It's 11pm and here I am, still at work. Took no lunch break and about 20 minutes to eat dinner. That's 14 hours. My garbage can is nasty - since they only take it out every other day, it's filled to the brim with take-out boxes from the cafeteria and empty watter bottles and cups. Praise the Lord for other coworkers still stuck here too, because it makes it so much more bearable. I am ready to party this weekend! Dinner and k-oking for Ted-meister's farewell (we've been having quite a few of those lately), and BBQ at jean's.... bring it! I am SO ready for it!

Is this week over yet? :(

I'm in the grumpiest of moods today, possibly due to the lack of rest and sleep this weekend. It's funny because I *know* I'm grumpy, and I know I shouldn't be, yet everything is totally aggravating me. I'm already at the point where I just want to go home. NOW. And never go back to work. And then I step back and I hear myself whine and hear myself being cranky and I realize how selfish I am. About how everything needs to go MY way, how I complain about the work that I have to do, and basically the general attitude of "what about me? me me me!" And I look at myself and I see just how ugly my heart can be. What happened to serving others first... to think of others' needs before mine... to thank God for the blessing of having a job, instead of complaining about the work I have to do? sigh. It's a good thing God extends this thing called grace, because on some days I feel like I need as much as I can get.

I never thought I would get tired from playing the piano, but this weekend I did. It was an all-day marathon at church on Saturday:
10am-12: praise band practice for Sunday morning
1:30-4: practice for prayer & praise night
6:30-9: actual prayer & praise night
That's 7 hours. yeah. throw in practice pre-service and then also service itself this morning, and it's been a lot of piano-playing for me. My arms actually hurt from playing so much.

Also, never baby-sit a two and four year old (even if they are one of your favorite kids) when you haven't had enough sleep the night before and the night before that. In three hours, they managed to: watch two videos twice (because they refused to watch the other videos I had), stick lots and lots of packing tape all over a chair and call it a puppet show, draw on themselves, fight with each other, draw on the church carpet (thanks to bob who showed up and helped me clean the mess... and then ditched me to go swimming at MY complex, of all things. heh heh. crayola washable markers are the greatest thing ever. good thing faith & zachary didn't find those sharpies), and then, zachary decided to take off his shirt, and then also his shorts (oh, and earlier he also tried to take faith's clothes off for her). I also had the privilege of being called "auntie larry." And those are just the highlights. I totally forgot I had already committed to baby-sit Hubert & Debbie's kids during Mexico missions training this sunday a while ago, because I was really looking forward to a mid-afternoon nap. Oh well, at least it was definitely not a boring afternoon.

There's a person named Karen Chan who works in a different department at work. We work with each other, and lots of people work with both of us, but unfortunately, everyone decides to send emails that are supposed to go to me to her instead. Half the time I don't ever get the original email or meeting request because she doesn't forward it back to me - she gets that many. Her only solution: that I marry someone who's last name doesn't start with a "Ch". Right. Because that's the obvious solution.

Now I know what happens when you get warned to 100% on IM - you get kicked off. You can ask joe about that one. ;) And also, people who IM you "hey," wait for your response, warn you, and then log off immediately are wimps. Yes, I'm talking to you, drew.

Costco update - after multiple emails (with no response), a call to the actual warehouse where the guy couldn't find my order and promised to call back within 30 minutes (which he never did), calling their 1-800 number, listening to their elevator music for 10 minutes only to lose reception on my cell phone, calling again, listening to their elevator music for another 25 minutes, and FINALLY talking to someone, the result: my tires are nowhere to be found. What kind of service is this?! I was charged a whole lot of money three weeks ago for these suckers. I want my tires. The lady said that they may have to ship out another set because she doesn't know where the original set went, which will take at least ANOTHER week. But I won't know anything until tomorrow, when she is supposed to email me. Yeah right, let's see if I really get that email. Yeah, never order anything from Costco.com. Lesson learned.

The big screen TV is out of storage! 50" TV, here we come!

Okay. I just tried to write the same post five times, and I lost it every single time. Blame it on blogger, but I have a feeling I'm not supposed to share my thoughts on what I was writing about for some reason. Because, no joke, I lost it EVERY time I was in the middle of the same topic. So if you want to know what it was, guess you'll just have to ask me. It was missions-related.

Well, I did have a productive weekend. Overslept my missions committee meeting (hey when a meeting is at 8:30 on a Saturday morning, you're bound to oversleep it at least once!), but did manage to make it to the tail-end, before heading to the sanctuary for praise band practice. That afternoon was the first afternoon in a long, long time, where I had no plans. It was great! I cleaned our bathrooms (those fake plastic tiles and plastic bathubs are IMPOSSIBLE to clean), finished up the logistics for Mexico missions that I'm still helping out with, AND finished putting together the scrapbooks for jen and jerry. That night, went back to church to hear a long-term missionary who Canaan supports share about his current experiences in East Asia.

