when i visited home last night the first thing my mom asked me was whether or not i went to work dressed the way i was. she finds it hard to believe that anyone can go to work wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and flip-flops. i guess it is kind of nice to have such a relaxed dress code at work. i think it must be the industry that i’m in that affords me this kind of casual attire. that’s good though, right?

i thought it was funny though. i guess she is used to my dad’s wardrobe of 20+ suits, so what i wear in comparison is quite different.

i don’t. really, i just don’t want to talk about it yet. i don’t know if i ever will really want to talk about it, but maybe there’ll be a day where i’ll be ok with talking about it.

what i sometimes find strange for myself is that i don’t really like talking about things that really bother me on an emotional level to anyone. there are a very select few that i’m comfortable talking to about anything, but they are far and few.

when i do talk about things that bother me, i think that it just ends up bothering me even more. usually it’s because i’ve already thought of all the angles and talking to someone else just doesn’t really help. instead it just dredges up all the pain all over again without making things better. i guess i just don’t find it useful.

but i do complain about things from time to time. in some ways, just venting about stuff makes me feel better about it. even if no resolution has come out of it, venting about it makes it a little bit more tolerable for me.

i remember this one time when i was with a bunch of accountant friends and they all got together one evening and started a HUGE bitchfest about their jobs. bitch bitch bitch. all night long they would go on and on about how awful their jobs were and how messed up this or that was. at the end of the evening, i was a little scared of these friends. who knew what they said about me when they were in a bad mood behind my back! but at the end of the evening, i think that they all felt better about things just being able to vent about it.

maybe that’s just the way to make sure that things don’t get bottled up in you. just vent it out.

i went home last night to visit my mom and she fed me some dinner. she’s trying this new miso stuffed eggplant recipe and she wanted me to try it. i told her i don’t really like eggplant, but she insisted, so i relented. yup, still don’t like it.

i was thinking though, why is it that no one deep tries eggplant? eggplant tempura? surely it’d taste good, right? hmmmmmm.

so anyway, my mom and i were talking and she was waxing philosophy with me about relationships and what are good things to be found in a good relationship. my mom reminded me a lot about what is important in life, and i’m sure she wasn’t preaching, but there were a lot of things that she said that made me appreciate how lucky i am.

while we were talking, my mom then whipped around and stopped talking to me and dashed over to the tv. AMERICAN IDOL TIME! oh my. my mom is a huge fan of the show. who would have known that a non-english speaking japanese woman would be such a reality tv junkie? i would never have suspected it.

but she loves it.

she asked me about whether or not i saw william hung. she told me she had read articles about him in the local japanese newspaper. very interesting.

while talking to my mom, i realized that she’s amazingly progressive for a woman in her generation. most traditional japanese mothers of her generation would think that there children should be married by the age of 25. we were talking about other japanese families that we knew and how some of the families were pressuring their kids to get married immediately out of college. my mom said that this is something that you shouldn’t rush and you shouldn’t get into a marriage where you don’t fit in with the other person. why would you want to get into a relationship where you would end up fighting for the rest of your life, she asked. it’s true. sometimes she surprises me.

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i think i forgot to mention that i had dinner with thanh on sunday night. it was good catching up with her. i guess i haven’t seen her in a while. the last time i saw her, i think we met up in the city…but i can’t quite remember what it was that i was doing in the city, but i think that we were both sort of on foreign ground.

dinner was steak, stuffing, and mushrooms. i think that the sauteed mushrooms weren’t done very well, but it was my first time trying to make them so i won’t be too hard on myself. but the steak was good. mmmm, beef.

it was good catching up with her though, it seems that there’s been a lot going on in our lives since we last were able to catch up. why does time seem to fly by so quickly? i’m not sure. but it does make you realize what’s important in life.

never take what you have for granted. once it’s gone, you won’t be able to live with it.

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i went to the DMV today to renew my license. apparently california state law dictates that you can only renew your license by mail twice. after that, you have to go into the DMV to get a new picture taken as well as a vision test and fingerprinting.

i left my apartment at 7:30 this morning to get to the DMV at 7:45. they don’t open until 8:30 today and when i got there, 45 minutes before opening, there were already 25 people waiting in line at the closed DMV. by 8:30 there were close to 80 people waiting in line outside the DMV. the line had snaked its way down a full block. it was crazy!

luckily, i was in and out of there and there in 30 minutes and i know have successfully renewed my driver’s license. yay. 12 more years from now of no DMV use, hopefully.

but wow, the DMV sure has changed. instead, we had to wait in crazy long lines to get whatever we wanted. now, with the aid of technology, they have a queueing system that lets you sit and wait for your number to be called. it’s great! much more civilized. i was amazed at how cool that process is now.

but yeah, new license, new picture, it’s a new me.

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i’m bored, but i have a lot of work to do. it’s funny how that seems to be the case. oh well, luckily, with all of the work that i’ve got on my plate, it’s easy for me to just drown in my work and get lost for hours on end.

i had no idea that my afternoon had gone by so quickly already. it’s kind of crazy.

busy, busy.

reminds me of busy phillips from dawson’s creek. i wonder what she’s up to these days.

cup-o-noodles are very good, but also, apparently very bad for you. why is it that preservatives are bad for you? wouldn’t you think that it would be good for you because they preserve your body?

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