ilubmoney

Just got back from Tahoe earlier this morning (Monday morning). I went skiing on Sunday and covered lift tickets (bunny slopes only), equipment rental, and lessons for $85 at Sierra. Didn't take a lot of photos because it was too cold, but I'm so glad I went. The lessons were well worth it, and I wish I spent more time getting back up on the lifts towards the end. My calves are sore today.

It was kind of odd, but one of the lens on my glasses fell off when I tried to wipe it later that evening. Nothing had been bent, broken, or loose on the frame, so I'm guessing that the cold temperatures made my lens contract. I couldn't pop the lens back into the frame because--and I'm guessing again--the heat from my hands and sweater might've made it expand again. Nothing that an eyewear kit couldn't fix (thanks, MF!).

More photos to come in the coming week! Heading to LA tomorrow and will be back Sunday night.

I've left my LJ in a state of nearly complete privacy. So I'll start with some general updates for you interested parties.

Work

• For those that don't know--most of you, probably--I'm currently working 3 jobs. One is for the money, one is for the love of the job, and one is a combination of both. The less I like it, the more I get paid. :P


• If you're wondering how the counseling gig is going, things are going better. And by better, I mean that I'm getting more cases and more experience. I recently bought the book How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk. It's a good resource for parents and for those working with parents. I'm considering buying a few cheap, used copies online to give away to parents whom I think would read them and would benefit from them.


• Also, because of the counseling job, I am both pleased and slightly surprised that my graduate education is put to good use. I'm finding myself pulling out textbooks and old notes as resources.

Holidays

• Had a great Thanksgiving weekend. It was low-key and involved a memorable dinner party with a Jon Troast performance. It also involved a new haircut (not a great photo, but a better one to come) and a pretty, red trenchcoat I decided to buy at the encouragement of my more fashionable sister.


• My family put up our Christmas tree. I don't remember if I mentioned this in a previous entry, but our special family tradition is that each of us gets a new ornament each year. This being said, I'll have my 25th ornament this year, and Jenny will have her 6th ornament this year. She was very sad that she had the fewest ornaments out of all of us, and we have way too many ornaments anyway, so my parents made a new rule that we'd only hang up 5 ornaments each on the tree this year. Aside from our ornaments, the only other things we have up are the lights and the angel at the top. I like it. I'm pretty sure it could qualify as a Hallmark commercial seeing as how all the ornaments are strictly Hallmark.


• I'm looking forward to a lot of holiday things coming up. There's the ski trip in Tahoe in a couple of weekends, which I almost couldn't go to because I thought I couldn't afford it. There's also the holiday events around the South Bay that I want to check out. Downtown SJ has what looks like a Christmas festival, so I want to check that out this weekend if I can.


• Due to the slimming of expenses, I'm only buying gifts for family this year. I might do cards, though.


• For those of you sending Christmas cards and who happen to ahve my new address, please don't send me anything. I'm having trouble receiving my snail mail and am working to get that fixed, but please don't send anything til then. Or send it to my Torrance address (email me for it).

Personal

• Things with MF and I have been fine, as usual. I can't wait til he comes home later this month so I can show him a bunch of new, local discoveries.


• One place I wanted to check out with him is uWink, a "social entertainment restaurant." It's a restaurant that has various computer games at the table; you can even play group games with/against other tables. Sounds like fun if you ask me. Plus I'm told it's a good first date place. For those in the LA area, there's one in Hollywood, and up here, it's in Mountain View.


• Some of you may or may not know that I'm going to my own personal counseling. It's just general good practice for therapists/counselors to have their own counseling, and not to promote the profession so much as it's to take care of ourselves and help us keep ourselves in check for work. For me, I have some concrete goals that I'm working on in therapy, all of which will be part of my 2009 resolutions. One is making friends with girls. I'd just like more female friends.


• I love playing pool, and I like going to Shirley's pool mixers for this reason, but I really, really dislike being flirted with by various guys there. I've considered buying myself a silver band to wear on my left ring finger to signal to them that I'm not available. MF thinks this is an unusual thing to do (I think he explicitly said "crazy"). I don't think this is that odd, but I do think it's kind of lame that I'd buy myself a ring to do it instead of MF getting me one. Think it matters? I'll probably just keep an eye out for a silver ring. I think I wear size 5 or 5.5 (can someone drop hints to MF for me? he doesn't read my LJ :P).

I think that's all for now. Is there anything else I'm missing?

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.

