Just SO

my mommy loves me

2010-11-28T14:11:00.000-08:00

i know my mommy loves me. she shows me in lots of ways. like making me food when i go home, buying me clothes so i look like a grown woman instead of a teenager, buying my make up to make me look presentable and not a slob, and trying to marry me off to a nice korean boy. sometimes i wish she'd stop showing and just say "i love you".

a little background: my mom has tried to set me up with nice korean boys for years. after i moved to ny, it stopped (mostly because i lived in new york and she didn't know anyone in new york) and it was awesome. but recently she's really made an effort to get me dating so i can get married already. and pop out those grandbabies. turns out she's been passing out my number and email to anyone who knows anyone with an available boy. no screening process. just 1.) korean 2.) single 3.) older than me. which makes me feel oh so confident in her choice of boys.

speaking of choice of boys, my mom has made it clear over the years that there is a ranking system of who is an acceptable son-in-law. 1.) korean 2.) american 3.) chinese that's pretty much where the ranking ends and the nos start. my dad has added no japanese and no koreans straight from korea (he says there are cultural differences that would make things difficult on me). my mom has expanded on the no list to include: jews and muslims (bc they shouldn't marry outside their religion), blacks, or indians. i'm sure more would be added to the no list if she were asked. i've never asked about native americans. but black muslims got a very firm no. when i asked about mexicans she said that they were ok as long as everything else was in order (they're smart, have a good job, etc).

stay tuned! you'll get to read about the different boys i've been subjected to. horray!

postop?

2010-02-28T08:12:00.000-08:00

attention world! (aka the three people who read this thing)

I'm moving! to the third floor! i anticipate it to be the easiest move ever. no going out side, no renting a van, no getting boxes... but i also anticipate a slow migration of stuff. like stuff going up in stages. take a box up, dump stuff out, take box down, fill, repeat.

today a guy actually responded to the craigslist ad for the room. not mine. crazy's room. but maybe he'll want my room instead. my room is much better. anyways. i describe him to people at the german postdoc. that seems pretty descriptive to me. but when i told my coworker, the word postdoc was a mystery to him. "wait. what? post OP? like a tranny?" ..........no.

iphone

2009-12-20T01:51:00.000-08:00

sometimes when i get an email from someone and it says "sent from my iPhone" on the bottom, i want to reply back and end it with "sent from my laptop". just to see what would happen.

visitors!

2009-10-16T03:21:00.000-07:00

my parents came to visit last weekend. this is huge. i've lived in new york for two years now and this is the first time they've visited me. here are some highlights:
- on saturday we went to the american natural history museum. we pretty much walked around all day on little sleep since they were a bit jetlagged. my mom sorta took a mini nap when we had a coffee break.
-my dad had a dream friday night and when he woke up he said that he needed to buy some lotto tickets. we bought one each. then that night he prayed to God that we'd loose.
- parents in town means good food at restaurants :) on saturday night we met up with distant relatives to a korean restaurant. i got really excited to see the table filling with banchan and appetizers. and on sunday for lunch we went to a japanese place owned by my aunt's friend. they didn't give us menus. the food just came. it was awesomeeeeeeeeeeeeee! a HUGE platter of assorted sushi, pork salad, mochi, and more. it was an almost 3 hr lunch. i don't know the last time i ate so much!
- we walked around 10 miles each day wandering the city. including walking across the brooklyn bridge and then realizing that i don't actually know where the subway stop to get back is.
- my dad fixed my door. now it actually stays shut when i close it. but now i have to turn the knob to open the door.

i like having visitors. it makes me fall in love with the city again. i get to go on adventures through the city, find random statues and make up stories about why they were commissioned, and re-experience all the little things that make up manhattan that i usually rush through.

picky eaters..

2009-09-28T03:19:00.000-07:00

i am an equal opportunity eater. if it's food, i'll probably try it. it bugs me when i find out that someone is a picky eater or refuses to eat something because it's out of their comfort zone. even in a hypothetical situation.

my roommate is the whitest boy i know. he's from wyoming and went to michigan state. which means he grew up eating square middle state food like meat and potatoes. he finds the idea of sushi repulsive (fish just wasn't something he grew up with. and in sushi the fish is GASP!! raw!), he doesn't like beans, doesn't really eat vegetables or fruits.. let alone a mango. i've stopped offering him food because the answer is always no. his eating habits are both weird to me and a bit fascinating.

the other day, i met another guy whose food habits surprised me. he lives in sunset park section of brooklyn and i asked him if he likes the variety of authentic ethnic foods that sunset park is known for. i referenced mexican food (i love mexican food) and he told me that he doesn't like to eat non-asian food. i took that comment as an insult to mexican food and fired back that i don't like chinese food. there was an awkward pause. apparently i'm very good at creating awkward moment. yay me.

summertime!

2009-08-15T19:04:00.000-07:00

today actually felt like summer. the sun was out, the air was warm, and not a cloud in sight. it was lovely. especially after the shitty summer we have been having. so today i decided to take a walk through central park when a guy walks past me and asks if i'm taking a hallucinogen or some other drug. i didn't know how to respond to that so i just gave him a weird look and kept walking. then as he's walking away, he says "you must be on a hallucinogen because why else wouldn't you find me attractive?". um. maybe because you asked me if i'm high? just throwing that out there. you know, as a possible reason.

father's day

2009-06-22T00:52:00.001-07:00

today was fathers day so i gave him a call. but he said he couldn't talk long. he was in the middle of a golf tournament.

new policy

2009-06-16T03:27:00.000-07:00

so. i have a new policy. a no-talking-to-strangers policy. when i walk back to the subway after work, i tend to see the same people every week. most of them have no names. just identifiers. first i check to see if the psychic is still awake, if she's on the phone, or if her son is on the phone. then i walk past the econo lodge and see if the black girl is working or the asian girl is working. then i cross the street and wave to the mexican guy with the ponytail at the pizza shop. right next to the pizza place is a bar where there are usually three homelss guys. one gave me a rose. and then took it back after i told him i wasn't going to pay him $5 for it. another sells newspapers. free newspapers. he recently started talking to me and says that i'm always smiling. today i found out his name is truson. then there's omar, the porter at the edison hotel. then lue at the w hotel. and mohamed at the shish kebab stand right in front of the train station. it took a long time to know their names or even say anything more than "good morning". that's really what i wanted. a sesame street moment where we all wave hi and i head on home. now omar wants to hang out and lue wants to go on a picnic. but if i see these ppl away from their hotels, what will happen if we end up hating each other? then i have to find a new way to walk to the train. that's why i have my new policy. or i'm anti-social.

i met meeko. twice!

2009-06-08T00:56:00.001-07:00

one day i was walking through central park when i saw a racoon walking around in the water (fishing, i assume) and i started taking pictures of it. then it realized i was there so it kinda hid from me. by climbing up the tree. and scared me a little since i had given up finding it again. so i took another picture of it, thanked it, and walked away. i'm not sure if the thank you was for letting me take its picture or for not attacking me and giving me rabies.

a few weeks later, i take another walk through central park and i see a group of people taking pictures of a tree. naturally, i go over to see what they're taking pictures of and see another raccoon in a hidey-hole. and then became one of the people making the poor noctural animal blind with camera flashes.

on a side note, you know what song line is stuck in my head right now? "do the helen keller and talk with your hips".

food has to be eaten?

2009-05-29T20:30:00.000-07:00

i love food. but i like reading about food and looking at pictures of food more than making and eating food. i guess it has to do with only having myself to feed and it's not as much fun and it's alot of work. the good thing is that if i mess up, nobody knows. i just have to suffer through eating horrible food. sometimes i take food to rina's house and get my cooking fix in. but usually i just look at recipes and say "hmm.. i wonder how i can modify this so i can make it at rina's house". mordy has said that he likes when i go over bc i usually bring something exotic. i made them vegetable soup when everyone was sick (rina didn't want to have chicken soup), wontons, tostones, seaweed soup, and rhubarb compote. i don't think these things are exotic. just different from things they usually eat. and i love that they aren't picky eaters and are willing to let me take over their kitchen every once in a while.

the last time i went to visit, we passed a dry goods store. i got pretty excited and asked them if they sold beans and stuff. rina said no. more like paper plates. mordy asked me if all i ever think about is food. is it bad that the answer is yes, usually?

i took an inventory of my fridge earlier today. i have sandwich meat, a bunch of asparagus, a bunch of ramps, a thing of ginger, and tomatoes. this is only because a couple days ago i made nettle pesto and green garlic pesto. and i made rhubarb compote last week. i blame tastespotting for the nettles, green garlic, ramps, sunchokes, and rhubarb. well, maybe not the rhubarb. but nettles and ramps, yes. i really hope the ramps get made into something and i don't have to resort to making a third pesto. my roommates must think i'm crazy. my food consists of four types of flour, two pestos, random veggies, kimchee, asian sauces, and american condiments. oh, and about twelve cups of ganache. but this is only because at work we make ganache for the hot chocolate and i usually take home a cup. even though it hasn't been hot chocolate weather. but i'm sure i can find ways to eat that chocolate. oh, and i bring back a loaf of bread at least once a week. but rarely finish the loaf. someday i'll make croutons or bread crumbs or bruchetta or something. hmm... maybe i should stop bringing stuff back.

so. i have a blog.

2009-05-15T13:09:00.000-07:00

so. i have this blog. the one you're looking at right now. but the last post was back in december. i've decided to change that. now i'm going to try to update more frequently. maybe writing about weird things i see around this crazy city. like when i saw a stroller locked to a pipe outside of a montesori last week. or the double rainbow i saw a couple days ago. or the movie crew that was setting up for the nicholas cage movie (based on fantasia but live action.. doesn't sound good) in time square. but these things are one sentance long. and sometimes they're fragments. they never seem blog worthy. maybe i should add a picture. maybe i'll blog about what i ate. although that could be boring. seeing as in the last week i made pasta, quesadillas, sandwiches, and bread dipped in pasta sauce or bbq sauce. and they're nothing spectacular. sometimes they'er just sad. bread dipped in pasta sauce? that probably has negative nutrients. but it's something to eat until i get to work and fill myself with (more) bread and cookies. in any case, i've decided to blog a bit more.

living with boys

2008-12-09T13:48:00.000-08:00

i've lived with boys since about july. but in july there were 3-4 boys and at least one other girl. and with 6 ppl, a cleaning lady, and some ppl living there for over 2 years, it makes it difficult to judge. the toilet seat was always down (someone must have trained them early) and the kitchen was always full of stuff. food stuff. some multiples of stuff. like 2 things of cinnamon sugar, 3 things of basil, 3 of oregano, etc. but with the number of ppl in the apartment, it's hard to tell if two ppl happened to buy the same thing at different times or if they are shopping amnesiacs.
now that i live with just two boys, i've noticed things. the toilet seat is sometimes up, the floor probably hasn't been swept/vacuumed in weeks, and the boys before me definitely had shopping amnesia. i was going through the cupboard just to see what the previous roommates left. there were SIX containers of Parmesan cheese. SIX! of varying sizes, shapes, and fullness. all open, of course. and 3 containers of oats. one was almost empty but the two others weren't even close. 4 cans of tuna but one was in the process of being opened. the flippy thing was pulled up but the lid wasn't peeled back. but.. why half open a can of tuna? oats, fine. they're less perishable. but tuna?? ew. and 3 bottles of maple syrup. all half empty or less. and then there are spices. i was actually impressed by the selection. there weren't many multiples just alot of types of seasoning salts. and allspice, pumpkin pie spice, and rosemary. i heard that one of the guys is engaged now so maybe the fiance decided to bake a pumpkin pie? but overall, these things don't really bother me. i just put the seat down when i use the toilet and wear shoes around the apt. and the kitchen is more amusing than anything else. although i would like it cleared out so i have space to put my stuff. my three different types of brown rice, 4 types of flours, two types of asian noodles, and two bags of black beans.

wonky schedule

2008-11-20T02:02:00.000-08:00

since i started working at the bakery, i've had a wonky schedule. i sleep when normal people are awake, i'm working when normal people are sleeping, and my weekend is during your workweek. sometimes i wake up at 1pm, other times it's 6pm. it all depends on when i actually fall asleep. and how much sleep my body thinks it needs. i range from 6-12 hours of sleep. i've grown used to it an accepted it. now that it's daylight savings, there are days when i don't see the sun. i'm not happy about it but if i really wanted to see the sun, i would set my alarm clock and make an effort to do it.

last night i went to sleep at around 1. i woke up at four and saw that it was already dark. i think it's because ny is higher up so it gets darker earlier. anyways, i see that it's four so i get up and get ready to go on a bunch of errands before work. i leave the apartment think "gee, it's really not busy out. it must be because it's so cold" and "wow, why aren't these restaurants open? isn't it profitable for them to be open for dinner?" and then a thought pops into my head. "oh god, is it four AM?!??" it's pretty much confirmed by the time i round the block and i see that the bar is closed.

but here's my question. what made me wake up in the first place and say "hey, i think 3 hours of sleep is good enough. let's go be productive today!" instead of the usual "ermm.. let's sleep a bit more"

jumping high fives rock!

2008-05-28T00:42:00.000-07:00

on thursdays, fridays, and mondays i listen to classic rock on the radio while working. it's the only station that doesn't repeat itself during the 8 hours i'm there. after a while though, you realize that while they don't repeat themselves over the course of a night, they do repeat themselves. mostly to amuse himself, randall started making up contests. the first one was to have one person pick a song and then everyone guesses what time it will come on. however, none of the songs have been played on the same night so that game was quickly stopped. then there was the two for tuesday game. that's where one band comes on and you guess the next song. that's not a bad game if you know the artist and song title. i do not. and as randall learned this, he became more and more appalled. at first he accommodated my ignorance by saying "ok, this is the rolling stones." and then i'd pick a song. then he soon learned that i also don't know titles or if that title goes with that band. so then it turned into "ok, this is the rolling stones. i'll give you a choice of 5 titles. angie, brown sugar, etc, etc". i have now been disqualified from this game. he and courtney still play it though. courtney has consistently beat randall, much to his annoyance.
but now, in an attempt to educate me, randall has given me 7 bands and if they ever come on, i have to identify which band it is. they are: the rolling stones, led zepplin, the beatles, u2, bob dylan, bruce springsteen, and billy joel. on friday, we started late so he only asked me to name four bands and i got them right! the prize in any game that i participated in has always been a jumping high five. (courtney doesn't really care about the jumping high fives so she doesn't get them after her wins though.) and i think it was the best jumping high five i've ever had. it was the really loud clapping kind and was really satisfying. i'm looking forward to more.

i hate my super

2008-01-07T13:39:00.000-08:00

i moved to new york in october. since then, i have lost electricity, had the electricity hooked up to the fire alarm in the hall, tried to get management to refund some of the rent b/c of the electricity problems, had surprise exterminators just show up without warning, got a letter in the mail from the gas/electric company about the building not paying a deposit and that if it wasn't resolved, it would shut off the gas/electric to the building. not the individual apts though. we pay our own gas/electric bills. but last friday was the worst. wednesday and thursday was so cold (nearly single digit temps) but i didn't stay at my apt. i went to visit rina on wednesday night then spent thursday night at saritas. by friday i really felt the need for a shower and wanted to clean up for sara kondo's visit so i went to my place. i hopped into the shower and waited for the hot water to kick in. it never did. i took the coldest shower of my life that day. i couldn't bring myself to put my entire body into the water so i washed myself in sections. first my hair. then face. arms, legs, then torso. i really didn't want to but i figured after washing my hair and face, the rest of my body had gotten sprinkled with water anyways so i might as well. i got out of the shower still feeling a little dirty and a bit numb. then i went to put on warm clothes. i broke out my slippers, sweaters, long johns.. anything to get me warm again. then i realized what the problem was. there was no heat! i checked roommate's thermostat and it said 58.8 degrees. feeling that it was an unacceptable temperature, i went down to my super's apt. she wasn't there (i hate her) but i talked to a lady (aunt? mother?) who lives with my super. she said that there was no heat or hot water then showed me that she was boiling two pots of water to warm up her apt. after getting back to my apt, i got a call from my super. she said that she called a mechanic (?!?? aren't mechanics for cars?) to come in and fix it. sara k's flight was super delayed by the storm at sfo so she didn't get in until about 1am. after getting her a bit settled, we went to feed her since she hadn't eaten all day. then we went to sleep until i woke up in the morning b/c of a knock on my door. i answer the door to the super (wonder of wonders.. she came to do her job). she said that she had to shut off the water to the apt b/c a pipe burst which flooded the basement and short circuited the heat/hot water thing. i woke up sara and said that we needed to go to sarita's so we could do our morning routine. for those of you who weren't keeping track, my apt went from no heat or hot water to no heat or water. i was so pissed off at the super and the building that i stormed off to sarita's with sara trailing after me. we get there and use her lovely heat and hot water then go about our day. at about 6pm, i call my super to see if everything has been fixed. she said that the heat and hot water was back on but to watch out for the extension chord in the hallway that was the only power source into the basement.

if this place weren't so cheap, i'd move. blurgggg

times sandra has gone to the super b/c something needs to be fixed: 2
times the super has been home to fix anything for sandra: 0
satisfaction with super: -59234576543567295

add? ocd? add with a hint of ocd?

