from Kiohl's lj

What Planet Are You From?


this quiz was made by The Autist Formerly Known As Tim

a randomly fun night

last night was randomly a lot of fun at some random places.

ming invited e and i for pearls around 10:30pm
so close to 11 pm we show up a q-cup to meet fu, ming, and johnny-bakes-alot

we had to order quickly because they close at 11pm. but we still got to hang there for about 30 min or so (the pics of ming's pansy shirt are at qcup)

since q-cup was closing, we headed next door to pizza my heart and e bought a bottle of water so we didn't feel like we were just using their table (although really we were, because it was cold and rainy outside).



since pizza my heart closed at midnight, we left when we were the last 'customers' in the joint... where to next? well, off to the rose and crown which had just finished some sort of show... (we need to go to quiz night some tuesday evening...). ming and johnny actually had some real drinks, and we got made fun of for calling a cabernet sauvignon "cab sauv." Apparently, it's just "cab." silly us. fu and i had root beers. we switched tables twice, and we learned some weird dice game from the bartender. Even though the music was loud, we had pretty good conversation all night. I have to say it was really really nice to go out and keep wandering around for a change.

ming's pansy shirt

ming's digicam is missing its cord, so yesterday i took some pics of him wearing his new pansy shirt. The middle pic had weird coloring that i couldn't doctor in photoshop, so i blasted out the contrast and brightness.

who wants to wrap me in duct tape?

haha... i know that sounds weird, but I'm thinking since I'm getting so into sewing/surgerying my clothes, I should make my own dress form... and there are many tutorials on the web that show you how to do it...with duct tape.

apparently, i get a long tshirt (i'll visit my recently discovered thrift shop for that) and have someone wrap lots and lots of duct tape around me. then i slit it up the back, and climb out. Stuff the form and voila! it's bust-o-lori!



duct tape bust tutorial

red corset top

i got this idea from someone in a diy community.

This was a nice shirt to create because it involved no sewing, only a pair of scissors. the pics are a little blurry, and my mirrors are dirty so there are spots where there shouldn't be.



I plan to make it more decent for normal day wearing by buying some sheer fabric (white or black) and sewing it to the inside. all in all, i think it's much cuter than the original t. I should start taking pics of these things before I ravage 'em huh?

update on the e stencil

i hand wrote band names with a fabric pen around the hem (all the way around the back. reads: death cab for cutie * flaming lips * the new pornographers * the shins)

everyone should have a scarylori

What's that you say? What's a scarylori? Well it's only the newest in frightening fashion. Designed at the request of a tall skinny white boy, now all of you can own a scarylori of your own. She's fierce, she's frightening, some might call her ugly... she's scarylori! Take a look for yourself:



AND A CLOSE-UP (not for the faint of heart!)



Now, for those of you who say, "I've got to have a scarylori of my very own!" you are in luck! Getting your own scarylori is as easy as pie -- make that a hot cherry pie!

Just provide your own shirt (or pay the designer to buy one) + $2.00 for paint and work and VOILA! you can wear your scarylori with pride.

how indie are you?

You're Generally Indie. There's nothing wrong with
this. You like music all over the map and
aren't adversed to listening to some Top 40
here and there. You just know to comment that
The Neptunes are the best producers around
right now. You don't feel the need to debate
constantly with other music geeks, because you
know that Pavement were the best band of the
90s.


You Know Yer Indie. Let's Sub-Categorize.
brought to you by Quizilla

made another new shirt!!

hehe, I'm wearing it today...





Why yes, those are stamps on my shoulder, chest and waist! Am I a fashion maven or what?!! hehe... what's that you say? I'm a fashion DIVA?? yes, yes, oh go on... lol... i'm in a fairly good mood can you tell?

anyways, this was an old free shirt i got from stanford's Bases group (some business entrepreneurial group). It was a v-neck. Obviously I chopped off the top shoulder and ran flowered ribbon around the new neck line. I chopped the remaining sleeve in half, and angled the bottom of the shirt. I made a bunch of slits up one of the sides and tied the pieces together. I plan to buy a zipper and run it up the other side and tighten the shirt up a bit. I also might stencil some stuff across the bottom.

Playing with this shirt was my reward for finishing my papers yesterday.

did i mention i love my sewing machine??

North Korean children call Bush the next Hitler

Using Anne Frank in North Korea to show a Nazi America

i think i've been killing my plants

i've been bad. I haven't watered them because i figured they would be getting water from all the rain we've had. but i think they were just under the awning enough to not catch any rain. so pretty much all my herbs look dead except my oregano.

my kaffir lime tree was very sad, and its leaves toward the bottom have started to curl.

my meyer lemon bush hadn't even been planted yet. So i pulled it out of it's home depot pot to transfer into the new pot. Half the roots came off... :( not a good sign i think... but i put it all in the new pot with more soil... and watered everything...

now i'm just hoping they'll all live...
poor plants.
i suck.

more recycled clothing

Minger was going to make himself a pansy shirt, but it didn't work out. So I decided to make him a pansy purse. I made it last night/this morning around 3am-4am (silly me, that meant i didn't get up till 2pm today!). I found an old skirt from old navy in my donation pile (it was from high school and was way too small for me, plus it harkened back to that old librarian look...), and made a pansy purse!

voila!

whoa there adbusters!

I don't know if you all follow adbusters at all, but if you have, you might be confused with their new selling strategy. They've launched themselves into the consumer world.

see for yourself The blackSpot Sneaker

bad day stenciling

i made a stenciled shirt!