We took communion during service on Sunday, and I was definitely surprised (as I am sure everyone else was) when we took the wine, to find out it actually REALLY was wine. Pastor Dan showed me the bottle later - who knew kosher wine existed? They have kosher everything! After church, since I no longer have mexico missions training, I got to test ride Ted's brand new Corolla. The Corolla sure has gotten bigger over the years - it's huge now. I also finally watched Office Space (and I didn't fall asleep!) after so many people told me to watch it. It was pretty funny and some of it I could totally relate to. Good thing our company doesn't use paper memos.

Unforunately, all good things must come to an end, and so did my weekend. And now it's back to work. Two more weeks until the quarter ends. Olivia and I are going to celebrate in two weeks together. I'm good at distracting her when she needs to get homework done, but in two weeks, we are free! Well, not really, but anything to have a party! Anyone else up for the party??

Costco is ridiculous. I ordered tires more than 3 weeks ago, they got shipped and I got charged two and a half weeks ago (saying it would take about 5 days to arrive), and where are my tires? Nowhere to be seen. No call from Costco, no response from their customer service, and no tracking available on their website. Dude, if they charge me $625 for my tires, I expect at least a STATUS on where my tires are! Yes, ridiculous. Let this be a lesson to you all, don't ever order tires via Costco website.

Okay. Rant over. I had to get that off my chest - every time I think about it, I get angry. My tires sersiously need to be replaced.

The new Saratoga library looks hecka nice! That's where I'm going with olivia everyday when she gets back. Granted, I haven't gone to that library in more than six years because I accumulated some fine for turning in like 10 books more than a month late, but I figure it's time to face my debts and finally pay them off. ;) Maybe I'll get lucky and it'll be erased from their system... then again, I think about that Seinfeld episode when the library chased Jerry down like 20 years later... hmmm....

Listening to music at work (through earphones) really can make a difference. Too bad I have ghetto speakers - the cord is like a foot long, so it can barely reach the back edge of my desk, plus my right speaker doesn't work. So I have to listen to the music through my left earphone in my right ear (because the speaker is so far away because of the short cord, my earphones can only reach my right ear, and that's if I sit right right up to my desk). ghetto, but hey, it works! (well... sometimes. Other times neither speaker works, so I have to play with the ghetto one-foot long cord and push it around and pray that music eventually will come out of that left earphone. This morning I wasted a good 20 minutes trying to get it to work.) Many thanks to my coworker peter for providing cds upon cds of mp3s, although he claims he has no knowledge of some of the interesting songs I see on them... right. ;)

I know too many Johns and Peters. Stop naming your babies john or peter, please. Once, I had lunch with three peters. Yes, I went to La Burrita with peter hyun, peter kim, and peter choi. People we ran into would greet us as "hi karen.... and... peters." Actually, add andrew to that list as well. Too many of them around too.

Looks like I've officially transitioned to be a "sender" for Mexico missions. :( Can't say I'm not disappointed, but I'm glad that I'm not sitting on the fence about whether or not I would be able to go anymore. God has a purpose for everything, and so I believe there is a reason for me to stay at home this time. I may never find out what that reason is, but at least I can have peace about it. :)

karen (3:11:36 PM): thats what happens to lakers
karen 3:11:37 PM): they suck
peter (3:11:41 PM): yep
karen (3:11:54 PM): whoa
karen (3:12:01 PM): you agree
karen (3:12:03 PM): that the lakers suck?
peter (3:12:47 PM): now i do

WHOA. I never thought I'd see the day when peter hyun says the Lakers suck!! I must record this for history's sake! And I didn't take anything out of context. The rest of our conversation:

peter (3:12:54 PM): btw
karen (3:12:58 PM): what
karen (3:15:32 PM): hello
peter (3:16:23 PM): i donno
peter (3:16:24 PM): forgot
karen (3:17:23 PM): nice
peter (3:18:15 PM): yep
karen (3:18:24 PM): you are SO weird

yeah. peter is WEIRD.

byron (reading jerry's memory of jen): Who's the Hulk?
jen (guessing who wrote that memory down): jerry

Oh my. jerry's got some smooth moves, getting jen to call him "The Hulk." Guys, take note and learn your lesson from jerry! haha.

Got some great pictures from jen & jerry's farewell party. Videos of the chicken dance will soon be available on andrea's website.

Mondays at work after 4-day weekends are always so painful. Especially when a coworker decides to take vacation, AND during quarter-end. boooo.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ALINNA! WOOHOO!

