twenty-five seconds of silence

checked in

2,836. that's how many lines of stuff that my final ACM code turned out to be. it's fully functional, fully working now, and i checked it in and blessed it. let's hope that no more problems turn up, because i spent the entire damn day debugging it. boy, were there a lot of problems with it. a lot of really esoteric, miniscule bugs that made for mismatches between the RTL and the C-model. *phew* i am BEAT today. but very happy that it finally works.

i don't have much time to write today. i have a meeting at 6pm (in 15 minutes), and then i have to go up to the city for dinner at le charm with alex, jeremy and jose. so i'm just going to end it right here and go out for a celebratory smoke. i certain deserve it, if i do say so myself.

by the way, i am dressed up for le charm. kenneth cole shoes, banana republic khakis, and club monaco shirt. people have been constantly asking me if i'm going to a party or if i have a hot date. i even got a "slick!" from my coworker R. ha! i guess i dress so rattily usually that any day when i look decent is a weird and abnormal day.

anyways, have a great weekend, folks, and GO CARDINALS! (by the way, speaking of The Cardinal, we lost again by ONE FUCKING POINT to USC last night. how unlucky are we? that's the *third* time it's happened! *pukes*)

perks

well, they're gone. the perks, that is. today, the facilities guy at our company announced the elimination of some taken-for-granted things that we've had here:

1) no more free sodas. now we have to pay at a vending machine at "market prices."
2) no more free breakfast every wednesday.
3) free lunch every month now. it used to be every week, then every two weeks.
4) no more bottles of water. now we get a mug and a water dispenser.
5) no 4th of july bbq, holiday party, or company picnic.
6) no more ice cream socials every month.

i'm most bummed out about the free drinks. i wonder if i'll become a permanent water drinker. i mean that'll make me much healthier, so it might be a good thing, no? or maybe i'll be a coffee drinker, which will be much worse. we shall see.

the thing is, i wonder if the company will lift these restrictions if the economy gets better. or will they continue being cheap, even in good times?

i did some good debugging today. but i have 1.5 (counting saturday) more days to get this ACM thing working. i'm getting close, though, maybe halfway there. i found some nasty bugs and stuff in my code, like unconnected wires, hard-to-find typos, etc. but it's slowly getting there.

as usual for a basketball day, i went to mcd's to get breakfast. they gave me two hash browns (i ordered just one)! so i gave one to my coworker V, and he accepted it with gratitude. i was glad to see that the hash browns were back to being 50 cents each again, instead of $1.19. that's a lot of pay for a piece of fried potato.

i know that horsepower is a redundant unit of measurement, but it's still a commonly used one. and i was just wondering if the metric system people have another unit that they use for cars and garage door openers and stuff like that. but man, that was an edifying comment! bravo!

i think that this american idol season is going to be a boring one. aside from anoop dogg, there's no one interesting or hot. i watched last night's episode with a big yawn, and i'm glad that tonight's auditions (NYC and san juan) are going to be the last. they're not hanging out many golden tickets; i think yesterday's auditions in salt lake city only resulted in like a dozen out of over 10,000 people. that's like 0.1%! the last hippie girl (rose) had some nasty shit on the bottom of her bare feet.

speaking of bare feet, if you walk around in them all the time (outside, i don't mean in your own house), they can get pretty gross. when i lived in a co-op my senior year in college, there was this one dude who walked everywhere without shoes. and one day, while we were in the dining area eating, he just sat back and plopped his nasty, BLACKENED feet up on the table. we pretty much lost our appetite right then and there. *pukes*

i'm pretty much a shoes and socks kind of guy. i never wear sandals. i guess i don't like to show my feet unless i'm by myself at home. i mean, for mikeT's hawaii wedding, i actually had to go out and buy a pair of flip flops for the first time. and that wedding weekend was the only time i ever wore that pair of shoes. yeah, it was a one-time purchase. and the flip flops felt all weird and stuff, because i had never worn a pair of shoes like that before, you know, where there was a strap between the big toe and the next toe. it was a very foreign feeling.

a certain someone i know is pregnant! she posted up a picture of her ultrasound today. ha! i KNEW it! for a while now, her husband was like, "oh, she isn't coming because she's not feeling well." i was like, "hm. i bet she's pregnant." and today, she confirmed my suspicion. hehe. i love it when i'm right. *grin* congrats!

i bet this will be the first domino in a chain of pregnancies. and that will change the social dynamic in this one group of friends a lot. i bet a lot of us will stop hanging out on a whim, and the people with children will stay at home a lot more and have a lot of baby dates a few years from now. that's what's happened to my stanford friends. i mean, they're all married now, and a lot of them have kids, and trying to get together now is a major pain in the ass sometimes. i mean, alex is flying in tomorrow, and it's not often that we see him, but three of the guys can't make it because they're got other engagements.

speaking of that, i've got a reservation for 4 people at le charm tomorrow night. it'll be great to see alex; i'm really excited about that. like i said, he's my drinking buddy, and hopefully afterwards, we'll go out and hit the town. of course, i can't drink that much since i'm driving, but i'll maybe have 2-3 whiskeys and then sober up before taking him back to his hotel and driving back home.

ok, my brain is fried. it's been a long day of debugging. time for a smoke.

step by step

well, after some grueling clicking done by my left index finger, i finally figured out the problem that was plaguing me yesterday. my coworker pointed out to me the "-line" option in VCS, and i stepped through (painstakingly) the simulation, line by line (which was like 10,000 at least) until it finally ended. and that showed me the exact line in the HDL code that the simulation terminated on. it turned out to be a clocking issue, whereby a snooping module was on the wrong clock domain, and thus looking at the descriptor in an erroneous state, thus terminating the simulation. *RAAR* i would have never found this problem. stepping through those 10K lines of simulation made my left index finger sore. :)

i'm still burping up the chinese new year's dim sum that 7 coworkers and i had for lunch today. it was a gluttonous feast. at least, *i* ate a lot; i don't know about the others, some of them (non-chinese) who seemed befuddled by the plates of food that were presented before them. these were the people who ate with forks, curiously poking and prodding at the food, and who were relieved when the plate of more familiar fried rice was placed upon the lazy susan. btw, don't order the honey walnut prawns at dynasty; for $8, you get FIVE pieces of shrimp.

it looks like i'll be working late or on saturday, or both. this looming deadline (and super-ridiculous schedule) is really insane, and i'm going to have to put in some extra hours here and there. i actually enjoy debugging my own design (it's IMPORTANT that it's my *own* design, and not somebody else's), because it feels like i'm making progress and stuff. i found some bugs in my code today, and i fixed them promptly. it's still not quite working, but i've decided to fight the battle again tomorrow. so hence the blogging.

i was very disappointed with last night's episode of _fringe_. it did nothing to further the plot regarding "The Pattern," and once again, massive dynamic was nowhere to be seen. it was basically a standalone episode that did nothing for the conspiracy behind all the weird shit that's been going on the show. oh well. i hope the next episode is better.

i had this vivid dream last night where i was playing tennis with two girls i liked. (i think i've been watching too much of the australian open.) i don't remember anymore who those two girls were, but i clearly remember being the one who served the ball into the court from far back, and then the girls would rally. i remember feeling very loved. *bliss* sometimes i wish i could have a harem.

you know we have the yard/foot, and the metric system has the meter? well, we have the horsepower, so what does the metric system have for that unit of measurement?

ok, nevermind. i just had dinner downstairs in the cafeteria and talked to my boss, and he said we MUST work this saturday. ugh. oh well. i think i might have a tough time waking up at 9:30, though (to go into the office at 10), because friday night i'm planning on partying and drinking it up with alex. like i said yesterday, i've got a slate of activities planned for the weekend. damnit! work was NOT part of the plan.

do you people get grossed out when you find a hair in your food? i don't. should i? i mean, i usually just pluck it out and keep eating. but i guess hair can be quite unhygienic if you think about it. hm. have you ever sent back food or demanded a refund after finding a follicle in your dish? come to think of it, i've never sent back food for any reason. if my dish is bad, i'll just not eat it and drink water or eat more appetizers or something.

ok, i'm going to cut this short because it's late, i want to go home, and i have nothing to talk about. i'll try to write more tomorrow.

don't call it debugging

damn, today has been one fucking frustrating day. i can't even call it debugging, because i don't know what's going on with the testbench. it just isn't working. i run a test, and it just quits on me for no apparent reason. at first, i realized that the clocking was all wrong, so i fixed it, but then, it still didn't work. so i've been banging my head in futile desperation for the last few hours, but have made ZERO progress. ugh. this fucking sucks. i am supposed to finish this stuff by friday, but at the rate i'm going, it isn't going to get done. DAMN. *RAAR*

last night, i had a dream that, when i woke up in the middle of the night, i was positive would make an awesome hollywood screenplay. it's funny how serious some dreams seem when you're in the thick of it. it involved a very complex switcheroo between babies in the hospital or something like that. it's pretty neat how the brain can come up with entirely fictitious (and complicated) scenarios all by itself. anyways, as usual, i don't remember all the details of the dream now, and there goes my millions of dollars in the movie industry. ha!

last night, after eating at corner place with jennie, i went home and watched some reruns on CBS. it's funny, whenever i see penny on _the big bang theory_, my eyes gravitate towards her chest. if she's showing the slightest bit of cleavage, i can't stop staring. it's not like she has a wonderful set of ta-ta's or anything, but i'm just drawn to them like a magnet. i also enjoyed the rerun of _himym_; i really love the way marshall describes a perfect burger. it's nothing short of poetic. who else uses the words "pas de deux" and "fugue" to describe a hamburger?

it looks like i might be working late or working this weekend. it's too bad, because i've got some fun activities planned friday through sunday. friday night, i'm having dinner with alex (followed by a potential party in the city), who's up here on a real estate conference. saturday night is ann's birthday celebration, and sunday is the super bowl, which i will most likely watch with some people somewhere. go arizona cardinals!

i realized today that _hell's kitchen_ starts on thursday. damn, i've got multiple tv shows on monday through thursday. booked solid. i don't like being a slave to the schedule. maybe i really should seriously think about investing in a tivo. as much i like good television and being entertained, it's sort of annoying having to keep up with shows, and i long for summer, when everything's reruns (except for a brief part of _SYTYCD_), and i have more free time to hang out with friends and do other things.

i tried G2 today. it's the low calorie (about half) version of gatorade. i had the fruit punch flavor, and it tasted a bit like light cough syrup. not a fan. i drank a whole bottle of gatorade before, during, and after basketball today, and i still wound up with a headache. luckily, i brought advil from home with me this morning, and i took it, so now, i'm still feeling ok.

yes, j earns 69 boner points! they are indeed women's lacrosse goggles. how did you know? they looked pretty cool. i put them on mainly to see how much my view would be obstructed, but amazingly enough, i still have much of my peripheral vision intact.

no, i am not a latent homosexual. i can't be. i love women too much. i just wanted to see if i could appreciate a good-looking guy. i would like to get feedback from women (or gay men) on whether my judgment on what a "doable" guy from my list is good. since i'm not sexually attracted to guys, i could be off, you know.

i've wondered about that guy on the mtv _true life_ episode. he's a straight man who does gay porn. i mean, he says he take viagra to get it up, but still, if you're not aroused by dudes, how can you still pop a boner? i don't think i could do it, even at $5K a scene. he was like, "it's great, i get paid a lot of money, and i get to have sex." but if it's not the sex what you *want* to have, then is it really a perk? hm.

i'm tired. i was so into my hollywood screenplay dream that i kept on waking up to try to remember the details. so i didn't get very restful sleep. unfortunately, it was all for naught, because now, 1) i don't remember exactly what the dream was about, and 2) it's a silly notion, thinking that some dream of mine would make some big blockbuster movie, much less one about a baby swap.

oh, by the way, yul isn't exactly short, it's probably more that i'm 6' tall, so he doesn't look that tall standing next to me. you can go to adam's entry for more pictures and info about our visit to red mango this past saturday.

ok, time to go check out what the company's cafeteria is serving for dinner. what a shitty day at the office.

guess the goggles

can you guess what sport these goggles are for? 69 boner points for you if you answer correctly! i found these during the sports basement single girl event last thursday. and they're for women, which explains why they didn't fit my face quite right. i look like a dork, no? adam took this picture, btw, as well as the picture with yul in the previous post. anyways, i'm impressed with all the protective gear they make for sports players. i marvelled at the jock straps and cups that they sold there. it's amazing that all these years i've played basketball, i haven't been hit in the gonads once. *knocks on wood* i have, however, gotten my shorts pulled down intentionally. *laughs*

jessica texted me at 8am this morning, which woke me up in a startle. whenever i get a text message, my phone beeps three times loudly. i'm a pretty light sleeper usually, so it was not a welcome sound. i didn't bother to get up and see what the message was, so it was only after i got out of bed (to a phone call, which also did not make me happy) that i saw that she said happy new year. i called her earlier this afternoon and chatted with her for a while. don't text me before 11am! that's always a good rule.

