Making the Best out of the Worst

It's beginning to look like the big move to the bay area/silicon valley is inevitable. In less than a year's time this blog has gone from San Diego Blogger to Sacramento Blogger (never added my site to that list) to Bay Area Blogger (yet to look it up). Spent our last anniversary moving to San Diego. Spending this upcoming anniversary (2 yrs! :) moving to bay area. Hopefully this trend will continue and we'll perhaps spend our next anniversary moving to Seattle, WA. :))

While the big plunge is inevitable, I've decided to look on the upside of moving to the bay area:

1) Lots of Chinese food. :)))
2) Mangas every Tuesday (when their new shipment comes in :)))
3) Beautiful weather
4) Better job opportunities (I hope. I hope. :)

See? It can't be that bad. It's no San Diego, but the house prices are relatively more "reasonable." (It's all relative, right?) It was a mere month or so ago that we were looking at brand spanking new 3,000 sq. ft. houses. :~( Now we are going to rent a 2,000 sq ft town house for a mere double of what we pay for our mortgage. The upside? No more driving to bay area in search for a place.

Dharma & Greg

Dharma & Greg is one of my all time favorites. Hey! Some people like their M*A*S*H others like their I love lucy; I deserve to have my own quirk!

There are more than one reason why I like the show so much. The humor was subtle. I am not into crude or slapstick type of humor (hubby loves that. pie in face never fail to make him laugh. Simple mind, simple pleasure right? :). I also think Thomas Gibson is arguable one of the most attractive men I have seen. (Hey! We all have different taste, so stop being judgemental! :P) I particularly like it when he breaks into that innocent smile of his. :) Simply gorgeous!

I like Dharma and Greg's personalities and how they interact. One of the first episode I have watched when it was first aired was when Dharma and Greg went onto a first date and ended up getting married in Reno. I've always aspire to do that but hubby wasn't spontaneous enough for that. Well, having one failed marriage under his belt didn't exactly help with that issue. :P We did move in after a month and subsequently run off to get married one weekend in Tahoe though!! Close enough. ;)

A couple of years ago when I started dating the current (and so far, the only) hubby I started watching D&G reruns and also got hubby hooked on it. At times it's like watching the two of us. :) Though sometimes we shift roles. For instance, hubby is a very organized person. He likes his things to be in orders and he likes routines very much. I, on the other hand, welcome changes and sometimes even uncertainties (i.e. moving. I, however, do NOT like it when it affects my roof over head and food on table). The random, on call schedule that I had working for the tissue bank for 2.5 years drove hubby nuts. :D Sometimes I worked 3 days in a row; others 12 hours a week. Hubby did not like that a bit. He'd rather me take a pay cut for a 8-5 job. *rolls eyes* But when it comes to being obssessive-compulsive, I definitely have hubby beat in that department.

Work wise I definitely aspired to be like Dharma: magician assistant, black jack/poker dealer, dancer for ZZ top, owner for a shop that sold nothing, auctioneer -- as many odd end jobs as possible. :D I had a degree in physical anthropology, I've done freelance translation work (Garfield comic strips), I've done tissue harvesting. One more odd end job and I think my resume can finally look somewhat like that of Dharma's. :)

Bay Area. House Prices. Depressing.

So after the wonderful 10-month stay in San Diego, the dream-like house hunting in Seattle, we are now looking for houses (rental, of course) in the bay area. The infamous bay area. The are that I vowed never to return to when I left it years ago. Ack! House prices there are -- how should I put it -- depressing.

Why am I returning to the dreadful bay area? Well, hubby left the Navy (happy happy joy joy) and got a job offer that's too good to turn down in the bay area. Okay, he'll be working for Northrop Grumman. :D Hence the big plunge.

To put things into perspective for all ye folks who are unfamiliar with houses prices in bay area:

We've saw a house for sale (next to the one we were looking at renting) going for $698,000 for a tad short of 1,500 s.f. in Sunnyvale.

To put things into more perspective:

We can pay twice the price of what our house is worth in Sacramento for a house that is, you guessed it, a tad smaller, and possibly older.

To put things into yet another different perspective:

We paid less that 1/3 that price for our house 2 years ago that is bigger and possibly newer.

Some comparisons:

$600,000 can get you a brand spanking new 4,000 sq. ft. house in Sacramento with money left for upgrades.

$450,000 can get you a brand spanking new 3,000 sq. ft. house in Seattle, Washington (Renton area). Cheaper if you are not too picky about pretty designs.

