it's like that time when...

Doesn't the government know that education is important?

2010-04-08T20:10:00.000-07:00

song: train - hey soul sister

well, it's definitely been a while. let's recap:

chris got into UCLA for his MBA. i threw him a surprise dinner at yuki to celebrate his acceptance. we're trying to move to LA by june, but i can only join him if i find a job. thanks, LA unified school district, for having one of the biggest and longest lasting teacher lay-offs ever. and thanks, california, for appointing arnold to office, because even if it wasn't entirely his fault, he definitely didn't help.

chris broke our "Good steak for your birthday" tradition and got me the best birthday present to date: a trip to China and the Philippines! reminder that all photos are on fb, or at least the ones worth keeping.

china: had an awesome time hanging out with Curtis and Lea. i wish they lived closer to us, and to each other. they announced their engagement on chinese new year, yay!!! spent my birthday in Shanghai and ate all you can eat sushi (plus meat). awesome!

philippines: chris stayed in the philippines long enough to attend dada king's 80th birthday celebration. i think everyone had a good time. dad and i caught up with mom in cebu, and visited lolo in the hospital almost every day, sometimes twice or thrice if the visits were very short. stayed a week in manila with dada king. man, he's my kind of guy. breakfast, sudoku, nap, lunch, nap.... :)

on the not-so-bright side of things, i gained a lot of weight on my trip. yes, i gained some weight on our family cruise in december (about 7 lbs?), which raised me from about 120 to a consistent 127. luckily, it was fairly easy to get back to the 121-123 range when i got back to santa clara.

but it seems my birthday trip was really a food tour of asia. our days in shanghai and HK were planned around what we were going to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (and several coffee/snack breaks in between). when i got to the philippines, i always ended up eating each meal twice.

so, i'm at a consistent 130lbs now, and it doesn't seem to be coming off. i told myself that i'd start running in april, which technically i did. but i only ran twice, and my eating habits haven't improved. boo. but the worst thing is....i'm getting used to the weight. other than having trouble fitting into my clothes (or not being able to at all), i'm........settling into my fatness. THIS IS BAD NEWS BEARS.

the job search

job hunting really sucks. it's very depressing and it's put chris and i at odds with each other a lot. my lack of subbing opportunities has given me the entire workweek to just sit around the apt like a lamer. with all this extra time to contemplate life, i've realized, for new reasons, that i do not enjoy being in santa clara. i feel like i'm wasting my life away, because i stayed in santa clara to stay with chris, even after i stopped going to school. i'm following chris around california like a frickin puppy. it makes me resent looking for a job in LA. and on top of that, we're fighting about all this crap because he's acting like i'm not trying hard enough to find a job.

it's really depressing. our 5 year relationship is probably hinging on whether i can find a job and move with chris. if i can't find a job, i can't move with chris, and i'm going to feel like i failed at keeping our relationship together. in actuality, i should feel bad for not being able to find a job, but no, i'm going to have this irrational guilt that i broke us up. it's ridiculous.

in other news, i've been reading "J"'s blog (that's a nod to you, "J"). it seems like she's really honest about everything, even if that means she sounds narcissistic, alcoholic, and spoiled rotten. usually people want to paint themselves as nicely as possible, and although i kinda worry that she IS an alcoholic, i do appreciate her bluntness. i just can't imagine the how she could do all this.

::hand signal:: CONNECTION! it's like when i found out that K is one of those guys who just sleeps with anyone when he's single. i thought one night stands and all that stuff was just for shallow, self absorbed and/or insecure people (kinda like K's roomie, S). but K does it too! and i guess J had her fill of casual sex after her monumental break up. i don't know why it bothers me...maybe i'm just intrigued. perhaps i've grown up thinking you can't be a good person AND be self absorbed and promiscuous at the same time. maybe i've been wrong all this time.

hmm.

Hey Friendo

2009-12-28T14:31:00.000-08:00

song: Beyonce-Sweet Dream

In an attempt to procrastinate from cleaning up the apt, i'm going to write a blog entry! :) Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, btw.

So, Ekit posted this pretty cool thing on fb. at first i didn't know what it was, since it kinda looks like one of those motivational posters (yenno, the kind that has a picture of a rockclimber with a caption that says DETERMINATION: (thoughtful insight in smaller font)). Anyway, i clicked on what Ekit posted, and it turned out to be a compilation of fb statuses that he's had throughout the year. Turned out to really sum up 2009 for him really well, so i clicked the button that said "Create Your Own!".

First of all, i've found that all my statuses are novels. I think Ekit fit twice as many statuses on his poster than i ever could, just cuz his were short and sweet like, "In line at Best Buy", and "love my friends", where as mine were "i'm still grumpy that SFO customs took my damn meat. they're probably eating it...right now. word to the wise: always check "No" on all the boxes in that immigrations form, NO MATTER WHAT. word to SFO: stop hiring IDIOTS who think austria is australia." (yes, that was just one), and "is eating day old ranch flavored popcorn, trying to find somewhere to watch the pacquaio fight in stockton". Both very true, but very long.

The app (Called "My-Year-In-Status" on fb's apps) generates a list of all your fb status posts, then organizes it by month. It's like a yearbook...nostalgic, funny, and sometimes embarrassing. i'm going to call it my "Personal YearList" as a yearbook derivation since it's not a book and there aren't any pictures. I'm posting it here because, like i said, all my statuses couldn't fit onto the fb app cuz they were too long.

After reading mine, i've found it's also a good jumping off point for my new year's resolutions... you know what they say: you can't know where you're going till you look at where you've gone. (That should be a motivational poster for REFLECTION)

Without further ado, here is my unabridged Personal YearList:

January
✓ is happy to have Lea and Curtis in Santa Clara
✓ is looking for an apt in san francisco! HELP!
✓ is getting braces tomorrow :X
✓ is apartment hunting!
✓ is tired of apartment hunting
✓ is rephrasing--she's discouraged by unsuccessful apartment hunting
✓ is going to tahoe! but too lazy to keep packing
✓ wants another vacation.

February
✓ is wishing she had better study habits
✓ wants to know who wants to kick it old school and go to boreal
✓ is twiddling her thumbs in stockton
✓ is thanking everyone for the birthday wishes! and is NOT hung over at all! yaay!
✓ has a lot of plans for this week
✓ wants to watch love and basketball with her 82 roomies

March
✓ is suprised at how much slower DSL is. :(
✓ is going to austria!!!!
✓ summertime in the lbc

April
✓ i'm still grumpy that SFO customs took my damn meat. they're probably eating it...right now. word to the wise: always check "No" on all the boxes in that immigrations form, NO MATTER WHAT. word to SFO: stop hiring IDIOTS who think austria is australia.
✓ i wanna go back to austria
✓ is back in stockton, wanting to take bailey to live with her in santa clara.... mew :(
✓ ucd alumni: you guys going to pcn this year?
✓ wants to cook tomorrow.
✓ love reading FML
✓ want to make my own eiskaffees and my own schlagober

May
✓ is eating day old ranch flavored popcorn, trying to find somewhere to watch the pacquaio fight in stockton
✓ Easy Peezy. Manny's too humble sometimes.
✓ hates talking to customer service. i feel your pain, christopher.
✓ HATES getting bogus parking tickets for parking in legit spaces.
✓ is sipping tea and feeling fancy. thanks dan and tina!
✓ misses clam chowder and dunkin donuts already
✓ listening to Lea Salonga in Miss Saigon makes me cry

June
✓ mmmm, peach lambic with vanilla ice cream
✓ loved the movie, "Up", and is excited to have a monkeywoman jacket!
✓ is wishing she still had email on her phone :(
✓ feels a twinge of pain when her braces get too close to aluminum foil (from a burrito) :(
✓ has been waking up at 5am every day this week.... i shake my fist at you, zion.
✓ loves the "tasks" feature on gmail. a handy dandy to-do list you can check off as you go!
✓ thinks the Coffee Toffee Twisted Frosty from wendy's is too sweet....still hella eating it tho. :) ✓ loves eating at mom and dad's house :) .....plus they have a/c.
✓ is sunburned from golf yesterday. how does a brown person like me get sunburned!?

July
✓ wishes all her physical photo albums from the ol' days could scan themselves onto the computer.
✓ grad school = jumping thru hoops....very very specific, tedious hoops.
✓ still feels like tina gabriel
✓ feeling emo and wishing for more
✓ is enjoying family time :)
✓ is listening to "i wanna be your man" from the love and basketball soundtrack :) i need to buy that movie.
✓ feels hella moted!!!! but can't stop laughing about it
✓ (day old) Sprinkles (free) cupcakes FTW!
✓ anyone wanna watch The Ugly Truth tonight at camera 12?

August
✓ i love you, fb, for helping me find long lost friends. :)
✓ can i just say....i get hella, hella red.
✓ is using google calendar to organize her life!
✓ is a mario kart master!

September
✓ does anyone know how/where to find jenn dela cruz?
✓ feeling teeny boppy and wishing i was back in high school
✓ is doing laundry, and thinking, "i wonder if the term "laundering money" came from the idea of making dirty money clean."
✓ wishes awkward hair grow didnt exist

October
✓ i hate you facebook inbox that always loses the long messages i write!

November
✓ damn it feels good to be a teacher.
✓ 5.9s and 5.10s from here on out.
✓ anyone wanna watch new moon tomorrow with me and alysia?
✓ red velvet cupcakes with homemade frosting....SUCCESS!

December
✓ in NOLA, on our way to our caribbean cruise!

i should add to december (since i wasn't on fb much):

✓ is obsessed with 30Rock
✓ in love with Christopher
✓ can't fit into any of my pants since the cruise
✓ got a scale (for weighing myself) as a Christmas gift from Keiko...way to be subtle
✓ had a wonderful Christmas with family
✓ has moved from Cranium to Guesstures
✓ loves bailey's and hot chocolate
✓ wants to be a better teacher

Ah, a year in the life. anyway, it's January 2nd, and i should be heading out to stockton now to see family. i was hoping that by the time i finished writing this, Chris would wake up so i could say goodbye, but he's still dead asleep. It's NOON!

until next time. (didn't carmen sandiego always say that?)

Time to procrastinate

2009-09-26T23:08:00.000-07:00

song in my head: "beggin.....yoOoOoU....", yenno, the one Aaron Carter danced to in DTWS.

The work i am currently trying to avoid is job searching.

will answer phones for food. out of desperation, i've decided to try and branch out and look for some kind of admin job on top of looking for a teaching position. this means i have to update/redo my resume to reflect adminny type skills. it's harder than i thought, and i'm a quitter: i tried retrofitting my teacher resume (cuz i really like the layout), but after maybe 20 minutes i gave up cuz i don't know how to make any kind of admin position or skill sound important and/or something only i possess. I can type 95wpm, WOO! I know MS Office, WOO! I know how to answer phones...WOO!? I really can't talk it up, especially after only 20 minutes of trying.
.................. did i mention that i applied for a school related position that only requires a high school diploma, and i STILL didn't get a call back???
online job applications. found a few teaching positions for schools in seattle (yes, california sucks that much, and washington is THAT cool). started filling out an online app for a position that seemed like a particularly good fit, and was working hard on the essay questions when i clicked on a bookmark without pressing ctrl+click like nathan taught me so that it'd open in a new tab. so of course when i press the "back" button, none of my essay questions are saved. i get mad and never finish (or rather, rewrite) my app. i almost thought about it today, but instead i'm writing this blog. bad choices, trish; bad choices.

Anyway, another thing i wanted to write about (and i'm not sure why, because it's pretty random), is how LAME Filipino magazine and newspaper articles/editorials are. they always use flowery words and overly long sentences, so much so that you think a report on the mayor cutting a ribbon is a 12 part, uber dramatic play. why do they do that? it's kinda like when 8th graders have to write an essay, and they use the thesaurus feature on Word to make them sound "smarter". it really pisses me off, and it really makes these writers sound horribly pretentious, a little flamboyant, and not very cultured. it also takes away their own writing voice (cuz they all sound the same), and makes the piece really annoying to read.

por ejemplo:
http://www.zeelifestylecebu.com/living_01.htm

oh, and did i mention all the typos?

anyway, some updates on my goals:

Things to DO: 2009

1) Listen to music outside the confines of my car. (i think i need an ipod dock for this)
2) Read for fun. (currently reading "Wolf Totem")
3) Bike Bailey at least 3x a week, and run him at least once a week when weather permits.
um...yeah. still fail.
4) Redecorate the freakin living room.
thinking about applying for "My Parents' House" makeover tv show.
5) Improve Vantage
still haven't done this one....i've made plans, tho. i hope i dont suck.
6) Get my mom to stop gambling.
um...i dont think this will ever happen. i think i'll just be bitter forever on this one.
7) Try to figure out a better way of dealing with my actions and emotions when it comes to family issues.
i think being "bitter forever" is not helpful, but i've got my own issues to figure out. family can do whatever they want.

8) Get back in touch with my old friends.
kinda doing this. vee, espy, and keona came up to SF/San Jose this weekend, and i tried my best to hang out with them as much as possible.
9) Finish my stupid masters.
EFFF YOUUUUU SJSU!
10) Get a job. start my career.
tryyying....just gotta stop procrastinating.
11) Learn how to cook at least a couple of dishes that taste good consistently.
i've been spending QT with brianna every weekend by baking something. today is the first day we've actually succeeded in making something both LOOK and TASTE good.
12) Stop wasting my incredibly expensive Planet Granite membership.
i feeel sooooo fat.....

update on 2009 goals

2009-07-17T08:27:00.000-07:00

song in my head: alicia keys-you dont know my name

i posted some "new years resolution" type things to do in late february, and i'm just updating on what i've accomplished so far:

Things to DO: 2009

1) Listen to music outside the confines of my car.
this hasn't happened, but i have gotten a few "new" mixed cds for my car, and i've learned that using my ipod shuffle for my auxilliary input has been awesome. listening to a wider music selection makes me very happy.

2) Read for fun.
DID IT! DOING IT! i got into Wicked and am also reading the Time Traveler's Wife. I'm enjoying them both, and it's weird that i TTW between breaks of reading required texts for my classes, cuz it technically doesn't give my eyes or brain any break time. it just feels enjoyable, like reading up on a friend's life or something.

3) Bike Bailey at least 3x a week, and run him at least once a week when weather permits.
um...yeah. fail. i'm not home as much as i used to be, but i do try to bike him at least once while i'm home on the weekends. sometimes that doesn't happen cuz i'm lazy and it's super hot.

4) Redecorate the freakin living room.
i think i'll just hope and pray that if i send pictures of the livingroom to ratemyspace, they'll see the travesty and fix it themselves. ::crossing fingers:: i'll do that this weekend

5) Improve Vantage=teach my dad that he needs to be a little more practical, even if it means to be less giving.
so i worked for vantage for a couple of months, and it wasn't as bad as i thought it was. my dad's still a softy, but the business is fine thanks to girlie.

6) Get my mom to stop gambling.
um...i dont think this will ever happen. i think i'll just be bitter forever on this one.

7) Try to figure out a better way of dealing with my actions and emotions when it comes to family issues.
i think being "bitter forever" is not helpful, but i've got my own issues to figure out. family can do whatever they want.

8) Get back in touch with my old friends.
CHECK! the vegas trip was totally awesome, and just like old times. except we're all older, wiser, and hotter. except for me and my short hair and braces. i miss my girls, and i'm so glad we got to go on this trip together.

9) Finish my stupid masters.
seriously! SJSU sucks for supporting me in this. i might haveta drop my research methods class. it's supposedly a 'supplementary' class to prep me for the official research class, but all it's doing is making me jump through more hoops

10) Get a job. start my career.
seriously! i don't think it's gonna happen cuz SJSU is being stupid and not giving me the support i need.

11) Learn how to cook at least a couple of dishes that taste good consistently.
so i did have a cooking phase earlier, and i made a bunch of stuff. pochero, bistek, even homemade lumpia and sinigang. but then i stopped cooking again. hmm.

12) Stop wasting my incredibly expensive Planet Granite membership.
yeah. i think i should just quit and save myself $54 a month. boo. :(

STILL can't sleep

2009-05-29T02:29:00.000-07:00

listening to: Lea Salonga.

She's awesome. i'm in stockton at the moment; drove back for Viel's high school graduation this saturday. also, i didnt have anything to do in santa clara. Some updates:

Travel:
went to Boston with chris for memorial day weekend. stayed with kassel and arvid, who showed us a wicked good time. i had like 8 bowls of clam chowder, and i bought a boston hoodie. i also took a bunch of pictures, which i will eventually post on facebook. everytime we travel outside california, i'm amazed at how much more awesome things are. really, santa clara/stockton suck. there's just no way around it: it's built into the infrastructure of the cities. given, stockton isn't as big as boston, but san jose is (i think). big enough, at least. it's a real downer the more i think about it. i wish i could travel more, just to get away from all the blah.

School:
has been a bitch. i got notice from my lender that i need to go back to school or start repaying my loan. i also found out that because i havent thought of a research question yet, i'm bound to yet another full year (including a summer) of school in order to finish. I got a lame parking ticket while trying to shuffle some paperwork to the financial aid and registrar's office, and i've been going back and forth and back and forth trying to add classes i need for the summer. i'm still technically not in one of them, and it may or may not start next week (i wouldn't know, since i'm not enrolled). on the up side, the masters colloquium was a couple of weeks ago, and i enjoyed watching/seeing everyone's work. come to think of it, the graduation ceremony happened while i was in boston. hmm. at least i'm not the only one who didnt graduate yet, although i may the the only one who hasn't been doing anything worthwhile with all the extra time. I think maybe 1/3 of us finished this year. Hopefully when i finish next year, i'll see some familiar faces.

Work:
it's been ok. because of summer school, whenever that will be, i have to give up my only lunch shift. there have also been a bunch of new waitresses training for the new restaurant that opens next month. that's kinda fun, and it's interesting to feel like a veteran waitress when i know i still suck pretty hard at it. it's paradoxical. oh, and i'm poor because i havent been making enough money.

Vegas:
i was telling fonz and nathan how i havent been out to a club for like a year because 1) chris doesn't like "the scene" and 2) chris mocks me when i dance, which makes him no fun to dance with. and how me and my 82 roomies always had so much fun going out to the cluuuubs together. which led me to the fact that i havent been to a club in vegas. which led me to think that i should plan a trip with them to vegas and get the best of both worlds. so i sent out a message on facebook, and we've been talking back and forth just like the good ol days ever since. everyone has booked their ticket to vegas for this july 10th, and i'm really excited to go... mostly because it's 82, but also because it's vegas and i get to leave santa clara.

Diet:
which leads me to the way i usually do vegas: the fatty fatty way. i've gone to vegas twice in my adult life, and both times consisted of just staying in buffets all day and not setting foot in a single bar or club. i'm so lame. so this time, i wanna live my single lady life (as in, not married), and party it up, especially since it's been forever since the last time i went out. but i feel so fat (-1). plus i cut my hair (-1) (which IIIII think is more stylish, but less beautiful), PLUS i got braces, which i'm sure takes me down at least another 2 points on the attractiveness scale. can't grow my hair out by july, and i cant take my braces off, so i'm hoping i can at least feel a little less fat. so i'm trying to eat less, because i figure it's more passive than exercising more.

eating less sucks. i'm irritable, exhausted, and i just think everything sucks. there is no more joy in the world. and to base my happiness and general outlook on life on food, come to think of it, sucks even harder. I DONT CARE. i dont even like my boyfriend as much. on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being zomg gushing grossly with uncontrollable love, my baseline of how much i like my boyfriend is usually around an 8, so still kinda gross. i get spikes of 9 weekly, and 10s monthly, but now it's seriously like a 5, and i never get that low even if i'm mad at him. he hasn't done anything different and i feel like i'm practically hating him. this sucks. i dont even think i've lost any weight.

i've found some comfort tonight in listening to lea salonga. how lame does that sound. but really, her miss saigon stuff is great, and even her video recording of a whole new world was awesome. you can just FEEEEEEEL the emotion. i wish all music had this much of an affect on me.

also, watching so you think you can dance makes me really wish i could dance. yenno that feeling like, man, wouldn't it be so empowering and awesome to be able to manipulate your body and express yourself that way. and it made me really realize i can never be truly good at dancing. it's just something you're born with, i think. you can learn and practice all you want, but there's only so much grace and confidence you can learn. take shannon elizabeth on DWTS. she doesn't miss a single step, but she just doesn't move like a dancer.

anyway, i'm gonna try to sleep.

cant sleep.

