Goals for 2010: 6 out of 10

1. SUCCESS: Lacto-vegetarian Tuesdays. I totally rocked that. Sure, there were some accidental lapses and a few intentional ones, curiously some of those cases involved bacon.  But more or less, I did REALLY good. And I even threw in no alcohol to that mix. So yay me!

2. FAIL: One hour of piano/guitar/singing, twice a month. Another victim of my television habit.

3. SUCCESS: Keep up with Italian. Still going strong despite feeling like the village idiot in class. The joy of learning the third language on your second one.

4. FAIL: Work out at least once a week. HAHAAHAHHAHAHAH …nope.

5. FAIL: Read at least one book a month.  8 out of 12 and two of those are graphic novels. So yeah, I cheated a little bit.  I didn’t do so well this year because I rocked #6. And I got stuck trying to get through “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “The Zombie Survival Guide” when I should’ve given up and moved on.  The sad reading list looks like this:

1. Serenity: Better Days #1 (Comic book)
2. Serenity: Those Left Behind (Comic book)
3. Angel Time – Anne Rice – the first book I ever hate
4. New Classic Family Dinners – Mark Peel – Read it but haven’t cooked all of it.
5. Dead Until Dark – Charlaine Harris
6. Room – Emma Donoghue [ETA: Totally forgot to mention]
7. Delivering Happiness – Tony Hsieh
8. Naked Heat – “Richard Castle”

 
6.  SUCCESS: Finish reading the magazines as they arrive. And that’s why it eats into #5 goal a little bit.  I usually read my book before I go to bed so I’d bring in the magazines some nights instead.  Someone was laughing at me that I couldn’t finish reading a magazine in a few hours. Unlike other people, I *do* really read my magazines, getting my money’s worth.  Entertainment Weekly gets read the day it arrives, except the big issues.  Food & Wine gets in the next few days as well and will get another going-through when I sift through them later to pull out recipes.  WIRED and Self also get read cover to cover but over a longer period of time, in that order.

7. FAIL: Do my household paperwork on early day from the office.  Not so much. I found myself using that time for something else like catching up to the DVR.  Again, another victim to a television habit.

8. PARTIAL SUCCESS: Eat breakfast everyday.  Not very consistent here, but I did make an effort to do so.

9.  PARTIAL SUCCESS: Take a crack at National Novel Writing Month. Another weak yes.  I did it but didn’t accomplish it.

10. SUCCESS: Keep up with what’s working.  Starbucks and lunch out once a week for most of the year.

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Goals for 2011

Less ambition! More routine setting!

Well, a lot of the failures last year has to do with bad television habit. It’s like a vicious cycle. If I don’t watch the show(s) that night, then I’d have to sacrifice another night to catch up and therefore losing time. ETC.  Hopefully, I have come up with a good solution.

Here goes!

1. 12 books a year. One of these years I’m going to be able to manage this!  Already have some books lined up to get read:

• Full Dark, No Stars: Stephen King
• Side Jobs: Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden short stories
• Emperor of Maladies: Siddhartha Mukherjee

 
These will be alternating some what with a bunch of cookbooks I haven’t read yet, and the three newest edition.

• Momofuku: David Chang — this has more stories than recipe!
• Ad Hoc At Home: Thomas Keller
• Fiesta at Rick’s: Rick Bayless

 
2. Play piano/guitar/sing on Sundays after dinner for an hour. More manageable and a set schedule on the least busy night of the week.

3. Eat a salad a week…Vegan Tuesdays don’t count! Trying to add more vegetables into the diet here.  And yes, I switched from calling it meatless or vegetarian Tuesdays because I also don’t eat eggs. That just throw people the hell off for some reason.

4. Catch up on DVR on Tuesdays, Thursdays and weekends (Friday is flexible). This doesn’t mean no television on any other night.  We will still watch a show with dinner, but I will not linger on the couch and watch everything else on the DVR every night of the week.  Tuesdays, since I already can’t have meat or alcohol, I’ve gotta have me one of my vices!

5. Cook one new recipe a month…and blog it! This could be a total disaster, but it’ll keep me on schedule at least.  Especially with all the cookbooks I have/want to read.

