A sort of fairytale with you

Just wanted to point out the coolest website EVER (besides this one, of course).

I've started my library already and in less than an hour, have added over 60 books to it. I think I'll post my book reviews there now instead.

What a cool idea. Now I really will be able to keep track of my books, minus the previous 27-odd years' worth, I guess, though I'm trying to remember what I've read in the past.

Go start your own catalog there and link yours to mine! I'd love to see what you've read and what you think of it!

Like a good book, I can't get this day back

I just finished my Writing Portfolio for my Technical Writing class. What a relief. I made the decision *not* to rewrite the paper I got an A- on, but did rewrite the B- and B+. A nice compromise. I'm having a hard time with the concept of "enough" and not obsessing about the A/4.0.

I'm not taking a class next quarter so I can focus on getting back into shape. After October's horrendous work-every-day schedule, I gained back almost all the weight I lost in the preceding *year*, if you can believe that. I weigh almost as much as I did before I started the crazy workouts before the wedding. (And more than Tyra Banks, I'm sad to report.) But the good news is, I went back to the gym today and started running again. My goal (as the Internet is my witness) is to run a 5K in less than 30 minutes in 2006. I know, for all you runners out there, that's pretty slow, but for me that would be a screamin' pace. And to be honest, I'm not sure I can even run for 5 minutes given the shape I'm in now. Boo.

Thanks to Thanksgiving (hee hee) we have a ton of healthy homecooked food in the house. We had 7 people at Thanksgiving dinner this year: my parents, my brother, my aunt Swarnam(who just happened to be visiting from India!), and my cousin Ram who also works at M$. We used the nice china TJ's grandparents gave us and drank a bottle of the nice Riesling that was almost like the Happy Monk wine that we LOOOVED at Canlis on my birthday this year. Ram also faced his fear of dogs and was totally cool with Spike and Peanut being in the same room as him. (Pretty brave!)

I made a bunch of stuff for dinner - some old favorites and some new recipes from the latest issues of Cooking Light. We also figured out how to cook the happy natural vegetarian pig-based ham we got from Whole Foods. Which, by the way, is AMAZING. (The store, I mean, though the ham was pretty good too.) I went to the Bellevue store for the first time last week and was BLOWN AWAY at how nice it is. They even have a creperie inside. How cool is that?

We're going to the Seahawks/Giants game tomorrow - only a few more for our season tickets. It should be fun, and hopefully not too cold or wet.

Diamonds don't bling in the dark

Yikes. It's been a while, huh? You'd think I'd write more often when I'm busier, cuz' there's more to write about. My parents were here for 6 days and just left this morning. My brother's still here and leaving tonight. TJ and I made Thanksgiving dinner for everyone, including my cousin Ram and my aunt, last night. It's been a fun, busy past couple of days.

My mom and I went to see "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire". What an awesome movie. I'm a little sad that the guy who directed "HP and the Prisoner or Azkaban" didn't do this one, because that movie had a really neat dark vibe. HPatGoF was pretty scary and true to the book, but wasn't as "artistic" as HPatPoA. Some of the details of the "Yule Ball" weren't quite like I imagined, and neither was the magical prefects' bathroom, and the actress who plays Hermione is far too pretty, but all in all, it was a good film version of that extremely long book.

Today I got my hair cut and colored by The Awesome Lindsay again. As usual, I didn't have a style in mind, so I let her Do Her Thing, and she did not disappoint. I have big red stripey highlights, and a cool cut that's short in the back (just to my collar) and a bit longer in front. We'll see if I can reproduce this after washing my hair. I suspect not, but I think it'll look ok anyway. Yay Lindsay!

I'm on my way, just set me free

Oh my god - this was just too good to pass up. Only a few of you will get these, but I thought it was funny. I've edited to remove the ones I didn't get. :)

You Know You're From Pittsburgh When...