2009-03-25T08:56:00.000-07:00

What is a girl to do when her (expensive) internet connection sucks?

Okay, it’s almost 3am. I’ve been battling insomnia lately; chris’ snoring doesn’t help, and neither does this ever so frustrating internet connection of mine. I turned my computer on at 1:54 and typed in gmail.com. it’s now 2:54 and I stillhaven’t been able to check my mail. It won’t even load the login page. I’ve been trying for the past hour!

Stupid, stupid Comcast. And btw, I hate their stupid Juno-songy new commercialsn with the bored monotonous “singing”. I shake my fist at you, Comcast.

As a result of my inability to sleep, I have gotten some unproductive things done. I have a lot of important things to do, like my taxes, and making various medical appts before I leave for Austria, or calling up my financial aid loan to extend my due date because I took the semester off and they’re likely to start billing me $26,000 by June instead of when I earn my degree? I still also haveta reapply for FAFSA.

I’ve probably lost out on a lot of aid money since it’s already the end of march and the economy sucks in general. Stupid budget crisis. Oh, and I still haven’t applied for my credential, another important thing. I’ve followed up on none of those things during my countless waking hours. But what I have done is watch a ton of clips on youtube. Found out I like Carrie Underwood. Also transferred all my old media from the desktop at home to my laptop. I had stuff like Craig David music videos, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton, and all the music I downloaded while I was living in the dorms in davis. I also found a bunch of pictures I forgot I had. It was nice looking through them, and I decided, because I had nothing else to do, to post them on facebook at 5:30 in the morning for everyone to enjoy.

Speaking of facebook, I hate the new layout. Dunno where anything is, and makes facebook less of a mind numbing time killing tool because the usual mind numbing activities (looking at pictures, reading other people’s comments) take energy to actually find. For some reason, fb didn’t tell me that anyone commented on the pics I posted. For a second there, I thought nobody saw them, or cared. Not that facebook design flaws matter at all if I DON’T HAVE AN INTERNET CONNECTION. It’s 3:03 now, btw.

My dad told me the last time I couldn’t sleep that I should try exercising to get myself tired………….Right. I totally don’t have the willpower to do that while it’s daytime, let alone this late at night. I’m totally not enjoying this sleeplessness. On Thursday, I didn’t sleep at all till 7:30am, and once I did, I had to wake up at 9:30 anyway for work. I also have been noticing my obsessive nature with food. I can’t stop myself from ordering too much, and eating too much. Clarification: I do stop myself from being painfully full, but I still go a several bites past “full enough”.

Woohoo! I’m connected! (3:12). It’s kinda sad how much of a necessity the internet is for me (and a lot of other people, I’m sure). It’s like not having electricity or water for an hour, or however long you haveta go without when you wanna use it. …….and it’s gone again. Jesus. I quit. I’m calling them tomorrow. We’re due for another promotion anyway.

Let’s see, what else is new. Curtis flew out to Austria today, and we had a goodbye dinner for him on Sunday with his family, and with just the three of us (chris, Curtis and i) on Monday at the Counter. Mmm, the Counter. It was nice having him around. I think it made me and chris do more than just watch TV and eat dinner. Or maybe it’s just like that age old question of “if a tree falls and no one is around to hear it, does it really make a sound?”, corny I know, but because Chris and I spend so much time together alone at home, it kinda all blends together and we don’t know where our time went. So at least when there’s someone else around, we have more reason to go out and entertain, or even just do more stuff at home, like play video games we haven’t touched in a while, or watch some of our favorite DVDs. It was kinda like that too when Fonz lived with us for a while, except after like a couple weeks, he just settled comfortably into our routine of doing nothing at home instead of go out. His new place in SF doesn’t have a living room (the owner of the house optimized it for maximum occupancy, making the living room and dining room into bedrooms), and I think he relishes in the fact that we have a couch, coffee table, and TV that is separate from our bedroom. It is nice. I dunno if we could ever live in a studio.

Chris and I also attended Sabrina’s engagement party last Saturday, so hooray for going out and doing stuff. It kinda wasn’t what I expected, but still nice. For some reason, it reminded me of those Filipino parties we always used to go to as a family when I was younger. Lots of food, chairs lined up against the wall instead of at the table, no shoes in the house, bunch of adults standing around and talking, and nothing for the kids to do. J

Anyway, I should try to sleep again. This sucks.

update at 9am.....neither my internet explorer or firefox will not work. i cant update my mcafee because it tries to open mozilla. chris says i have a virus. :(

List of Things to Do

2009-02-27T23:39:00.000-08:00

Currently listening to: Daniel Beddingfield- If You're Not the One
Mood: nostalgic

I've always written down lists of "things to do". Last winter, i bought a 12 pack of what they call junior steno pads for my advanced kindergarteners who started getting bored with carpet activities. the original purpose for these junior steno pads (they're about 4"x6") was that these "smart and bored" kids could incorporate spelling and writing (skills that still challenged them) during the lessons they had already mastered but the rest of the class was still learning. look at my differentiated learning strategies!

anyway, since those days i've used the junior steno pads for my lists of things to do, as well as for general chore notes to chris while i'm away from the apt. i think i've gone through 2 steno pads, with 90% of the 120 pages entitled "Things to DO". sometimes i wonder why i have to write that at the top of each page. i already know what it's a list of. just like the list before it and the list before that.

so now i'm gonna try something somewhat new. lately i've thought of semi-big projects that i'd like to accomplish throughout the year. it's kinda out of the scope of my usual steno pad lists because those are mostly for daily chores. i like to feel accomplished and check things off as i go about my day (i'm sure everyone does). today, i will try to remember all the life changes and goals i have thought of recently and write them down here. let's see if i can check any of them off a year from now.

Things to DO: 2009

1) Listen to music outside the confines of my car.
my mom always had music playing in the house when i was younger. i used to have a radio/alarm clock i'd listen to KWIN on when i was in high school. my roomies always had music blasting (simultaneously) at 82. i dont know what happened to my music-listening. i think i feel like i don't have time to listen to music anymore other than in my car while i'm driving to and from stockton. by myself. maybe music has just become more of a private thing for me. i don't know.

2) Read for fun.
i liked having Twilight to read while i was in the philippines, even if it wasn't intellectual at all. hopefully my future choices will have better vocabulary.

3) Bike Bailey at least 3x a week, and run him at least once a week when weather permits.
i enjoy biking bailey around. makes him a calmer dog. i feel like i should get into exercising myself, as well. gah, i hate running.

4) Redecorate the freakin living room.
it's ugly yo! i've been watching enough HGTV to do some good in my parent's living room. at least i think so. i just wish our carpet wasn't so horrendous. it really narrows down my color palette options. Olive Garden/Macaroni Grill green makes me think of their color schemes. hey, it works for them! only we're not americanized italian. or big pasta eaters.

5) Improve Vantage=teach my dad that he needs to be a little more practical, even if it means to be less giving.
my dad's a softy and i'm tired of people taking advantage.

6) Get my mom to stop gambling.
it's ridiculuous that nobody can stand up to her. i dont wanna haveta be the parent here, but someone's gotta take care of this problem.

7) Try to figure out a better way of dealing with my actions and emotions when it comes to family issues.
Getting frustrated doesn't help. Not helping doesn't help, either.

8) Get back in touch with my old friends.
j9's getting married! all my roomies are far away it seems. maybe i should sign onto AIM again. feel like i chatted with them while talking to them across the apt. one out of two is better than none. i have come to cringe at all phone calls in general (thanks, chris). maybe i can work up to that later. i'm pretty sure i tried calling nancy a few times, but maybe she's too cool for school now, or maybe she just got tired of me falling off the face of the earth all the time. i dunno.

9) Finish my stupid masters.
seriously!

10) Get a job. start my career.
seriously!

11) Learn how to cook at least a couple of dishes that taste good consistently.
curtis said cooking is easier and less torture when you get comfortable cooking a couple things that you really think are delicious. prep time gets shorter and shorter the better you get at it. i just need to find something delicious that i can cook other than breakfast . :(

12) Stop wasting my incredibly expensive Planet Granite membership.
i think i could get pretty good at rock climbing. and they have a gym and free yoga classes there. what the heck am i doing sitting around all day???? i'm wasting 50 bux a month on sitting around! GAH! i'll never catch up and make my money worth it at this point.

more to come...maybe.

New Kitchen!

2008-11-23T20:10:00.001-08:00

"LeFou I'm Afraid I've Been Thinking...."

2008-11-16T01:27:00.000-08:00

A dangerous pastime, i know.

haha, disney used to be awesome. i feel sorry for the kids today who need flashing lights and videogames to stay entertained. Whatever happened to good movies with great music that everyone could enjoy?

anyway, i have been thinking jack handy-like deep thoughts. it helps when chris isn't around...or maybe i just get grandiose with my ideas while he's not here. haha, i just checked dictionary.com to make sure i was using the word grandiose correctly, and i totally was!
Grandiose: adj.
2.more complicated or elaborate than necessary; overblown.

i guess i let my thoughts run for longer than usual, and they can get pretty out there, hence it being a dangerous pastime. Here are just a few examples of my trains of thought:

as i'm cleaning the apartment: man, this place is always messy. and it sucks how crap gets stinky in our sink because we don't have a garbage disposal...... ->if only we had more storage and space in general, maybe things wouldn't look so cluttered. man, we need a garbage disposal. maybe i'd cook more if i knew washing dishes wouldn't be so lame and stink filled.

result: I wanna move! so then i go off looking at apartment complexes, all the while thinking of more beneficial things that would come out of moving : ie, bailey would live with us. i look on rent.com, craigslist, and visit like 6 different apartment complexes and EVEN start drawing up furniture arrangements on pamphlets with floorplans! w. t. f. i even think long and hard about san francisco, and i decide that yes, i am ready to live there. bring it on, bitches!

i think about the last time i had my hair down. maybe 3 weeks ago. i wonder to myself why i even keep long hair in the first place if i always have to tie it back or in a bun. How lazy is that. and it just makes me colder since my ears are all exposed. and plus turtleneck season is here. man, a long bob would look cute with a turtleneck.

result: I make an appointment with a coworker's hairdresser and i chop off like 8 inches. it's day 2 of the new 'do and i think i like it. i've gotten mixed reviews. Kiyo doesn't like short hair, and neither do my mexican coworkers. i think it's a guy thing. chris said the same thing a long time ago when i asked him about it: "i like long hair". technically i don't really think it counts as long hair if you never see it cuz it's in a tight, unflattering bun. plus my hair is so flat on top and all ugly in general. i don't have luscious long hair by any means. it's just limp and fly away-y and dull.

before....the last time i had my hair down, i curled it so it had some body.
short and straight while on the phone.

i've also been thinking a lot about my subbing obligations. i reflected on my various stages of emotion:

excitement and responsibility: wow, a whole classroom for the taking! I GET to make my own lesson plans! i GET to be here for the long haul and be their teacher! what a wonderful change from being the student teacher last semester having little control about how the classroom was run. i spent several (and i mean a LOT of) unpaid hours cleaning up moving boxes and rearranging empty cabinets so that the classroom would feel like a real classroom instead of a very low-prioritized afterthought (miss bleep, i'm totally calling you out).
frustration and disappointment: i've been here for weeks, why are they still misbehaving? why don't they treat me like their teacher? why am i still seen as a substitute they can take advantage of? don't they see how HARD i'm working!?
anger towards MIA Teacher: why is this MIA teacher just leaving her class like this? Why doesn't she just quit so they can get on with their lives with a teacher who will stay with them?? How can the kids still miss her and write her "i wish you came back" letters if she was only there a week? i know them better than she does!
overwhelmation and feeling like i'm being taken advantage of: i got a sticky note on my desk saying "let's talk about how you can do 1) report cards 2) parent teacher conferences 3) exhibition night (open house) WHAT. THE. HECK. how much am i getting paid for this? for my lesson planning and grading papers till 1am and missing class every week so i can teach? oh yeah, the same amount as the last sub who was there that sat around and did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING except let the kids think that all subs are useless pushovers.
and what am i even going to do after my 30 days in this class are up? What will happen to all that work and all that effort i put in? they'll just get another substitute that'll do nothing for 7 hours because there are no lesson plans provided. They're gonna go back to the hot mess they were before me and erin got there. What the hell am i doing this for?!
Jealousy and remorse: erin's the good cop and i'm the bad cop. i don't play games, i don't do art projects, i don't give out as many table points and i don't let them get away with bad behavior. i firmly remind until firm reminders prove to be ineffective. then i raise my voice. i move clips down. i take away recesses. and none of the kids are ever excited to see me, and they don't say hi and they don't talk to me when they don't need to. but they LOVE erin! i don't know, maybe negative reinforcement doesn't work well. maybe i should give a little so that they can enjoy school a little more...and i do feel bad when i get short with certain kids over and over and over again.
hopelessness and pointlessness: maybe i should go to school one day and just not do anything. no lessons, no purpose, no expectations. just be like another sub. why not? why put myself through all the stress? my days are numbered (literally), and i'm at the tail end of my stay. why not? why even finish out my 30 days? Why not just find an easier subbing job and sub whenever i want instead of HAVING to sub on a schedule? why not?
then it makes me question whether or not someone who gives up that easily is really fit to be a teacher at all. maybe i'm not cut out for this. maybe all these roadblocks in the classroom are just projected excuses of something wrong in my teaching. what does this do to my plans of going back to the philippines and revolutionizing SWU? what happens then?

anyway, those are very unsettling thoughts and i feel bad for having them, but it's true.

i've also been thinking so much that it's hard for me to get to sleep at night. it's 2:27 and i can't go to sleep cuz my mind's running, trying to find "the answer" to all my dilemmas, especially that last one about SWU, because i've been planning that one out for years and now it seems that it's starting to crumble.

and another thing that happens when chris is gone: i start to really think about what it'd be like without him around. i guess i don't have many friends, but maybe i would if chris wasn't in the picture. not saying that he's keeping me from making friends, it's just that he's that entertaining and multi-purpose. i'm the type to compartmentalize friends: one or two people i confide in, another group i'd enjoy going out with, another couple people to talk to about beliefs and philosophies and ethics, another couple people i go to for advice, almost anyone to eat with..... and so far, i can do all those things with chris....except maybe the going out (to the cruuuub) one. i still have patbo and jon wong to confide in and shoot the shit with and everything in between......although not too much lately, but we all get busy. jon moved to san diego recently, but he's probably one the only person i can talk to on the phone with till the battery dies....at 4am cuz he's drunk dialling me. and patbo's all stressed out about work but he's known me the longest and probably knows me the best on most things. maybe a person only needs a couple of really good friends to survive. it'd still be nice to have more tho.

i also think about what life would be like if chris wasn't around anymore. i'm pretty sure we'd still be friends...but then why wouldn't we be together if we were still be friends? it gets a little fuzzy at that point. i think i'd still be on the same track...finishing up school, teaching, watching too much tv. i've decided it's hard to plan very far ahead when another person is involved. i was all set for going back to stockton and teaching at mckinley and then going back to cebu and making SWU awesome.......and i was dead set on those plans, whether chris was coming with me or not. but now i'm thinking of going to SF with him when he decides to move, and all the aforementioned doubts about SWU.... i don't know. i guess plans seem a lot clearer when you think about big ideas and ignore the details. what ever happened to the whole being greater than the sum of its parts? The little things are stopping my big things from happening!!!

anyway, this is what happens when i get more time to reflect on things. a good thing? maybe. a bad thing? maybe. chris is coming back from romania tomorrow, so we'll see what he thinks about all this thinking.

i'm spent.

p.s.- i saw my previous post and just for the record, i got 2 A's, 2 A-'s, and a Pass (no letter grades for student teaching) last semester. GPA is slipping, but not by much. I hate how A+ aren't worth more, but A-'s are worth less. Someone really needs to fix that. i've been complaining about it since 2001.

a old blog entry i found on my computer

2008-10-16T05:04:00.000-07:00

i was moving files onto my new netbook and found this blog entry that i wrote just about a year ago. sadly enough, nothing has changed since then.

10/3/07
I’m at the SJSU MLKJ library, and I’ve found a few interesting things:

1) More than half of the people who bring their computers to the library use them to either play games, watch a movie, or surf the internet. Why not do these things at home? It’s almost as if the library has turned into a place where pretending to learn and actually learning are equally accepted. Given, I am not particularly staying on task at the moment, but I have managed to hold off for almost two hours on using my laptop for leisure.

2) Eating is allowed in this library. I haven’t exactly seen signs saying either or, but I did see an employee walk past a student with a big doggie bag from Johnny Rockets next to her books without reprimanding her. Davis was being unduly restrictive and I didn’t even know it.

3) I feel like an uneducated child when I read my Bowers required text. I have tracking issues (i.e, I have trouble staying on the same line of text, or I jump down extra lines unintentionally when I reach the end of a line), I read but I oftentimes do not comprehend, and I want to unlock the message, but I feel as if I cannot. As we learned in our ELA class, “good readers know when they are confused, and they stop and try to figure things out”. I know I am confused, but I continue to read in hopes that the next word (or page, or chapter) will contain something that will magically make everything I’ve read up to that point make sense. I’ve finished chapters 3 and 4, nodded off to sleep and reread the same pages several times. Each time felt like it was the first time reading the passage, evidence that I did not absorb anything during the previous go. Some things make sense, and others I cannot even remember. This is the first time I have ever felt like this (that I can remember, anyway), and I can only imagine the confusion and exclusion from the world that low readers must feel every day.

4) Today I got my “Tower Card”, the sjsu version of a reg card, or bruin card. This card allows me to stay for the MLKJ library after hours (an extra two or three hours on the weekday, I believe), permitted only for students of SJSU. I also affixed my free VTA lightrail/bus pass to the plastic sleeve included with the card. I didn’t bother to put my glasses back on after the picture was taken, and I thought I saw the less famous ‘he who must not be named’ on the escalator of the library. Blurry vision plays tricks on you.

5) So again I’ve been having dreams about he who must not be named. not voldemort, just the ex (not the evil two faced one, the other one that for some reason nobody knew about) i'm trying not to name names because he's already had many a blogger devoted to him. anyway, I’m not sure why, but i seem to have dreams with him in them every month or so. Maybe it’s because he lives in the area, maybe because he gave me a tour of this library over two years ago. That doesn’t really explain the dreams, but it does explain why I think I might see him here. Do I hope to see him? I’m still sad that he didn’t think I was ambitious and driven enough as a person to be considered a good wife, and I reflect on all the crap I go through for this masters program and wonder how anyone could be any more driven and ambitious than I am now. And I want to tell him that he was wrong about that aspect of me. I want to mail him a picture of my credentialing ceremony, of my masters graduation, of my first class picture as a teacher. Those are big things. Maybe I just want to prove myself, or maybe I just want to be able to share those moments with him.