No luck in Reno, guys. We had a great time kayaking in Tahoe, though. No photos unfortunately... gosh, I wish I took my camera then! I chose not to because I didn't want to get it wet. :(

I can't really remember the last vacation I've had before this one, though. It might've been the family trip to Canada last summer. Totally wish I spent more time doing stuff in Tahoe instead of losing money in Reno. :P

Quick trip to Reno this weekend. Anyone have any recommendations?

I'm totally longing for travel adventures again. My 2006 was characterized by travel, and even then, I still wish I did more traveling. By comparison, man, what a downer 2007 was. 2008 is already a quarter gone, and I won't have any time available for travel adventures until August. What should I do then, especially on a limited budget?

I know. Road trip!

Now how cheap can a road trip be? And how far can I go with whatever time I have? My parents want to do some kind of special dinner party thing as a graduation gift, so I estimate about 1-2 weeks off for some roadtripping. I think if I'm really hardcore about it, I can probably make it to the east coast and back, but that's just crazy. :P

Have any of you done some serious roadtripping, particularly around the west coast? Any advice, tips, or recommendations for me?

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.

My memories of my family's Canadian vacation have faded, so I'll just recall what I can remember based on my photos.

It was a long road trip. The first rest stop we took was somewhere in Oregon...


( More photos )

Sorry for the vague descriptions and convoluted photos. I thought I had more, but maybe it was because I had taken several using my dad's camera, so they're probably still in his memory card or on his computer; if I get ahold of those, I'll try to upload a few more here.

Victoria (Canada) is beautiful. It's touristy, but with so much natural beauty surrounding the area, it's hard not to get so many tourists here. So lovely!

Pictures to come when I return. I'm just borrowing the wifi at a local library to answer some work-related emails.

Took me forever to get this posted, but I finally figured out how to
post via email (thanks to needing to post privately!). Here it is,
written two days ago. Hope this works!

---

You know how you've done a lot of stuff, then when you finally have the
time to update about it, you just don't feel like chronicling it all?
Yeah. That's me right now. So while I'll post up a few photos from the
weekend, the narrative will be very brief. You know what they say about
Vegas. ;)

To start off, MF made a very beautiful frittata that we had seen on the
Food Network just a few days before. It was lovely, but it needed more
seasoning than what was suggested in the recipe we followed, so it's
pictured here topped with some Sriracha sauce.



Then off we went on our trip! ( Bits of the trip + photos )

Vegas was fun. That's all I'm gonna post about Vegas for now. I'll be
posting separately about general updates.


--

Back from Sin City. A few photos and stories to come! But right now, exhausted and in need of serious catching up for work, school, emails, and LJ entries on my friends list. :)

Sharing the deals!

Southwest is having a great deal with Ding! I'm flying from OAK to LAX for $25 one-way (base fare), about $70 RT (which includes taxes). Thanks to EC for the tip!

DL Ding! now to take advantage of this! Purchase today by 9pm CDT.

Routes on sale for $25 one-way are: ( inside this cut )

Routes on sale for $50 one-way are:( behind this cut )

Okay, it just occurred to me that I may or may not have the stomach built for buffets. I'm one of those people who eat a lot of small things over the course of the day instead of eating big meals. Okay, okay, I lied; I have a few small meals. Because I currently work from home, I just don't expend that much energy and don't need to eat so much.

But I love variety, and I love buffets for this reason!

Any tips on how I can make the best of eating at a buffet? (Hmm, maybe I should try jogging before brunch!)

What are your favorite places (esp. restaurants) to visit when you go to Vegas?

School and work has been keeping me busy, but I have a week between spring and summer semesters to look forward to (and do I have plans for that yet? No, but perhaps soon). What I'm really looking forward to is the possibility of travel in August, when I have an entire month off before fall semester begins. I am in the process of making work arrangements so that time off is possible.

However, I'm operating on a student budget. This August might quite possibly be the last month off from school (maybe work) that I'll get, so I want to take advantage of the time to travel, but I can't afford to spend big bucks. And it's peak travel season for a lot of cities.

Does anyone have any suggestions to affordable vacation sites this August? I hope to stay somewhere between 7-10 days. Budget will depend on location, but I don't want to spend more than $250 on airfare. (Hmm, maybe a road trip!)

I live close to San Francisco's Clement Street, also known to locals as "the real San Francisco Chinatown." Though I am skeptical as to how much more "Chinese" it actually is compared to the one on Washington St, I will definitely say that it's less touristy than the latter. In my efforts to explore the city bit by bit, I'm trying to visit Clement Street once every few weeks to get cheap, fresh produce.

