update:  quarter is over.  phew.  still hot and stuffy here.  i'm going to go home in a little bit.  time to sleep. YAWN.

update:  a/c is off.  it's stuffy and hot in here now.  one more hour...

Praise the Lord it's air conditioned in the office tonight!! Usually on weekends it's not... yesterday it wasn't and it sure was stuffy being on the third floor and all (and no windows that we could open or anything...) countdown begins....

be on the lookout! karen is a'headed to baltimore in september! i must really love certain people out there since this will be my second time visiting.  yes.  i'm voluntarily going on vacation to baltimore.  twice.  actually, the last time i took an extended vacation over one day was... baltimore. well, baltimore and ny.  so in essence, i've only taken substantial PTO to visit baltimore.  you people better feel loved. ;)
 
since i'm lazy, a pictorial of what i've done the past two saturdays.  enjoy.
 
yesterday, i went up to the city to have a day of fun with the funnest girls in san francisco: marcia, g, and aud.  we ate at the best breakfast place (at 2pm) in north beach.  we waited outside in line for a long time, but it was well worth it:

 
we walked around the area for a little bit and found a new heart for the city:
 
 
we then muni'd on over to some shopping plaza where we looked for bridesmaid shoes and other things for marcia's wedding.  here are the final two choices for shoes.  You vote for which you think would look better with a maroon-colored dress:


unfortunately i don't have pictures for the rest of my day.  but we found great deals at papyrus (75% off sale!) and i discovered i help g&marcia be productive when it comes to shopping for wedding things.  all in all, a wonderful day with some wonderful gals.
 
two saturdays ago, andrea, bob and i went to work to help alice pack up her cube:

 
tomio, oski and alice all drove down for the day, and since it was a saturday, we let oski roam around on our floor:

 
unfortunately he got a little too rambunctious, so we locked him up in a conference room for a while:

 
alice finally finished cleaning out her cube, and said her final farewell to the little square space that she called home for so many years:

 
but before we could leave, andrea discovered the concept of free office supplies.  so she went "shopping":

 
we work on the third floor, so we decided to take the elevator down.  unfortunately, oski is scared of elevators and alice had to drag him into it:

 
since it was so stinking hot in the office (no a/c on saturdays), we hung out in front of our building in the shade to cool off and let oski play:

 
tomio decided that he wanted to play, too.  he found alice's bag of junk she wanted to throw away, and found some great treasures he wanted to keep:

 
oski found some treasure in that bag as well, and found some new play toys (watch him decapitate the duck):
 
 
we then went to a park to eat dinner and let oski play some more.  unfortunately, we didn't take bob up on his offer to go to his aunt's for a bbq. that would have been entertaining. hehe.
 
and that's the end of my pictorial.  i've come to realize i don't really take that many pictures anymore.  i think it's more out of sheer laziness than anything.  but at least i upload my pictures so other people can see them. ahem. bob.
 
one more week of purgatory at work... midnight next sunday can't come soon enough.  one.more.week.

forgot to say my congratulations to john & joy!  all i can say is... jt definitely raised the bar for canaan engagements ;)  anyone else flying to europe to propose anytime soon?
 
also, happy happy birthday to reni!  reni & maurice are great - they always open up their home for me to stay in when i go down to LA (as much as i dislike LA, i always like visiting them :)  unfortunately, my darn friends keep getting married down there, so be on the lookout for me down there twice in september!  and baltimore too.  i'm coming to visit you all.   time to use some of the billion days of vacation i have accrued.
 
one more week until quarter ends... please let me survive.  this quarter has been... stressful, to say the least.   too. much. pressure.

dear andrew hyun,

sorry for being a friend that actually got excited when you said you might come to visit. this is what i get for caring:

[13:40:46] me: so when you coming?
[13:43:00] drew: dunno
[13:43:01] drew: leave me alone
[13:43:13] *** drew signed off at Tue Jul 13 13:43:13 2004.

thanks, drew. thanks.