6. Wednesday Date Night. We MUST establish a day or it never happens!  LOL

7. If the hair needs a wash, work out! With much hair, I am not going back to washing it daily. No way in hell!  So, if it’s the pony tail day, it’s a work out day.  And by work out, I mean doing something active.  Like going for a walk or go to yoga class, or doing some mini workouts with the weights I have sitting on the bathroom floor before hitting the shower.

8. Write every week day on the way to work. It’s proven over November during NaNoWriMo that I *can* write on the bus on the way to work without getting motion sick!  The route is pretty straight on and the traffic is never too staccato. And I don’t really miss the morning nap that much.  That’s an hour of productive time I can have.  And I should use it!

9. A secret goal. If you want to know, you’ll have to ask me personally.

10. Keep up with past success. Weekly Starbucks and lunch out; Vegan & Dry Tuesdays; Italian lessons; Reading magazines as they arrive; and participating in NaNoWriMo.

*

So those are mine. What is/are your goals?

I mean, look at how neglected this blog is!!!

Let’s take a look back this year, see what all I did, and give out some 2010 awards, shall we?

2010 in Pictures:

Drinking Buddy of the Year: Bus Buddy Amanda

We’ve been riding the bus together for a few years and carpooled together numerous times.  But it was this year that Amanda and I started hanging out outside of the bus.  We grabbed a few drinks either in Downtown LA or right here back in Los Alamitos.  We occasionally dragged our husbands with us too, like when we went to the Night Dive at the Aquarium of the Pacific. Next up on our agenda is shopping.  Our wallets should be afraid. Very afraid.

Bar of the Year: Chaya Downtown

I actually have visited less and less Downtown LA hot spots since last year.  Work dynamic continues to shift and happy hour gathering has become more and more difficult to manage.  Yet, I kept finding myself moseying over to Chaya Downtown whenever I have an excuse to do so.

At the beginning, I didn’t really give Chaya much of a chance.  Compared to the cozy vibe at the Library Bar, I felt Chaya was a bit more snooty.  I was proven wrong on that.  Also with Library Bar having become so popular it was too crowded for my liking, Chaya has plenty of space to spread out either right up to the bar or out in their Japanese beer garden.  It’s one of the better places in the financial district for happy hour these days with great menu and strong drink specials.  I mean, that $5 cocktail specials they have would knock a lightweight on her ass, I tell ya!

Chaya bar is not just for drinks, but for lunch too.  Bartender Greg always take a good care of me whether I was just picking up a very reasonably priced to-go bento box or sitting down to pig out alone.  The food was surprising fast out there at the bar versus sitting down at the proper restaurant section.

Newcomer Award: USC Trojan Nation

Fight on!

It only took me 11 years since graduation to get around to buy USC football season ticket.  Bless her heart, at the time of purchase, Gridiron Goddess Amy shouldn’t be spending her money on the ticket, but she did. And we roamed and ruled USC campus as tailgate nomads, lugging our own food and beverages, looking for a place to crash.

During the sesason, I reconnected with old friend Roy aka USC Psycho and crashed at my rarely-seen Trojan brother Joel and his wife Zoe’s tailgate.  I never quite made it to Hawaiian Jen’s group at the engineering quad though, my one regret.  I also made new Trojan tweeps as I tweeted my away games from my couch or at the bar with USC Long Beach Alumni Club.

Yes, the Long Beach Alumni Club is back and very alive!  As destiny would have it, it got resurrected this year.  And naturally, I joined and soon became their director of technology, handling their twitter account and soon to design their website.

More Trojan Nation shenanigan will ensue through the spring, I am sure.  Thank god I’m not a basketball fan too or else my husband will never see me again…

High point of the Year: NaNoWriMo

I have great friends who always supported me through everything I do whether it’s AIDS Walk Long Beach with Team Lesser Weevils or joining GuerilLA in a spectacular improv musical unleashed upon the unsuspecting crowd at Universal City Walk.

This year I took a swing at National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and raised money for the foundation set up in my grandfather’s name in memory of both him and my mom.  Friends were super supportive with donations and encouragement.

