Hmph. That's the last time I try to be straight up with anyone. Peter sends this mass email to a billion people saying goodbye for a year as he goes off to korea. Now, being the social butterfly that he is, of course he gets a billion emails in response... "peter i miss you!" "peter come back!" blah blah. so obviously, I'm not like any of those girls who dote on pt hand and foot, I gotta keep it real. so i reply, (only because when i talked to him on IM, he actually told me to reply to his email. sad, huh.) and give him my one-sentence advice. And the email I get in reply? "you are expelled from my list. nor are you my friend." How RUDE! That's the last time I try to be your friend Peter Hyun!!

I went to one fancy schmancy wedding yesterday. It was held at the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay... yeah, enough said, right? I mean, when the ushers wear tuxes, you know this is going to be fancy. The really weird thing about this wedding is that the guests clapped for everything during the ceremony! When the groom's parents walked down the aisle, the guests clapped. When one (not all of them, just one or two of them) of the bridesmaids walked down the aisle, the guests clapped. When the guy translating parts of the ceremony into Chinese translated a phrase, the guests clapped. Seriously, what the heck?? They also didn't have an even number of bridesmaids and groomsmen, so the last bridesmaid had two escorts. Also, they drew quite an audience since the wedding was outdoors by the golf course and by the beach. Not only did the golfers and ppl jogging/taking a walk watched, but all the people staying at the Ritz whose windows faced the ceremony watched. You could see a huge crowd of people at every single window. Weird. What was really annoying was how the minister kept mispronouncing the groom's name. Come on, if there's anything you should know before you perform the ceremony, it's the bride and groom's name! Granted, his name is spelled "Shang Lai" but pronounced "Shawn Lie" but really. She called him "Shawn Lay" the first time, and then after that, she just kept calling him "Shane." Annoying.

This weekend was pretty exhausting, and now it's quarter end, the boss is back, and I'm tired. Bridal shower, music workshop, and Switchfoot concert on Saturday... plus the Cal-USC game, which I only got to watch the beginning of (but I did watch parts of it on tape later). Yeah, that was awesome. We were in line for the concert, and I guess there were bunches of Berkeley ppl around. Someone yelled "they won in triple overtime!" Man, that was great. Go Bears! Sure beats the Tom Holmoe era that our class had to endure. ugh. Plus the wedding yesterday (started at 10:30am and I didn't get back till 5pm!) and our Alias viewing party last night = one pooped karen.

I'm getting good at getting Giant's playoff tickets for ppl... especially for people who can't seem to get tickets for themselves. Got 4 tickets for game 2 for my coworker. I need to start making a profit from this! ;)

Can someone tell me why the niners stink it up so much? So much for getting rid of that traitor Mariucci. The niners better not steal Jeff Tedford from cal.

The US should establish a "rest time" like how China has xuexie and Mexico has siesta. Really, that would be great. Can you imagine taking a nap after lunch everyday? That would sure solve the food coma problem. I'm such a genius.

I listened to parts of the gubernatorial debates yesterday, and all I can say is, it showed me who NOT to vote for. Seriously, could these candidates attack and heckle each other any more than they did yesterday? Arianna Huffington was driving me nuts! Half the time all they did was shoot personal attacks at each other and stray waaaay off topic. It was more like a comedy show than anything... which is really sad... to know any one of these people could possibly be the future governor of California.

On a totally different topic... you can definitely tell when someone is wearing too much perfume when I park 4 spaces away from the nearest car, and the first thing I smell when I open my door is a waft of some girl's scent as she gets out of her car. I almost thought *I* was the one wearing the perfume!

And btw, seri - you guys ate more than half a chicken sandwich! There was literally two bites left. And to be fair to Alinna, she did make up the bbq pork bun incident by bringing me home dinner Monday night. That whole incident still cracks me up. btw, alinna is one lucky gal that I woke up at 7 to work out this morning. The minute I said, "alinna, shouldn't you have already left for school? It's 7am." she shot out of bed, mumbled "oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh I have to teach first period" over and over again and hightailed it outta there. I've never seen Alinna get out of bed so fast in my life.

fun with numbers...