Some less depressing news (for the bay area dweller or bay area dweller wannabes):

$600,000 can probably get you some old houses that's less than 1,000 sq. ft. into San Diego, California.

Surely, we can live some 40-60 miles area from the bay area and get a brand spanking new, 2,000 sq. ft. home for around $600,000. What better way to spend your time than driving back and forth to the bay area some 5-6 days a week and what better way to spend your ENTIRE pay check than putting every single penny into the mortgage?

Movie Reviews

Lately my blog has turned into my personal movie review blog. I can't help it when there was nothing else I can blog about owing to unemployment. How ironic it is that when I am NOT working and have all the time in the world to blog, I have nothing to write about. Hahaha.

I realized that my keywords "movie" + "name of movie" had drawn me a lot of traffic. (Advertisement time: Yes, you too and find out search terms leading to your blog by signing up to SiteMeter.com) I sure hope those folks who came here when searching for information on a movie found what they need here instead of feeling like it's a hoax, like those other group of folks wandering here thinking I could teach them how to raise/keep/transplant or kill a banana tree. :D

Movie: Coronado

A total waste of time. Acting was bad, movie was SLLOOOOWWWW. Very disappointed.

Movie: The Forgotten

I like the movie, I guess. I guess it was not unlike "Signs," you kinda figured out there's only one way the movie can end. Lots of excitment during the middle of the movie. I was expecting a more spectacular ending but that didn't happen, kinda hard given the nature and time constraint of the movie. I do like it that the trailer/preview didn't give away too much. Well, it had to give away a certain amount to lure you to watch the movie. I think they did a good job by not showing you a 15 minute abstract of the entire movie. It's not a bad movie to watch if you have the time.

Note: Hubby liked it, although he didn't think he would before we started watching the movie. *rolls eyes*

Tomorrow: Cellular

Movie: Employee of the Month

Let's just say it's one strange movie. For some reasons I thought it was a comedy. Well, I was far from being right. How strange was the movie? It's sort of like a combination of Keanu Reeves's "Point Break" and "Feeling Minneasota." So if you like one or both of the movies, you can consider watching this one also. When the movie took this bizarre turn close to the end, I knew all "rules" were out of the window and anything could happen from that point on. So the even more bizarre ending wasn't exactly a surprise. :)

My Hubby's Job Search Saga

I've always pride myself at my ability to spot patterns. I am starting to see a pattern at hubby's job search saga, or was it all a figment of my imagination? Let me list some (all) of the incidents. The companies are in no particular order and no names (of course) will be mentioned.

(1) Hubby was suppose to have an interview with Company #1 at his first job conference. Co. #1 was late and didn't have time to interview him. Okay. Co. #1 was supposed to be at job conference #2 (held by a different recruiting agency). Co. #1 didn't even bother to show up the 2nd time. Okay. Co. #1 was to have a phone interview with hubby. We received a phone call the morning of the interview, from the agency, that someone was fired from the company that day and human resource was too busy to do the interview. Eeerrrr. Is their human resource a one-man department or was it someone very, very (like the vice-president or something) important was let go that day? We have yet to hear back from said Company.

(2) To interviews with Co. #2. Co. #2 said they'll get back to us last Thursday or Friday to inform us of their decision (I held out looking for a temp job in case we are relocating). No called Thursday. No call Friday. Hubby called them Fri evening. Guy #1 called back after work hours and said he'd call again this Monday or Tuesday to schedule a phone interview with another guy (hereonafter known as 'Guy #2'). No call Mon or Tues. Hubby again called them on Tuesday. Evidently Guy #2's daughter got into an accident and broke her arm. No call from them till today -- interview next Thursday.

(3) Hubby went an took a test with Co. #3 on Monday. Guy #1 (NOT to be confused with Guy #1 from Co. #2) said he'd inform Hubby of the test result on Tuesday. No call on Tuesday. Hubby called them on Wed. Turned out that Guy #1 (of Co. #3) has been sick, and possibly will be out for the rest of the week.

Ugh. And we are not yet taking into consideration Co. #4, 5, and 6 which were supposed to contact us last week and this but has yet to do so. I am starting to think perhaps Hubby was the one who's jinxing everyone. :D Oh well, no loss on our part. The longer the process takes, the more opportunities will open up for us. ^_^

Movie: Harold and Kumar Going to White Castle

Can you tell that we were just watching one movie after another? The next "project" is to catch up on the past 3 seasons of Alias. :D

Your typical slap stick comedy type movie. Some jokes were more crude than others. More hubby's (ex-sailor!) taste than mine. Built-in sequel "Harold and Kumar going to Amsterdam."