2007-11-25T22:29:00.000-08:00

today i made a chicken stock. to prepare for the chicken stock, i cut up (and cooked and ate) the chicken and saved the bones and guts for the stock, bought a stock pot, and then went to sleep. i guess i should also say that this was done over the course of about three days.
this morning (well fine. it was around noon) i got up and decided that today was the day i'd make stock. i read a few food blogs about stock, looked at a few recipes, then looked in my kitchen. then i proceeded to disregard most of the ingredients. most recipes call for celery but my fridge doesn't have any so neither does my stock. it also called for a bunch of herbs i don't have so i sprinkled in italian seasoning. i did have the carrots, onion, and the chicken though. and really, i think chicken stock doesn't need to be all fancy. just water and chicken would probably do. but i wanted to make mine sorta fancy.

speaking of fancy. i read a couple of shira's books and they're so cute! fancy nancy, i love you blue kangaroo, and paperbag princess. sometimes i wish i could just read kids books all day long.

back to the stock!
eventually the water with stuff in it was turning into stock. but since i had the stove on, i couldn't go outside and have human interaction. instead, i decided to watch episodes of days of our lives (i was almost a month behind) online. on a website that sounds like newcube. i'll be very sad when it gets taken down and hope that never happens. anyways, while i watched days, i decided i needed another activity. so i got out all of the plastic bags and started to fold them. i now have a bag full of cutely folded plastic bags in a neat row arranged first by where the bag is from then its size. i am also all caught up in the lives of my salemites. and most importantly, i have stock! woo!

hermm.. what do you do with chicken stock?

i took you for granted wall socket, mr. outlet

2007-10-29T13:06:00.000-07:00

i'm sorry wall socket. mr. outlet.
i took you for granted.
there were times when i took advantage of you
connecting you to a power strip
making you power up seven different things at once

hi wall socket. hi mr. outlet.
please come back. i promise i be more grateful for all the work you do
my laptop misses you
my cell phone misses you too
but most of all, I miss you.

when you come back, i won't make you power up so many things at once
when you come back, i'll only plug things in when i really need you
when you come back, i won't take you for granted

wall socket. mr. outlet.
please talk to that faulty wire and become friends again
wall socket. mr. outlet.
please come back!

i'm a squib

2007-10-21T22:41:00.000-07:00

just like mrs. fig and hagrid are squibs in the magical world, I am a squib in the orthodox jewish world. i know alot of random words in hebrew/yiddish, i notice when people wear yamulkes or head covering, i understand the kosher food laws (and have cooked according to them), and i grow defensive of orthodoxy when people criticize them. I think i like being a squib.

sara asked me if i ever wonder how i got so immersed with orthodox judaism. i guess i couldn't help it since i stayed friends with the filler family and then got introduced to their friends and all. seems like a natural progression. it doesn't bother me. except when i'm searching for ppl to hang out with but it's either a holiday or friday/saturday.

i lost my wallet on thursday. i used it to pay for some groceries (it's pumpkin season, y'all!) and walked back to my apt. then friday was a bit gloomy and rainy so i didn't leave the apt (free wireless is the best!). then saturday rolls around and i need to find my wallet so i can take the bus over to sara's house for lunch. omg, i can't find it. i search everywhere, roommate starts searching, i re-search the same spots thinking that maybe it'll magically appear. we can't find it so we head over to sara's for lunch. it's nice so we went to central park for a picnic. then i go on a scavenger hunt along window sills and above the refrigerator for coins so i have bus fare to go back. i search again to no avail. i go online to see if my cards have been used (nope, thank god), call to cancel all my cards, get sad over losing the wallet, get annoyed that i don't have a license, student id, money, or metrocard anymore, worry about identity theft, then go to the police station to ask if anyone had turned in a wallet (right. in east harlem.) and then file a lost property claim. i think i'm saddest over losing my student id. it was still valid for another two years! my master plan was to use it until i have residency for two years then go to a jc here and get a new student id for who knows how long. yes. i'm cheap like that. but broadway shows are expensive!

p.s. this is not a big enough reason for me to pack up and move back to palo alto. it's a minor, insanely annoying, and worrisome hiccup.

we have internet!

2007-10-19T21:11:00.000-07:00

we have internet! er.. we're helping someone use their internet. it's good enough for me to watch the tv shows online so i'm happy with it. the bad thing is that since i have internet in the apt, i don't leave the house as much. so not too much exploring. god forbid this person moves or password protects their internet. i'd be sad.

so.. everyone i know in new york ( and will most likely hang out with) are jewish. my roommate might convert and become orthodox and the rest are orthodox. which means that my friday nights and saturday days might be a bit boring until i find a non-jew to hang out with on those days. or i can watch more episodes of tv online/play sudoku/write in my blog.

today i inventoried the food we have in our kitchen. we have spices, seasonings, and sauces. and then rice, beans, and pasta. what can i say? we live like kings here.

i live in New York, people!!

2007-10-16T10:35:00.000-07:00

Things that have happened to me since moving to New York City

A rat ran into my foot as I was walking around Tribeca. I'm pretty proud of myself for not yelping. And very happy that I didn't bring any flip flops.
I've gotten lost about once every few days. Which probably says something about me since I now live in a city based on a grid system with numbered streets
I never know which way to leave the subway leading me to becoming confused
I got my nails done. I figured it's a nice New York thing to do. Except that they're the longest they've ever been and it's taking me a while to get used to them. Typing, cleaning and putting in my contacts, actually being able to scratch an itch.
I watched Rent. I kinda wanted to watch Legally Blonde or something but I went with a guy friend and figured he wouldn't want to watch it.
Since the apt has no internet or tv, I've been playing a lot of sudoku. It still takes me forever to finish a game though.
I've been to three bar type places. All three had people playing either flip cup or beer pong. Or there was a table with the dots showing where the beer pong cups should go and a sign up on the wall giving the rules of beer pong. It's like all of a sudden I was in a frat house or something.

Thing that I still need after living in New York for a week:

Furniture. I am currently borrowing Dayne's air mattress.
A comforter especially since winter is coming soon.
hmm.. what else? OH YEAH! A job.
I also need to get used to the sounds of New York. As I type this, there's a girl outside screaming “DADDY!!!” over and over again. It's 11:44pm. Not to mention the bus that stops right in front of my apt. And runs all night.

Overall, I really like living here. It's super convenient to get places, I have people to hang out with, and I've been able to explore the city a bit. I'm not scared of living in East Harlem. I think it's nice seeing all the diversity and all. And I haven't been mugged (yet?) nor have I seen a cockroach (yet). You guys should come visit. :) We can be tourists together.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WALNUT!

2007-09-25T17:15:00.001-07:00

so, rina had her baby boy! i don't think there's a name yet so jane and i decided to call him walnut. i told kristin and, thinking the baby is really named walnut, began to rant about how people name their kids such weird names and that just because someone is a celebrity or thinks they're a celebrity doesn't mean that they can name their kid after a fruit. heh..

on a different note, the entire state of south dakota only has one area code??!!!!?????

oh, and i'm moving to new york on the 7th. there's a chance i'm planning something. or packing like mad. i haven't really decided yet.

I'm feeling itchy

2007-09-20T16:51:00.000-07:00

i'm feeling itchy. i want to go off and do something fun and exciting. or do something really drastic. like drive across the country and accidentally live there. or live in europe for a year. or go to baking school. NOT culinary school. baking. bread. or maybe i can learn how to be a sushi chef. or ship myself to argentina and learn to tango from a nice argentinian. anyways, i just want to do something fun and exciting. anyone want to do something fun and exciting with me?

Adventures in the kitchen

2007-09-13T11:19:00.000-07:00

Since baking the lovely ricotta loaf, I have made a few other things in the kitchen. Two not sour sourdough loaves, a chocolate cake, jam, and stuffed zucchini.
I've decided that the two not sour sourdough breads are not sour because I didn't follow the recipe from Rose Levy Berenbaum. The sourdough starter was sort of like hers except that I used whole wheat flour instead of white flour, the starter never really started, and I baked the loaf according to a recipe I found in the No Salt, Low-Sodium cookbook. The loaves of bread were bread but they weren't sour. I guess I'll have to try again. Except this time, I'll make it the way Rose would make it. The first loaf was made early in the sourdough starter making process so I attributed it to the starter not being ready yet. Then I made the second one after it had enough time to start and at one point, Kristin said that the starter smelled sour. That comment made me very happy. But the bread just is not sour. Which means I have to throw out my starter and make a new one. Ah well...
The chocolate cake tasted really good but looked ugly. I filled the pan almost to the top instead of the normal 2/3 full. so the sides of the cake overflowed and it took a bit longer for the middle to set. It probably should have stayed in the oven longer but the overflowed edges were burning and I was running late (I was getting Jane for the pub trivia night). When I got home, I tasted the cake and it wasn't bad. A lot like fudge and not a lot like cake. But that could be because the recipe called for 700 g of dark chocolate and 700 g of butter. Being American and not having every cooking gadget imaginable, I couldn't weigh them. Instead, I bought as close to 700 grams of chocolate and butter as I could and worked with it. I probably should have compensated for the added chocolate and butter by adding more flour but I didn't. Oh well. It still tasted fine to me.
But really, I'm the most proud of my jam. I'd never made jam before. I'd thought about it when we lived in our old house and had the apricot tree. But really, apricots are good by themselves. There were five old and wrinkly peaches that had managed not to get eaten so I looked up jam recipes and made peach-banana jam. Mostly because we have way too many bananas that turning it into jam wouldn't have been too horrible. Last night I tasted the jam. I'm a bit disappointed that the jam wasn't more solid. It was more runny than what I'm used to. But it's still nice and jam-y. I'm also a little sad that the bananas overpowered the peach taste. And that the jam is very sweet. But I guess that's to be expected when the recipe calls for six cups of sugar. I left out a cup and it was still too sugary. Ah well. Next time. I even have a fruit picked out for my next jam adventure: Grapes. My family isn't too into grapes but we always end up with grapes in our fridge. Go figure...
Ever since Alice brought home a zucchini that is longer and thicker than my forearm, it had been sitting on the kitchen counter waiting for its purpose in life. And it looked at me with sadness as I tried to think of different things I could make out of the gigantic thing. At first I thought of fried zucchini knowing that Asher would probably let me fry them at his place and "accidentally" forget to take any home. Then I looked up recipes online and found one for a zucchini frittata which led me to zucchini quiche to stuffed zucchinis. When I found the stuffed zucchini recipe, I was excited because it uses the entire zucchini, seemed simple enough, and USED THE ENTIRE ZUCCHINI! The zucchini had a purpose. All I had to do was make it. I modified the recipe a bit because I didn't have ground turkey that it called for. Instead I cut up frozen shrimp and cubes of beef and it satisfied the carnivore in me. Of course, once the meal was fully prepared, it turned out that just my mom and I were going to eat at home. We both decided that the stuffing was good but the outside of the zucchini was tough. We solved this problem by carving the skin off the zucchini and eating the rest. Now we have an entire half plus a little bit of stuffed zucchini left. Anyone want to try it? You can try it with toasted not sour sourdough bread with some peach-banana jam on top. Sorry, no cake for dessert. But we do have bananas. My next project will probably include bananas and grapes. Probably separately.

i love bread

2007-07-23T13:29:00.000-07:00

i love bread. it doesn't get the respect it deserves b/c so many ppl are anti-carb/starch/sugar/fat/yogurt/unicorns/blah. but whatever. i love bread. so much that i like to bake it too. and since i've been home alone, i've been bored at home alone. which really results in me baking or cooking. it's ridiculous since i'm home alone but making a meal for 4-6 ppl. it's a bit much.

i baked a beer bread that i didn't like. maybe i did it wrong but it was too dense and a bit salty. the recipe is easy enough though. next, i decided to bake a ricotta loaf (b/c i had ricotta). i like it. you can taste the ricotta, it's light, and yummy. i was a little worried since the recipe said to do it in either a food processor (don't own one) or a kitchen-aid stand mixer (too lazy to get it out of the box and set it up). i went with the next best thing: big bowl and a rice scooper paddle thing. but i really can't say anything bad about the bread. it's from The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Berenbaum, whom i love. i don't think i've ever baked a loaf from her book that turned out bad. the only problem is that i'm not sure what to do with the bread. will it be good as sandwich bread? what about putting garlic cheese on top? i don't know. which really means that i've just been eatting it in slices and not putting anything on top or in between them.

on a side note, as i walked to safeway to buy some butter, i found a bike leaning against a tree with its back tire missing. so now it's mine. i think in those circumstances, the bike is considered "up for grabs". so i grabbed.

back from tucson

2007-07-13T17:13:00.000-07:00

so, i'm back from tucson (i actually came back mid-late june). it was ok. really hot and dry. we were working on a prehistoric native american site. it was pretty cool. i'd never even thought about doing archaeology in the southwest and now i have a bit of experience in it. the rocks and soils are pretty different.
i did end up going to that giants vs. diamondbacks game. giants won so that made us happy. i went with three other californians and one tucson boy. he was an honorary giants fan that day. :) my roommate, jen, lives near the scout for the nationals and roomed with barry bonds when they went to asu so he got us tickets behind third plate 30 rows up. i'm glad we weren't one or two sections away b/c two foul balls came through and i cannot catch/close my eyes when balls come near me.
on the last night that pamela was in tucson, we threw her a birthday party. we had pizza, a pinata, and cake. except the pinata was full of jolly ranchers, lemon ricola (b/c jen somehow contracted valley fever and she doesn't like the lemon flavored ones), and ginger cat cookies from trader joes. and the cake was "baked" by me in the microwave. without the aid of measuring equipment. which basically ment that the "cake" was more like a rubber ball. so of course i covered it with buttercream frosting. in tucson. where the temperature is hot enough to melt butter. yeah. well whatever. it was a fun little bday/going away party. :D
my cell phone is a sony ericsson walkman phone so i put a couple cds worth of korean music on it. but since att doesn't have the korean firmware, all i see in the playlist are the ever so helpful square boxes.
i met family who live in new jersey for the first time. for about four days my house turned into a hotel with both myself and kristin getting kicked out of our rooms. i think they're my second cousins. or third cousins once removed. not sure. there are two kids, one 13 and the other 6. kristin, alice, and i took them to great america. we all had a good time. minus the little bit when the 6 yr old cried b/c she got a little scared. to cheer her up, we took her onto another ride that also scared her. yeah, we're evil.

i'm in tucson.

2007-05-30T22:07:00.000-07:00

i think this post will be in bullet form minus the bullets.

so i'm in tucson now. i'm here for an archaeology job. we're excavating a bunch of features that were found when a gas pipeline was trying to get installed. i left palo alto yesterday and got to the hotel by 4pm. everyone should come visit!
my hotel room is called a studio. 2 beds, a kitchenete, and a bathroom. i have the bed closest to the ac. b/c i'm a weather wimp. the roommate, jen, is pretty easy going. i had to explain to her that i am not a morning person and that i don't like unnecessary noise. she seemed ok with that.
today i dehydrated myself. i need to do something about that. i think i'm going to add gatorade powder to my waters tomorrow. apparently the whole electrolyte thing actually helps.
today i tried to make brown rice on the stovetop for my lunch tomorrow. except that i somehow botched it so now i have semi cooked and burned rice. i added chipotle peppers and tomatoes. hopefully it tastes ok. (side note: spellcheck doesn't recognize "chipotle" and suggests that i replace it with "spotless")
this morning at 330am, the alarm clock went off. it woke me up b/c 1) it's an alarm clock and that's it purpose in life 2) it was spanish music 3) i couldn't figure out how to turn it off for a good minute or so. that whole episode annoyed me though. b/c my real alarm clock went off at 445am. it was not a good start to the morning.
tucson should be interesting. apparently ppl go to the mountains on the weekends. i'd like to do that sometime. and the diamondbacks are going to play the giants in a week or two from now. if i get tickets, i'll suffer through the 1.5 hr drive to phoenix. it'd be interesting to be one of the few giants fans in the stadium.

spam.

