i'm tired. been staying up past midnight the last couple of nights to log in to work b/c it's quarter end. and now i'm in the office. and it's kind of evident that we're all tired:

my coworker (talking about holidays in china): they get a week off, but they have to work 9 days the next week.

something doesn't sound quite right with that statement :)

can't believe tomorrow is may already! april showers bring may flowers... may showers bring...? it's weird that the weather is still like this - tahoe must be happy because snow season is probably extended to end of may. too bad i can't take advantage of that :( the more i think about it, the more i'm thinking about semi-retiring from skiing. one ACL didn't stop me, but two ACLs is really making me slow down and think hard. so sad.

ok this post is boring. i'm tired. i'm at work. i'm waiting. *yawn*

[12:16:00] drew: where r u?
[12:16:02] drew: at home?
[12:16:03] me: work
[12:16:09] drew: SNAP
[12:16:10] drew: that sucks
[12:16:13] drew: im glad im not you

THANKS DREW.

whoa. i made a new discovery today.

some of you may know that i have this bump in my left wrist - a cyst, that when people see at first think it's the normal bone on the side of their wrist. but then i tell them to take a closer look, and they discover that it's, in fact, really a cyst in the middle of my wrist, that you can touch and push around. i've had this cyst for years - no, decades... i probably first noticed it sometime in jr high or high school, but never bothered to get it checked out.

well today, i just realized... that the cyst is gone! go figure. i don't know how long it's been gone for, but it's really not there. i wonder if it just moved around where it doesn't stick out anymore like it used to in the past.

um, yeah. that was my discovery. kinda nice not having this bump protruding out of my body where there should not be one. plus my watch doesn't get caught on it anymore.

I went to the doctor again this morning for my pre-op appointment. I have come back with the following:

-a prescription for vicodin (let's see how much i'll end up using. when i was prescribed it in the past, i barely ended up using any of it. isn't vicodin what matthew perry got addicted to?)
-a decision to use a cadaver's body part to replace my ACL
-an appreciation for my company's health insurance. Sure, it used to be free, and they upped it so that now i have to pay $20/pay period... but I sure do like 100% coverage right about now...
-and last, but definitely not least, an application for a temporary handicap placard. good until end of october. so NOW who wants to drive me around? :)

Amy is now... amy lee! amy & mike finally got married, after, what. 12 years or something. our table got accused of starting the glass-clanging every time, but let it be known to all that we were just pawns for the very sneaky bridesmaids known as alice & jean, who, every 5 minutes would hold up their chopsticks at the head table, and motion to us to start the banging. jean, jenie and i were also very entertained by one of amy & mike's drunk high school friends who involved us in a very long conversation about the movie sideways and how the best man was just like a character that didn't exist in sideways. (yeah seriously. we were confused too). i'll eventually upload pictures. i've found that one of the downsides to always playing piano in weddings is that i never get shots of the ceremony. oh well. amy was a beautiful bride, and she told me she'd invite me to their new apartment in one or two... years. she said she'd cut it down if i went over and cooked for her. uh, yeah. thanks amy :) jean and i are still waiting for our jak club lunch! as treasurer of our club, i believe you still have all our dues, which was about $20. Actually, with inflation over the past... when did we have that club? in 3rd grade? so past 18 years? i would think that $20 should be worth a lot more now. forget a mcdonald's lunch. we want a house of prime rib dinner! :)

alinna rocks. because when i came home at 8 from work last night there was, freshly made on the counter:

-a smoothie
-fruit salad (spring and summer is coming! finally, a variety of fruits versus apples and oranges the rest of the year.)
-brownies

yum. thanks!