are you wearing red today? i'm wearing the same red buttondown that i put on yesterday. and only one other chinese coworker of mine is donning that color. ah, what horrible new year's spirit.

i've got two college buddies coming up from LA in the next two weekends. i hope to see them both. i'm going to plan dinner with the first one, alex, this friday night. afterwards, i might recruit him to be my wingman at this party that i might go to for this girl i don't know. she's a friend of ting's cousin chris, and apparently, there will be single girls there, so i figured why not go and check out the scene. i know, knowing me, i will probably wallflower, but this *is* a new year, so i've got to do the carpe diem thing while the spirit's still there. if anything, this will give me an excuse to drink with alex, who was my drinking buddy in college.

i got an internet flirt today from a girl in sacramento. from what i can tell (it's hard to say) from her three pictures, she looks ok. the cool thing about her is that she likes sports, and even plays tennis. hm. sactown is a bit far. well, not "a bit," but VERY far. not sure if i can do anything about it. but i'll talk to her and she what she's all about.

i've been drinking some snapple iced tea out of the glass bottles, and underneath every cap is a random fact. one fact that stood out was: the world's termites outweigh the world's humans 5 to 1. that's astounding. where are these termites? should i fear them? man, don't buy a wooden house, that's for sure. my place got tented for termite extermination a few years ago, and i had to stay at jay and margaret's place (luckily, they had just left for their honeymoon, so they had a vacancy) for a few nights. damn pesky bugs. but holy shit, that's a lot of termites!

last night, while i was outside having a smoke, i thought about guys i would do if i were gay. i've come up with a list before, but it's always been pretty short, as i am, of course, not gay. but still, this is what i came up with:

1) taye diggs
2) gregory peck (in his prime)
3) rupert everett
4) clive owen
5) stephen dorff
5.5) jude law

that's about all that i can muster. the last one is sort of a "meh." i mean, i know a lot of women think he's HAWT, and can maybe see it, but all in all, i am a bit lukewarm on jude. i think it's the roles that he plays. i really like gregory peck, though. i've seen _roman holiday_ a half a dozen times, and he's just so dashing! and last night, i caught the tail end of _the bourne identity_, and clive has a short role in that as one of the treadstone assassins, and while he was lying there, dying, wearing glasses (a plus for me, as always), i thought to myself, "dude, he's a scruffy good-looking bloke."

i spoke briefly with feline today on IM. she told me yesterday that she was going to a whiskey bar, so i debriefed her today about it. she told me that the bar had a glenmorangie 30-year for $80 or so. damn, that's expensive. i think after you go beyond $15 or $20 a drink, the returns have completely diminished. like, i tried johnnie walker blue for $40 (without tip, i tipped $5) at the W hotel in SF a few years ago, and it was totally not worth it. i am, however, curious about the midleton whiskey that paul is collecting at over $100 a bottle. that's the high-end stuff that jameson makes, and a collection of all the vintages (like 20+ bottles) together was selling for $65,000 at the jameson distillery in dublin.

how does shazam (the iPhone app) work?

i have not been reacting well to spicy foods these past few weeks. every time i have it, the next day, or several hours later, i get stomachaches, followed by spicy dumps. this is a new development. maybe i cannot tolerate it anymore? but whatever, tonight, i'm having juk ge jang with jennie at corner place. we'll see how it goes afterwards.

ok, i'm off.

lunar new year

friday night, i met up with nelson and paul at 99 chicken. yes, AGAIN. it was my fourth time going there in 3 weeks. they were already on their way there when i called them, so it wasn't like i had a choice. but i was actually fine with it. and i discovered a neat thing: the wings are actually really good! i have only eaten drumsticks there, but the wings have a much higher skin to meat ratio, so they taste much better. there's less meat, so you don't get full as easily, but damn, the skin is tasty.

after that, i went home and watched the end to the warriors/cavaliers game. lebron made a shot that left his hands with 0.1 seconds left to win the game by one point. crazy. it was the second straight time that the warriors lost by one at the buzzer. too bad. but monta ellis came back, and they played a great team tough, so i think that's a good sign for the warriors.

saturday, adam woke me up at 10:30 and told me to go to his house at 11:15. so i got up, went to safeway to pick up my meds, and headed over to his place. from there, i drove (as he and rae walked) to valley fair. we went to the official grand opening of red mango. the line was long, and i was so starstruck when i saw yul, sporting a pink buttondown. he recognized me (*flattered*), and we talked briefly about his impending wedding and general stuff. they were offering free yogurt, so i got mine with mochi. yul said that people were lining up already at 8am!

rae got typed for blood marrow donorship (something which yul is very passionate about, as his best friend at stanford died of leukemia after failing to find a donor), and then, jay came to visit. his forehead was sweating profusely, as he had just run 23 miles. he and yul were both lambdas, but i noticed they didn't do the secret lambda handshake. hehe.

anyways, afterwards, we went back to adam's house, and he cooked us steamed tilapia fish with jerk rub (which i picked out). i also used this vegetarian no-calorie kosher bacon salt, which was very good. and then, we were still hungry, so we scarfed down some leftover ma po tofu. then, i went home and took a nap while watching the ucla/washington game. ucla is not very good this year; they have no inside presence, much like stanford.

before dinner, i called up my grandparents (grandma on my dad's side and grandpa on my mom's side). they seemed very happy to talk to me. the first thing my grandma asked me was whether i had a girlfriend, and when i was going to get married. ha! i really enjoyed talking to them, but both of them didn't seem to want to talk long. my mom later told me that it was probably because they thought the phone call was expensive.

for dinner, i called up jay, and we decided to get hunan homes takeout early since their baby jaden had to got to sleep around 7-8pm. so i ordered over the phone in 100% chinese: peking duck, honey walnut shrimp, and chicken in hot garlic sauce. unfortunately, when i got to jay's and examined the contents, it turned out that the shrimp was *cashew* shrimp. UGH. i was SO looking forward to the honey walnut shrimp! and i even said "yao guo xia!" is that not the right way to say it?

but anyway, the peking duck hit the spot. jay LOVED it. it's sort of our tradition together to get that dish on chinese new year. i left when jaden got grumpy and wanted to sleep, so i went home and watched the stanford/oregon state basketball game. it was horrible. OSU shot like 60+% for the game, and 68% in the second half. they were just unstoppable. i was pretty depressed afterwards. i expected an easy win (after all, OSU was 0-18 in the pac-10 last year), but apparently, OSU is a lot better this year.

sunday was peter's birthday lunch. i called him up to confirm, and he said he was coming. then, he called me up 10 second later to say he wasn't coming because he was still sick. i pleaded to him to come anyway, and eventually i persuaded him to do so. while i drove to the venue (dusita sunnyvale), he texted me that he was on his way. then, jay, alan and ting arrived. but 20 minutes later, peter texted me that he was bailing. ugh. i wonder what happened. so we celebrated his birthday without him.

after lunch, introduced the three to tartini, and they all seemed to enjoy it. then, i went home at 3 and took a 2-hour nap to a college basketball game (i forget who was playing). then, i putzed around, and i had dinner with D (who was still sick) at pho kim long. ah, the #27 never fails to disappoint. i added a lot of sriracha, though, and i just took a spicy dump. i seem to be more sensitive to spicy foods lately, asshole-wise. then, i caught up on the past two weeks' worth of _the big bang theory_ on the internet (i finally found a site, megavideo.com, through surfthechannel.com, (thanks to my commenter!)that has the episodes), which i highly enjoyed.

i ended the day with some IM's and phone calls wishing people happy new year. yes, i wore red. and i'm wearing red today as well.

thaibodia

well, ann, i went to thaibodia today. i was supposed to meet up with some ex-coworker for lunch, but we had an 11:30 meeting, so i had to bail. so, for lunch, my coworker I and i went to try out thaibodia. we both got the jun pad poo (they spell it "chan pad poo") for $7.95. i know some people have criticized me for judging food, but i still want to give my take on it: i didn't like it (neither did my coworker). it was weirdly sweet, and very sticky/slimy. barn thai's jun pad poo is way better. i'll go back again to try their other dishes (i'm interested in the "angry" dish), but i'll definitely never get the jun pad poo again. and my coworker I thought their soup was not as good as barn thai's, either. definitely a disappointing first impression.

at 3pm, we had a status updating meeting for our new project. the vp kept talking about how the schedule is the #1 priority, and how we should work harder and even work weekends to "make it happen." i got annoyed. i mean, what are we working for? we're not getting raises or bonuses this year, so what's the incentive? raising our stock price? hrmph. i just don't see it. i alreay worked three weekends in december, so i'm not about to start doing it again. i got a lot of work done today before and after the meeting, so screw coming in tomorrow.

a lot of people are sick now. D is sick, and he didn't come in today. poor guy. and last night, peter called me, and he was sick, too. he was going to get some ramen, so i joined him at maruichi. i got the aka (red) ramen with the $2 kakuni (tender stewed fatty pork), and it was pretty tasty. afterwards, we went to the drugstore to buy some stuff. i got four items: airborne (to pay back adam, who gave me his airborne for my UK/ireland trip), a lightbulb to replace the burnt out one in my lamp, some good crest pro health toothpaste, and advil liqui-gels (to combat my post-basketball dehydration headaches).

before going to meet up with peter, i got a nice massage and stopped by sports basement for that single girl shopping event thing. i went looking for a basketball, and the only one they had was a small one for boys 8-12 years old. rats. i was going to get a 20% discount, too. i asked where the other basketballs were, and the girl who was working there said they were out. how can a sporting goods store be out of basketballs? hrmph. what a joke. anyways, i hung out with adam and rae for a bit, met the single girl, and just chilled at the store for a bit before heading out at 8 or so.

last week, after _the office_, i watched an episode of _30 rock_. you know, i know it won the golden globe for best comedy, but honestly, it sort of sucked. the humor was odd (i mean, i got it, but it just wasn't that funny), and i didn't enjoy it at all. i don't understand why it's getting such praise from the critics. i really like(d) tina fey's work on SNL, but here, it's just not very good. phooey.

so, going back to last night's _the office_... hillary swank: hot or not? personally, imho, she is NOT hot. at all. it's her face. she looks like a guy sometimes. she may be a good actress in some movies, but that doesn't make her hot at all. skilled, yes, and admirable, definitely, but that in no way makes me want to do her.

man, i keep burping up my jun pad poo. i can taste a bit of chili and some garlic. it's not bad, because at least i can't taste the sweetness of it.

peter's text messaging system on his phone is all screwed up. i think he tried to send a few test texts, and they wound up getting sent out at 7am and 9am this morning. that really upset me. yes, i am very grouchy when my sleep is disturbed. i was like, "WTF?" but anyways, i woke up after the first one set my phone off, read it, grumbled to myself, and went back to sleep. then, the SECOND one came in two hours later, and i got mad. i even dreamt about it before i got out of bed this morning. in my dream, i confronted peter about it, but then i looked at my phone, and it turned it that it came from another person, so i forgave him.

so my coworker who totalled his car yesterday came into work today. what happened was that another car turned right, right into the driver's side of his car, and pinned him against the road. it was so bad that his entire body hurt, and he was jammed in the car and couldn't get out. all the emergency vehicles came, and they had to stabilize his body and take him in an ambulance to the hospital for MRI's and x-ray's. man, how harrowing. he was in the hospital for four hours. i hope he doesn't suffer any long-term effects.

oh, before i forget. HAPPY NEW YEAR! i'm going to try to get peking duck with jay (who loves the stuff) tomorrow night at hunan homes, pending his baby schedule. my mom gave me the phone numbers to my grandma (dad's side) and grandpa (mom's side), so i'll try to call them tomorrow afternoon (morningtime in taiwan) to wish them a happy new year. i'm the eldest of all of their grandchildren, and my mom says that they'd love to hear from me. *flattered*

here's something that happens among my stanford friends that i don't know if you guys do. basically, they're all coupled up, so when we go out for their birthdays, we pay for both the birthday person AND his/her significant other. do you guys do this? lucky for me, most of them don't drink that much (or any, for some people), so the tab isn't super-inflated with fancy wine.

ok, i need to go run some synthesis jobs now. once again, happy new year everybody! eat fish!

crash

it seems like today is a bad day for car accidents. my coworker got into one today, and he had to go to the emergency room. from what i heard, he couldn't move after the collision, due to shock or some other reason. *shivers* he's been since discharged, so i hope he's ok.

