ilubmoney

In honor of dementia's birthday, I told her I would eat a cake in her honor. Any cake of her choosing. She chose pineapple upside-down cake.

I knew I probably wasn't going to be able to find this cake easily at a bakery, so I decided to make one.



What is that bright yellow splooge in the middle of the cake, you ask? I discovered later that I might've taken the cake out a little early from the oven. Yeah, it's undercooked in the photo. But I put it back in the oven and ate it later. Yum!



And yes, I made two. I cheated with classic yellow cake batter from the box, so I had enough to make two.

Happy birthday, Demmie!

Just got home about a half hour ago, and I gotta say that the Bridge Benefit Concert was, for the most part, worth the money.

My favorite acts were Death Cab for Cutie and Jack Johnson. I remember hearing rumors a few years ago that Death Cab wasn't great in concert, but I loved how they made some of their songs more upbeat tonight. I was also pleasantly surprised at how amazingly hot Norah Jones got with her cute short, highlighted hair. Side note to dementia and robio: Norah Jones totally reminded me of Lisa! And her voice--like an angel! Click on the second photo below for a larger, watermarked version.



Biggest disappointment: Smashing Pumpkins. Now I can't claim to be a huge fan of theirs, but I really liked some of their newest songs, and I didn't get to hear any of them this afternoon. Plus the one song I did like and recognize, Disarm, wasn't even sung by Billy Corgan but by Josh Groban. As for the rest of his performance, the song selection was generally too mellow for what I was hoping from Smashing Pumpkins, but when I got home, I downloaded The Rose March. :)

Overall, a good experience. We had to adjust from hot weather to what seemed like suddenly cold weather, and the group of people sitting behind us couldn't shut up during the concert, even after I politely asked them to lower their voices (they did for a few minutes, but not after). Plus I was kind of smacked in the face by a woman who had more than just a few drinks there. Despite all that, a good experience. :P

Anyone in the Bay Area interested in the Bridge School Benefit Concert at Shoreline? I bought 3 tickets to the Saturday show and am trying to get into the Sunday show instead. They're for lawn seats, and there's a good lineup if you like that kind of music: Jack Johnson, Neil Young, Death Cab for Cutie, Norah Jones, Cat Power, etc. Email me at ilubmoney at livejournal to let me know, or leave a comment with contact info. They're for Saturday, October 25th, 5:00pm. I'm trying to sell them on CL for $45/ticket (about $10 less each than what I got them for), but I'll accept a best offer from an LJ friend. :)

</sales pitch>

I had a mixed week last week, but the weekend was good and relaxing. Good friends make it easier to get through the day-to-day stuff. A friend even encouraged and showed me how to fight my speeding ticket in a legit way; I'm reasonably confident that I'll be able to get my ticket dismissed based on a written declaration (maybe I'll post this up on a locked post... don't want it floating around the internet!).

Don't mind the subject line. I'm just enjoying this delicious ginger cookie from Bakesale Betty's. They're in Oakland, but they were giving out samples at Caltopia last Saturday (thanks, Will!). Normally I don't like ginger, but these cookies are so satisfying and delicious!

Other freebies grabbed from Caltopia: a blue water bottle, cereal samples, a bag of popped (instead of fried or baked) BBQ chips, a black Pasta Pomodoro bag with red letters, a green Half Price Books bag, more cookie samples, gelato/sorbet samples, apple "fries" from Amanda's, a free mini sewing kit courtesy of Minute Rice, a slice of pizza from the Bear's Lair, sample packets of granola, a $6 Cal keychain (which was free, but they left the price tag on so that you KNOW they're not skimping :P), and a sample packet of hemp that I'm supposed to add to my soups and breads for added nutrition. And probably more that I don't remember.

Other things going on:

• I need to get back on a tennis regimen. Or maybe I need to get jogging first. But tennis is more fun. But jogging doesn't require a partner to do. I guess tennis doesn't either, but it's not as fun hitting the ball against a wall. Alan, do you want to play after school? I can't do early mornings. :P


• I start my new internship next week. I'm excited while also a little nervous about getting acquainted with several school cultures at once. Just seems a little overwhelming.


• One of my best gal pals, S, is coming to LA this weekend and will be staying until next weekend. We haven't seen each other since my visit to Boston 2 years ago, so I really want to make the time to visit over the weekend. I just don't know if I can afford another trip out of town again this month.


• MF left for Syracuse last Friday. It hurt to see him go, but I think the time away is good for me. We've spent a lot of time together over the past month, so much that I've been feeling really guilty about not making time for other people. It's just when you're in an LDR, it's sort of like, "OMG we need to take advantage of this time together NOW," and it's hard to see that a month straight of that can get to be overkill. If you're not careful about balancing your time, that is. And I sure wasn't. :\ But the time with other friends this weekend was refreshing.