with the coming of summer, i've been planning my PTO for the year. i'm finally going to take an actual vacation (not like visiting baltimore hasn't been vacation... but time to go somewhere else since the only extended vacation i've ever taken has been to visit baltimore twice ;) so far, i have the following:

may 10-14: surgery - not really vacation, but PTO :( (if not, it would have been a week at the end of may to go to jean's graduation and then visit chicago)

sometime in august: visit portland for an extended weekend (yes, joseph, this is for YOU. i hope you're there in august!) anyone else want to visit with me? joseph told me to bring the whole crew :)

two weeks, beginning of sept: spain (& surrounding areas). can't wait, i've never been to spain before!

everyone's coming HOME soon. (and by "everyone" i mean three people. should be four, but someone decided to get married and stay on the east coast so that her southern-belle husband will continue to think that everyone walks around in their swimsuits all day in california. ahem.) have i mentioned how all my friends are super-nerds? and they either are in the process of receiving a higher degree, about to go to school to get a higher degree, already returned home with the higher degree, or are graduating in two months with the higher degree (and are coming back to california except for a particular set of twins who mistakenly seem to think ny is better than california). meanwhile, i've, uh, taken the GMAT three years ago. does that count? hm. my scores still last another two years at least.

yesterday, while talking to my mom:

mom: you need to go shopping more, when are you free?

today, while talking to my dad:

dad: you know, you can spend money. you need to spend more money.

HAHAHA. Who else's parents say these things to their children?

joy invited a bunch of people over as a semi-housewarming party (i think she's had the most housewarmings in the shortest period of time out of anyone i know!) and cooked us up a korean feast (YUM. i can never turn down free korean food). her new complex has a ping-pong table, so eon brought over some paddles and balls and eon, andrea, mike and i headed over to play. i hadn't played ping-pong in so long (um i didn't run around, i swear. we played doubles, so i just stood there and hit the ball) - and i guarantee you, if you want excitement and adventure when playing ping-pong, just play with eon. by the end of the first hour, his jean pants and shirt sleeves were rolled up and one side of his button-up shirt untucked. he even slapped himself in the face when he apparently missed an easy shot. it was so quick you wouldn't have noticed, except andrea and i both saw it and asked him at the same time, "uh... eon? did you just HIT yourself?!" other ping-pong adventures included playing midget ball (except i had to sit in a chair because i can't kneel on my right knee. actually i can't kneel of my left knee either), setting the ball to mike so that he could slam it at andrea, eon snorting from laughing, and andrea denying that she snorts anymore and claiming that she can "control" it (yeah, right) - we probably would have played around the world, except for the fact that i couldn't run. whew. i hadn't laughed so hard and long in a while.

on saturday some of us went up to berkeley to tour scharffen berger. now i know why i had never heard of them when i was actually at berkeley - because they didn't move there until the year i graduated. the factory is really small... the tour basically consisted of us sitting in a room while the guy talked to us for a good 40 minutes, sampling some chocolate, and then taking a "tour" of the machines - "tour" because the machines were small and were basically all in one room, so we spent a whole 5 minutes looking at them. the most entertaining part was seeing everyone in hairnets and this one random guy in our tour who also had to wear a beard-net. the chocolate was okay, i didn't think it was spectacular, so i didn't really buy much. i also got to see hot ma and cal for dinner before they went to the u2 concert. cal claims he'll make me a stick to push my car pedals so that i can drive after my surgery. i'm waiting for my stick!

and now... unfortunately, it's monday again, and now it's really quarter-end. no more conference, so everyone is back.

reni's had (i assume) her baby!! she went to the hospital last night at 6pm to get induced, so i'm assuming baby beth is here! how exciting! can't wait to visit :)

and... i get to see gma tomorrow. woohoo! gma, my fellow female die-hard cal fan who will moan and groan and cheer along with me about cal sports :) did i mention she's hot too? check out the pics of her in her bridesmaid dress at jason & marcia's wedding ;) and i know the secret to winning her heart. does any guy want to sweep her off her feet? come talk to me. all it involves is an oven, some flour and eggs, and a special top-secret ingredient. i guarantee it'll work.