Speaking of which, I wasn't aware that White Castle Burger Joint is a real place in the South and East. :D I thought it's just something made up. Great advertisement for White Castle Burger. Hehehe. If there's one around I'd want to try it at least once. :D Although some gal that roommie knows said it's not that good. Anyone ever been to White Castle??

Movie: Village

Another good thing about being unemployed. I can be at the door of Blockbuster Video right when they opened on Tuesday morning to nab the new movies that come out that day. That's about all I can say about being unemployed...

Not a bad movie. Very similar to Signs. You were really looking at the thrill effect through out the movie. There's really one way to end the movie Signs. There was 10 minutes left of the movie. The aliens HAD to be defeated. It was a convenient ending. Although why aliens of superior intelligent (judging by the fact that they can do intergalactic travel) failed to do a oh so slightly more thorough research about this substance that covers about 3/4 of earth was beyond me.

Again, Village was a movie very similar to Signs, watch it for the thrill factor and don't think too much into it. I didn't see the twist coming, which is good. I am slow like that; it allows me to enjoy my movies more. :) Hubby said he figured it out half way. Glad he didn't tell me. Regardless, we enjoyed the movie.

What It Takes to Be a Housewife

Whatever it takes to be a housewife, I don't have it. All these time I've been pestering my hubby to make enough $$ so I can be a full time housewife, I lied. This is the second week I stayed home while waiting to see where in US we'll be moving to, and I am practically being bored out of my MIND. Last week was fun. I need last week off. Caught up on some TV shows, movies. Oh boy, this week was PAINFUL. I found myself playing mindless computer games all day. I would rather sit at a desk somewhere else, doing some equally painful and mindnumbing work AND getting PAID to be there. Now I know why traditional housewives always have kids after kids after kids -- to keep them from going INSANE from boredom.

A friend from the last temp place was telling me about this temp job that she is at right now. Hopefully I'll get it too so I can have some INTERACTION with other live humans (never thought I'd say that) OUTSIDE of this HOUSE!

Komen Pink Suede Tote Notebook Bag

Arrggghhh! Is this desire for more materialistic goods ever going to end? (Of course not, there's where my drive comes from. :) New on my "I want" list:



Put your laptop in the middle portion and still have lots and lots of room left for all the cords and miscellaneous stuff that goes with the laptop AND all your feminine stuff! :D Best of all, it's PINK, PINK, PINK! The cheapest I can find it was for $129.05.

Love at First Sight

Everytime I browse Ebay when I am bored I get into trouble... Look at this adorable rooster that I found and must have:

Movie: Hero

No..... can't say I liked the movie. It's one of those movie that I didn't think I'd like, but had to see it anyway because it has so much publicity. By the way, the director was a Chinese fellow, was Quinten Torentino just the financial sponsor?

Sure, a lot of the scenes were pretty. There were no denying it. But I generally don't appreciate movies that mangle up my culture. People used to say Hong Kong was the "desert of culture." Boy, do they need to understand the Americans. In this country, classic is Stephen King and James Patterson, and majority of the population are convinced that Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, Little Mermaid, and possibly even Mulan were entire creation of Disney. The first three at least still kept the gist of the stories. Beauty and the Beast has too many versions. Little Mermaid. Ugh. The ending was only altered. She was supposed to DIE, for crying out loud. All these classics have hundreds of versions floating around because they have been around for so long. And in every single version, little mermaid DIED in the end. And Mulan, don't even get me started on Mulan. Hubby argues that Disney kept the gist of the stories and therefore it is not important to know who was the original author. Funny how nobody says that about Shakespeare eh? Even modern interpretations will still credit back to Shakespeare. Nonetheless, how did Little Mermaid kept the gist of the story when love didn't really conquer it all at the end? And Mulan, Mulan was about this girl who loved her father so much she went to war for him. It was never meant to be a love story. Or that she and that jackass of a guy (who wanted to kill the girl who saved her life. Some kind of loyalty eh?) single-handedly saved the emperor. Speaking of which, why was the emperor alone in the palace? What happened to the tens of thousands of guards? Was that budget cut of the imperial palace, or budget cut on Disney's part (too expensive to draw extra background characters).