and aimee's passat (affectionately named "gunther") got totalled today as well. aimee has a bit of whiplash (neck pain, she says), so i hope she's ok. apparently, she got hit on the passenger side by some korean girl wielding a cell phone while driving. stupid girl breaking the law. i still see people talking on their cell phones these days while driving. hrmph. i make sure that i use speaker phone or my bluetooth headset, although with speakerphone, i find that i'm still a little distracted. the headset is the way to go, either that or not talking at all.

i filled out my self evaluation form for 2008 today. it's due tomorrow. i have this file in my home directory called "sched" (short for "schedule"), and every workday, i write one line in it that summarizes what i did at work that day. it's very useful for seeing what i accomplished throughout the year(s) at my job. so today, i went through it to fill out what i did in 2008, and i actually did quite a lot! my list of tasks accomplished this past year was pretty lengthy, and i hope it impresses my boss. of course, we're not getting raises this year, so i feel like it was sort of futile. well, it WAS futile. but oh well. a job is a job, and you have to work, right?

oh! i went to su's mongolian bbq today! it was FUCKING BRILLIANT. i was so satisfied. of course, it cost me $15, but still, it was worth it (just today, i wouldn't pay that much for it on a frequent basis). i had three eggrolls and one big bowl of the stuff. one of the waitresses and the guy who cooked my food recognized me, and i got all warm and fuzzy. seriously, their stuff is way better than new mongolian bbq on castro. it was good seeing charlesH again. he looks really tired, though, since he just had his second baby, daughter iris. did you know that his son's name (issac) is an acronym? it stands for I'm the Son of Selene And Charles. pretty cool, huh? his wife came up with it. i think he told me that "iris" is an acronym, too, but he forgot what it stood for.

i'm getting a long overdue massage today at 6:15. and after that, i'm headed to sports basement for this sale/singles event. well, i'm more interested in the sale event because i need to buy a basketball (at 20% off). my old basketball's seal broke, so it's permanently flat. the singles part of it is the fact that it's organized by a single girl, and adam told me that there's only going to be one other single girl there. i don't know i'm going to find either one of them attractive (you all know how picky i am), so i'm not getting my hopes up. i just want a new basketball. and after that, i'm headed home to watch _the office_. poor angela! it's all her fault, really.

happy birthday dad! of course, it's no longer his birthday in taiwan, but i e-mailed him anyway. i nearly forgot. i keep forgetting whether his birthday is 1/20 or 1/22, so today, i freaked out and had to dig through my old e-mails to verify that it was indeed today. i found out that my mom forgot, and my dad was a bit disappointed. i called up my brother and told him to e-mail him.

i'm a bit sad that i'm not closer to my bro. i talked to him for like 10 minutes today, just catching up on what he was doing. he's been teaching tennis (at $25 an hour, not bad!) and in the meantime studying for a teaching certificate. he's going to teach math and chemistry to junior high kids once he passes. keep in mind that this is the first time i've talked to him since his wedding back in october. :( we're 10 years apart, so we never really grew up together, and when we did spend our short childhoods together, i tortured him. yeah, i was a bad brother.

so it's the year of the ox coming up! my parents are both oxen, so that means that a new cycle is coming for them (a cycle is 12 years), and they'll both become 60. man, that's getting up there in age. i need to round up some friends and go out to get some peking duck. i know jay will be salivating at the mention of that. you're supposed to eat fish on chinese new year, right?

ann, i drove by thaibodia today. is it new? i'm definitely interested in their chan pad poo (jun pad poo), and i hope it's authentic, unlike this other thai place where i tried it, and they completely fucked it up. and $7.95 isn't a bad price for it. so i'll try going there some time next week.

a lot of people are sick at my company. today, D was in horrible shape. his voice sounds all deep, and he was dizzy when he woke up. he even went home during lunch to take a nap. i asked him why the hell he came back; sick people should definitely stay at home to rest and not get others at the office sick. i also told him to get a jamba juice coldbuster smoothie. poor guy. i hope he gets better so he can come over to my place on sunday and watch the lakers/spurs game.

my teeth definitely feel cleaner after using listerine for 1-2 weeks. but i can't tell if i have bad breath. i just tried licking my fingers and smelling my saliva, and it doesn't smell that good. hm. anyways, we'll see if this listering experiment is worth it the next time i go to the dentist.

ok, i'm posting this early because i've got my massage appointment coming up. i can't wait! i'm not ticcing as much, but i still do it from time to time, and my shoulders and neck are pretty sore.

pinkberry

last night, i was supposed to go to pinkberry with jennie, but she was working late. so i had dinner with will at 99 chicken (again). we got only 5 drumsticks (2 for him, and 3 for me) and french fries. cheap dinner. then, i went back to work at 8pm and waited for jennie to call me.

we wound up at pinkberry at 8:45ish, and we scarfed down our yogurt in a hurry because i had to be at adam's house at 9pm to watch _fringe_. so i didn't get to really savor my yogurt. it tasted good, but as far as i can remember, it wasn't as tart as i would have liked it to be. and they really gipped me on the mochi, only giving me like two small scoops of it. the place was almost empty when i got there, but after jennie and i got our orders, it got PACKED. this was at almost 9pm!

anyways, i think my memory of pinkberry colored my expectations. i don't think i could tell the difference between red mango and pinkberry in a blind taste test. but i will go back soon and try it again. the yogurt was sort of hard, and less creamy and soft than i was expecting. maybe they need some time to calibrate their machines? *shrug*

anyways, red mango in valley fair is having a free all-day yogurt session this saturday, during their official grand opening. (this is directly from yul on facebook.) so i might stop by, especially if yul is there. i get so starstruck when i see him. *little girl*

i'm having su's mongolian bbq tomorrow! i'm SO fucking excited. i haven't been to su's in like a year, and it's way better than the one on castro. yes, it's expensive, but it's damn tasty shit. i can't wait!

i've been totally tired today. and i've been getting food coma every day this week. today, i put my head on my desk, and i totally drooled all over myself. i felt the liquid pour out of my mouth and onto my jeans. ick. how gross, huh? and last night, i drooled onto my pillow, too. what is up with this suddenly happening to me? i never drool!

so i'm IM'ing syndromes, the bloke who defriended me. i feel bad that i totally didn't contact him for ages, and it took him defriending me to talk to him again. sigh. friendship is tough sometimes, and you drift apart. but anyways, syndromes is cool. but i do worry for him sometimes.

_fringe_ is frustrating me. after every episode, there are more and more questions that pop up. who is behind all of this? what is the pattern? what does broyles know? and in last night's episode, massive dynamic wasn't even featured. what is the whole deal with that company? ugh. if they ever cancel the show without resolving the questions, i will be VERY pissed off. but so far, i am loving it.

assuming the urinal is clean, why do guys flush BEFORE they pee?

i've noticed that i've been getting boners after coming back from playing basketball. the past few times, i've come back, collapsed in my chair, and the next thing i know, i'm sporting major wood. weird, huh? i think it might be because of the loose shorts i wore, and the increased blood circulation in my body after playing. but still, luckily, i haven't had to go to a meeting directly afterwards. otherwise, i'd have to think about baseball or something really intensely to get rid of my stiffy.

is it just me, or did last night's SF _american idol_ have more commercial breaks than normal? it seemed like they didn't have much material. i mean, in the course of the entire day, they only gave out 12 golden tickets. the only one who i liked was the dude from _wicked_ who sang "bohemian rhapsody." and that first girl (tatiana?) was just so fucking annoying. her laugh! UGH. i can't believe she got through. she BETTER get cut in hollywood.

my sudden lethargy has me wondering if i have cancer or something. if i suddenly drop 20 pounds (like patrick swayze), i'll check myself into the doctor. speaking of which, i need a physical anyway. i haven't had one in 2 years, and it's time to get one. the trouble is, my primary physician at PAMF retired, so he assigned me to some other doctor in the los altos branch. i need to check up on that.

i still haven't hooked up my blu-ray player yet. i just don't have any content to watch. i'm not the type of person to watch a movie by myself at home, so hence the lack of motivation. perhaps i really should start investigating blu-ray porn, because at least that gets me interested. maybe tonight, after _AI_, i'll get on the web and do some sleuthing. but is it really worth it for the better picture?

ok, that's enough for today. i crave pinkberry once again.

de-friend

so today, by chance, i figured out who de-friended me on facebook around last week. and the news was not good. it turned out to be that girl from stanford who i've liked for over a decade. (how i found out was that by whim, i decided to glance at her profile, and i saw that she was no longer a friend, and her profile was private.) i don't know what drove her to do such a thing, as i haven't had any contact with her since last september. hm. anyways, i'm very bothered by this.

anyways... *sigh*

and coincidentally, i had a dream about this girl last night. we were together, and she had cancer, so she had a wig on, and at one point, she was bleeding profusely from her head. there was also one instance where she looked horribly disfigured, but i still cared about her deeply. later on in the dream, she was too weak to walk, so i carried her down a flight of stairs. it was a pretty touching dream, actually.

i got up at 9am today, and i watched obama's inauguration speech. i wasn't impressed. it sounded like a campaign speech. i guess i've seen too many of his debates and speeches. his acceptance speech on election night was just so inspiring, so maybe my expectations are too high. but anyways, i found myself feeling very nervous, and i remember thinking, "hm. the bulletproof glass is too low." as you can tell, i am very scared for his safety. man, there was a MULTITUDE out there in DC, and i read later that there was like a million people who turned out to see him. i can't fathom that number. i mean, a large football stadium holds 100,000, so there were TEN times that amount? wow.

on the radio today, i heard that someone in SF pulled a prank by replacing four blocks worth of "bush street" street signs with "obama street." i thought that was brilliant. if the police catch the guy, i hope they don't prosecute, even though i bet a lot of people looking for bush street probably got lost. :)

happy birthday to peter and jimmy! i hope there are celebrations this weekend. i want to get them both drunk. the new year brings another round of birthday celebrations, and i'm looking forward to them. i think my birthday is one of the last ones, if not *the* last one, so when mine passes, i get a bit bummed out because there's no more reason to drink.

_fringe_ is back! now i can find out what the "little hill" teleporter people want with olivia dunham. i hate cliffhanger endings because i can't wait to see what happens next. argh. but now, the wait is over, and i can continue watching this awesome show.

_gossip girl_ presents an interesting situation. if you and your girlfriend were going out, how would if feel if your two (single) parents were also dating each other? that would be pretty weird, wouldn't it? anyways, i find the show really captivating because of all the pretty people (guys and girls), but man, why does the one asian on the show have to be this really nasty looking girl with ridiculously large dorky glasses? (i think they're even blue?!) and to top it off, her character is completely subservient to the popular girls, so that doesn't help her image, either. ugh.

one of our elevators broke today. apparently, somebody got stuck in one of them for a while. ugh. that's a nightmare for me. i have a bit of claustrophobia, and although our elevators aren't that small, getting stranded in one of them would probably freak me out a little. i'm not sure what i would do if that happened to me. i'd probably lie down and try to go to sleep to calm myself down. i think this will be on my mind for a while, and i'll try to avoid that elevator for some time before i trust it again.

i went to take a leak a short while ago, and there was this dude in the bathroom, standing in the middle of the empty space, with his pants down, fumblinjg with them. he was wearing red briefs. what a curious color. do women consider red briefs (or colored ones in general) sexy? i pretended not to notice and went straight to the urinal. the guy fumbled around behind me and left, without washing his hands. BASTARD.

last night, i met up with geoff and pak, among others, at dish dash. i had previously been to dish dash once (for lunch), and i didn't like it (i think i ordered a chicken schwarma). however, i think i just ordered the wrong thing, so this time, i went there for dinner, and i decided to give it another chance. i ordered this amazingly tender lamb shank in a rich tomato sauce with a ton of baby okra scattered all over it. it was very good. the lamb fell right off the bone, and you all know that i LOVE okra. so i was very satisfied. fyi, the dish was $16.95. i recommend it.

i might go get pinkberry today. i will let you know if i do. PIN-KBE-RRY... PINKBERRY! (have you heard the song yet? go to their website to listen to it.)

ok, off for my 6pm smoke.

comatose states

ugh. it's been a sleepy day. i woke up at 9am, half drunk with sleepiness, and went to see my psych. i've gained 7 pounds since the last time i saw him, two months ago. i need to get a digital scale. otherwise, the only news i told him about was a panic attack that i had a while back, but i couldn't remember any details about it except that i had it. he wrote me a prescription for my meds (his printer was down), and that was it.