1: apparently, the number of times eric has gone to fresh choice. hearing him grumble and moan after every restaurant we passed on the way was pretty amusing. ("oooooh denny's... i loooove denny's. let's go there instead.")

2: the number of giants playoff tickets i managed to secure for eric. shoot, i should have kept them for myself and sold them on ebay! also the number of steak dinners he now owes me - one from a bet we made like four years ago (pay up already!) and one for getting him those tickets.

3: the loads of laundry i did on saturday.

3: the number of weddings i have to go to within the next three weeks... and then i'm finally done for the year!!

4: the number of books eric was deciding between to purchase for a friend. choices were: league of extraordinary gentleman, pearl harbor, charlie's angels, and xxx. bob and i wouldn't let him pick xxx, so he ended up with charlies's angel (complete with 8 pages of colored pictures from the movie) and LXG. his poor friend.

5: the number of minutes bob was away from owning the alias season 1 dvd set! dumb borders girl wouldn't give me my 20% discount. darn, we were sooo close. the guy that was originally helping us was about to give it to us, too. grrrr.

6: the number of days until the alias season 3 premier! woohoo! party at our place!

7: what time i woke up this morning to work out with jenie. last week jenie and i weren't so successful...

8: the number of korean potstickers i ate for dinner because seri & alinna ate my chicken sandwich. according to them, they were doing me a favor by eating it for me. 1: the number of bbq pork buns they brought back from the city last night for me to make up for it. 1: the number of bbq pork buns alinna ate this morning for breakfast. i tell you, alinna's real slick. hahahaha.

I have officially been delegated little sister duties for irving by olivia... especially since our company bought his out and not only does he work in my building now, he actually works on my floor. and also especially since o is in baltimore. Seriously, it's still weird to see irving pop into my cube on random afternoons. anyway since his birthday is today, she has handed me the responsibility to find something to do for his birthday. our original plan included something like ordering roses or bears with hearts, having them sent to the office, and signing it "your secret admirer." who said we weren't evil little sisters? (hm, i hope irving never finds this blog. hahahaha. that's to make up for all the times he's tried to poison us with his "cooking." ask me about his "pizza" someday. or better yet, the time he set his kitchen on fire.) but anyway, 1800flowers ruined that plan when we found out you could only pick out of like 10 things to have delivered within the next day, and even then it'd cost like $15 for shipping fees. for a $15 bear. please! with those plans foiled, we had to stick with boring, tried & true. cake and a balloon. oh well. we'll glady take suggestions for next year.

Never again do I want to watch a movie on imax. it was cool and all, but boy did i want to puke after that experience. What a way to make a person nauseous. We watched some documentary/film-type movie about Lewis & Clark. Classic quotes from my coworkers when we got our tickets (we got the tickets at our office).

Coworker1: Lewis & Clark? We're watching something about Superman?
after explaining that Superman is Lois & Clark...
Coworker2: Didn't Lewis & Clark discover South America?

sigh.

Things that I'm thankful to God for:

1. fellowship with sisters. honestly, i don't know what i did to be blessed by such great friends. even though most are scattered around the country, i'm still constantly blessed by their presence in my life. such things include:

- ev's faithfulness through these times of trials
- time spent exercising in the morning with bops... and her heart for the lost and her desire to see them saved
- that alinna actually LIKES her job this year. the fact that she doesn't come home crying every other day is a very good thing.
- reading funny stories about jean and her adventures in the midwest
- olivia keeping me company online while i'm work. we help each other by distracting each other from our real work ;)
- the email from shrie with some awesome news (NO she's not engaged!)
- reni's hospitality and opening up her home for me to stay every time i go down the area-i-dislike-the-most, aka socal
- random chats with eva and how she always makes time to hang out when she's around
- sharing a cube wall with alice and having a friend at work... even though she's only in the office twice a week now. :( she understands and lends a listening ear when i need to whine.

what i love the most is that though we are far apart, i know that if any of us need prayer, everyone is ready and willing to fall to their knees and uplift each other in the name of God. sweet. with that said, there's a whole lot to pray for. both praises and requests, but regardless, a lot going on that is in need for prayer. a lot.