I was highly aggravated after going into school today. I was supposed to meet with my advisor to talk about my work on honors. Well, she left for lunch, and said she'd be back in 20 min to discuss my paper. After an hour she still wasn't back. And this other woman came in and said she really needed to get on the computer I was doing my analysis on (her data was saved there). I told her I'd be off in 20 min when my advisor came back. After 20 min, my advisor still wasn't back, but i got off the computer in case the other woman came back (which I might add, she never did).

finally, my advisor came back, but she said she'd be back in a minute and went to go talk with some other grad students. After 45 more min, I went to go see if she was done. She was in an office laughing with about 4 other women, gossiping about how crazy another professor's class was (as in silly). Then she said to me, "sorry, this is just so much more fun than your paper" *ouch*

needless to say, I came home feeling pissed off and cranky. So I cleaned up my apartment a bit, and finally got around to cutting out my stencil of e. I cut it out and placed it over an old tank top and painted on fabric paint...

see!


it's a dark blue stencil

i'm thinking about writing around the bottom hem of the shirt either 1) some bands e + i like, or 2) names i use for e sometimes (this might be a little too cutesy, but no one else will know...ahem... besides you guys of course)

brief celebration, followed by dissappointment

as i pulled up to the school parking lot today, I saw a marguerite (the free shuttle on campus that I take from the parking lot to the psych dept) just pulling up to the stop.

SHIT, I think. I just missed it!

upon closer inspection, I noticed that the shuttle was actually the B-Line, I wanted the A-line, which normally shows up about 5 minutes later. Score, yes! perfect timing...

then I noticed that on the tail of the B-Line, was the A-Line bus. Damn! isn't that always the way...

McDonald's and Asians

saw this on yellow world. Apparently McDonalds has a whole page on being Asian. The front page says,
" We're Asian and Pacific Islander Americans "living on the rim," where our diverse cultures and the everyday American lifestyle become one. We're hanging on to our great traditions while we move to the beat of the times. We honor our heritage - but we love being Americans. From high fashion to high tech, from Asian Pacific American hip hop to haute cuisine, we're weaving the threads of our culture into the fabric of everyday American life. Whether we're sipping green tea or enjoying a Big Mac® sandwich, we're helping make the magic mix called America become even richer. And McDonald's is right there with us, everyday!"

the whole page is very late '90's in its feel. I'm not actually that disturbed by this, although, I find it very weird that Mickey D's is suddenly claiming stake in Asian Americans.

tee hee

I made a present for someone. I mussed up a bit, but overall, I'm excited about it anyway. I can't post it here yet, because it might be seen, and i don't know how to lock blogger posts.

eventually I'll post pics of it....

i'm just giddy with anticipation...I love making people things!

sheesh, i'm so silly.

e was gone for soooo long this afternoon. he didn't get back from his field trip till 8pm. It's a good thing I wasn't stuck at school till then. Unfortunately, since i didn't go into school today, I gotta go in tomorrow to work on my honors stuffs.

i'm working my way through the emotions book: how to raise emotionally healthy children. It's filled with annecdotes that annoy me, and it's sort of irritating in its voice.

fu, minger, and i have come to the conclusion that there are no asian kids on the cover because asian parents are not concerned with their children's emotions. They just want us to do well in school and respect our elders. oh yeah, and we need to grow up to be doctors or lawyers (oops, i guess I failed that one ;) )

Actually the most irritating thing about this book is that it has no chapters, or at least, it doesn't read as though it has chapters. The sections all run together. This might seem small and insignificant, but honestly, I always mentally tell myself that I can take a break from reading "after the next chapter." so if i can't tell I've finished a chapter (well then I must be stupid... duh...) then I don't get my break. Truly, I can actually tell when a section ends, but because there is no physical space (a blank page, whatnot) between the chapters, my inclination is toward reading until i find one...
I guess that means I should finish the book soon.

k, back to reading with my majorly throbbing headache... here's some silly pictures I took for asiancuties' funny face theme

went to goodwill

found an old retro skirt that I wanted to convert into a purse. I chopped off the bottom quarter of the skirt and made it into a saddlebag style purse and added a white felt cutout I made of a squirrel (I know, it barely resembles a squirrel, and i should have made it black like the squirrels around stanford, but oh well).

I sewed up the hem of the rest of the skirt, and now have a very retro (maybe too retro) skirt. It would look better as a mini skirt. I'll think about that though.



I also bought a corset I might adapt into clothes, and e found me this great little blue suede stationary holder that is already an adorable purse like thing, I just need to figure out how I want to make a strap for it.

I plan to stencil this weekend if I get all my project work done.

Fred died on Angel tonight. But I always thought she was too whiney. She came back as this cool blue haired/icy being. I'm thrilled to see next week's episode.

quiz

You're Siddhartha!

by Hermann Hesse

You simply don't know what to believe, but you're willing to try
anything once. Western values, Eastern values, hedonism and minimalism, you've spent
some time in every camp. But you still don't have any idea what camp you belong in.
This makes you an individualist of the highest order, but also really lonely. It's
time to chill out under a tree. And realize that at least you believe in
ferries.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

other t-shirt surgery

this one actually took a lot more sewing. I plan to use red ribbon in the top runching, but I currently only have blue. The v-neck came out off center, but it almost looks like it's supposed to be that way. I did take in the sides to make it a slimmer fit on me, but I still might take it in a little more to have a cuter fit.

please sign this petition against racism

link to post. then sign petition to get it changed!

a nytimes article about it

anyone interested in doing this?

flashmobcomputing

what is the goal of this one?

interesting/amusing

TiVo thinks I'm gay

prof. Nass talked about this as an effect of collaborative filtering. Very amusing effect and interesting to think about

looking out for some old ties

this choker looks very fun to me. i'm not sure where I'd wear it, but it's a great idea. and i agree that they would make cuuuuuute bracelets as well!

really stiff pants

i guess you might be able to turn some of your old cool clothing into vases and such or sculptural pieces... kinda interesting

my second t-shirt surgery today

i stumbled across some t-shirt surgery sites today. My first surgery was on my AID's walk shirt that was way too large. I'm still working on getting it to a point I'm happy with, so I'll post a pic of that when it's ready.

