if i had made the resolution to blog more, i’d already be on track! maybe i should have so i can feel accomplished…

this past week has been okay. i’ve been pretty steady at doing at least one wedding planning related task each day. i find it’s not too stressful and good at making me think about the fun times awaiting me in hawaii. looking back on the whole process, i don’t really understand why people send wedding invitations. it’s fun because they look great and it made me energized about organizing the week, but in the long run, almost no one turns them in without prodding. in fact, i can confidently say i probably only received 3 of them unsolicited. i also find it funny that people who aren’t coming, won’t just RSVP no - is this out of guilt or some other thing? i’m not offended, i’m just trying to get some counts! i guess now you know about the stressful part of event planning. :)

work has been yucky. that’s really the best way to describe it because i’ve had some serious conflicts with a couple of co-workers. plus, as usual i have a lot on my plate, but what takes up 50% of my time here is prodding co-workers for information they owe me. i get that with faculty since they are immensely busy and are completely volunteering their time. it really eats away at me when i have to re-send e-mail after e-mail to co-workers to obtain information. that’s when i have to focus on my deep breathing and that congolese dance class to keep me sane!

leith and i had the chance to see dallas black dance theatre on friday. it’s been years since i’ve seen them perform and it was amazing. in particular, there was this awesome african dance (choreographed in 1932) with a solo male dancer mimicking an ostrich. it was a beautiful piece with a lot of strength and simplicity.

the weekend was spent locked up in our apartment otherwise, which was a nice break. i did some finances, planning and our taxes. plus, i got some good friend time in with kevin, visiting from austin and FINALLY caught up with kristine after her visit to japan. conversation really brings life back to earth and shows you what’s important (aka, not work!)

so february marches on…i’m hoping for some sunnier weather these days.

[permalink]

wow, what a week and what a month!

i can’t believe that mister groundhog is out tomorrow and january has flown on by - i wonder if this is how 2010 will play out for me?

leith planned a super celebration week for my 31st birthday, each day planned around a certain letter. for example, breakfast, blueberries, bingo, boggle, baking - and we did actually participate in all of those activities in one day! it was pretty exhausting by thursday, but also fun to try to fit everything in and great to spend so much time together.

the most exciting things for me were when we played bingo with friends and i won $250 (how many years did that take??) and my big surprise thursday. leith organized a scavenger hunt for 1 in the apartment where i searched clue-by-clue until i discovered 12 boxes of alpha-bits cereal. for those of you that don’t understand my excitement, it’s a discontinued cereal that i just love. i don’t know why i love it so much - maybe it’s because it’s affiliated with words? anyways, i have a year’s supply now and it was a super thoughtful gift.

i also pushed my comfort zone a bit on saturday and we went rollerskating. i haven’t gone since junior high and my balance is terrible, but it ended up being a ton of fun. why isn’t skating cool anymore? there were lots of kids there, but i think it’s totally a cool high school thing to jam out to music and meet people…

i’m sick of the rain around here, not because everything’s wet, but because i am not biking to work regularly. it’ll be nice when it stops, and even nicer when i’m back in short sleeves weather. i think that gives me even another reason to look forward to hawaii! the wedding planning is shaping up and we’ll probably end up with a small cozy group of 30, just how we wanted it. i do a couple things a day, and at that rate, it’ll be planned in no time. i think the best part of planning is not so much the planning, but just that i have a close group of family and friends willing to pitch in, come up with ideas and help make the day special. what a great reminder of how much love there is around me!

i’ve fallen off the reading wagon lately, but we have been watching a ton of movies and playing zelda spirit tracks on DS, which has been addictive. so i guess that means that life is wonderful now - even if it is flying by in 2010.

[permalink]

i promise that even though i’m not blogging regularly (or i guess even irregularly!) but that i still think about it a lot. perhaps my problem is that i blog a lot in my head and that’s not really very productive.

i’ve got tons of stuff going on right now - work is pretty much the same and believe it or not - i have now been at stanford for 5 years. leith reminded me that it was a goal of mine to put down roots with an organization and develop there for five years, so i can check that off of my list. it feels like an accomplishment!

otherwise, i’m full gear into wedding (i like to think of it vacation) planning. march is right around the corner and it’s been so exciting to get travel plans from family and friends. i’m really looking forward to feeling the aloha spirit and spending a solid week with loved ones.

last week was a rollercoaster and it feels like it’s been a month! i spent 4 days in phoenix with lily (photos to come). worked, got sick and had 4 days of nada. amazing, right? having my roomie around was great because we really plowed through some planning. i finally made a concrete decision on the dress to forgo it and pick something more casual. i feel great about that and i’m just moving forward on all fronts.

i’ll try to be better in 2010 on posting to my blog. otherwise, my resolutions include working less, breathing more, and getting fitter! this new congolese dance class i’m taking should help with that last one. happy wednesday!