2. i have a stable job. it's so easy for me to forget the big picture and to complain about this and that. but in reality, i have a job. and a lot of people out there don't.

3. freedom in Christ. it's exhilarating to know that i have such freedom, yet i always fall into the trap of forgetting that i am special to Someone. its like the well-known Max Lucado children's book, You Are Special. I need to learn how to be like that wemmick who had no dots or stars. I don't need to worry about what other people think of me, whether it's good or bad. I just need to continue to strive to be like the One who created me.

4. the free car wash our church had for our neighbors. more than 40 neighbors showed up to chow down on some free bbq & food and get their cars cleaned. although, i have to say - some of those cars sure looked pretty clean when they came in. i think we may have made them dirtier! but it was lots of fun, good way to get wet in the heat, and we met a lot of neighbors. in fact, a lot of neighbors met each other while waiting for their cars to be finished. seriously, the california water blade is the coolest thing ever.

5. catching up with old friends. having lunch with some fellow berkeley ieor people, and reminiscing about our adventures in lab, senior projects, and whatnot. seeing jimmy post-cal & post-aacf, working in the south bay and coming to our young adult fellowship. jimmy's a young adult now! seeing one of my OEX 2000 teammates, looking at my pics from our summer in china, and pics of him in east asia as he continued to serve there over the past two years. yes, imagine a tall, pale, white guy with red hair (sometimes various other colors such as blue or green, and sometimes his hair is in the form of a mohawk or a mullet) skateboarding down the street in china. yes, he got lots of stares. and yes, he speaks better chinese than me. shameful.

6. that the weather has cooled down tonight!! praise the Lord.

the list could probably go on forever, but these are the things that are on the top of my head for now. life can be hard, but God is good all the time. I have to remind myself to see His goodness in everything.

iwonan award for beingthelaziestpersonever:

karen (1:21:08 PM): mythumbistired
karen (1:21:15 PM): i dontwanna hit thespacebar anymore
olivia (1:22:41 PM): wow,that's the laziest thing i've ever heard
olivia (1:22:45 PM): you should blog that
olivia (1:22:46 PM): haha
karen (1:22:52 PM): hahahaha
olivia (1:22:53 PM): laziest things ever
karen (1:23:57 PM): itssomuchfasterwithout thespacebar
olivia (1:26:13 PM): right, it'sthatmuchhardertoreadtoo
karen (1:26:28 PM): nahnothardtoreadatall
olivia (1:26:56 PM): ithinkitisplentyhardtoreadwheniwanttojustglance
karen (1:27:47 PM): ifwewereusedtoreadingthingslike this,itwouldn't beashard
olivia (1:28:02 PM): okbutwearenotegyptian
karen (1:28:21 PM): egyptian?
olivia (1:28:22 PM): norarewepplofsanskirtdescent
olivia (1:28:32 PM): wheretheyjustletlettersrun
karen (1:28:32 PM): sanskirt?
olivia (1:28:37 PM): sankrit
olivia (1:28:41 PM): sanskrit
olivia (1:28:43 PM): shoot
olivia (1:28:45 PM): i dunno
karen (1:28:49 PM): hahahahahahaa

doyou everwonder how olivia and i keepourselves self-entertained? really,ishould renamethis blog "theadventuresof karenandolivia"

olivia (2:06:27 PM): you can't find me on google
[after showing her that when you google "olivia chung" my blog shows up...]
olivia (2:09:27 PM): I HATE YOU
karen (2:09:30 PM): what???
olivia (2:09:31 PM): YOU CAN GOOGLE ME BECAUSE OF Y OU

theadventuresof karenandolivia = endless fun!

thanks to andrew, click here to see some pics from our camping trip. Stupid me forgot my camera as usual. Some pictures to note: the real pond scum and the fried twinkie, aka heart-attack-on-a-stick.

more camping pics courtesy of enoch.