we went to choi's today with my coworkers (my usual ex-coworker crowd was nowhere to be found), and for some weird reason, the menu was different. there were no luncheon specials! i asked the waitress what was going on, and she said it was a holiday. ah, it all made sense. so no potstickers this time. *sniff* so i just got the kimchee tofu soup this time, and i ordered it spicy. D ordered the same thing, mild, but we got ours mixed up. he was tearing up, and i was fine with mine, and midway through, we realized that he had mine, and i had his. oops!

i didn't eat all that much, although i did finish most of my bowl of rice, so after i got back, i passed out for a while. i did a little bit of work, and then D came by to tell me that where was an architecture overview of the FRC block that i should be interested in. so i went, and i fell asleep again. so it's been a day of being groggy.

so no, i didn't meet up with eharmony girl this past weekend. she gave me her phone number, though, so i might call her up and give her a phone screen. you know, see if she is eloquent, fobby, a good communicator, witty, etc. a girl's voice is very important to me (why wouldn't it be?), so it'll tell me a lot after talking to her for 5 minutes.

my top two front teeth are very clean. usually, i can usually feel a slightly thin film in the front that i can scrape off with my fingernails, but right now, they're very smooth. i wonder if it's the listerine. yup, i'm still going strong on the green liquid, and my routine has been as such: after brushing my teeth, i fill the cap with listerine, and then i swish with it. then, while swishing, i take off all my clothes in anticipation for my shower, and that usualy takes more than 30 seconds, and finally, i spit it out. the act of pursing my lips while spitting the stuff out hurts like a mofo, let me tell you. but i'm starting to enjoy the pain. ugh. am i a masochist?

does anybody know where i can find full episodes of _the big bang theory_? i've looked on cbs.com and hulu.com, and they only have snippets. i'm not savvy enough to download from bit torrent. it looks like tonight i'll miss it again, since i'm headed off to dinner with geoff, pak and nelson, and i'm going to tape _gossip girl_ (at ting's request) instead of _tbbt_/_himym_.

can someone PLEASE tell me when obama is going to be sworn in? i want to watch. it'll be historic. i've got sources telling me it's at 9am PST, others at 11am, and still others at 2pm. which is it? i don't want to miss it. this is something i'll definitely want to get up early for.

to tell you truthfully, i am worried for obama's safety. there are a bunch of white supremacists out there who can't tolerate a black man as president, and they would stop at nothing to have him eliminated. i wonder if obama will speak behind a bulletproof shield like he did when he made his victory speech on election night. i think he should, for his own security. but anyways, i am excited about the prospect of having him as my president. here's to a hopeful four (and maybe eight) years!

my television schedule is starting to rule me. like tonight, i was hesitant about having dinner with my friends because of it. ditto for tomorrow night (dinner and possibly PINKBERRY!) with jennie. it bothers me greatly that i would rather sit at home and watch tv than hang out with real live people. ugh. when i realized my madness today, it was the first time that i considered getting tivo. i might just do it. i cannot be a slave to my television schedule.

*yawn*

ok, i'm going to head off soon. gotta run home first before dinner to set up my VCR. hey! don't laugh!

warm january weekend

friday night, after that meeting where i was assigned the bug fix, i just did it before i went home. so by the time i got home, it was late, and no one was around to eat dinner with. *RAAR* so i just grabbed some taco bell and tried the bacon cheddar gordita crunch (among other items). it wasn't bad. bacon is an interesting taste for "mexican" food. i watched the end to the lakers/magic game as well. dwight howard is a beast. his shoulders are the biggest i've ever seen, and his skinny legs make for a rather lopsided physique.

saturday, i got up at 10:30 and went over to adam's sound guy's place in campbell to do some voiceover work for his film. it's hard! for the first soundbite, i had to say something in a very forceful tone, and i found myself having to do a fist pump to get the correct emotion. and for the second one, i had to act dejectedly, so i had to slouch to do it correctly. who knew acting (and this is voice only!) was so hard?

after that, i drove home, and i met up with cindyY for lunch. she had already eaten, so we just grabbed froyo at mel's place (sweet corner). that was my lunch, and afterwards, we walked in a small park in mountain view and just chatted.

after cindy left, i took a nap and watched the UCLA/ASU game. i don't really know who i was rooting for, but in the end, ASU won in overtime.

then, i got ready for the stanford/cal mens' basketball game. i drove to wilbur dorm and parked there and walked over. hanns and his friend ray were late, but we got into maples just in time for the introduction of the cal team. the crowd gave mike montgomery (the coach and former stanford coach for 17 years) a warm welcome (with a few scattered boos), so that was classy.

the game was VERY tight, with a lot of 1-point lead changes, and in the end, we pulled it out. we went up by 10 with two minutes left, but then cal scored two quick 3-pointers. my heart almost stopped, and i was wondering if stanford would choke. and then, anthony goods missed three free throws when cal started fouling, and i really started to freak out. but after we won, i cheered, and i went home happy.

i had dinner with nelson at st. john's, and i had the "beg for mercy" burger. it was spicy this time, and the next day, i had two spicy, painful dumps. after i went home, i just watched sportscenter and IM'ed a few people, including adam and tim.

sunday, i got up early (around 9am) and went over to greg and cheryl's place to help them move. there were 16 people (greg's friends are very generous, apparently) total moving, and we helped for the next 8+ hours, moving and driving and unloading. there were several huge items, including this gigantic ikea armoire (sp?) and refridgerator. the new house is very nice, though, and the three bedrooms are yellow, blue and purple.

greg and cheryl fed us bagles and lee's sandwiches and drinks, and we were cheap labor, considering that real movers would have cost thousands of dollars. but it was fun hanging out and stuff.

for dinner, they were going to treat us to gombei, but i left to join alan, ting and chris (ting's cousin) at chili's. alan wanted ribs, but unfortunately, the ribs were dry there, according to him and chris. i got the country fried steak, and it was a gluttonous meal.

i was following the NFL championship games during the whole day, so when i got home, i turned on espn and watched all the highlights, multiple times. i am SO happy for kurt warner and the arizona cardinals! oh, and i saw the hit by clark on willis mcgahee. what a horrible collision. i hope mcgahee is ok. he was down for such a long time, i thought his spine was broken. *shivers*

so that was my weekend. i didn't make it to pinkberry, unfortunately, and jay told me that yul opened up another red mango across the street in valley fair on the same day. yogurt wars!

damn, my biceps are sore from moving.

a new burden

ugh. so i attended a design review of this module that i found a bug in, and after two meetings (one of which i just got out of now), *i* am the one who is assigned the task of modifying it to fix it. *RAAR* now i'm regretting finding the bug in the first place. i know, it's a bad attitude, and i should be glad that i am making our chip a better product, but i'm just upset that i have to do more work. i probably have to come into the office this weekend to finish the job. *DOUBLE RAAR*

we had mini-eclairs for lunch today (free company lunch), and i ate one that had an empty filling. is that a bad omen, like a sign of bad luck? i wonder if something bad's going to happen to me. well, it already did. (read the last paragraph.)

i finished coding my block this afternoon. it's 2,200+ lines of new, fresh code. i am pretty proud of myself, and i blazed through the rest of the stuff this afternoon and let out a cheer as i typed the last line.

last night, i caught the first real episode of _ABDC_ (america's best dance crew) season 3. i was especially intrigued when they mentioned a crew called "quest." i thought to myself, "is this the same 'quest' from SYTYCD?" and it was! awesome! this crew includes ryan, dominic, and hok from SYTYCD, so they're very, very good. and they didn't disappoint. there's also another SYTYCD alumni on the show, the clogger who auditioned and made it to hollywood. i wonder if shane sparks will be biased towards quest because he's choreographed dominic before and knows hok. anyways, i'll be watching the show just because of quest. oh, and the breaker girls group (beat freaks) is pretty good, too.

while watching mtv, i saw an ad for _the real world: brooklyn_, and is one of the girls on that show a transsexual? her voice is really really deep, and definitely can be classified as manly.

one of the eharmony (i gave up on that site a long time ago) girls wants to meet up with me. we're friends on facebook, but i don't talk to her. i haven't heard from her in ages, and out of the blue, she e-mailed me today and asked if i'm free this weekend. hm. i'm not really interested in her, but what do i have to lose, right? well, i might have better things to do, but we'll see.

this weekend, i'm going to the stanford/cal men's basketball game on saturday afternoon. hanns has two extra tickets, and i asked yuji and cindy if they want to go, but they're both busy. but hell, i'm not passing up an opportunity to go to maples to watch a game. i'm afraid that cal might kick our asses, though, because mike montgomery is doing a fabulous job at cal. GO CARDINAL!

and then, sunday, i'm going to watch some football. there are only three meaningful games (the pro bowl is a joke to me) left in the season, so i better soak up all the football i can before i regret it. GO CARDINALS! i like kurt warner.

AND, i want to visit jersey joe's and pinkberry. thanks, ann, for the update!

AND, like i said, i probably have to work.

so, should i meet up with this eharmony girl? *ponder*

have you ever served a vegetarian a dish that actually had meat in it but didn't tell him/her? once, i microwaved some shu mai for k2 (who was a "vegetarian" who ate eggs and seafood), and then, i read the ingredients on the box and found out there was like some sort of meat in it like chicken or something. i debated telling her, but in the end, i didn't want her to puke or freak out, so i just kept it to myself. i mean, what's the harm, right? as long as their body isn't allergic to meat and can digest it, it's no big deal, that's my take. i mean, she ate seafood, so it wasn't like she was vegetarian for humanitarian reasons.

another time, i went to sizzler with some coworkers, and this indian vegetarian (strict one) just ate at the salad bar. now, you would think that a salad bar would contain 100% vegetarian items, but they had imitation crab. well, this dude ate some, and i was like, "uh... isn't that made of fish paste?" so we debated it for a while, and we came to the conclusion that it had meat in it. he didn't react too well to that.

ok, time to look into my design change. i want to get some of it done so i don't have to slave over it during the weekend.

pepper agony

holy shit, those dozen+ jalepeno peppers i ate yesterday for lunch FUCKED ME UP. late yesterday afternoon, i took two dumps at work, and then, at dinner, my stomach started hurting. i took one more dump at los charros after not being able to finish my wet burrito (with cilantro, i don't mind cilantro with mexican food) with adam (the mad eater), and then after going home, before _american idol_, i took TWO MORE painful, spicy, incendiary, asshole-torchign dumps. it was ridiculous. as good and delectable as those peppers were while eating them, if i have to face an aftermath like this, i'll think twice about doing it again. i called up D afterwards, and even though he only ate one or two peppers, he said that he had a stomachache as well. yowza!

by the way, ann, i wasn't talking about fu lam mum. i was talking about chili palace in milpitas. their menu is 100% chinese. oh, and congrats for being the 4,444th comment!

AI wasn't as interesting last night. the only notable auditions were jason castro's brother (who i though sucked and didn't deserve to get a golden ticket), the dude whose wife passed away 4 months earlier (i thought he was really good), and the indian geek, who i thought was really awesome as well. did they really say there were SIX more cities? or did phoenix and kansas city count as two of the six? that's a lot of auditions to watch, and i'm gonna get tired of it.

so after getting sidetracked this morning and early afternoon (to do some work on an old chip), i finally finished the core code of my new block. it's just over 1,200 lines long. *phew* now i just gotta do the host/RAM interface, and i'm done with it. it wasn't so bad! just three days worth of work.

basketball was decent today. at least, in the beginning it was. i thought we would be totally outmatched in the first game, but in the end, we won. for some reason, they weren't guarding me very closely, so i got to shoot the ball without a hand in my face, and i scored 4 out of my team's 7 points. *whee!* but after that, S joined the other team, and they shut me down. the last game was 4-on-4 full court, and boy, was it tiring. i managed to sprint down the court on some fast breaks, but i couldn't finish and kept on getting fouled or losing the ball. ugh.

mikeT's raves about jersey joe's has me salivating for one of their cheesesteaks. i bet they're really good. i might call up alan and ting over the weekend and go up to san carlos to visit that place. i like cheesesteaks, but my only reference point is st. john's fare, and mike says that jersey joe's stuff is way better. can't wait!

ugh. i just got a meeting request for a design review that *i* have to present at 10am tomorrow. it's not even my design! it's simply a flaw in the design that i found through testing, and now it's my responsibility? *RAAR* oh well. i guess i have to get up a little early tomorrow.

can someone tell me what happened to kim briggs (j.d.'s kid's mom) on _scrubs_? i mean, like, why is she not present in the show from a plot perspective? you would figure that little sammy would have his mom around at some point. i am really glad that courtney cox arquette is gone from the show; every time i see her, i think of monica from _friends_, and i hated monica with a passion.