6) Which leads me to another realization: it seems I have no friends. Am I more socially awkward than I give myself credit for? The CRA cohort program instills a sense of belongingness and camaraderie at the very basic level of being stuck in the same long classes with each other, day in and day out. Because we’re all in this program for the same general reasons, otherwise we’d be somewhere else. And yet, I haven’t created any special bond with anyone. Why is that? It seems others have. Should I feel bad? Should I try harder? Why haven’t I held on to friends I made in high school, or college? They still keep in touch with each other. What about the way I live my life isolates me from being part of these relationships?

Genius! (or lack thereof)

2008-05-04T17:57:00.000-07:00

today i feel lazy and uninspired.
i'm currently listening the live mexican band 15 ft away from my window. it's my fence-neighbor's birthday and apparently they do it big.

i have about a million papers to write but i am not inspired one bit to write any of them. On the bright side, school is almost over. on the not so bright side, i'm probably going to get terrible grades this quarter because of how stubborn i am about this work.

some highlights from the past 6 months:

The Move-In
chris and i moved into an apartment together. if we were lazy before, we have upped the ante by devolving into slothlike creatures who have no sense of moderation. here are some pics!
before after

I'm glad we finally have.........furniture. I kinda went crazy on craigslist. i felt like my mom at a garage sale. some of the deals were kinda just okay, but it was fun in the moment. On the bright side, we have a breakfast nookish kitchen set (which i use as a desk/ printer stand), a coffee table (that we use as a dinner table because we live on the couch), a dresser & nightstand, a bedframe, and bookshelves. lots of bookshelves.
pseudo-kitchen table/desk and bookshelves
bookshelves and rockband and Optimash Prime

We spend most of our time watching TV or playing videogames. A few months ago it was Rockband, and just last week i bought Mario Kart for the wii. i've also become very spoiled from our DVR. here is a list of shows we watch, because i know you all care very much:

Avatar: The Last Airbender on dvr. yes, i realize it's a cartoon but it's SOOOOO awesome. there's a lot of story and character development and i'd recommend it to anyone. :)

Coupling on dvr ....those brits are so damn witty! jeff is my favorite with Susan at a close 2nd :)

Flight of the Conchords , they're so good they deserve to be embedded in my blog.

also check out ziggy stardust david bowie, hahaha

Arrested Development on DVD because they're so painfully ridiculous. who can lose with names like Bob Loblaw! Tobias! GOB! George Michael!

Grey's Anatomy, but i'm losing faith
The Office.....but i'm losing faith with this one also
Lost (mostly chris)
Ace of Cakes!! ZOOOOOMG!! i have to devote some picturage to this one.

Yes, this beercan and bacon are really cakes in disguise. go ahead, take a closer look.

Yes, this hugemongous elephant is also made of cake. props, duff. mad props.

anyway, that's what we occupy ourselves with. And now we have trouble separating tv watching and eating, because we always do them together. now when we watch tv, we get hungry, and when we eat, we wanna watch tv . :(

The Schooling

Man, if i thought last semester was hard, this semester is just impossible. sometimes i feel like i've given up on trying because i'm just so overwhelmed and disinterested in the crazy stuff we're expected to produce for our classes. Crazy in the sense that i have like 3 papers due every week on top of working full time as a student teacher. That means i'm up at 6AM (sometimes 4:30, depending on if i did my hw the night before), i'm in the classroom from 8AM-3PM, then i'm on campus taking my masters classes from 4PM-9:45PM on Tuesdays, and 4-7:30PM on Thursdays......and that's after i dropped a class! i used to go til 9:45 on both days but decided it'd be total suicide. At least my current load is only partial suicide. My grades and sanity are gonna burn in hell but i'll still be on Earth, with a nervous twitch and imaginary friends as parting gifts.
I admit, i handled 4 papers a week last semester, but those papers were so deep and insightful and inspiring. This semester i'm in a classroom, i am a part of an actual CLASSROOM, facing all these REAL problems, and the university decides to shower us with busywork papers about memorizing content standards. MEMORIZING!? i thought that was against everything that the CRA stood for. This semester, they want us to jump through hoops, and all i can do is walk begrudgingly through them SOMETIMES, often with a lot of whining and complaining. but i still want my credential and i still want my masters. i'm just trying to bypass all the crap, and so far it isn't working.

The Kindergarten

For my 2nd semester of student teaching, they assigned me to a kindergarten class at a small school. like all classrooms, the kids' abilities range from like toddler to 3rd grader. my cooperating teacher (CT) is bomb and i love working with her because she's so caring and dedicated to the kids. She is also a CRA graduate.
Anyway, the toughest thing for me was to see the "lowest" group just get left behind in the dust by the other kids in reading and math. they are trying their best and it's not like they don't get extra help. My CT tutors them after school M-W. It used to be M-Th, but after like a month of that she felt like it was unfair to all the other students and reduced it to M-W so that she could tutor the other kids on Th and Fri. Anyway, what kills me is that omg they're only in Kindergarten and they're already behind!! They're getting crazy extra support and they're still not catching up! It seems hopeless. But i guess everyone has a different developmental trajectory, and they're doing much better with this help than they would've without it. It just sucks to see that despite the presence of all these crucial factors that are usually missing, sometimes you still don't get the result you want.

and the i'm all paranoid about legal issues now because of all the precautions we take for anonymity and all that, so whatever, this is a very good school and i love it there but i can't show you any fun pictures. instead, here's a picture of some paper on a table and our word wall:

I took a picture of the paper on the table because these kids have no idea how to conserve paper. I decided to do my service learning project on making the entire school more tree friendly. I used Dr. Seuss' The Lorax to help introduce the concept.

i think the kids somewhat got it, but i wish i had more time (and my own classroom) to delve deeper into the 3R's. it's amazing how quick kids pick up on what adults want them to say. they just say whatever it is we want to hear and then go about their business the way they did before. i really wanted to work on getting them to really own the project. maybe next year.

The "Run-In" with the Wall

Yeah, i was an idiot and backed into a wall. It was in early february, right before my 25th birthday. I was in some kind of retarded hurry and thought my car was small enough to clear a retention wall that closes off the driveway to my apt. needless to say, i was wrong.
i don't even think i was going THAT fast, but it made a pretty good dent in my left quarter panel, and gouged the crap out of my bumper. For some reason it didn't break my tail light, which allowed me to put off getting it repaired. i think i got at least 8+ estimates for the damage, ranging from $600 (shaaaddyyyy!!!) all the way to $2300 (also shady). I was about to settle for a mid-priced job from a very credible body shop for $1400 when i went back to Angkor (where my accord was taken when it got broken into several times), who quoted the job at $700. now usually i would say this was ridiculously shady, but because my car had been there before, i trusted them, and they actually did a great job. WOOT, i saved myself $700, and managed to do it during spring break (end of march) so i didn't need to get a rental car. i just sat at home and basked in the glory that is called relaxation.

The Boob (warning: this may be TMI, and not the sexy kind)

Since my last blog entry, i've also found a boob lump and had it removed. It was scary at first, especially since i'm crazy poor and don't have any insurance. i went to the SJSU clinic for $20. The doctor said i was too young to have it be anything serious, but referred me to a "Healthy Breast Project" for underprivileged women that would pay for all the lab fees and examinations. woot! I got a sonogram and a few visits to some specialists who all said the same thing as the first doctor.

This was in december, i believe. so i let it alone for a few months until sometime in march it started to hurt for some reason. I gave the doctor a call back and voila, they removed it in under 30 minutes. The biopsy confirmed it wasn't cancerous or anything, and now i have this fatty ugly scar on the side of my boob.

The nurse said it would heal quickly and should be a "thin white line" of a scar by the end of six months. I could totally deal with a thin white line!! Unfortunately, i dont think the stitches did what they were supposed to. First of all, the incision was about an inch and a half long. The doctor put a stitch in every quarter inch or so, which would make you think that i would have 6 stitches. But no, i only had 5. The picture doesn't do it justice. One end of the incision stayed open for days longer than the rest of the cut. It was still red and weepy when the rest of the incision was dry and healing together.

Then, after 10 days, he removed all the stitches and put "steri-strips" on the cut, which i guess are just hardcore pieces of tape to hold the cut closed. He said "leave these alone until they fall off". Except, one of the 2 strips fell off the day after he put them on. He didn't actually tell me how long to expect them to stick on there, so i didn't bother calling. By day 2 of the lost steri-strip, my cut opened up and is now a wide gash of red skin, not a thin white line. grr.

The worst part is that the scar is right where my wire hits on my bra. Which might've been why everything went wrong and fell off and stretched out or whatever. And now this stupid scar will be poking out of my bathingsuit this summer. great.

Um......yeah, i don't know what else to write about. Honestly i thought maybe blogging would help get me into the groove of writing so that i could finally start on all those papers i have to write by Tuesday.............it's sunday night. crap.

Dinkin Flicka

I suck at beerpong
UCLA lost in their Final 4 game
there's a dragon for sale in my neighborhood:

Chris goes to a lot of Sharks games
i saw jerry on an applied materials/Sharks commercial!!!!!! W:-OW!
Leah and Karim invited us to Tahoe
I miss my dog
I made friends at the golf course
We started a "American Gladiator Margarita Monday" tradition...hopefully it'll start up again this season
Went to my 2nd Tessera Holiday Party, woohoo!

The end.

Wiki: How to Shoot Yourself in the Foot

2007-10-17T01:48:00.000-07:00

Step 1: gush on your blog about how friggin HAPPY and FULFILLING your life is
Step 2: watch everything that made you happy magically turn into the most dreaded, life-draining, painful, and what-seems-to-be-pointless thing you have ever had to do.

yes, i am talking about grad school, my previous beacon of hope and pathway to my life goal.

seriously, am i really that ADD?

does everything have to be new all the time to keep my attention? what's the deal here? and before i continue bashing myself, i would like to point out that many people in the program are feeling the same kind of "slump". I'm trying to rationalize this feeling, attributing it to my expectations of a timeline more similar to a....quarterly (10 week) system. I've been in school, doing diligent work nonstop for, oh, 12 or so weeks now. BOO HOO is what you're thinkin, right? you snooty semestered students. this is uncharted territory for me, and i'm trying to deal with it the best i can. and this program is ri-goddamn-diculous....moving painfully slow and much, much too fast at the same time. what-the-dealie-yo?

my guilty pleasure? abc.com

yes, i've spent (more time than i'd like to admit) on watching shows like Grey's Anatomy, Dancing with the Stars, Private Practice, the Office (nbc), Gossip Girl (cw), and recently (out of lack new episodes to watch), The Bachelor, and Big Shots. I could at least pick some good shows, like Pushing Daisies maybe. But no. i pick the crappy kind. out of all the nice, fun, productive things i could do with my already limited amount of free time, i decide to spend it watching guilty pleasure tv. today i missed class because

1 i didn't want to go
2 because i couldn't write a paper that was due for another "more important" class,
and 3, because i was stuck watching the bachelor that i couldn't concentrate on writing the aforementioned paper.

in fact, it's 2am now, and i'm still awake because i watched all 3 episodes of Big Shots. I think it would be mildly interesting if they only stopped talking about how much they're like women all the time. when the writers decided to make that explicit that amount of times, you kinda wonder who they're trying to please with that statement. i'd imagine that men wouldn't like hearing it, but i think women would cringe at the thought as well. they say that in women being so much like men, we've made them obsolete. but really, in men taking on such feminine roles, haven't they done the same to us?

not that i would know anything about women; i haven't talked to any of my college girl friends since....college. and in the 12+ weeks i've been in this program, chock full of women, i haven't once hung out with any of them outside the classroom. this bothers me at times, but in more like a reflective "why can't i make friends" kind of way more than the "i'm so lonely i want friends" kind of way. i figure either way is bad, but at least with the first one, i'm not lonely. neither speaks praises of my interpersonal skills.

on a somewhat separate note, i went to oktoberfest with chris and phil and phil's friend kevin, and met up with patbo and tad and all his friends. i didn't drink any beer, but i'm pretty sure i had fun and i'm pretty sure everyone else did too. except for the guy who got his head stomped in and got carried away in a stretcher. him...not so much with the fun. but i had sausage (mmmm) and a pretzel, so all in all a good day.

okay, time to sleep so i can dread the thought of waking up to do more schoolwork. seriously, it's only wednesday?

Dinkin Flicka

jon wong and neal's birthday was a couple weeks ago and it was AWEEESSSSOMMMEEE. i miss jon and his goofy-craziness. i think he should live in san jose with neal so that he can hang out with me more often, although his tahoe pad IS pretty sweet. oh dilemma.

Like Jimmy Ng, i'm "taking a breath"

2007-09-20T22:56:00.000-07:00

man, my time is no longer my own; i am devoted to this program. i guess this is a good thing, because i'm a lazy ass and i waste my time, every time. this forces me to stop wasting. now even resting doesn't feel like a waste. documenting my experiences in this blog feels meaningful. everything means something now. i seriously enjoy every minute of everything i do, from schooling to playing to eating to resting. i have this crazy demanding schedule and somehow i feel like i've found new meaning (or new happiness) in life in pursuing this career in this direction. this is my contribution to the world, and to myself. there is pride and contentment in that.

so some background on my program. It's a credential/masters course that emphasizes social justice, equity, and a bunch of other stuff that basically makes us think critically of the structure of our education system (and our society at large) and how we can change it for the better. So we read all about how the system started in the first place, the ups and downs, the goods and the bads, and all these theories on where it should go from here. It SHOULD go towards a student focused, open ended, inquiry and dialogue fueled, equity based "system", that honestly, at this point in time, cannot work within our society because our society is not structured this way. But for now i'm trying to take from it what i can, little bits and pieces of what can work, and hoping to use these baby steps towards a larger purpose and goal.

Weeks 1-4
i have to admit, it was tough going the first two weeks. I thought they were trying to kill us with all the work we had to do! Maybe i was trying to kill myself, because i took on an extra course, AND i stayed all day (7 hours) every day at my student teaching site even though my program only required 4 hours twice a week. this was possible at first because our official college courses started almost two weeks after the first day of school at our teaching sites. It became increasingly difficult to manage all of it once my college classes started though, so for the past 2 or so weeks, i've been going only the minimum amount of time required at the site. it makes me feel like i'm really missing out every day that i'm not there. it's amazing how much they cover and how much they learn and how many things change in one day.

it was pretty hard with chris these transition weeks as well, because i was tired and irritable, and he was used to seeing me during my leisure hours (which was almost all the time) and wanted to play all the time! I was too tired to play!! but i really commend him for being so supportive and understanding and accommodating. he's really stepped up. i think this program would consume my life in a very bad way if chris didn't balance me out on my days off. we go to ball games, we've gone jogging/biking/hiking, we play frisbee, we watch movies. life is awesome.

Week 5
it's thursday and i'm coming to the end of week 5. I've gotten used to my routine of waking up at 4am to study before going to my student teaching site so that i can be prepared for sjsu class from 4pm-9:45pm. I get home maybe 10pm on average, and i'm so tired that i pretty much go straight to sleep, which is why i do all my studying in the morning.

a somewhat sad thing i feel i have to say is that although it's good that i've been getting full credit for all my essays and assignments so far, it takes away from the sacredness of that "A" grade. i'm not sure why. I'm supposed to be learning to enforce a structure that ISN'T obsessed with letter grades because those systems judge and value the "products" rather than the learning process itself. but here i am, still wanting to feel like i deserve an A. not a perfect 100% A, which is apparently what is being distributed liberally in my classes, but like a 94% or a 97% even, to tell me hey, it's not perfect, but it's really good and i'm in the right direction. Perfection is nonexistent to me, so having a perfect score is like saying Pass in a P/NP format. that could be anywhere from a C- to an A+!

Fake Grades
And that's another thing about grad school. what is it, does EVERYONE get straight A's all the time? Is that all there is in grad school? I got straight A's in summer school, and as far as i know, everyone has an A in all my classes so far. and if they're grading rubric is based on our effort and thought processes and all that UNQUANTIFIABLE crap, then what's the point in assigning grades in the first place!? bother.

And i think this is the latest i've stayed up in a while. and i have class again tomorrow.

to be continued.

...continuation
okay, i might've jinxed myself by saying i loved every minute of every thing, because now, as the assignments get harder and more frequent, it's starting to suck! being in a classroom is still awesome tho. the kids make it worth it every time. it's just the rest of it that is starting to bog me down!!! and i just saw bailey this weekend, and aww...i miss my boy. i really do.

happy birthday stacia and hello frisbee!
since i'm on the topic of this past weekend, i also want to mention that i FINALLY went out to an "ultra lounge" in stockton and had a blast. it was matt's girlfriend, stacia's birthday, and all the mckinley heads were out to celebrate. i also got to meet kristy rose, one of matt's other really close friends that i always heard about but never met. i had a ton of fun; drunk, all smiles and stupid dances. even patbo had a good time, which is really good, cuz it was like pulling teeth trying to get him to go out with me, let alone to the formerly known "back door" shady ass bar...in stockton.

the next day i played golf with dad and pretty much sucked donkey balls at it. afterwards, i decided to steal my sister's old clubs, which are used once in a blue moon by my mom. i hope it improves my game, cuz it's hard to get any worse. after that, i played frisbee with patbo!!! YAY FRISBEE!!! i swear it's one of those simple inventions that just makes for endless fun. patbo was skeptical about the fun factor of that activity too, but i think he had fun once we were out there.

okay, gotta sleep for another grueling (and yet rewarding) day at school.

Long time, no see

2007-08-02T09:33:00.000-07:00

song/s at the moment: Ne-Yo : Because of You

What ever happened to me blogging regularly? I guess it's kind of self defeating; when you actually have time to write everything down, it usually means you're not doing anything noteworthy elsewhere, and the times in your life that are worth writing about do not give you time to write about them. oh well. i'm trying. because i'm bored out of my mind here in stockton.

Early May:
Having major issues with the chris so i wanted to end things. pretty sucky timing since in a few months, i'd be in san jose, and usually relationships are more enjoyable when they're not long distance. but no, i had had enough of me always driving there, of me always being ignored while on the phone, of me always whatever whatevering, and him not doing enough. i thought i was being all strong or whatevs, but i ended up going to san jose a week later, and every succeeding weekend that month anyway for interviews and registration and stuff. blah. but for some reason, probably the me being fed up part, chris was being extra nice, and has been pretty nice ever since, so yeah. there goes that.

CSET
had a scare with the education program that i wanted to get into. the critical research academy, which is a combined credential/masters program, said they were full and waitlisted me till further notice. and being an impatient person (who has already waited over a year!), i decided to look into a different program, just so that i could start somewhere. that stressed me out quite a bit. then, the internship program i interviewed with on may 10th or something told me i absolutely needed to take the CSET that weekend to be considered for the program. i freaked out because i totally failed all the practice tests i took online for the cset. omg it STRESSED ME OUT EVEN MORE! especially since cingular was giving me a lot of grief about taking a day off to take the test on such short notice. it cost me like $273 to take the test with emergency registration, and i felt like i totally failed it. things were not looking good, and i started breaking out HELLA because of all the worry. boo. i got my results in mid july and it turns out i passed with flying colors (except for math, which werent flying, but still managed to hobble along enough to pass), but i was really worried for a long time.