• Over the past few days, I've seen Kung Fu Panda and Bill, both of which I enjoyed. Kung Fu Panda was better, though. My thought the whole time I watched KFP was "Whoa, that's like MF!" A big guy who likes to eat and obsesses over kung fu anything. :P


• I just downloaded The Battle of Red Cliff. If you don't know of it, it's based on Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a Chinese epic on the scale of Homer's Odyssey. Directed by John Woo, and from the bit of it that I've seen, it looks good. I'll probably watch it tomorrow.


• My brother's new girlfriend seems pretty nice. From what I've seen of them over my LA visit (esp. during Jenny's birthday party), she lets him be who he is, which is more than what I can say of his previous relationship. Brother kind of let himself go a little in recent months, though. We were worried he might've had something like anorexia for awhile, but I think he's got that beat now. :P


• My bangs irritated me and badly needed a trim, so against my better judgment, I went to a random hair salon to get them trimmed. The stylist trimmed them way too short, and now I wish I went to Kim's in the first place. Maybe Kim can still fix them somehow, but they're just too short. No new photos for awhile! :P


• I spent a lot of time with MF's family last week. His mom seems to like me a lot. She thinks I can't cook (she might be right), so she says I'm free to come over on the weekends for some traditional Vietnamese cooking. If you think I'm crossing my fingers for homemade pho, you'd be right. His niece and nephew are adorable and seem to like me a lot, too, especially after I bought them some books and stickers. Nephew wanted to see some YouTube videos of sharks one afternoon, and I accidentally showed him "Zombie Vs Shark." I didn't actually think it would be a zombie versus a shark, but I was very wrong. Oops. I think if MF was the one to show him the clip, his sister would've yelled at him.

My roommates--Jayna and CP--went out last night to Jimisan's for our going-away dinner. It's a nice little sushi place owned by Jimisan and his wife Kimi, who's also the hostess/server there. The roomies had gone about 2 weeks ago and were raving about it, and I can't think of a time when I'd been to a really good sushi restaurant, so I agreed excitedly to go to Jimisan's.

It was a great time. Jayna is a regular customer there, so when we came through the door, Kimi greeted her by name as though she were an old friend. We were seated at the bar and spent quite a bit of time talking to Jimi and Todd (the other sushi chef). I loosened up a few sake shots later. :P

Needless to say, I was not disappointed with the fish. Everything was so delicious, but the most memorable bite for me was the very first bite of the stuffed tomatoes (somehow cut sushi style so that the tomato looked like it was a piece of sushi fish wrapped around the rice and scallops). The only other thing we ordered was the tamago (egg) nigiri, then we asked Jimisan to make us whatever's good that night. He obliged happily. The fish were so fresh, higher-quality than what I'm used to in cheaper sushi restaurants, and the pieces were melt-in-your-mouth kind of good. I loved the ocean trout and the toro.

Towards the end of our dinner, Todd started talking about uni (sea urchin) and encouraged us to try it, that it was something one needed to try at least once in their lives. I took him up on this (maybe liquid courage from the sake). CP has a video clip of the moment--I'll post a link if/when she sends it to me. It turned out to be really good, and I could see why some customers would love the stuff so much. It wasn't until I got home later and looked it up that I realized that uni is sea urchin gonads. Still good, though! I'm sure some people may have had bad experiences with uni, but it was fresh at Jimisan's, and Todd warned us that we were coming towards the end of the peak season for fresh uni.

We got to talking about Jimisan's hat when we got to our red bean ice cream. He had this black hat that said "MANILOW" in big red letters and was hanging in the corner. Jayna told us this story about how a customer had given this hat to Jimisan and said that the hat was to be passed on to other people. "He was from Colorado," Jimisan mused. Someone suggested that CP take the hat since she was moving to Denver, so Jimisan gave her the Manilow hat and showed us a photo of the guy who gave him the hat so that if she ever bumped into him, she'd recognize him. Very cute little adventure for her. :)

Anyway, it was good times. I came home quite tipsy. Will post photos when I get them.

It's hard to stand by on the sidelines and watch the people I care about get hurt. It's been particularly hard lately to watch them make decisions that have hurt them in the past, hurts them in the present, and will continue to hurt them if they continue to repeat their mistakes. And it's hard to watch them make these decisions in the name of "love."

Mostly I just sit and listen to them as they tell me their stories. Sometimes they ask for advice and sometimes they don't. I usually let them know some small bit of what I'm thinking if they ask for advice, but usually at that point, they've already made up their minds about what they want to do. So I bite my lip and watch fearfully to see what happens next, hoping for the best possible outcome for them.