I did put together a new death cab for cutie shirt from an old shirt I didn't like that much in the first place. I love the way it came out. The letters I used are adorable!
see:


Wine party (x-posted to my munchies blog):
We had our first wine party today at Fu's place. We gifted our host a set of white and red wine glasses as well as a few flexible cutting boards (since vendetta took most of the others when she left). The wine theme was cabernet sauvignon. We eventually had 9 bottles of wine at the party which was way too much, even for tasting. We kept a booklet of the different wines tried with our comments in it. I would post which wines there were, but I left the book at fu's place.

There was actually much tension at the party for several reasons. 1. the food wasn't ready till around 9:30 or 10pm and people were starving. normally this might not be so bad, but fu's house isn't as stocked as ours, so people couldn't snack on anything after the cheeses (not really fu's fault, we did choose the recipe for dinner that took 3 hrs) 2. as we drank more, we lost more inhibitions and got testier 3. there was roommate tension among some of the people.

on the major plus side, the dinner was EXCELLENT. It was a variation on the pork stew with prunes soaked in brandy recipe from the Greatest Recipes book that my aunt and uncle sent us. Instead of cream and white wine for the stew, fu substituted (at ming's suggestion) red wine and double the amount of onions. The pork was tender and the whole stew was amazingly flavorful. I might try to post this variation recipe later.

on a negative side, all the sulfites in the wines gave me a major headache later in the night. in the future, we should try to keep it to five bottles of wine per party i think. Towards the end, people couldn't make great judgements about the wines (whether from drunkenness or an unclean palate).

Other:
-negs-

1. I tried to read my emotion pop culture book for class today. It's so cheesy/boring I find my mind wandering after each sentence. I thought I could be entertained laughing at the cheesiness, but now it seems like it might just waste my time. Either way, I have to get through the book very very quickly so I can write it up in the next week.



2. I've been pretty stressed about my Comm 169 project. Our paper is due this Wednesday, and I'm still sort of clueless on what we're writing on/what our project justifications are for electricity help in Nepal.



3. I don't know exactly how to make one of my friends feel better. I can tell how short he is getting with everyone/thing when he is stressed about his roomie situation, but I feel sort of unable to help out much besides offer refuge which is only a bandaid solution anyway.



4. I tried Aveeno's face scrub today. It made my cheeks burst out in hives. Sadness. I hate wasting money. maybe e can use it. it makes me timid about trying the oatmeal lotion by aveeno that i just bought as well (although, I know my face is much more sensitive than the rest of my skin).



5. In the stress of spilled wine, no food, and major tension, I tried to help fu with cooking the noodles and ended up sticking part of my hand in boiling water... don't ask. blah...



6. e and i have been extra touchy with each other for some reason. we keep reading each other's tone incorrectly. no harm is ever meant though. I attribute it to stress.

-pos-

1. Costco had amazing candle sets for low prices. It made me sad I bought so many candles from ross that were more expensive and not as good, but oh so happy about the obtaining of the candle sets. I also bought a new ionic hair dryer from Conair. I forgot how full blow dried hair can get when it has layers. It's nice.



2. I'm having lots of fun doing my t-shirt surgery. it's been so long since i got to get crafty.



3. we bought frames. I can frame my magic washer print as soon as i make a matting :) score! and that frame in the hallway can go up when we put the replacement plexiglass in (we broke the real glass that came with the frame).



4. i think i saw my fav actress from law and order svu on a food network show. (the lawyer : Alex. But her hair is a darker/redder blonde and her smile was larger than it ever was on svu)
   


5. lots of clean laundry since the 7 loads the other day.



6. honors research is coming along. and I'm finding some interesting results I may post later after I make my subject population a little more equal.



7. the fly that was in my house (and resisted repeated magazine attacks) flew out the door as we left for the wine party...YES!!



8. i'm whitening my teeth with crest white strips so i can conform to society's pressure for beautiful smiles. haha... expect whiter smiles in 11 days...

sorry for the uber-long listing... I had a lot of neg. venting i needed to get out, and then i wanted to remind myself of some positives to combat the negatives :)

yay anniversary dinner

it was soooooo good! I'll probably post about it on my food blog. but it was one of the best evenings i've had in a long time.

here's some pics from before i left.





this one'll probably become an lj icon for me...

That midterm was a pisser

My comm 169 midterm sucked majorly. It was a take home exam, which meant it was largely dependent on rereading materials and quoting from them.

Understandably/annoyingly, there was a strict word count maximum of 700 words per question (each question was divided into at least 3 sections). This was a painfully difficult to keep to, and I found my self having to prune out 120 words out of my question 1 at 3 am this morning.

After printing out/finishing my stupid test, I had to face the mound of 8 loads of laundry that I had spent several hours doing yesterday. So until around 4 am-ish, I folded clothes so that I could get them off the bed. I did get to watch American Idol from last night (I recorded it because I was busy watching my midterm). Last night's performances were horrid by the way. Thankfully the judges saw that. It was painful to listen to the contestants (I was actually very surprised given that nearly all the contestants last week were AMAZING!). There was even a girl from Palo Alto on last night, who very poorly represented the town. I will not be watching tonight to see who won. No one should have won IMO. Take some people from last week please!!! I can't help but think that the producers somehow planned to have an amazing group the first week, and follow it up with a horrible week (just to hear the judges rag on the contestants).

Our new neighbors had sex the other night - very loudly. This struck me as odd, mainly because I have not been witness to cries of other peoples' passions before. I would have thought that in a dorm setting, I would have heard more people getting it on... but no, I guess I lived around very chaste students.