I was writing on the bus on the way to work. I was writing it at lunch at work. I was writing some of it at home too.  50,000 words in 30 days proved to be too much for me as my inner editor and procrastinator kept chipping away at my words and my time.  However, I did have half of that for a draft of a memoir about our family’s ties to mom’s two big folders full of fortune teller notes.

Low point of the year (other than a disappointing USC football season): Sickness and death among friends

This year has sucked for so many friends healthwise thus make it a low point of the year.  Friends have been afflicted with fibromyalgia, MS, and cancer. I hate you, diseases, for making my friends’ lives unnecessarily harder. My fist. Your direction. Grrr….

Also,  a former colleague who had been dealing with kidney issues unexpectedly passed away.  He was okay one day and died in his sleep over the weekend. It was quite a jolt.

Holiday of the Year: Halloween for a completely different reason!

The past two years, weeks leading up to Halloween had involved running around with Thrill the World.  This year, I passed on the torch so I get to have my favorite holiday back!  Then again, the costume change this year was the most I’ve ever done.  5 costumes leading up to Halloween, if you can imagine.

1. Halloween Friday: Nerd Herder for work
2. Halloween Friday Party: Slave Leia for a Star Wars party at Amy’s house.
3. Halloween’s Eve: Crazy USC fan gear.  Well, I just topped off with what became my signature Dr. Seuss hat for the game.
4. Halloween afternoon: a Jedi costume was thrown on to visit Gregg at the hospital. I did tell him I was going to bring out Slave Leia but I didn’t think it was appropriate for a hospital.  David said if anyone was to have a heart attack, that would be a good place for it. LOL.
5. Halloween: Resident Evil’s Alice accompanying Brandon’s Tallahassee from Zombieland to our usual trick or treat evening at Paul’s house.

Song of the Year: Teenage Dreams, Glee version

Can’t. Stop. Listening.

Movie of the Year: Toy Story 3.

No, I haven’t seen the Social Network, Inception, The Kids Are Alright, or anything critically acclaimed.  Naturally, Woody and the gang won this round.

Surprise Movie of the Year: Hachi: A Dog’s Tale

It’s a straight-to-video gem.  I’ve grown up knowing the story of the original Hachikp in Japan so I was curious to see this movie Entertainment Weekly and my friend were raving about.  I knew it was going to be a 3 hanky type mush so I expected a little tears in my eyes.  But oh, no. No no no no. THAT was the middle of the movie.  At the end, I was sobbing so hard Brandon asked if I was okay.  I never cried like that for a movie. Ever.

Book of the Year: Delivering Happiness

Amy G. knows me more than I know myself sometimes.  She definitely knows something I don’t when she saved me a pre-release copy of Zappo’s CEO Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness she had received at an event.  It only took me months to get to read it.  And once I did, I was inspired and depressed all at the same time.  You know, excited about the future and the fact that there’s a company out there that has the same perspective about “work should be a happy, inspiring place” as I do. (Damn you, Zappos for being in Las Vegas!)  And of course, it’s a little disheartening to look at my current situation which is not quite what it could be.  Then again, there’s not much fun you can really wring out of the line of work I do. *sigh*

TV Show of the Year: Doctor Who

I might have just become a late fan of the show (helloooo Martha Jones!), but my attachment to David Tennant is pretty strong.  So I was very skeptic of Matt Smith’s taking over.  But the show managed to change my mind and kept me glued.  So, hats off to you, Doctor!

Runner Up: Hawaii Five-O.  Alex O’Loughlin’s taking his shirt off every other week?  If this is not the best show on television I don’t know what is. But to tell you the truth, it’s Scott Caan’s performance that is keeping me hooked.  His big softy, smart alecky Danno is the only real character on the show. Everyone else is kind of two dimensional.

Oh, and you’re welcome for the following clip. (Good luck, Aquaman!)  Alex’ chest deserves his own FB page…oh wait a minute…

Restaurant of the Year: Koi Sushi, Seal Beach

We have always known of Koi Sushi.  As a matter of fact, my memory of it was that Brandon’s parents wanted to take us there once but the line was out the door.  We rediscovered it one day as a part of my quest to find a true Japanese restaurant, not just a place that serves sushi and teriyaki.  Koi was exactly what I was looking for.