The CRA and housing
the critical research academy called me at the end of may saying that they found an opening for me in the program, which made me a lot happier. More time to retake the cset, i thought. i also had the task of looking for housing. STUPID STUPID willow glen or whatever apartment complex i was so excited about took me off the waiting list for some reason (despite me calling them every week to follow up on my status) , so i couldn't land a unit there. it was basically the only reason i kept my job at cingular, because they needed proof of current employment to qualify for a unit. so the minute i found out i couldn't get a unit, i put in my two weeks notice. oh cingular, how i miss you so. only not really, but sometimes. anyway, i found another place that was actually even more bourgie in san jose for about $200 more.

of course i couldn't handle $1000 rent on financial aid, and me and chris considered moving in together because he felt like he was paying too much for his place also. but he didnt like the place i picked out, so that idea was dropped. i started looking for jobs so that i would be able to afford the place on my own, and found a position at a mortgage company (to be explained later). of course that check wouldn't come in time, so i also kept looking for cheaper housing. i TOTALLY lucked out and found another place for $500 with a filipina girl who was renting out rooms in her house. her name is caryn and she's pretty awesome so far, and didnt mind me bringing bailey. there's also a park about 3 houses down, so it's a perfect situation!

My Awesome Roomie and the Night Out
Caryn invited me to go out with her and her friends to go out on a friday or saturday night. It worked out perfectly, because the week before, i ran into Anthony Vu from college at Gordon Biersch and he invited me out to the same venue! I hadnt gone out clubbin in a really long time, so i was excited to go with a group of pinays my age, and really excited to meet up with some old friends too! We prepartied at the house and then got to the club by 12:30, haha. The line was HELLA long though, so we went to a bar closeby instead. Luckily they still had a dancefloor and everyone was chill and happy. I took a shot with caryn and her friends, and a shot with anthony too. We danced it all off, or at least tried to. It was a good night. I hope i get invited out again soon.

First Day of (Summer) School
I wasn't really planning on taking summer school, but because the CRA program requires it, i was in a classroom (as a student, not a teacher) by June 2nd. Because of the summer schedule, i was in class from 9am-4pm on a saturday. Boo. But man was i excited to be back in school!!! Woohoo school! I think by then i'd already paid tuition with my own money, so i was savoring every minute of my expensive education. Sad to say, it wasn't the most exciting class. Luckily, my other two classes that summer were pretty awesome. lots of projects and homework and reading. I think i got solid A's in all 3 classes. Woot!!

pictures of my tri-fold project for educational psychology.

Golfing Queen and Cold Call Bitch: one in the same?
As exercise an general doing stuff together, chris and i started going to the driving range. for some reason, im hitting exceptionally farther lately. we also played a par 3 course with tal and a few of his friends, which was pretty fun. now that i'm back in stockton, i'm golfing regularly and having a blast, despite the hot hot heat. seriously, it's ridic hot here in stockton, my jeebus!

so about the mortgage company. it's about 3 blocks away from campus (sweet) and had pretty flexible hours (sweet), had decent hourly and big commissions (sweeter), and full health coverage (woot!). i was sad to find out though, that the position was basically for cold calling. they made it sound pretty awesome by labeling it "account manager", and telling us it wasn't "cold calling", but following up with current clients to see if they wanted to refinance or take out new loans. But really, it was cold calling. really ghetto cold calling at that. they didnt have computers set up at our branch yet, so we had to call people based off of a manifest from 2005 of everyone who had inquired about a loan in our area. OMG. it was torture, knowing that i was one of those people that just bother people in their homes by trying to sell something over the phone. i kept up with it for about 2 weeks+, but then finals rolled around and i needed more time off. i told my boss the hours i needed, and she said she couldn't let me take that much time off. so i was let go, or i quit. one or the other. she said once i have more time, i can go back to them and look for a job, and to feel free to visit, so things ended amicably. hopefully, my coworkers have gotten the computer upgrades by now, because we would just keep calling the same numbers over and over again because we weren't given any other numbers to call. oh well.

ok, i want to take a nap now. remind me to talk about megan's new condo and my new hair.

(2 days later)

We went to santa cruz today to pick up keys to megan's new condo, and let the contractor (who happens to be revee's husband!) in to convert the garage into another room as well as paint megan's room for her. It's a pretty sweet pad, and it made me whine about how I want a house for myself too. I wouldn't want my dad to pay for it or anything, i just want one. :)

About the hair, i've been meaning to cut my hair for a while, and even brought pictures of what kind of style i wanted. I guess in theory, it looks like all my other haircuts, but there are subtle differences that make it one of my favorite cuts so far. The problem though, was the coloring. Brady, matt's hair guy put the bleach color stuff on my hair, stuck me under a hair dryer, and did matt's boss' hair and left me to rot. The end result was like SUPER blonde streaks, even when we were joking beforehand about how i DIDNT want to be pamela anderson. I dont know if he was just trying to play it off or if he was serious, but he was like, that looks so dope!! it was pretty clean, and looked really punky indie stylish, but i really couldn't pull it off. i came back later that evening to have it toned down. I think it looks pretty good, but maybe a little more chunky than i'd like, but i guess it's only because i'm not too used to it yet.

wow, i'm not a good storyteller.

SJSU Here I Come!! (Part II)

2007-05-02T08:35:00.000-07:00

Song of the Moment: Morrissey- the "Charmed" theme song
Mood of the Day: Anxious

Finally.
In response to my SJSU post like, a YEAR ago, i finally got my shit together and interviewed for the teaching credentials/masters in education program and actually got in!!! WOOOO!!!! I still have to pass one more test, but in theory, i'll be on campus by july, and IN A CLASSROOM BY SEPTEMBER!!! O M G! it's been a loooooong time comin. I had to take the CBEST, get fingerprinting done, get a certificate of clearance, get letters of rec, transcripts, write a friggin personal statement essay and resume....the works!! Technically, the school itself has to process my application as a student, even though the college of education has already accepted me. Oh, and worse off, i still have to meet with the department chair before i can get an ACTUAL spot in the masters program. Hmm, i guess when you look at it that way, i haven't really accomplished anything. :( I'm a little scared about everything tho, because i'm more than a little rusty and i don't remember half the things about education as i used to. i've become a drone of the cellphone world. oh well.

Much Too Much
I've been working quite a few 5 day weeks lately. Maybe 2 or 3 a month, or at least it feels like it. Too much!! I've been doing fairly well at work though, and was power ranked #2 in the store for last month. All of the part-timers kicked all the full-timers asses. Woohoo! I'm not naturally good at my job though, which is okay in the long run because it's not going to be my career, but for now i feel bad that i can't really excel cuz this is probably as good as i'm going to get. What happened to my 'can do' attitude? It's totally sad too, because whenever i walk around ANYWHERE, i always look at people's cellphones and i wanna go up to them and ask them if they have unlimited texting yet (which is now available, for those of you who still don't know). And i find myself guesstimating how expensive their bill usually is, and if they're an ass customer or not. I even hear the voice from the stupid contract acceptance automated service in my DREAMS. my job has taken over my life. seriously. but hey, i forgot to mention that they gave me a pearl!! Yay!!! Thanks to my new smartphone WITH CAMERA, there are a lot more actual photos to illustrate my blog.

The "Way Too Eager" Checklist
So, in anticipation for my big career move, i've set up this ridiculous and over the top checklist of everything i need to get done to ensure a smooth transition into san jose.

FAFSA, APLE, and Pell Grants: (done and done) currently processing, now all i can do is wait and hope they give me money. Because i'm going for teacherdom i can get almost $6k in grants to cover tuition and books. That means i dont have to pay them back. :) everything else, like living expenses, will have to go on loans, but the APLE is a loan forgiveness program (which means they'll write it off completely) for teachers who serve in teacher-needed areas for 4 years. Because of my income last year, i'll probably qualify for the biggest loan they have...and it'll all be forgiven, meaning even more money that i don't really have to pay back! when i filed for 2006 taxes and barely exceeded poverty level. Pros: this means the state feels sorry for me and will probably help me out in any way they can (money!). Cons: I am, by definition, poor!

Apartment Hunting: (done and in progress) I've found the perfect place to live. It's subsidized housing, so i can use my poor status to live there for CHEAP! Well, cheaper
than what chris is paying. But it's actually very nice and perfect for me. It's 600 sq ft 1 bed 1 bath, allows pets, has a private park and bbq area, gym, computer lounge, and communal game room/tv room. honestly i have my heart set on this place and i think i'll go a little crazy and desperate if i don't get it. All the other apartments i've seen either don't accept pets, or are too expensive and not close enough to campus. And look how cute it is!!!

(shown: private picnic/park area, kitchen window/dining area, living room and entry.)

I've already thought of furniture placement and color schemes for this place, which is me being way too excited. But I must have it!!! :(

3) Furniture Shopping: (done and done) even though i don't technically have an apt yet, i've already friggin bought furniture for it. how terrible is that??? But i made some good buys:

they said it'd take a month to get them shipped to the store, so i thought, oh! i should have an apt by then! and made the order. in theory, i've already purchased them so i can't really back down now, even if i don't find a place by the time they get there. worst case scenario, megan takes the furniture to sta cruz. she needs furniture for her own place too.

There's more to the checklist, but those are what i've done so far. :( the waiting game sucks, but it's all i can do till the school's financial aid office and the leasing office at the apt get back to me.

Megan the Golfer
Megan's been touring the country with her golf team, and making my dad very proud. last week she was in boston (area) and the Murphys watched a couple of her games. I think she's having a lot of fun, and aparently her team made it to D3 nationals!! She'll be in Orlando next week, and my dad's going out there to watch her also. He asked me to go, but of course work wouldn't let me leave for a week on such short notice (my dad told me today, thursday...and he wants to leave on monday for a WEEK!) I hope she's also doing well in school but i havent really gotten in touch with her at all for the past few weeks. Mew.

Bailey the Retard
Too bad dogs dont know how to read, because the packet of silica gel that comes in shoe boxes clearly says "SILICA GEL : DO NOT EAT". Of course bailey thought it was candy or something and ate the whole packet. I took him to the vet shortly after and they induced vomiting, made him eat charcoal, kept him overnight for "observation" and gave ME a $200 bill and antibiotics to administer to bailey twice a day for a week. greeaat. i still love him tho, he's so adorable and delicious. he's been really pissing me off about his disobedience lately. how can i possibly leave him alone in an apt if he cant behave?

the only time i let him run around was in davis at a dog park. he had a great time off his leash and playing with other dogs. All of the male dogs wanted to mate with him, and i know my dog is very asexual, but still, it was kind of wrong to see their lipstick come out everytime they came near bailey. it also makes it impossible to take him out ANYWHERE cuz he wont listen to me when i tell him to come and he can't heel. gah, of course this is all my fault because a dog is only as good as its trainer. :( i thought this would be easier, but it's hard when i'm at work for most of the day and i dont have the time or energy to teach him anything. I hope i do better with school children.

Speaking of davis though, i went over there to have lunch with Jon Wong at Hunans and also pick up my diploma (finally). The lunch and the park and the hanging out was awesome, but the diploma was definitely anticlimactic:

it's not even worth scanning, and somehow it was worth 4+ years of my life and a bunch of my parents' money. oh well.

Patbo Family Functions
Patbo's sister's wedding was last week and i was invited!! I feel kinda bad because i kinda forced them to invite me, but im still glad i went. I got to meet the Coloradans (which they might actually be called because spellcheck said it's okay) and i met an EE from san jose who was half visayan, left handed, and allergic to shellfish!! what are the odds! I dont have any pictures though, hmm. but it was fun. I also went to a Morrissey concert with patbo and his parents on Tuesday in Oakland, which is why the charmed song is in my head.

Dinkin Flicka
In response to spending a bunch of money on furniture that i dont even need yet, i've decided to stop eating out, which means no more sushi for me. :( makes me really sad. i didn't buy any food for the first couple days of buying the furniture, but it was kind of a necessity when me and patbo went to the morrissey concert because we both didn't have dinner yet. and then the next day i got really really really hungry at work and spent $4+. :( i'm trying though.

An update: i'm officially accepted into SJSU university, with a student ID and password and application status completed. Now i just need to fill out some forms to verify my FAFSA with the financial aid office and i'm good to go!! the problem with this is that if they process it too fast, the money i receive will make me ineligible for the apt i want. HOPEFULLY the apt will get processed first before the aid comes through so that i win all around.
*crossing fingers*

i guess it's time for another obligatory update

2007-02-26T21:08:00.000-08:00

song of the moment: my answertone, Lost Without You by Robin Thicke
current mood: lazy and tired

hmm, some highlights since my last update:

Mid-Late December

i dont really remember when it was, but me, david webb, and patbo went up to northstar to go boarding. it was pretty early in the season, so there were a lot of thin patches of snow, but it wasn't too crowded either so we had a good time.

cingular made me work 6 days a week (with lots of overtime) during the month of december. i just about went crazy because it's kinda tough to go from being a bum 24/7 to working 10/6. but my december paychecks were very nice, so i can't really complain. :)

when i first started working at cingular, they gave me a blackberry 8700c, yenno the kind with the full keyboard. it was my mgr's old blackberry, so he already had his email push set on the phone. i thought it was an awesome phone, but was kinda bummed about the size of it and the fact that it didn't have a camera. after maybe a month and a half, they gave me the smaller version, the 7130.

omg i hated it for a while. it took me maybe a month and a half (and that's being conservative) to get used to the keyboard, and still no camera. but man it's the best phone i've ever had, and i can never ever quit cingular because i dont want them to take my phone away. it's just so awesome. i thought i might be irkin for a pearl, the camera/media/awesomer version of my 7130, but man, i ruv my trackwheel and i just ruv my phone too much to even upgrade. am i being a huge nerd for talking about this?

January

i had to go through a lot of shit from my mgr's to get the go-ahead, but on january 4, mom, dad, tita chinky, nanay, baby marielle and i took a happy trip to the phianyway, soon after december, it was time for my parent's silver wedding anniversary. i had tolippines. we even got bumped up to first class!! YAY philippine airlines!! i tried a mimosa for the first time and had a bunch of food. as awesome as first class is with all the extra room and awesome food, i had to admit that i got pretty tired of them waking me up every 2 hours to eat something. i wanna sleep!!!

when we got to cebu, lola came through as always had greeted us with a hug and a lechon enough said. :)

the very next day, we went on a boat trip on the ONLY sunny day the whole time i was there!!

we totally lucked out and we had lots of fun. i went snorkeling for the first time!!! ange and stephen were there, so it was good for me cuz they gave me people to hang out with. AND we had lechon again. :)

The Big Event

a few days after the boat trip, we had mom's wedding anniversary at vista mar resort. it was pretty fun, lots of dancing and food. we had lechon again, haha. i wrote up a speech just in case(which was funny, heartwarming, and very good if i do say so myself), but i was glad that i didnt have to stand in front of all those people , because no speeches were made that night. and we had lechon, if i didn't mention it already.

the rest of the vacation was pretty chill after that. went to the mall a few times and tried to shopping, but ended up spending most of my time sick because of some kinda food poisoning. that didn't stop me from eating everything anyway, but it did hinder my ability to stay very long at public places without good bathrooms. all i did for like 3 days straight was eat, poo, sleep, repeat. it was awesome (except for the pooing part).

Other Stuff
i went to watch the final round of Miss Southwestern, and i totally called the winner right when she first stepped out on stage. there was another event, faculty night fashion show that was pretty cool too. kinda sucks, i cant find any pictures online. hmm.

Animal Cruelty
i saw some animal cruelty at the front of a chinese restaurant: giant prawns stuck in water bottles. it's like that rumor that asian people keep dogs and cats' bodies restricted in some kind of bottle and let their heads grow normally to make them look like cartoons...yenno big head small body. but yeah, these poor prawns must've been put into bottles while they were still small enough to fit through the opening, and they just grow there till they cant move anymore. sad! but they were FRIGGIN HUGE. that's a water bottle folks. and those are giant prawns inside that are so huge they cant move.

Mid-January : Back To America

ok, anyway, i hurried back to work on jan 18th and missed sinulog because of it. i was still sick to my stomach and ended up not working for the first 4 days i got back anyway. chris picked me up from the airport and i stayed in san jose for a couple days before work. man, our store was SOOOO slow compared to december's craziness.

while i was in the philippines, i told the vet to chop off bailey's balls. yep, that's about all i have to say about that.

Entertainment

me, tiffany, chris, megan, tal and his roomie darren (?) all watched wayne brady at the san jose improv nextdoor to chris' apt. in other news, i've been trying to keep up with greys anatomy and the office, and actually greys is still pretty disappointing, but the office is working its way back into my heart. i've been trying to download season 3 thru demonoid but nobody will share teh files. i've been stuck on 37.9% complete for the past week. grr! i shake my fist.

Video Games

stephen and angelyne both had nintendo DS's and i had to admit it was really fun to play. i'd played brain age on chris' ds before and really enjoyed it, but i figured one game isn't enough reason to buy a whole game system. but yeah, the new super mario bros was a bunch of minigame reasons to buy a ds lite. i picked white because i'm not a pink girl and i thought black might make me look like a poser. i brought it to work and got lisa hooked on whack a mole, and david webb impressed enough to get his own DS. soon after, i picked up my own brain age and mario kart on top of mario bros. i also got a carrying case recently to hold everything together, cuz those cartidges are tiny!!! sandisc mini size.

February:

chris took me to alexander's steakhouse in cupertino for my birthday/valentine's day. mmm, steak. hooray for traditions...he's stuck around for 2 birthdays and 2 christmases now.

Love Actually

for actual valentine's day, me, patbo, roosevelt and tyler from work went to Basil's bar in stockton to drink our sorrows away. i think i ended up having a bad night when i got home but i figured going out with a few friends is better than staying at home alone. mew. luckily patbo was awesome enough to drive my drunk ass home.

for my actual birthday, patbo was even more awesome and brought me our traditional mcdonalds breakfast before i had to leave for work. i had the dumbest required training class scheduled on my birthday. the class started off with "let's go around the room with what you hope to learn today" i said, "i want to learn how to copy and paste text from notepad or even just attach the actual file onto email using xpressmail instead of outlook on a blackjack", and another girl perked up and said "yeah i've been trying to figure that out too!" and the instructor was like...um...this course has a specific focus on certain aspects of our new devices and i don't think we'll cover that today. so what did we cover?it was really dumb, how they managed to create an 8 hour class on how to ADD A PHONE NUMBER to a contact list on a phone i will never know. hello. people should not be selling phones at all if they need this course. there are 2 more courses that we haveta do, and supposedly they get harder. hopefully i'll learn something.

after the training, i bought chris a black DS, and tyler took me out to dinner for my birthday so i wouldn't be arone. we went to macaroni grill and a good time was had. chris called me towards the end of dinner to say that he just pulled into stockton, so when i got home he was there waiting for me. it was a good birthday except for the very beginning where i woke up puffy and hung over, which was made better by the breakfast, but then the training brought me back down, but then the dinner was awesome, and then the chris was awesome...and just when i thought the day was over.....

BAILEY ESCAPED! the little turd got out of the backyard and never came home. i was freaking out!! me and chris spent the remainder of my birthday walking around calling for bailey around the block and around the park. i made flyers and everything. luckily some neighbors took him in and i found a flyer on the main gate the next morning saying that they found him. man. i think i still had to go to work that day. hmm.

i dunno when it happened, but at work, i bet tyler that ihop (an old favorite from my davis days) did not have a menu item that had waffles and ice cream together. of course i won and we ate breakfast at chucks on our day off. we also ended up spending (or trying to spend) all the random gift cards we had accumulated during the christmas season and even went to the driving range! i met his brother later that week and they taught me how to play liar's dice (i cant lie for shit) and i ate homebbq'ed ribs for the first time. pretty awesome.

i cant find my inshape membership card. :(

ok that's all i can think of.

