loser.

loser!

so i lost the ebay auction for those JM tickets. there's a strategy involved, i've noticed. people wait until the very last minute, then place some aberrant bid amount like$150.21. then in those final moments before the bidding closes, you're trying to figure out what is the minimum amount you should bid to still out-bid them. sneaky! and if your computer is slow like mine, even if i was willing to put an overpriced bid, i still lose because my computer didn't process quickly enough as i was hitting the Place Bid button a million times a minute. alot of times, people will wait until the very last moment before putting in their higher bid. here i was, thinking i got the tickets for sure because no one had out-bid me for a day. next thing i knew, as the last grain of sand fell through the hourglass, i was out-bid and lost!

i am an e-bay loser.

i wish.

my feelings are true
whether we end up together or not
chemistry is crucial
but is the rest of it not?

i wish we weren't so different
i wish you wanted kids
i wish coming up with baby names
was as fun as picking out cribs.
i wish you loved dogs
and saw the magic in their eyes
i wish you didn't sneeze around them
causing tearful goodbyes.
i wish you loved the sun
shining on your face
i wish you loved the outdoors
just as much as any indoor place.
i wish you loved to roam the world
like the gypsy i am
i wish you could pick up and go anywhere with me
on a carefree whim.
i wish you weren't stuck
in boring oc
much more to my taste
is santorini.
i wish i thought of all this
before i fell in love with you
because now i've no idea
what i'm supposed to do.

china.

since when was it so hard to volunteer in relief efforts?
i looked everywhere, on dozens of websites, to see where they could possibly use my help. all i found were "donations wanted" banners. how about hands-on help? from red cross to peace corps to mercy corps to doctors without borders to orbis int'l to feed the children, they all said it was either too soon to go to the epicenter or you had to find employment or donations wanted.

free help right here. up for grabs. time to give back to my people who need me. who ever thought people don't want something completely free? it just boggles my mind.
well, this blog post was pretty helpful for those who are continuing to look for ways to help those poor people.
Chinese Earthquake: How to help

where i'm at.

moratorium

Etymology:
New Latin, from Late Latin, neuter of moratorius dilatory, from Latin morari to delay, from mora delay

1 a: a legally authorized period of delay in the performance of a legal obligation or the payment of a debt b: a waiting period set by an authority

2: a suspension of activity

ever get that warm feeling in your heart?

today, my 60-something year old former co-worker left me one of the most endearing messages i have ever heard on voicemail. i had emailed her to let her know i would be resigning from my job very soon. in response, she emailed me back, saying she gasped upon reading this. then she called me and on my voicemail said something to the effect of, "you are one of my most favorite people i have ever met."

that left a knot in my throat and a tear in my eye, seeing as how many people she must have met in her long life and choosing me as one of her favorites. she would periodically email me telling me how much she missed me.

but,

wow. talk about making my day. :)

thanks judy.

john mayer - no such luck.

all his good seats are sold out. i didn't know waiting a month could mean the difference between lawn seats and any seats at all. i've been wanting to hear him sing for so long. no more real seats on ticketmaster. on ticketsnow, everything is so inflated and pretty much lawn seats too. so i took my chance on ebay but pretty sure i will be outbid the obnoxious amount i dared to bid. 1 more day til the bid ends.

oh i so wanted to hear him croon his sweet ballads...because i know each one was written for me. :)

dragon boat festival - june 8, 2008.

zong zi! Dragon Boat Festival

Dragon Boat Festival is called Duan Wu Jie in Chinese. Jie means festival. The festival is celebrated on the 5th of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar.

The most popular theory of the origin of the festival is that it was derived from the activities of commemorating a great patriot poet, Qu Yuan. The story about Qu Yuan has been deeply rooted in Chinese culture and this festival, so it is definitely a very important factor for the origin of the festival.