2007-03-06T01:13:00.000-08:00

i really like watching my spam folder fluctuate. for a while it was in the low hundreds and i was very happy with google's spam blocking abilities. then i made a mistake. i thought that if i clicked on the messages and told them that i want to unsubscribe, i'd have less. instead, the next day, my spam count rose a couple hundred! i was in such shock that i decided that i would never open another piece of spam if i could help it. and i haven't. the highest it's ever been was somewhere around 1000 - 1300 pieces of spam. (EW!) some days, when i'm bored, i'll check to see how many pieces of spam i got on that day, how many more i have left from 30 days ago, and compare which days got more spam that others. i also have a theory that spammers know when i'm logged in so they send me more when my account is open than not. so i've started gchating using meebo instead of leaving my gmail box up all day long. and i am now proud to say that my current spam count is 612 pieces. :)

the adventure that was kansas

2007-02-18T21:17:00.000-08:00

here's a basic timeline:

sunday the 11th:
after the bar, i come home, did some last minute packing, watched an episode of days, and went to the airport in time for me to check my luggage and wait for my flight.
2pm - i arrive in wichita, unpack, introduce myself to the principal archaeologist (amy), and write in my blog
7pm - i get called into a meeting in amy's office with all the other archaeologists. she tells us that we are suspended from doing any work. then i go back to my room and eventually sleep.

monday the 12th:
10 am - another meeting is called in amy's office and we are told that we are now officially demobilized. amy tells me that the company will pay for my ticket home and that they will reimburse me for the flight to wichita.
2 pm - i'm packed, i watch an episode of days, and book a flight home. wichita - denver - vegas - san jose. then i do some sudoku and hang out with the remaining ppl from the project.
6:30 pm - i'm at the wichita airport waiting for my flight to denver.
8-ish pm - i'm at the denver airport where i find out that the flight is delayed by an hour.
11:29pm - i arrive in vegas bording pass-less and have to go to the ticketing counter a tram stop away, and get on the flight before it takes off at 11:59pm. it doesn't happen. i take a taxi to the strip and wander around all the different casinos and whatever. i try out a couple of the penny and nickel slots and move along to other casinos.
5-ish am - get kicked out of the bellagio lobby for napping on a chair
7-ish am - get kicked out of a restaurant at mgm for falling asleep at the table.
9 am - get to the airport and end up in line behind a billion perky happy and talkative portland, or all star cheerleading squad. they got second place apparently. i didn't care b/c i was sleepy and grumpy.
1:30pm - FINALLY arrive in san jose. come home, sleeeeeeeeep. yay for sleep. i probably got somewhere between 12 - 14 hours of sleep the entire time i had this adventure.

so basically the only parts of wichita i saw are the airport and the hotel. i really wanted an adventure. i guess this counts. :)

on a side note, was i/am i a mean person back in elementary school and now? i hope not. i want to think of myself as a very awkward person who is shy to the point of being rude.

i'm in kansas!

2007-02-11T14:21:00.000-08:00

if anyone who reads this ever feels like going to the YMCA in east palo alto, you should ride the elevator. it's dedicated to my aunt. kinda cool. :)

yesterday was michael, travis, and my joint birthday party. it was pretty fun except that it rained off and on. ppl from all over came and it was fun. travis brought food from a catering guy he knows, michael brought a TON of drinks, and kristin and i made dinner. more like kristin made dinner. at first we just played net-less volleyball. which pretty much ment we were tossing the ball around and used a stick to act as our net just for the sake of boundaries. but there were also no set boundries for the sides or back. then we played sloshball. it was very muddy and wet. good times were had by all. then we had dinner and decided to go to rudy's for some dancing. which is where i ran into jibari, khari, nik ajagu, and aaron wilson. crazy reunion-ness! afterwards, we went home and i finished packing (weather inappropriate clothing) and watch an episode of days before kristin took me to the airport in order for me to catch my flight by 6:15. luckily, my flight to phoenix was fairly empty so i got an entire row to myself. so i stretched out and slept on all three seats. my flight to wichita was pretty full but i was able to get two seats so i sorta stretched out a bit and slept.

after checking into the hotel, i went to explore a bit. the room itself has dsl internet, a kitchenette with all the normal kitchen stuff, a recliner!!, and of course the cable tv with a dvd/vcr. the hotel comes with free washer and dryers, a small gym, and a mini convienience store. it's a pretty nice hotel!

one bad thing is that i didn't pack weather appropriate clothing. which i knew i would do. i'm a retard and forgot a thick jackt. and i'm kicking myself over that. but i honestly didn't think about long johns, something to cover my face, or a hat/beanie. if they ever have a suggestion box, i would ask them to provide an "essential clothing list" list. so i have that going for me.

i'm not sure how much i'll be able to update this thing b/c i was talking to the principle archaeologist and she said that the gis guy usually works until midnight and has to get up early to do field stuff. this job sounds like it's going to be interesting.

kansas!

2007-02-04T23:49:00.000-08:00

for years, i've told people that when i got older (25 and up) and didn't have any marriage prospects, my mom would start to set me up on dates. and i've also said that when she did that, i'd run away. people would usually laugh or ask questions about it. well, now that i'm 25 and have no marriage prospects, my mom set me up on a date. it wasn't horrible but it wasn't enjoyable either. i think the main reason was because his english isn't all that great and my korean isn't too good either. also, my mom was there. she had a great time. a little afterwards, i found a job posting for a gps person on an archaeology job list site. i applied for it and the next day was offered the job. i had to talk it over with my parents and a couple people online about whether or not i should go and then called back and said yes. so now i'm going to kansas in a week. the job is temporary and is only until april but it might be extended to september. who knows. the nice part is that they pay for my hotel and food!

i don't know too much about kansas though. i know it's a red state, it's going to be cold, there are tornadoes, and there's probably a small chance of me eatting good korean food while i'm there. oh, and i've heard that the lawmakers passed a bill to outlaw the second law of thermodynamics. .......... yeah. i'll update everyone one kansas once i actually get there. in the mean time, anyone want to help pack? ;)

yay for cooking!

2007-01-17T23:30:00.000-08:00

sarita, asher, and i have started cooking ethnic foods. it's more like sarita and i feel like cooking something and instead of going to her house, the two of us go off to asher's apt. and cook there. usually giving him about 30 minutes of notice. one night was indian, another was gingerbread houses, and the most recent was wontons. it's always an adventure b/c he has a bachelor-i-live-alone kitchen. which means that sarita and i usually go there with a camping mentality. does a campground come with a spatula? does it have salt? egg? milk? what about a cutting board? the food always turns out good though so it's ok. we just give asher alot of crap about his empty kitchen. but to his credit, his freezer usually has food in it even if his fridge does not. next on our list is italian, korean, mexican, and sushi. on indian night, we all ate our food listening to indian music and sat around an indonesian tablecloth. asher even dressed up in a traditional indian outfit. hee! too bad i never take a camera. neither does anyone else, for that matter.

on to more serious stuff that i've been thinking about:

what's wrong with people? why are ppl so mean and discriminatory?? on new year's eve, Yale University's "Bakers Dozen" was performing when a guy started yelling at them for being gay. even though there's no correlation between being in an acapella group and being gay. and later, that guy calls up a bunch of his friends and they all beat up the "bakers dozen". one to the point of needing his jaw wired shut and getting reconstructive surgery!! and the sfpd released the boys! ugh.. and T.R. Knight of grey's anatomy needing to come out after a cast mate called him a faggot. and that castmate is denying it all. there are so many things wrong with those last two sentences. 1) nobody should be forced to come out. it's something that you chose to do on your terms at your pace. 2) for anyone to say racial or in this case, sexual slurs means that they say them on a regular basis. otherwise, it doesn't fly out of your mouth at any given time. (yes, i'm talking to you cosmo kramer!) 3) own up to what you did. it was wrong. fix the problem somehow and don't bring more publicity to it. and most recently, northwest airlines denied muslims from boarding a plane from frankfurt, germany to detroit. they were on their way back from a pilgrimage to mecca. i wonder how northwest is going to spin this so that denying 40 muslims from boarding a flight is not racial profiling. and it'd be interesting to see how muslims react to northwest from now on. will they boycott the airline entirely? those are the three mean and discriminatory things came to my attention enough for me to blog about.

a couple things i've been thinking about

2007-01-08T15:41:00.000-08:00

why are subject lines so hard? they're like writing a one sentance abstract for your entire email. i hated writing paragraph-long abstracts for my papers b/c i didn't have enough space to write about everything. a one sentance abstract makes it all the more difficult.

i think san francisco doesn't want me to watch a concert in its city. why else would i not be able to watch two different concerts? ozomatli over the summer at some point and the devil makes three last saturday. but i guess if i had seen the concerts, i wouldn't have gone off to go to plans b - d.

i think i'm going through my quarter-life crisis. i don't know what i'll do. probably cut my hair really weird and move? i have no idea. but i guess this brings me to my next point.

i want to go on an adventure. does anyone else want to go on an adventure? i've been pretty passive about it but now i just want to go. only thing is, i don't know where to go or when. just somewhere. and soon. there are a ton of places i'd love to go to. i've never been to DC, i want to see the arctic before it melts away (but i can deal with alaska instead), europe.. or places that are more likely to happen like a camping trip to yosemite or just camping in general. or a kayaking trip in santa cruz. or a snow weekend. i just want to go on an adventure.

i just got my new phone! which means i'm switching to a new phone number and a new service. i'm switching from verizon to cingular. which i'm ok with.

2006-10-03T11:39:00.000-07:00

my family all went down to LA to drop alice off at school a couple weeks ago. she was the first one to move into her dorm room so she got dibs on everything she wanted. upper bunk, desk next to the bed, big dresser/closet thing. as kristin and i were helping alice unpack, we began to fully realize just how many pieces of clothing she has. and alice only brought the clothes that she wears. which means there's still clothes in her closet at home with her "reject" pile of clothes. kristin and i have decided that alice has twice as many clothes and the two of us put together. slightly ridiculous.

i went to the download festival with sara, michael, nina, and nina's friend alex on saturday. it was fun but i didn't get to hang out with nina all that much. which is sad since we don't really get to hang out with them too often. later, we also met michael's friends andrea and jeff. they're cool ppl. towards the end of beck's set, lots of people were leaving. so sara, michael, and i asked two people for their tickets and snuck into the good seats. nina, alex, and their friends were somehow able to get down to the good seats before us. best acts: kinky and beck. not so good acts: yeah yeah yeahs, the shins

on sunday aimee called me to ask if i wanted to work in catering at shoreline. i was the ticket marker/not let ppl get seconds at the buffet table person for the vip ticket holders. the server portion was only until 7:30 and then we started to clean. that wasn't bad at all. we weren't responsible for the dishes. which made me super happy. but also made me wonder who was in charge of the dishes. by 10pm, i was off and got to sneak over to watch john mayer. that was fun. too bad i couldn't see sheryl crow's set. that would have been fun too. but i wasn't heartbroken over missing any of it. i'm not too into either of them.

all these school shootings are not happy topics. especially the most recent one at the amish school. the amish are non-violent and were even exempt from the draft. for those girls to die in such a violent manner is insane. that man! if you want to commit suicide, go off and do it. don't kill and injure innocent girls in the process. even if you want revenge or whatever for molesting girls 20 years ago. that man needed a shrink. not a gun.

facebook hopping

2006-09-14T13:10:00.000-07:00

yesterday, i decided to facebook hop. i found groups to join, people to add, and very few to stalk. but my most interesting find is that timi wusu is a rookie for the raiders! i never had a class with him but i think i took a cooking xl with him back when we were at jordan. when he was skinny and not football bulky. his website picture makes him look mean and scary. but his facebook and myspace (yes.. i'm a stalker) have him in happy pictures. so yes. i think i might become a raiders fan. except that i've always been much more of a 49ers fan. another nfl guy from paly is drew hodgdon of the huston texans. i remember seeing him around paly and thinking that he was uber bulky. but i guess you need to be uber bulky in football.

REI, petsmart, chipotle, etc all moved into a new shopping complex thing near costco recently. and because of the stores, a left turn signal light was installed. but the lights were on timer instead of sensor. i have to pass through it every day to get to 101 for work and having the light on timer mode slows things down. i got annoyed enough to email the public works dept of mountain view to ask them what was going on with that. and this is what they emailed to me today:

Thanks for taking time to notify us of your concerns. Yes, this is a temporary condition related to the construction. This project required traffic signal modifications and removal of an existing power pole at Charleston/Independence. The electrical sub-contractor is scheduled to complete their work today and the signal should be operating in actuated mode (“on sensor”) by the end of the day.

that email pretty much made my friday. yay for sensor traffic lights!

Ghiradelli chocolate festival!

2006-09-11T15:30:00.000-07:00

on saturday, i went on an adventure to sf. except that i missed the 1:30 train which ment that i had to wait an hour for the next train. missing that hour made it so that i only had a bit less than an hour to spend exploring the vendors. but i did have time to try goats milk ice cream, fudge, cake, and cookie vendors. but since i got there after 4 (it closed at 5), alot of the stalls were already empty. i'm assuming that they ran out of samples. at about 4:30, sara met me and we walked around a bit and then headed for dinner in japantown. i had udon for dinner. sara had a tekka bowl. good stuff. but they were a bit understaffed and we had to flag down a waiter to order and get more tea. after dinner, we got a hold of my cousin jake and decided to meet up. we spoke in korean/spanglish to each other and finally met each other at tommy's tequila bar and mexican restaurant. jake the tequila connosauoir pointed out all his favorites, which ones were only worth drinking a shot of at the bar, which ones went through what process.. yes. jake likes his tequila. when i told him that tequila and i are not friends, he said that we just weren't introduced correctly.

on sunday, sarita, her friend jessica, and i went to watch breakfast at tiffany's at the stanford theater. good movie. then we went to the nuthouse b/c we were supposed to meet up with sara, michael, and travis there. but they weren't there and only creepy old guys were there. so we went to starbucks instead. i had the pumpkin spice latte. i like pumpkin spice but don't like coffee. i asked for extra pumpkin spice but it still tasted like coffee to me. then jessica went home since she had to be up early for work and sarita and i headed back to the nuthouse to meet sara, michael, and travis. lots of pool was played. little beer was drunk. personal low point: when michael, sarita, and i played cutthroat and he sank all our balls and all his were still on the table. personal high point: when i beat travis. then kristin, travis and i went to happy donuts to play scrabble. kristin won and travis and i tied. i think it was 160 to 92. pretty ridiculous. i pretty much suck at scrabble. i could not put down a word longer than 4 letters. but in my defense, i kept drawing vowels. specifically, "E"s. for three rounds i had 4 or 5 "E"s, 2 or 3 "I"s or an occasional "U".

funny little things

2006-09-06T11:49:00.000-07:00

last night, as i was driving down alma, i saw mr. mid-life-crisis. he was an older man in a red convertable with the top down. at a red light, i realized what he was listening to in his car. it was a language cd. i wish i remember how to say thank you in the mystery language. in any case, it was a fun drive after seeing that.

i was at the free jazz concert at santana row yesterday. it was in the grassy area behind hotel valencia and maggiano's. as i was sitting and waiting for kristin and sara to show up, i started to people watch. one guy who caught my eye had clearly just come from the gym, club one. as he walked past me, the first thing i saw were his feet since i was looking down. that's when i saw that his toes are painted black. once i noticed the painted toes, i had to do a once over to see how normal his looked. he was wearing a tshirt, shorts that looked like they could be swim trunks, and sandals. and normal looking. which allows for my imagination to run with ideas about him. maybe he likes to look punk when nobody's looking. or he somehow banged up his toes so he thought he'd paint them to make them look ok. or his girlfriend thought it'd be funny. or his friends thought it served him right for passing out. the possibilities are endless.

labor day weekend fun-ness

2006-09-05T10:29:00.000-07:00

on thursday night, sarita and i decided to go for a bike ride and we went to the new soccer field and stanford. then sarita gets a birthday surprise from jason (he came to visit for the weekend). but now jason must think that all we ever do late at night is bike around since that's what we were doing the last time he surprised her.

on friday i hung out with sara, kristin, and sam. sam said that he had never experienced so much girl talk before in his life. haha... later on, sara, kristin, and i went to the old pro where we ran into a very drunk michael f. and his coworkers. he gets a bit cocky when he's drunk but i think it's hilarious b/c when he's sober he's so shy and quiet.

on saturday, sara, michael h., sam, and i went to an a's game. they lost to baltimore. sadness. they were on a home game winning streak. sam taught me a lot about baseball and baseball strategy. on the way home, we saw an accident happen on 880. a girl braked (i'm going to assume that braked is a real word) really hard and lost control of her car. she tried to over-correct her steering wheel and went from the 4th lane all the way to the 1st lane and hit a car. i guess that technically the car hit her. kind of like a "T". michael pulled over and we stayed with them until the cops came. both drivers were fine but pretty shook up. the girl's car is pretty much totaled and the guys car will need work done. he was saying that he lives in hayward but works in redwood city and was worried about how he'd get to work. hopefully his insurance will pay for a rental. the airbags deployed in both cars. craziness. and the girl's car's front wheel was in a 45 degree angle, was leaking oil and other fluid, and looked undriveable. but a cop drove it to the shoulder of the freeway. i was pretty impressed that the car could do that at all. after michael gave his info to the two drivers, we went home. so eventful! later on that night, kristin, sharon, esther, and i went to boss, a korean club in sf. there was a $15 cover (BOO!!) but we know the bartender so all the drinks were free (WWOOOOTT!!) they don't carry seagrams so i couldn't have my usual 7&7s (boo) but they had fun music (yay!). they played sexy/back three times. which i thought was a bit excessive. but they also played a couple 80's songs. overall: good day.

