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
-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

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.

—–

setter guy: how do you like it?
me : i’ll take it anyway you give it to me.
teammate: oh REALLY?

oops.

—–

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.

—–

If I could recapture
all of the memories
and bring them to life
surely I would

hear the distant laughter
wasn’t it you and me
survivng the night
you’re fading out of my sight
swiftly

you’re vanishing
drifting away
you’re vanishing a-a-a-a-o-oo-o

I was so enraptured
no sensibility
to open my eyes
I misunderstood

Now you’re fading faster
it’s suddenly hard to see
you’re taking the light
letting the shadows inside
swiftly

you’re vanishing
drifting away
you’re vanishing away

reaching out into the distance
searching for spirits of that past
just a trace of your existance to grasp

and if somehow I could recapture
all of the memories
and bring them to life
lord knows I would

but now you’re fading faster
getting so hard to see
you’re taking the light
letting the darkness inside
swiftly

you’re vanishing
drifting so far away
you’re vanishing
a-a-a-a-a-a- yeah
away

you’re vanishing…how far will you go?

i was talking to a friend of mine today and all of a sudden i was overcome by a moment of sadness. i think that this summer is going to be very different from summers past. why? i think that a large part of my summer world has forever been altered.

things changes. it’s a natural progression of life. life is never meant to stay stationary and it’s just a matter of whether or not we can keep up with the jones. it sort of makes me sad that that chapter of my life seems to have been ended.

i guess i realized tonight that some things will never be the same again. i guess i should just let go of my pipe dreams that we could all get along and that everything will be ok. sometimes things aren’t ok and they won’t be ok. just gotta deal with it.

—–

i’m alive.

but that isn’t to say that jimmy didn’t try to kill me. no, no, make no mistake about it. he tried to kill me…with a mountain.

there’s something about mountain biking that has really been bothering me as of late. i’ve been pretty hard core lately and i’ve been biking about 3 or 4 times a week. now, i don’t consider myself to be super athletic or anything, but i used to think that i’m at least sort of reasonable ok. biking, however, has changed my opinion about this. i am now under the firm belief that i’m a weak ass wuss.

now, some may ask…why would you feel like that? why? well, it seems that EVERY single person that i’ve gone biking with can zoom zoom past me without breaking a sweat. but here i am huffing, puffing, and dying trying to make it up a little hill. it’s just insane.

oh well, that’s ok, i still had a lot of fun despite the fact that quicksilver has intimidated me for a long, long time. i had a great feeling of accomplishment after finishing the climb and reaping the rewards of the easy downhill on the back side.

this was the first serious uphill climb i went on with the new bike and i’m pretty happy with its performance. still though, i thought that something must have been wrong with me because i was dying climbing the hills while jimmy didn’t seem to break a sweat. dammit.

no pictures this trip, i couldn’t bear the extra weight of my gigantic camera.

—–

[url=http://jimmy.ocliw.com]jimmy[/url] and i are going to go biking today at almaden quicksilver park. i’m nervous about it. it’s been a few years since i last went there, but my last outing nearly killed me and i’m dreading the climb up the mountain.

the last time i went there, i recall having to make many, many stops because i just couldn’t go on. i was out of breath, dying, and just trying to gather up the will to go on.

then on the way back down, the brakes on my bike weren’t working well and i was braking with full power, but the bike wasn’t slowing down. pretty freaky. i swore never to come back again, but here i am, waiting for jimmy to pick me up so we can kill ourselves. why am i doing this?

i think part of it is because i need to face this challenge and take the mountain out. no more intimidation by this big rock, yo. it’s time for me to take it out.

if only it were that easy.

maybe i should write a will in case i don’t make it back.

i will admit it. i do not like confrontation. i don’t like it because it’s usually difficult and painful and not fun. but i do recognize the necessity of confronting other people and communicating effectively to get resolution to problems. i can apply this principle in the work place just fine, but when it comes down to my personal life, it begins to get a little muddier.

i think intellectually i know that if something is bothering me, it may not necessarily be obvious to the other person that i’m hot and bothered. in fact, they are probably thinking that everything is just fine. who would blame them?

though it has been more of a struggle to confront people and tell them what i thought, i think that in the end it has worked out much better because then there aren’t these long periods of resentment held against each other.

the problem i have is that i think that i am generally pretty oversensitive about things, particularly when it comes to my friends. i remember a friend of mine made an off-hand comment about me and i was deeply hurt by what they said. maybe it’s my reputation that precedes me and maybe they believe the reputation instead of getting to know the truth. but when i realized what they really thought of me, it was pretty devastating. i was sad that they thought so little of me and i was even more sad that they didn’t know me better than that.

it’s not so much that i want to try and convince them that they are wrong or that i want to try and defend myself or anything. people can think whatever they want, and if some people decide to look farther than whatever’s skin deep then they may realize more of the truth. i used to find it really saddening to hear that so many of my friends misunderstand me so much…but it’s not my place to try and change people’s opinions.

i think about the people who i consider to be my closest friends and i think that why it is that i think they are my closest friends. some of them i don’t get to see much of at all. maybe once a year, if i’m lucky. and others i see on an almost daily basis. and i wonder what it is that has made them become one of my closer friends and i realize that there is a common thread amongst all of them. honesty.

there was a time a while ago where i had told some friends some lies about my whereabouts because i guess i didn’t really want them to know who it was that i was spending my time with. so instead, i made up excuses or other reasons when i was spending time with them. one of my friends had called me on it after they had found out the truth and it really shook me up. i never realized that these little lies of mine would undermine my integrity or my friendships. i just never thought about it.

but from that moment on, i swore that i wouldn’t lie to my friends. even if i was doing something that they may not approve of, i figured that they would eventually find out anyway, so i should be honest about it and just tell them instead of lying about it. it’s definitely helped me get out of situations where i feel very uncomfortable because of lies that i told or lies that i have to keep track of…and it’s made my life a lot simpler too. some of my friends surprised me because they didn’t react how i thought they would and were supportive of me instead of being critical and judgemental.

if you can’t be at your weakest with your friends…who can you be your weakest with?

—–