But since some of the well-known traditions of the festival already existed even before Qu Yuan, other origins of the festival were also suggested. Wen Yiduo suggested that the festival may be associated with dragon closely because two of the most important activities of the festival, dragon boat racing and eating zongzi, are related to dragon. Another view is that the festival is originated from the taboo of evil days. The fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar is traditionally considered an evil month and the 5th of the month is particularly a bad day, so a lot of taboo had been developed.

Most likely, the festival was gradually derived from all of the suggestions and the story of Qu Yuan is certainly the driving power to make it a great festival today.

Like other Chinese festivals, there is also a legend behind the festival. Qu Yuan served in the court of Emperor Huai during the Warring States (475 - 221 BC). He was a wise and erudite man. His ability and fight against corruption antagonized other court officials. They exerted their evil influence on the Emperor, so the Emperor gradually dismissed Qu Yuan and eventually exiled him. During his exile, Qu Yuan did not give up. He traveled extensively, taught and wrote about his ideas. His works, the Lament (Li Sao), the Nine Chapters (Jiu Zhang), and Wen tian, are masterpieces and invaluable for studying ancient Chinese culture. He saw the gradual decline of his mother country, the Chu State. And when he heard that the Chu State was defeated by the strong Qin State, he was so despaired that he ended his life by flinging himself into the Miluo River.

Legend says after people heard he drowned, they were greatly dismayed. Fishermen raced to the spot in their boats to search for his body. Unable to find his body, people threw zongzi, eggs and other food into the river to feed fish, so hoped to salvage his body. Since then, people started to commemorate Qu Yuan through dragon boat races, eating zongzi and other activities, on the anniversary of his death, the 5th of the fifth month.

Zongzi is the most popular food for the festival. Zongzi is a special kind of dumpling. It is usually made of glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo leaves. Fresh bamboo leaves are the best for the wrapping since the taste and smell of the fresh bamboo leaves is part of zongzi. Unfortunately fresh bamboo leaves are hard to find.

Today you may see zongzi in different shapes and with a variety of fillings. The most popular shapes are triangular and pyramidal. The fillings include dates, meat, yolk of egg, etc. The most popular fillings are dates. The festival is closely associated with zongzi and dragon boat races. More importantly this is also a national patriot festival through commemorating the great patriot poet, Qu Yuan. People are reminded that the importance of loyalty and commitment to the community in the festival.

extra extra, read all about it!

update on miss nibblet: dog-sitter said she's doing swell, no more liquid poop, healthy as can be and had loads of fun up north. hooray!

treasures of nature.

oh how i love nature. they make for the nicest fotos!

the sky's the limit.

beautiful skies on memorial weekend in the oc.

Rejected.

guess those bluehairs didn't think i could hack it.
back to the drawing board.
jailbirds may be a bit friendlier but i don't know if i want to be friends with them.

at least my pug still loves me. :)

starstruck.

just interviewed this star in my office. shoulda got her autograph!

She's a star!

She played with Brandon Lee as a child.

Dan Inosanto is her father. He is a famous martial artist. He was Bruce Lee's student.

she gave me her business card. she's an actress/director/writer/stuntwoman. perhaps she'll produce one of my film ideas?

sick puppy.

nibblet has come down with some serious diarrhea. starting at 6pm last night, her poop became increasingly more and more liquid. at 3 am, i woke up to her running crazily around the house, and i knew she either had to poop or pee. i went to the living room area and there she was, delivering poop all over the floor. poor thing. at 5am sharp, once again, found her delivering liquid poop. by 7am, i had learned the pattern. i felt her jump off of the mattress and ran after her and led her outside where she delivered fecal hell to the grass. again, 9am sharp, i was able to get her outside in time. i was worried. she has G-I problems but this was excessive. i couldn't figure out if she ate something bad at the park, caught something from another pooch, if it was the string cheese i gave her days ago, if she had a stomach flu, or what. so i called an emergency pet clinic and other local vets and consulted with whomever picked up the phone. i decided to bring her in, knowing the vets would tell me what i was already reading online about dog diarrhea. i took the first appointment. i consulted with my dog-sitter, who told me nibblet had ingested 2 tampons this past weekend! good god! i was horrified! i did tell the vet about the pons and he didn't even really react.