on sunday i went to anna marie's bbq. good times. i hadn't seen her in a few months and got to catch up with rachel. she just finished archaeology field school so she had alot to say about it. and i was able to sympathize since i when through the exact same thing last year. when i got back, kristin, sara, and i went to the nut house and felt like we were intruding on a wedding reception. a bunch of ppl descended upon the nuthouse for a wedding afterparty. apparently, they used to come to the nut house all the time and wanted to wax nostalgic. i was ok with it since they picked good songs on the juke box.

weekend rating: good times and fun had by all. well, except for those two in the car accident.

lack of human interaction

2006-08-30T17:10:00.000-07:00

kristin made a surprise visit to me at work today. that was when i realized that i have no human interaction. today especially. i was the only one in the office since everyone else was in a meeting. when krisitn came, i literally jumped out of my chair and skipped to her. and then she started to teach me how to dance. she taught me the two-step and the cha cha cha. that was pretty fun. then we just sat around and talked. as i was petting her hair. it was after i started petting her that i realized that i need more human interaction.

another sign that i need more human interaction is that i keep talking to telemarketers. today a lady from DHL called to ask if we wanted to switch from fedex/ups to dhl. i let her keep talking and quoting prices and giving her false information. it was a fun 10 minutes. yes. definitely need more human interaction.

non-drowsy medicine should be NON-DROWSY

2006-08-29T16:20:00.000-07:00

i officially have a cold. before it was just my throat and weird voice. now coughing has been added to the mix. the hydrogen peroxide experiment kinda worked. gargling it in a 1:1 solution with water helped my throat. but putting it into my ear didn't prevent a cold. but maybe it was b/c i didn't do it often enough. and i'm my own test subject so who knows. maybe it works better on others. sarita told me to take a shot of vodka and follow it with a couple glasses of water. i tried that too. i don't know how well it worked on my throat but it helped me sleep. i've also been taking a yucky, unnaturally blue, "non-drowsy" cough syrup. it put me to sleep yesterday. which is not good. today i took it with caffeine. so i haven't fallen asleep but i haven't been awake either.

over the weekend i ran into nancy wong, the dermatologist i used to work for back in high school. she was painting a watercolor of a landscape when we saw her. and she won the most recent weekly photo contest. such an artsy doctor! she gave me and sarita a raffle ticket. and i just got a call saying that i won! woo! i get $100 from the pacific art league to either buy a piece of art or take a class. i think i'm going to take a class.

i think i'm getting sick

2006-08-25T10:48:00.000-07:00

so i'm getting sick. i have a sore throat and a mini cough. yesterday i drank alot of airborne but i don't think it helped me too much since i woke up with a sore throat. this morning i bought hydrogen peroxide and i put some in my ears and i'm gonna gargle with it later. i wonder if this will work. lots of people online are saying that hydrogen peroxide is the best thing for colds and such.

yesterday, i had problems bringing food from the plate up to my mouth. for some reason, lots of the food i ate decided to take a detour onto my shirt. maybe it's a sign that i should do my laundry.

i tried making hummus from dried garbanzo beans (as opposed to canned) yesterday. i didn't know that after you soak the beans you have to cook them. instead, i soaked the beans for a few days and then tried to blend them. i thought it was unusually hard but i went with it. until i tasted the "hummus". EW! i tried to make it taste better with cayenne pepper, lemon juice, and garlic. but still. no. i had only ever made hummus from canned beans and i guess they take care of the cooking part for me. booo... i really wanted hummus too. ah well. maybe next time.

weekends are when fun happens

2006-08-21T12:19:00.000-07:00

i've forgotten how good back to the future is. last night i watched back to the future 1 and 2. they're pretty much awesome. someday i'll watch the third. and i'll watch the commentary too. i heart commentary.

on saturday i went (back) to the old pro and rode the bull. i also ran into a bunch of paly guys. hi glen, hans, matt, greg, and rob! even though you don't know that this blog exists. i didn't last. i slid off. which means that someday, there will be a rematch. WATCH OUT!

random hs reunions at the old pro is interesting. always good to catch up with people you haven't seen in about 6 years.

lately, i've been drinking alot, staying out way too late, meeting new people (shout out to michael, travis, phil, and mama d and her other homeless friends!), and having alot of fun doing it.

sara and i have pretty much been dating for that last month. we see each other almost every day, we walked around shoreline and watched a pretty sunset, ate at date restaurants, and did other date like things. the best part: we don't annoy each other to death.

yesterday, sara, her friend brianna, michael, and i went to sf to go to ozomatli. but we got there too late and weren't allowed to see them. which sucks b/c ozomatli is so good to see live. so we left. instead, we went to the stinking rose for some yummy-ness and a candy store. i really like candy stores. i bought chocolates that look like rocks. and michael bought us each a truffle. too bad sara and i got ours confused. i guess i'll never know what a champagne truffle tastes like and sara won't know what a peanut butter truffle tastes like.

whoa.. long time no blog

2006-08-10T14:03:00.000-07:00

i guess an update of my life is in order.
my parents' company burned down in april and we're in the process of working the whole insurance thing out. thankfully, nobody was injured in the fire and we have some good people helping us out. shout out to uncle rick!
i finished my certificate in archaeology and GIS in may/june. which is nice. since i'm currently in the hate part of my love/hate relationship with school.
right now i'm working with my parents doing all sorts of office things. but i'm also looking for a job someplace else. geographically, i want to find a job in either san francisco or new york city. and maybe DC or alaska.
i've started walking the dish. yesterday i saw it move. pretty cool. i've learned a few things about myself while walking. 1) i have no endurance 2) when i run, i inhale twice and exhale twice. it's weird and makes me sound like i'm dying 3) my walking speed is the same as this one guy's running speed times 3. i've nicknamed him speedy gonzalez.
last saturday i went to holly's housewarming/superhero costume party. i was scientistwoman b/c the only thing i could find as a costume is my lab coat. duff man won the costume contest. sara used my graduation gown as a cape and her friend tomi wore my hardhat. i'm not very good at last minute costume making. there were 2 quailmen, a duff man, she-ra, a businessman, a supergirl, and surprisingly 4 ppl were in lab coats.
last sunday was my cousin julie's sloshball bday party. it was fun as always. except when i got home, i realized that i had a sunburn. also, someone threw away almost an entire pan of 5 layer dip. who does that??!! i would have taken it home if it wasn't in the trash first.
this weekend sara and i are gonna make a trip down to LA for a wedding. that should be fun. we originally wanted to go down friday, wedding saturday, vegas sat/sun, and drive up on sunday. but now we're carpooling with other people and it's become complicated.
on to current events:
the terrorism threat in england is pretty scary stuff. but i like that it was stopped before anything happened. it gives me hope that separate agencies are talking to each other instead of hoarding information. and it's going to be a bit more inconvenient to fly but all the security precautions are making me feel a bit safer.
lieberman should accept defeat and not run as an independent. it's kinda like giving up cigarettes but replacing it with cigars.
LC and jason from laguna beach (and later her spin off, the hills) have broken up. which leads me to say this: LC should have taken the internship in paris over staying in a beach house with jason all summer. really. for a girl who wants to get into the fashion world, she made a crappy career move.

long time no post

2006-02-06T23:18:00.000-08:00

it's been a while since i last posted. it became 2006, i had a birthday, and other stuff that i can't remember. but here's a few things that i did recently that i deemed blog-worthy.
i went on my first ever paid archaeology dig thing. that was exciting. except that it had rained the night before so i had to dry screen mud. basicly push mud through a giant strainer. i was so tired by the end of the day that i would see things that i should have taken out like charcoal and instead smushed it up so that it'd "disappear" or "accidentaly" let little shell pieces fall through the dry screen. and the mud was so compacted, it took forever to actually screen a full bucket load. wowzers was i tired and sore the next day.
i got stood up for a job interview. i was supposed to meet a guy so he could interview me but then he called me a couple hours later saying that he found someone else. then the next day i get a call from him again saying that the person he hired the day before doesn't know english well enough (it's a korean company so they probably had the whole interview in korean and the topic of english somehow never came up). so we set up an interview for the next day. 45 minutes before the interview, he called me and asks if we can have the interview sometime after 2. I say that's fine and wait for his call. but he never does. how rude is that? i was not happy about that at all. b/c i decided to go to the interview instead of doing another archaeology dig. so instead i cleaned the house. angrily.
i love the police blotter. i just read one from half moon bay.
"Miramontes Point Road., 6:26 am: Officers responded to reports of a boisterous customer at the Ritz-Carlton. When they arrived, the apparently intoxicated man introduced himself as 'Crazy' and said he was the hotel owner. He was booked into San Mateo County Jail." hahaha!!
it was my cousin's engagement party on saturday. that was fun. it was a cocktail party and jake brought whiskey. which i drank. alot. and later paid the price. but the party was fun because i'd never met pete's family. he's half japanese so you can tell which half is which. i guess you can say that for julie too. but i already know julie's family. we met one of pete's cousins who transfered to usc and is a communications major. she instantly became alice's role model.

an unnatural facination with houses

2005-12-05T23:33:00.000-08:00

someday, i want to live in lots of different types of houses. i've lived in a house, dorm, and apartment so far. but there are also times when i want to live in unconventional houses. even just temporarily. i want to make and live in and igloo. but then again, i have a romanticized vision of the arctic. that's a big reason why i can't go to alaska/the arctic in the winter. it would ruin the vision in my head of everyone living in igloos and eatting whale blubber. i know that people don't live in igloos anymore. but.... yeah. i've still got that romanticized vision. and i'm going to have to make an igloo someday and get that out of my system. but today, i discovered a different kind of house i want to make and live in. a yurt. i wouldn't want to live in it forever. just long enough to get that out of my system. but since it is used by nomads, i can collapse it and take it camping too! so yes. i've found a summer project.

best concert EVER!

2005-11-20T14:58:00.000-08:00

last night i went to the kuumbwa jazz center (koo-um-bwa. not koom-ba-wa like i pronounced it up until last night) where i saw four lovely ladies playing the best guitar music ever. the show was called la guitara. it's basically an all female guitar concert. the organizer, patty larkin made a compilation cd of 14 different female guitarists. the styles ranged from classical to cajun to alterna-folk to folk.. such fun to listen to. muriel anderson played the harp guitar and the classical guitar. but somehow, she was able to make it so that the classical guitar sounded like a banjo, mandolin, fiddle, i don't even know what else. so fun to listen to. and she seemed to enjoy herself up on stage. kind of making fun of herself and just having fun. it turns out that they guy i sat next to is friends with muriel anderson. when she first started out, he was a concert organizer and she called him up and he let her crash at his place. i thought that was pretty cool. and kaki king was also great. i don't know what instrument she played. it kind of looked like a zyther. but i don't know. i was sitting behind tall ppl. like stupid person. but to get the full effect of her, you have to watch her music video from her website. she was the only person i knew before going to the show. but i like her enough to say eh, well.. the rest might be good. i also went to amazon.com to listen to 30 second clips of the other ladies' songs. although only listening to 30 seconds can get a bit aggrivating after a while. especially if you're trying to do it on my SLOOOOOW computer. anyways, so yeah. kaki king apparently originally started off on drums. so when you see her video, you see her strumming and "drumming" on the guitar. very cool to hear. and mimi fox was fun to hear too. she's really got really into her music and was able to just go off and have fun. her eyes were closed but her mouth was mouthing the sound that the guitar was making. silent onomonopeia (my favorite word, by the way). and the last person to play was also the person who organized the tour and the only one to sing, patty larkin. she sang songs that she had recorded and played guitar and was fantabulous. her songs were interesting too. made me wish i had a spare $100 or so to buy all their cd's. in the end, they all came together and they played the duke ellington song caravan. b/c they were playing the a jazz club and seemed appropriate. they also came out to do an encore. it was a song lead by muriel anderson on her harp guitar. good stuff. i ended up buying the compolation cd. which is awesome. and all the artists seemed approachable. but i couldn't say anything to them. i wish i had though. b/c they were really approachable and seemed like nice, down to earth ppl. also, i wanted them to sign my cd. but by the time i bought it, they'd already left. the cd line was crazy long.

ps. how is it that i just now figured out that there's a button on top that lets me link to sites?

a virtual funeral

2005-11-04T02:12:00.000-08:00

all i can say is wooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwww.. it's a mix between kinda funny and really really sad. and slightly political. computer games are not things the chinese gov't should regualte.

so anyways, i got a friend request from a guy on myspace the other day. apparently we went to paly together. except that with me, it's more or less "out of sight, out of mind". and his pictures aren't clear enough for me to know who he is. it took me alot of searching effort to even figure out his name. anyways, his myspace made me decide that today was the perfect day for me to look at ppl who went to/graduated from paly. i limited my earch to ppl between the ages of 23 and 35 and found a bunch of ppl. including james franco. i found it interesting that he only has 75 friends. i would expect more.
i felt slightly stalkerish looking at ppl's sites online. but at the same time, i didn't really care. i got to read up on ppl's lives after college. or the past 5 years since graduating, whichever is more applicable.

an interesting email moment

2005-10-27T23:43:00.000-07:00

a couple of weeks ago, i signed up for bella greeting cards b/c i forgot a friend's birthday and wanted to send her a belated birthday ecard. they're cards aren't that bad. but you need to pay for them. i got the card and i canceled it as soon as my friend got the card b/c there's only a two week free trial period. to cancel the subscription, you have to write out a cancelation request form thing. and today, when i checked my email, this is what i got from their site:

Sandra,

Your account has been cancelled.

Just out of curiousity is this Sandrah Oh the actor from Gray's Anatomy and Sideways?

Regards,

T.*

I emailed the woman back and said thank you for canceling my subscription but no, i'm not the actress. but i did sign the email "Sandra Oh (the unfamous)". because, you know... i'm not famous.
kinda made me wonder about identity theft for a bit. b/c if i can't be famous, i'm going to be paranoid, DAMNIT! but yeah. identity theft is up there in my "scares me shitless" list. that and germs (i mean biological warfare. i'm not a antibacterial hand sanitizer bottle a day person) and disappointing ppl.

*The name of the emailer was removed in the off chance that she decided to google "interesting email"+"sandra oh"+"bella greeting cards" and went back about 15 of google's "O"s.

job hunting is not fun

2005-10-19T16:42:00.000-07:00

i've been job hunting since moving back to palo alto. and even though i say i'd take any job, i've come to realize that i won't. i've never had any desire to work in retail, i'm perfectly happy never working for another quizno's, and i'd rather not have a menial job somewhere that i could have gotten while still in high school.
but then i try looking up jobs and if they want an anthropology major, they want an MA or PhD. or they want a senior level executive or all other jobs i'm nowhere near qualified for. and then i started news link hopping until i saw an ad for jobs in korea. i signed up for that board and have now recieved a bunch of job listings by email. here's an excerpt: "This school wants a brand name college graduate" (is ucsc a brand name?). all the jobs so far have been related to teaching english and you don't need any certification. and the thing is, i'm pretty sure i won't take these jobs. it's a bit of a commute. and a commitment. i don't want to go there, get settled, and then get fired. not to mention how behind i'd be on days of our lives! actually, i think that it would be interesting to work in a different country. but people there will not like me for my poor korean skills and my lack of teaching experience. ah well. i'm off to find out about more jobs i'm uber unqualified for.

at the risk of sounding like a total alcoholic...

2005-10-14T22:27:00.000-07:00

i think drinking alcohol is fun. i don't do it excessivly. more or less social drinking. although i have had my moments of bowing down to the porcelin god(dess). my two top favorites have to be fat tire and guiness. they are very yummy. but today i found a new beer. unfortunatley, it's seasonal. it's a pumpkin ale. if you can get it, try. so spicey and yummy. tastes so much like nutmeg! mmmmmmm... like a liquid pumpkin pie.. minus the crust. my least favorite has to be a hefewiezen. the only good thing is that if you order it at a bar, they'll give you a slice of lemon. and lemons are yummy.
on another note, i've been reading alot of non-thinking books. so instead of reading about the first hominid to walk, i'm reading the shopaholics series. it's alot like a chick flick in print. yayness. along with any other shopie kinsella book and one called jemima j. ...someday, i'll read mentally stimulating books. until then, chick flicks in print, here i come!
also, i saw shera! sheera? shira? rina's baby! woo! such a cutie. she looks alot like mordy. you can still see bits of rina though too. such a cutie.

just thought these were so funny!

2005-10-05T03:06:00.000-07:00

Stupid Celebrity Quotes

"Where's Austria?"
David Hasselhoff, Baywatch star, when told he has five gold albums as a singer in Austria.

