my face is peeling. it’s rather disgusting to wash one’s face only to realize that a little bit of it is sloughing off. yuck. damn sunburn.

so much change is taking place around me. sometimes i wonder if i’m stuck in slow motion while everyone else seems to be just speeding around me. it isn’t that i feel left behind, it’s more that i just feel like everything is just whizzing by a little too fast.

the summer is almost half over. where did it go? i just realized that the last big vacation i had was in october. that was quite a long time ago. who knew?

today was spent relaxing. i ran a few errands on the way home from work and spent a few hours working at home, but mostly i stayed at home and chilled out. i need a chill day every so often just to keep things in balance. i think tomorrow is going to be spent running around, so hopefully it’ll all even itself out.

—–

i feel like i haven’t had dim sum in all too long. yesterday, jen, [url=http://leafee.ocliw.com]leeya[/url] and i went to eat dim sum at dynasty restaurant. they have pretty decent dim sum and the wait is usually not too long. the food was good and it was nice to be able to enjoy dim sum again. i think that dim sum really should be enjoyed in groups of 3 or 4…or multiples of them. otherwise, not everyone gets their share of the whatever is ordered, or you hace to order two of everything.

on friday, we celebrated diana’s birthday at maggiano’s where we had another small dinner gathering. i think that i do enjoy the smaller dinners now because it gives you a good opportunity to have a good conversation with everyone instead of the bigger group dynamic. i don’t really like shouting across the table to make conversation with someone else.

hmmmm…i have a lot of ground beef at home right now. i was going to make burgers yesterday, but opted to make steak instead. hmmmm….burgers….maybe i should make some tonight instead and have some people over for some bbq. mmmm.

last night [url=http://www.track15.com]dardy[/url] and i decided to have dinner at king of siam thai in mountain view. the food was pretty good, but at one point we were the only two people in the restaurant. i wonder why they aren’t doing so well. it may be because of the large number of thai places that already exist in mountain view.

but the food was good and dardy and i had a chance to catch up with each other’s lives. seems like there’s a lot of change in the air.

somebody asked me if i thought it was weird that dardy and i would meet up for dinner…just the two of us. i didn’t think that there was anything weird about that at all, but then she asked, you don’t think that people would get the wrong idea? it sort of made me think.

i don’t think that i generally have dinner one on one with too many guys, but it isn’t something that i haven’t done or that i don’t do with some regularity. sometimes it’s nice to be able to have that so that you can talk about things that you may not regularly do in a larger group setting.

after dinner we had some pearl tea from tea era. i love their roasted barley milk tea. even though it’s an alarming $3.25, i still will get it from time to time. oh so very good. it’s the same drink that dardy had as well.

—–

this saturday jen, cathy, de, and i played in the AACO volleyball tournament. there was a little mix up with our registration and we were originally registered for the intermediate level. when my team found this out they all had this panicked look on their faces. it was rather amusing.

but i cleared up the mix up and got us back into the friendship pool. this was the second year that i played in the AACO tournament, but my team changed quite a bit from last year. jen and i are the same, but cathy and de are new additions. i met cathy through my JACL league and de through the citybeach league. this was our second 4s tournament.

i’m trying to remember how we did in our first tournament, i think that we didn’t quite make it to playoffs last time. this time, however, we made it to semi-finals after struggling through the day.

the day started off unusually warm, perhaps foreshadowing the blazing summer heat that was going to beat down upon us later in the afternoon. we struggled through our first games, the four of us just weren’t playing up to our potential. playing in this group of four is actually a pretty new experience for me because i have to play a position that i’m not completely comfortable in yet.

i think that i’m used to playing on teams where i am one of the weaker guys on the team. i think that it’s always been that way because when i first started playing volleyball i was on a team where the guys were all much stronger than myself. it’s been a weird transition to start playing middle in volleyball because that’s a position that’s usually reserved for the tallest members of the team and also usually the better players on the team. hmmmm, does this mean that i just play on teams who have short players? =P

this new team is a lot of fun, though, and i really enjoy playing with them. we all get along and i think that we all are encouraging of each other, especially when we need the encouragement. i think this is why we were able to pull out of our early morning slump and were able to push through and make it to playoffs.

it was a little stressful though…it all came down to the last two games. we needed the first place team to beat the team that they were playing both times AND we needed to win both of our last 2 games as well. it was getting close as we were watching the first place team play their opponents, but they did win and then the rest was left to us.

we were playing much better overall and were able to win the last two games. then it came down to a matter of breaking the tie which was done by looking at the head to head records. we had beat the team that we tied against, it was actually one of the games that was the turning point in the day. that victory that pushed us into playoffs was just that much sweeter.

the first team we played against in playoffs in the quaterfinals was won but was was won with some effort. it was a good feeling and then we went to semis. the other semi-final team had some good hitters and i thought that we were going to beat them, but they rallied back to make a final run to win us out.

still, though, it was a lot of fun and so far every tournament we play in, we’ve done better than before, so that’s always encouraging. we ended up winning some shindig-branded pilsners as the prize for advancing that far into playoffs, which just made my day.

all in all, t’was a good saturday.

—–

True Love Is Not Nice
-Jonathan Richman

Well, it hurts from the bottom
and it hurts down to your soul
that’s because true love is not nice.
And it brings up hurt from when
you were five years old
that’s because true love is nice.

Oh, pain, pain, pain,
ain’t that just love’s name,
love can bring up hurt
from way down low.
It now be emphasized,
true love is just not civilized.
True love is not nice,
no, no.

Well, you’ve been hurt before,
but now you’re hurt and sore.
True love is not nice.
And if it’s real love then
that hurt won’t go, well,
true love is not nice.