of course the vet sent us home after 2 hours with every medication off the shelf accompanied by a bill that was my economic stimulus check, no real answers, and advice that i had read online as well a follow-up appt. the fecal test results would be in tomorrow so we still didn't know if it was something more serious. poor sick puppy. so i went to the market afterwards to get some chicken to cook rice with for her 'bland meal' and cheese to wrap her antibiotics with. it was hot in the car and she looked like she wasn't going to make it. we had to make trips to several places and the a/c vent just didn't go down low enough to blast on her. coupled with her probable dehydration from diarrhea, i felt god-awful.

but we made it home. she enjoyed her home cooked chicken and rice meal, with rice bits all over her whiskers, face and paws. so cute. she took her medicine, without objection. she slept while i managed to go into work for 4 hours. let's hope my dogs-sitter comes back with lovely memorial day stories about nibblet's poop being rock hard.

The Ha-ha

Just finished listening to the audiobook, The Ha-ha.

The ha-ha or sunken fence is a type of boundary to a garden, pleasure-ground, or park, designed not to interrupt the view and to be invisible until closely approached. The ha-ha consists of a trench, the inner side of which is vertical and faced with stone, with the outer slope face sloped and turfed - making it in effect a sunken fence or wall.

First novel about a man badly scarred in Vietnam, and scarred by it, who at last begins recovery. Howard Kapostash can only grunt, so he carries a card explaining his condition: he is of normal intelligence but can't speak, read, or write ... more ». His emotional IQ has always lagged behind, however, and his war experiences have aggravated the problem. He's still vaguely in love with his high-school sweetheart, Sylvia, even though her life is one of incompetent motherhood and addiction. When Sylvia's sister forces her into rehab, Howard is pressed into taking care of Sylvia's nine-year-old son, Ryan, a surly, wounded, and uncommunicative child with whom Howard has only a passing relationship. Living with him now, though, in the house where Howard once lived with his own emotionally wounded parents, a father-son relationship begins to grow. They share the house, without intimacy or much cordiality, with a Vietnamese-American soup-maker, Laurel, and with the house painters Steve and Harrison, whom Howard calls Nit and Nat. Howard buys Ryan a baseball glove, takes him to the fights, attends his school play. Gradually, emotional barriers fall, and, as the rehab stretches into to weeks, the five become a family, for the first time caring for one another's well being. Howard, paterfamilias-like, even lends Harrison a suit to attend his father's funeral. Then Sylvia returns, a new lover in tow, and Howard, after years of disappointment and just weeks of hope, is reduced to a bearlike existence. He lashes out at the new couple in an effort to protect his young and his family, violence that brings him a brief sanitarium sojourn. But the tide has turned. Howard slowly regains his humanity, his emotional life begins unfolding, and his newfound family begins to come back together.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
my rating: 2.5 out of 5. honestly the synopsis on the backcover was much more interesting than how it was written. i did like the story line, which was why i borrowed the audiobook in the first place, but i suppose it just didn't rate high for me on readability, or rather, listenability.

i do like the metaphor, however, and do believe i have quite a few ha-ha's myself.

objects in mirror are closer than they appear.

i was driving at high speed on the freeway. as i drove past this huge metal object on the shoulder lane, i thought to myself, "good thing that's not on the road." next thing i knew, i heard this loud bang/thump/scrape/clank beneath my car. i had run right over another huge metal object. i thought for sure all 4 of my tires and the entire bottom of my car was taken out. it sounded so awful. the ford focus in front of me quickly exited to the shoulder lane and had at least 1 flat tire, if not 2. i decided to follow the car to the shoulder lane, expecting my car to be in the same shape as his. however, as i continued, surprisingly, i did not have a flat. as i continued, i drove past the huge truck carrying the culprit metal objects causing so much danger and hassle, parked in the shoulder, and watched the guy trying to secure way too many jagged metal objects in the truck despite the size of the back of the truck. all the metal was housed in thin clear plastic only.