well, my toe scab got ripped off again today during basketball (it started disintegrating during my shower last night to begin with), and it oozed through my sock afterwards. ugh. hopefully during the four day layoff until my next basketball outing, it can heal properly. if not, i don't know what the hell i'm going to do. maybe i'll have to wrap up the toe or something, although i'm not sure if that's going to do the trick.

one of these days, i'll suck it up and go to su's mongolian bbq, even though they're really expensive these days. i just miss their wonderful noodles, thinly sliced meat (i only get pork), and infinite garlic. it's like $5 more than the one on castro, but it tastes much better. yeah, i think i'm craving food right now because i'm getting hungry. being a basketball day, i've only had breakfast, and i didn't get a cup o' noodles like i usually do. food is on my mind.

i need to buy some advil. my head is slightly throbbing from dehydration (again, basketball), and i have like three liqui-gels left at home. i am trying really hard not to tic because the violent movements will exacerbate the headache.

you know all the meds i take? sometimes it boggles my mind, the power of those drugs. like, i wonder what would happen to me if i took like 50 of those pills all at once. would i die? likely. how would it feel? pain? craziness? blackout? for example, when i first started on haldol over a dozen years ago, i took a mere 3.5 MILLIGRAMS of it, and i just went bonkers. i couldn't stand upright, like i would stand up and then fall down and repeat over and over again, and i couldn't keep my neck straight (like it was kinked permanently to one side), and my parents saw me and were horrified. my dad had to drive me to the emergency room, and the doctors gave me a shot of benadryl to counteract the overdose. so what would happen, say, if i took like 100mg of it? would i hear voices? (i've actually heard noises in my head on high doses of haldol before.) would i just pass out? would i just go berserk and have to run myself into a wall to drown out what was going on in my head? it's crazy, all these powerful drugs.

but anyways, this is what i think about every time i take my meds. all that power, concentrated in these little tablets. and all i have to do to fuck myself up horribly is to just take a bunch of these tiny little things and swallow them. so easy! the line that i have to cross is so small, and it's right there in front of me. it's sort of like leaning over a railing on the 100th floor of a tall building. like vertigo.

ok, i hope i'm not scaring you. i must go now.

pepper mania!

i had a wonderful lunch today. i went with the chinese coworkers in my team, and we went to chili palace, this restaurant in milpitas specializing in spicy food. i've been there once before with this same group of people, and i demanded that we ordered that pepper dish, which is basically sauteed jalepeno peppers with black beans. it was awesome. this time, the peppers were spicy, and my scalp got all sweaty and stuff. amazing shit, and damn fucking good. after i finished eating, and the sweat started drying off, my head felt cool. what a gustatory delight!

my boss scheduled a meeting at 4:30, so i didn't have as much time to code today, so i went off like a madman before and after lunch. my ACM code is now over 900 lines long, and i'm almost done with the core arithmetic stuff. i plan on finishing it early tomorrow afternoon and then getting in the peripheral register programming stuff soon thereafter. i am on track on getting all the code done by friday. *flex*

i found a good friend of mine from junior high and high school on facebook today. i had been looking for him on and off for a while now, and i finally looked up his full first name (marc-andre) yesterday and found like three matches. the first one had him listed as living in dallas, so i figured it might be him, so i wrote him a brief message asking if it was him (he didn't have a profile picture). and lo and behold, it WAS! i am so happy to get back in touch with him. he posted a picture of himself today, and he looks almost exactly the same, except slightly older! ah, marc-andre. he was one cool cat.

_american idol_ was mildly entertaining last night. the girl in the bikini was definitely quite a sight. pretty bold to audition and go the whole day sporting a two-piece like that. she had a nice midsection and shapely legs, but she definitely didn't have the bust to fill out the top. and her face wasn't that great, either. but i give her props for making it through to hollywood. i wonder what kind of slutty outfits she'll don during that round. i highly doubt she'll make it to the top 24, though. other interesting contestants included the horror movie-obsessed teen, the blind dude at the end, and the joe cocker-like nerdy teenager. oh, and the pink-haired rocker at the beginning; i liked her.

after AI, i went out to join grace's volleyball team for dinner at fu lam mum at 10:15pm or so. i know it's bad to eat so late, but it's always nice to eat with them. the food was surprisingly good. dishes of note included jen's hunan tofu and john's cantonese chicken with these delectable garlic nuggets. after that, i got home pretty late, and i finished watching the first of two episodes of _scrubs_ and promptly passed out for the night. i still have two episodes of tv (one _scrubs_ and one _the big bang theory_) to catch up on. i better not fall behind on television!

i hope all those jalepeno peppers i ate today for lunch don't make me have a spicy dump later on. but damn, were they good. i don't know if i can take my friends to that place, though, because their menus are all in 100% chinese, and i can't read it. i only know (slightly) how to pronounce the pepper dish, and that's it. i doubt that if they even had an english menu, if any of their good dishes would be on it. i have yet to see one non-chinese person in there in my two visits to that place.

it touches me when my long lost friends tell me that they have been thinking of me from time to time. it makes me feel like i've been a good friend to them, and i've been doing something right all along. friendship is something that you have to work at; you can't just sit back and do nothing and expect it to nurture itself. i spend a lot of energy and time calling my friends up and hanging out with them, and i think it shows. i know i've complained about it being a little one-sided from time to time, but in the end, as long as i know that i'm being a good friend, i think that's the most important thing.

i had a dream this morning where i was a transformer (even though i didn't transform into anything), and i was a part of the legion of autobots. and my leader was this acquaintance of mine (i don't know him very well), dylan. he didn't transform, either, and instead, he sat in a huge gun battery that shot huge arrows at our nemesis, the decepticons. he finally killed megatron, and then announced that his name was "karlis." it was a very vivid dream.

anyways, i need to end this blog entry short. i'm leaving soon to meet up with adam for a wet burrito. i'm not terribly hungry right now because of my glorious pepper lunch, so we'll see if i can finish it. i doubt it.

300

so today i coded around 300+ lines. it was definitely more brainful than yesterday's work. i ran into a problem in the middle, though, where i had to instantiate a bus whose width turned out to be -1 wires wide. hm. so i had to hack it to make it work and depart from a fully parameterized format which was my original intention. not the beautiful design that i wanted to make it, but hell, i've got to make it functional, right?

i got up earlier than normal this morning and watched _how i met your mother_ on the internet before going to work. poor barney. i don't think i could do what ted and robin did, i.e. have sex without strings attached. i think i would eventually get emotionally involved. but who knows. i wouldn't know until i've tried it, but that's just my thinking.

but come to think of it, i have had sex without being in love with the girl before. it happen many years ago, and it was just a sort of a habit (meaning the sex) that we did. i didn't have feelings for her anymore, but we still slept together because it was something that we used to do. so i guess i *might* be able to do it? *ponder*

anyways, _gossip girl_ was so heartwrenching last night. chuck and blair, ugh! it's just such bad timing. one of them is ready and willing, but the other isn't, and then it flip flops. just get together already! i wonder if the writers will ever hook them up. it would be sort of weird, though, if they ever end their dance around each other, because their flirtation is what makes it intriguing. it's the tease that makes us keep watching, isn't it? ah, the thrill of the chase.

before going home last night, i had dinner with this group of guys from stanford. it was jeremy, cliff, brian, and adriel. i knew the first two, but had only met the last two a few times. we were supposed to go to 3ta, this thai fusion place, but it turned out to be closed indefinitely for some reason. bummer. so i took the guys to maruichi and recommended the combo B for lots of good. we started around 8:15 and stayed past closing (at 10pm) talking. those four are pretty good friends (and i sort of an outsider of the group). and all of us are pretty tall and big (well me, just tall, not big), so it was like being among true MEN.

cliff mentioned how there were studies done that demonstrated a correlation between being a good stock trader and having an ring finger that was longer than one's index finger. i didn't even know that was physically possible. but adriel held up his hand, and indeed, that was the case. btw, he's a CFO at a company that went public a few years ago, so i think he's doing quite well for himself. very impressive. i wish i were rich.

i think every guy should pee sitting down on a toilet. i mean, that would eliminate splashing and missing. i mean, even when i use a urinal, sometimes i miss the bowl. a man's pee stream does weird things sometime. it goes all wonky when it starts and stops, curving left and right in all sorts of odd angles. the reason why i started sitting down to pee is because my dad forced me to after i left a mess on the floor when i was a kid. and i've been doing that (provided it's a clean toilet, like at a friend's house or at home) ever since then. it's just common courtesy, and it's much more convenient than having to wipe the toilet and floor afterwards in case i wind up pissing off target.

i missed getting breakfast today, so after i got to work, before basketball, i went out to mcd's and got a big mac. it was the first big mac i've had since scotland or ireland (btw, the beef was leaner and tougher and drier over there). it was pretty damn good. but it gave me a food coma before bball, and i was all drowsy and yawning when i stepped out onto the court. i didn't play particularly well today, just making a few jumpers (albeit one long one) and one putback after a rebound. at least the weather's been nice lately.

i found a handful of ex-coworkers on facebook. i hesitated to add them, because i didn't want to mix my professional life with my personal/online life, but in the end, i did it anyway. some of them are quite accomplished for their age. one of them, S, is really really smart, and he was only two years ahead of me in school. it makes me feel unaccomplished. of course, i haven't been that ambitious in the past 5 or so years, and i could be much further ahead than i am now, so it's not all his doing.

my foot was itching last night, so i scratched it pretty hard and forcefully, and i tore off a piece of skin on my left middle toe. YOWZA. it scabbed over this morning, but after i played basketball, the scab melted, so now it's stinging and raw once again. liquid came out of it and soaked through the sock. ick. damn, this sucks. i need to not scratch myself so hard, no matter how good it seems to feel. i've also split the webbing between my toes by rubbing it before, and that stings like a motherfucker.

we have to do self-evaluations at work in next two weeks. it all seems pointless because we're not getting raises this year. *sigh*

so it all begins again. _american idol_. that whole memorization thing. btw, i still can recite from memory the bottom 12 of the top 24 from the past two seasons. (but oddly, i can't remember the order of the top 12 itself from the past two seasons.) i'll have to jog my memory and post up my AI recap of last year, which i haven't done yet. that, and _sytycd_ as well, which i still remember. damn, i hate my OCD sometimes. but all i can say is, i hope there is a girl that is as hot as kristy lee cook this year. apparently, one girl tries out in her bikini this year, that's all i know.

ok, i'm off!

coding commences

so after a false start (i passed out for a little bit after lunch at choi's), i buckled down today and did some coding. it was mainly empty skeleton code, but i did put 450+ lines of code under my belt. it's a start. i got some issues out of the way, but i still have a long way to go. i need to raise the bar for the rest of this week and get my ass moving if i am to finish coding by the end of this week. my boss is really pushing me hard on this one, and i can tell he's really stressed out about this project.

tonight, i'm meeting up with some stanford folks for dinner at 3ta (thai fusion restaurant, never been there before, strange name), but i'm a little cautious because it's a drawgroup that i'm not a part of. there are two people that are going to be there that i barely know at all, so i feel like i'll be left out of the conversation. still, i'll probably go, but that also means that i'll miss out on some tv. there are simultaneous shows going on from 8-9pm on CBS and the CW, so i can only tape one channel on my VCR. i guess i'll just have to watch the CBS shows on the internet later.

the weather has been great these past few days. it doesn't feel like it's january at all, which is fine with me. i haven't needed to put on my sweatshirt hood during smoking breaks.

i am still going strong on the listerine. i swish for about a minute instead of 30 seconds (i timed it once using my watch), and by the time i spit it out, the pain is almost unbearable. when i spit the stuff out, the way i purse my lips when i do the spitting makes it hurt so much that it brings tears to my eyes. i swear! this shit better be worth it. but am i supposed to use it in the morning as well? i don't know if i could handle it twice a day.

most single guys i know don't put down the toilet seat after taking a leak. me, i put it down *before* i take a leak (if i'm at a friend's house, i.e. clean toilet) because i sit down to pee. and if i'm at a restaurant or mall or gas station, etc., i ALWAYS lower the toilet seat after i use it (and wash my hands thoroughly afterwards). it's just training after having had a girlfriend, i suppose. but what's weird is that some of the guys i know have had girlfriends before as well. didn't those girls teach them to lower the seat after using it?

i've gotten some hits on my blog from people searching for my full name. who are you people?

and i seem to have lost one friend on facebook. hm. i wonder who that person who de-friended me was. i don't think i'll ever find out, nor figure out why he or she did that. i hope it wasn't because i pissed that person off or anything.