[permalink]

october is hands down the most stressful month for me with work and i’m so glad it’s over and done with. the best part of it is that reunion homecoming was a total success. i love the new schedule with a long saturday, even though it means more work hours. the positive side to it is that it makes a more robust weekend for alums and my CWOQs were a huge hit that day. another monkey wrench thrown into the weekend is that my mom was here on saturday for a long layover. her visit actually ended up re-energizing me and lifting my spirits to get me through the last couple of days. plus, she got to see a piece of what i do at work, which made me feel proud.

today i’m celebrating daylight savings time, which is probably my favorite day of the year. strangely, it means i’m super american, because what other type of person would be so happy to have an extra hour. to me that meant an extra hour of sleep, a reason to stay up late and it was easier to hit the farmers’ market this morning. literally the day after reunions, i’ve felt like i have my life back. :) we went to the movies mid-day to see good hair, had great food and washed a million clothes. it’s only been a week and leith and i have already gone to a couple lectures and spent quite a bit of time with friends. last night, we had our texas friends over for the game, which ended up being a great blowout for UT. the best thing is that i’m reading again - which i pretty much put down when work became time consuming.

now i’m recovering and getting back to wedding planning. i’ve got a fan full of receipts i’m entering into quicken and from there i’ll crank out the website and get back on track with catering.

thanksgiving is right around the corner and i can’t wait for my favorite holiday. being home will be nice and we’ll catch up on all sorts of things. ahh november. okay, off to get things done!

[permalink]

so september has totally stormed in since it rained cats and dogs when we were in portland this past weekend. leith and i had a totally fun weekend and you should check out our pictures. :) the city reminds me of austin with cooler temperatures, better public transit and a little more grit. the food was cheap and tasty and it was such a great escape for 4 days.

i’ve tried to ramp up the wedding planning, but i’m still dragging feet a little. it’s hard to plan a lot for myself when my workweeks are about 50 hours and fairly stressful. what i’ve been trying to do (and i’ve been pretty successful about it), is keeping the work at work and de-stressing - just having fun at home.

i’m still sticking with the exercise about once a week with leith’s help. it’s shocked me because i’ve never really stuck with a gym in the past. i just don’t love the whole scene. i also signed up for a random asian dance class this next quarter, so we’ll see how that pans out.

[permalink]

summer feels like it’s coming to an end. i’m happy since that means weather will be improving. i can’t wait to get rid of these hot nights - perhaps that’s the true sign that i’m a californian at heart! on the flip side, these last 3 months have really flown by, and i can’t quite put my finger on why time has escaped me. this photo is from our tamale making and mexican food cooking department retreat this summer. it was a ton of fun.

i finally got a hair cut this weekend. the last time was november when my mom was visiting me, so you can guess about how long it was. the whole weekend was super chill and i got to see tons of friends and be a slave worker at nasun’s party. of course, that’s just what we tell her since she’s the boss, but i really enjoy helping her create her party visions. :)

i think this week should be GTD week. lately, i’ve been very productive at work and not so much at home with the wedding planning. the funny thing is that my approach has changed a lot, where i just sit down and tackle whatever task comes my way. of course, e-mail takes precedence and that means that i’m not prioritizing in the way that i should be so that i can really get work accomplished that needs to be.

[permalink]

i took yesterday off of work and it’s really going to be a chill weekend for me. i expect to be a toasty brown when i return to work on monday.

friday i started the day with homemade egg/cheese english muffin sandwiches and then spent the whole day at great america with laura, kristine, heather and her sister. it was a fun day with perfect weather - warm but not too hot. one of the roller coasters was down, but we still pretty much rode most things and enjoyed each other’s company. after a frantic week at work, it was nice to kick back. GA was definitely a reminder we’re getting older, because by 6:30 we were beat! afterwards, i detoxed from amusement park food with a lot of veggies and watched ‘the lives of others,’ which is one of the best movies i’ve seen in awhile - about the stasi of east germany and a small story about the relationship between a spy/interrogator and the artist he’s been assigned to - an excellent film.

today’s get things done day where i’m crossing items off my list and getting ready for the party next weekend. i can tell i’m in an organized mood when i actually make a list for the weekend of stuff to get accomplished at home. i’m definitely taking it easy and that showed with sleeping in today. i gotta be a little productive since tomorrow i’ll be celebrating laura’s birthday by floating down the russian river on tubes - can’t wait!