They hooked us at our first visit with a huge hunk of braised pork belly “appetizer”.  I mean, we could’ve split that for dinner, it was that big.  And it was delicious.  The teriyaki beef got Brandon addicted.  Tender beef cooked perfectly and the teriyaki sauce that’ not cloying.  What I like most is that they a special menu that changes every week I believe.  Food was fresh and portion is generous.  Service was great.  As long as we get there off peak hours, there wasn’t any line.

When it’s a restaurant that Brandon actually craves, that gets on my favorite restaurant list!

*

Well, that’s my 2010. How did you year go?

That’s as far as I got, which is not too bad considered the constant cage match with my Inner Editor and my serious time management issue. Writing was quite fun but at 1,500 words a day, that has proven to be a little bit too much for me and my crazy fall schedule.

I may not have reached the 50,000 words. Or even my personal goal of 18,000 words. But I do have in my hand $230 donation (with a little bit of interests) to send back to the General Mangkorn Phromyothi Foundation in my mother’s memory, and a beginning of a family memoir.

I may not be able to finish writing in the 30 days given, but I am going to continue writing the story. Someday it will become a full fledged book that becomes an Oscar winning film starring Parminder Nagra as me and Russell Crowe as Brandon.

Okay, maybe an Emmy winning movie on Lifetime starring Olivia Munn and Joe Manganiello. Well, or maybe a Thai telenovella starring Ann Thongprasom and Willy McIntosh…?

/sigh/

Now we wait to see if the exchange rate would go up a little more. We have just gotten to 30 Baht per US dollar. Still nowhere near where the currency used to be but we’ll wait a while and see if that goes up any more by the end of December.

All of you have stuck with me through my first attempt at NaNoWriMo, and I’m very grateful for your support.

Yes, I said first attempt. I will be doing this again, you can bet on it!

Brandon said that maybe next time I should do a lot better if I write a fiction instead. With all the crazy dreams I had, one of them should turn out to be a pretty good novel.

As a matter of fact, there was this dream about a Saint Bernard puppy and a girl left orphaned by a mob hit that killed her parents…

***

Haven’t read about my NaNoWriMo effort? Read this and donate.

Friends in Thailand: To donate, please contact me and I’ll get you the routing number.

Friends in the US and Elsewhere with Facebook: To donate, please go through my FundRazr page here.

Friends in the US and Elsewhere without Facebook: Use this button here:

Seriously.

As I continue to get encouragement emails from the main NaNoWriMo people as well as my regional leader, I keep finding myself doing all the wrong things which they said would happen anyway.

I can’t just keep writing things out; I go back and rework things as I go.  And that’s not really the point of NaNoWriMo.

Being a blogger also doesn’t help as I try to rein things in to keep you folks interested.  It has become a second nature for me to start cringing when what I’m working on started to get lengthy.

And the biggest obstacle of all: time.  I have been doing great typing away on the bus on my way to work.  As a matter of fact, I think I’m going to keep up with this productive habit so my blog would not lapse this much ever again.  Writing at lunch was also good now that I have an office with a door I can close.  When I have a time schedule set up, I’m on it and productive as heck.

In comes the weekend.

I thought I would do all sorts of catching up and making great ways on the weekend and in the evenings.  Oh boy have I been wrong!  By the time I was done with dinner and cleared a show or two out of the DVR, it was time for bed.  The weekend rolled around and because of my social life, I would find myself with a couple hours break…which, selfishly, I would rather watch the Graham Norton Show than work on the computer.

And in a way, I guess there’s a part of me that’s still doing the emotional running away. You can’t possibly imagine all the time I spent on the couch watching TV after mommy died. It was crazy.

The more I write, the more I become aware of how much of my mom’s last few years I had missed.  The guilt of having been away the entire time is nipping at my heels every time I turn on the netbook.  That is probably why I never quite gotten far. Damn guilt.

But I’m aware of it. And I’m trying to work through it. At the end of the month, I will definitely have 17,000 words written. I will make good of that promise. I really want to see what I kind of book I’m going to end up with at the end.

For sure, there are all these holes in the draft I must fill in from all those times I wasn’t there.  Hopefully, doing so will also fill the corresponding holes in my heart.

