somehow, i couldn’t find the inspiration to write a blog post until right this moment, 2:20am. why am i not asleep, you ask? my semi-nocturnal roommate came home late, once again, and then wanted to watch a movie because i have no class tomorrow and she doesn’t have class until 2pm. while we didn’t end up watching a movie, we watched a dvd of our high school dance team days. haha, those were the days. it’s really too bad neither of us dances anymore, because i think we do both miss it. we need to form an scco dance crew.

i’ll regret not being asleep right now in the morning, but what can one do? there are discussions to be had.

i’m finally done with fall quarter! words cannot express my joy as i leave behind what had to be the most dreadful scholastic experience of my life. magically, i don’t have any proficiency retakes to do, so i’m lucky in that i can really stop thinking about everything. life, once again, is good. this is enhanced by the fact that most of our professors are away at a conference this week, so it’s been an extremely chill first week of a new quarter.

this has been bothering me for a while, but why does google chrome semi-suck? it’s one of those things that i really WANT to love, so i keep using it, but i just keep encountering problems with it. for example, the picasa uploader doesn’t even work with it very well, and they’re both google-born! i open internet explorer everytime i need to use picasa. (don’t even get me started on mozilla, i never could stand the fox.) other sites i can’t seem to open and use correctly are the timesheet website for logging my work study hours and the time warner payment site. it must be noted, however, that one badass aspect about chrome is that you can type in google search words directly into the url bar. i’ve gotten used to it, so i keep trying to do that on charoll’s mac.. needless to say, it doesn’t work there.

in the past week, i think i’ve read over 2,000 pages.. the entire vampire academy series that’s out so far. it started because i needed something to entertain myself with while i waited in line for 5 hours with heang to meet weezer last friday (we were first in line), but then i got so into the series that i couldn’t stop and now i’ve read all the published books. i honestly have to say that i think this series is better than twilight (please don’t burn down my house, angry fans). the world richelle mead created is just so much better. thanks for the tip, bevular!

me & heang meeting rivers cuomo from weezer. he didn't say ANYTHING!

charolls and i still haven’t decided whether we want to visit london/paris or australia for winter break. i think the problem is that they both sound rather appealing to us, and they’re such different vacations. if we go to london and paris, it’ll be wintery and cold and full of history; if we go to australia, it’ll be tropical and fun. that’s what’s really calling out to me — the great barrier reef and the rainforest. i really wouldn’t mind europe, either, though.. but who would?

i absolutely love taylor swift, but what the heck happened in her CMA performance this week? i caught it on youtube after-the-fact and i was shocked by how bad i thought it was. it was a lot of head/hair swinging, bad dancing and off-pitch singing. i felt kind of embarrassed for her because i usually enjoy her performances, and this had to happen on a night where she just swept away all the best awards. i think she’s probably been too busy, what with hosting SNL and all her appearances lately.

here are some pictures from a trip i took to sf in october, after my 12 station proficiency was over. i was lucky and took it on the earlier date, which left me with a free weekend to play. there’s this floating boat sushi restaurant a block away from charles’ apartment that we finally went to try. i definitely don’t like it as much as kula in irvine, but it was fun to go to anyway.

ah, here i am with my fave, salmon roe! you're mine!

so deliciously juicy and salty, mmmmm!

<3

we went to safeway to get some ice cream, but came across a blizzard in the freezer aisle.

craving crab, we went to fisherman's wharf, where i consumed an entire crab. *burp*

feeling crazy, we walked from fisherman's wharf all the way back to union square, instead of taking the bus. here we are on our epic journey. ow.

other than that trip, october was pretty uneventful. school’s fault. we did celebrate philip’s birthday on halloween, though. lawry’s was delicious, as always.

kim (lana's sister) and lana outside the restaurant. charles abhors using the flash, which is why some pictures come out so dark..

jen & me getting full off meatballs and chips while we wait for our table. philip tricked us all into coming half an hour early.. don't trick the punctual people!!

enough to make even a vegetarian drool

those pictures, and the following ones were taken with charles’ brand-spanking new d-lux leica camera. i’m soooo jealous. that camera is totally drool-worthy, with all its functions, HD video capabilities and geeky fresh look&feel. charolls, if you’re reading this, i still have plans to both steal it and label it with one of my 姓名貼紙. beware.