Video Game Life

In a nutshell, life is arguably very similar to a video game. Any video game. There are challenges and obstacles, when you defeat them all, you move onto the next level. And there'll be new challenges and obstacles waiting for you.

I've never been really good at video games. Most games require more hand and eyes coordinations than I possess. Lately I got suck into this simple, little game called Insaniquarium. As it's name clearly suggests, the game involves an aquarium. The game actually takes place in an aquarium. You start the game out with two guppies ("guppy" is such a funny word), and you'll have to feed them periodically. As they start to grow bigger, they'll start producing coins. You then collect the coins to buy stuff. Level ends when you buy three pieces of egg shells and earn yourself a new pet that you can bring to the next level. What's the challenge then, you might ask. Well, aliens (hence the "insane" part) will come periodically to eat or destroy your guppies. Game is over when all fish dies. The game gets very crazy toward the end, lots of coins to collect, and fish dying from starvation if you don't feed them fast enough. Before I figured out what I really want to do when I grow up I figured that an ideal job will be like playing a game of aquarium. No, I don't mean to be a game tester. Although that would be a cool job, if I am more of a video game fan. I mean a job that's insanely crazy, takes up all your time, but you can still finish it by the end of the day AND also have fun during the process.

By the same token, the same theory can be applied to life itself -- then are different levels (stages of life), and each levels have their own unique obstacles and challenges. And the rewards are the drive for us to go back into the battlefield day after day after day. For me, at this stage of my life, most of my rewards are materialistic. There are always more items on my "I want" list. Not all of them are big ticket items, most of them are just small, little toys that I would rather get when I have a job. And I hope that at some point in life, I'd get to a point that that would no longer be the reward. The reward may then be another trip to a country that I have never visited before. Or re-visiting a place than hubby and I both enjoyed. Currently one of my dream is one day to be able to go on one of the Earthwatch expeditions.

Movie: Wicker Park

Recommended. It's different. Not one of your mainstream Hollywood movies where the focus are big explosions and other special effects. Hubby's comment at the beginning of the movie: weird. Hubby's comment at the beginning Little Black Book: predictable. Hubby is a very hard man to please when it comes to movies. ;P

Interestingly enough, I've seen the trailer of this movie, and it misled me to think that it's more of a suspense type of movie, but it was not. I suppose I prefer trailers to not tell the entire story in 3 minutes (kinda like how men find lingerie more enticing than an entirely naked woman!). The whole movie was like a jigsaw puzzle of time line. Ultimately the audiences were presented with all the events that took place, but not in the chronological orders. Events were therefore unfolded one after another, eventually all tying back up together. I thought the major event that unsolved all the mysterious could be revealed a tad later to keep the audience in the dark for longer, but that I guess it could potentially mess up all the small pieces and the movie will fall apart. Luckily I am not producing movies. I leave that up to the professionals. As far as critique goes, anyone can do that. ^_^

Sound of My Home

I am an abandoned child. When my mom committed suicide when I was one and my loser sperm-donor decided to forfeit on his responsibilities of raising his own child (?), he abandoned me to his parents. How should I describe my grandparents. My grandfather is a very selfish man. He loves two things in his life -- himself, and his face. (And if you are not familiar with the concept of "face," it can be losely translate to your image among your peers.) I doubt he ever loved anything else other than the above two. Offsprings were probably just by-products of his sexual behaviors, let alone grandkids.

My grandfather dislikes noise. Whether it was genetic or environment, I do not know, but I can't stand noises either. I dislike loud noises. At home I constant have to ask my husband or the roommate to turn the volume of TV or computer down. I definitely can't stand constant background noise, including ambient music in background. Noises over a certain decibel blasting for prolonged period of time literally can drive me homocidal. I was never able to study, read, write, or even think in a normal volume of sound. But my husband is changing that gradually. Not intentionally, but gradually.

Someone once said that marriage is a series of compromises. Being a single child growing up, I am not very good at compromising. I've always tell my hubby that, "Let me explain marriage to you. What's mine is mine and what's yours is ours." :) And that was nice to let him keep half of what's his. :D But I do keep in mind that marriage is a two-way street. I don't want an entirely one-sided relationship, because I do not believe such a relationship would last. So sometimes I tolerate him listening to music around me, even music that sounds just like noise to me.