i did a search for T (the guy i met last night at michelle's party) on facebook, and i found him. what's weird is that "T" is his last name. but that's what he said when i asked him what his name was. very peculiar. who gives out their last name when prompted such? he had a very common first name, so maybe people call him "T" to differentiate him from other people that have the same first name. or maybe he's like kramer from _seinfeld_. *ponder*

i think i was in corner place, taking a leak in the men's room, and there was this poster of a hot girl in there. the girl was looking directly at me, and it felt a bit odd taking a leak with her staring into my eyes. still, though, she was pretty damn attractive, although her arms were a bit too skinny. i'd do her regardless.

the other night at the end of alan's bbq, jeremy and kate's daughter audrey was all set to leave, but she wanted to be carried out to the car. when they asked who she wanted to carry her, she pointed at me. i was touched. so i told audrey to come over, and i picked her up and carried her out. strange, but very sweet. keep in mind that i had not played with audrey all that much during the entire event, just a little bit on the swings.

jeremy is pretty amazing with audrey. she has these manic temper tantrums where she just explodes, and jeremy just calmly talks her down with a soft and gentle voice. i don't know how he does it. if that happened to me, i'd probably freak out and not know what to do. (i was spanked as a child, btw, so i feared my parents at a pretty early age. i behaved.)

who accepted heath ledger's golden globe for best supporting actor?

i didn't quite understand why _vicky cristina barcelona_ was classified under the "musical/comedy" category. obviously, it's not a musical, and i didn't find it very funny. still, though, i really enjoyed it, and i'm glad it won an award. woody allen rocks!

do you get annoyed when people misuse your/you're, their/they're/there, and its/it's?

ok, i'm done for today. gonna go home, head out to dinner, and catch my taped episode of _gg_. no HD ogling of leighton meester tonight. *sobs*

social

i had a very good, busy weekend.

friday night, i called up nelson as i was leaving the office, and he told me to stay there, as he was at paul's house deciding on where to have dinner. 5 minutes later, he told me to meet them (plus mikeC) at corner place. ah, my 4th korean meal of the week. i got the yuk ge jang plus ramen noodles minus green onions, and it was pretty good. after that, i went home and watched the tail end of the mavs/suns game, in which my mavericks got blown out, 100-128. ugh.

saturday, after my morning routine, i danced. yup. i played three songs on my iMac and just danced in my living room. the three songs were: "he's on the phone" by saint etienne and "body movin'" and "sure shot" by the beastie boys.

then, i called up my coworker D, and we went to 99 chicken (FIFTH korean meal of the week) for lunch. we got 10 drumsticks between the two of us. after eating five drumsticks each, D said that he didn't want to see another piece of fried chicken for at least three months, haha. and i had satiated my craving for fried chicken as well.

i brought my bottle of balvenie 12-year whiskey to lunch, and i gave it to D for him to keep and drink. i've converted a lot of my friend (including ben from friday lunch) into whiskey drinkers. i told D to buy some ice and some whiskey tumblers, so he went to walmart and bought a set of four for $12. he tried it later on in the weekend, and he liked the balvenie.

after lunch, i went home for a brief while (and watched the first episode of this season's _scrubs_ online) and then headed off to stanford shopping center. i picked up my watch. ah, how i missed my watch. i paid $150 for the repair, but i think they forgot to charge me $85 for the battery change and pressure test. then, i headed to schaub's meat market and spent a whopping *$98.06* on 2.5 pounds of fred's kobe and 2.5 pounds of regular fred's steak.

i went to alan and ting's house, where some people were already there. alan was busy grilling up some chicken, and other people soon followed.

so how was the fred's kobe? at $26 a pound? it was pretty good, as fred's steak usually is. salty, fatty, like a ribeye. but honestly, i don't think it's worth the price tag. regular fred's, cooked medium rare, is good enough, and at half the price, it's worth it already. so i would say skip the kobe style and get the regular stuff. but i am glad i tried the kobe at least once.

the kids watched _ratatouille_, while the adults mingled, and at about 7pm or so, it was bedtime for them. so after they all left, i stayed until alan and ting cleaned up. then, i finally went home. i did also see arizona destroy the carolina panthers, in a surprising upset in the NFC divisional playoffs. go arizona and kurt warner!

sunday, i got up at 10:30am and watched a part of the eagles/giants game. i hate both teams because they're rivals of my dallas cowboys, but i was sort of rooting for the eagles because if they won, that would mean that arizona would host the NFC championship game and have a better chance of winning it.

then, i had lunch with william at pho to chau. he's a prospective roommate, so he came over and checked out the place. i hope he moves in. then, after he left, i called up emi and talked to her for a good half an hour or so. it was good hearing her voice again, as i hadn't heard from her for a long long time.

then, i drove off to adam's house to watched the chargers/steelers game. the score was 7-0 chargers already, but that was about it as far as their offense went. the steelers defense stiffened up, and they pretty much dominated san diego for the rest of the game. sorry, adam.

at 4, i drove up to the city to monica (my co-sib!) and drew's place to michelle's going away party. i was very hesitant about going because i didn't know anybody there. when i walked up the stairs (their place was on the 3rd floor), i heard this chattering, and i felt a bit ill because i knew that it would be all strangers. once i got to the top, the familiar feeling came over me because i was right. i saw monica, so i gave her a hug, but she was cooking, so i couldn't really talk to her. so i grabbed a beer and just surveyed the crowd.

i saw michelle, but she was occupied, and then i spied a guy in a steelers jersey. so i went over and talked to him and congratulated him on winning the game. and soon afterwards, i recognized a girl from my freshman year dorm (penny), and when she recognized me, i felt relief because i finally found someone to talk to. and then, cliff came up the stairs, and ah! a friend! we gave each other a big hug, and we chatted happily.

i went out for a smoke, and then another came down to smoke as well. ah, the smoker's bond. his name was T, and it turned out that he was my class at stanford. so we talked as well outside as well as inside. the whole crowd was a hodge podge of michelle's friends from all sorts of circles, so a lot of people didn't know very many people there.

anyways, i stayed until about 7:30, and then i grabbed a quick dinner and drove back home. peter called me up later, and i met up with him at tartini for frozen yogurt. man, one of the owners of that place is really busty. motorboat!

after i got my fro-yo and mochi fix, i went home and caught up on the sporting news of the day (as well as the golden globes, go _slumdog millionaire_!), and then i got really tired and went to bed.

all in all, a very good and eventful weekend. i'm glad i went to michelle's thing and did my social duties. but this week, i have a TON of work to do, and i hope i'm motivated to do it. there is no more time for procrastination.

two tasks

hm. my context switching at work has not been very good this week. i have two tasks here, and i've been mainly focusing on one (the audio testing for the current chip), and not doing much on the other (ACM coding for the future chip). ugh. i really need to get started on the next task, and i have until the end of the next week to finish coding. hopefully next monday, i can focus more. i really don't want to become the bottleneck for the future project and let my boss down. here's to no more procrastinating!

it's hard to focus on fridays. i've daydreaming about my weekend plans (a stanford reunion at alan's bbq saturday and some NFL watching on sunday, followed by a going away party for michelle up in the city afterwards which i am leaning towards attending, although i won't know anybody there), and that's taking away from my productivity. however, i *did* find a bug in the hardware, which is very good, because we're working on finishing up this current chip. *flex*

man, the stanford/washington game was a nailbiter all the way until the end. i know the pac-10 season is only getting underway, but the game was very intense. in the end, we lost by one point. ONE MEASLY POINT. ugh. we got totally destroyed inside, giving up about 20 more rebounds to washington. also, we were in foul trouble for most of the night, with brockman and that MBA dude drawing tons of fouls on our players. still, we fought valiantly, and i think we put up a decent battle. still, though, that one point loss stings quite a bit. the women, however, defeated washington on our home floor by something like 80 points or something, setting a pac-10 record. holy shit!

i was also switching back and forth between the bball game and the BCS title game between florida and oklahoma. i was rooting for UF because i like tim tebow, and he did not disappoint. i love his passion and spirit, and he is also something of a saint. during the offseason and spring break, instead of partying, he administers medicine to poor children in the philippines, where he was born and where his parents were missionaries. i know i don't really support religion, but his religion fuels him in a good way, and i admire that.

how does memory work for children under 3? i mean, i don't remember anything from before that age, but apparently, kids that young do still exhibit some sort of memory. so is it a short to medium range memory? and how is it that they remember words and language? the brain is a fascinating thing. anyways, i just thought about that today because today is my friend's son's 3rd birthday. i was IM'ing her, and i was like, "ah, he has memory now." it must suck to have a birthday so close to christmas because you get gipped on all the presents. she told me how they were very careful not to give him too much stuff because he already got a ton of toys from xmas.

i had lunch with ben today. we went to our usual place, thai basil in sunnyvale. it took me about 15 minutes to find parking in the macy's parking lot because they were doing construction. ben shaved his head! and he is always styling in his fancy clothes (he wore a tie today). i got red duck curry today instead of my usual pad see ew, and it put me to sleep afterwards. i paid for him because his birthday is in 4 days; i like taking people out for their birthdays. anyways, i haven't seen the dude in a long time, and it was good catching up with him.

and last night, i had ramen with yuji, who i hadn't seen in like a year. after getting married, his life has changed a lot. he used to be the super-sports guy, and now he doesn't even watch espn anymore. (he didn't even know who was playing in the BCS championship game!) it's quite remarkable, actually. he said that it's not a bad thing, just different. i wonder how much my life will change when i get married. will i really stop keeping up with sports? that's hard to believe. hopefully i'll find a girl who loves sports as much as i do. or at least a little bit. yuji also doesn't play poker as much as he used to (once every two weeks, he said).

when i was in a relationship, i didn't mind being domestic. i guess it's just something that came with the territory. your priorities and habits just change naturally, i suppose. kids, on the other hand, will be a shock to my system, i bet. we shall see.

man, listerine is kicking my ass. last night, i counted to 20 (instead of 30 seconds) before i just *had* to spit that shit out. it just HURT to much! but i'm going to keep trying to swish it around for a full 30 seconds to get the maximum effect. hopefully i'll see results the next time i go to the dentist. do you guys who use it have the same struggles with the burning sensations in your cheeks and gums? this is some powerful shit!

my morning song: "radio ass kiss" by the wonder stuff. i haven't thought about this song in years. the wonder stuff was a band introduced to me by either ken or k1 my freshman year in college. one of those cool alternative bands back then. this is probably one of the only songs that uses the phrase "jeepers yowzers."

so does anyone know what's going to happen to cable tv (i have comcast) when the DTV switch occurs? will all the analog channels come with HD counterparts? i would LOVE to watch sportscenter in hi-def. HD is really sweet, and i've come to pretty much expect it for all prime time shows. what's actually pretty good looking in HD is _the big bang theory_ because the characters wear really colorful outfits (especially sheldon, who wears a lot of greens and purples). and sports, of course, look amazing. i hope CSN will come in HD on my cable package, too, because i'd love to take in a stanford bball game in hi-def.

i haven't seen nelson in like 3 weeks. maybe i'll call him up for dinner tonight.

ok, off for a smoke and then to check up on my audio test. it BETTER pass this time. (it's taken me a full day to debug this bad boy.)

pleasurable birthing?

one of the biggest reasons why i am glad i'm not a girl is that i'd be afraid to give birth. the expulsion of a miniature bowling ball through my would-be vadge scares the bejeezus out of me. (i mean, hell, i'm a guy, and just passing a kidneystone freaks me out.) however, the other night, i caught the last minute of something called "the orgasmic birth" on tv. apparently, the show was _20/20_, and there's this whole revolutionary concept of a woman being able to achieve orgasms and physical ecstasy during labor. is this real? i mean, if it is, then it wouldn't seem so bad.

what are urinal cakes for? combatting odor? but urinal cakes smell bad themselves to begin with! and do women know about urinal cakes?

last night, i had dinner with jennie. we were going to eat at corner place (korean again), but jennie got there first, and then called me to say that it closes on wednesdays. so i suggested 99 chicken next door (korean fried chicken), and she said ok, so we ordered kim chee jigae (which i already had for lunch that day) and 5 pieces of fried drumsticks. damn, their chicken is good. i think i could eat 10 pieces myself. i gotta go there again, soon.

i think i pulled my right quad muscle during basketball today. when i flex it, it hurts. going up stairs, for example, is very difficult. ugh. bball, by the way, was very bad today. i made a lot of bad passes, and even R, who usually doesn't mind losing, seemed frustrated and upset with me. *sobs* i am the weakest link by far, and every team i joined lost. i HATE that. i feel a lot of pressure on me, whether it's perceived or actual. it makes me not want to play, and that that reluctance only grows the longer i play.

i really need a massage.

re: cindy's comment. that's sad that there are guys who just want a quick orgasm without reciprocating to their partners. i've been the recipient of that kind of treatment before (the "me only" incident), and man, it feels like shit. nobody should feel like they're being used as a sex toy. pretty rotten.