Super quick update!

2006-12-12T19:44:00.000-08:00

HI!

so it's been almost 2 full months since my last update. this is because:

1) bailey's sucha friggin handful and he takes up all my time
2) i'm still runnin on dialup at bernice, so it's pretty pointless to blog

and most importantly,
3)i got a friggin JOB!

yes, never the day would come, i thought, but here it is. i'm signed up as a part time employee (which means crappy benefits comapred to the full timers) but it seems i'm working close to 40 hours a week anyway. LAME!!! but i like my job and i like the people i work with, so i'm ok with it. i'll prolly just never get used to working so much, especially since i'm still doing data entry for vantage. le sigh!!!

4) i go to san jose on my days off (which are few and far between lately), and what's the point in going online when there are so many other things to do!

yep, that's about it. it's hard to sum up everything when i've prolly forgotten the past 2 months myself anyway.

:) ok that's all. :)

A Bunch of New Happenings

2006-10-25T22:38:00.000-07:00

New Car?
Yep, I crashed my car a couple weeks ago...prolly a day or two after my last update. Completely on accident, and from what i know, nobody's hurt, but both cars are pretty fucked up. So fucked up, in fact, that AAA decided to just total my car. They gave my dad a check for $6,200 (WOW!) for the car, and before i knew it i was in my red Chevy Cobalt rental. my dad told me to go car shopping for a new car before our free rental allowance was up. :). goodbye honda accord. you had a good, albeit non air-conditioned, run.

So of course at the mention of car shopping, i went back to my good ol' Nissan Murano, but of course nicely equipped they were around 38k. I've long let go of my dream of having a crossover SUV, but it was still nice to look at the "sunset red" 2006 murano. i was pretty sure my dad would "make" me get a sedan of some sort, so i took a spin in a maxima and an altima, and even looked at the sentra...but i wasn't feelin em too much. meh.

i thought about it for a while and then finally broke down and considered the new CR-V that came out a few weeks ago. i thought it might be a decent compromise between suv and sedan. it looked a lot bigger and better than megan's 2000 version...and i hate to admit it, but i was impressed with how it handled when i test drove it; very sturdy. The rav-4, despite its new size, still felt very light and roll-overish, a lot like megan's car. Honda is right next to Toyota which is right next to VW which is right next to Acura. I sat in a few cars from each brand. man, how weird are those silly american made german cars!! i tried sitting in a passat and i felt really weird. i think i've grown allergic to non-asian cars. and then i found the acura tsx. :) look at tiny bailey in the background of this pic!

WOW! it's pretty awesome. originally i wanted to check out the TL, because i thought it'd be a pretty pimp car to have. but it's too FRIGGIN HUGE!!! it wasn't sprightly enough for my personality because of its hugeness...made me feel like i was too young to drive it (or it was too old). but the TSX was juuuuuuuuust right. :) the tsx is like 7+ inches longer than the civic, but also like 8 inches shorter than the accord, although it doesn't feel like it. probably because they've made the accord bigger over the years....my old accord is probably the same size-ish as the tsx. but it's considered a compact car, same class as the civic. i decided to get pearl white (because all the other colors looked to racey/guyish...although if i was a guy, i'd totally get the carbon gray with black interior....as patbo would say, "SEXY!") and i got the black interior instead of the tan because the tan came with woodgrain, which also felt old to me. see? my black interior is sooo much more awesomeristic. :)

sooo....my TSX is loaded with:

Navigation! i'll never get lost again!
Bluetooth handsfreelink (which i RUUUV! it automatically finds my phone so i dont have to look for it...im sucha lazy ass now that i dont even wanna pick up my phone when i'm not in my car)
awesomeness. everything is standard (leather, voice recognition, sunroof) except for the navigation and spoiler. i did, however, added a scotchguard guarantee package for the interior and exterior. they say it makes for easy breezy cleaning and maintenance. no waxing the outside, no worries about stains on the inside.
i'm planning on getting my back windows tinted...and *gasp*...subwoofer? we'll see. maybe next year, when i have actual money instead of pretend money :)

New Activities (or lack thereof)
I went to J9's birthday celebration, which was only a couple days after the car accident. i rolled with Chris and Patbo to Burlingame to club blush, and omg it was so crazy to actually see that many people my age in the same place at the same time. happy birthday j9! it looked like everyone had fun, and i got to see some familiar faces, so thanks j9 for inviting me. :) i've been isolated for too long; first because stockton sucks, and now because i have a pup to take care of. i don't even visit chris in san jo anymore because of bailey. meh.

a few days after the cluuub, teresa visited stockton, and we had lunch and went to the driving range afterwards. yay vee-see-tor! we went to coco ro cuz she felt like japanese food, and she had this beef sauce chicken pork all kinds of meat with rice bowl, haha. we caught up on things and we had fun at the range, too. she let me borrow this sweet hybrid club, with plans of her returning the next week so we could actually play a round of golf and i could give the club back to her. hmm, i dunno what happened with that. i should call her.

Bailey NEWs
i have this feeling my journal will just end up being bailey's weekly log. ah well.

i finally got him an ID tag :) i wanted to make sure that bailey was gonna be his name before getting one. it's official, his name is bailey...not bacon, or omalley or george.
he started his first puppy training class today. it was supposed to be last week, but the trainer canceled. i think he did well...haha he picked up the training faster than i did! he's had "sit" mastered for a while, but now he's better at actually responding to "come", which i think uber important.
i ended up buying him a travel kennel made of plastic so that i could transport him easier. that friggin metal crate he has must be like 20 lbs, and too big to put in the car! so now he has a crate that i keep in the trunk of my car which doubles as a good crate for him while visiting tita chinky and mom and dad's house. yay!!! SO much easier!
goal for next week: train bailey to do this:

The Trish's New Groove
i dont really know how it started; maybe it's because the weather became milder, or because megan's on UCSC's golf team and i dont wanna get schooled by my sister, but i've been going to the driving range lately, and i actually enjoy it! my shots have gotten a lot more solid, but my short game sucks HARD CORE. chris has been coming to stockton these past few weekends to visit because i can't really visit him, and we play golf!!! last time it was with megan and dad, and this weekend it was with mom and dad. we were able to play a full round of golf this time, and dad and chris managed to tie us on the last hole because chris sunk a totally clutch long putt for his first par of the day. great way to end the day i say! we're going to santa cruz this weekend to watch megan's last home game of the season. GOOO MINGAI!!!!!

Dinkin Flicka

omg! that gentle stalker/cheezit girl is EVERYWHERE! i saw her in yet another commercial, this time for best buy. she's the chick on the couch who says "i promise to watch football on friday...and sunday...and monday......and sometimes thursday". or something.
did you know that the Caterpillar tractor (both the technology and the brand) was INVENTED IN STOCKTON!?!?! by Benjamin Holt, who has a major street in stockton named after him? *star shoots across the screen; the more you know*
i finally got callbacks for the tutoring positions i applied for months ago. TOO LATE!!! GRRRR!!!!! i hate them and their bad timing, but i think i'll interview anyway and see if i can work out a 5 hour a week schedule. i don't think they offer health insurance tho, so cingular would be more beneficial financially.
i really need to follow up on my FRIGGIN DEGREE. I HATE YOU, DAVIS. just give me my diploma already!

A Great Way To Start the Month

2006-10-08T17:53:00.000-07:00

okay, so i havent updated in a while...mostly because so much has been going on!! I'll try to recap...

Megan's in college!
megan officially moved to santa cruz on sept 19. my dad and i drove her to her dorms and helped her lug her ridiculous amount of stuff into her room. we picked up don from his dorm (since he moved in about a month earlier for water polo conditioning) and he helped make her bed. i didnt get to meet her roomie, but megan says she's cool. unfortunately, megan broke the digicam (or it broke while she had it with her) and she also broke the charger for her laptop within the first week. boo. but yeah, congratulations megan! look at her and her froshie dorm lanyard. aww :)

on the ride home, i had a good talk with my dad. mostly about how i'm uncomfortable with all the people in our house aaaaallllll the tiiiimee till ridiculous hours of the night/morning. but we also talked about how lame i am just bumming around all the time, and it was good to be able to get it out in the open with my dad. i told him about the things i was considering to do while waiting to get my credentials, and he was supportive. it was good.

My very own trip to the E.R.
so a few days after megan moved out, i was laying in bed trying to sleep at around 11 when my heart started to race. i thought i just had extra adrenaline in me; i had worked out the day before, but was feeling fine up until i wanted to go to sleep. i kept trying to calm myself down....but i was calm! my body was tired and my head was tired, but my heart kept acting like stage fright, nervous, pulse racing (not heart pounding) badness. i couldnt fall asleep till like 4am, and woke back up again with the same feeling at around 6:30. GAH.

by then it felt even worse cuz of the sleep deprivation. my mom was in new york at the time, but i called her and she told me to go to the hospital.
wtf? see, i figure, if i cant explain my symptoms correctly, i cant expect a doctor to figure out what's wrong with me. and i had no way of explaining what i felt. i had no idea what could've caused it cuz i didnt do anything different. it didnt hurt really...it was just annoying to feel on edge nervous all the time. i wonder if that's how chihuahuas feel, and that's why they always shake and jump at every noise. anyway. so i call kaiser and they tell me to go to the Emergency Room at dameron. :( boo.
so i get there and they do a whole bunch of tests on me. blood samples, EKG, X-Ray, urine samples, and put me on a monitor for like 4 hours. omg. and the whole time, i was so tired and i still couldn't sleep! i felt terrible.

everything checked out tho, but that didn't help me feel any better. just made me feel dumb for wasting everyone's time (i told you, mom!) i didnt feel any better for the next few days after that, which made me miss Brianna's very first gymnastics competition, as well as the awesome waterslide picnic family day thing that tiffany invited us to. i'm still really sorry about that tiff! gimme your address, i'll reimburse you for our tickets!

Mom and Grey's Anatomy
my mom came home a few days after my ER episode, and i told her the same things i told my dad, about the people in the house and the bumming around. it was a pretty good conversation, up until i mentioned i wanted to get a dog. then she just said no and walked away. end of good conversation. the next day, she didnt have any mahjong ladies over, as well as the day after that, and i was like, wow, are they actually being considerate of my feelings!?? i came home one night and my mom and dad wanted to QT, so we watched the PREMIERE OF UGLY BETTY, THE OFFICE, and *GASP* GREYS ANATOMY!!!! that was like, the first time in months that i was able to watch TV in the livingroom.

It's been 3 weeks of greys and the office, and i must say, greys hasn't lived up to my expectations, but im still excited to see what happens. the office doesn't seem as funny with all the commercials and stuff...it's just so much harder to get into the "office mode" you haveta be in to enjoy the show. i'll still support tho.

just when i thought things were good again in the house, the mahjong crew came back with double the force. over 10 people playing mahjong and sitting around!!! gah. the end. i figured it was time to start applying for jobs, and move out.

Job Interviews and Apt Complexes
i had been applying to a bunch of teaching related jobs for the past month, but i hadn't gotten any callbacks. boo. i decided i shold broaden my horizons...cuz beggars cant be choosers. and i actually "will work for food". :(

Me and patbo had been looking at a few apt complexes lately, in the case that we actually had enough money to get a place. the leasing consultant at waterfield told us that if we were employed by certain corporations, we get our app fee waived as well as half our deposit waived. pretty awesome, i thought! so i look up the preferred employers that they have, and i see that cingular was one of them. i applied to cingular before, while i was in davis, but they weren't hiring. boo. my friend michael worked there and said the benefits were great and that it was pretty chill as well. so i decided to try again and apply to cingular a second time, to 1, get a job finally, and 2, to get a nice discount off moving into an apt!

i found out later that Equity,the property management company in charge of waterfield, was also hiring...and employees get 20% off rent every month! so i applied there too. :)

i went to an interview for cingular on tuesday, and then Equity on wednesday, and then a 2nd interview with cingular on thursday, and a 2nd interview for Equity on Friday! busy. i think i did well on all of them really. it was nice to be able to go out and talk to people and feel productive instead of just lay in bed at home all day.

Moving Out and Puppies!
it turns out that the cingular branch that gave me the 2nd interview was actually in lodi instead of the one i was aiming for in stockton. it's actually only like 8 minutes away from the bernice house (shown here), and i was thinking about moving out there anyway for some change in my life (a jump start/restart type jolt thing in my daily routine) and also to get away from the all the mahjong.

so i started to move out to bernice slowly during my 'interview week', and was pretty much settled in by the last interview on friday. man did it feel so refreshing and happy to be back in my old room!!! it just felt so.....good! happy thoughts and everything...and no bum routine to fall into (mainly because there's no high speed internet here...and i have a desk to sit at, so no more laptop in bed!) it was all good.

i also decided i wanted to go thru with the whole puppy idea now that i was out of my parents' house. it may seem like it was a spur of the moment kind thing, but really, i've been researching beagles and where to find them and how to take care of them for months! i went to a couple places to look at litters, and patbo came with me to the 2nd one. and i felt so excited to think that wow, i might meet my very own puppy soon!!!!

i found my baby boy, the biggest one in the litter, all mellow and friendly on saturday the 30th! patbo wanted me to get another boy, who was super frisky and had nice markings, but i thought he might be too much of a handful for me. he was very nice looking tho...but small! patbo didnt like the big one at first cuz he said he didnt look like a puppy cuz he was so much bigger than his brothers and sisters. but i liked him :)

i bought my big puppy and we visited chris, who happened to live only like 10 mins away from the breeder. we tried to come up with names for the pup, since he wasn't frisky enough to be an "omalley". chris suggested "bacon" because i wanted a B name and my pup seemed kinda dopey cuz of his cockeye. i felt bad cuz my pup was all depressed and sad and seemed like he lost his will to live cuz he got separated from his litter. :( but i took him home and we became fast friends. :) i decided to name him bailey. bailey's a good name :)

BAILEY, BAILEY, BAILEY BOY!!!
I RUUUUV MY PUPPY!!! OMG..i dont even understand. man, i'm up at 7am every morning to let him outside to pee. he's he's been with me a week now and only messed up in my room a couple times during the first days he was here, and only once in his cage cuz i left him in there too long cuz i was showering. he cried when put in his cage the first couple of days, but now he likes it just fine. he can sleep thru the night now without having to pee (i used to take him outside at 3am to prevent him from peeing his crate) and he goes everytime i take him outside. i think this marks day 4 of him not going potty in the house. 4/6 days aint bad at all!! he's sucha good boy!!! OMG! I RUUUV HIM....and he ruvs to sreep....and best of all, he ruuuvs me!!

A Full Day of Fun on Saturday
we had quite a schedule on saturday! I was supposed to play golf in the morning, mariel's 1st birthday party inthe afternoon, and curtis and lea's goodbye dinner in the evening! bailey took all the traveling and excitement well though. :-D proud momma. :-D bailey kinda knows how to fetch (thanks to chris!) and he's more friendly now that i took him out to the birthday party with a bunch of kids and strangers, as well as chris' house to meet the parents. yep, bailey got around that day :). he didn't pee or poop inside, and even went swimming for the first time!! haha i wish i had my camera....he totally freaked out!

Golf QT with Megan, Dad and Chris
We all went to Micke Grove and played a super fun round of golf at Micke Grove on saturday. it was supposed to be at Spanos Reserve, but they were hosting a tournament there and forwarded us to Micke instead. much fun tho. megan says she likes chris more because of the outing (and because she got to laugh with/at him wholeheartedly and it seemed to be okay). we only finished 11 holes because we had to head over to the brithday party, but it was still lots of fun.
P.S.-it was boys vs girls, and me and megan totally kicked ass!!! :)

dinkin flicka

how come it seems like every year is some kind of special year at disneyland? what the hell is the year of a million dreams? seriously? what's next year, the year of a million and one? The year of a BILLION dreams?

i just got a call from cingular...i got the job! :) they have good benefits, and even have a program where they help you pay for school. awesome!
since megan broke the waterproof camera, we tried to exchange it at costco, but they didn't have it anymore. back to a regular ol', non-waterproof digicam. :(
the "Other" that has jack hostage is also the crazy pedophile lady from the movie Running Scared
the "mom" in the Cheezit commercial is also the lying "Gentle Stalker" girl from the episode of Grey's Anatomy where they were talking about luck.

Some forward motion......

2006-09-13T20:09:00.000-07:00

...and some backward motion, too.
first off, my wrist really hurts. it may be carpal tunnel from the terrible angle i always put my keyboard at (shown here), and the fact that i type in this position for most of the day, everyday (cuz i'm a lazy ass). or it could also be cuz i do this weird prop my chin like i'm posing thing while i sleep. i dunno why i do that....i only noticed i did it because i kept waking up in pain in that position.

this comes at a terrible time, too. dad's attendance file for vantage (a huge, colorcoded, overly detailed and not automated spreadsheet on excel) became corrupted, and now we (meaning "I") have to reconstruct 3 month's worth of data on over 140 patients. on top of the weekly billing and remittance im supposed to do. there's a possibility, because of my wrist, that we're not going to get paid this week cuz i didnt finish billing in time. sad panda. :(

but onto good news!
hey, i finally went out last weekend!! i went to tessera's luau bbq event in sj and learned about all of chris' childhood secrets from his older brother curtis. later that night, chris, tiffany and i went to caroline wong's birthday celebration at a club in sf called tabu. i got a good buzz goin and we tore up the dancefloor!! hahaha...or at least that's how it seemed in my drunken haze. SNAP YO FINGAZ!!! man, it was so fun to go dancing...havent done that since like, april or something ridiculous like that. i think me and tiff should be clubbin buddies. why, you ask? let me make a list:

we make the most of every drink (who can afford more than one anyway???)
we dont need to dance with boys to have fun
we're filipino, we know how we do!!
we dont get out nearly as much as we should (or at least i dont, haha)

i finally finished my application for a job. an actual job that for once, is actually geared towards what i wanna do. i got a call back earlier today but i missed it. i'll call again tomorrow morning once i have my cereal. it's for child development social work, which i think is pretty cool. still right up my alley even tho it's not the position i was originally going for.

i found a blog that i love reading. it's called mr. pulsipher goes to grad school...(sorry if i was supposed to ask permission to link...) the guy's clever and insightful and the stuff he talks about are funny random things that you could imagine getting into long, animated discussions with your friends about but then forgetting how you got on the topic in the first place. it's a good read all around. he should update every day so i'll have something to do.

Puppies!!!
did you know there are allergy-friendly dogs??? i didn't until earlier this week and now i'm totally infatuated with mini goldendoodles, which are golden retreivers crossed with mini poodles. the result is a smart, happy, shed-free, allergy-friendly, cute as can be pup! it's like a smaller, curlier version of the classic golden retreiver. SO AWESOME!

i also went and saw the most handsome beager today. his coloring was beautiful and he looked very intelligent, but maybe a little too aloof also. he just sat there with his eyes half closed while i was petting him, like how people look when they get a massage. when i stopped, he just opened his eyes back up again like it was nothing and ignored me. wtf?

but man was he a good lookin teenage pup. i shoulda taken a picture of him with my phone. :(initially, the visit was just to see if i was allergic to beagles in general. i'd never spent any time with them and i wanted to find out if i had to exclude them from any of my future plans for my own apt. given, apt plans are more like daydreams than anything else, but hey, it's bound to happen sometime, right? i was somewhat hoping that i was allergic to the beagles i met today, so that i could get over my beagle craze. but it doesn't seem that way, and now i know where to find handsome, affordable beagles.

so i was thinkin, if i got a smart lookin beagle, i'm gonna name him O'MALLEY!!! like from the thanksgiving episode of grey's anatomy. isn't that an awesome beagle name??? and you get to say it in a yelling, MNF, bunch-of-frat-boys way like george's family did. awesome.