On another note, I'd really like to get to know our neighbors. They are younger than the other residents. I've always wanted to have good neighborly relations... maybe so i can go over and ask to borrow a cup of sugar or something neighborly like that.

don't go see Win a Date With Tad Hamilton

we saw it under I-Cheung's recommendation and my curiosity. It had some cute moments, and Josh Duhammel (All my children hottie)

was fun to look at.

ooh here's another one



Ahem! uh but i digress...
the movie was of course cheesy, and the plot was a giveaway from the start. But! I do think this would be a nice movie to cuddle up with your sweetie with when it comes out on dvd. Grab a blanket and popcorn, and don't expect major enlightenment. It's mildly entertaining.

oh yeah and did I mention:

I'm e

What Irrational Number Are You?

You are e Of all the irrational numbers, you are the most intense. By nature you are powerful, although sometimes you can spiral out of control. You are good with money; the interest seems to just compound whenever you are near. When someone uses the word "exponential" they are probably talking about you. In some ways you and φ are a nearly perfect match. Not to mention how attractive φ is. But then, there is the remarkable π... Your lucky number is approximately 2.71828183

Shiny Lemur Straif's Blog

btw, ev got φ which he was very excited about... given our perfect matching...

what is this?

saw this on someone else's background, but I dont' really know what they are. I think, after looking around a bit, that they may be pygmy possums from australia, but i really have no idea.

ooh new browser!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

rating communities [edit posted relevant stamps]

so i 'just barely' got into one of those rating communities. haha see the count here


I got rejected at alluring asians. I actually find their rejection picture quite hilarious. you can look at the countdown and the reject pics


i think if the mods on asian cuties actually counted, they'd see I was rejected, but they haven't gotten around to the "aiyaaaah uncute!" stamp yet...
[edit] I just got an acceptance stamp to asian cuties... maybe the mods voted for me and their vote counts double?

eyes are rolling

Paul posted this on his bloggy, but since I know few people actually read his, I'm reposting it here. Just imagine me rolling my eyes while reading the entire story (sounds actually rather difficult, huh?)
Engineering geek names son version 2.0
I can't believe the mother gave in to that. Honestly, if I were the kid, I'd be pissed my parents named me in such a gimmicky way. Plus, kids get enough crap about their names anyway. This boy will be sick of explaining the story of why he's 2.0 and not "the 2nd," although I'm sure his dad will get a kick out of telling it to everyone forever.

there's this interesting reproduction of an advertisement I want to get on ebay. i'm not telling you what it is until i secure it. it's actually a buy it now, but i want to make sure i can pick it up and not pay the 6 dollars shipping and handling since the seller resides in Palo Alto. Suffice it to say for now that it is an interesting piece of history for a Chinese American. I would obviously prefer to buy the real thing vs a reproduction (I did purchase a non reproductrion trade card that is similar to this one although not quite as cool. I decided that it would be nice to collect Chinese American historical bits. I'll let you know if I get the thing or not.

actually, I just got home, and guess what arrived? My trade card of course so I took a picture (i know i should have scanned, but the camera was closer)

I plan to put it in a larger frame with historical reference facts around it.

O, and I bought the poster I was talking about earlier. The people are in palo alto, and they said to be neighborly, they wouldn't charge me shipping, but they had no retail outlet. So I payed them 3 bucks instead of 6 because they deserve some handling fees. Anyway, it is a reproduction of the 1885 advertisement for the Magic Washer.

look closely at the bottom. it says, " The Chinese must go. We have no use for them since we got this Magic Washer"
A similar print can be purchased here but notice they cut off the top and the bottom which I find are an integral part of the image. Encarta says the bottom part refer[s] to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the pervasive anti-Chinese prejudice of the time."

where to go

I did some cleaning today. I figured I'm going to have to move out of the Stanford web space soon, so I backed things up, deleted almost everything I had there, and put up a new web front. It doesn't go to much. It links to another one of my pages and e's page. From my other page you can go to either of my blogs or my yahoo photo album which includes some self-portraits I tried making this morning.

I think so many of us seek approval. I stumbled upon the asiancuties community on lj. It's basically like are you hot or not where people put pictures up of themselves and others rate how attractive they are. In the case of asiancuties, you are rated on how 'cute' you are. Honestly, I felt and extreme pull to submit. Upon introspection, I think it's due to a feeling of disconnect I sometimes have being Asian American. That problem of 'feeling Asian enough.' I am not the typical cutsey Asian girl. Well I did submit, I don't think I'm going to get in (the votes were close at last count, but the no's were winning :) )

I went on campus for a job interview today. It's with the Stanford Library system to work on fixing up their online library tutorial system (soon to be required for all new students). I think they're looking for someone who has more time to spend this quarter (+10hrs) and who has more javascript experience. We'll see I guess.

our place is a mess right now, which makes it all the more difficult to concentrate on work. earlier this week i decided to drop my interpersonal abnormal psych class so i could have a lighter load. Hopefully I can buckle down and do well this quarter.

I wish I had one of these

a talking parrot i mean
Remember Paulie the movie about this?

now does this parrot really talk, or was he just trained very very well and can fool enough people? how are we to know if he is actually cognitively recognizing a stimulus and reacting innovatively as opposed to being very well conditioned? perhaps fMRI scans are in order :) not that we know enough about parrot brains to infer which area is the 'free thinking' area if there is such an area (i guess like the frontal lobe in humans?) and not like he'd be able to keep that still in the fMRI machine (plus the noise'd probably freak the hell out of him).

I guess it would be interesting to see if he could teach others. I propose they find this parrot a mate immediately, and see if his children will learn to speak from him as well. dibs on a baby!

sore neck and too much work

why is it that this quarter seems like more work than i can wrap my head around? I think I'm taking fewer classes, and the classes themselves aren't as challenging (in terms of requirements) so am I just lazier? did I take winter break and extend it too much into winter quarter?

some how i slept funny and my neck is killing me every time i lean forward or backward too much.

my scouring of classified ads hasn't turned up a job for me yet. Am i being to snobby about what I do for work for a little extra cash. I thought about retail somewhere i want to shop (major discounts!) but e said retail is miserable and discourages me at each suggestion of it.

since we have no income right now, it worries me when i want to buy a little happiness here and there (ok that's a little frightening, but i mean i hate feeling guilty when i want to buy a candy bar at the grocery store - mmm violet crumble!).