even though we're at quarter end, work has been very quiet these past three days since our ENTIRE floor - actually our entire department - is at a conference, including my boss and all the managers in my group. literally the only people not at the conference on my floor and in our department is me and my non-managerial coworkers. it's been relaxing, albeit boring (whoever talks to me on im knows this - yesterday was especially bad). and since the only people i really interact with are our entire field sales (at the conference), marketing product managers (at the conference), and operations (not at the conference, so they're the only people i've really talked to), it's been pretty slow for me. literally all my meetings were cancelled this week as well. I usually have a couple meetings/day, maybe on average 7-10/week, and this week i've been to a whole ZERO. ahhhh it's been nice.

so anyway, today i came prepared - with my camera to finally upload pictures! so here goes:

random pics
not much here, just some pics of andrea playing dr. mario ;) and one or two random other things


eva & eric's wedding!
woohoo welcome back to the tai's! waiting to really welcome you back. to california, that is.


amy's bridal shower
ha. like i'd include pics of the gifts. i'm giving those to only amy. the pics here are safe to view.


some highlights:

one day, alinna, jenie and i were hungry. so we busted out the grill, and cooked up some meat. don't be fooled. this meat was only for the three of us.





at eva & eric's rehearsal dinner - joyce looks so happy to receive her oh-so-pretty pink bridesmaid gift :)





eva & eric's very yummy mango mousse cake. YUMMMMMM.





all the gals (minus amy who left early, and reni who was too pregnant to make it up for the wedding). i find it very disturbing that we're all (cal grads, mind you. except for joyce, who's a ucla grad) in some shade of red. um, go bears!





the pretty cookies that jean, alice & i frosted for amy's bridal shower:




that's it. click on the links to see the rest of the pics.

even though jean has vehemently denied ever taking me as her PT patient, even back in undergrad, i think i became her very FIRST patient! :) and i promise, i'm trying to do my exercises.

i've been listening to "knees to the earth" non-stop at work because i need to learn it for amy & mike's wedding. anyone have chords to the song? the chords i have right now are difficult to figure out, especially since they don't match up to the lyrics and i'm unfamiliar with the song. or hm. after listening to it hundreds of times today, maybe it won't be as hard :)

ev was showing someone's xanga, which is pretty much a shrine to this person's boyfriend and their (only few months long) relationship. i was shocked at the lavish lifestyle, adorning each other with lots of designer gifts, and even just how into each other these people are, even after dating for only a few months. it's scary how someone can be so obsessed and revolve their entire life around another human being - people are fickle, God is not. People always change, God does not. People are finite, God is not. Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to judge these people, but it's just a whole other lifestyle that i haven't been exposed to much, and I'm thankful that i was never sucked into it, and that i know there's so much more to life than money, success, and fame.

my cell group is currently going through "Celebration of Disciplines" - this week we're on the chapter on meditation. it's interesting to read about because i don't do it often, if ever. i think it's because i'm the type of person who always has to be doing something, that sitting still and trying to listen and fill my mind with God and His Word is difficult for me. I end up falling alseep or my mind starts to wander to other thoughts. This is definitely a discipline that i need to work on more...

my surgery is in a month, and the more i think about it, the more i'm not looking forward to it. (well, who ever looks forward to surgery? :) the rehab post-surgery last time was so difficult and painful for me, i remember crying out of sheer pain every time i went to PT for the first month. but i'm doing rehab pre-surgery (see! i'm doing my exercises!) so i think it should be better this time. I feel like i need to apologize to al & jenie ahead of time since i'll be a lame duck for at least a few weeks, especially since my parents won't even be here for the surgery to help me around the first few days. i'll probably take a week off of work, and then probably work from home for at least another week, if not two. still need to work it out with my boss. but i guess God is really going to provide me with the time to force me to meditate more :)

i've decided to go to the wedding in LA in june, even if i'll still be on crutches and be somewhat immobile. besides, it'll give me an excuse to visit reni & baby! :) maybe i'll just fly. hm... i'll figure it out eventually.

okay, this was a really random mish-mash of thoughts.