OMG FALL TV SHOW PREMIERES!!!
speaking of grey's anatomy...THE NEW SEASON IS ALMOST HERE!!! i'm so excited, i dont think anyone will truly understand. what totally BLOWS is that they moved grey's to the same day and time slot as the office. what the hell were they thinking?? see, i figure it's fair to pit the same genre of show against another network's equivalent. like ER vs Grey's, or Grey's vs Desperate Housewives or something (neither of which i watch, so if that was a totally bad comparison, sorry...i just know that ER is a hospital drama and DH has lots of sex). i figure you only have enough time in your life for one of those kinds of shows before you mix the storylines up somehow.

but the Office vs Grey's? that's just not fair. MerDer vs Jam? i haveta somehow set up a system in which i can watch both. maybe get a satellite and watch one of them 3 hours early on eastern time....or get a tivo. or a vcr (do they still sell those?). somehow i'll find a way. i dont think i can wait long enough for people to post them online.

My first Mac Purchase
...does this make me a sellout? patbo showed me the redesigned, super cool new ishuffle, and at only $79, i HAD to order one. i'm so juiced to use it for working out and later on this year when SNOWBOARDING SEASON comes around!!! wooooot!!! speaking of which, i just got an email from boreal about their season pass sale. i dunno how good the snow will be this season, and i dunno how often i'll be able to go up ( now that im applying for jobs and stuff)...but i figure if i go up 5 times, the pass will pay for itself. but eh...we'll see. i have till october to figure it out.

Dinkin Flicka

megan leaves for college on friday; mom leaves for new york
i worked out with tita chinky and girlie this week! unfortunately, i don't think i've progressed any with my workouts. :( i dont push myself enough i think...but hey, tita chinky gave me a bunch of cute workout clothes!
look what me and megan are gonna be for halloween!!

keep in mind that we only used eyeliner pencils...imagine us with facepaint!!
(i'm a tiger and she's a leopard, if you didn't pick up on that on your own... :()

Out of Boredom

2006-09-06T12:45:00.000-07:00

i'm bored.
it's totally my fault that i'm bored and it could be easily corrected, but my laziness gets in the way. so far i've tried watching 5 episodes in a row of Scrubs, played Brain Age (stupid voice recognition cant understand the word "blue"!), browsed facebook and its newfangled News Feed, tried addictinggames.com, tried tontie on a laptop (didn't work out so well), and updating my resume to keep me occupied. and now here i am....updating. only i dont have much to say or have many pictures. mm...therein lies the problem.

so a few things...

CBEST Scores (again)
My unofficial reading and math scores came in on the 28th....62 and 58 i think. kinda sad, because i really thought i kicked ass on the test. but i still got well above passing (37 on each), so that's ok. i got my unofficial writing scores last night, and i got a 75! WOOT! kinda makes me wanna reread my awesome essays to bask in the pure genius of what was written. i guess i never get them back tho...but i remember writing something about discipline and having a heartfelt, tearjerking, ambitious conclusion. either way, my cumulative score was 195 and passing is 123. awesome!

PAT and TA
i looked into the job with the social work group, and it seems pretty exciting. starting is 13.95 and the position starts immediately. unfortunately, the job description says i have to be bilingual spanish, and that's not happening anytime soon. :( i was misinformed!! im going to email or call my contact and ask him if the bilinguality is really necessary. i felt it was an issue when he mentioned the position initially, but he assured me that there were english speaking cases also. we'll see.

also, i went back to McKinley to get my letter of rec from Mrs. Suguitan, and decided to volunteer again for another class. The vice principal set me up with a class and i should be back in a classroom by tomorrow.

Does that mean no more Vegas?
I suppose the whole mckinley thing does kind of cancel my plans for vegas. I kinda wasnt too juiced on going anyway. i dunno why i'm sucha homebody. in fact, i'm in san jose right now (carless and unfamiliar with my surroundings) and instead of going out and exploring the city , i'm in bed updating my blog. i guess i'm lazy to like, get my day started or whatevs. vegas woulda been great if i was already packed and ready for the trip. but i'm not, cuz i lay around too much. :(

Misaki and Beerfest
Matt, Verlee, Mardon-Hard On, Megan and I all ate at Misaki (the sushi place next to the cinema) for dinner, with plans of getting drunk on sake and watching beerfest afterwards. but somehow they all bailed out on drinking, which kinda ruined the plans of watching beerfest. fun times tho...we got a free round of sake and verlee stole the sake pitcher and cups cuz he thought they were nice.

Meeting the final Loo Brother
Chris' older brother Curtis flew in from China this weekend. chris and nathan picked him up from SFO and they all drove to stockton together. i finally met the rumored nicest loo brother on sunday (and he does really seem like he's the most easy going and the most animated of the three). Chris looks a lot older than him...i cant really pinpoint why. It might be the hair. His hair is past his shoulders but wow, great hair must run in the family cuz it was so smooth and shiny. (am i being screepy?)

Ports vs. Giants, again
chris, nathan, patbo, patbo's friends and i went to a Ports game at the new stadium that day. the ports kicked the giants' asses!!! woot! the stadium is nice too, but man is the food expensive!!! I paid 9 bux for a hot dog and soda, it's ridiculous.

as chris and nathan were getting ready to leave for san jose again, chris said, 'hey, come visit san jose. i'll drive you home on wednesday when i pick up curtis'. So i'm kind of here on a whim, carless and stranded. i would've driven over here myself, but my car window fell into the door again, so my car is kind of outta commission.

(modified) Beer Pong
On monday, ken and tal came to visit and we all played beer pong. only we played it in regular ping pong format, with paddles. we played doubles, me and chris against tal and ken, and we each had just 1 cup in front of us. i've never had so much beer in my life (one, because i hate beer and dont drink it, and two, because tal and ken are experts at ping pong and kept hitting my cup). it was lots of fun tho...we also played a round of 8 ball and ate pizza. then ken and tal started telling me how hot megan is and tried to find pictures of her on facebook. pervs! i'm proud of myself for not puking from the beer tho, or vurping for that matter.
and i dunno who the people in the picture are...they're just the only ones on google images who didnt have the whole triangle of dixie cups thing in front of them.

Sushi Factory
Last night, me and chris went to sushi factory and had all you can eat sushi rolls. OMG. i had to drop anchor twice, i was so full (or maybe just constipated). chris said the sushi chefs gave him dirty looks while i was in the bathroom, because it looked uuuber suspicious that we ordered all you can eat and i went to the bathroom twice. man, we ate 3 meals worth of sushi. :( it tasted so good but it hurt sooo bad!!! haha

Dinkin Flicka

how awesome is that trailer for the new season of Greys Anatomy! click here to watch.
merriam-webster has failed me. it only has about a month's worth of spelling quizzes, then it recycles. it's been about a month.
watched the illusionist with patbo...was pretty good! patbo didnt believe me when i figured out the story. who was right all along!
am i using the bold headings too much? i have one for just about every paragraph....
how weird is that facebook news feed??? and all the ads...man, facebook is sucha sellout.
working out is good. :) i'm upping the resistance on my cardio while still maintaining the same speed and duration. awesome.

Big Things A'Brewin

2006-08-28T00:04:00.000-07:00

This time, in order of importance:

The Power of Networking
Today i went to a Stockton Rotary Club luncheon with my Tito Jo. He said the superintendent of Stockton Unified is also the president of the club this year, and that he could help me start getting connections in the district, maybe even a position as a sub. So i was introduced, handed over my resume, and was told by the super that "it should be no problem". what "it" really specifies, i do not know, but hey, at least it's not a problem!
Man tho, rotary club is the place to be to network. The room was filled with important people with humanitarian interests! Someone actually approached me after the luncheon and told me about a position open at his work. His org totally handles a bunch of stuff i learned about in my Social Policies class at UCLA. I'm excited to check out all these new avenues i can take! And the food at the luncheon was good too. :) Woot!

CBEST Test Results et cetera
My unofficial cbest scores are available online tomorrow after 5pm. I'm so excited to check em out!!! I also need to head over to McKinley to get Mrs. Suguitan to write a letter of rec for me. Shouldn't take too long tho...i just gotta schedule it and not get lazy.

Happy Birthday Mom!
We threw a party for mom's birthday on saturday, and it was pretty cool. She said she wanted me and megan to help her clean up the house and do laundry and linens and dishes and stuff as a birthday gift to her. So we did, and the whole house (except for my room) is vaccumed, tidy, febrezed, laundered, and air freshened. A good amount of people came for the party and the food was delicious. It was fun playing with the baby (i taught her how to High 5! Matt would be proud) and chris sang a karaoke song! and my mom looked happy to have everyone over. yay!

Working Out
I decided to just go ahead and get a membership for my mom and myself at Inshape. So far i've gone twice...woulda been more but my efforts were hampered by other duties (explained later). I keep asking patbo to go with me, but he always has whatever excuse not to. Same with my mom and tita chinky. So i've only gone to the gym by myself so far, which is pretty damn impressive for me, because i can't do anything like that alone. Cuz i cheat myself and i quit early. So yeah, i'm doin pretty good so far. I'm going tomorrow, to meet with a 'trainer' to figure out what machines i should use and how to use them. Then tita chinky says she'll meet up with me after. We'll see.

The Hot Dog Stand
So my dad had the great idea of putting up a concession stand at the spanos driving range. To make it an attractive deal for the golf course, he's offering to invest in a mobile canopy for the range. This should generate more foot traffic because golfers will no longer be discouraged by the hot hot heat, or any other kind of inclement weather. He's also planning on putting out tables and stuff (with shade) to make the place more family friendly. He's assigned me the task of researching how much all that is gonna cost (and from what i have so far...it's gonna cost a lot....)It's a great idea, and a hot dog stand would do great in that kind of environment. We make the proposal tomorrow with the manager. Haha, guess who's gonna go back into the food service business? ;)

Shopping...again!?
Megan and I went shopping at Valley Fair in San Jose, and spent like, 9 hours there. I finally used my AE 40% off coupon, and the employees there were like, the nicest i've ever met. I didnt realize how much more megan bought till we tried on all our newly purchased clothes. I was done in 3 minutes and it took her like 35. We also visited Chris and i finally met Ken Borst! Tal also came to hang out, and megan and i went to pita pit for dinner. megan tried brain age on DS for the first time and loved it! got home pretty late, but an all around good day.

An All-Around YAY Week

2006-08-20T23:32:00.000-07:00

all the yay happenings in order of occurrence:

I'm the Crazy Shoe Lady!
i got this AE "rewards coupon" in the mail for 40% off of everything i want in the store because i spent like some ridiculous amount of money there a few months ago. frequent flier miles for the clothing world i guess. so i headed over to the mall to do some preview shopping, only, i never made it to AE. i passed thru dillards and saw that O M G, they have a 50% off sale in women's shoes. i was in the shoe dept for seriously like, 3 hours. i decided to try to start changing my wardrobe by starting with my shoes. i bought a bunch of nice looking heels...all work appropriate. :) no hooker boots this time! haha. but jeez....i feel like i went a little overboard buying 5 pairs of shoes. but hey! 50% off!!! you cant beat it!!! (the picture has 6 pairs because i went back with my dad and he bought me another pair.....gah!)

Patbo's Photogenicocity
Apparently, people (or just one person?) think that patbo's self-pic (which he uses for myspace, AIM, facebook, etc) is a bad picture. personally, i think it's fine, but i told him that maybe they (or he/she) doesn't like it because patbo is neither smiling or looking into the camera. he does it in most of his pics, at least the not showing teeth thing. he says he feels fake when he tries to smile for pictures. happy thoughts, i said. so when he came over, i took a picture of him, looking at the camera and smiling. voila! plus 12 points for photogenicocity.

Healthy Hair and Pool Table-ocity
my hair's pretty ratty from everything i've done to it, so i went to brady (matt's hairstylist guy) and he trimmed off the brittle ends, gave me bangs and re-highlighted my hair. i also got this really good smelling serum stuff for my hair that makes it soft and shiny. yay!

then i went to san jose to visit chris / meet tal / go to SJSU to drop off some documents / hang out / get out of the house. chris' pool table came in on thursday and i had to sit outside to babysit it for a few hours till chris got home. then chris, his neighbor jim, ed, and tal had one hell of a hard time pushing the 420lb table up the stairs. now it's in his dining room, 95% assembled and 100% awesome!!! when chris left for work the next day, i stayed in his apt and played pool all day...and took a nap. i'm getting better at pool tho, i swear!!!

Megan's Homecoming
YAY my sister's home!!! after 2 long months of partying and livin it up in the philippines, my sister is finally back in the stockton. we picked her up this morning at SFO. she told us a bunch of entertaining stories on the drive home (pictured here), over lunch, and while unpacking. she's sleeping now, but i'm sure there will be more stories to listen to when she wakes up again. she bought all these awesome clothes while she was there and got me some nice stuff too. she even gave me money!! haha, some from my grandpa and some she's donating to me from her own funds cuz i was telling her how poor i was. yay, something to pay off my shoes with!

Dinkin Flicka

went to the driving range with chris and had a putting competition. i won!
FINALLY watched talladega nights
talked to tiff on the phone! she's so awesome
dad's willing to pay for my gym membership! me? exercise?!?
i keep having really weird dreams that might be considered nightmares. hmm.

How to KICK ASS on a test

2006-08-14T01:02:00.000-07:00

The Secret to Success
Apparently, the way to go on studying for a test is to not study for it. It might seem counter-intuitive, but it's worked for me and patbo, who kicked mucho culo in his statics class this summer. I bought a practice book back in april but didnt crack it open til july. it's really hard yenno, to not be lazy when it's all you've been doing for the past 4 months. to stall a little on the studyage, i went on the CBEST official website and tried their online practice test. to my surprise, the test was super easy! i got a 46/50 on the reading, and a 41/50 on the math. passing is 37. you'd think this would be good news, but really, it was bad news for my plans to study, because according to that test, i didn't need to. :)

all in all, i think i only managed to study once before the test (twice if you count taking the practice test online), and i did a little prep work for the writing section before the test. the actual test site was at East Union High School in Manteca, and i had to be there at 8:30. To be safe, i got there at 7:50 and ate Jack in the Box Extreme Breakfast Sausage Sandwich while reviewing some sample writing prompts in the parking lot.

Inside the actual testing room, i was a little nervous to hear that many of the people there were taking the test for the 2nd and 3rd time. But when i got the test booklet, it was even easier than the practice one i took online. I really hope i dont jinx myself by saying this, but i really truly think i kicked major ass on that test. I'll haveta wait till Aug 28 to find out for sure.

The Seattle Trip, and WTF is Oral Thrush?
ok, this might be TMI, but two weeks ago i got a pretty bad case of bladder infection and decided to go to kaiser. The doc gave me some antibiotics. I was happy to finally get some meds because usually, the pain goes away within a few hours of taking the first dose. And i really, really needed the pain to go away. Me and patbo were supposed to go on our roadtrip to seattle the very next morning, and having to go to the bathroom every 10 minutes with searing pain is really not a good condition to have on a roadtrip.

But for some reason, the meds i got didn't work. I was in no shape to go to seattle the next day, but hoped i'd be okay the day after. i wasn't, so i bailed on the seattle trip. sorry patbo. i felt extra bad because it was supposed to be a way for patbo to get outta stockton for his birthday. By day 3 of medication, there was still no improvement...at all. So i called the doc, and he said, "oh yes, i looked at the culture and found that the strain you have does not respond well to the antibiotics i gave you.' GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!! when was he planning on telling me this info?? Anyway, i got a new prescription and it worked like a charm. Unfortunately, he prescribed me another 7 days worth of meds, 'to make sure'.

So i read all the warnings and stuff on the new meds, and crap, there were a lot. may cause dizziness, drink with plenty of water, do not take with dairy products, iron, or antacids, do not have caffeine, do not eat chocolate, stay away from direct sunlight, may cause joint swelling (do not exercise), avoid excessive sugars as they may cause oral thrush or vaginal yeast infections.

hold on....what?? wtf is that?

so i looked it up, and apparently it's a yeast infection...IN YOUR MOUTH. You get all these white spots all over that bleed if you try to pick them off. people with immunodeficiencies or people on antibiotics are susceptible to oral thrush because of the imbalance of good bacteria in the mouth. candida, the actual yeast, is always present in the mouth, but it is kept under control by the 'natural flora' in the mouth. antibiotics kills a lot of this good 'flora' and the candida get a chance wreak havok. wanna see some pictures of havok being wreaked?

(those tiny white dots at the corners of the mouth and tip of the tongue aren't image pixelations, folks. those are baby lumps just waitin to grow....)

YUUUUUUCK. My mom says some people foam at the mouth too, and that vaginal yeast infections look EVEN WORSE. GROOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSS. So i was really freaking out because i was gonna be on antibiotics for over 10 days (when you put the 2 prescriptions together). Not to mention, the latest prescription made me feel TERRIBLE!! They weren't kidding about the dizziness and nausea. with the previous meds, i stayed in bed because sleeping numbed the pain, and with the new meds, i stayed in bed because i'd break into cold sweats and feel like throwing up if i stood up. GRR!

So i kept off the sweets and now i'm on my last dose of meds, YEAST INFECTION FREE! i'm pretty relieved that all this is almost over. i've been going crazy just laying in bed. and i know....i KNOW laying in bed is what i seem to be doing 24/7 anyway...but it's different when you feel sick and you dont have any other choice BUT to stay in bed.

And yeah, since i stayed in bed for over a week, i didn't really do anything exciting so i dont have much else to talk about. :(

Dinkin Flicka

Happy Birthday to Patbo! Sorry it was not as eventful as you hoped it'd be.

Happy Birthday to Matt! i called him at 7am to be annoying, and then sent like a million texts when he didn't reply. SORRY, i didn't know you were sick.
I helped make Kasajos (beef tapa) with my mom. MMM...i love that stuff, it's so filipino breakfast.
I watched Step Up with my mom. it was...everything i thought it'd be. my mom cried...something i also expected, but was still pretty surprised about. it was really not cry-able material.

Remember, Remember...

2006-08-02T01:22:00.000-07:00

...the first of August.

yeah, that didn't rhyme as well as a lot of the other possible months. oh well.

Dinkin Flicka

got my car window reinstalled. still no a/c.
had a small family reunion and met my godfather for the first time since my baptism. talk about MIA. i feel he abandoned me long ago and i dont feel like acting like he means something to me because he doesnt.
what i thought was good for me might not be. i've wasted many things. this might be one of them.
patbo thinks i'm weird for my club knocker songs.

V for Vendetta
i just finished watching it with patbo. along with final destination 3 and Chain Reaction (thanks to eric) on GSN. It's a lot easier than i thought it'd be...i thought you were supposed to stump the other team by picking hard words to chain react to. but no. either way, a lot of TV watching was accomplished today; 'accomplished' being the most inappropriate word.

CSU East Bay
i looked up some stats on CSUEB and i think i'll check out their advisement session in september. it'll be a bit more of a drive (if patbo decides to take that job in Redwood City), but hey, independent studies say that they have the happiest students there. man i really loved the idea of san jose state...and now it's starting to sound worse and worse. i totally jinxed myself with my SJSU entry.

Communication
strangely enough, i've been caught in many instances where it's just me and my dad in the car together for a long ride. i thought this would be awkward, that he'd either lecture me or just talk and talk, but i think my dad has somewhat given up on me. not in a bad way, but he seems to have left me alone. maybe he's figured, he's done enough talking, and it's my turn to put his advice into action. i was expecting a questioning on why this hasn't been accomplished yet. during those drives, i didn't really want to talk. he remained quiet. all the feared conversations never quite came to pass. and i'm still debating whether the silence was any better.