Having a 4-day weekend is the best - having Thursday off was great because I got a lot of errands done, plus I got to have lunch with jean and alice AND we watched legally blonde 2 (yeah, the movie was not that great. The first one was way better).

On Friday we got up bright and early at 5:30am to head up to Sacramento to go river rafting! We then headed over to our state's captial to watch some fireworks and spent the night there. Some highlights from our trip:

- falling asleep in jt's car on the drive up and waking up to him singing to madonna in a falsetto voice (hey, I guess anything that keeps him awake, right?)

- watching jerry try to throw big rocks as far as he could. I'll hopefully send the videos of this to andrea so that she can put them up on her site. Pretty funny stuff.

- we got perfect weather. It wasn't that hot (at least not for Sacto), and the river was pretty empty. Lots and lots of water fights and some fun rapids totally made the day.

- jumping out of the raft after our last rapid and floating downstream with andrea and jen. The funny part was when jerry jumped out - while andrea, jen, and i swam to keep with the raft, jerry ended up floating downstream ahead of us and started screaming "HELP!" We told him to paddle backwards, but he said he couldn't, so jen had to go after him to keep him calm and from going any further. I guess you had to be there, but it was pretty funny, especially since he wasn't even that far away, but he wouldn't stop yelling for help. Props to andrew who hates water, but still jumped into the river (albeit for a very short time) with us.

- don't ever leave a can of soda in your car if you leave your car in the sun in scramento weather. ask andrew about that one.

- watching fireworks in Sacramento. Our hotel was *right* next to the fireworks, so we just had to walk down the street to view them. Unfortunately, we didn't realize the fireworks would be in the sky to our left, which was blocked by a bunch of trees. When we heard the first fireworks go off, we all scrambled around so that we could get a view of it. We did end up getting a decent view, although still partly blocked by one tree. The bad part was we were totally in the line of fire of the fireworks' ashes and debris. That was not fun. Imagine bits of ashes falling into your eyes (and your mouth if you weren't careful), hair, and all your food and belongings.

- waking up Saturday morning, completely sore in my entire back and shoulders - but not because of river rafting, but because of the broken pull-out bed that jenie and i slept in. Ouch, i was in total pain. We both were. Who would have thought a bed would make me sore, but not rafting?

- finding out that a ferrari chose to park next to eon in the parking lot. Yes, the guys drooled all over it. Check out the pics of it.

- eon & his car leaving sacramento after all of us, but beating all of us back to moutain view. What a madman! That Mazda Protege can go faster than people think.

All in all, we had a blast, and we're ready to upgrade and raft the next level next time!

Pictures are uploaded. Click here for pictures from JT's housewarming, here for pictures from andrea's birthday, and here for river rafting pictures. Hopefully george's pictures of us on the river turned out since he was the only one with a waterproof camera.

alice is crazy. She wants me to get up at 6:30am ON our day off to go swimming! She must be out of her mind... I wonder how Tomio puts up with this. :)

I cannot believe reni signed me up for friendster. Let it be known to all of you that it's not me on there so don't even bother!

It's a good thing I have tomorrow and friday off, because for some reason, work has put me in a bad mood.

Anyway...

I miss fellowship with my girls. Like, true fellowship. And I know I've been spoiled to not just have one group of girls, but two - the "canaan girls" and the "saratoga girls" but we're scattered all over the country now. I miss the loud laughter and craziness and late nights with reni, amy, eva, alice, jean, olivia and joyce - but the prayer times that we had that would go along with it. I still remember that insane time of prayer the girls had back when I was in 8th grade and we were on the summer youth music trip in Seattle. I think that was the first time I really learned about the power of prayer, of the importance of it. And I miss the random-gibberish-everyone-talking-all-at-once times with ev, al, jean, o, bops, and shrie (heck, we can even throw in honorary member mary, and honorary "saratoga girl" michael wang, aka mr. physics, who is soon to be married in August!). I miss the days when i (and others) would go over to olivia's house practically everyday, making "creative" crafts, dropping rice bowls into the soup her mom made, tasting irving's gross food creations, and singing praise together. I think I'm just being selfish - like, of the Canaan girls, come August, amy and i will be the only one left in the area - and I know that God has blessed me with new friendships, but sometimes I long for the good ol' days of when we would randomly gather together, encourage, laugh, share, pray... the whole shebang. Well, for now, for the Canaan girls, I guess I can look forward to summer of 2004, which is probably the next time we'll all be together again (yes we already have an evite going, and yes we do need to plan a year in advance!). And for the saratoga girls - there are more of us who are somewhat more local, but it's still hard to get everyone together. Okay. Enough whining. I've been blessed as it is to have such great friendships that have been able to stand time and distance. I've found that it's hard for me to create new friendships that go this deep though. I guess it takes time and effort.