"Beyond its entertainment value, Baywatch has enriched and, in many cases, helped save lives. I'm looking forward to the opportunity to continue with a project which has has such a significance for so many."
David Hasselhoff

"Good looking people turn me off. Myself included."
Patrick Swayze

"Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life."
Brooke Shields, during an interview to become spokesperson for a federal anti-smoking campaign

"There is certainly more in the future now than back in 1964."
Roger Daltrey

"I feel my best when I'm happy."
Winona Ryder

"Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean I'd love to be skinny like that but not with all those flies and death and stuff."
Mariah Carey

"I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever."
Miss Alabama at the 1994 Miss Universe pageant, when asked "If you could live forever, would you and why?"

"I was asked to come to Chicago because Chicago is one of our 52 states."
Raquel Welch on Larry King Live

"I don't know all the certain words to word it."
Vanilla Ice, on why he hired a ghostwriter for his autobiography

"I can do anything you want me to do as long as I don't have to speak."
Linda Evangelista

"A bachelor's life is no life for a single man."
Samuel Goldwyn

"We all get heavier as we get older because there's a lot more information in our heads."
Vlade Divac, Basketball player

"Every city I go to is an oppurtunity to paint, whether it's Omaha or Hawaii."
Tony Bennett, Singer

"Where the hell is Australia anyway?"
Britney Spears

"In an action film you act in the action, in a drama film you act in the drama."
Jean-Claude Van Damme

"We've got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we need?"
Lee Iacocca, Chairman of the Chrysler corporation

"Deals work best when each side gets something it wants from the other."
Donald Trump

"You can hardly tell where the computer models finish and the real dinosaurs begin"
Laura Dern, about the special effects in the movie Jurassic Park

"I loved Jordan. He was one of the greatest athletes of our time."
Mariah Carey on hearing of the death of the King of Jordan.

"To have your niece die in your arms is the greatest gift from god"
Celine Dion

my favorites have to be mariah carey's, miss alabama's, and raquel welch's comments. too funny!

i don't want to grow up, i'm a toy's r us kid

2005-09-11T21:47:00.000-07:00

so i've moved back home. back to the world of parents and no clear idea of what's going to happen. i've been applying to jobs and waiting for replies. i'm also going back to santa cruz every other weekend to take classes at cabrillo. b/c i like certificates and with these classes, i can get a lab work/archive certificate. which would go nicely with my field survey and excavation certificate. the only thing is that my schedule gets all kinds of messed up since it's6-9 on friday and 8-5 on saturday and sunday. so on saturday especially i was so sleepy in class. but at least it's every other friday and not every day. this way i can have a job on the weekdays. once i find one. and until then, i have grand plans to get my tivo working. who knows how to hook up tivo? i've got close to 80 hrs of days of our lives i need to transfer onto vhs.

over the weekend, i watched the last two episodes of a tv show that won't air. it's called "welcome to the neighborhood" where three families in a cul de sac get to choose their new neighbors. there was a latino, black, gay, asian, punk, wiccan, and stripper mom family. each episode, one family gets voted off until there's a winner and that family gets to move in. the neighbors are christian white families. One is a very christian white family who have issues with the gay family with a black adopted toddler. the show can't be aired b/c there were too many lawsuits and abc, owned by disney, decided to just settle instead. it would have TOTALLY been a great show though. i watched the last two and wish that i could have seen the first four. but yeah.. i'd rather settle than deal with GLADD, NAACP, etc..

on another note, in my sad and pathetic attempt to donate to the katrina victims, i've beeing drinking at nola's. they have hurricanes and every $3 goes to katrina. as well as 20% of september's earnings. i was also meaning to go to trader joe's bake sale until i realized it was last saturday.

odd... but there's a backpack that conducts energy. that would be pretty cool if it was big enough to conduct energy and store stuff and not be too bulky. i think it's still in the planning stages though.

sandra has left a heartbroken quizno's for the world of the unknown

2005-08-21T23:24:00.001-07:00

today was my last day at quizno's. it was the best ever. b/c i knew it was my last day and they knew it was my last day. and quizno's is slow so i didn't have to make many sandwiches. most of the day i spent stnading and sort of cleaning. then 4:00 rolled around and i threw away my cup that quizno's gave me so i can drink as much soda as i want, clocked out, and left. FOREVER!! i couldn't stop smiling from when i threw my cup away to when i walked home. NO MORE QUIZNOS! yay! then i went home, showered, waited for my friend megan to come over so we can go to safeway. there we bought marshmellows, chocolate, grahm crackers, firewood, lighter fluid, and beer. then we realized we had left some things back at my place. so we went back and got coat hangers, chips, and a few random alcoholic beverages and headed out for seabright beach. we were on the road when pat called us. she was already at the beach. then we sat, shot the shit, drank, and eventually started the fire. pat had to get back early so i burned my shoe laces, tounges, and a pair of pants. all these were clothes that i wore under my quizno's uniform and it felt good to do it. such stinky clothing. a bit later, tim and his friend dave stopped by and i burned another pair of pants. then pat had to go home to see if her husband fed their kids or not. and holly and matt showed up. and as tim and matt left, jeannette came. then i tossed my last bit of clothing - my shirt into the fire. so much fun. although it was a bit drawn out. i kinda wish i had done it one right after the other. but ppl kept comming at random points of the evening thati couldn't. then at 10 the ranger person came and said that we had to leave b/c the beach was closed. luckily we had hidden our beers and he didn't catch us. we were innocently roasting marshmellows at that point. then we left the beach and i dropped jeannette off at her car and holly and matt downtown. megan and i went home to sleep. yay for burning quizno's clothes! yay for no more quizno's!

on a side note, i'm leaving santa cruz by the 31st and if you know anyone who needs a full mattress and box spring, a desk, wood filing cabinet, fold out couch, 2 lamps, 2 rolling chairs, or a table, tell them to contact me. b/c i'm selling.

rina had a baby!! (name tba)

2005-08-08T23:56:00.000-07:00

rina had a healthy and happy baby girl on saturday! yay for mordy and rina! according to sarita, they have picked out a name but aren't telling anyone just yet. the pictures show happy parents and a cutie of a baby.

to all you days of our lives watchers: i LOVED the past couple days. seriously, i've watched the friday episode maybe 4 times and today's twice already. WOO!! kate's gotten what she deserves and today foreshadowed more bad stuff to come crashing down on her. WOO! and it made me wish i were alone in the apartment b/c then i could really say "WOO!" outloud and be more animated about the show. but daniel doesn't know the full extent of my obsessiveness about the show. and i figured that wasn't the best way to introduce it to him. although it's my passive mission to get him to like the show and kind of understand what's going on. i watch the show while he's on his computer in the same room. sometimes anyways.

wow.. long time no blog

2005-08-02T21:23:00.000-07:00

ok, i just check and the last time i blogged was when i graduated. so i guess this is the time for me to give the internet world the latest in sandra news.
right after i graduated, i started my archaeology technology program at cabrillo college in aptos. it's broken down into three classes: survey, excavation, and lab. i finished survey and excavation already. i start lab on monday. it's been pretty fun. and the ppl in the class are pretty cool (for the most part). and like all anthro/archaeology ppl, alcoholics. every friday we all went to the seabright brewery to just hang out. which would have been super fun if i had been able to go every friday. but i had sucky quizno's to deal with.
the survey class was all about map making, reading maps, how to do surface searches for artifacts, and all that fun stuff. we had a three day camping trip to los padres national forest to survey. that was pretty fun. the excavation class was the actual digging part. we were at the redman hirahara house in watsonville. you can see it from hwy 1. it's the old victorian that's falling apart. it's the first japanese american site to be excavated. which was exciting. we at first wanted to see if there would be a clear anglo level and a clear asian level. but there wasn't. but that's ok. we found a ton of stuff anyways. lot of glass, buttons, tools, ceramics, gravel, dirt, and clay. and in the lab class, we're gonna sort everything into categories (interior decoration, kitchen, architecture, etc) and then identify things. like going through the sears roebuck catalog and saying "oh! here's the shirt that button came from!" but yeah, you should see us. it's a group of 30 ppl all wearing hats, long sleaved shirts and pants, doing various excavation things. we're an odd sight to see. all covered up and all.
aside from the class, which runs from 8-5 monday to friday, i also have quizno's. so by the time i come home, watch days of our lives, and shower, i'm half asleep. which is great if you don't want to talk to ppl ever during the class. but yeah. ...good times... the only thing i've kept up with is my soap and email. and seriously, in that order.
also, i now have a roommate. which is cool. b/c he can pay half the rent and i don't have to go insanely into debt over the stupid rent. he's quiet, from wisconsin, 20 and we never see each other. he wakes up and leaves for his internship before me, comes back when i go to work, and sleeps before i come home from work. it's like living with an invisible person. odd.
right after this program ends, i'm leaving santa cruz. which will be interesting. so yeah, if you know anyone in santa cruz who wants furniture, send them my way. i have a couch, tables, chairs, a desk, bookshelf.. yeah. it'll be interesting.

GRADUATED!!

2005-06-12T22:46:00.000-07:00

yay! i graduated! (finally!) i went to two graduations. one for the anthro dept. and one for my college. the anthro dept one was pretty cool. i got to see alot of the graduating anthro ppl. that's where they gave out awards and honors. i didn't get any but cheered for the ppl who did. my friend won the physical anthro essay writing contest. he won $500!! he wrote about primate play. such a cute topic. afterwards, jessica, carol, claudette, and i went to a bar for "lunch" with the lab manager. richard is the coolest person in the world. i want my office to look just like his when i grow up. and he knows everything about everything. the coolest guy ever. after "lunch", we dropped richard off at school and the four of us went for real food. i thought my food had too much peanut sauce but whatever. it tasted good cold. later on, claudette and i went to her high school's graduation. the school she teaches at is so small and hippie.. there were two graduating seniors and the graduation was on the beach. it was a potluck beach graduation. everyone got to say what they liked about empire academy and other people can say what they like about the person. so for a bit under 20 students, the graduation took almost 3 hrs!! i ended up snacking on chips and salsa while waiting. it was nice to put a face to the stories that claudette would tell me.
the next day was my college graduation. ucsc is broken down into 10 different colleges so my college had a couple hundred walkers. since i'm a transfer student, i didn't know many people that i graduated with. i knew a grand total of 6 people. one of them is me. we got to sit next to anyone we wanted so that was nice. seeing as i really would have gone crazy sitting next to strangers. but yeah. ashley and i sat next to each other. i had a random politics major i didn't know next to me but next to him were max and sam. they're also anthro majors and i do know them. it made me wish that he didn't sit between me and sam. ah well. anyways, the graduation took place at the upper quarry. so while most colleges had a nice ocean view, i got a rock wall. i guess if ppl were bored enough, they could go mine for limestone. but yeah. there were no chairs!! there where stadium style seats but it was wooden planks on dirt. ashley and i were saying that our moms must be so annoyed that they paid so much for our tuition and they had to sit on dirt while wearing fancy clothes.
after the graduation, we went to lunch at margaritaville. where none of us had a margarita. i had camarones el diablo. jumbo prawns in i think chipotle sauce. it was very spicy. they had very good salsa for their chips though. after lunch, i went home in a food coma and took a nap. after the nap, i went out with jessica and carol to celebrate our graduation and end of school (for now). we later met up with claudette, ashley, ashley's sister samantha, richard, and his partner kai. richard and i played a horrible game of pool. i could not get that stupid eight ball in. either i suck at pool or i just wasn't sober at the time. i think it's a combination of the two.
yay graduation!
now i've got to go to bed so i can wake up on time for summer school. (WHAT?! ... yeah, i don't know either)

sandra the stalker

2005-05-31T02:44:00.000-07:00

so guess what i just spent about two hours doing? stalking the actors of days of our lives. on myspace. sad, i know. anyways, i found three. jason cook, ashley benson, and amanda musgrave. also, i have amanda musgrave's aim. i've never talked to her. b/c really.. that's creepy. jason has a ton of chicks as his friend. with alot of his comments saying "hey, thanks for the add" or "you've been hit with the sexy truck" with picture of a truck. all three have pictures of themselves and of them on the set. which i thought was cool. and made it that much easier to know for sure that they were the actors of dool. but yeah, after all that searching, i didn't request an add. maybe i will but i don't know. maybe i'll message them. wow. hello. my name is sandra oh and i'm a dool obsessed stalker.

i heart bread.

2005-05-26T17:59:00.000-07:00

i'm taking a tae kwon do class right now. it's week nine right now and i think i've gone to a grand total of about 3 weeks worth of classes. i felt so guilty about missing so many classes that i went this week. at the end of class, master song says "so sandra, what's the story? why have you missed so many classes?" in front of everyone. to which all i could do was say "uhhh.. duuhhhh.. i dunnoo" b/c mostly, i miss the class because i'm sleeping. or wake up only 15 minutes before class. from my apartment to the bustop, it's about a 5-7 minute walk at the sandra pace that i go. and from the bustop to campus, it's about 10-20 minutes depending on where on campus you want to be dropped off and how many stops/people there are. so if i wake up at 915, i don't see the point in going. anyways, i went to class both days this week. and now i'm sore. i think i need to stretch out my calves more. at the beginning of class, we stretch most muscles except for the calves. i guess i should go in a bit eariler and strech out my calves. but it was fun to do jump kicks again.

i decided that i want to experiement with bread. so far, i've made challah and two different types of white breads. one was a vegan white bread. which wasn't bad at all. although, i halved the recipie wrong and added the full amount of flour. it just made the bread a bit more chewy though. nothing too bad. today, i bought wheat and soy flours. so next i'm going to try baking a low carb bread, wheat bread, and multi grain bread. i asked my friend if she'd help me eat all the bread and thank god she said yes. or i'd have some VERY well-fed ducks following me.

queer fashion show!!

2005-04-30T01:44:00.000-07:00

i went to the queer fashion show today! it was SOO much fun! one of my friends, jeremy, was in it. and a few random aquaintences were in it too. i went with holly but we didn't have tickets. so i picked her up, drove to campus, waited until they started selling tickets, bought 2 of the last 8 tickets available, and drove off for some quick chinese food. word of advice. don't go to a sit down restaurant for a quick meal before a show. also, don't eat chinese food in santa cruz. there's a reason why we're known for taquerias and not chinese places. anyways, i was being a brat about it the whole time. holly wanted chinese food so we went. the show started at 8 and we got seated at about 6:30/45ish. but i wanted to eat and leave by 7:15 so that we can drive back up, get a decent parking spot, and find a good seat. we order, wait for food, gobble it up, and wait (what i think is ) forever for the check and togo boxes. well, it really was a long time b/c the waitress was doing double duty with the take out orders and waitressing other customers. and we never told her we were in a hurry. all the while, i'm telling holly that we have to leave and that the waitress should have given us our checks already. holly became a bit irritated, i'm sure. we leave the restaurant at about 7:20ish and zoom off to park. surprisingly, i found a spot pretty close. then we rushed off to get a seat. a couple professors and classmates were in the second row but had no spaces left for us so we went to sit farther back. but stefanie comes and says that the couple they were saving spots for didn't look like they were comming so we could take their spot. YAY! so holly and i moved up but behind a tall guy with poofy hair. ah well. jeremy wasn't blocked. the rows were set up so that they went diagonaly. we sat on the other end of the runway and closer to the main stage. i wish we were closer to the runway but no matter. it was fun anyways.
the fashion show was not alot of fashion but alot of dancing. and sending pro-queer messages. there was one part where it was couture. good stuff. all very nicely coreographed and everything. or dancing disguised as skits. there was one about body image, another that was very west side story(pinks vs. blues). jeremy was in one about stereotypes.

on a side note, i love cirque de soleil. i tivo'd the cirque-a-thon that bravo had last weekend and i'm wataching it now. and since i don't go to vegas, i can't see them live so tv is the best way for me to see the show. and even if i did go to vegas, i can't see myself spending over $100 for a ticket. i can't' see myself even gambling with that much money! but if i win big, i'd spring for a ticket. :) and if i wing REALLY big, maybe 2 tickets.