Today's super-brief adventure was at a store called Cheaper than Cheaper. Yes, the big lure for me was the store name. I came in and had very high expectations on how cheap things were going to be, but alas, the price tags were typical of the other Chinese stores around. I was looking for a tea filter (for brewing), but Cheaper than Cheaper didn't have it. At my roommates' recommendation, the next Clement excursion will involve a Japanese store called Genki.

Brent and I did get to see (Washington St.) Chinatown yesterday evening. Armed with only hypothetical questions, a vague sense of direction, and two rusty-but-still-good pairs of legs between us, we went on a walking adventure around the city. Polk St. was where a VERY skimpily dressed transvestite flashed his/her ass at me and told Brent to be good and behave. We passed by what appeared to be a lot of good restaurants and interesting shops. We didn't go into Good Vibrations, but I definitely want to check it out one of these days. I need to return to Polk for that and a cookie cutter a few stores down from there.

They had closed down a street for the Chinatown New Year's Parade, too. We only caught part of the parade because everyone who intended to watch the parade took the good viewing spots already. So really, I only caught the "top" part of the parade, just everything over 5 feet. Poo. Oh well, there's next year! Things eaten in honor of the celebration: half a chocolate-covered fortune cookie (with part of the fortune eaten) and a hot egg custard.

Good exercise, though!

I had orientation yesterday and got a number of things squared away, including registration, getting my ID card, etc. There's still a LOT to do, but I'll get them done little by little next week. I feel good about this program.

My schedule this semester is also surprisingly light, with classes only on Wednesday and Thursday. (That'll be very different come summer, when everything I'd need to cover in 15 weeks will be condensed to 8 weeks.) Since it's light now, and since I don't have a full-time job yet, I'm probably going to schedule a trip home in February.

When I read about USF's program, I knew immediately that I wanted to go there, and I applied to no other programs. I got that exact same feeling when I saw this one job posting. Crossing my fingers for that... it seems like such a good fit in so many ways. I don't want to jinx it, though, so no details for now.

On the love front, I'm thinking about a flight to Syracuse since I could fly there on a Friday and return on a Tuesday. But I'd probably need to schedule that soon in case I end up getting a full-time job. (Note to E: Farecompare.com has fantastic flight prices, but it's difficult for me to take advantage of their SJC-ALB prices on a Fri-Tues itinerary. *sad face* Going to keep looking.)

There's a pool mixer in the south bay that's calling my name this evening, so I'm gonna go get ready for that. Have a great weekend, everyone!

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.)

People have been posting up Christmas wishlists recently thanks to the annual holiday_wishes meme. Which brings me to this post.

While I'm sure there are a number of things I'd greatly appreciate receiving, the only thing I truly want is to be able to visit MF as much as I can.

I'd ask for travel gift certificates like that one birthday I asked for Southwest giftcards, but because it's East/West coast traveling, there's no one source I can link people to. I also don't want to just ask for money. So instead, I just ask that people please help me find some amazing deals that would get me to Syracuse, New York every once in a while, or to get him from Syracuse to San Francisco. (For reference, a good deal is pretty much anything below $300 round-trip.)

That's all I'd really want more than anything else I could list.

Our weekend in NYC was great! Again, no (digital) camera to show you photos, so I'll try to link to other pictures like my Philly entry. This will be a long post filled with images.

We stayed in Jersey City, which saved us a lot of money and wasn't too inconvenient (thanks to ertai's tip-off about PATH, which brought us from Jersey to NYC cheaply and conveniently). Our first ride on PATH was a little different from the rest. Imagine me sitting down with MF napping on my right shoulder and a drunk guy napping on my left shoulder. At first, I didn't mind the drunk guy that much because I didn't know he was drunk, only sleepy. And I, being tired myself, had lots of sympathy for sleepy people who had nothing to rest their heads on. Two young guys sitting across from us watched me for a few minutes, then suggested I gently push the guy off or tell him not to do that. Our stop was coming up, so I did tap the guy on the arm to wake him up.

He stared back at me with bloodshot eyes and asked me with a beer-laced breath, "Are you Cantonese?"
"No, I'm not."
"Do you speak Spanish?"
"No, sorry."
"I speak two languages."
"That's very cool."
Then he asked me something, but I couldn't understand him because his speech was slurred. MF pulled me away as we left the subway car.

Our first stop was to Times Square to hang out and do lots of walking around to build up our appetite for the all-you-can-eat sushi at Coco's Japanese Restaurant (which I'll get to soon). ( Images are beyond this cut. )

All in all, it was a great weekend. Really expensive, but I'd be willing to pay more money if we could spare the time. But I doubt it'll be my last trip to NYC. :)