I've also been looking around for stuff I would like to sell. eyeing old textbooks to sell on amazon, old vacuums taking up space in the closet, etc. anything to make a few extra bucks, right? I think there is a fuzzy job fair tomorrow somewhere on campus...

The House of Sand and Fog

Yesterday for our 1.5 yr anniversary, we went to see The House of Sand and Fog. It wasn't playing too near us because it wasn't picked up by the Century theaters. It was playing at AMC (which we avoid at all costs) and at the Camera Cinemas. We went to Camera 7 in Campbell which which I highly recommend to you all. Before the movie previews, it shows a few ads, but it also showed photography and art slides, and people can submit their art for display before the show. Plus, they allow you to bring food in from Pizza my heart or their cinema cafes (yay to something besides extremely expensive popcorn and candy). They also have student discounts and are located in a center with plenty of other food (i used to go to this shopping center w/ my family and apop). To apop: remember the center where you drove around the circle turnaround repeatedly?

And for the movie, YOU MUST GO SEE IT. apop wrote a synopsis for y'all here at his lj. Be warned to bring tissues and be prepared to be very very sad. It's beautiful though and worth seeing in the theaters. Some points in the movie hit you over the head a little too hard to parallel the stories, but it's forgivable. the bird metaphor is a little too much.

you can read my lj about my dining experience at La Fondue in Saratoga right after the movie

sick maybe?

I can't tell. At first it hit like an allergic reaction in emotions class. I just started sniffling and sneezing like crazy. Then the sinus headaches came, and I was gifted with a cough as though I had taken an expectorant. Am I sick? Am I allergic to something special? boo.

perhaps the practicing on yahoo poker (hold'em aka Celebrity Poker) helped my poker playing. Somehow e and I both managed to get more money than we came with to our poker game last night. Paul of course raked in as well. That means poor Adam woefully emptied his wallet and ended up giving a written I.O.U. to e for $9. His defeator: Frankenstein (an extremely high stakes game. at one point there was $32 in the pot). Actually, what worked for me was keeping track of my money, and not betting wildly on chances. e and I still are way down out of all our nights of poker/mahjong playing, but last night inched us up the pit.

Monk was also recorded on Paulie and Adam's TiVo. I to watch it. It's new! We didn't get a chance to because of poker. There was fun S'Mores making though in their fire place. Paulie was particularly impressed by his fire in the fireplace having never experienced a fireplace in Hawaii.

we're celebrating e's bday tonight because our friends don't NEED get MLK off, although Stanford gave us the day off.

gotta read. gotta sleep. went to bed at 6am woke up at 10:30am. Damn internal clocks. hopefully i will take a nap midafternoon.

Look I got new comments! HaloScan graciously picked up the blogSpeak users so our old comments are saved as well! Yay haloscan.

living

i'll put a different comment engine thing up soon. blah. i've been trying to put a new ringtone on my phone (nokia 6200). I'm very disappointed in the quality of the ones I found so far. They all sound too synthesized. I don't even know how many polyphonic keys my phone is capable of playing at the same time, but i'd wager it's not too high. I really want to get a phone with true tones, but I'm not quite sure if they're out in the US yet, or if AT&T sells them.

Haven't been getting much reading done, although I did start playing yahoo poker to practice (e and i tend to lose too much money when we play for real). Unfortunately, when people aren't playing w/real money, the betting is so arbitrary. People make no sense when they keep raising and raising until the pot is at $70 before seeing the river (in hold'em). lame asses.

I have an interview tomorrow morning for a campus job. I hope it's not too involved, I just need the extra cash. We'll see.

oooh blogspeak!

as e mentioned to me, i have no comments currently on the page. Explanation from blogspeak site, "BlogSpeak is currently down because the bastards that host it decided to suspend my account. I do not know as of yet when this situation will be resolved. If you don't want any JavaScript errors on your pages, take the code off for the time being. Thanks for your patience."

sigh, so I might have to take a look at some other comment providers. not so bad i guess.

I've been searching for a part-time job either on campus or somewhere along our home-school route. e may not be working at ea this quarter so i need to help bring in some dough. I have a meeting with the engineering dept someone for some sort of job there. We'll see. I struggled with the fax machine in the psych building to send my resume to some elusive fax number for some digital imaging job ($20/hr!) we'll see if i get a response.

i realized my schedule is not horribly full. my main full day is thursday. i guess that means i have no excuse for not getting my work done.

spoke with Val about possible RA ships in the department, she gave me some leads to follow up on in late february. Found out that psych full time RAs make something like 30,000 a yr which is better than i thought. I need to try to get myself one of those positions.

need to kick my butt to work on honors.

oh i have to keep an emotion journal for 2 weeks for my emotions class. so this blog may become more emotion heavy at some point :)

gottafinishmyfifthyearatcollegeblog

Your Years at Hogwarts by nevermindless
Name:
The Sorting Hat places you in:	Gryffindor (Red and Gold)
Subject you are naturally best at:	Herbology
Your favorite book:	The Standard Book of Spells Grade 1 by: Miranda Goshawk
Pet you bring to school:	Montane Forest Owl
You are most known for:	Being Prof. Quirrel's favorite student.
Created with quill18's MemeGen!

blupdate

The Reporter - Man says he’s addicted to cable; wants to sue Cable company. Is he for real? it's the blame game. it can't possibly be my own fault for my own failures. Who can I point the finger at? oh yes, tv destroyed my life. give me more free media for compensation.

here's an amusing jab at Christianity yes yes, appeal to greed, that's the best of the 7, sure to win a youthful convert.

did i mention the VS semi-annual sale was fabulous? This was the first year I got to go to the sale early on, before all the good bras were picked away, and while a majority of the sizes were still organized into the correct bins. I also bought a new swim suit off the website for next summer (who can resist a good sale? not me, that's for sure)

Val has been raving about the candied walnuts I gifted to her for the holidays. Apparently, the famous C. Steele also had a tasty, but Val wouldn't give up more of her nuts. Since he's on a nut kick, maybe I should make him up a batch to gain more major advice time...