Thanks again for being here for me!

***

Haven’t read about my NaNoWriMo effort? Read this and donate.

Friends in Thailand: To donate, please contact me and I’ll get you the routing number.

Friends in the US and Elsewhere with Facebook: To donate, please go through my FundRazr page here.

Friends in the US and Elsewhere without Facebook: Use this button here:

First of all, balancing the time between my numerous hobbies and activities, as you all know, during USC football season has proven to be challenging.  Secondly, my inner editor won’t shut the hell up.  I guess that’s a major pitfall of someone who writes short and concise pieces for a living.

And finally, typing through tears is kind of hard.

I know going in that writing a memoir about my mom is going to be difficult.  Band-aids are definitely being ripped open and healed over in almost an instant.  The physical pain in my chest still needs a little getting used to.  Thank god that I have an office now so nobody has to see my occasional bloodshot eyes.  But the warm and fuzzy feeling when I got the words out is quite rewarding.

Then came the news of a dear friend who has recently been diagnosed with lymphoma.  He has just begun his treatment and has a long road ahead of him.

Real life and memories meet on the pages of my Word document, and bring with them feelings I’ve long since put away or learned to live with.

Expecting the best and the worst at the same time was something I perfected when my mom was sick.  While I never gave up on her treatment options, at the same time I resigned to the fact that she might never make it.  I guess so I wouldn’t be disappointed with either outcome.

It seemed I’ve applied that to everything else since then.

So, while I know I might not make it to 50,000, I’m not giving up  NaNoWriMo effort.

I’m also not giving up on the friend.

(And yes, I’m adding this to my word count. So we’re at 5,209 now. It’s a preface material, no?)

***

Haven’t read about my NaNoWriMo effort? Read this and donate.

Friends in Thailand: To donate, please contact me and I’ll get you the routing number.

Friends in the US and Elsewhere with Facebook: To donate, please go through my FundRazr page here.

Friends in the US and Elsewhere without Facebook: Use this button here:

NaNoWriMo is is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved. So, staring November 1 and wrapping up on November 30, participants are aspired to write 50,000 words or about 175 pages novel.  It doesn’t have to be completed. It doesn’t have to be edited.  As they call it, “It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.”

That’s right. 50,000 words in 30 days.  For scale, one page of single spaced Times font size 12 has about 525 words.  That’s about 95 pages of written word I have to crank out.

Hopefully, by November 30, I will have a draft of a memoir on my hands.

“Folder of Fortune” will be a memoir based on a folder full of notes my mother took from her visits to fortune tellers, numerologists, and psychics of Thailand. With mom’s due diligent in checking to see the accuracy of these readings, the folder full of little pieces of paper and torn pages of notebooks hold the key to my family’s past, present, and future.

Now, to keep me motivated, I’m going to raise fund for this pursuit.  $1 for every 100 words.  That’s $500 for 50,000 words!  The more you pledge, the more I will write!

NaNoWriMo is put on by Office of Letters and Light so naturally folks would raise fund for them.  You can too.

However, since this memoir will be in the memory of my mother, I’d like to raise the money for her and my grandfather’s foundation back in Thailand instead.

The General Mangkorn Phromyothi Foundation was founded in my grandfather’s name but with my mom’s love for education in mind.  My grandfather was Thailand’s Minister of Education back in the days so the Ministry of Education asked to use his name for the newly established foundation for their Teacher’s Training Program.  Essentially, the GMP Foundation funds the development of the training program for teachers with a goal to better prepare them to teach children in the rural area of Thailand. The Foundation also provides scholarships for those seeking training in this program.

Friends in Thailand: To donate, please contact me and I’ll get you the routing number.

Friends in the US and Elsewhere with Facebook: To donate, please go through my FundRazr page here.

Friends in the US and Elsewhere without Facebook: Use this button here:

And you will have to trust me with your dollars as the donation is going through PayPal for me to hold onto until I transfer the chunk to Thailand at the end of NaNoWriMo.  And more importantly, US dollars are weak right now (29 Baht/$US) so to maximize your donation, we will have to wait for the rate to go back up…at least 32 baht.  (I’d rather prefer 35 baht, but who knows when we’ll get there at this point!)