Mostly, I'm hoping that even if their decision turns out to be the 243239th time it's been a mistake, I'm hoping hoping hoping that they survive the experience, learn from it, and grow from it.

I think that's more likely to happen when the person I care about is younger... then it's just a developmental issue, and stupid mistakes are more forgivable in youth. But when they're grown men and women making the same mistakes for years? I mean, people can change as they grow older, but it's hard to change habits. Can I still continue to hope that they'll learn from their mistakes and do something differently?

Things have been good lately in various areas of my life, seems like. Maybe it's because USF is on spring break this week. No, I haven't gone anywhere or done anything out of the ordinary this week because I still have work and traineeship, but it feels so good to have space to relax.

Work
Getting the raise about a month ago really helped ease things quite a bit. I left Tutor.com as a result--I had a lot of good moments helping students online, but it was getting to be too much on top of what I'm already taking on this year. The current pay rate is also going to help me get through internship as much as possible, which brings me to...

Counseling
I had a quarter-life crisis moment back in January that I shared with very few individuals. I seriously considered switching careers because of the level of overwhelm I was experiencing in my Master's program. Actually, to be honest, I even seriously considered and applied for SJSU's library science program... yes, that sexy librarian talk was alluding to that. But mostly, the application was motivated by fear more than desire. By the time I got my acceptance letter in the mail, I had resolved some of my hangups about counseling and decided to continue down this career path. There's such a huge diversity and richness to the counseling career, and I would be making a mistake not to explore that further. At the very least, this career's guaranteed to be interesting (hopefully in a good way!).

Anyway, cross your fingers for me. I had an interview last week with a school district. It's in the city I want to move to, it's paid (not high-paying, but most MFT internships are unpaid), it's more of what I'm doing now, and the supervisor seems awesome.

Family
My family's doing well. I mentioned in a previous post that one of my cousins is getting married in April and is having a Catholic-Buddhist wedding, so that should be interesting. Mom's promised to take notes for me since I can't be there.

Baby Jenny is no longer a baby. It's kind of hard to see her growing into the elementary school ageset. She's outgrown her cuteness, but I'm always so amazed at how smart she is. It won't be long before she grows into the "awkward age"... Cathy is in that right now, going into middle school soon.

My family's visiting in May to see me walk. My brothers and I don't care much for graduation ceremonies, but my parents wanted to see at least one of us walk, and it being (presumably) my last degree, they asked that I sign up. So I did. It's a great excuse to have a fun, family day in SF.

Friends
Due to my busy schedule, I've felt disconnected from a number of my friends. This week has been my chance to reconnect with a few, and what timing! None of them know each other, and yet it seems like everyone is trying something (or someone!) new. Unfortunately, some of those resulted in heartache. I hope everyone gets a chance to heal and transition to better times in their lives.

Love
MF and I started this thing a few months ago in which I would let him know when my PMS week was, particularly when I'd have a hypersensitive moment. He's been so receptive and sensitive to this, and I've also been much better at letting him know what I need from him.

Recently, I thought about the time when we were just friends and how he had seemed the sort of person I would never date but become good friends with. How things change! The commitment really started to settle fully when I began visiting his sister's family in January; the positive relationship with his family members really helped to deepen my love for him in ways I hadn't experienced before.

Glasses/Contacts
I had my eye exam. Dr. Lem was very nice and didn't try to talk me into buying anything. Actually, he confirmed that contacts have no benefit of vision preservation and said contacts were really for convenience and cosmetic reasons. He also added that since I have a slight astigmatism, he'd have to special order contacts for that which are more expensive. So I decided to stick with glasses.

I didn't get any from his store since they didn't have frames I felt strongly about. I'm going to try ordering them online, but measuring the pupillary distance (PD) is going to be awkward. Eric recommended Optical4Less. Anyone have recommendations or tips on ordering glasses online?

Misc
Oh, for fun recently, I've been apartment-hunting in the south bay for an affordable studio. It's just helps with the whole "positive thoughts/energy towards the future" thing.

Also, I've been doing some research for cheap summer vacations. MF and I may be taking a trip with some other friends, but from the sounds of their summer plans, it might end up being just the two of us (and we're both very okay with that!). Caveat is that it's gotta be $300 or less per person. Someone suggested camping, but here's how that conversation with MF went down:

MF: "Yeah, that sounds like fun. Let's rent a cabin! Last time I went with my family, we got this cabin that had cable TV..."
Me: "MF! Seriously! I'm not against indoor plumbing and showering, but cable TV?! That's not real camping!"
MF: "Okay, Phuong, YOUR kind of camping--the kind with dirt--is the kind I don't like."