[permalink]

the summer has taken a strange turn for me. i feel like i’m in this state of constant disappointment and i’m trying to shake it, but the facts are there.

on the job it’s there with our staff cutbacks and people just not working much during the summer, while i feel a bit buried alive. maybe that’s not a new story (as miki would say, since he thinks i only talk about work on my blog!), but it’s more acute these days. the unique thing about this disappointment is that it’s happening a lot with friends. dates get canceled, invitations lack responses and it takes days to respond to e-mails. on top of that, i’ve had a lot of people ask about keith spending the summer with us, and really he’s just become a teenager and is completely focused on himself. leith is bummed and so am i, but that’s life. these series of experiences remind me why couples tend to withdraw into each other and spend all their time together. it’s because the more people you connect with, the more they can disappoint you. with leith and family, there’s not that disappointment because you come through for each other and keep your commitments. sorry for the bummeronis, but that’s just where i am right now.

on a more positive note, i’m excited about going to renegade craft fair this weekend. leith and i are hitting up a mostly veggie breakfast place beforehand, so it should be a fun date. we haven’t been up to the city for awhile, and i love being surrounded by indie crafters. it’s festival season right now and there’s arts festivals left and right, so my spirits are up for those!

summer reading is also in full effect. i’ve flown through a few texts and i’m now reading about this california japanese farmer’s experience on a peach farm. it’s one of those books i picked up when browsing randomly through the library shelves. the writing is more like poetry, so it’s a slower read, but still worthwhile. i just powered through sense and sensibility - the first jane austen book i’ve read. it was actually difficult for me with my summer attention span because my eyes were so intent on reading quickly that i’d miss some of the interesting language nuances. i’ll need to re-read it sometime in the future, or at least conquer another one of her books so i appreciate it more.

what else? we had a blast last weekend participating in a survivor game put together by chris and kim. it was like a lab reunion for leith’s friends and i fared pretty well. leith turned out to be the ultimate survivor. i think he has a healthy competitive edge, but he really won because he’s always competing with his own best and giving his all and it really showed. it’s such an admirable quality and made the game a lot more fun. we made a banner in the morning (tribe menolo parko - sounds intimidating, huh?), wore buffs and came to play. anyways, it was awesome and tiring. my dedication to the game over the years must have played some role in helping my team. :) hopefully we’ll have some pictures to share of the experience, because it was a blast.

[permalink]

the weather has turned cool again in the mornings and evenings (yay, my favorite!) what that means is that it’s hard to get out of a warm bed, change clothes and hop on my bike…add to that the fact that half of my building is out on vacation and it’s difficult to be motivated on the job. i finally hammered out my performance review, which i’ve been putting off for weeks, so thank goodness i can cross that off my list.

i have been quite the busy social bee. rare, huh? i’m organizing and getting invited to summer stuff left and right. leith and i are in the beginning stages of planning a party, which we never do. it’s food themed and i’m pretty excited about it. otherwise, i’m on the hunt for interesting festivals, hikes, films, you name it. i’m having a little mini-reg reunion dinner tomorrow and then seeing wyatt cenac from the daily show do stand up comedy.

last weekend, we spent the fourth of july kayaking in santa clara, had sammies and watched fireworks with ron and sue. it was pretty fun, and probably the longest weekend i’ve ever had. we played a ton of lego star wars, i read and book and a half and did a lot of cooking. i wish time stretched out like that always!

on the wedding planning front, i’m finally cooking. for you loyal readers, the date is march 13, 2010. there, you have it first. i finally confirmed a place and i’m starting to think about invitations and more now. the whole approach for wedding planning is completely hands-off. i want to have fun with it and not make it a stressful thing. there’s so much time for logistics - i’m shocked at how much of people’s lives get invested in the whole day, but i think we have different expectations and wants going into the wedding, so it’s a whole new ballgame. i think of it like i’m organizing a vacation for family and friends for a week and how could that not be awesome and easy?

[permalink]

you can check out all the vacation photos now. i finally have them all up. if you saw them on facebook already, this is about double the number.

i’ve been spending the weekend melting in the apartment with this over 90 degree weather. we had a nice bicycle ride around to return library books and grab ice cream yesterday. it definitely feels like summer around here! the heat is a bit embarrassing since i’m trying to read more and i keep falling asleep on top of the pages… it also makes it harder not to scratch all of my mosquito bites!

[permalink]