So, here’s what I’ll do for you, donors.

1. Every single penny is going to be donated. I’ll pay for all FundRazr and PayPal fees incurred on my end.
2. On December 1, if currency is about/above 32 baht/dollar, I will send the donation home.
3. On December 1, If currency is still below 32 baht/dollar, I will continue to keep watch and give weekly update on “In Memory of Khun Noi” Facebook Page.  The moment we get to 32 baht/dollar, I’ll make the transfer.

I hope you can support me through this journey!

It wasn’t what I expected. Like I said, twitter went bonkers just as I tried to write my composed message. It figures, doesn’t it?

So, the original 10,000th post was, instead, 10,001st. (And yes, I meant 10,001ST, not 10,001th…)

I know it’s not just me who have forsaken their blogs, the gateway online medium.  As you can tell, I haven’t come by here much any more.  Google Search has proven it. Not that I would dare hope to hold off Gary Vaynerchuk forever for the top spot of search for “oakmonster”.  (And for the record, his is two words for an oaky wine. Mine is one for, well, me, and I’ve been around a while too.)

For some, they keep it up so well despite their daily lives. I could never blog like Rude Cactus. Daily. Without fail. Seriously, dude got a day job AND 2 kids. Where did you find the time, man?  Others are doing it as almost a profession. And some, blogging *is* their profession.

For others, they’ve moved on altogether.  Gnarly Kitty, for example, has made her name right here on the internet as the Thai “it” girl of blogs, but has since moved on to twitter and tumblr only.

But me? I’m still keeping this space despite it all.  Call me sentimental. But some days, all you really want is an evening in front of your computer with a glass of wine.

And here I am thinking, god, only a month from NaNoWriMo. How am I going to fucking make THAT happen if I can’t even keep up the fucking blog that makes me!  What was *I* snorting when I put that on my 2010 goals!?!?!  However, I do have an idea for a memoir…

How do y’all do it, making time for your blog? Want to share some thoughts? And if you’ve done NaNoWrimo, what planet are you from, pray tell?

I know she’s all professionally made up for the show and she’s already GORGEOUS.  But I looked at myself and thought: Fuck, I look like crap.

As I might have blogged about before, I don’t really like make-up.  I don’t like the feel of it. I don’t like the maintenance of it. But at 33…and another look at that picture…I’m rethinking that a little bit.

Armed with internet tips for doing make-up for girls with glasses, I adapt an easy new routine.  I’m already using tinted moisturizer, so I’m adding aqua pencil liner, my favorite cream blush, a little mascara and curler action, and lip tint blended with lip balm.

The first day I did it, Nhien noticed right away.  I don’t think anyone else did.  LOL.  So I gave it a week to see if I could maintain it.  And as it turns out, I can.  And I’m doing it!

After I reevaluate my face, serendipitously, other new things started to change too. Or maybe I’m starting to notice them more.

Holy crap. I’m having a little bit of a mid-30s crisis!

Naturally, after I upgrade my face, I decided on upgrading my work wardrobe.  Most things I have in there are either handed down from someone or things I don’t really like to wear.  So, I consulted Brandon and then my fashion forward friends and I dropped a bit of money on buying new nice shirts, pants, and cardigans.

I did get my hair highlighted reddish a few months ago. And I’m thinking about going in to get it redone fire engine red. But we shall see.

I’ve changed my beauty habit and my clothes.  But the biggest change of all is internal.

I am much braver at going out solo than I have ever been before.

And you’d think of all people I shouldn’t be scared of going it alone.  I mean, I’ve danced in front of hundreds of people as Zombie Slave Princess Leia after all!  If I can do THAT, going to events by myself should be a piece of cake, right?

Well, *I* didn’t know THAT.  LOL

Originally, going solo wasn’t by choice. At all.  Since there are a LOT of things I’d want to do that Brandon doesn’t have any interests in, I have to make new friends.  And I have.  But once in a while I found myself dialing down my phone list to find no one available…or interested in doing all that crazy shit that I do.  LOL.  Normally, if I have no buddy, I would cancel that plan and miss out on the event.

