fumofu

I can’t believe I turned 28. I’m too immature and irresponsible to be 28. 28-year-olds should be trophy wives sipping and serving cosmos to fellow trophy wives, or yuppies with rising careers wearing designer goods driving expensive cars. Me? Well, let’s just say the paint on the hood of my 1999 Corolla is chipping off. And I never got around to building my alcohol tolerance.

Nonetheless, my birthday was spent lazily and leisurely with Albie. We walked along Geary to a couple rental/photography places. I even tried on a couple of dresses. The conclusion is, I need to lose weight. A lot of it. I have 9 months to get fit. Anyways, it was nice just strolling around the city in sunny weather. He bought me this beautiful flower arrangment! (Dammit, I forgot to get the camera again, I wanted to snap photos…) It’s been a while since I received flowers. I’m not big on them, because…why spend money on something you can’t eat? ;) But, once in a while it’s nice. The arrangement really was beautiful. And the flowers smell heavenly.

For my birthday, I requested new glasses. For both of us. So now Albie is one big step closer to fobby Azn geekiness. His Belgian coworker laughed at him when they returned to work after shutdown. Poor Albie. At first I wanted to go back to plastic frames. Then i realized the pair I wore before had nosepieces that propped the glasses up. These new ones sans nosepieces either kept sliding off my nose or were so up close to my eyes eyelashes were brushing against the lense. Good thing LensCrafters have that 30-day guarantee. So I exchanged for these eggplant purple metal frames. They’re nice. I like them. Nosepieces – they’re a good thing.

I’ve been under the weather lately. Like today, I had very bad nasal congestion. As if a very heavy paperweight was placed on the bridge of my nose. And my senses were dampened. Like I couldn’t stop scratching an itch that needed relief because I couldn’t completely savor the much needed abrasion. But Albie’s good at scratching. ;)

A couple of things I’ve noticed lately:

1. My chopstick skills have plummeted.  Even though I’ve eaten Chinese at least one meal every day since moving back home.
2. I have a hard time remembering people’s names. Like, when I was emailing on Christmas Day, I couldn’t remember the names to a lot of my friend’s SO’s. Note to self: Must ask Hana what Yama’s real last and first names are.
3. My intellectuality (if I had any to begin with) has also gone down. We were at Petco yesterday, looking at birds. I said to him, “If we had a finch, I’d name him,” and I hesitated for a second just to think of the name because I couldn’t quite grasp it, “Abacus.” And right after I said it, in my mind I slapped myself in the face. He said, “You mean Atticus?!?!?!” FUCK. I’m an eediot. I knew it was Atticus. But now the damage is done. If we own a finch, we’ll just have to name it Abacus. And two seconds later, that was what Albie suggested. Then tonight, I mentioned how tiring it is to pretend to be social and enjoy people’s company when my entire family is antisocial. Here’s the IM conversation:

[09:56:14 PM] albeesgirl19: and she’s cranky because faking to be social is tiring work
[09:56:16 PM] albeesgirl19: i agree
[09:56:30 PM] DRather19: it is
[09:56:33 PM] DRather19: it’s better just to hate everyone
[09:56:36 PM] DRather19: except for the circle of trust
[09:56:44 PM] albeesgirl19: and aunt is definitely not in the circle of trust
[09:56:50 PM] DRather19: hehe
[09:56:55 PM] albeesgirl19: there is no penn diagram
[09:56:59 PM] DRather19: venn?
[09:57:03 PM] DRather19: …
[09:57:08 PM] albeesgirl19: because the circles would never overlap
[09:57:19 PM] albeesgirl19: i am THORWING a lot fo domyoji’s this weekend, aren’t i?
[09:57:54 PM] DRather19: you’re my little abacus
[09:58:06 PM] albeesgirl19: so secretly i’m hoping that new years dinner would be split into 2 tables
[09:58:28 PM] albeesgirl19: because the circle of trust of 8 will be a closed circle

Yes, I am officially an eediot.

I’ve completely thrown myself into the fandom that is Johnny’s Entertainment. Turning 28 just further accentuates how old I am for fangirling over boy bands. At least Oh-chan is older than I am. By 1-1/2 months. Yay! And this winter’s drama season is going to good. So many series with people I like!

Sorry this entry is so choppy.

Watching the Arashi interview/performances on Shonen Club Premium right now. Best “Kaze no Mukou e” performance to date. “truth” makes me realize how hot red and black outfits can be. AND Aiba-chan did the kick this time! Love those long, long legs of his.

Current Mood:  pensive

Yatta!!

It was nice spending the entire day at home, cooking meals, relaxing, not being cranky after waking up from a nap. :) I look forward to living together with you again.