i got to spend some time with the fam last weekend. it was so fun! i’ll end with some pictures of them. we took christmas card photos for bev & johnny, but i’m not going to post any of them here lest i ruin the card for everyone. they were adorable, though.

i decide to sit in jack's chair and engage in one of his favorite activities: pretend-reading.

for a second there, charles was really worried that i had turned flamingo.

although i'm not releasing their holiday photos, i figured there was nothing stopping me from posting my own family photo. hahahahahahaha

just a great picture of jack, courtesy of the rolls.

love funny-looking atari.

facts of self-discovery: i can’t take very good pictures, even if i try hard. and i’m pretty not creative.. i would go so far as to say i’m anti-creative. having me around will probably take creativity away from you. but it’s okay because i’m funny.

goodnight, world!

aah! summer’s nearly all gone and i totally didn’t update my blog!

the big news is.. i turned 24! okay, that’s not really news, but i guess that could be considered the big event of the summer, right?

it's still completely proper for 24 year olds to celebrate birthdays at disneyland.

i guess my birthday could make room for jack’s birthday.. and derek’s birth!

little did he know that mere days after this picture was taken, he'd have a new little brother to compete with!

and those events could all be trumped by.. my 6 year anniversary with charolls. it’s been one hell of an adventure, but i wouldn’t trade it for the world.

why sf, why?

i just finished a 7-day break from school. exactly seven days. they didn’t give us a week off with a weekend buffer on either side.. it was thursday-wednesday. how messed up is that? it wasn’t very much of a summer, but i got a few things done.. and had time to go to the beach one afternoon!

laney & me

elaine's found herself her own mini-beach.

best friends, old and new

i also spent some QT at bev & johnny’s house and jack is sooo freaking adorable these days (albeit ridonkulously loud). i shall share a few moments through the spyglass of another life.

am i going to hug the dog?

YES!

this is how atari begs for food.. dejectedly.

haha, this next picture comes with its own story. jack is 2, and 2 year olds speak with telegraphic speech (thank you, 7060: pediatric optometry), which means that he mostly makes sentences with just 2 words in them. common sentences are “more [fill-in-with-something-jack-likes]” like “more train?” or “more bacon?” so my mom was on this chair and her foot stuck out and she stuck it in the back of jack’s shirt so that he would get caught on it. jack thought this was HILARIOUS. he kept running away, saying “wahh!” (in chinese, it means like.. oops or oh no) and coming back and asking my mom for “more toe?” and making her stick her foot back in his shirt. he did this about 50 times.

"more toe??"

alas, it is not always fun and games. jack has real big-brother responsibilities now. aside from sticking pacifiers in derek’s mouth when he’s crying, jack can also..

feed the baby!

"i hope you don't put up the sheep picture."

b f was having too much fun reading jack’s books.. and now it’s back to the grind. i better get to sleep.. i have contact lens clinic at 8am tomorrow O.o

oh, also during my break, i saw these in the mall..

almost tricked you!

they’re totally not MBTs..

i never feel like much time has passed until i try to write here again. then i’m like.. wow, i didn’t update for weeks?? where did those weeks go?! weird.

anyway.. as you all probably heard on the news, 2 weekends ago there was a big fire near my house. i snapped one picture out our front door when the fire was still a distance away.. it wasn’t that close at this point. thinking back, considering how it looked, maybe we should’ve been more worried all day. charles was the only one who kept wanting to evacuate.. my mom and i were just like nah, it’ll be fine. seriously, i was just thinking.. how many people actually have their houses burn down? it can’t be that many. that’s the kind of thing that only happens in the movies. it’ll never travel here.

who was smoking?

anyway, you can read a better story of what happened on my sister’s blog, but yeah, stuff happened, the fire got super close to our house, we had to evacuate, we thought the whole place burned down, it’s not cool to see your whole neighborhood ignited, yadda yadda, the usual. we’re lucky that everything turned out okay and our community was unaffected except for the possibly contaminated water and and ash everywhere. the fire/evacuation was on saturday, and we had to stay at my aunt’s house in arcadia that night. we came back early the following morning, but they blocked off all the roads leading into the area where we live. we had to camp out and sleep in our cars all day until 4 pm when they finally opened up the roads again. i’ve never been so happy to drive up to our home and see it there.