ucsc is way too hippie-ful

2005-04-20T11:40:00.000-07:00

so, within the past week, there has been a strike, a tent univeristy, a walk-out, and 420. omg.. i keep forgetting that santa cruz is full of hippies. and then weeks like this come up and i say "oh, yeah. santa cruz is hippieful"...
the strike was about union workers not getting a pay raise in 2ish years and not being paid a living wage. which i kind of agree with except for the fact that most dishwashers don't make a living wage anyways. the strike was for clerical workers, janitorial, and others. the city buses had a sympathy strike and didn't cross the picket lines. the shuttle busses on campus didn't run b/c they were also doing a sympathy strike or were a part of the strike. i'm unclear on this. in any case, they weren't running either. so if you wanted to go to class, you'd take the bus to the base of campus and walk to class. i don't know if you know about ucsc's landscape but it's a mountain. a big, huge, hike through the wilderness type of school. NOT FUN. and the dining halls were closed, the libraries, basically the whole school. my professor said that i could email her and say that i support the strike and she'd excuse us. so i emailed her and stayed home. hee! here's an article about it
the tent university is very unclear on why their doing it. what are they protesting? i don't know. they just have tents set up at the base of campus. which is why the police came at 10pm to arrest them. there's even a video. here's an article about it and http://dmedia.ucsc.edu/~afrojas/TU thing is, all the hippies cried police brutallity. when really, they did pressure point things for them to pass out and arrest the people. there was no batton. and the worst injury anyone would get are bruises from the pressure points and such. the school told them that if they were on the base of campus, they would be arrested. but the base of campus is considered city land ad you can't camp on city land. if they had listened to the school, they could have moved it to any part of campus and not gotten arrested. their stupidity. there are some classes that were held at tent university. WHO ARE THESE HIPPIE PROFESSORS??
and today there's a walk-out. i think it's to stop budget cuts. apparently is a state-wide walk-out. but the walk out is scheduled for noon and i don't have a class at noon. what am i going to walk out on? the computer lab? riiiight... and the walk out just happens to be on 420. hermm.. i wonder what ppl will be doing instead of staying in class?
looking up the articles reminded me of a few weeks ago. there was a job faire and just like every job faire, there were military recruits. but the santa cruz hippies would have none of that. so they blocked the job faire entrance until the recruiters left. but i think that's bad. i mean, i'm sure there's someone who may have wanted to talk to the military. they recruiters should be there for that option. http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2005/April/06/local/stories/01local.htm
sometimes, this school makes me feel like an uber-conservative. then i go back to palo alto where i'm just a silly liberal. one time, i was eatting with a couple friends when a chick asked if she could share our table. we were fine with it b/c the rest of the place was full. then she started to talk about some sort of gathering to protest about fair wages, promotions, and such. about how they should promote internally. i'm perfectly fine with that except that sometimes the best person for the job can't be found internally. promotions should be based on merit, not seniority.
420 is a big day in santa cruz. so big that even rolling stone wrote a whole article about it. i can't find it but it was pretty funny. although the administration didn't think so. http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/central_coast/9633345.html i haven't seen it but next to porter college there's a meadow. and last year and the year before, there were a bunch of ppl who got together and smoked out. i wish i could have taken a picture at 4:21. apparently there was a big mushroom cloud-ish thing of smoke. but there were also alot of police there to arrest anyone they wanted. bahh.. crazy santa cruz hippies.
crazy crazy hippies.

ok, so apparently the links don't work and i don't know html to fix it so here are the urls. the one for the sj mercury makes you sign up for access to the articles but it's free
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2005/April/15/local/stories/01local.htm/
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2005/April/19/local/stories/01local.htm/
http://dmedia.ucsc.edu/~afrojas/TU/
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2005/April/06/local/stories/01local.htm
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/central_coast/9633345.htm

bumper stickers

2005-04-04T01:54:00.000-07:00

on my walk to work i read alot of different bumper stickers. really, whenever i see a bumper sticker i have to read it. some are funny, some are political, some confuse me.
the funny ones i like. like there's one that says "what the fuck am i thinking?" with michael jackson's picture right next to it. or "shut up hippie". i know there are others that are funnier but i can't think of them right now.
it's the political ones i wonder about. like all the cars that have kerry/edwards stickers. what's going to happen to them? i mean, it's not like they'll run ever again. all it says is that in 2004, you voted for the losing team. or proposition 208. from when? 1996? but if it's a political issue, i guess that's ok. like putting up a pro-life sticker or something. things that will be debatable forever and clearly state your position.
the confusing ones say "flirt harder. i'm a physicist." i really don't get that one. do i have to be a physicist to understand it? i've only taken high school physics so i have no idea what flirting has to do with anything physics related. there's another one that has to do with being a scientist. i don't remember it right now though. i think it said "back off man, i'm a scientist". does that mean not to tailgate because you're a scientist? b/c i don't think that being a scientist will stop ppl from tailgating you. i know it doesn't stop me. and how do i know that you reall are a scientist? and then there are some bumper stickers that i want. like "keep santa cruz weird" or "i love santa cruz diner". and some i don't want. like the ones about being a goddess or whatever. the only thing is, i don't think i'd ever put bumper stickers on my car. b/c i know that if i have one, i'll want another. and another. and another. then i'll become THAT car. the one with more bumper sticker than paint on it. and that's just not pretty. and it's a traffic hazard.

shooting range!

2005-03-25T19:13:00.000-08:00

i went to a shooting range today! it was really cool. philip, claudette, holly, and her brother jason and i all went to go shooting. we shot three different kinds of guns. the revolover was the most fun. philip took pictures and video of all of us. there's a video of me shooting the revolver and the recoil was powerful enough to shoot my arms up and my head back. hee! good times. it was my first time shooting and for the most part, i hit the target. some hit the paper but not the guy. and i'm pretty sure i missed the paper altogether on some shots. we spent a bit over an hour there. we used two different ranges with us trading off and taking turns with the guns. very diplomatic. jason's an ex-marine so his shots were all very close together and accurate. mine were all over the place. but i thought that was pretty good for my first time.

an update on my bruise. i looked at it this morning and it was bigger and more black and blue. i showed claudette and holly my bruise and they were both very impressed with how bad it looked. i'll see if i can get a picture taken of it. odd what i think is picture worthy..

se callo

2005-03-25T02:21:00.000-08:00

i had work today from 11-3 today. but i woke up at 11. so i called in to work saying that i'd be about 10 minutes late. and got ready and ran out. RAN! the parking lot i have to run through to get to the side walk was half full of water from the rain but i saw an opening between the dumpster and the recycling bins. and that's when it happened. i ran and slipped and fell on the mud. the parking lot asphalt is about an inch or two lower than the sidewalk. so i slipped on the mud and slammed into the side of the sidewalk. ....that was fun as always. and as i fell, a woman pusing her baby in a stroller passed me and helped me get cleaned up. nice samaritan. :) she gave me a cloth wipe thing but i felt bad getting it dirty. so she gave me a bunck of baby wipes. that worked well. and i limped to work. i got there and told a very animated story about how i fell (lying a bit so it sounded worse) so that my boss would have a bit of sympathy and not be too mad for being late. he asked if i was ok and said that i would be working the cash register all day. the only thing is that i'm the only one working that shift who knew how to work the cash register. so i had more or less an indefinate break since it kept being interupped by ppl comming in. and even though i was scheduled to only work till 3, i stayed til 430 when the other shift started. which was lovely. and when i eventually looked at my thigh, i saw that i have a FAT bruise on my upper thigh. good times.

craziness of the end of the quarter

2005-03-12T00:01:00.000-08:00

thursday started with me being kinda nervous about my lab final. i took it, went down to the computer lab to burn my powerpoint presentation onto a cd from my zip disk. but my disk was unreadable. and i wasn't about to redo my powerpoint 2 hrs before the class. so i went to class and wrote out what i was going to say. i was 1 of 3 who didn't do a powerpoint presentation. which sucked. the class has 19 ppl in it. each person was given 10 minutes to present and 5 for questions. so 15 minutes per person. which is about 5 hrs. the class is 3. so we ended up taking 4 hrs to present. which sucked. b/c the class ended at 9pm. so we were all cranky, tired, and hungry. but our professor, nate, said that after class we could go to a bar after class. as a "yay, the quarter's over!" thing. so we did. we went to 99 bottles, a bar that sells about 103 different beers with a card system so that after you drink 99 different beers, you get a mini plaque on the wall. after 9 plaques, you get a brick. but ppl with bricks probably have liver failure now. anyways, nate was there and so were most of the people from the class. which was really cool. i'd never done that before. go out with a professor. and he said that all the drinks were on him. but alot of us bought pitchers on our own and thursdays are all day happy hour prices. also, we didn't let him pay. another guy from the class, ivan, paid for it. which i felt kinda bad about. the class should have split the bill. oh well. we left 99 to go to the blue lagoon. because by that point, being the alcoholics that we are, we felt like dancing. thursdays at the blue is 80's night. nate bought us drinks there. he surprised me by getting scotch. ivan, nate, and i had scotch, others had run and cokes, etc. then we danced. i thought the whole night was really cool. i've never done that before. the whole night was full of surprises. nate's a scotch guy, he dances, and i must seem alcoholic to him. having nate there kind of made me feel weird though. b/c he's still my professor. and the anthro dept. really isn't big. ah well. i went in to see him today to ask about my presentation. b/c he gave everyone else in the class questions but not me. and i need that kind of validation. i can't get a paper back that just says "good" on it. i need comments. and he seemed fine. or he was hiding it well. i think he was hiding it well. there are some professors that i know i'd never go out with. but others.. maybe. nate especially. just because he's not much older than us.

cleaning..

2005-03-06T23:52:00.000-08:00

usually i do the dishes when we run out of cups. to the point where we're at the verge of drinking out of espresso cups. can you imagine drinking your daily 8 oz of water from an espresso cup?!?! you'd have to refill it after each sip. but today, the limiting factor was bowls. so even if i wanted a bowl of cereal for dinner, i wouldn't be able to eat it. b/c all the bowls are dirty. or a bowl of soup. although, now that i think of it, i could have used a mug.
also, from quizno's i brought home the huge garbage bags. and since the kitchen had two safeway bags full of trash already, i put the bags in the big bag. i also put the bathroom garbage and my room's garbage in the bag. but it was still only about half full. so i left it in the kitchen. and we just kept filling that bag full of garbage. until today. when i decided that it was time to toss it when our kitchen started to smell like a dumpster. and i figured, if i was going to toss stuff, i might as well get rid of yucky things in the fridge. like my milk that expired 2 weeks ago. and dried out cheese. and rotted garlic. the garlice wasn't in the fridge. but it still needed to be tossed. and some moldy bread. i'm not so sure i like the fact that i didn't eat all that stuff before it expired. b/c as a kid, it was basically drilled into my head that you don't waste food. b/c there are a lot of starving kids in north korea and africa.
the thing is, i need the communal areas to be clean. not neccessarily my own room. my room is disgusting to the point where i can't find some papers. my bed is never made. my clothes are piled a couple layers high. my books are all over. but i don't clean it up. instead, i have to make sure the that blankets on the couch are neatly folded and that the kitchen counters are clean and the microwave is crumbless. it's like i have selective ocd.

not fired!

2005-02-22T21:45:00.000-08:00

for those of you who knew about my freak out session, i didn't get fired from quizno's. last sunday night i had to work the closing shift. on sundays we have to wheel the sandwich making stations to sweep behind them. i pushed one cart kinda hard b/c there are alot of wires and i had to wheel over the wires. but then the oven didn't work. and when i went to see what was wrong, i saw that the plug was a bit weird. so i went to replug it. but it sparked and freaked me out. and after that, the oven really didn't work. erika refunded everyone's money and i had a mini freak out session there. b/c i was at quizno's and couldn't have a proper one. we finished closing and went home. i decided that i needed to go out and drink and so did others. so a bunch of us went to the avenue where it happened to be the perfect thing to do. b/c a random guy put all the drinks bought by the ladies on his tab. HEE! the bartender said that at first she was a bit sketched out by the idea but he wasn't a creep. he didn't even want us to go up to him and say thank you. later, the bartended clanked a bell and said "ladies, say thank you nick" so the whole bar said "thank you nick!" haha. but the whole night i was still worried about being fired and all. i even had dreams about it that night. not fun. but then i went to work monday night and nothing happened! NOTHING! i thought for sure that i'd at least get yelled at. b/c russ likes to yell. but nothing happened. erika started her shift at 2 so i guess they asked her earlier. but they didn't ask me. and i didn't bring it up. later, erika, russ, and sunil were talking about the wire and how they had to call an electrician and that it cost alot and all. and russ kind of joked around with erika about not letting her near the wires. but erika's nice and cool and didn't say anything about my involvement. yay! not fired!
omg though, monday was days of our lives' 10,000th episode. and i forgot until i watched it. the very first scene was francis reid came on and said "hi, i'm francis reid and i play alice horton and i want to say thank you for watching days." i saw that and yelped and clapped. it made me happy that i was the only person at home. b/c i don't know what ppl's reactions would be if they saw me clapping and bouncing around for watching the 10,000th episode of days. haha.

kaki king.. almost

2005-01-30T19:48:00.000-08:00

today claudette and i went to san francisco to go to ameoba records on haight. we left santa cruz at about 1130 with the free show starting at 2pm. with that much time, you'd expect us to get there, eat lunch, and browse the store until the show started. but no. we got to san francisco a bit earlier than 1 and progressively got more and more lost. we finally got to the record store at about 3. after goin south on 101, north on 101, through some funky streets who knows where, and on embarcadero. i heart pier 39ish area. b/c i was going crazy driving around and not knowing where i was until the most beautiful sign in the world appeared to me. singing. "visitor information" llllllllllllaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!!! the guy there told me very clear instructions but we inversed on of the directions and ended up going backwards. which wasn't all that bad. since we went down lombard street and up to coit tower instead. it was really pretty. it was such a nice day in sf. usually you have to deal with so much fog or cold. but it was really nice. sunny and pretty warm. but since the visitor information guy gave us a map, we were able to find haight pretty easily. we finally got to the store after the show ended. claudette bought some cd's and i got the kaki king cd. we also ate at a thai place. it wasn't all that bad. i'm not usually a big thai person but this was ok. it was a cute restaurant. and they didn't stop refilling the water. but it's ok. since it's lemon flavored. and i drank alot of it. then we came back. i was a bit disappointed that we missed kaki king but ok with it. since we had a good time otherwise. good times.

my birthday

2005-01-11T14:34:00.000-08:00

thanks to everyone who called to say happy birthday to me!! i felt so loved! apparently i'm birthday twins with pat benatar, george foreman, and rod stewart. cool stuff.
since my birthday fell on a monday, i went out with my friends on sunday. which really isn't that much better. well, better for me since i don't have monday classes. we went to tampico's (a really good mexican restaurant that everyone should try) and a couple bars. one b/c a couple of my friends know the bouncer and the other for dancing. too bad it was techno night..
i got cool presents too. i got a cookie cookbook from bailie and keir and a collection of hot sauces from claudette. she gave me about 6 different hot sauces. i think they're all mexican sauces. so i had to taste them all. i'm sure my stomach loved that combo.. mexican food, beer, and all six hot sauces. she got me cholula, picamas, el yucateco, tamazula, salsa huichol, and el pato. the one i liked the best is tamazula. she said that a random guy in the salsa aisle told her that tamazula was the best one. so she got it and he was right. it's a really good hot sauce. the el yucateco is the spiciest. the kind that lingers in your mouth and throat. i'm not so into that. i'm used to korean spicy food where it burns you then goes away. not so much burns you until you have tears in your eyes b/c you can't get the spicy out of your mouth. el pato tasted more vinagear-y than the others, and picamas and salsa huichol kinda tastes like tapatillo to me. although picamas is a bit thicker than salsa huichol and tapatillo. cholula is pretty good. a nice, americanize mexican hot sauce. they have it at pizza my hear and california pizza kitchen. all in all, very yummy presents. ;)
was it just me or was brad and jennifer's split painful for you? i mean, just the other day you were having a discussion about who's prettier (brad)
on another note, i think the new apprentice will be interesting. i don't really watch the show. i usually just watch bits and pieces and the last couple minutes to see who was fired. but i'd like to see a street smart person win over a book smart person.

countdowns

2005-01-03T22:52:00.000-08:00

i'm hooked on countdowns. if i find out there's a countdown on tv, i'll usually watch it. even if i've seen it before. like numbers 40-20 of E!'s top 101 worst red carpet moments. or if it's a stupid countdown. and since it's E! and VH1 repeat every episode 50 billion times, it's ok if you miss a few.
i think the thing i like about countdowns is that you start with 101 (if you're lucky.. usually you start in the middle) and go down to 1. and as you go down the list, you start to argue with the tv. "ashely judd should NOT be number 48 in the top 101 cute hollywood chicks!!". and then you get to number 1 "oh, yeah.. anjelina jolie is definatley number 1!" but i think that countdowns only work on tv. i really don't think that the radio should have countdowns. like 104.9 had a top 1000 songs of 2004 countdown on new year's eve. and 107.7 had the top 500 classic rock songs countdown. those really didn't work for me. i guess i need pictures.
but also, i was watching E! earlier today with claudette and she said something that i thought was interesting. she said that E! and VH1 and all those types of shows plant little seeds of ideas into our heads. like joan collin's was talking about what types of girls hot hollywood men go for. hot hollywood guys like colin farrel, lenny kravitz, and jerry o'connell. if joan collin's hadn't said lenny kravitz or jerry o'connell, i wouldn't have thought of them at al. there are lots of times that i forget about their existance. but i guess joan colins has different tastes. it's true for so many other things too though. who heard of paris hilton before VH1 and E! told everyone she's famous and fabulous? but it works on me. i'm the same person who will buy the "new and improved" goldfish because the package is now shiny and bright.