Lucky e and I had a big surprise when we opened the energy bill yesterday. Apparently our energy usage had a bizillion % jump, and costs went from $5 to $300 something! Apparently PG&E had made our little energy reader invalid, so all previous readings had been rejected (hence the charge of the minimal amount of energy possible before this), now they had fixed the problem, but the energy read was a read of all the energy since the meter had been inactivated (which might have been way before we got to our apartment). The company is fixing things, but it'll will take a couple months still. oh blah company! at least we don't have to pay anything while the bill is being readjusted.

e says harvard is better than stanford at everything, but he admits since he's never gone to school there, it could all be a bold-faced lie.

and finally, a cute play off of the ubiquitous ipod advertisements and current media hype

why can't skeeter be cuddly?

Acid trip 1

e and i were jealous when we turned on animal planet the other night. there were these cute cute guinea pigs loving being held in their owners' arms. skeeter is speed lightning when we even walk near his cage. I gave him a stuffed penguin to have as a friend. he dragged mr. penguin down into his cardboard house. e suggested that they were doing the nasty.

classes argh... my schedule is flipping like a tiddly wink. i went to computer interfaces today w/ e and nickchan. Looks like alot of fun, I'm a little intimidated about the project. I feel like we have to do something amazing to actually make a valuable contribution to the world. that's so intense, but exciting at the same time.
I shopped Zimbardo's new class on human nature (cults, sex, and terrorism). honestly, the class looked ok. "the legendary zimbardo" (as noted on every one of his slides) has decreed that freshman oriented projects are required. For instance, one of the projects calls for organizing a terrorist cell in your dorm. other projects involve hightailing it out to SF to explore Scientology or a dinner date with The Moonies. I do think I will audit some of the lectures. They are having several good guest lecturers. They're bringing in a panelist of a long time prostitute, a professional dominatrix, and a male porn star. Another guest will be the sex columnist from the Guardian. The whole second hour with her will be spent answering all of the questions sent in by students (i think it's required to write a question).

I also shopped Human Abilities tonight. the class seems okay, not too difficult, but also not exciting enough to drag me from home at 6pm to 8pm twice a week.

I've also realized I've been extroadinarily chatty for the past several days (at least for me). I guess that's natural when you get back to school. everyone is always interested in the chit chat. Still talking to random people I sit near in my classes isn't normal for me, but it has felt a little natural lately. weird eh?

Hot Topic

Hot Topic has a pretty good online website. all their models look very goth or punk (not that I'm surprised). I went w/ my parents into hot topic over vacation. Much to my bro and my own embarrassment, my dad walks in, stares at the store clerks and exclaims in shock and dissapproval something about how weird it is that everyone has all these body piercings.

e: don't go to the website, i don't want you to for gifty reasons right now. maybe in a month.

oh for all those who care, e's bday is coming up on the 20th.

blah. school has started again. e has a 9am class TTh, so I'm attending a class at 9:30am. I think it might require too much participation for that early in the morning. I felt absolutely brain dead in class.

Victoria's Secret Semi-Annual Sale started yesterday! I'm so excited, I've got to go there after school today to get some cute new stuffs. I want to order a swimsuit from the website too (it's cute AND on sale). yay cute underthings!

still need to find a job, got to stop by the photo lab to see if i can do a little something something there. oh money.

step, step, step

I wish I had done this as a child. sounds fun.

i made an extra special trip up to the parents to bring back my stair climber. I put it together yesterday and started huffing and puffing to law and order. hopefully i keep exercising a little each day to strip the pounds off.

caught the beginning of an x-files w/ some freaky bleeding neck ghost girl. that kept me up way to long in a paranoid state. next time i'll switch the channel

family trips

Oh dear. Family trips. Supposed to leave at 9am which of course means we leave at 11am. After 5 minutes on the road we stop at a phone booth to look up a Best Buy on the way down to LA. So 15 minutes later my bro is at best buy buying some lcd screen for his xbox. Peppermint mochas from starbucks were had by all.

After our 20 minute stop we’re back on the road again, only to hear will complain 15 minutes later that the power cord for the screen doesn’t fit in our power source. Of course he says this right as we’ve passed the exit for home depot. So for the next couple hours I get to hear I get to hear whining and complaining banter from both my parents in front of me and my brother behind me.

And so starts my list of annoyances about my family car trips:
1. over packing: my parents pack like there is no civilization down in LA. Think 20 bottles of water, huge ice chests of food, humongous suitcases , spray bottles, plates, napkins, etc. So even with a 7 seater minivan, we barely have room to fit family of five. No leg room and no ability to lean back makes for a crappy car ride.
2. strong smells in small spaces: my mom decides 20 minutes into the trip to have an orange. Yes an orange smell can be pleasant. But the small confined space inside a minivan does not have enough air to get away from the sharp acid of an orange. Imagine my disgust when my father bought a chili cheese dog at a gas station 15 minutes later.
3. Christmas music nonstop on the cd player
4. people asking for things that were packed beneath all the other crap packed into the car.
5. hearing two sets of audio. In front of me, Christmas music interspersed with the beatles. From behind me, family guy audio interspersed with my brother’s laughter.
6. trying to hold conversations with people in the front and back of the car. People in the front never hear what people in the back say, and vice versa. Being in the middle means you get to hear all parts of the conversation repeated 5 times on each side, and you’re often relied on to continually pass messages along.
7. having four backseat drivers. Really really stressful

as an interesting aside, we saw a car pass us with a bunch of chinese characters on it. My grandmother strained to read it as my father got dangerously close so she could do so. My brother comments, “Ugh, it’s just some Asian who thinks he’s cool.” Wow. Growing up in Orinda must be doing its job.

