dido this weekend!

i haven’t mentioned it yet, but i’m going to the dido concert this weekend! i’m pretty excited. what i find kind of funny about the concert is that i’m going with [url=http://www.track15.com]dardy[/url] and greg. yup, it’s a guy’s night out…to a dido concert. i wonder if anyone else finds that just a little odd.

but still, i’m looking forward to it. i wonder if she has a good shirt to buy. i think last concert’s stuff wasn’t that great so i ended up not getting anything.

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angel

man, i watched the angel series finale last night and it was probably the most disappointing series finale i’ve ever seen. sure, one of the main characters dies. sure, there’s this huge showdown and great plan to take out the black thorn. but what really upset me was that there was no real closure. what happened to angel and the rest of the gang now that they have to fight against that huge swarm? what exactly is this huge swarm of demons? where did they come from? exactly who is wolfram and hart? i don’t get it.

i feel like there could have been so much more to the show, but it just left me hanging. very unsatisfying and quite the disappointment, if you ask me.

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weird dream

i had a dream last night that i was on a group date. the way it worked was that there were an equal number of guys and girls and they would all collectively go out on a date. the setting was actually a living room somewhere and the girls were sitting on the sofas. it was sort of like speed dating initially where we would make our round of introductions to each girl individually and rotate amongst them.

when i met diane, one of the questions she asked me was when i thought it was appropriate to kiss your date. what happened next was sort of an out of body moment. i could see myself leaning over to her kissing her after she had asked that question. she was surprised and shocked at first, but then got into the kiss. after that it was time for the guys to switch to the next person, so i left her smiling and she watched me go with a smile on her face. she winked a goodbye to me.

and then i woke up.

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the era of bad cookies is over

[url=/image.php?image=/images/2004/0520/IMG_6650.jpg&title=cookies+galore][/url] [url=/image.php?image=/images/2004/0520/IMG_6652.jpg&title=cookies+galore][/url] [url=/image.php?image=/images/2004/0520/IMG_6653.jpg&title=cookies+galore][/url]

the last several batches of cookies i’ve made came out as dismal failures and i’ve been pretty discouraged to try to make any more cookies since. i don’t know what happened because i used to make cookies all the time and they came out pretty good.

i miss the days at [url=http://www.imaginon.com]imaginon[/url] where my coworkers and i would bring in various baked goods and share amongst ourselves. it used to be that there would be sweets at least once a week. i had a lot of good memories working there. when i first started working at my current company, i used to bring in baked goods too, but no one else brought in anything so i quickly felt less motivated to make anything anymore.

but a few weeks ago thanh gave me a silpat, so i finally decided to try it out with some cookies. over the years, thanh has supplied me with many of my baking supplies from cookie cutters to cooling racks to silpats. maybe my penchant for cookies is more obvious than i had thought.

so i made about four dozen cookies and they are all good. no more super flat ones. no more super crispy ones. ahhh, cookies galore!

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mmmm dinner

last night maureen came over and i made dinner. i was waffling between a bunch of things to make, but finally decided on a three dish meal that composed of [url=http://appetizer.allrecipes.com/az/GrtGrlicBrd.asp]Great Garlic Bread[/url], [url=http://pasta.allrecipes.com/az/OldFashMacaroniSalad.asp]Old Fashioned Macaroni Salad[/url], and [url=http://maindish.allrecipes.com/az/ssiChickn.asp]Aussie Chicken[/url]. all three dishes were new to me, but they all looked relatively simple enough.

Great Garlic Bread
this recipes for garlic bread was quite good. in fact, i think that i may stop buying the premade garlic bread from safeway and start making this instead. it’s a unique combination of garlic bread and cheese bread. very good, very easy. i highly recommend it.

Old Fashioned Macaroni Salad
this recipe wasn’t exactly what i was expecting and i thought it was ok, but my dinner companions seemed to like it more than i did as they did get second helpings of it. still, not a bad macaroni salad, i think that i like my mom’s recipe for macaroni salad more though as it tends to be a little heavier with more mayo.

Aussie Chicken
i don’t know if this chicken is really australian in origin, but whatever the case may be, it’s a very good honey mustard chicken recipe. i will definitely make this again. i don’t know if the bacon really adds anything to the dish, i may omit it next time. but on the whole, i was pretty pleased with the chicken. nice, tender, and pretty good. i used dijon mustard and was afraid that it might be a little too bitter, but it turns out that after adding all of that honey and corn syrup, you probably needed that bitterness otherwise it would have been too sweet.

i have so much food leftover now. i think that i’ll go home and have another meal or two of it. maybe i can make an aussie chicken sandwich. mmm. it was nice to cook again. i haven’t cooked in a long time and i forget sometimes how good it feels to cook.

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you choose

You Choose
-Pet Shop Boys

He’s gone
You’ve lost
Stay behind
and count the cost
You try
You lose
You don’t fall in love by chance
You choose

It’s a decision
made overtime
Should you take the risk
and start to climb
the steepest hill
only to find
halfway there you’ve been
left behind

Choosing to love
is risking a lot
and trying to change
and to keep all you’ve got
But don’t pretend
it comes out of the blue
You take a chance
and see it through
and if it’s refused
what can you do?
Continue hopefully
Start anew

Lick your wounds
Buy your booze
You won’t get drunk by accident
You choose
Don’t blame him
for refusing your bid
He didn’t decide to love
You did

Learn the lesson
Take the blows
You didn’t fall in love by chance
You chose
Play the sad songs
Sing the blues
You don’t fall in love by chance
You chose

the price of honesty

honesty. as cheesy as it may sound, i do believe that honesty is the best poilcy. that isn’t to be confused with full disclosure. just because you don’t tell everyone everything doesn’t mean that you are being dishonest. now, you don’t want to mislead them into believing something else, but you can withhold information without being dishonest.

that being said, one cannot expect that every effort they make in a friendship will be reciprocated. it just doesn’t work that way. the ties of friendship are formed after someone extends that first step and it is reciprocated. if it isn’t, then maybe there’s just no desire to be anything better.

i remember the countless times i’ve extended my hands in friendship only to feel like it was taken without thanks, without acknowledgement, without any real appreciation for the effort i was trying to make. i guess you have to just know when to call it quits and move on. no sense in lamenting over something that you don’t have…unless you are into that sort of thing.

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new volleyball league

sometimes i wonder if i should just make a volleyball category since i seem to write about it enough…more so than some of the other categories. anyway, i started a new season this last sunday with the JACL league. my teammates are pretty awesome, so i’m quite happy about how it all worked out.

it just proved how small the world really is when i was talking to a teammate. we were just chatting and she mentioned that she was a teacher. i told her that i had a teacher friend too who worked in milpitas. she then said, oh, “shirley?”

i just froze in my tracks. what?! how do you know her? it turns out that they went to college together and were neighbors. go figure. such a small, small world.

i tried setting last night and it was a dismal failure. i can’t get myself to set non-tight sets. it’s just too much of a habit for me. ugh. but i had a lot of fun and i look forward to playing on this team.

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