"Hey Yunz Guyz" is your traditional greeting. You know the location of the following towns, know someone from them and have spent time there: Monongahela, Altoona, Bethlehem, Ligonier, Harmony, and Wilmerding. You've memorized lines from the movie "Flashdance". If you're a girl, you're biggest fear is getting hit on by a hairy-chested man, heavily weighted in gold chains, who refers to his friends as "junior" at Chauncey's. Your latest cultural experience: On your way to partying at Slippery Rock University, having to stop your car to let the Amish buggy cross the street. As your out-of-town friends brag about their latest trips to Europe, you think to yourself, "Polish Hill will suffice." Your father has worked for the same company for over 20 years. You don't see what all the hype is about Disney World when Kennywood is just around the corner. " N at' " is eloquently added to the end of every sentence. You feel the only good bands out there are Donny Iris, Joe Grushecky, The Blue Oyster Cult, and of course.... Rusted Root. You're more worried about Jerome Bettis's health than your own. You own more than one original Terrible Towel. You don't understand what all the hype is about for Rolling Rock beer. You've been drinking it for years, although Penn Pilsner is better. You consider a great vacation a trip to Conneaut Lake or Lake Erie. For something a little more exotic, a trip to the Jersey shore. You're 35 years old, have never been outside of Allegheny County, and don't see the need to leave. You only own four spices: salt, pepper, Heinz ketchup, and the bottle of Trappey's Red Devil you swiped from Primanti's. For the life of you, you can't understand why your all your out-of-town friends don't get the "fries and cole slaw" thing... Words like: hoagie; chipped ham; pop; and gumband actually mean something to you. You walk carefully when it is "slippy" outside. You often go down to the "crick". You've ever gotten hurt by falling into a "jaggerbush". You know that Ahia is a river, a boulevard, and a state. You've ever "warshed" or "wershed" the laundry. You know you can't drive too fast on back roads,cause-udda-deer. You've drank an "Arn" . You've told someone to "quit jaggin around". You know that Clinton, Monaca, and Beaver, are actually names of towns. You've called someone a 'jaggoff'. You hear "you guyses", or "yins" and don't think twice. You hate Cleveland, although you've never been there. You drink "pop", eat "hoagies", pierogies, and gyros(jy-rows). You know what a still mill is. You can find Zillionopal on a map. You go 'food shoppin' at 'Jine Iggle'. You know someone from 'Sliberty, E-sliberty, or Wesliberty. You know the Pittsburgh Zoo is in 'Hilinpark' and have been there for school field trips. You know what is meant by "The Point". You actually get these jokes and pass them on to other friends from Pittsburgh.

Get Your Own "You Know You're From" Meme Here

And it makes me feel so fine I can't control my brain

My Starbucks chai exploded all over Otto's front seat today. Ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration, because most of the chai stayed in the cup. But what a bummer. Now I need to go clean out the cupholder and the spots on the seat and steering wheel that got splooged with my grande nonfat 1-pump chai (don't ask).

I think I'm digging the pink blog. And speaking of pink...

Last night on ESPN Sportscenter, there was a whole story about how the Univ. of Iowa stadium's visitor's locker room is painted pink. Even the urinals are pink. Apparently the idea was to give the home team a psychological "edge" over their opponents. Now there's obvious sexist intent here, making the visiting team feel like "girls" or whatever. But I think it's kind of funny anyway. Apparently there are some people who are really upset about this. Honestly, with so much injustice and overt racism/sexism/homophobia/etc. in the world, why would you choose this as your battle?

I think I know what you think of me

I was sick of the old template, and the new flowery graphic wasn't working for me either. There are a lot of free Blogger templates available on the Web, but I just wasn't happy with a lot of them, so I came back and picked one of the templates Blogger provides on their site. Over time, I'll tweak it to be a little more personal.

For some reason, I was feeling pink. I wish I could effortlessly design my own template but I don't even know how to begin with that. So I'll settle for poking at the available ones until it's "just right".

Ignoring the ads, I love the design of dooce.com. (She's supporting her family with those ads - apparently her site is one of the top visited blogs on the whole Internet.) The top graphic changes from time to time (seasonally) and is always *really* cool. Everything else is clean and simple. I'd be all set if I could design something like that.

For now I'll have to settle with not-quite-perfect and the restlessness that comes with this crappy winter weather, which makes me want to buy new clothes I don't really need and make other sweeping changes around the house.

And the car drama continues. TJ bought this yesterday from a guy at Microsoft:


The Micronews really does rock! That's where we found Spike and sold the Saturn, too. I think this car's name is Simon. So maybe the Micronews works for cool things that start with the letter 'S'?