But I was determined to go to Phototasting event even after Gregg had to back out.  So, I grew some balls and I went alone anyway.  I had a wonderful time!

The proverbial light bulb went on in my head with accompanying proverbial “ding!”

Oh my god. Going out by yourself is totally fine!  Hellooooo!

What was I doing when I was single then if I don’t like going out by myself, you ask?  I am both a social butterfly AND a homebody. So those days when I was alone, I was either out with friends or perfectly fine alone at home.  I never thought I’d be going OUT alone.

I still feel a twinge guilty for not doing stuff with Brandon–who is perfectly fine being a home playing MMORPG with his buddies.  But I’m working hard on not issuing myself a ticket to that guilt trip.

Having gain my solo confidence, I signed up to join a GuerilLA improv “mission” without anyone going with me…which so far all of the past events I have missed was because I had no one to go with.  The result is this spectacular surprise musical we dropped on unsuspecting crowd at Universal CityWalk.  (Thanks Gregg for the video!)

And by product of that, I also abandoned Brandon’s family visiting from New Mexico for a day to run amok with other “Yellow Shirts” in Santa Monica ( Thai people don’t panic. It’s not what you think it is…heehee.) for ipOddyssey: an MP3 experiment. (Thanks Gen for the video!)

New make up. New clothes. New frame of mind.  All started because of Olivia Munn.  That figures. LOL.

Well, a life crisis doesn’t complete unless you get a new car, right?  Lotus Elise, darling, mama’s coming for you…

…in, like, 10 years when I actually have a midlife crisis…after a refresher course on driving stick shift…and a race car driving class.

In the meantime, I’m just going to continue working on my life.

“How Did Thailand Come to This?” indeed.  (And this report is pretty accurate and surprisingly unbiased.)

My family home is literally in the war zone.  I mean, they had been since the Red Shirts camped out not 200 meters down the street.  Everyone is safe now, but my dad and brother, my uncle and his family, and our family maid were more or less held hostage by all of the activities all around.

My brother did take a heroic run to take an elderly neighbor with a heart condition to the hospital and returned home with food and supplies to stock up.  And he did it again the day after the city was ablaze, to take my dad with a severely painful “stuck shoulder” to the doctor.  Ah, calcific tendonitis, calcification of the tendons in the shoulder! You know just when to reveal yourself!

I didn’t realize I’ve inherited my mom’s ability to worry too much.

Hellooo anxiety!  Thanks for visiting.

I’m sure the level of angst I had since last Tuesday was multiplied by each mile away from Bangkok.  And that inadvertently made me shut down and mentally run away again.

Ask Brandon what I’ve been doing these past few evenings. That’s right. I sat in front of the TV and didn’t move.  The good ol’ self defense mechanism when things got too much for me to handle, I just ran away into TV Land.

As things seem to be returning to normal in my hometown, I came across another fork in the road of life.

But making the decision on which direction to take wasn’t a problem.  It seems things have been decided for me already.

Those who have read “The Alchemist” know this well: “When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream.”

So many things happened to so many aspects of my life these past few weeks.

First, a few weeks ago, Brandon and I were deciding what to do for Memorial Day weekend.  Do we stay? Do we go?

Do you want to go to Monterey to re-do our disastrous first romantic getaway or go to Hearst Castle?  How about Joshua Tree before it gets hot?  We couldn’t decide but we know for sure we didn’t want to be in town.

Then I saw posts from our friends in Portland.  And I was reminded that we told them we’d going to visit them this year. Why not now?

Cheech’s dad is visiting but he’s leaving tomorrow morning, leaving him enough time to clean up and be our host.  Matt and Traci are lined up for dinner on Saturday night, and Rachel for Sunday breakfast.

And then just last week, another universal alignment.

Did you know that I’ve always wanted to do archery?  I don’t recall having shot any arrows when I was in Thailand, but I sure as heck ran to the booth the first time we went to Renaissance Faire. I was in love with the long bow.  But I didn’t quite find time or resources to explore further or take it up.

Then I started to go to shooting range with Brandon and his colleagues.  As much as I like to shoot firearms, I don’t really care for the noise.  I’d prefer something quite as deadly but a lot quieter.  We’re back to the archery conversation. And again, it didn’t go anywhere.