Um... no.

I liked the idea of going to Mexico or Hawaii, but it's beyond our budget. Taking a California cruise would be fun, too, but also beyond our budget. Oh, beach camping could be--bleh, nevermind. >:( Someone else also suggested a B&B, which could be pretty awesome. Maybe we'll finally do that drive down the 1. If you guys have ideas or recommendations for cheap vacations, that would be great, too.


Hope you're are doing well!

I finally downloaded photos from the past month or so into my computer.

( Weekend(s) with MF )

( Thanksgiving weekend )

Most interestingly, though, today I just got back from my first "tea time" experience at Lovejoy's in the Mission district. I met up with Chrissy and her friend Sarah there, and we were amazed that the place was so cute! I think the mismatched china and quirky decor had something to do with it. We had unlimited refills of the spicy citrus tea and the gingerbread tea (I highly recommend the latter!).


( Tea time! )

It was a very cute experience. If you're in the city, I highly recommend visiting Lovejoy's with some girlfriends and at least $20. It's not cheap, but it's so worth the splurge, and I think it's still cheaper than the other tea rooms in the city.

I went with quantumfoam13 to his company Christmas party. It was a lovely party with prizes being raffled off, a monte carlo theme (just blackjack and craps, I think), dancing, and a really good buffet. Everyone looked nice; Chris and I matched! It was also a good excuse to buy that cute shirt from Express (which is sparkly, but you can't really see from the picture). Good times were had by all despite the fact that it was cash instead of open bar. :)

( Jenny helped me get ready for the party! )

Also, I made another test batch of cookies yesterday.

( Cookies! )

Also, a few photos from our weekend in SF!

( Weekend in San Francisco )

Okay, off to another busy week! (Mental note: I need a "camera" user icon.)

( More photos )

Captions and more photos to come when we get back to Columbus.

Just in case you guys are curious, I've uploaded photos from last week's Disneyland trip.  Here are a couple of my favorites.



( Two more under the cut )

I love pool.

It all started months ago, really.  Back in April or May, when we were still just friends, MF and I went to Edgie's once after work to play for a few hours.  Then in June or July, we played at Santa Clara Billiards with two of his UCLA friends.  And I came back twice more to play with Chris and Sangeeta, then my sister Teresa.

I still needed to satiate my pool fix.

I had met someone on Craig's List who happened to be a pool junkie.  He told me about some bi-monthly pool mixers occurring around the South Bay; to play from 7:00 to 10:30, ladies pay $10, guys $15, and if you wanted to play more after that, you could pay $5 more to play til closing.  I figured that was a great deal, so I went.

That was three mixers ago.  :)

My first mixer was a little intimidating.  I came by myself and didn't know anyone; the first people there were the pool sharks.  Fortunately for me, they also happened to be very patient teachers.  My last game that night was quite a ways from the first game, and I was complimented a few times on my learning curve.

Since then, I've gotten to know the regulars bit by bit.  Some of them are there for the pure enjoyment of the game, and others hate to lose a game.  You can tell which one's which, and for a beginner like me, I try to hang out with the former. 

I've learned a lot at these mixers, including learning how to play nine-ball (which is a lot of fun) and cutthroat (not so fun).  I can hold my cue better than before, and I'm learning strategy as well (like when you clearly can't make a shot, shoot the cue ball so that your opponent can't either).  And about once or twice each mixer, my coach might tell me a shot is difficult to pull off, and I do it anyway... such great beginner's luck! 

The downside to pool, however, is that playing outside of these mixers is pricey.  The longer I play at a mixer, the more bang I get from my buck, especially since it sometimes takes me awhile to warm up. 

Wow, I'm already tired of writing this entry.  I'm reading it over and I'm tired of it.  Pool's just more fun to play than to talk about, but it's been such a major interest lately that I'd have to bring it up.

If you live in the Bay, especially the South Bay, come to a mixer!  The next one is two Saturdays from now, and it's most likely going to be at Lucky Shots in Sunnyvale from 7:00-10:30.  :)  It'll be fun!

Got a call from my former roommate's girlfriend, Miriam.  She called for my address to mail some things I left 8 months ago at the apartment, and we caught up for a few minutes.  Turned out that since the end of June, she and Chris have been engaged and are making plans to move to Massachusetts.  SQUEE.

Perhaps it was the timing of her announcement to me, but I felt really happy for them.  I think my whole summer has been filled with so many troubled relationships that hearing about their engagement (which was no surprise to anyone) warmed my heart.  I've had a brief glimpse of rough times between them, but even in those moments, I saw love between them, too.

I wish the best of luck to those two.  :)

Good news puts me in a good mood. :)