moving onto happier things.. paula’s birthday was last weekend, and we’ve been celebrating! it seems like she got many well-deserved wonderful birthday celebrations this year. a ton of people from our school went out to celebrate with her and kathy (who shares her birth date) at yard house during the week last week. here’s one picture that i snapped. i don’t really know how paula was still standing since all anyone wanted to do was buy her more drinks

jen, amanda, me, tina, paula, heang, vi & lana.

this is kind of a catch up post, i suppose. the week before that, jon came over to visit for a bit and have dinner with me, charles & valerie. lana happened to be making lasagna that night, so i kind of invited us all over and i made some crack pasta in addition to her lasagna (which is the best ever) so that everyone would have enough to eat. yeah, we had too much food.. haha. it’s okay, it just meant we got to eat crack pasta for lunch for a while.

the super chefs with our food!

then val and jon decided that it would be super fun to try to get a nerf dart stuck on jon’s glasses by continually pelting him with darts from philip’s nerf gun. seriously, this went on for a quite a while, and i think val was having a blast.

see the flying dart?

and that evil, deep in concentration expression?

and finally, just as we were about to give up..

success!!

we took a quick picture together before we all had to take off. the tv makes a nice tripod.

apparently it wasn't so comfortable for anna and ethan on top of the couch. you could've fooled me!

man, i’m totally loving that blue dress of mine! yay, thanks lana, for getting it from AE with a discount for me it was one of the clothing items i tried to save on the day of the fire. i must end this post with a shoutout to charles, bf of the year (decade? century? wait, let’s hope he doesn’t stay my bf for a decade+, because that would be so sad). when we were evacuating from the fire, i was kind of just grabbing random crap, but he went through my closets and grabbed stuff, and managed to, even in our frenzied state, take the things i liked the most. he also took all the stuff i forgot, like my purses, a couple more meaningful stuffed animals, extra jackets, my snoopy blanket, etc. i realized when we were unpacking on sunday that i probably wouldn’t have missed much, thanks to him. (could’ve helped me unpack, though.. )

<3

it’s “reading week” at school, which means we have no real class this week! we do have a couple of proficiencies and a final scheduled on friday, though. boo. still, better than nothing. we took the opportunity yesterday to take our friend brian to breakfast at the original pancake house for his birthday!

me, jen, caleb, philip, lana, hieu, albear, heang & brian

a lot of us were dressed up because we all had our clinical medicine proficiency yesterday. there were four stations: glucometry, blood pressure/bruits, cranial nerve testing and headaches/systemic emergencies. i think i did well on the second two, but i’m not sure i passed glucometry because albear didn’t bleed enough when i pricked him (damn it, albear!!) and i forgot to say a couple things in the beginning, though i did go back to say them afterwards. for the blood pressure station, i noticed that my proctor was already looking away while i was still listening for the diastolic pressure, which means that i was still hearing it, but he wasn’t, so i’m not sure i passed that, either, but we’ll see.

last thursday, i attended an oakley party at the oakley headquarters in foothill ranch with some of my friends. it was called uniquely oakley, and though i nearly completely missed the point of the party while i was there, now i think it was for the launching of their new women’s line. it was sponsored by red bull, so almost the only thing to drink was red bull and vodka (they also had beer and wine, i believe), and there was no food! so sad. they showed a 35 minute movie that featured the women on the uniquely oakley site doing the things they’re good at — snowboarding, skiing, skating, surfing, etc. — all over the world. it was pretty cool.. they’re amazing at what they do.

here we are, waiting for the movie to begin.