Megan IMed me thru Yahoo Messenger (a far superior chat program than AIM, might i add) saying that i should email her. i really should get on that. i also finally heard back from some facebook penpals i thought i had lost. interestingly, i have this huge line of pokes that i plan to build up on facebook. what does a poke convey anyway? whatever it is, i appreciate it all the same.

Dinkin Flicka! Ugh!

2006-07-27T01:27:00.000-07:00

Song Currently Playing: Hale-Runaway
Mood: pretty awesome, i'd say

my first attempt of organizing entries like jon:

Teh Girlie IS Teh Married
not ME Girlie, the OTHER Girlie. yeah, filipinos arent so creative with the nicknames and neither do they mind when names are duplicated. i am a double case in point. anyway, i was surprised to hear i was attending her wedding, since i was only informed the night before the event. we all drove up to tahoe and landed an awesome suite in harrah's (thanks to mom's high-roller status at the casinos) and enjoyed a very sweet, albeit small, wedding. Congratulations Girlie!!! after the ceremony, i tried mom's FAVORITE slot machine game, "Sun and Moon", and yeah, it is a lot more fun than the other games out there. i ended up winning 110 bux net, but then gave all but 40 of it back to my mom so she could keep playing.

Teh Valley Fair Mall
the weather's been ridiculously hot these past couple weeks, so chris invited me to explore Valley Fair Mall, legendary for its hugemongosity, with him as a way to beat the hot hot heat. we must've spent the first couple hours just in Macy's, but it was worth it because we got chris a few work outfits and work shoes, AND we even checked out bedsheet sets and mattresses. We then realized we had to pace ourselves better, so we were a lot more efficient with our time as we strolled the rest of the mall. chris made his first Sharper Image purchase with the As-Seen-On-TV Magic Sweeper, woot! i have to admit though, i felt a little bit weird walking around the mall because of its vague familiarness from when david took me there for the first time last summer. sad panda.

Teh Eric Visit
so, a couple weeks ago i went to hang out in davis with janine, david salomon, and eric abad. because eric is such a nice guy, he felt he should return the favor and visit me. and plus, he had nothing else to do. soo.... when he got here, we:

had lunch (which was breakfast food) with my family and mahjong ladies
went to costco and didnt see any mochi ice cream, but lied blatantly to the cashier and narrowly missed being charged of fraud.
went to SUPER walmart and pointed out all the counter-intuitivities of the layout
showed him my awesome farmscape whimsical room at the bernice house
made fresh strawberry pies (incorrectly, might i add, because of me)
went to tita chinky's house to swim
met up with chris (who was in town for a dental appt) and ate at Sho-Mi.

A fun filled day indeed. :)

Underwater Photography
my dad bought this pentax digital camera specifically for girlie's wedding, but for some reason, it had a big sticker on it that said "WATERPROOF". what?? surely it means it's water resistant. "ENABLES UNDERWATER PHOTOGRAPHY". HUH!!!! i thought it had to be some kind of gimmick, like you had to put it in a custom plastic case or something, but i read the manual and it just says dip it right in. this is one of the main reasons why eric and i went to swim...we wanted to see if the underwaterness really worked. apparently it did, although we had some major issues with the memory card that wouldn't let us take more than 5 or 6 pictures. STUPID CARD!

And Finally.....Dinkin Flicka

i watched She's the Man (amanda bynes, dressed up as a boy), and Nanny McPhee this week, both of which i enjoyed.
i got back to watching my favorite episodes of The Office and Grey's Anatomy. still so awesome.
i was given the arduous task of teaching a 72 year old how to use a computer. O. M. G. here's a screenshot of the ridic How-To book i made for her. go ahead, click on the picture to zoom in. toooooo much effort...and it seems like she still doesn't really get it. :(
stayed up for hours on facebook looking at pictures and youtube watching music videos of Pam and Jim's unspoken love, and also of Dinkin Flicka, which i will try my hardest to make into colloquial slang. do me a favor and at least watch the dinkin flicka one. yes, the actual definition of the word is not specified. look at this as a chance to put your own meaning into it. it's versatile, just like the word "fuck". watch it. try it. live it. love it. dinkin flick it.

for blogging purposes and blogging purposes only, i will use "dinkin flicka" as a section for other random events that, in hoopla terms, are "bigger than forgetting about but smaller than writing a paragraph about". haha.

goodnight.

The Study Lounge

2006-07-19T20:42:00.000-07:00

I miss these damned study lounges. Here i am at home, trying to study for the CBEST, and i can't concentrate because it's not a study lounge. i only study in study lounges and other academic looking places.
everyone's like this i suppose; which is why people always tell you never to study in bed, or sleep in class, or develop any conflicting habits like that. when studying, simulate the environment you'll be in when you take the test you're studying for. that way you're thinking about knowledge you've learned instead of, 'i wish i had some grey's anatomy playing in the background', or 'where's my comforter? and pillow?'. bugger.

i woke up early this morning (7am!) to run errands and be awesome. it's 7pm now and i've yet to take a nap and i'm pretty proud of myself so far. unfortunately, i thought the day was passing by too slowly at one point and let myself get distracted with Nicole Kidman's Bewitched movie on the Encore! channel. despite this, i've completed every task on my list of things to do except for a couple that should've been taken cared of during regular business hours, but that's fine. i'll take care of it tomorrow. in theory.

some updates:

chris and i finally went to a Stockton Ports vs San Jose Giants game in SJ, and even invited Ed and Phil along for the fun. BASEBALL GAMES ARE AWESOME!!! chris and i became the sole stockton loving hecklers in the stands, but our labors were not in vain because THE PORTS KICKED ASSSSSS!!!! i think people go more for the ambiance of being at the ballpark than they do to actually WATCH the whole game. there was cool crowd participation and games and stuff after every inning, lots of free stuff (like baseball caps and several loaves of wholegrain white bread), and best of all, HOT DOGS AND BEER!!! i ate the hot dogs (polish sausage to be exact) and chris, ed and phil drank the beers. afterwards, we ate at the famous Sonoma chicken coop and then watched Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure at chris' apt. overall a very exciting day.

the rest of the weekend was pretty awesome as well. went to SF to pick up some hand-me-down furniture, met chris' grandma, bought char-siu-bao at a chinese bakery, and watched Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. san jose is really nice and a lot of fun. maybe it's because of the location of chris' apt, or because it's still a new city for both of us, but i really enjoy just strolling around and exploring downtown in the evening. there always seems to be something cool going on; like last week was the obon festival, this week the game...next week is the SJ Grand Prix i think. not bad eh?

Lost

2006-07-10T14:47:00.000-07:00

bringin it back old school:

Song I'm Listening to: Dashboard Confessional - Bend and Not Break
Current Mood: listless yet again

i suppose that lately, i've been filling my days with waiting. waiting for people to get off of work or school or whatever so that i'll have someone to hang out with or talk to. waiting for sac state's info meeting this thursday. waiting to take my cbest. waiting to go on a roadtrip. waiting for something to happen. waiting for a swift kick in the ass to get me to make something happen. is this patience, this waiting, or is it resignation from trying?

i keep watching Lost. and a big part of it is because it's a good show. an even bigger part is because it helps me kill time. waiting time. it's easy to think that i can do something just a tad bit more productive with myself, but lost requires the least amount of effort for the amount of entertainment it brings. i hope i'm not somehow trying to live vicariously thru the characters on the show, cuz they're all pretty damaged and their living situation sucks. but hey, props to Jin. wouldn't mind bein stuck on an island with him. he's doin pretty damn good.he's just built very well. proportions, frame, musclature, it's all good. finally, an asian guy gets some props for sexiness.

anyway, on thursday i'm planning on going to sac state to check out their info meeting for their credential program. san jose prices are pretty discouraging, and i dont think patbo's too warm on the idea anymore after i told him how much chris is paying for an apt. after the meeting, j9 set up some qt at aggie square with david salomon and eric abad. not the other david and eric, but wouldn't that be an interesting gathering? that david was also built very well, much like mr. jin kwon. just throwin it out there cuz i dunno if anyone else noticed.

maybe this weekend chris will wanna go furniture or bed shopping. now i'm definitely living vicariously thru him, mostly because i love house and bed and room stuff, because i love his new apt, and because he actually needs it cuz he has his very own life now. his apt is friggin gorgeous. even the entryway is awesome. i'm trying hard (or am gonna try hard) not to push all my cool apartment ideas on him, cuz it's HIS place, and he should know what he likes. (i definitely know what i like, but what good does that do him?)

what i wonder is though, to what extent he really cares about what kind of bedframe, what color sheets, and if his furniture matches. is he oblivious to things like that, or just indifferent? maybe he does care, but just doesn't know where to start or what he really wants yet. either way, he's prolly more concerned about his job and how to set up his 401k than he is with decorating right now. it's just that i can't really help him with his job, or his 401k. but this, his place, i can help with. he says i make him comfortable, and i want to help him make his very first place of his own comfortable too. i want to help, but i just dont want to feel like i'm doing more than i should.

My Life on Shuffle

2006-06-24T19:55:00.000-07:00

i got this awesome quiz activity thing from arya's LJ, which i do still read. not on a daily basis, but i try to read his entries in big chunks...i think i covered like 3 months so far. i didn't know he was in DC. hmm. i hope he likes it there.

anyway, i thought it was a cool idea.

Put your music player on shuffle.

Press forward for each question.
Use the song title as the answer to the question even if they don't make sense. You'll be surprised though.
NO CHEATING

How am I feeling today?
mymp covering madonna-crazy for you
(wink)

Will I get far in life?
craig david feat mos def- 7 days
(frown)

How do my friends see me?
parokya ni edgar- bagsakan (tagalog for failing)
(frown)

Where will I get married?
semisonic-closing time
(at a bar?)

What is my best friend's theme song?
mariah carey-dreamlover
(hmm..)

What is the story of my life?
maroon 5- the sun
(lines from the song... sometimes it's a sad song, but i cannot forget, refuse to regret, so glad i met you...take my breath away, make everyday, worth all of the pain that i've gone thru... hmmm......)

What was high school like?
nathan morris-wishes
(psh)

How can I get ahead in life?
whitney houston-i wanna dance with somebody
(shoulda been destiny's child-independent woman....but no...i need a man to support me and dance with apparently....)

What is the best thing about me?
montell jordan-this is how we do it
(hahaha.....)

What was today like?
simple-asian girl
(was i submissive today?)

What is in store for this weekend?
dem franchise boyz-lean wit it rock with it..... HAHA
(DEFINITELY going to the club tonight....it's a sign.....)

What song describes my parents?
mya-free
(yeah, they're basically just housemates.)

How is my life going?
boyz II men-dreams
(i dont even know this song...)

What song will they play at my funeral?
pharell feat jay z-frontin
(....)

How does the world see me?
musiq- you love me

Will I have a happy life?
usher- burn
(as arya said......motherfucker . . .)

What do my friends really think of me?
all american rejects- move along
(at least it's the acoustic version...)

Do people secretly lust after me?
freestyle-so slow
(oh yes.)

How can I make myself happy?
ideal-whatever
(:-D)

What should I do with my life?
the fray- over my head (cable car)
(bad sign)

Will I ever have children?
nu flavor-sweet sexy thing
(apparently i'm going to make multiple attempts..)

What will you name them?
whitney houston-saving all my love for you
(whitney? bobby?)

Who will you marry?
o-town - we fit together
(o-town=somebody hot and stupid. excellent. we fit together=somebody horny. excellent.)

Do you have a boyfriend/girlfriend?
james taylor-whenever i see your smiling face
(hi topes :) )

How will you die?
SWV-it's about time
(i'm gonna die now?)

try it, it's good. :)

Happy Graduation Also!

2006-06-19T17:58:00.000-07:00

yay for graduating!! summary:

got lost on the way to LA. spent an extra hour and a half sitting in traffic with no AC cuz i missed the 405. how the hell can anyone miss the 405??

chris' graduation was at 12:30. got on campus at 10:15. talk about being early. was super duper hot and i killed my feet walking up and down campus in my heels.

had dinner at JR Seafood. there was a grown up table and a kids table...kinda cool, bringin it back old school. food was great, didn't do much afterwards. went to sleep early cuz of the tiring day.

went to wild rivers the next day with mike and anna, only to be denied because our free pass voucher isn't valid on sundays. went to newport beach instead since it was nearby, and took pictures and hung out. i got even darker as a result, so i changed my avatar:

drove back to chris' place, watched transamerica with him to avoid having to pack, then packed up my car and left at 11pm. stupid idea. stuck in traffic for an hour (cuz apparently they shut down some part of the freeway to 2 lanes...grr)...got home at 4am.

the end.

Happy Graduation!

2006-06-09T21:21:00.000-07:00

i just read 2 of chris' latest blog entries. this means that i read 2 paragraphs, total. how come my entries are soooooo long? my life is hardly as interesting; in theory, my entries should be like a sentence long, at most. so, lemme try to be concise. even better, i'll use bullets.

on season 2, episode 11 of grey's anatomy. i ruuv it.
megan's graduation was yesterday and it was awesome. made a huge 15 ft sign for her that she didnt see anyway cuz she wasn't looking. went to outback after and of course, they didnt have prime rib. watched 2 eps of greys after with patbo and matro. haha.
just came back from running/lunges/squats/pushups/crunches. because i want stamina, endurance, and legs/buns/abs of steel, and flabless arms.
i'm sreepy
i got my teeth cleaned on tuesday. my dentist said my teeth were great and white. woot! :)

that is all. thank you.

Gochoco's Anatomy

2006-05-16T13:29:00.000-07:00

I just watched almost 4 hours of Grey's Anatomy in a row. Season 1, episode 1, so i get the feel for everything right from the beginning. Kind of like how you only like Real World when you watch the very first episode and meet everyone at the same time they meet each other...so you dont feel like you missed out on anything. Right now, i'm right there at Seattle Grace Hospital, anxious yet excited for the next 48 hour shift.

I noticed that every episode is formulaic really. It's like a living journal of Meredith's journey through residency. The show always starts with a monologue about some Rule of Thumb that Meredith lives by, or believes she should live by...and throughout the episode, those rules are thrown out the window, and the writers take a circular approach to everything finish the show beautifully with another monologue...this time, Meredith is a little wiser, a little more jaded, and a little less timid about dealing with what life may throw at her at the hospital. Epic.

I wish i could start all my entries with a logically sound notion, have a conflict and resolve, and come out a little more knowledgeable (and eloquent) about it in the end. Doesn't really happen.....not so much to me, anyway. I'm working on it.

In other news, Chris finally had his interview in San Jose the day before megan's prom, and we spent what was left of the day in San Francisco. stayed at his brother's place and met his friends Tiffany and Charlotte over some pizza for dinner. They're pretty awesome (and filipino!). I had to drive back and forth from San Francisco to help her prepare for her prom, which was on Saturday, but it was worth it. She got grounded for prom because she didn't call to say when she'd come home, and she tried to sneak in her window when she finally decided to call it a night. I told her to just call home, but she wouldn't. She likes to talk to me, but never really listens. One out of 2 isn't bad tho....i dont think she does either with my parents.
Technically they should be uber proud of her for graduating high school adn preparing for college, but that didn't so much happen. Too much arguing about things, and not enough tact on either side.

Life at home is kind of weird...people like to believe i dont get out much, people like Patbo and Chris who think i'm depressed and need a hobby, but really, i do get out. Maybe they're right about a hobby, but a job would be better, and really, i'm not a sick hermit of a person. I thought my parents would be on my case more about my bumming, but they're really happy to see me. For some reason, even my 'failure to launch' from the nest is more appealing to them than megan's not-too hostile rebellion to, well, everything.

After megan was off enjoying prom, i drove back to the city to go to a club with chris and the awesome filipinos. Haha, it was funny that i met Davis filipinos (i consider Chinners filipino) at the same club. We went to Mel's Diner afterwards and called it a night at around 4:30. I think Tiffany invited me on the roadtrip to Chris' graduation next month, which sounds pretty cool. Haven't taken that drive with other people with me in a really long time.

Sunday was mother's day and Tita Chinky's family came over to celebrate. We didn't do much but it was still nice to see everyone together. I made a carrot cake because i didn't have an actual gift for tita chinky, who has been extremely generous with me and megan lately. I feel like i should still get her something, only it'd just seem like too little, too late at this point. It's already Tuesday.
I still visit tita chinky's house regularly to see the baby, and last week i took a dip in the hot tub by myself whilst eating my favorite strawberry dessert from College Bakery, shown here, except mine usually has a lot more whip cream, and powdered sugar instead of chocolate on top.

Life's little joys.

Too much time on my hands...

2006-05-11T01:28:00.000-07:00

HAHAHHAAHA.....who's the better worker? It's sucha toss up.....

on a more serious note....

finally got a green light on the foreign language thing...i'm all set to get a degree and i didn't even have to take a test. more on that later.
decided to go thru insurance on the bumper thing. haven't heard any word for over a week about it. maybe he's decided not to file a claim? i'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Asparagus Festival and Working Out

2006-05-04T13:17:00.000-07:00

I ended up going to Stockton's Asparagus festival with Patbo the day after picnic day. There were soo many people there, it was kind of gross. We were forced to spend $20 bux on alcohol because we didn't know how the "tickets" worked. Teresa told me about the Aspara-ritas (Margaritas with asparagus in them), so i had a couple servings of those. tasted like a normal margarita, except maybe not as limey, and ther were small specks of asparagus in them. i made patbo "waste" the extra tickets on a margarita glass that says "20th annual Asparagus Festival" on the side. he hates it, but it was better than having to spend the tickets on more aspara-ritas.

I saw Nancy and Spencer there, which was weird since i havent seen them in ages. i felt kinda bad tho cuz i was totally scrubbed out and everyone seemed to be all dressed up. ah well.

what i learned was that Asparagus Festival should be renamed to Wait in Line All Day for vegetables you dont like anyway Festival. we waited in line for everything. i waited like 20 mins for a sausage on a bun that i finished in 3 minutes, i waited at least 30 for some funnel cake, and over an hour for the famous fried asparagus.
it was yummy i guess. worth the wait in line? i wouldn't go that far. At least patbo got us in for free. i dont think i would've wanted to pay $10 to walk around a bunch of fatties and wait in line.

After checking out the asparagus festival, me and patbo went over to tita chinky's house because i wanted to see the baby. i've been visiting a lot lately just because tita chinky's house is cool and they always have snacks and the baby's at a really cute age. I haven't been swimming yet, but the weather's too perfect to keep that up for much longer. I also watched Stick It with Brianna, that awesome gymnastics movie. It was great, it made me cry.

Sometime last week, i went to Union Square with Megan to help her find a prom dress. Man, it took forever and i was really dreading driving in the city. But it turned out okay, except for the parking fee ($20! It was ridic).

Also, i finally started my "workout regimen" with matt. We go walking and jogging around his neighborhood with his dog, and then i try to do some ab lounge crunches afterwards. At home, i use my dad's elliptical. I'm not feeling much strain yet because i'm going easy, but matt says that's good anyway. Matt, Verlee and I went to the driving range a few times with Garrett Buck, some kid from my high school that they worked with a few years back. Pretty fun. Something to do other than watch movies...although verlee matt and i have watched like 3 or 4 movies together already. And even tho matt is supposed to be a nutritionist, we've eaten at all the bad fast food places, haha. There's just not much to do in stockton i guess.