advice: never drive behind a truck filled with big things while on the freeway. i learned from a cohort who did a neuropsych hospital internship rotation that most of the brain damaged patients she saw were there because of injuries and accidents caused by large things flying out of trucks on the road and into their cars. it could have been worse. the metal object could have flown into someone's windshield today. i'm actually grateful to the ford focus because i think if he had not run over the metal object and gotten a flat, as a result causing it to fly to a different location (that which would be beneath my car), it would have been me. and perhaps a flat tire would have been the least of my worries.

pinkberry. sprinkles.

what is the big deal with pinkberry yogurt? it ain't pink and there's no berry in it. other than the green tea flavored frozen yogurt, i have a feeling people eat it cus it's 'in.' ice cream is sooooooooo much better.



and same with Sprinkles cupcakes? overrated and apparently in america, overeaten!

i've had both gimmicky items. when u pass by these two shops in your car, one piece of advice: KEEP GOING!

compromise.

there's compromise
deep in her eyes
would self-deceit count as lies
is the only redemption 100 good-byes?
what is she willing to give?
everything but the will to live?
would she do what she did?
or only what he said?
where will she draw the line?
how far is she inclined?
will she heed the signs
no matter what she finds?
it's never too late to go
no matter what time will show
is the ultimate blow
denying what she knows?
friends warn her of the worst
that her identity will be housed in a hearse
but are they too terse
and inflicting upon her a curse?
ask yourself the question
not susceptible to suggestion
that is the only path to redemption
there is no exception.

CYA

and i don't mean c ya.

when you have an office climate where people's motto is cover-your-ass, what you get are people who are tattling on each other, kissing their bosses' asses to earn brownie points and to keep their jobs, paranoia and mistrust, backstabbing, fakeness, and total neglect of what's actually important such as team work and quality of service for the clients served.

last week was eye opening. it was amazing how many people unraveled when i decided to take one day off. the women reared their ugly heads. the men ducked theirs. and i used mine to headbutt those who got in my way.

the CYA mentality coupled with menopausal women is one lethal combo. being subjected to this would constitute a lethal injection into the environment and completely cruel and unusual punishment.

fun at the cheesecake fact.

emma is the star of the day
hip hip hooray!
big or small
we all love the cheesecake factory!

'checking out' of the library system.

at first i thought it was just a ventura county library thing. i tried to get a library card at thousand oaks city library. i was so proud because i made it there just in time before closing so i could check out audiobooks for my long commutes to and from OC. i picked the perfect audiobooks too, and even began imagining the smooth narrator voice reading me the finest story ever told and me reveling in the author's imagination of how his/her book should be heard by the readers. lo and behold, i get to the checkout counter, and the guy asks if i reside in thousand oaks. no, i don't. it doesn't even count if i reside in the next town over (although my DL still reflects my central coast address, but i did have a local business card handy) or the same county. i'd have to pay an annual fee to check out anything except media, which wasn't even free of charge to begin with. he explains to me that because it's a city library, not a county library, it's private and exclusive for T.O. residents because it's funded by the city's taxpayers. what the hell happened? whatever happened to local, FREE, PUBLIC libraries? i thought library was synonymous with free knowledge for the general public regardless of what address is listed on their DL. so i politely declined and asked for change to buy my next meal..no, just kidding.

so i then i trek over to the simi valley library, confident my actual residence in that city would allow me free reign over all the magnificent audiobooks in their fine shelves. once again at the checkout counter, the library rep asks me for my DL,which i show him.

"ma'am, do you have a local residence?"
"why, yes i do, but i recently moved so my DL does not reflect that."
"well, you need to show verification that you reside in simi valley. do you happen to have a paystub or bill or anything signifying this?"