kristin is so weird

2004-12-02T22:53:00.000-08:00

kristin gets pulled over and gets out of a ticket usually. she didn't get a ticket today. here's our aim conversation:
soh 00 hos: where'd you get pulled over?
Oh k d 0h k: 280 off magdalena
soh 00 hos: god
Oh k d 0h k: he just thought i was drunk
Oh k d 0h k: bu i was acutlaly dancing
soh 00 hos: how'd you get out of it?
Oh k d 0h k: !!!
soh 00 hos: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11
Oh k d 0h k: i told him that i came bck from a christian convention praise night
Oh k d 0h k: and that i wasl istening to the new cd
Oh k d 0h k: and i guess i got carried away.
Oh k d 0h k: yeh he said i was driving kinda wobbly
soh 00 hos: HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11

sometimes kristin amazes me.

thanksgiving

2004-11-27T17:59:00.000-08:00

i went home wednesday in time for me and alice to watch the motorcycle diaries. kristin had to go to class so she couldn't go with us. alice didn't know it is based on a true story. but it's not like che is talked about much in school. it's a good movie. and very pretty.
on thursday, kristin, alice, my mom, and i went to my uncle's house to make won tons. my cousins michelle, jenny, jake, and julie helped us make the wontons. and julie's boyfriend came to help and jenny's boyfriend came to help. so did david and michael siegel. enough ppl to make about 1000 wontons. which were mostly eatten by the end of the day. in my family, thanksgiving is all about turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and wontons. not always in that order. there were 33 ppl over for dinner so we had to make more than normal. it was crazy. 2 round tables full of ppl filling and folding wontons. but eventually, we had to take a break. so most of us went to play frisbee golf at jordan. it's hosted by the ziesler family every year. and has been for the last 12 years. 2 yrs ago, they even had 10th anniversary frisbee gold t shirts made. hehe.. a couple of the ppl were wearing them. kristin and i were a team. we got a 62 but i think that we counted wrong b/c that puts us in second place. after the game, we went back to my uncle's house where i helped jenny make her turkey. and almost all the wontons were fried by that point. since there were 33 ppl comming, they made 3 turkeys. my uncle grilled his.. smoked it. jake fried his and jenny baked hers in the oven. i made the gravy. but it was thicker than i wanted it to be and was kinda lumpy. ah well. it wasn't all that bad. the tables were set up in a bit "U" shape. running from the dining room across the hall and into the living room. the adult table was only one side of the "U" and the kids section (from 18 to 32 years old) was the rest of the "U". it was kinda cool.
friday i went to frys to shop. right as i walk to the door, i see a guy holding a sign that says "free dvd player with the purchase of a tmobile cell phone plan. crazy huh? then i had to come to santa cruz in time for work. bleh. why anyone would even go out to eat after having a ton of leftovers from the night before, not to mention the fact that ppl probably woke up still full. i know i did. but yeah. after work, i made green chili with the left over turkey that i brought from home. good times. it wasn't all that bad. i had a recipie but didn't really follow it in terms of portions. b/c what am i going to do with half an onion and who knows if i have 2 lbs of turkey. ah well. it's not bad. and a nice blend of spicy. i was worried that it might be too thin for chili but claudette said it taste good. which is good. since it would be alot of hard work trying to eat something that tastes bad.

reality tv

2004-11-23T22:40:00.000-08:00

hi. my name is sandra and i'm a tv-aholic. which, sadly, includes reality tv. i draw the line at some things. like the surreal life, the swan, real world, road rules to name a few.. the surreal life b/c it really doens't look all that interesting. the swan b/c i think it's depressing and not a good show overall. the real world, road rules, and real world/road rules challenge b/c i never grew up with cable so i never really watched it. except for the really old ones that were on late at night on regular tv. but there are some reality shows that i do watch. i watch the simple life (to laugh at paris and nicole), the apprentice, the biggest loser, and he's a lady. omg.. he's a lady is great. it probably takes away the brain cells that i might have earned from watching the apprentice. it's basically a contest where a group of men compete to be the best lady. a drag beauty contest. very too wong foo.
i wouldn't be sad if reality tv left forever and ever. but if they think up new shows like he's a lady, i might not mind it as much. but if more shows like temptation island and the swan are created, i don't know if i'll like it too much. it's all about the concept. and how it's executed. but that's also true for all shows. but real shows have more to worry about. a good concept, good chemistry with the actors, good writing, and actual viewers. that's probably why there are so many reality shows popping up everywhere. even cable. like queer eye for the straight guy.

oh the stupid people of the world..

2004-11-16T11:58:00.000-08:00

so, a lady paid for clothes using a fake $200 bill with bush's face on it. clearly fake. read the article. it's funny how fake it is but ppl still believe it's real.
i also read an article about finding over 1500 lbs of coke. hidden in squid. guess how they covered the smell. PEPPER!!! and the squid itself. but still.
you know, if bush and chenney die, condoleza would become the first black president and the first female president. kill 2 birds with one stone! heh.. but it won't happen. bush and chenney won't die. i just think it's kinda funny. not funny. just kinda interesting.

where for art thou, ksjo???

2004-11-14T23:09:00.000-08:00

ksjo. 92.3 it was always there. they always talked about all the years it's been on the air and being the longest rock station in the bay area. and now.. it's a spanish oldies station?? what? ksjo can be heard here in santa cruz and all of a sudden it was a spanish station. i thought "oh, well, maybe they sold their santa cruz station. i'm sure it's still around in the bay area." but it wasn't. i wonder why they don't give any notice. and what happens to all the dj's? ah well. the songs are pretty. i don't always know what they're saying though. since it's in spanish and all. there's this one spanish station in santa cruz. it's called "super estrella". it's alot of love songs. claudette calls it soap opera music. and, really... i can hear it too. very dramatic singing.
today at work, i found out i was half an hour late, ended up doing the dishes, cut myself on a stainless steel pot, and had a huge stainless steel 1ft by 1ft square bowl thing fall on my head. yay for quiznos'. i think the cut hurt the most. i had to keep washing the dishes so it was always irritated by the dirty water. ah well. i'm sure my immune system is tough enough for dish washing germs.

FALSE ADVERTISEMENT!!

2004-11-11T22:02:00.000-08:00

why don't things with descriptive words live up to what they say? like tissue paper. right now we have angel soft. by the name you would expect it to be soft. but right before angel soft, we had charmin. charmin was MUCH softer than angel soft is. also, angel soft has this "quilted" quality to it. i don't know if it's supposed to make it softer. b/c it doesn't. well, it's better than the school toilet paper. but everything is better than school toilet paper.
while i was googleing angel soft, i came across the virtual toilet paper museum. you have to check it out. http://www.nobodys-perfect.com/vtpm/index.html i hope that shows up as a link.
and clean and clear. "clean and clear and under control". BAH! in middle school i used dial bar soap and i got my face clean and clear and under control. ppl think i'm crazy when i tell them that i used bar soap b/c it's so harsh on your face. but hey, it worked for me.
also, soft and dry isn't the softest and dryest deoderant that i've ever had. the arm and hammer brand one i had right before it did the job just fine. and made me feel like i was dryer. well, no. i really don't know about that b/c i really don't care enough about deoderants to compare them accuratly. i just couldn't think of another thing with a descriptive word in it.

being the filthy liberal that i am, i was sad about the election

2004-11-07T22:31:00.000-08:00

there's one chick in my class who's wearing black for the week b/c of the re-election. and she told me that she met someone who is going to wear black for four years. CRAZINESS!!! i was sad when kerry lost. but the way i see it, he won well. he got most of the votes and most of the people who bothered to vote voted bush. i'm just not looking foreward to more war in iraq. maybe if there was a real plan and a real goal. a real goal is not tring to eradicate all terrorism in the world. and really, it' not like all of the world's terrorists are iraqi. but it's also a bit too late for us to back away from it. we'll probably always have some sort of military there. kinda like there's always military in okinawa and s.korea. well, maybe not forever. but a long while anyways.
a nice thing that came out of the elections was a bumper sticker that i saw. it said: NO CARB and underneath it said: Cheney Ashcroft Rumsfeld Bush. heehee. that's alot better than the normal campaign bumper stickers. the ones that just say "bush cheney" or kerry edwards".

election day

2004-11-02T13:08:00.000-08:00

so, it's election day. and p. diddy and all of mtv have been saying forever and a half to vote. or die. so i voted. but.. everyone telling me to vote or die is really turning me off to voting. i mean, i've always voted every year since i could. and i've always told ppl to vote. b/c the way i see it, you have no right to complain about things you don't like if you don't vote in the first place. but i kind of thought the whole vote or die thing was a bit over-the-top. i mean, sure. tons of ppl don't vote every year. but i really don't think that after the whole gore-bush voting hell, as many ppl will stay away from the voting booths today.

2004-10-28T23:52:00.000-07:00

so, as my senior project, i have to research and write about the cost of food and its relationship to malnutrition (both under and over nutrition). so i decided to go to a bunch of markets in santa cruz to compare produce prices, make a survey for ppl to fill out, and interview some of the survey takers. so far, i've only gone to 3 markets and haven't even typed out the survey yet. ah well... i guess i should do that soon though. eh.. not too worried about it. i've trained myself to procrastinate successfully. clearly can't spell. but i can procrastinate.
so anyways, i went to safeway on monday to write down the prices. guess how long it took me. THREE HOURS!! why three?? well, it's probably got to do with the insane amount of produce, seeing someone i know and stopping to talk, and needing to take a break from writting down prices. also, for most produce, there was a price for club members and for non members. bah.. made me not want to go to the mexican market and whole foods-ish market today. but i went. b/c it had to be done. the mexican market frustrated me so much! why don't you have prices marked? and even if you do, why don't you write all the vegetable names in one language? (i'd prefer english but i guess their customers are mostly spanish speaking). but whatever. it's like the vegetables were pretending to be john kerry or something with all the flip flopping. the whole foods-ish market was cool though. didn't frustrate me. didn't make me go crazy. makes me feel better about going to other markets now. except that i know there's an albertson's. i see that taking three hours also. ah well.

side note: i'm watching leno as i write this and a guy is promoting his documentary. on comb overs!! hehehehehehe!!! i wanna watch it! were was i when this came out that i didn't know about it? it's called comb-over: the movie. HEHEHEHE!!!

i've decided that i want to be a piccaso painting for holloween. but i have to work until 10 on both saturday and sunday nights. i don't know if i'll end up doing it. it would be a cool costume though. i haven't decided if i want to be part of his blue period or if i want to go with his cubism yet. if i can't do it, someone should. but my friend might make a haunted house. so i might go off and visit. and my cousin, her husband, and baby are visiting for a week so i think i'll go home at some point to visit them or they'll come here to see my school. whichever. i want them to come here though. b/c i think santa cruz is pretty. where else can you be on a mountain on campus and still be about a mile away from the ocean?

laundry and such

2004-10-24T01:45:00.000-07:00

ok. i have know realized how important quarters are in life. they pay for parking meters, newspapers, gumball machines, and most importatly, washing and drying machines. so, on that note, how can a person run out of quarters? ESPECIALLY when a person just put in a load of clothes into the washing machine. so what does any sane person do when they realize they're fifty cents short of drying their clothes? first, frantically search the apartment for quarters, sit on the couch defeated, and watch an episode of roseanne. then, realize that the friendly neighborhood 7-11 is a short 3 blocks away. so off i go to buy a bag of chips for my senior seminar pot luck and a beef jerky stick for me. then after i pay, ask for the ones to be converted into quarters. then rush back to finish the episode of roseanne and off i go to dry my clothes. and so are the adventures of my life..

quizno's

2004-10-19T01:44:00.000-07:00

i'm a workin gal now. i work at quizno's in downtown santa cruz. it's ok so far. but then again, i haven't officially worked there when customers were there. the store just opened yesterday. the only thing i can see a problem with the place is that the managers are 2 very disorganized people. i guess it's ok though. i can understand since they were frazzled about the opening and all. but still. i want to know that they have control over everything. ah well.
does anyone out there in cyberland use toothpicks? i just read that it's probably one of the oldest hominid habits. there are teeth that have grooves in them b/c of the grass stalks that were used as toothpicks. pretty cool huh? i wonder if we have those grooves from our toothpicks and flossing.

i hate being forgetful

2004-10-04T11:22:00.001-07:00

today i went to longs because i knew that if i put it off until later today, i'd completely forget and realize a little too late that we don't have anymore toilet paper and that we need a set of mini screwdrivers. but worse than that, i don't remember my password to my own computer!! goodness. there's forgetful and just plain stupid. and i have no idea how to fix it. my computer is password protected and it can be changed every month or so. but over the summer i didn't need the computer so i never used it. then i turned on my neglected computer and realized that i don't remember the password. sometimes i amaze myself. narrrff... and to make it that much more interesting, i'm taking my senior seminar class this quarter where eventually i'll have to write a 15-20 page paper. i wonder if i can turn it in on post-its. anyways, i'm off until i can think of something equally as stupid or doubly funny to write about.

grape picking

2004-09-27T16:02:00.000-07:00

on saturday bailie, philip, and i went to Rick's house to pick grapes. philip used to work for him before he started ucsc. rick only hires people from jc's. i guess because most other people probably wouldn't want to work on a farm/vineyard and such stuff. he has a small vineyard with cabernet and pinot noir grapes. we only picked the pinot grapes though. as a thank you he fed us lunch and dinner and gave us each six bottles of wine. too bad i don't know much about wine though. four other people that rick knows were picking too. two work for him and two are home brewers and were buying grapes from him. then we went up to the house and put the grapes through a grinder type thing. it basically split the grapes from the stems. it's hard work but fun to do too. after we cleaned, we played horseshoes. philip said that rick made him build a regulation sized horseshoe track thing and make it laser-level. but the ground is made of dirt and in the path of the creek if it overflows. i guess there will always be work for philip there. there was so much yummy food though. lunch was make your own sandwiches with different breads, mustards, meats, and cheeses! so many choices! and lots of beer, wine, and sodas. the beers were from all over. like france, Prague, italy, and more. it was crazy. i didn't even know you could buy beers from all over here. well, i know you can. i just didn't know people who did. for dinner we had tacos. rick made three different types of meats, homemade salsa from his garden, and mexican sour cream. it was so good! but what was even better was the dessert!! imagine a HUGE meringue cookie. then cut off the top crusty part, spread a thick coat of whipped cream and sliced strawberries on top, then put the crust back on. MMMMMMMMMMMMmmm!!
i'm taking a class called book arts. it's gonna be pretty interesting. but the professor is the first person i've ever met who actually whistles when he speaks. hehe!! i'm going to be very amused in the class.

i'm in santa cruz now

2004-09-17T19:13:00.000-07:00

i moved into my apartment in santa cruz a couple weeks ago. it's been an interesting couple weeks. i live with claudette, also an anthropology major and ex-villager. we have a tv and 2 computers but no cable and no internet. it's more like decoration. if we were ikea, the tv and computers would be made out of cardboard.

i've been on the job hunt but not having much luck. i applied to retail jobs, bakeries, and even to ups. one of the requirements for ups is to lift 70 lbs. i hope they don't test that on me.. i haven't been called back. i did get an interview but i don't think that got me anywhere. ah well.

lately, i've been going to the gym around 1pm. not because i have nothing better to do or b/c the lunch crowd is gone. more because that's when days of our lives is on and i can watch it while i use the elipical machine. closed captioned of course.

in sc now

2004-09-08T01:49:00.000-07:00

i'm all moved into my apartment in santa cruz now. i got here mid afternoon on sunday. it turned out that that's not the best time to go to santa cruz. aparently, a silly holiday called labor day combined with a hot day made people want to go to the beach. those crazies. anyways, i am now officially on the job hunt. i wonder what i'll find. i hope it has flexible hours so i can work it around school.
on sunday the church service was about the experiences the mission team had in china. kristin was one of them. i thought the sermon was interesting but had alot of questions about the ethics that were invovled. the mission team was told not to contact people who could give away the fact that they are christian missionaries and they went to china under false pretenses and everything. but during the sermon, the pastor named names and after the sermon, there was a slide show presentation of their experiences. if the MISSIONARIES can't let the chinese government know that they are christian, wouldn't the people who actually live in china be more in danger? the pastor got verbal consent from the people who participated but they might not know that the photos and all that such stuff can get themselves identified by the government and sent to jail. i guess it sounds a bit far fetched but being an anthropology major makes you have to sit through alot alot alot of ethics lectures and things related to ethical treatment of participants. also, it's just safer that way i guess. nobody goes to jail this way.

tech support and frustration

2004-08-17T02:33:00.000-07:00

after about three days of me trying to make the computers in the house run wirelessly, i found a few odd things. like one tech support site said something along the lines of "if you can't connect online, click here for help". merr.. how can someone without internet click that link? also, i hate calling tech support. i never really liked it. but now i really hate it. i first bought a netgear router and it completely confused me and the tech support weren't very supportive so i returned it and got a d-link router. and after 5 hours of fiddling with it, calling both earthlink and d-link tech support, and pure dumb luck, i now have wireless internet! yay for sandra! but yeah, through my talks with various tech support guys, i realized that there are some who have thick accents and are short tempered, there are 15 other people who need tech support at the same time as you (10ish pm), and that it's monsoon season in india right now. but it's a sunny day today.

who's watching the olympics with me? the olympics even make ping pong really intense and exciting to watch. i missed the men's gymnastics though. i was trying to get to computer to work and forgot about it. boo.

i know i have more to say but i can't think of them right now.. i've been trying to post things but it wouldn't except my password when i had things i wanted to post. ah well. at least it worked today.

back at home

2004-08-02T19:06:00.000-07:00

i'm back home now. yippie for me. i got to the airport at 930am ish with chris and elizabeth. i was coninental and they were both american. we got in line and i made it a race between the two airlines. i won. yippie! but also, american was 3 hrs delayed so it wasn't all that cool for them. i borded the plane and waited for take off. then at houston i waited 1/2 an hr for a parking spot for the plane. our plane had to fight against 2 british airways planes. after i deplaned, i rushed over to customs, got my luggage, went through a security check again, left my bags at th e side of a wall, then ran around the airport for my gate. all in 1/2 an hr. i got to the gate and found out the plane had just landed and would be a 1/2 hr late. so i waited around. then got on at 730 when i found out there's a mechanical problem that would take about 1/2 hr to fix. so i ran across the whole airport for nothing. not too happy about that. b/c while some women "glisten", i sweat like a hog. A HOG. but whatever. then i get to sfo at 1015. and home at 11 or so. fun trip home. but i found out that there was a flight to san jose that i wish i had known about since it's closer to home. ah well. elizabeth had it worse though. she flew from san jose, cr to miami, spent the night at chris', flew out of ft. lauderdale today at 7am, and got to minesota at noon. craziness.
but now i want to go back to cr to play more. and jealous of scott and joanne for being able to do that.

happy birthday jong

2004-07-26T09:50:00.000-07:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JIYONG!

this post is all for jong the day after her bday
hope you had fun.
i tried calling you yesterday but got your voicemail.
unni

almost done with this program!