what the hell is happening to the boston celtics? they start out with a francise-best 27-2 record, and now they've lost 6 of 8. crazy.

i don't think i would make it as a student athlete in college. my time management skills are pretty bad. i get sidetracked too easily, i don't context switch very well, and i am the king of procrastinators. plus, i'm hella lazy. i got by stanford on my natural talent and cramming capacity, and i think i actually got stupider as time went by. i am impressed by all-academic student athletes because they can balance their studies with their athletics; that is quite a feat.

anyways, i'm leaving soon to meet up with yuji for ramen. we always go to maruichi and discuss the state of affairs in the land of the stanford men's basketball team. i haven't seen him in a year, i think, so i wonder what he looks like. his weight fluctuates quite a bit, like mine, so it'll be interesting. i promise i won't eat to much today (unlike that wet burrito on tuesday); one bowl of ramen, and that's it. and then, it's off to watch the stanford/washington game tonight. go cardinal!

how do you guys remember all your account passwords and stuff? do you write them down in a secret location? i've recently switched some of my more important passwords to a much tougher one, one that includes numbers and both capital and lowercase letters. this happened after facebook got hacked, and they made me change my password into one with more strength. but i've got so many online accounts and stuff, it's hard to remember everything, and there's no way i let my computers remember them on their keychains.

re: passwords, i've often wondered what happens when a person dies. who takes care of all of his accounts and stuff? how does his custodian know how to access his things? do you just call up yahoo or etrade or wells fargo, for example, and say, "this is so-and-so, mr. X just died, and i'm taking care of his stuff, so i need to close his account and liquidate his assets."

oh, i got listerine yesterday. (i didn't see the cool blue kind at safeway.) that shit BURNS. i used it for the very first time last night before i went to bed, so i popped in a mouthful and started swishing. after about 5 seconds, the insides of my cheeks felt like they were on fire. but i kept going until my estimated 30 seconds passed by, and i couldn't wait to spit that shit out. ugh. this stuff better be worth it.

how many of you women out there put on makeup every day before you go to work?

sore ass

man, my butt hurts. it's from basketball yesterday. i went to have a smoke outside, at my usual place, sitting down on the sidewalk. when my ass hit the concrete, i let out a loud grunt. it was like i had two huge bruises on my cheeks. i must be way out of shape. my achilles tendons are sore, too. i still plan on playing tomorrow, but maybe i should stretch first?

i totally forgot that last night was the season premiere of _scrubs_! i missed the first episode on ABC, and i was fortunate enough to be surfing the channels, and i caught the second episode. jd looks silly with a beard. the second episode was really sad, a big departure from the usual silliness. i'll have to catch the first episode online tonight or tomorrow night. i planned on waking up early and watching it on my computer today, but alas, i just couldn't get up.

i feel totally naked without my watch. i dropped it off last week to get a new battery and pressure test, and they said it failed the pressure test, so they called me today and told me that i have to spend an extra $150 for a new gasket and crown. i think they're just fucking me over. the same thing happened to alan's tag heuer, too. hrmph. i'll be picking it up on saturday at 2pm, right before alan and ting's bbq, and i'll stop by schaub's to pick up some fred's tri-tip and kobe. that will cost about $80+, i think, because the fred's kobe is about $26 a pound. i am excited, though, because i've wanted to try fred's kobe for a long time now. it had better be good!

last night, john, mikeC and i went to wahoo's, and for the first time, i didn't get a quesadilla. instead, i tried a spicy chicken wet burrito, with spicy white beans and guacamole thrown in. i shouldn't be picky, but i would say skip the wet burrito at wahoo's. it's sort of weird-tasting, and los charros's wet burrito is WAY better. definitely more authentic, for sure. but i was still stuffed afterwards, and i wound up not losing any weight yesterday. basketball days are the best chance for me to lose weight because i eat a breakfast, skip lunch, and exercise.

wahoo's is decorated with all these stickers of surf and skateboard companies, and i swear, one of them is of a woman's reproductive system. i wanted to take a picture of it last night; it's clearly delineating the fallopian tubes, the uterus, and the labia majora. i'm not kidding! and there's even a dot in the middle of the uterus part, so i bet that represents an egg during ovulation. if we ever go back there again, i'll point it out to you.

i always wonder about people who don't post up pictures of themselves on dating websites. are they fugly? ashamed? lazy? beautiful on the inside only? so hot that they would get bombarded by only shallow people? celebrities who want to remain incognito?

i need to get a digital scale. mine used to belong to my parents, and i think it's like 30 years old, seriously. i remember using it when i was a little kid. it's analog, and its reading depends on where you stand on it, like my weight goes up if i lean forward. right now, my weight maxes out at 185, and i'm starting to get alarmed. that's only 15 pounds from my super-fat stage. of course, since i see myself every day, i don't look fat to myself, but i wonder what people who haven't seen me in a year or so would think. i definitely need to start a serious diet.

last night, all of a sudden, i was hit with extreme lethargy. adam called me, and i wasn't even coherent. (i confirmed that with him this morning.) i vaguely recall talking to him about macworld, and i recall slurring my words a bit. i think it was a combination of being tired from basketball and eating that big burrito. maybe my meds (seroquel) also somehow got into my bloodstream more quickly than usual as well. anyways, there are times when i'm so tired i can't even stand up. what's interesting is that if i take a hot shower, i wake up a bit; maybe it's the fact that the hot water makes my blood circulate better.

oh, to the commenter, my parents are around 59 years old. (which reminds me, my dad's birthday is coming up.) my mom doesn't work anymore, and my dad is still going strong. i don't know how their finances are, but i do know that my dad still needs to work a few more years, and his company needs to do well before he has enough money to think about retiring.

one thing that irks me on tv and movies is when they imply that a couple has had sex, and they finish, and the girl still has her bra on. what woman keeps her bra on during sex, and more importantly, what man in his right mind would allow that to happen? breastplay is key! learning to snap that sucker off with one hand is one of the first things a guy should learn, right? hrmph. it seriously bugs me.

i keep on forgetting to buy some listerine at safeway. i will do so the next time i go. i am going to run an experiment to see if that stuff really works, as far as reducing plaque and tartar. i asked my dental hygienist the last time i went, and she recommended using it. so far, i still haven't started flossing yet, and if listerine doesn't work, i just might start using floss. i just can't stand that water pick thing. it really freaks me out. the metal hook is ok, but the water pick just kills me.

has anybody bought a pair of gap jeans lately? the denim feels thinner. it feels nice, but i worry about the durability. i like gap jeans because they fit me, they're cheap and they last a while. but the thinness aspect of it makes me wonder if they're skimping on quality now. the prices of jeans can be quite astonishing. jennie took me to the true religion store in valley fair, and the price tag for one of those things was like over $200. !? for a pair of jeans? no way!

ok, time to put an end to this entry. dinner at 7 with jennie.

getting exercise...

...feels good. i played basketball today for the first time in 2009, after a 2+ week layoff. one 2-on-2 game, a 3-on-4 game, and two 4-on-4 games. pretty tiring. i made quite a few jumpers, but i missed way too many easy point-blank shots. ugh. but afterwards, i was really tired, my achilles were sore, and i felt all hot. i felt so hot that i could have walked out into the frigid air naked and not felt cold. and so far, no dehydration headache. *crossed fingers*

so i've started looking into the code modification/redesign that i have to do. i have to get it done by the end of next week. the code is over 1,200 lines long, so it's no small feat. ugh. in some ways, i'm excited because it's "brainful" work, and i like that, but in another way, i'm just feeling lazy, and i just don't feel like doing anything right now. it's a tug of war going on in my head.

it's a bad idea to call me when i'm watching tv. alan called last night in the middle of _gossip girl_, and i swear, i must have been giving him the spaciest answers. it got to the point where i had to turn on my VCR and tape the show so i could at least be coherent. but anyways, _gg_ was awesome in HD. would you date somebody if your two parents had a kid together? that makes you brother and sister in a way, doesn't it?

i've got dinner tomorrow (jennie), dinner thursday (yuji), and friday lunch (ben) with friends all lined up. time to get social! once _american idol_ starts, i'll be saddled with my television schedule. i'm curious who this 4th judge is and whether they're going to phase out crazy paula.

i had a 10am meeting today, so i woke up at 9:35 and went to mcd's and grabbed breakfast. i took the food into the conference room, and after i finished my sausage & egg biscuit, i crumpled up the wrapper. what i didn't realized was that i was right next to the microphone (we were teleconferencing), so the guy on the other end snapped at us, telling us to NOT rustle the papers or whatever we were doing. i felt embarrassed, and i immediately admitted that it was me and apologized. *blush*

i am touched. there's this guy who does the menial things at our company, like refilling the coffee beans, restocking the drinks in our refridgerators, etc. his name is J. he's very friendly, and i've always been friendly to him back. we've become pals over the years, and during the break, he made a 36-hour drive with his family down to his hometown in mexico and back. and guess what? he brought me back a bottle of tequila! it's a 950ml bottle of herradura reposado. he claims that it's awesome, and it doesn't give you hangovers. what a sweet gesture. when i went down for a smoke today, he gestured for me to come over to his car, and he brought it out and gave it to me. i was floored. he told me about it yesterday, but i thought we were just going to have a shot of it or something. i had no idea he was going to give me a whole bottle as a gift. *beams*

my left earlobe is still really sore and chafed from all the digging i did yesterday. i still think there are some wax remnants in there, though. perhaps i should use the earpicking tools that greg or C got me as gifts; a pinky finger is too dull and fat an instrument, methinks. oh, i took another look at the largest chunk of wax i dug out yesterday; it's more like 55% the size of a dime, not a third. it looks like a brown watermelon seed.

i found a really old friend (from junior high) on facebook the other day. he was my best friend in 7th and 8th grade. but for some reason, we grew very distant after we entered high school. we pretty much stopped talking, even acknowledging each other. i don't think i even saw him in the halls anymore. he's japanese, and back then, he was into country music, which was sort of rare for a japanese dude. (well, asians, especially japanese, in general were pretty rare in my high school.) but anyways, i found his brother the other day, and lo! i saw him as one of his friends. so i got all excited and added him. i hope we can talk again. he's a doctor now (geriatrics) in hawaii, and he's married and has a kid. i'm glad he seems happy and settled down.

i also saw pictures on facebook of kevin and his wife ayesha's (second) wedding ceremony in pakistan. this was a muslim ceremony (kevin's jewish), so all the pictures were in the traditional garb. there's even on a picture in which kevin is wearing a turban. is that against jewish beliefs at all? anyways, the pictures look fabulous. i'm really glad that a jewish man and a muslim woman can get married, and that's ok. i am very curious what kind of belief system the kids will have.

so my parents are thinking seriously now about retirement. i have received a few e-mails from my mom and dad, and what made me sad was that my mom said that she is comfortable living in an old folks' home. HELL NO is she living in an assisted care center. she will live with me before that happens. she also said that as long as she can still go to church and "has the lord," she is fine living anywhere. hm.

joe lunardi's bracketology has four pac-10 teams in the tournament as of today. the last one? stanford! yup, he has us as one of the "last four in." how flattering! of course, it's too early to tell, as we're only two games out of 18 in the pac-10 regular season. but i'm glad he thinks so highly of us. but we shall see as the season goes on.

two of my newer friends just had a baby, and his named is "ehren." cool name. ehren is the name of one of the guys on _jackass_, and i will always remember him as the dude who made a yellow snowcone, tried to eat it, and puked. :)

return to normalcy?

well, it's back to the grind. the routine. back to blogging regularly. back to sitting in front of this computer. back to drinking lots of fluids and peeing like a motherfucker. back to working and using my brain for a few hours a day. it's all right, i guess. but man, was it hard to get up this morning. i snoozed for like 40 minutes before finally dragging myself out of bed.

when i went to lunch today, i felt some rattling in my left ear canal, and then i felt a sharp pain pierce through the area. "crap," i thought, "i'm getting an ear infection." then, i gingerly probed the canal with my right pinky, and i felt some hard pieces of stuff clanking about. so while driving to choi's, i picked out not one, not two, but FIVE pieces of earwax. the last one was about the size of a third of a dime, and it was hard and brown/yellow. WOW. i am amazed that i can still hear with this gunky/flaky shit clinging to my eardrums. anyways, i was a relief that i got this stuff out; i saved some of it so i can take a picture of it later. my ear canal, by the way, is really sore and tender from all that digging and scraping.

i am thinking about getting a roommate. as much as i want/love to live alone, my rent is just too high to afford living there long term. i asked will if he wanted to room with me, but he balked at price. i might reconsider my asking price and talk to him again. hm. i do have a ridiculously high rent, and i'm just too lazy to move and find a one-bedroom apartment. and besides, how many one-bedrooms have their own garage and washer and dryer? those are two necessities (especially the w/d).