To an abandoned child, there's nothing more important than a home. A home, I said, not a house. Everybody can buy a house, if they are determined enough. A home requires actual work. My hubby was the first to provide me with a place that I can call home. Today as I left the bedroom and round the corner of the hallway, I heard him listening to his noisy "music" again. The feeling of "home" washed over me. Never had I thought that those noise that I once hated so would remind me of the sound of my home. :)

Seattle. Love.

I love Seattle. I didn't think I'd ever say that. I've never really loved a place before. It seemed that every place I've lived at before was purely by chance. Born in Ann Arbor, MI. I figured at some point in my life I've been to Illinois cause my mother died there. Then my sperm-donor decided to toss me to Hong Kong. I returned to Palo Alto, California for my schooling and lived in a few other cities in the bay area. Lived in Davis, CA when I went to school at UCD. Then naturally moved to Sacramento after graduation cause rent was cheaper in Sac than in Davis. Finally got a chance to move to San Diego with my hubby because he was transferred there... I've never consciously chose a city where I want to live. And I never thought Seattle would be the place of my choice.

I've been there a couple of times before. It just looked like San Francisco to me -- the ocean, the buildings in downtown area, Chinatown. In fact, I'd imagine myself choosing San Diego over anywhere else, with the rain and such at Seattle. I never felt an attachment to San Diego for some reason. Whether it was the knowledge that the stay was only meant to be temporary or that we'd never (almost never, since you should never say never) be able to afford a house there. And for a girl who had been abandoned by her sperm-donor, a home IS the single most important thing to me. Home with a great hubby, that is. :)

Seattle. It just popped into my mind about Seattle when we were in Montana. Granted, hubby ran into job opportunities there by chance. I don't know what it was, as soon as we drove into it's vicinity, I knew it was the place I wanted to live. Funny thing, despite the fact that house-shopping is hubby's hobby, we've never found a house that we fell in love with in Sacramento. We found that said house in one day, in Seattle. Both of us simultaneously turned to each other and said, "this is it." And almost couldn't wait to get onto the wait list, before we even moved there. That must be destiny, if there is such a thing.

That said, let's hope it all works out so we can relocate to Seattle, Washington. :)

Movie: Little Black Book

Chick flick night!! Hubby bowed out after the initial 10 min. :~(

Movie critique:

It's a fairly decent romance comedy. Actually better than a lot of it's kind.

Pros: A couple of twists that you actually don't see coming.

Cons: A tad too long of an introduction (where it lost hubby) AND it has significantly more sexual inuendoes than your normal romance comedies. Some of them borderline tasteless. Why would you put sexual inuendoes in a movies that's targetted toward WOMEN? Women are not big into sexual inuendoes, at least not the tasteless ones. Are the producers trying to throw in bits that appeal to men so they'll watch it with the women? Oh, and some panties scenes too, if you are into that. As a loyal romance comedy fan, I find those bits offensive.

Movie: FrankenFish

Hubby and I are still on a roll blowing through movie after movie. We watched three movies in one day alone: Open Water, FrankenFish, and Hero.

FrankenFish is the reason why I appreciate that actual video stores still exist. I've never heard of this movie before. The only reason I picked it up was because Hollywood Video had FOUR of them on display. I figured it's got to be better than Python or Arachnid (not to be confused with Eight Legged Freaks or Arachinophobia). The latter two pretty much just hired porn starts to read, and I do mean READ, the lines. And occasionally you'd see scenes of nudity and two girls making out. Those are not even B-lined monster-flick. They are D-lined porn.

FrankenFish, on the other hand, was a fairly decent monster flick. Even the hubby liked it!! :) Does that say something? I'll put it in the same category as Red Water, Lake Placid, and Deep Blue Sea. I especially like the recent monster flicks where they are NOT afraid to show you the monster. :) It's really cool. I remember when I was a kid and you'd have to strain to try to see the monster. The background was always dark. The light was either flickering or broken, or the characters just didn't bother turning them on. And at any given time you could only see a portion (like about 1%) of the monster. Grrrrrrr.

FrankenFish: recommended, if you are a monster flicks kinda person.

Another movie that I picked out from the bargain bin that turned out pretty good was Alien Hunter.

Movie: Open Water

Do NOT read on if you don't want to know the ending of this movie. I WILL divulge the ending of the movie somewhere in my ranting and raving.