Oh, pain, pain, pain,
rain, rain, rain,
that’s why you felt love’s arrow and said, oh,
Well, you knew from your first flirt,
that love was here to hurt.
And that’s because true love is not nice,
no, no.

==============================================================

i love jonathan richman.

the dating game sucks. pure and simple. well, actually, let me take that back. games suck. i really have a very low tolerance for games when it comes to dating. i think that when my heart starts to get involved, i’d much rather just act how i feel instead of acting how i should because of some silly rules that someone long ago made up…presumably because they really enjoyed the chase.

i do not enjoy prolonging the chase. get me to the good part faster!

i was watching this episode of andromeda (which is a really great show for any sci-fi fans…well, not really, but it has the beautiful lexa doig in it and that’s reason enough to watch…but really, it’s actually a pretty decent show too) and nia peeples was guest starring in it. wow, she’s purdy too. but her character is VERY flirtatious. it was all about the chase. and though it was all good and fun to watch, i think that if i were put into the same situation, i wouldn’t be able to show the same kind of restraint the recipient of that flirting had.

yeah, i don’t have that kind of self-control. =P

while i was driving to work today i had a bit of a revelation. i realized that one of the qualities that i really appreciate in a woman is if she is a little quirky. there are a lot of other qualities that i appreciate, but if she’s quirky, that does seem to speak to me a little bit more. some people find that kind of quirkiness to be weird, but generally speaking i think that i generally find it endearing…and that is cute.

—–

good taste.

my latest netflix batch is the last samurai (which i have extremely low expectations for and am hoping that it won’t be as disappointing as i think it will be, but because so many people have said good things about it, i’ll try…), along came polly (a movie that i will watch because i love jennifer aniston), and…wild things 2.

ummm…yeah. don’t really have high expectations for this movie, either. but i am a fan of the first movie and i feel compelled to watch the sequel…regardless of how bad it is. i fear that the movie may rank as badly as cruel intentions 2, but hopefully it won’t be as bad as bring it on again…because that was a truly painful experience that i would not wish on anyone else.

i’m trying to get back into watching more movies, but i’m also beginning to realize the serious time sink it is to watch a movie. luckily, the summer season has afforded me with more time to watch movies because of the complete lack of any good television, save for a few reality shows that are coming to an end soon.

last night i fell asleep rather early. i also went to sleep pretty early…around 11:30 or so. i woke up this morning at 5:20AM and i remember thinking to myself, “wow, i’m up a little bit before i need to.”

i figured that the alarm would wake me up and when it went a-blaring ten minutes later, i thought i hit the snooze button but it turns out that i turned off the alarm by accident. i later woke up to the stirrings of my loud roommate only to discover that my 9 minute snooze became a 3 hour snooze.

oops.

—–

me: hey, i saw you at q-cup over the weekend!
friend: what? oh really?
me: yeah, i was waving hi and said, “hey [FRIEND]!” but you just walked right by me like i didn’t exist!
friend: what? no way. where was this?
me: yeah! at the milpitas q-cup!
friend: oh…you hang out there?

everyone started laughing at how i was dissed. so sad.

—–

[url=http://leafee.ocliw.com]leeya[/url] wrote something that i think i have to respond to. she said that:

Personally, I don’t believe that it’s possible for exes to interact on a platonic level after a breakup…especially after being together for an extended amount of time. There’s just too much history to ignore—good and bad. On top of that, there’s the intimacy you’ve shared. How can you be near someone who you’ve loved both physically and mentally for a while and then act as if those moments have never existed? And can you be okay watching them moved on without you?

and i would have to strongly disagree here. yes, there is a lot of history to ignore and i don’t think that after you do break up with someone that you should just ignore the history that you had…especially after you’ve dated them for a long time. i don’t believe that relationships should be things that you just forget or ignore…and it should be just the opposite.

it isn’t so much about acting like you’ve never been intimate with someone before. generally, the exes that i’ve been friends with are my friends because of the experiences that we’ve shared, not despite them. it’s important to acknowledge that you have had those experiences…it’s not like you can deny the past. and i think it’s because i’ve had those moments that i can better understand the person and be a better friend to them.

i will admit that it was hard for me to see some of my exes move on. sometimes it wasn’t hard, it was excrutiatingly painful. i was bitter, i was upset, i was deeply hurt. but i also wasn’t over them. as much as i want to say that i was ready, the reason why i felt all of that pain was because i wasn’t. but eventually i got over it and them moving on helped me get over them and just move on myself.

Lets face it, no matter how often you convinced yourself that you want them to be happy with or without you, deep down inside you prefer they be miserable without you. 🙂

i just don’t think that’s true. i don’t think that i would ever want any of my exes to be miserable without me…even some of the exes that i felt really screwed me over, i wouldn’t wish ill on them. i want them to find happiness in their own right. even some of the exes that i don’t really care for, that i wouldn’t want to see again, i still would hope that they are happy now and that they can find the happiness that they are looking for.

i’m a big advocate of happiness. however anyone can find it and however it is that more people can find it, the better. it’s one thing to still be in love with someone after you’ve broken up, but it’s another thing to have a mature relationship with them afterwards. it isn’t for all people, some pain runs too deep and maintaining a friendship with them may just end up being a constant reminder of what can never be. i guess the secret of being friends with the ex is to have truly moved on and to truly like the person as a friend.

some people are never friends with their exes. that’s probably a very safe way to go. you will never run into issues with your ex if you never see them. but i guess the way i see it is that if you can have a successful friendship with an ex, they have the potential to be one of your dear, close friends because they share an understanding of you that few people in the world get an opportunity to have. i’m not optimistic about being friends with many of my exes, but the few that i am friends with, i am very glad that i am.