my cousin's in town, and it was her birthday yesterday. i really want to take her out to dinner, but she doesn't know her schedule until the last minute. and plus, she's near oakland, so i don't know if i can make it up there. rats.

i need to buy some snacks to combat the fourthmeal cravings. does drinking lots of water to fill up the stomach work? and i thought smoking also cuts down on one's appetite. hm. anyways, my hunger has been raging lately, which also explains why i've gained 10 pounds since thanksgiving. i better play basketball extra hard tomorrow.

i have a chance to go to the katy perry concert later on this month. i would go, except for a few problems. 1) i don't know her music that well except for her two radio songs. 2) it's on a wednesday night up in the city (at the fillmore). 3) i'd be chaperoning my friend's teenage daughter and her friend, which would be a bit annoying and weird. but i do like katy perry; she's sort of cute/hot. but do i like her enough to spend $50 to go through all that just to ogle her?

grace made an amazing cake for her nephew's 5th birthday. basically, she made an entire monopoly board game, including the board, dice, houses, cards, and the playing pieces. everything was edible (for example, the game pieces were made out of silver-dyed fondant). she showed me pictures that john took, and i was fucking astounded. she had a lot of help from friends, and all in all, she said it took about 25 man hours to create. dude, i would have cried when the cake was finally cut in to pieces. astounding!

assuming i won't see my cousin, tonight will be the first night where i will see a new episode of _gossip girl_ in HD. i am very excited. leighton meester in hi-def glory! *rubs hands in anticipation* and afterwards, i won't have to watch the two shows on CBS because they're both reruns.

with the cowboys out of the NFL playoff picture, i am getting into stanford men's basketball now. last night's game was fun to watch (because we won), and this thursday will be a tough road test at washington. we don't have decent interior defense, so brockman will be a tough player to defend. arizona's jordan hill was tough enough last night, and brockman's even better. it'll be interesting to see how we do. luckily, the game will televised. go cardinal!

today, while taking a piss, i was standing there, going at it, and then, with my relaxed pelvic muscles, i felt something about to come out of my ass. i guess all the muscles are tied together, so i had to cut off my stream, which was so hard to do that i leaked a bit onto my boxers, and run to the neighboring stall so i could try to take a shit. i ended up being just a fart. ugh. so i soiled myself for some innocent gas.

i don't like the new espn.com. at all. there's less information. yuck.

i realized during the break that i didn't think about some people (from the office) at all. i guess i *do* compartmentalize my job very well. one of these people was the cute girl. i got in the elevator with her this morning, and i realized that she did not cross my mind once during the past 11 days. so i guess i don't really like her much at all anymore.

over the break, before i went over to felix's place for the football games on saturday, i grabbed froyo at mel's sweet corner. it was my first yogurt since before my UK/ireland trip. with the frigid weather, i just haven't been craving it. but i figured i wanted a light lunch, so i decided to get it. it was sort of refreshing, actually; i had almost forgotten what a tart yogurt tasted like. and the mochi! ah, it was good, although there wasn't enough of it.

is pinkberry at santana row yet?

last day of the break

so sunday, i had lunch with jeffrey and nicki. after they got done with church, i introduced them to dusita. nicki's benchmark dish is the green curry chicken (which she liked), and i also ordered the spicy crispy catfish (jeffrey's favorite), and duck run (nicki's favorite), and the pad see ew with pork. all in all, they thought the food was very good. we ordered way too much, though, and they ended taking home the leftovers.

i went home and passed out for over two hours while watching the eagles/vikings game. the eagles won, which i kinda expected because tavaris jackson (the vikings' quarterback) struggled mightily against the eagles' defense. rats. that could have been us (the cowboys) winning the game.

i was supposed to meet up with jenC for coffee at 3pm, but instead, i met up with her at 6pm at kabul (afghani food) for dinner instead. i was still full for dinner, but so i ordered a semi-light dish (beef with tomatoes, eggplant and spices) with seasoned rice. i got re-stuffed afterwards. we had a good chat, and we talked about jen's recent trip to peru and aruba. she was hardcore, hiking 50km along the inca trail and all that.

after dinner, i said goodbye to jen and told her not to wait for me as i rushed back into the restaurant and took a nasty dump. then, i rushed home and watched the stanford vs. arizona basketball game. it was a good game, as we forced a lot of turnovers and played solid defense. we won, which atoned for our 30-point blowout loss to ASU. i was pleased. i was worried for a bit, because in the beginning, we had no interior defense, and jordan hill was kicking our ass.

after that, i watched _superstars of dance_ for the next two hours or so. it featured two dance numbers (including solo, duet, and group) from each of eight countries, and then judgement from a judge from each of those eight countries. you could tell that this was a _sytycd_-inspired show (even though it was on another network) because it featured the santa monica popper and pasha/anya from _sytycd_. china did horribly at first (the ribbon dancer), but then they closed the show out with these shaolin monks doing kung fu (i mean, it was interesting, but is that even considered dancing?), which got high marks. anyways, i'm not going to watch this anymore.

in the middle of the show, i got hungry again (see what i mean about gaining weight?), so i got a fourthmeal: a sourdough jack. man, i have got to cut these out if i'm to lose 10 pounds as per my new year's resolution.

anyways, that was the last day of my break, and now i'm back here at work. i've got a ton of work to do, so let's hope that i can survive the hectic schedule.

the break winds down

on new year's day, i went to adam's house at 12:30 after getting up. then, from there, adam, rae and i drove up to oakland for this "oshogatsu" celebration. it was put on by the members of somei yoshino taiko ensemble (SYTE). adam called it an "art crowd," and man, i had never seen so many men wearing berets before. haha! it was a potluck, and there was a lot of food there. my favorite was the kimchi rice, which i ate so much of that i got a food coma and passed out for a while in a chair.

at 3:30, there was a taiko performance, which was the main reason why i went. the members of SYTE and their students played two songs. the first one resembled "miayke," which was basically soloing on a horizontal drum to a syncopated beat, and the second was "yodan uchi." it was good to see taiko again. i talked some taiko with some of the SYTE members, so i was afraid that they would make me play. luckily, they didn't, because i could have made a complete fool of myself.

around 4:30 or so, we left, and got home in about an hour. i called up john, and he, mikeC and i looked around for some places to eat. we wanted to go to wahoo's, but the closest one was closed. so, in the end, we went to duke of edinburgh. i got the shepherd's pie and fries. i think i burned my tongue on it, but it was very tasty nonetheless. of course, i got some irish whiskey (black bush on the rocks). afterwards, we hung out at john's place for a while.

friday, i didn't see a single friend. i woke up, got something quick, and watched some college football. then, i went out and ran some errands. first, i had noticed that my watch was running a bit slow, so i figured it was time to get a new battery. so i went to the stanford shopping center to gleim jewelers (formerly johnson and co.). they told me it would cost $85 to do a battery change and pressure test. then, i shopped around at BR, bloomingdale's, and macy's men's. i was looking for a cool track jacket, especially at ben sherman, but alas, i didn't find anything.

then, i got a badly needed haircut. my favorite cute girl was there. apparently, she works fridays, saturdays, and sundays, so i think i'll go there on fridays from now on. i tipped her $4 on a $14 haircut.

then, for dinner, i was really hungry, so i went to la bamba and got a super carnitas burrito. then, i watched the utah/alabama sugar bowl. utah played really well, and they upset the mighty crimson tide. i didn't do much afterwards, but i did talk to davidC for a while.

then today, i got up at noon and went over to felix's place to watch the two playoff games. for the first one, atlanta played arizona pretty close, but in the end, they lost. then, adam got really pumped up (he even simulates shoulder pads! ha!) for the chargers/colts game. i only watched the first half, and then i left to meet alan and ting in redwood city to watch _slumdog millionaire_.

unfortunately, downtown redwood city was inexplicably clogged with people, so there was no way we would have been able to find parking, so we decided to go to palo alto's aquarius theater to watch the 8:30 showing. first, i hit up pizza my heart to grab two slices for dinner. when i poured parmesan cheese on my two slices, the top came off, and half a cup of cheese came out. BASTARD ASSHOLE. i scooped out what i could with my hands and ate an unreasonable amount of parmesan cheese. it was ok, a bit chalky.

the movie was good. i enjoyed it, and the movie theater was packed. adam told me that the adult latika (freida something or other) looked like k1, and during one scene (the one where she's looking up at the train station), she did a little. but otherwise, she looked nothing like k1. but yeah, i'd highly recommend the movie.

so yeah, now i'm back home, and i'm catching up on the sporting night on espn. congrats to the chargers for their overtime win! i bet adam is sleeping happily tonight. i'll definitely try to catch their upcoming game next weekend with him.

well, one more day until the 2009 work grind starts up again. i'll be pretty busy, as my boss has already gone over my upcoming assignment.

NYE

monday night, i went to bj's to have drinks and dinner with jessica and her crew. the place was packed, and i had to park in apple's visitor lot. i got there just after 6:30, and jessica and leah were the only ones there. i ordered a bushills on the rocks, and we chatted as the rest of the party filtered in. all in all, there were like 11 people or so.

we stayed until 9:30 or so, or at least, i stayed until then before i left early. i had the roast beef dip, which was pretty good. as far as drinks went, i had two bushmills on the rocks and one irish car bomb. man, the irish car bomb fucked me up. both times i've had them now, they're made me feel sick. when i got home, i just felt ill, and i puked my guts out. i wasn't drunk or really buzzed, but just felt gross.

tuesday morning, i got up at 8:30 (early, i had to set my alarm), and i waited for jeffrey to call me from the airport, and then i went to pick him and nicki up. to thank me, they took me out to stacks for breakfast. i had never been to stacks on a weekday morning before, and this time, it was the first time ever that i didn't have to wait. their tuesday morning special was "the popeye omelet" (spinach, bacon, and mushrooms), and it was great.

then, i went to work. yup, that's right, work. i had gotten an e-mail the previous night about an issue about the register test hanging, so i had to go in and debug it. i spent three hours (11-2pm) at the office, and i think i figured out why the test was dumping out.

then, i went home and took a little nap. for dinner, i called up alan and ting. he suggested ramen or indian. i hadn't had indian food since london, so i said indian. we went to darbar (hah, dardy at darbar) in downtown palo alto. we ordered butter chicken, bhindi masala (my pick), and vegetable kurma. alan's dish was our least favorite (ting said it was too sweet). but overall, it was a good meal, and the food really hit the spot.

then, we went on a search for dessert for ting and coffee for the rest of us, so we went to satura cakes, but they didn't have much of a cake selection, so then we went to starbucks. ting got a gingerbread slice, alan a drip coffee, and me a hazelnut latte. i used the starbucks giftcard that my cousin shirley got me. we chatted for a bit, and then we went our separate ways.

then, it was NYE day. i had lunch with john at southland. the usual: ground pork over rice for him, and combination fried rice (no pork liver) for me. then, i went home, took a nap, and then i watched MOST BORING football game ever. oregon state vs. pitt (i think). the final score? *3-0*. WOW.

then, i went over to alan and ting's house for a pre-NYE celebration. jack and his family, and jay and his family came over, too. all the kids were in tow, and of course, to occupy the kids, we watched _kung fu panda_ and _wall-e_. jay brought over dessert, and jack brought king eggrolls. alan ordered some sushi, but i didn't eat much.

margaret told me the sad story of kobe, the maltese that she and jay had. remember, this was the dog that bit me on the toe. so they had to give up kobe when they had their baby, because they couldn't risk having a dog that bites in the house. so kobe got adopted out to various families, but he kept on getting returned because he kept biting and was out of control. well, for the final time, he got returned, and the agency decided to put him down. :( :( :( margaret went to see him on his final day, and she gave him treats, and kobe recognized her and did tricks and all that. margaret cried. :( i feel so sad. i mean, this dog viciously bit me, but i know it wasn't his fault. it was a previous owner that treated him horribly and fucked him up. BASTARD.

around 9:30, all the kids started to get fussy, so we left. i went over to edric's house, where there were a bunch of people enslaved by grace to make game pieces out of fondant from the board game monopoly. (it's for her nephew's birthday cake, and her nephew is obsessed with monopoly.) i had a shot of this really good tequila called "fortaleza." it was a blanco tequila, but it was surprisingly smooth, almost sippable. i tried sipping it, but in the end, i just shot it.

we just hung out and counted down when the clock finally struck midnight. i tried two champagnes, one that was very sweet (like cider) and one that was very dry. then, half an hour later, i went home, hung out on the computer, and then went to bed.

ah, 2008 is over. i hope 2009 brings me something good.