WHAT?!? i had bills and paystubs at home, but since when did FREE, PUBLIC libraries go extinct? probably before dinosaurs did!

"i don't have those items with me, sir, but i do have my local business card. will that suffice?"

BINGO. one good thing my employer did for me is issue me local business cards. wa-la! off i go with 3 audiobooks tucked under my happy little arms. too bad those audiobooks didn't end up half as good as their back covers purported. but i do have to recommend The Life Of Pi. pretty good Indian accent, if i do say so myself.

ok. so here i was today, at the OC public library. i had a bad feeling the same thing was going to happen. my DL still says atascadero, i still did not have verification i resided in OC because I DON'T. but gosh darnit, i wanted to check out audiobooks. i wanted to enjoy what public libraries were intended for--free knowledge and entertainment, and a place to cool off on a 100 degree day like today. but it was a county library, so would the same rules apply? would it be a free library open to all? kinda like what the statue of liberty must represent to all those immigrants entering ellis island for the first time. the hope and promise of the american dream, land of the free, home of the brave. except all i was looking for was a land of free audiobooks! is that too much to ask for? apparently.

"i'm sorry ma'am. your DL does not match the address listed on your application."
"oh that's because i recently moved. but i can provide a business card that is in the same city as where i reside. or i can just use the old address listed on my DL." i did not care if they sent bills to my non-working address.
"well the business card address does not match the address listed on your application."
"well, that can be changed."
"well the business card address does not match the address listed on your application."
[was this woman brain damaged?]

so she referred me over to another woman who was obviously her superior.
same conversation ensued. i inform her that the kind lady at the Information desk (and i was telling the truth) said as long as i am a CA residence, i can apply for a library card. the superior said this was incorrect, but she would be so kind as to make one exception for a desperate wanna-be library patron just this one time although this was clearly NOT the policy as i needed to be a residence of OC plus,
"well the business card address does not match the address listed on your application."

i wanted to choke this barely high school educated non-English speaking person of authority in her corner of the world. she very reluctantly scanned my items, making sure i did not exceed my new library patron checkout limit of 3 items. she reminded me once again that this was truly an exception she herself was making despite the MisInformation desk lady telling me otherwise. checking out those audiobooks felt harder than getting away with a million dollar jackpot that wasn't mine. as i left the AC building into the sweltering oven heat, i was still baffled at how public libraries became so exclusive to certain residents, wallet sizes, and apparently, what was written on your DL. and if you pass those tests, you still have to contend with the patron-satisfication-NOT-guaranteed dimwits running the place.

what happened to the days of sweet old lady librarians who would so kindly stop in the midst of organizing their dewey decimal systems on old hand-written index cards that fit neatly into old wooden index shelves just to answer your questions?

after checking out these library systems and barely being able to check out anything besides librarians' bad attitudes, i am so checking out of the library system. next up: downloadable online books.

Woodbridge--a trip down memory lane.

what a pleasant afternoon in woodbridge. this was the man-made lake near Waters. D took me down memory lane in irvine, his old stomping ground. can you believe he used to be half the height of the rocks that are shown? he used to climb those rocks. now he's at least twice as tall. so that begs the question: do things look bigger because you were smaller or do they look smaller because now you're bigger?

sometimes i forget how lovely OC can be. u do have to look a little harder but i do believe every place on earth has some redeeming quality about it; it just takes some creative searching and the right frame of mind.

what a great afternoon to be in love. :)

birthday girl.

happy birthday
to the coolest girl in town
the biggest smiles
were seen all around.
good chinese food
filled our tummies
it was general consensus
vittles were mighty yummy.
the cake was delish
courtesy of ralph's
lots of purple and white
filled our mouths.
gramma loved the company
more than anything else
here's to a lifetime of joy
and wonderful health!

happy 83rd birthday wipwo. i had forgotten that a person is considered a year old at birth because time in the womb counts. so actually, it was gramma's 84th birthday.

either way, here's to many more, on channel 4, wipwo!