And then, out of the clear blue sky, Brandon’s coworker posted something on Facebook about his daughter doing archery class. He found out a new range has recently opened in Los Alamitos.  He was telling me as we got in the car to go get dinner.  But he suddenly changed his mind about where to eat and we ended up at Pasties…which is down the road from the Archery Outpost.

We popped in and I already felt right at home.  We chatted with the friendly staff, and got the tour of the place and a bit of the history of this family business.

This comes in the heel of my decision to step further back from my involvement with Thrill the World Los Angeles.

The universe couldn’t have been clearer about its plan for me.

There have also been changes at my work.  We have created a new department which roped my marketing team of 2 in with 2 other departments to pursue new directions.  The new Boss Man is first a friend.  Much like my relationship with my boss Nhien, because we are friends first, communications are open in both directions.  It makes for very successful partnership I think, but yet also frustrating.  You see, the new department is like new found toy.  There are constantly “Oooh! I want to do THIS!” and “Yeah, let’s do THAT!” which tend to throw a wrench at both us and another department.

The perfect analogy for my current work situation, which my colleagues agreed on, is that the New Department is like a box of marbles spilled across the floor.  Your day-to-day responsibility is like the door you’re trying to reach.  You want to get to the door but you keep tripping on the marbles and falling down.  You pick up the marble and put it back in the box and keep going toward the door but there will be another marble to trip you up.  You eventually get to the door but you’re now all banged up. AND you’re late.  Eventually, we will all learn to navigate the marbles and manage to pick them all up AND get to the door gracefully.  In the meantime, put on your helmet, kids–it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

Now, the Big Event just wrapped up without much of  hitch on Wednesday.  So a huge weight has been lifted but yet more are on the way.  In all of this, I’m trying to squeeze in an hour here and there to study Italian.  I’ve been neglecting homework because I thought I can totally do this without much help, but every week I fall further and further behind.  I’m realizing the reason why I struggle so much with it is because I’m learning a third language on my second language.

To use Hugh Laurie’s analogy of going to the set of House being the only one who has to add an accent, it’s like going to a battle with a fish when everyone else has a sword.  Almost everyone in class is a native English speaker.  Most also speak Spanish even a little bit.  I’m there with Thai being my native tongue and here I am learning a new language on my second language.  My head is translating it front and back and left and right before I come to some conclusions.  However, the benefit of my Thai tongue is that I can roll the R’s and sound the hard T’s better than anyone.

So here I am, trying to be a better student and put in some homework time.  On top of that, I still have to find time to cook–which, sadly, I’ve been able to do strictly on the weekends, to keep the blogs up to date, and to wrap up my tax paperwork.  Hey, at least the office is in order now.  I just have to comb through the pre-sorted bill and reconcile everything.

Oh, and today I had Italian class in the morning, was supposed to be at a salsa workshop at noon, bake a cake, then off to a baby shower at 4 and a birthday dinner at 7.  Thankfully the last 2 parties are at the same place.

At this level, I thought for sure I would go down with a cold after the Big Event.  I ended up with massive allergies starting at the event.  My stomach has been warring with me pretty much for 2 weeks.  And then my back decided to throw a coup as I was having a nice relaxing dinner with Brandon.

It’s like my brain knows of the maddening schedule I have ahead of me today.  So last night on behalf of the entire body, my back muscles decided to throw a tantrum and seized up.

So, no salsa today.  And up until now, I’ve been laying flat on the couch, nursing the stout left in the bottle from making my chocolate Guinness cake with some Ibuprofen.

I don’t know if having been a better eater helps stemmed the physical meltdown I usually have after a stressful period of time.  You know, my usual 24 hour of low fever and energy zap?  Not happening this time.  So the body just went for the most recent injury, my back, and uses THAT to punish me.

Well, I’m soldiering on anyway.  At least tomorrow all I have to do is type up notes for Thrill the World and go to the meeting at 7 p.m.

But then there’s the farmers market I want to get to, dinner I want to make, and the paperwork…FUCKIN’ PAPERWORK!!!

*sigh*

So, how is your week/weekend?