Current Mood:  loved

I had the perfect birthday weekend ever. This one definitely tops them all, thanks to Albie’s wonderful planning. :) We started off with Saturday breakfast at Simple Simon’s (think Intermezzo on Telegraph, but breakfast food). Then we headed over to Huntington Library in San Marino. I had talked about going there for a while, and Albert included it in his plans. At first he wanted to surprise me, but I mentioned Huntington again earlier in the week. It was my fault for ruining my own surprise. :(

As always, we took lots of photos – about one picture every few paces. You can take a look here. I have had a peculiar fascination for Japanese gardens ever since I wrote a paper on the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park for my landscape architecture course at Cal. The one at Huntington Library is not as extensive as the one in GGP, but it holds its own. My favorite photo is one that Albert took of the koi pond (look how big those suckers are!!) with the reflection of the moon bridge. Supercool. I was surprised that the Library has the original paintings of Pinkie by Sarah Barrett Moulton and Blue Boy by Thomas Gainsborough. At my elementary school there were half sized replicas of these two paintings hung side-by-side along the grand stair case that I walked up and down for 6 years but only learned of them later in high school. It’s always exciting to see the original artwork.

After the Huntington, I knew we were going to some sort of hotel because Albert told me to pack clothes for an overnight stay. I was thinking really hard but couldn’t think of any hotels in the area. Then it suddenly hit me, a block away, that we were headed to the Ritz-Carlton in Pasadena. Oh my God. Never in my dreams have I dreamt of spending the night at such a luxurious hotel. We handed my ’99 Corolla to the valet (they probably hid the car in the very back behind the BMW’s and Benz’s) and checked in. My heart was still palpitating from this grandiose surprise when Albert told me I have to get ready for a Swedish massage at the Spa. This was when I broke down in tears. All the bad things I’ve said to him or thoughts I’ve had – I felt really guilty for all of it. I feel like I didn’t deserve all the nice things he’s showering me with (considering  the birthday gift I gave him several months ago – see last entry).

It took a Lord of the Rings adventure (I was Frodo and Albie’s Sam Gangee, or the other way around…) to find where the Spa is. I was told I would be given a Swedish therapeutic massage. 5 minutes into the massage, I realized this was a deep-tissue massage. I mean, I thought I had a pretty high tolerance for pain, but my eyes teared up when the masseuse keep kneading me with uber-force. In hindsight, it might’ve been nice to have told him to ease off a bit. But I knew I had to suck it up because I really need my knots untied. No pain, no gain, right?! Plus, it was worth it because now my knots are gone…almost.

After the massage, Albert and I took a bath in a tub that is inferior to our Roman-sized (read: bigger) tub at our apartment. So we switched to the shower, which was also inferior to our duo-showerhead setup in our apartment. Yes, it’s a five-diamond hotel, but there really is no place like home. The night concluded with a fantastic dinner at the Dining Room, where we bumped into Jason, Hanie and her family. Albert pointed to the man sitting behind me and said, “Doesn’t that guy look like Jason Wang?” I turned around and saw a profile that looks just like Jason’s, and said, “That is Jason Wang.” So I said, “Jason!” with volume that was loud enough for the guy to hear, but soft enough so that if it wasn’t Jason I wouldn’t look like a complete idiot yelling out a random name to a stranger (at least that was my assessment…). Jason looked at us with the same stunned look as ours. We exchanged a few words and enjoyed the rest of our respective dinners. Afterwards, Albert and I took a night stroll and headed to the mini Japanese garden (two in one day!) on the hotel grounds. It was such a wonderful day I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Just lovely.

This Sunday morning, we enjoyed room serviced breakfast. Those people at the Ritz definitely do their jobs completely. I ordered Norwegian salmon and expected two flimsy pieces of fish. When I lifted the metal cover half the plate was covered with salmon. I love this stuff. We lazily packed our bag and checked out.

The really weird thing is, Joy (whose mom I think we saw at Huntington) lives about 3 blocks down from the Ritz. And 5 blocks away from the hotel is Alhambra, which is a Chinatown area we regularly frequent. For about 20 hours at the Ritz we felt like we were swept away to a far-off place, only to be jolted back into reality within 3 minutes.

When we got home, we sprawled on our comfortable bed (the best $300 I’ve ever spent, I seriously think the salesman put the wrong price tag) and enjoyed a spa-quality shower.

Now my only headache is what to plan for Valentine’s Day/Anniversary (it’s only been 7 years).

Happy Birthday to me. Yay! Today doesn’t feel any different than a typical Monday. Then again, there is no school today in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. So, what better way to celebrate my birthday than to go to lab… Going to lab on the weekend is actually not so bad now because I get to be alone (most of the time) and I can hog all the equipment. Our lab is growing every year, to the point where we need to wait our turn to use equipment like the PCR machine. Gone are the days when I can hog both machines all day. Anyways, it’s nice when no one else is in lab so that I can think quietly and work at my own pace without interruption.

Albie surprised me with chocolate cupcakes. He’s so sweet! The fact that he’s not a dessert person and he knows I love it makes the cupcakes even more special. Yay!

This past Saturday we went to the Edwards at Irvine Spectrum to see a live showing of Tan Dun’s The First Emperor at the New York Metropolitan Opera. Because the afternoon matinee is on EST, we had to drive to the theater at 10:30am PST. Not so fun, considering Albert flew back from Portland at 1am or so. The opera was not very impressive, as expected from reading a mediocre review on the New York Times. But it’s nice to immerse ourselves into music and culture. Maybe next time we’ll actually go see an opera in LA.

Albie promised me there will be more celebratory events next weekend. I can’t wait.