after the movie, they had a band come in and.. okay, i really don’t have anything nice to say about the band. i didn’t know who they were during the party, but later, as i was looking through the pictures i took, i saw in the background of some of the pictures that they’re called ming & ping. and the sad thing is, i think they’re chinese or at least imitating something chinese-y. they’re all wearing so much makeup that it’s impossible to know what they really look like underneath. there was also this poor guy who had to wear a bear-monkey hybrid costume the whole time. it’s obviously supposed to be a monkey with cymbals, but why are the ears so big?! and there were these two girls, who, for a while, i thought were guys dressed up as girls, that had on dresses with really, really long sleeves and danced around weirdly, waving their sleeves around the whole time. and the band’s sound was not awesome. i don’t think any of us were feeling the band, but there was a whole crowd of people up front who were obviously loving them. it was too weird.

see poor monkey dude?

the whole time, the background image would be a random video of the lead singer singing. and sometimes the song didn't seem to match up with what he was singing live.

i’ll just leave you with a couple of pictures of the night. i’ll put up the whole album in the right column with the other photo albums. thanks for letting me borrow the dress, jen!

elaine, me & paula on the red carpet

all of us before we left

wish me good luck on my finals!

it’s really too bad about the poll results from my last post because.. i got my hair straightened over the weekend. haha. oops! sorry, jom.

firstly.. happy birthday, anna! i’m sorry i forgot to bring your tiara today

secondly.. happy birthday, jen, for tomorrow! jen’s always talking about how people are never successful in surprising her, so naturally.. we did.

heang & vi did such a good job on the decorations!

jen & john

crowd around the food! i'm serving paula's delicious pasta, and ethan is serving stouffer's lasagna.. it was actually really good, haha.

caleb tried to run, but lana caught up

happy 21+8! nice cake, huh?

toast to jen! let's see.. there's clara, brian, vi, anna, albert, jen, john, elaine, me, lana, tina, ethan, paula, caleb, heang, rob, amrita & ali!

john brought the cake from porto’s bakery in glendale. it was so delicious! vanilla cake with a layer of strawberries and cream. i even thought the cream was pretty good.. and you all know i hate stuff like that. we originally tried to have a surprise party for jen on wednesday. we even had the restaurant all reserved and stuff.. but then jen got the stomach flu! what a party pooper. we had to scurry, postpone and then have a lunch surprise on friday. at least it worked!

on saturday, we met up with bev at the grove to eat lunch at the farmer’s market and check out the pumpkin patch with jack. there was a petting zoo at the grove so i bought some feed for $2 and went in. i came out.. abused..

check out how much jack LOVES the animals. no sarcasm.

mr. huge llama was pretty cool.

the little goats started crawling all over me to eat out of my hand!

this one started eating my shirt! he wouldn't go away! my mom had to pull him away in the end. after i cleaned the spit and half chewed food off my shirt, i realized he'd chewed little holes all over it.. i had to throw it away. i'd only worn it once, too!

i don’t have any pictures from the pumpkin patch.. you’ll have to check bev’s blog for those.

jen and i happened to both get hair changes this weekend. i went straight and she went even shorter. i don’t think she likes it, though. charles wanted to see a picture of her new hair, so we used my webcam, and this is what came out.

in class.

see how straight my hair is? hehe. and how.. amazingly stylish jen’s hair is? yeah.. yeah. style like that doesn’t come free. <3

aah. it’s been a relaxing week, but it’s almost time to get back into the grind. this marks the first (and i’m sure it’ll be the only) weekend that i didn’t study a single thing since school started back up in august. we usually have big exams on mondays and thursdays and quizzes and proficiencies are dispersed throughout the week, depending on our individual lab schedules. however.. last week we didn’t have a thursday exam, and this week we don’t have a monday exam, giving us a whole week and a half (kind of, if you don’t count the time you start studying for the next test) of freedom!! pretty exciting stuff. it fell at a good time, too, since this was bev’s birthday weekend. lots of celebrating!

on friday, mommy and i drove out to our jeweler’s place in la to meet up with johnny. he wanted to get bev some diamond earrings as a surprise birthday present. they were really beautiful, and i liked the 3-prong setting. after leaving the jewelry district, we made up an excuse and went over to bev & johnny’s apartment and then proceeded to take jack to the westside pavilion mall. i managed to catch a cute picture of jack & johnny playing in the junk food play.. place.. thingy.