At first I thought this is yet another one of those monster flicks (my fav :) that involves sharks. Well, I was wrong. It's a movie about two divers left behind in the middle of the, you guessed it, open water. The movie itself was decent. What I didn't understand was the "based on a true story" part at the beginning. Is it even necessary that it's based on a true story? Obviously none of the two person lived to tell the story, so how much truth is there to a true story? By that definition, almost any movies can be based on a true story, with the exception of perhaps Jurassic Park I, II, III and Alien v. Predator. I guess the true part was when the found the camera in the shark's stomach...

Hubby thought the movie was very disturbing. Hubby said we'll never go diving in this life time (not that we were planning on doing that prior to watching the movie).

Tonight's special: Frankenfish. :))

New Year's Wish List II - Laptop

I really, REALLY want a new laptop to replace my dead one. I guess technically speaking we really don't need two laptops between the hubby and I, except when we are on the road then our laptop will mysteriously turn into his laptop. Okay, I should give him some credits, he is VERY willing to share HIS laptop AFTER he goes to bed... Okay, for real this time, for nerds like us, laptops are personal items much like a toothbrush or a razor. You just don't share certain items...

I am debating between the Sony Vaio s260:



I absolutely LOVE that 13.1" wide screen with Sony's new XBRITE technology. Although in all honesty, a 12.1" screen is about the prefect size screen for a laptop. The Sony Vaio T series which as a 10.1" screen is cute too, but the resolution is too high for the screen size and the display is just too small. :~( Not to mention it cost over US$2,000...

and a Gateway M210, affectionly known as Gateway 3520 at Bestbuy:



14.1" screen, but you really get a lot for the price -- a whopping $1,099.

Dilemma. Dilemma.

New Year's Wish List I -- The Dream House

Forget about New Year resolution. Let's just go straight to the new year's wish list. Most of them I probably won't get this year. I hope I'll get them sometime in this life time. At the very least, they give me reasons to get up in the morning to go to work (when I find one, that is).

Hubby and I found our dream house in Seattle. It's the Madison floor plan, a 2,598 sq ft house built by Harbour Homes. Click to view the floor plan for the lower floor, upper floor, and the master bedroom retreat option that I am going to get (assuming we move to Seattle, haha). Pay special attention to the two-sided fireplace between the master bedroom and the retreat AND the significant lower prices as compared to houses in San Diego.

Movies. Movies. Movies.

Hubby and I were on a roll watching movies. We have been going through movies at the rate of two per night. It's kinda cool when both of us are unemployed AND kids-free. Last night we watched Anacondas (finally!! I've only been begging for it since we were still in Montana!) and Surviving Christmas. Anachonas wasn't bad. It's decent for a monster flick (Hey! It's a monster flick. Have any monster flick ever won an Oscar?). Surviving Christmas was hilarious through the first half of the movie, then it inevitably turned sappy. Again, sorta necessary to finish off a movie of it's type. But some of the parts were really, really funny. And I think Ben Affleck is always a cutie. :)

Movies to come!! I just got done jumping up and down with joy after I've picked up the moives-to-come list from Hollywood Videos. They rock. Here goes:

Jan 4th
Little Black Book

Jan 11th
Paparazzi
The Village

Jan 18th
Cellular
The Forgotten

Jan 25th
Alien vs. Predator

Feb 1st
The Grudge
Shall We Dance?
Vanity Fair
(Hubby: *Groans* All the girl movies that are coming out!)

Feb 8th
Incident at Lochness (I'm a big monster flick fan, remember? Or, do you care? :)
The Notebook
Shark Tale

All the movies that we were FORCED to wait for their releases on DVD because of all the INCONSIDERATE BASTARDS who chat and use their cellphones in the THEATER as if they are in their own living room!! No wonder people are screaming bloody hell just at the mere suggestion of allowing cell phone usage in airplanes -- not for fear of equipment interruption, but the destruction of their last sanctuary.

Intertwined Fates

So we've gone out fooding a lot during our stay in Seattle. It's kinda my hobby, to look for good Chinese (or any other kind of Asian) restaurants. Hubby actually eats the fortune cookies, even the ones that are not individually wrapped. EEEwwwwww. So when the fortune cookies came, he'd snatch one up right away. By the third meal (it took a couple of years to build up the White hubby's tolerance for multiple Asian meals in a row, by the way) I started complaining how he'd chose the fate for me, as in the remaining cookie of the two. I successfully guilted him into letting me pick my cookie first. :D (On a different note: fortune cookies do NOT, I repeat, do NOT exist in Asia. It's an American adaptation. Neither do we have those cutsey white to go boxes. Or the so-called chopstick font. I hate the chopstick font. I find them offensive as an Asian...)