I always thought my car had a 20-gallon gas tank. Until I filled up on 21.067 gallons today. My car almost didn't start this morning, and was seriously shaking pretty badly this afternoon as I drove to the gas station - I was scared my car wouldn't make the one block to the nearest gas station! And man, talk about gas prices going up - it cost me $46 to fill up the sucker. ouch! I think I've learned my lesson. I tried to look up the real fuel capacity on my car, but the one website I found said that it was 19.8 gallons, and, well, that can't be right. Go figure, anyone know the tank size of a 1997 960 Volvo?

I did some luxury camping this weekend. By luxury, I mean we had steak for dinner (cooked over the camp fire)... and a couple of us rebels (arex, ang, andrea, enoch, joseph, and i) decided not to do the hike. So what'd we do? Instead, we went to the beach, a marine discovery center, a surf museum, a monarch butterfly obervatory, and yes, the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. How's that for camping? At least we slept in tents!

Also, on Friday, we stopped by Cupertino on the way to the campsite to eat dinner. Instead of eating at one of the abundant fast food restaurants or chinese/asian restaurants, we decided to eat at Country Inn. Yeah, we took one step into the restaurant.... and 98% of the diners were cacuasian senior citizens! No joke. Every table had at least one person over 65 years old... I think we were the only asians and the only table completely under 30 years old. seriously, it must be their safe haven from all those asian people living in Cupertino. "where do you want to eat tonight?" "somewhere where i can find people like me." "Country Inn it is!" quite the experience. andrew commented that all restaurants in the midwest are like that... i can't even imagine going to school or growing up in the midwest. ask andrew sometime about his music teacher.

You know you're getting older when you hang out with high school friends and the topic the entire time is wedding planning. karen's ring is... shiny... and big... to say the least. :) For some reason, I've been to and coordinated and been involved in a billion more weddings than my other friends my age. I'm suddenly the "wedding expert." go figure.

We had good times reminiscing about things too, like Vallco. Whatever happened to that mall? The whole place is deserted now. I remember way back when it used to be the happening place. Now all it consists of is Fresh Choice, Todai, and the ice skating rink. karen told us that some chinese restuarant is buying a big chunk of space... supposedly can hold 1000 people. 1000 people?! That's like, the entire mall! Wow, they'd better get pretty good business. Can you imagine? Even if like 100 ppl show up at a given time, that's only 10% capacity. Who knows, this whole thing could be a rumor so we'll see.

Now that my yahoo account works again... for your viewing pleasure:

bbq at jean's
let's just say jean's dog, tuffy may be little, but whew! that dog can FART! (just like drew while he's sleeping in the car). jean sure knows how to host bbqs. YUM.

ted's farewell
ted and jt karoking. enough said.

LA & mike&kim's wedding
see below post on Aug 10 about that. The thought of driving in LA still repulses me.

bbq at farley for Chris
Chris & Josie made a trip up to visit us, and so that Chris could speak at Canaan... so of course we had to have a bbq to welcome him back! got to hang out with dave too. Two weekends in a row that I got to see Chris, Josie, and Dave. wow.

judy&roland's wedding
although we got stuck up in the loft where we couldn't breathe because it was so hot, at least we could make all the noise we wanted. (which may have been why we got stuck up there in the first place, haha).

labor day was great. Yes, I didn't leave my apartment for the ENTIRE day. alinna came back at around 6pm and i was still in my pajamas. And that was after eva bob and byron visited. no shame. it felt good. judy&roland's wedding was fun, but i am starting to get wedding'd out. only three more left for the year! watched two towers sunday night after janet & john's engagement party. I felt like I was in college again... it was kind of spur of the moment decision as we were leaving the party at 10pm. but watching it on projector screen is nice. just like the movies again.

Rereading Rich Mullins' biography, An Arrow Pointing to Heaven. I feel like I missed a lot of it reading it the first time, so I'm having another go-around. That man amazes me.... just the way he thought and lived his life. Everyone should definitely read it. Man, I need to get cracking on some other books I haven't even opened yet. I still have quite a few.