"here i am!"

that night, charles and i headed over to the indian, a taiwanese beer house restaurant near charles’ house to attend jom’s birthday party/annual navajo sprint journey. the beer was good (i can’t believe those words are coming out of my mouth as i really, really hate beer) as was the food. there were so many people that at one point we couldn’t all sit down. they had to keep adding tables to our huge table when people got up to leave. i think i managed to not be in any photos that were taken except for this one picture someone took on my camera of charles, jom & me.

this place is so insanely fobby like you won't believe.

on saturday, we tried to meet up with bev & johnny at boiling crab in garden grove (they’ve never been), but it was so crowded by 5:30 that we had to eat somewhere else! i think i’ll just get some boiling crab to go sometime to eat with them. after dinner, we headed over to the honda center to watch none other than the so you think you can dance tour!! man, it was so good. they performed a lot of favorites, some group dances and a completely new routine to a hairspray song at the end. we all loved it. katee was in, like, every other dance.

in the audience, waiting for the show to start.

snuggle is one of the show's sponsors, so the make people do their "snuggle happy dance" and the snuggle bear came out during intermission

bev, me & johnny during intermission. i almost sat on the head of the girl sitting below us. oops.

self-taken picture of me and bei-kun

we took some pictures of the stage and arena, but i didn’t think they were good enough to share. need to get a super fancy camera or something

bev’s birthday (which was yesterday! happy birthday sistah!) celebration continued into sunday. we met aunt kathy and uncle bill at the huntington library in pasadena, near charles’ house. we had lunch/brunch at the tea house, which was better than i remember. i don’t think i ate as much the last time we were there. after lunch, we walked around and checked out the new chinese garden, which was pretty cool. had to get out of there fast, though — it felt like it was 100 degrees out.

we're getting good at this taking our own pictures thing..

uncle bill & aunt kathy in the tea room.

happy birthday, bev! johnny got her some diamond earrings this year. lucky lucky!

cute family picture..

all of us outside the walls of the china garden.

at the pretty lake place.

so lomantic!

mommy & charles enjoy the serene scenery..

it was pink shirt day. they got the memo.

jack was the luckiest! he got to sit back and drink from his sippy cup.

that was my exciting weekend! now i have a test tomorrow to study for

whew! it’s been a busy first couple weeks of school, but i’m still charging through. we’ve already done a lot, and i hope i have the energy to keep this up through the whole quarter. we’re learning ever-more truly clinical optometry related stuff and it seems like the days are getting longer and the nights are getting shorter. i’ve been cooking at home a lot more and trying to stay healthy. i’ve also been keeping off my computer.. a lot of people have commented on how i’m never on aim anymore, and i reply that i’ve barely been turning on my computer at home. it’s a huge change for me, and i’m not really sure what brought it on, but it’s not a bad thing. june’s growing up

last monday was my mentor annie’s surprise birthday dinner. some of my friends and i were invited, and it was fun. she’s the best mentor, and she’s always willing to help not only me but all of my friends out with school and anything else we need. be jealous!

me, lana, annie, jen & elaine.

on saturday, jen, charles and i ran the disneyland 5k! it was part of the disneyland half marathon weekend, and bev ran the half marathon sunday morning. let me tell you, the 5k was tiring enough. i have no idea how bev did it! i’m very proud of myself for doing something athletic.

charles, me & jen before the big race.

jen & charles waiting to eat at goofy's kitchen after the race.

we just want our buffet please!

all the animal characters terrified jack..

help!

the three runners. yay!

after the buffet, we headed over to the health and fitness expo for bev to pick up her packet of stuff for today’s half marathon. jen & charles tried out this machine that’s supposed to work your muscles by vibrating while you balance on it.

do they look skinnier now?

charles and i got to keep jack for a night so that bev & johnny could stay at a hotel close to disneyland (they were up by 3 something in the morning as it was) and here’s a nice picture of jack eating a banana.

fatty!

it was so cute. i took off all his clothes and charles held his hand near the door of the bathroom while i checked the bath water, and then jack PEED on charles’ leg! i wish i had taken a picture of charles’ expression because it was freaking priceless.