In all honesty, why does it matter who get which cookie between a married couple? Our fates are intertwined. If it says "relocation in the future," both of us will relocate. If it says "wealth is coming your way," (which happen to be what one of them said :) it's wealth to the BOTH of us. Unless, of course, you are one of those couples who really want to kill each other. In which case, I have no idea why you two are sitting down and dining together... Chinese no less.

I've read a book a long time ago, it said how when you love a person, you don't just adopt his/her present and future, you also adopt his/her past. Hubby doesn't have a lot in the past department. Let's just hope that there won't be a kid that he never know about popping up one day. :D That said, I sure hope he'd have a good future. Move us to Seattle, buy a nice house... My life would be complete, again. :D

New Year's Day II

With the new slate and new page or new whatever you want to call it and that I've decided to return to blogging some more. It had really crossed my mind to clean up my blog some and give it more consistency. But after a few days of deep thought, I've realize that it is simply not possible. How can a person with so many random hobbies (and mind you, I don't pursue too much on any of them) have a consistent blog. I couldn't decide on a theme when I started this blog, I still can't. Perhaps I should rename it "Me, Myself, and Hubby" because it'll be about me, my rants and my random thoughts. =)

New Year's resolution (one simply can't blog on new year's day without talking about new year's resolution. I figured the sooner I get that out of the way, the sooner I can move on):

Weight lost, like every other woman in this country. I want to look HOT by summer time. (And if less than "every other woman" in this country wants to lose weight, well, some of them really should start giving this idea some long, hard thoughts.)

New Year Day

It's New Year's Day! (Well, technically speaking, it's already the second day of 2005.) It's a new page! It's a clean slate!! I finally get around to blogging again!! I couldn't even remember when was the last time I logged onto Blogger. It's really hard to blog when one is on the road, constantly being surrounded by others, AND lost her laptop to a horrific death.

Hubby has been back for almost a month now, and we've spent almost the entire month travelling. Hubby returned from deployment on a Friday, and by Sunday we were already on our way down to San Diego. After last year's San Diego fiasco, hubby and I were no longer stranger of this kind of last minute rushed schedule. January of last year (2004), hubby and I decided to take a trip to Hong Kong before he relocated to San Diego. The original plan was that he'd go alone and I'd stay in Sacramento. Since I was crying my eyeballs out we decided that I was to move down with him. :)) We made that rash decision about a week before departure to HK. We drove down to San Diego a day or two after the said decision to arrange for an apartment in San Diego. We had about a week's time after our return to recover from jet lag AND to move to San Diego.

Back to the present timeline. We left on the Sunday after hubby's return to San Diego and Irvine. Spent 7 days there. Then on our drive back hubby called mom on his cell phone and decided that we'd go to Montana for Christmas. Somehow it seems that our lives are made up of a series of impulsive decisions. We decided one weekend to go and get married at Tahoe. (We did rent a cabin and it was snowing and it was very romantic even though we didn't have a $30,000 wedding. =) We decided to buy a house together (and this was way before we got married or even talked about getting married, mind you) because we took a trip to San Diego and hubby saw a bill board that advertised low interest rate and said, "Let's buy a house." It'd be unwise for me to turn down the proposition at the time. Afterall, had things not worked out between us, I'd still owe half a house. LOL.

We spent a couple days housecleaning after returning from San Diego then it was prep time to Montana. Two days of drive and five days of Montana. (Christmas in Montana was nice. You know what's even better than a White hubby? Answer: White in-laws. But that discussion belongs to a separate entry.) A day prior to departure from Montana, I said to hubby, "Boy, I wish we could move to Seattle." Immediately, hubby decided to call up a company in Seattle that he had spoke with in San Diego to see if he can schedule a second interview with them. He was able to get hold of the guy by 8 AM the next morning and guy said, "C'mon down." And by 10:30 AM we were on our way to Seattle from Montana. Spontaneous, remember? Without spontaneity our lives would be so boring.

After the interview we decided to stay an extra day to do the "tourisy thing" -- dining at China town for me and house shopping for hubby. In addition, we've also took a side trip to Ikea, Seattle.

We finally arrived home at 2045 hours (8:45 PM) on December 31, 2004. Boy, and I thought I was ready to go home after San Diego.

Now that we are back, I can once again confiscate hubby's laptop and calls it my own and abuse it to death. =)