Also, while cleaning up this morning while people were still rushing around trying to pack, I noticed that my parents’ dishwashing liquid is sold as aromatherapy. It had mandarin and green tea essences. What an interesting idea, who knew that to relax and titillate the senses, all one had to do was wash her own dishes. Swell. Oh marketing.

To end the xbox lcd power saga that I know you all are so interested n, about 4 hours into the trip, my dad remembered that he had a power source that fit into the extra plug in the front of the car. Hence the whining ceased and the dual audio tracks ensued. Oh please let LA come soon.

The Dent: Mona Lisa Smile

I went to see mona lisa's smile with e last night. It was an enjoyable movie. julia roberts was, well, julia roberts playing her normal julia roberts role in that julia roberts way. Julia Stiles' performance didn't hit the right key with me. Her performance was not quite believable. Kirstin Dunst was good in her role as 'the bitch' and Maggie Gyllenhaal was amazing in her role as 'the loose and progressive girl.' most reviewers gave this movie a poor rating, but i thought it was a fun time. and for you tori fans, tori makes an appearance in the movie (as pointed out by e).

The Dent: Mona Lisa Smile: "But here's the part you'll want to know: The movie does indeed have a wedding scene at which Tori appears as a wedding singer. We see the girls socializing in the ballroom at the wedding reception, and there's big bang music playing. One of the characters repeatedly comments on the good band. Shortly thereafter, we hear 'Murder, He Says' partway through, then cut to a close-up shot of Tori singing onstage. She sways seductively, and kind of bobs her shoulder and head toward the microphone in that way she does. Tori is standing, not playing a piano, and wearing a royal blue dress that is pulled back behind her neck. (I don't know what that style is called.) The song ends, and as Maggie Gyllanhall's character begins to dance with a teacher who she has slept with (that's not ruining any of the plot, so no attacks about the lack of a spoiler!), we hear 'da ba ba da-ba doo wee doo wee/da ba ba do-wee do-wee do-wee/see the pyramids along the Nile...,' and for a good minute or so of the scene, the two characters slow dance to the music, but are parted right down the middle to reveal Tori from a distance on stage in full focus! It's actually kind of surprising to me how carefully the shot seems to have been composed to make room for Tori in the romantic context."

Christmas Christmas time is here...

a close up of skeeter snacking on some lettuce.


i was so thrilled to be done with finals. i had been staving off on buying a christmas tree and going shopping for school (it mostly paid off in grades). When I finally went to target to buy the cheap fake tree (only 16.99!) they were long gone. The beautiful ornaments and gift tags I had previously seen at Costco were also long gone. as it turns out, the christmas season for them ends around 3 weeks before christmas. sadness.

finally we went to a real tree lot and bought a cute live tree, and went to long's and got some cheap lights and ornaments (i didn't notice i got blue and silver and now people tell me i'm mixing my religions [christmas and hannakuh]). It's great though. and i put the first present under the tree (e's xmas gift)!

blech

I hate finals. the worst part is thinking all this will be over in less than
a day. that is a dangerous thought because i start to lose concentration
on the task at hand. i think, hey in that little amt of time i won't care about
all this, so why do i care right now?

blah. times like these always make me think of my future and whether i'll
make something of myself. i wonder if i'll make my parents proud of me. i
wonder if i'll be proud of myself. i wonder if people will ever look down on
me for whatever i decide to do. i hope i do something good with my life.
on the other hand, i just hope i'll be happy.

my emotion final was long. i didn't know enough detail for the questions.
i feel bad, like i let my teacher down. he tried to chit chat when i handed
in the exam, but i nearly ran out of there. i should be studying for tomorrow
i won't sleep much tonight most likely. i hate the end of a quarter.

my parents sold the baby girl chinchilla today. a lot of people were interested
in her. my dad took some great pics of her that i collaged for a craigslist
post.
see:

people on an lj chinchilla group called her sexy which was sort of
disturbing.

e was nice and drove me to my final tonight. i was too nervous and stressed
to drive i think. he's really stressed now tho. big computer assignment due
in 30 minutes.

i made a new level for skeeter. i think e calls it his bachelor suite. he hops
up there for food and to squeek at us as we wander by. it's lined with an
aquafresh box which is a really pretty shade of green. it does advertise
aquafresh to skeeter constantly. maybe it'll get him to brush his teeth.

ok studying cognitive development now...

The 2nd Annual Twenty Most Annoying Liberals In The United States -- The 2003 Edition - Right Wing News (Conservative News and Views)

i don't know if people saw the list of the 20 most annoying conservatives posted not too long agolike this one, but the political right has come back with a list of the ownThe 2nd Annual Twenty Most Annoying Liberals In The United States -- The 2003 Edition - Right Wing News (Conservative News and Views). oh those silly conservatives.

yo-yo's

I remember yo-yo's going in and out of popularity growing up. I could never get any tricks to work (besides walking the dog for a few seconds) so I had to get one of those fake yo-yo's that would retract on its own so i could bounce the orb around in fun ways. These kids are crazy. it's very cool that a string and a couple of wheels can make such frenzied geometric sketches. Here's some highlights from the national Japanese yo-yo competition.

engrish

japanese making curry from a hamster?!!!
Cute Curry

Make-a-Flake - A snowflake maker by Lookandfeel new media

Make-a-Flake - A snowflake maker by Lookandfeel new media

Biography of President George W. Bush

it's odd how typing miserable failure in google brings up our president's bio. it's a funny prank. i never knew google worked like that.