2004-07-19T16:22:00.000-07:00

i went to a big waterfall on saturday that i don't remember the name of but it's in san luis. and i get mesmerized by water so it was fun. it was just patty and i. the day started with me walking from the institute to canitas (still don't know how to tilda) to be back in time for painting the casa clup. there ended up being more ppl than brushes so i was sent to the cement area. then i mixed cement and handed buckets of it to the guy to pour it. it was ok. kinda tiring. i later found out i wasn't supposed to mix cement but whatever. then a bunch of us hung around until everyone had lunch and was ready to go. it ended up just being patty and i. we walked to santa elena and caught a taxi then hiked up through a farm (had to pay to go through private property) then hiked some more (like an obstacle course really) and finally got to the waterfall. SO PRETTY! i love monteverde and the surrounding areas. then we head back and go for dinner with a buch of the others. but morphos double booked the reservation and we ended up waiting an hour. so our drinks were comped. then there was a club that's only open that one night so we went there. it was ok but every song that wasn't salsa was interupted 10 seconds into it. irritated me. i was tired so i went back early with patty on the back of a pick up. which was interesting.
sunday i went to gaudy's farm and went horseback riding with a bunch of other ppl and her son. it was fun. we rode along the continental divide. then we all watched spiderman 2 bootlegged b/c there's a dvd place here that rents out bootlegged movies. hehe..
oh! last week, i went to a dairy farm (gaudy's) and a pig farm. at the dairy farm, i had a sip of fresh milk and a shot of vodka (tastes like bailey's) and at the pig farm, i petted a baby pig (which will someday be my dinner). the next morning, i told my host family all about the farms and confused them all when i kept saying knife farm instead of pig farm. boo... i hate being retarded in spanish.
tomorrow my group starts focus groups! yay!

playa tamarindo

2004-07-11T12:44:00.000-07:00

i got to playa tamarindo friday night but we didn't find a hotel with room for 10 ppl that we could agree on the price for. my only criteria was that i didn't want an over crowded bed. like 1 per twin, 2 per queen. and a few others agreed too. i mean, who wants to sleep 3 to a queen/king when we're all sticky and hot? not i said the fly. ok, i've decided that this keyboard is from hell. the wind blows and the spacebar moves. narf.
anyways, i tried surfing yesterday and that was a sad sad process. i can't stand up! ah well. that's what todays for. that and another sun burn on my sun burn.
i fo und some cute things and i want to buy a sarong. such pretty things. but also, tamarindo is very touristy so the prices are all us prices. b/c ppl will pay them. we went to a couple bars here and there's one restaurant that has super cheap drinks. a bit oer a dollar for cocktails. good stuff man.
welp, gotta go play in the water. it's so warm you don't need a wetsuit to surf or anything!

and the tobacco group wins the race!

2004-07-07T18:13:00.000-07:00

today my group finished the IRB proposal to get approved for our project. now we have to wait to see if we get approval so that we can conduct ethical interviews. yay for us. haha, there´s a mini ¨we hate the tobacco group¨ club but whatever. that´s just because they´re jealous. hehe..
on a happy note, i haven´t had to eat beans in a while so now i don´t have as much gas. not just gas either. just a funky feeling in my stomach because of all the beans. just about everyone else has experienced the same thing.
this comming weekend i´m going to the beach! yay for sandra. this group is so organized and has connections to odd things. like reeve´s family knows someone who drives taxi busses so we´re getting a good price and chris talked to they guy who works at the internet cafe about hotels. so good.
my fourth of july here was un-fireworky. but it was still good. i went on the zip line and sky walk! i first did the walk and that was really cool. i saw a family of monkies and a bird of some sort (we´re thinking it´s a turkey). it´s called the sky walk because there are 6 different suspension bridges throughout the walk. really cool. i have some nice pictures. i hope they come out ok. the zip line is where there´s a cable that you´re attached to and you zip across. SO FUN!! there are 11 total. number 7 is the tallest and number 11 is the longest. half a mile! kitty and i had to go on number 11 together b/c it was too windy and we´d probably get stuck in the middle and someone would have to rescue us. so we go together. and we get stuck. but it was cool. they guy who rescued us came and wrapped his leg around us and pulled us to the platform. apparently, it was very sexy. i don´t know. i was just hanging out. haha...

weekend so far

2004-07-03T10:59:00.000-07:00

yesterday i went to elsa´s house with almost all the other ppl from the public health program and some other ppl who just work around the institute. elsa´s the public health coordinator. anyways, we stayed until about 1030ish which is late for us because most of us usually sleep by 9, 10 at the latest. most ppl left her house about 1030sih then the ones who stayed went to moon shiva. i swear. i love moon shiva. they had a dj and so we stayed there dancing until 1ish. it was patty, chris, scott, diana, oriana, elsa, christina, her boyfriend, and me at moon shiva. christina and her boyfriend decided to stay at moon shiva past 1. but yeah. after we got back to elsa´s, chris put on lock, stock, and two smoking barrels so we can watch it to sleep to. after patty, chris and i finished the movie, we just stayed up and talked some more. which was fun. we never get actual down time to just hang out with ppl. it was really fun and relaxing. elsa had enough beds so that if we doubled up, we all slept on a bed. then we had tamales for breakfast but there was hair still on the pork so i fed that to the dog.
now i´m gonna walk back to canitas to help clean and paint a community center. we have to because that´s how we negotiated getting to use the place.
tomorrow i´m going on a canopy tour and a zip line! it´ll be so much fun! basically the canopy tour is when you´re walking on bridges through the canopy of the forest and the zip line is where you´re harnesed to a cable and you swing through the canopy. i hope i see monkeys!

i missed my bus!!

2004-07-01T16:43:00.000-07:00

narf.. so now i´m here at the library typing this up because i missed my bus home. narrrrrrrf.. but whatever. only 8ish ppl were going home because 4 others had to go to a meeting and the rest wanted to do yoga. being oh so athletic and limber, i´m here in the library having successfully avoiding the yoga group.
yesterday, my host mom called me over to the living room and she had a broomstick in her hands and with the broom stick she pointed down to the ground. there was a scorpion! so i took a picture of it. no scale though so you won´t really know how big it was. i think it was probably an adult. then my host mom used the wooden end of the broomstick and started to poke it. she poked it until it died. then i said "it´s dead" and she said "i know" but kept poking it until she cut the tail off. then she showed me the tail and asked if we had them in our homes in the states. i said i don´t and she said that they have alot.
you know how in class projects theres always that one overachiever group? yeah, that´s my group. with not much help from me. and you know how in every group there´s the overachiever and the moocher? yeah.. i´m the moocher. also, i´m the slacker of the group. narff.. whatever. today our group was told to slow down a bit so i´m going at normal pace while the rest of the group was going superspeed.
there was a blood drive today at the cheese factory (which has really high fat content like all other yummy things) but i didn´t donate. they closed at 5 (the same time my bus left) and i was in class until then. ah well. it´s not like i would have been able to donate anyways.
this trip really makes me wish i had a laptob and a digital camera. ah well.

Tobacco

2004-06-30T17:18:00.000-07:00

so, i'm in the tobacco group here. i'm in the group with diana from ucb, joanne from harvard, susie from texas women's institute, and myriam from dunno. we're doing the influence of advertising in rural youth. too bad i don't know much spanish.. anyways, that's pretty cool. i originally wanted to be in the food and nutrition group b/c i'm doing the food and culture class in the fall but whatever. so now i'm taking pics of all the tobacco ads i see. so far i have 2. woo! i'm on a roll!
the class is taught more like a seminar type thing than an academic class which is pretty cool. but they also like to spring assignments on you 15 minutes before the class is over due the next day. i'm like.. ummmm... wanna give me a bit more time? but whatever.
omg. ok, so, this morning i leave from my house in canitas (needs a tilde but don't know how) to walk to a quaker meeting in monteverde. which is about 1.5 hrs away. so i gave myself enough time. i left at 7 for the 9am meeting. on the way i meet 2 others who are also going. ton and blythe. we walk together into santa elena, the next town over. walk through, get on a main road, keep walking, keep walking, keep walking. then we're in los llanos. ummmmmm.. WRONG WAY!! so we turn around. and IMMEDIATELY after, it pours. POURS POURS POURS POURS. then blythe asks a guy in a car how to get to monteverde. he says "oh, i'm going to the cheese factory (which is right next to the institute and has yummy ice cream) so he gave us a ride. then we walked to the meeting. i was drenched. and being the well prepared person for getting caught in the rain, my jacket was unzipped for part of the downpour, my jeans were soaked through, and my socks got wet. dunno how. the quaker meeting was cool though.

wow, the first week is over.

2004-06-27T14:00:00.000-07:00

welp, i guess i should start from the beginning.
i got into san jose, costa rica (which at first confused me b/c i saw an email that said get your own transportation to san jose airport and said, well that's easy.. haha.. i'm a dork) last. i got in at about 830pm. and when i got out, gaudy was there with a sign saying "sandra kim" which kinda made me worried that everything in the program would make me sandra kim instead of sandra oh. but whatever. i get in the van and i meet scott and ashleigh and we start talking. scott's a physical anthro guy like me and ashleigh is something along the lines of biochem. scott goes to usf ( which confused me too b/c i thought that was u. san francisco but it's u. south florida. still a dork.) and ashleigh is at harvard. we get to the hotel and i wake up reeve, my roommate. then ashleigh, scott, and i go to a restaurant for dinner. then we go to bed.
on sunday, we meet for breakfast, go on a tour of rio damas, the bad water supply, and a watershed. the woman also showed us a swimming pool that women meet up to swim in together. then we got a lecture on the history of the costa rican health care system. pretty interesting. now i kinda want to know more about the american health system. then we had dinner. good food. americanized though. but still good. YUMMY vanilla ice cream. better than
monday, we went to ucr (which i thought was uc riverside at first but it's u. costa rica. such a dork.) and got a lecture about the current health care system here. there is a 3 tiered hosptial system here. so we saw the top tier hospital in san jose. then had lunch. more fruit drinks and vanilla ice cream! i heart fruit drinks. pinapple, mango, starfruit, blackberry, etc. mmmmmmmmmmm fruit drinks. then i went to the jade museum with a couple ppl in the pouring rain in the skirt i was wearing to impress ppl i was getting lectures from and visiting the hospital. i was very soaked. thank god for north face's gortex knock off! after the museum we had lectures about individual topics that we're doing research on. i'm doing tobacco. afterwards, we went to dinner and the tobacco guy went with us. diana from ucb speaks spanish fluently so she chatted it up with him. our topic is going to be the effectivness of anti-tobacco campaigns in rural areas since they already have a study in urban areas. then a bunch of us went to the pueblo. which is a whole bunch of buildings really close together that are all bars or restaurants for us to dance in. good times. one was ladies night and had 3 guys dancing. very nsync. haha. oh, the night before, there were a a bunch of ppl who went out to a bar and met some cool transgendered ppl (male to female) who told them about the pueblo. after the pueblo, i went back to the hotel and pooed. but i was so paranoid that i would clogg the toilet that i think i over flushed. i flushed 4 times! i probably could have gotten aways with 2 but i had anxiety.
tuesday we left san jose for monteverde. on the way, we went to a fruit stand and truck stop type thing. the fruit stand had ants crawling in the candies. and flies all around the things that didn't really have peels. so i didn't get anything. but patty got a coconut and was just chillin with her huge coconut still in its husk drinking the milk. i hope someone got a picture of it. then we went to the second tiered hospital in puntarenas. it's kinda like a state hospital. the hospital is RIGHT on the beach and was really cool. the top floor is for the 5th year med students and the director was joking and saying that sometimes you see guys in the girls section and vice versa. haha. from the roof we were able to see out into the ocean (pacific) and turn around and see monteverde. the director said that it takes about 20 minutes to see a doctor from the emergency room. cool huh? as opposed to our 5 hr waits. after the hospital, we had lunch at the caballo blanco and had yummy food, fruit drinks, and the choice of 4 desserts. so my table got together and we each got one dessert. i had the tres leches. mmmm so good. joanne had coconut flan, patty had a squash type thing, and susie had rice pudding. all of them were really rich and sweet. except the rice pudding. then we got to our hotel at monteverde and explored the downtown area. "downtown". it's 3 buildings. there's a cafe and i went there with a couple other ppl and we had fruit drinks. haha. i heart fruit drinks. HEART!!
on wednesday, we went to the monteverder institute which is right next door to the monteverde cheese factory. OMG! yummmmmmmmmmmmmmy ice cream!! i'm sure the cheese is good too. i haven't really tasted any yet. but i will. then we went to the monteverde clinic. it's like the county hospital. the third tier. and had a tour then walked back to town, which probably took us about half and hour. then we had dinner, more fruit drinks, then back to the cafe. it's called moon shiva. the guy remembered us and said welcome back. haha. they were showing my big fat greek wedding with subtitles in spanish. pretty cool. i had a chocolate frio this time. just to taste it. bleh. i'm sticking to my fruit drinks. it tasted like chocolate syrup and milk. with crushed ice. i like my fruit drinks better.
thursday i went to the institue again, had more ice cream, took a spanish test to see what level we're in (i chose to be in beginning b/c i don't really know my past tense but i probably could have gone to intermediate b/c of my vocab). then we went to a sobado, a traditional healer. that was really cool. she said that she doesn't do it as much now b/c her shoulders and arms hurt b/c of it. but she did it to one of the ppl in the group. she only helps ppl who have digestive problems. she rubs the inner elbows, inner knees, and back of the neck. but while she was massaging, she turned the volume up on the tv when her telenovela came on. haha. then we found out that oriana, who's a med student in spain, found out that she passed her boards and that she's now officially a doctor! cool stuff so chris organized a surprise party at moon shiva. this time beers all around and some bailey's and hummos/pita breads. yummy.
then friday, we went to our homestays. my family is really nice. very polite and everything. luis is the father, monica is the mother, habraham is the 4yr old, and adrian is the 6mo old. cute but shy. adrian doesn't stay wake very long.
on saturday i took a shower in cold water b/c i couldn't get the hot water comming. i later found out that the switch was turned off. ah well. then i hung out with the family until we went on errands. we went to the supermarket where they asked me what foods i like and everything. coolio boolio. but i kinda felt like they were only buying food for me, which didn't make me feel all that cool but yeah. we also went to a carpenter so he can build them a cabinet. and the boys got a hair cut. then more hanging out with the family.
sunday (today) i went on a tour of the monteverde reserve. COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLIO! i saw monkeys (howler), birds(quetzals, turkey, mountain robins), and lotsa other stuff. it's so pretty here the pictures don't do it justice. now i'm in the next town over where there are internet cafes and supermarkets and very tourist friendly. the downtown even has paved roads! i get so happy when i see paved roads. it means that my food isn't wishing there was a seat belt feature in my stomach. anyways, this is a long entry and if you got this far, it mean you need to come to costa rica and visit monteverde. so pretty.