thanks to geo, river rafting pics

also, big big thanks to the miyais for letting us crash their place! they're great hosts, i love visiting them. tomio just had his surgery too and they still opened up their place. what great friends. and even better, oski likes me. woohoo! i'll be back to visit :)

this is normal karen:



this is karen when her lips are on steroids:



okay seriously, apparently word spreads around pretty quickly and people keep asking me... so here is the long version of the story. you probably can't tell that great from the picture, but my top lip is seriously swollen to twice it's normal size - and i never even knew that you could bruise your lips until yesterday.

so a bunch of us went river rafting yesterday - level 3/4 since level 2/3 wasn't exciting enough for us last year. in my boat was dareyn, me, and peter on the left side, and bob, andrea, and phoebe on the right side, with our guide in the back. so as we were nearing one of the level IV rapids, kanaka rapid, our guide warned us that this rapid had three "holes." he said that as soon as we hit the first hole, we would be launched forward, so we began to brace ourselves from getting thrown forward. unfortunately, i didn't prepare myself from falling off sideways, and as soon as we hit the rapid, according to our guide, both peter and i got knocked over at the exact same time, heel over head. everything after this is kind of a blur - we still had two more holes to "swim" through, and i just remember getting swept away in the rapids. i was bobbing in and out of the water, and i could faintly hear our guide yelling to get our feet up or to curl up in a ball. unfortunately i could do neither because the rapid was so strong. all of a sudden, i saw this white thing roll on me - at first i thought it was peter, but i really have no idea what it was, i was in such a panic. as i tried to shove it off, i felt the rapid suck me in and i got trapped underneath the raft. at that point, i was in pure panic mode because i didn't even get a chance to take a breath, i couldn't hold it for much longer. and to me, i felt like i was trapped under there forever. honestly, the thing that was running through my head at that point was "Lord, I'm never going to breath again." hahaha probably a bit dramatic, but that's what it felt like to me at the time! when i finally resurfaced, all i know is that peter was getting pulled into the raft, i had a busted bloody lip, my sunglasses were bent out of shape, and my right contact was missing. so i have no clue what hit me in the face - i don't even remember getting hit in the face, but obviously something smashed into me. my neck is in major pain today as well. our guide later told us that he had a chance to pull peter back into the raft right after we got swept off, but peter was curled up in the fetal position, and didn't look up, so our guide couldn't grab him. hahahaha.

so there you have it, there's my story. peter bruised up his back/butt pretty badly, so he tells me. i'd post a pic of it, but i don't want a picture of peter's butt on my blog. hahaha. fortunately, we were by far the worst of the casualties of the day. i had a ton of fun, and our guide was great and hilarious. better than last year's guide. he even called on peter for being a dead weight since he could tell peter was "pretending" to paddle (basically splashing water around). our boat was obviously a great set of paddlers since on one of our rapids, our guide told us that it tended to throw the person in the back (the guide) off the boat unless we paddled well. and what happened? we lost our guide in the middle of the rapid. (although i think someone's paddle was flying around in his face, so he had to lean back to avoid it, and in the process fell out.) and then later we tried to "surf" on a rapid, but our boat totally missed the turn, and as he tried to get us to paddle back up to the spot, we were paddling our heart's content out and didn't even move the boat an inch.

would i go rafting again? heck yeah, i had a blast despite having to paddle with a busted lip and only one contact for more than half a day. but i'm definitely thankful to God that i am here today, able to type this story out. as my coworker said, as i was sitting in a meeting, shifting uncomfortablly because my lip, neck and shoulders were really hurting, and people wouldn't stop staring at me, "just be glad you're even at this meeting."

the end.

i LOVE getting stared at at work. i mean, who cares if i'm in pain? i look like a freak, so sure - go ahead and just stare at me. don't even do the quick double glance to see if you saw correctly. no, just stare right at my face until i finally walk past you or turn away. and don't bother asking me what happened, even if i know you. just STARE. yes people, go right ahead and STARE at me. thanks.