The distance erased with the greatest of ease

Last night, Doyle, Dre, Lisa and I went to see Vienna Teng at the Triple Door in downtown Seattle. VT is slowly creeping up on Toad the Wet Sprocket and Queensryche as far as the number of times I've seen them live. This was my 4th Vienna Teng concert. I think I've seen TTWS 6 times (alas, no more!) and QR 7 times.

And WOW, what a show. I keep forgetting how much better it is to see music live. This time, VT had a drummer - in the past it was either her, unaccompanied except by her own piano playing, or with a couple of string instruments. But this was a much more rockin' show and I LOVED it. Even more than Weezer/Foo Fighters a few weeks ago. She played Harbor, which I put on the CD of songs we played as the guests were arriving at our wedding. That made my day. It even more made my day when she said it was her experiment in "Progressive Rock". Woo hoo. I'm so amazed that someone smart enough to get a degree in CS from Stanford, who worked at Cisco as a developer, can be *such* a talented singer/songwriter/piano player. Apparently when god was handing out the good stuff, she stood in line twice :)

Just like when I was 13, a good concert will keep me happy for days. The cool thing about VT is that, though I've heard her two CDs a million times, when she does the songs live, there's always something different about them. And not different in that weird Adam Duritz-talking through the song- sort of way, but in a familiar, but brilliant way, that makes me listen to the CD versions and notice new things in them. Which is just AWESOME. Though I do wish she'd come out with a new album SOON. She played some new songs last night which were great too.

And I got to chat with her briefly after the show. The weird part is she said she recognized me from one of the other shows. Sometime last year I think, or maybe even 2003. Anyway, that's kind of cool. I can't quite imagine Geoff Tate from Queensryche saying something like that. Though, come to think of it, Randy, the drummer from TTWS told Jasmine and me he remembered seeing us the last time we saw them in Seattle. Maybe I'm funny looking and that's why.

I have a sore throat again. Boo. Hopefully it won't last four weeks this time.

A little bit of disregard

Ugh. I got a B on my Tech Writing midterm. Which is not too shabby considering I was feeling pretty ill after the customer event last week, and didn't exactly have any time to study. However, it is a bit humbling, since I thought I did pretty well and yet, a third of the class (at least) did better than I did. So I guess I need to buckle down and study at least a bit.

I'm rockin' out to some stuff I downloaded from iTunes, specifically "Island in the Sun" by Weezer. As part of the customer event last week, we went to the Foo Fighters/Weezer concert. We rented out 5 luxury suites and had food, beer and wine, as well as a great view of the stage. I was not particularly excited about the concert since neither band is one I'd pay to see. But OH MY GOD. It was one of the BEST concerts I've ever been to. (Perhaps it was the fact that I could stand there with a glass of wine and rock out in the comfy suite?) Dave Grohl is a madman and has serious ENERGY when he performs. He did the most amazing version of "Everlong", which is definitely in my top 10 favorite songs of ALL TIME. And Weezer has a lot of great songs that I didn't realize was them until the show. So I spent about $12 on iTunes downloading my favorites. I'm burning them to CD so I can listen to them with Otto.

Today after class I had lunch with Dre, the first time I've seen her since she had Evan in August. (I know, I'm a bad friend.) He is an adorable baby- cute little round head (do they all have round heads?) and red hair.

Well, back to the boring task of cleaning up the office. Boo.

Remember yesterday and all the dreams we had

A moment of silence for my Saturn, which I sold today.



I got a pretty good deal for it, but it's still kind of sad to sell the first new car I ever bought. It will always have a special place in my heart, since I bought it as soon as I got the job offer from Deloitte Consulting.

TJ and I tried a new restaurant today - Blue Ginger in Bellevue. Korean + sushi. Talk about YUM. Nice atmosphere/interior and pretty good service too. The Bee Bim Bop was the best winter comfort food and exactly what I was looking for. We'll definitely go back when we're in the mood for Korean BBQ.

The workers are going home

Here's Otto. Thanks to TJ for taking the picture. It was a small price to pay since I let him drive Otto to work today. He's going to end up doubling Otto's mileage.

I have someone interested in looking at the Saturn so I have to take it for a wash/vacuum before work. Wish me luck in selling it!

Congrats to Kristin on her new condo! I can't wait to see it!