American Civil Liberties Union : Louisiana School Punishes 7-Year-Old Boy for Talking About His Lesbian Moms

this is horrible. did it come from a school that was afraid other parents would cause a ruckus? the kid wasn't even discussing sex. He was talking about his family. Sometimes people make me sick. This should never happened. American Civil Liberties Union : Louisiana School Punishes 7-Year-Old Boy for Talking About His Lesbian Moms

molly ivins chooses dean

she says, "Dean gives a hell of a speech -- even if you're Republican, you should go and hear him just for the experience. But I fretted about Dean on TV -- TV is so important. How could anyone poker up on Margaret Carlson of PBS, not one of the world's toughest interviewers? But then I saw Dean laugh his way through a Chris Matthews interview (which he should have done with Tim Russert, who was hell-bent on gotcha questions), and I know the guy can take care of himself. So he fights back if you get in his face -- that's not all bad. "

for the whole story click:here

oh no spidey!

they got rid of him! I don't know who, but they did. e and I came home today to find spidey out and about during the day time. He looked so cool and intricately patterned sitting on his web in full day light. Apparently this was a bad idea for him. Tonight we came back, and his web is gone. he's not tucked up in the corner where he usually is when it's chilly. Someone had to have killed him. RIP spidey. I used to love seeing you there by the stairs when I got home. i never got to feed you like i wanted.
bad people who kill spiders who aren't invading your space! boo.

b3ta presents buffys swearing keyboard

my friend fufu sent this to me: b3ta presents buffys swearing keyboard

i actually find it rather frightening. make sure you have your volume on.

buffy season 5 comes out next tuesday!!!! woohoo!

The lost art of hand-washing clothes - Eurail Blog

I was realizing I have some shirts I'm supposed to hand wash, but I haven't really hand washed any clothes before. So I decided to look up how to hand wash clothes. Here's some advice I found:

The lost art of hand-washing clothes - Eurail Blog: says you can use any type of soap

ehow.com's instruction on hand-washing clothes with deteregent

this page has useful info from handwashing sweaters to whitening grout between shower tiles

Mr. Picassohead

this is the most fun thingy i've found on the internet for a while. It's Mr. Picassohead. It's basically a paint program with set objects. But everything comes out abstracty and fun. plus, since you can enlarge, rotate, and color items, you can actually do a lot.

here's the first one i did


here's the first one e did


also you should check out the gallery as there are some great things people have done with this.

fun fun!

introducing... SKEW! Minli's puppy. Apparently he can't run straight... and that's how he got his name!

I thought he was a bichon fris, but apparently he's a maltese because his hair isn't curly. Anyway, I think he's ADORABLE!

balls

i just spent an hour sitting with peeps from my honors class having pizza. i barely remember anyone's name, and i can't really ask again now since it's the end of the quarter. i ended up stuck between a new york girl and the teacher, which meant i couldn't talk to anyone near me. i ended up talking loudly across the table to people i wasn't sitting near.

i'm so bad with the chit chat. barf...

i'm a blue plate special apparently

I went to vaden yesterday to check out a rash i've developed. Dr. Lady said i've got over sensitive skin. She said i was the second person she'd seen that day with the same problem, so it must be the blue plate special.

well boy howdy chowdown!

this damn honors proposal is driving me nuts. it's taking forever to write, i need to finish it today so that i can get people to help proofread it. blah!

hehehe! on a waaaay positive note! I figured out what to get e for his xmas present and bday gift. they've already been ordered. yeah baby! he still hasn't decided on a giftie for me (i asked him) :)

back to writing...

ok so apparently carole king

apparently carole king sang it, but i remember the version from my mix tape had a man singing it, and it was lovely.

tapestry lyrics

i have this song stuck in my head from a mix tape that an old high school friend once gave me. I really love this song, but I can't remember who sings it. I did find the lyrics though, so I can sing more than the first line of words when start humming the tune.

watch out this is long. here are the lyrics:
TAPESTRY MY LIFE HAS BEEN A TAPESTRY AND RICH AND ROYAL HUE
AND EVERLASTING VISION OF THE EVER-CHANGING VIEW
A WONDROUS WOVEN MAGIC IN BITS OF BLUE AND GOLD
A TAPESTRY TO FEEL AND SEE,
IMPOSSIBLE TO HOLD
ONCE AMID THE SOFT SILVER SADNESS IN THE SKY
THERE CAME A MAN OF FORTUNE,
A DRIFTER PASSING BY
HE WORE A TORN AND TATTERED CLOTH
AROUND HIS LEATHERED HIDE
AND A COAT OF MANY COLORS,
YELLOW-GREEN ON EITHER SIDE
HE MOVED WITH SOME UNCERTAINTY,
AS IF HE DIDN’T KNOW
JUST WHAT HE WAS THERE FOR,
OR WHERE HE OUGHT TO GO
ONCE HE REACHED FOR SOMETHING GOLDEN HANGING FROM A TREE
AND HIS HAND CAME DOWN EMPTY
SOON WITHIN MY TAPESTRY ALONG THE RUTTED ROAD HE SAT DOWN ON A RIVER ROCK
AND TURNED INTO A TOAD
IT SEEMED THAT HE HAD FALLEN
INTO SOMEONE’S WICKED SPELL
AND I WEPT TO SEE HIM SUFFER,
THOUGH I DIDN’T KNOW HIM WELL
AS I WATCHED IN SORROW, THERE SUDDENLY APPEARED
A FIGURE GRAY AND GHOSTLY
BENEATH A FLOWING BEARD
IN TIMES OF DEEPEST DARKNESS,
I’VE SEEN HIM DRESSED IN BLACK
NOW MY TAPESTRY’S UNRAVELING,
HE’S COME TO TAKE ME BACK
HE’S COME TO TAKE ME BACK

Blog Change Bot

Blog Change Bot: "blog "

Kittens!

Man, if you love kittens, you have to check out thesephotos!
They're probably some of the best kitten photos i've seen, and everyone has seen alot of cat photos!