Tonight i'm supposed to hang out with Eric Wong, who i havent seen since high school. That should be cool. Me and Chris were supposed to grab coffee with him the last time we were up together, but it never happened. After that, i think matt verlee and i will go watch MI3 in the theatres. i just wanna go because i get 5 extra crown club points for buying tickets on a thursday. i'm still pissed that i didn't get my friggin free movie ticket yet.

Chris is supposed to come up in a little over a week for a job interview. it'll be good to see him again because with gas prices nowadays i dont think i'll be going to LA anymore. i was feeling all mood swingy earlier this week and gave him a hard time because for some dumb reason i expected him to know how to handle me when i'm sad. 've never been sad or angry around him (just cuz he makes me whole day so bright and happy, haha), so it wasn't right for me to assume he'd know what works with me. but feeling bad and not having anyone to turn to made me feel even worse because i realized that i no longer talk to the people/person that do know how to handle. vicious cycle. so, my bad. i guess i'll have to try to avoid being sad and/or deal with it myself next time.

guess that's it for now. blogger makes it look like i wrote a lot, but really it's just because the writing space is really narrow and i put in a lot of pictures. :)

Mood Swings

2006-04-30T15:56:00.000-07:00

from megan's profile:

"life is too short; grudges are a waste of perfect happiness. laugh when you can. apologize when you should and let go of what you can`t change.

love deeply and forgive quickly. take chances.. give everything and have no regrets. life is too short to be unhappy; you have to take the good with the bad.. smile when you`re sad.

love what you got - and always remember what you had. always forgive but never forget, learn from your mistakes but never regret. people change and things go wrong.. but always remember life goes on.

so laugh out loud, never take anything for granted and love her with all your heart and i promise you, it will be well worth it"

Bumper BS

2006-04-27T03:42:00.000-07:00

A few significant things happened this week; i finally got the ball rolling on all my school paperwork stuff, i went to picnic day and hung out with the 82, My Sassy Girl finally has subtitles (thanks to eric abad), i finally watched Tristan + Isolde and RUVVED it....and i finally have The Office Season 2 on my computer.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Man, if Jim wasn't so friggin awesome to marry (except for his whole "i love Pam" thing...but i'd get him over it) , Dwight would be my absolute favorite on the show.

But this entry is about the most significant thing that happened to me this past week: i rear ended someone on the 80 during ridiculous stop and go traffic on the way home from picnic day.

Yes, my fault. Was there damage? Barely anything. i must've been at a slow crawl at most since the traffic was so bad...there was no way i could've done much damage to his car.

so i call the guy's house and leave him a message, asking him if we could settle it privately so we dont have to go thru our insurance. he calls back a couple days later and says, sure yeah, that's probably better anyway. he said he'd get an estimate and call me back later in the week. ok i said. i wasn't worried because what autobody shop would work on nothing?

i guess i was wrong. today, the guy called me and said the bill is gonna come up to $730. "This is good," he says, "because anything over $750 we have to report to the DMV." $730? FOR WHAT!? "They're gonna have to put in a new bumper they said, because you tweaked the bumper, you see. In the middle, if you look, it's pushed in and they're going to have to replace the whole thing cuz it's tweaked". UHHHHHHH.

Don't you wish i had a picture of the damage? So you could see what all the fuss was about? Here:

Z O M G. TOTALLY TWEAKED.

now i know my camera phone isn't 10 megapixels, but i think $730 worth of damage should be visible to the naked eye....and a camera phone. Don't you agree?

They're scamming. They've got to be.

Oh, and the icing on the cake: i haven't told my dad yet. :-X

San Jose, here i come

2006-04-21T20:46:00.001-07:00

with the help of the $8 and some directions david gave me the last time we talked, i managed to go to the SJSU campus all by myself and pay a ridiculous amount of money ($6!?) for (2.5 hours of) parking. The "credential advisement session" i attended was informative as well as fun. I dont really wanna go to the sac state session anymore; the head advisor of SJ's program is friggin awesome. Jan, you're awesome! I was so excited about the prospect of finally doing what i've always wanted to do, so i called patbo and told him all about it. and he said to me, "OR...you could work for vantage!" wow, thanks patbo for calling me "silly" for wanting to live out my dream.

The trip to San Jose bumps up my # of miles traveled to a little under 1000 miles for this week. I went to LA to visit Chris (and chill on the pier and do my own cool stuff), then to Malibu to visit Arya, and then back up to Stockton, then right back down to Manteca, and then today to SJSU. I didn't get lost, btw! Tomorrow, Saturday, i'm going to Picnic Day with the homies, and maybe i can convince some of them to holler at stockton for the Asparagus Festival on Sunday. We'll see.

My trip to LA was fun and it really got me out of my listless mindset. I think it was a mix of having someone to hang out with, the warm sunny weather (i'm starting to think i had S.A.D), and being able to go out and do things on my own. woot! the trip was more of a last minute "now or never" kind of thing, since i realized i had stuff planned for the next 4 or 5 weekends and couldn't visit any other time. Oh, and chris finally cut his hair, btw, so i changed up his avatar :) So while chris was at school, i went to Santa Monica pier and read up on Servant of the Bones (le sigh, still not done), and i was planning to go to the Getty again, but the whole bus thing just threw me off since i didn't bring my bruincard. yes, that was a lame excuse. i was planning on it though; it would've been nice.

Chris and i ate out a few times and watched Thank You for Smoking, and i finally watched my VERY FIRST IMAX 3D movie!! AND IT WAS ABOUT DEEP SEA!!! Omg, i was so excited, cuz i love that stuff. I watched a lot of Top Chef and of course, friends. The top chef inspired chris and i (mostly chris, haha) to make our own dinner the last night i was there. MMMM....we bought these awesome steaks (T bone and New York strip) and made clam chowder, garlic mashed potatoes, and spinahc sauteed with garlic for dinner. MMMMM!!! SO good, especially while watching friends. :)

Visiting teh Arya was quite teh interesting. I didn't know Pepperdine was its own civilization on a gated off hill. I got there around 8:30 so i couldn't see everything, but it looked pretty awesome to me. I was psyching myself up to see Arya's infamous beard, but apparently he shaved it all off 3 weeks ago. :( his friends seemed cool; a very interesting Aaron and a drunken podiatrist Tito who kept me in conversation all night. We went to this get together in malibu that was like, totally...unique. First off, it was in this really posh neighborhood of mansions, only there was a 1 lane road (like really 8 ft across) that went over a few rivers and through a bunch of woods and up some hills and through some caverns....haha, it was crazy, to get to this house. When we finally got there, there were about 5 people already there, and 4 of the 5 were in their 40's and 50's. Wha. But it was a really nice place and i had a good time. Me and papi got separated after like an hour, and he talked with people while i learned more about flat feet from the podiatrist, haha. A really nice girl, Stacia, got pretty messed up and had to stay the night. Arya and i left the party around 3am, and we chilled at his dorm for a while. I got home at prolly 5:30.

What sucked about this LA trip was that my watch broke on the first day i was there. I lost a lot of valuable Getty and beach time because whenever i glanced over at my watch, i was like, "oh! i 've got PLENTY of time!" it took me till about 3pm to realize that my watch was just stuck on 10:50am. :( i didn't know how much i looked at my watch till i didn't have it anymore. craptastic. I didn't get to go out with Espy cuz she didn't call (and i didn't call), but i figure it's okay since i'll see her tomorrow at picnic day. All in all, great trip. :)

oh, and here's some more avatars i made, which i think are pretty on point:

yes, this is jon. Tell me this doesn't look like him! He made his own, but even his mom agreed that mine was more accurate. I WIN!

next:

Now i feel kinda creepy since i dont think jacinta knows i made one of her, but i think if she was an animated computer character, she'd look like that.

oh yeah! and i went to a filipino picnic and also ate at sho mi with bryant and megan:

the end.

Women can finally pee standing up

2006-04-14T17:25:00.000-07:00

mm. gonna try writing out my thoughts on paper for a while....in the meantime, here's something i found on espy's myspace page:

GENIUS! maybe a little gross....but genius! haha.

and here are a couple quiz things from Arya's page that i filled out:

Can you name 21 people that you know that you can think of right off the top of your head? Don't read the questions underneath until you write the names of all 21 people.
*This is a lot funnier if you actually list the names first!! No Cheating!!

1) Chris
2) Patbo
3) Megan
4) Daniel
5) Arya
6) Jon
7) David
8) Janine
9) Teresa
10)Espa
11)Jared
12)Spencer
13)Karen
14)Borgy
15)Doug
16)Dan
17)Tina
18)Jack
19)Matt
20)Bryant
21)Bernie

Now answer the questions according to the names listed below
THE QUESTIONS:

How did you meet 14? through ange at some bar i'm sure.

What would you do if you had never met 6? i would've never seen an opera, or had retarded moments, or known about spika.

What would you do if 20 and 9 dated? Haha that wouldn't happen, cuz bryant isn't black. although he is tall and dark. haha.

Did you ever like 5? I love my papi. best valentines day ever.

Would 4 and 12 make a good couple? mm they're both hapa, which would make their kids equally hapa. if one of them had ovaries and a uterus, of course. i'd go with no on the good coupleness.

Describe 8: closure and hot eyes and cock blocking.

Do you think 13 is attractive: yeah but she used to keep complaining that she was fat (which is...not attractive).

Tell me something humiliating about 17: um... she let me borrow a cum-stained bedsheet. (that might've been on purpose, i don't know.)

Do you know any of 4's family members? Yeah, i used to visit them. i helped build their house dammit.

What's 21's favorite color? i dunno, green? white, cuz god is pure?

What would you do if 18 just confessed they liked you? mm, i said i wasn't ready for anything but he was fun to hang out with. (we didn't hang out much after that).

When's the last time you talked to 1? Earlier today.

What language does 10 speak? English and spanish and a bit of filipino vocab thrown in. huh espa?

Who is 2 going out with? Nobody. He's shy and doesn't wanna take advantage of all the underage girls that hit on him.

What grade is 16 in? He graduated fool. He's in done-with-schoolth grade.

What is 9's favorite band? Hmm i dunno. Something old school. i know one of her favorite songs is smoke gets in your eyes cuz it reminds her of her parents.

Would you ever date 7? Yes, and in theory it should've worked out great. but, it didn't.

Would you ever date 1? Yes. he's dreamy. and inchik.

Is 11 single? I dunno. maybe, maybe not.

What's 19's last name? Lazaro.

Would you ever want to be in a serious relationship with 3? mm...is sisterhood serious enough?

Where does 15 live? in LA. me and chris used to drop him off at home all the time but i still dunno where he lives. In a Luxury Apt. I think the street starts with a W.

Are number 7 & 8 Best friends? Nope, but they used to say good morning to each other during summer school.

haha, avatars

2006-04-05T15:06:00.000-07:00

just sharing how much my avatar looks like me! man it's sad that my hair and shirt and the brown walls are the same...

Playing catch up (School at UCLA)

2006-04-04T16:23:00.000-07:00

So, because everything was so last minute, i didn't exactly secure living arrangements for myself in LA. :( Chris let me crash at his place while i scoured the newspapers and craigslist for rooms for rent. haha, i actually made a few facebook friends in the process (all potential roomies). I finally found some cool girls who lived really close to campus. I had to share a room (for $430!) but i figured the high price and the sharing would be bearable since i'd only be there for a couple months anyway. Besides, i think i was wearing out my welcome with Tina, chris' roomie's girlfriend. in the beginning, we'd laugh and talk and hang out, but after a while, all she'd talk about with me was how long i'd be staying (read: when are you leaving) and how my apt search was going. she kept offering to find a place for me. ironically, the apt i moved into is literally 20 ft away from Tina's actual apt. Haha, it all worked out well i think.

the actual schooling at UCLA was fun. I missed my first class on the first day because i thought it was on wednesday. :( i'm proud to say though, that that was the only class i missed the entire quarter (which is a big deal for me considering my track record of truancy at davis).

I didn't really talk to anybody and for some reason i had no real desire to. Yes, that translates to: I didn't really make any friends while at school. Class was interesting and i interacted a lot there, but i didn't really extend it outside the classroom. I talked to chris and his roomies and his friends from work, and that was good enough for me. i was lazy and couldn't make my own friends. :( Chris and I met up for lunch every day for the first couple of weeks because i think he felt like he had to make sure i was okay at school or something, and all i really did on campus outside of class was study by myself in the library. sometimes i'd be done at 12 and just go home to catch up on sleep or something. It was pretty much the same routine every week, and i was A-OK with it. chris' friends were cool; i watched his clicc team play dodgeball every week! i wasn't really there for socializing anyway; UCLA was temporary and i made no attempt to make it feel otherwise. the extent of my friendships was watching Seasons 1-9 of Friends on DVD. Wow i sound really lame.

i somehow managed to go snowboarding every weekend until my birthday. I went up with chinch and met some cool friends along the way. (long story about the faulty roof rack...)
Chris took me on the bruinrunners ski trip to mammoth (SOOO cool!) and even though he didn't have the greatest time, i really loved it. Skory even took us to some hotsprings in the middle of a tundra, haha. and i rememebr talking about all this in my diary-x with pictures of a random couple in a random hot spring. :(

for valentine's day, chris surprised me with orange roses and rocky mountain chocolate at my apt, and then we went back to his place to make dinner together. My birthday was the real kicker though; chris took me to the most awesomest steakhouse! I cried, the steak was so good. SOOOOOOOOOO good.

i also met up with vee and espy on my birthday and we watched a movie. i hung out with them a couple other times after that; me and espy went to club touch in hollywood, and also the Opus Bar and Grill. I always end up going home early though because i'd have to wake up early for school or work the next morning. boo.

On thursdays and fridays i'd work my internships. I got a cool internship at an elementary school and helped out in a couple 1st grade classrooms. I also worked at a homeless shelter for mentally ill women down in santa monica. Because of these internships, i've crossed out "social work" from my list of possible careers, and i'm becoming discouraged on the whole teaching thing. It's just so hard to effectively teach 20+ kids at once. Kids really need individualized attention...kids would be so much better off if they were taught in small groups of 5 or something, yenno? but a 5:1 student/teacher ratio is impossible, even for like special ed kids. Man. and the whole thing about separating by ability is all controversial too. it would make sense to group kids by achievement, so nobody is holding anyone else back, but that just makes the gap between the groups even bigger. I dunno, everything sucks and there is no hope for the future.

Since school is over now, i can skip all the complaints about hard tests and ridiculous amounts of work and say that I got an A in Exceptional Learners (my favorite class), and a very close (91.2%) A- (92% was an A..dammit), and another unfair A- in a class that propped an A up to a 95%. Who does that?! All my classes had only 100 possible points, too, so whoever managed an A in that class is ridiculous and got a raw 95% or higher on everything worth any points in that class. jesus. But all my classes were worth 5 units, and hopefully the 17 units worth of A's will bump my GPA up.

There was a lot of stuff i wanted to talk about, but i've been in bed the whole day and i need to get out and do something. i'll finish later.

Playing catch up (Philippine Vacation)

2006-04-04T13:59:00.000-07:00

i guess i've got about 2 months of excitement to write about, seeing as how diaryx shut down late february. i hadn't been journalizing much before the big crash, mainly because so many things were going on that i didn't have any time. so to be safe, i'll recap our xmas vacation to the PI. It's a good place to start (cuz i have pictures, haha).

i got to manila with mom and dad on the 17th of december, and i managed to read Harry Potter 2-5 before xmas, and a bunch of other books to fill my time. we celebrated christmas at tita avie's house; went to midnight mass and everything. it was pretty unexciting and anticlimactic..i dont think anyone wanted to be awake and it seemed like nobody cared about presents. i went to sleep and we had to get dragged out of bed the next day just to open our gifts. i think we ruined christmas forever for christopher, my younger cousin. later on in the day, we visited some relatives and exchanged more gifts. nothing big really happened there, except that we met tito john's mom and a cousin of ours who is my age and acts even younger than i do. that's him in the picture, giving megan bunny ears. :-/ we had a bunch of cousins on that side, actually, but none of them wanted to hang out with us. they were in their early teens and all they wanted to do was play video games.

the next adventure on the agenda was a family vacation/tour to bohol. we left manila on the 27th or so. we ended up in a structurally unsound beach resort (they cut corners like no other!), but the beach was beautiful and we even saw a couple of our old cebu friends, Jojo from jungolf and Rouel from drinking, vacationing there as well. the ocean was clear but the water was super shallow, even when we tried going out really far. i think we spent the most time at the beach when it was night time.

at night we waded out about 400 yards from the shore and the water was only waist deep. out there, everything was pitch black except for all the BEAUTIFUL stars. there were soooo many and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. i wish i had pictures of that, but alas, my disposable camera can only do so much.

we had a sandball fight later that night (painful and not my idea), and took a bunch of cousin love pictures. i wanted to be cheesy and write an "i love you" message in the sand and take a picture of it, which i did, but i never gave it to chris since it's just way too cheesy, haha. megan made one also, and we did a "cuzn love" one. Menos puntos for having a crappy camera. It was fun trying to be industrious about making these messages...we found a big floating bamboo trunk thing in the water and used it as a stylus and also an "eraser" to wipe the slate clean every time we wanted to change the message.
YAY for cousin love!

The actual tour of bohol was surprisingly entertaining. I thought it was gonna be lame, and even though it was pretty tiring, all the stuff we did was super cool. We were split up into 2 vans, each with its own tour guide, and i'm proud to say that i was in the "cooler tour guide" van. we looked at the chocolate hills, and went on the awesomest river boatride. We had a patio boat (i think that's what they're called) all to ourselves and lunch was served while we floated down the river. there was even live entertainment! A guy with a guitar serenaded us and also had us sing along with him. The food was superb and the weather was perfect. We even passed by waterfalls and kids playing in the river on a tireswing. I had soooo much fun!

After bohol, my family went straight to cebu as the rest of the gochocos headed back to manila. Megan and I went to the mall a few times, but didn't really do anything, mostly because i'm a lazy bastard. We ate a bunch of lechon tho, good ol' lola and her need to feed us. On new years eve, we actually played a round of golf before going home for the festivities. After the clock struck midnight, we watched some fireworks and headed over to the Crossroads Bar/Club with tracy and jc at 2:30. Long story about megan getting insulted from a boob comment and me being super sick from having a couple smirnoff ices. :( sad panda. no pictures of that night, thank goodness.

Because school started back up on the 8th or so of January, i caught an early flight out of the PI. I sat next to a nice lady on the plane and watched Proof and a stupid Tagalog movie. Tita Chinky picked me up and i managed to hit the slopes once before leaving for LA.

it's the same, only different.

2006-04-04T12:48:00.000-07:00

i must admit, blogger looks really cool (and better) than my old one so far. but it doesn't change the fact that it's not my old journal, or that the move was caused by my loss of 5 years worth of entries on diary-x. most of my entries were kind of ridiculous, some pretty deep, but they were all ones i would've wanted to keep....thanks a LOT stephen deken. :-P

diary-x is being reborn into codexed (and even though they explained to me what the name means, i still dont like it), but so much has been going on that i couldn't wait for the grand opening of their website. besides, it's been a while since i've written anything, and i think it's affecting my speech. i can never finish my sentences anymore because my vocabulary is....retarded. see, i couldn't even finish that sentence. nonexistent? limited? a...a...there's an a word...yenno the one for muscles when they break down because of lack of use? a....atrophy! my vocabulary has atrophied? whatever.

anyway, the templates they have here at blogspot are pretty cool...i guess i wont be able to switch templates per entry like i used to be able to, but that's okay. seems like pictures are super easy to upload and the interface is very simple and easy. now if only i could figure out how to change the green to orange....