yesterday i finally got around to changing my cell phone plan. sprint currently has an offering where you can get unlimited nights and weekends and it starts at 7pm. my old plan had a finite, albeit large, number of minutes and it started at 8pm. so i got that pushed back an hour. and it actually turns out that i will be paying $5 less a month for this compared to my old plan. i think that this is fantabulous.

the only downside is that i had to agree to a 2 year contract with sprint, but i don’t think that’s really going to be a problem seeing how i’ve been with them for about 4 years anyway. but i am happy with the change in plans. sprint has been hounding me to renew a contract with them, but i’ve been holding out until a better deal came around. looks like i finally got the good deal.

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[url=http://www.geocities.com/sushisis]carol[/url] came out from the city to oakland to meet up with me for lunch. we got caught up on each other’s lives over some dim sum at jade villa. after lunch the two of us enjoyed pearl tea drinks (sans pearls for carol) at sweetheart cafe. the two of us then enjoyed the gorgeous weather outside while drinking our drinks.

it was good to catch up with carol, there’s a lot of exciting things that have happened in her life since last we spoke. i, on the other hand, didn’t have as much to share in terms of new things except for my recent gimpiness.

one of the things that i realized while catching up with carol was that it definitely is well worth any effort that one makes to keep in touch with their friends. even though carol and i hadn’t seen each other in quite some time, it still had felt as if it was just the other day in terms of what we could talk about and the ease with which we talked. it was a good feeling. it definitely motivates me to keep in touch with more people.

it was a bit of a longer lunch for me than usual, but i figure i’ve been working really hard, so it’s no big deal. it was definitely hard to get back to the office after enjoying the sunny outdoors, though.

as we were saying out goodbyes, carol made it a point to swat away the remainder of my pearl tea drink away from me and it crashed disastrously to our feet. i stood there in shock while my pearl tea drink dribbling away into the sewers of oakland. carol, of course, apologized profusely insisting that it was an accident and not intentional.

heh. sure.

deprive me of my pearl tea, eh?

just…you…wait.

every thursday at work we have goodies brought in for us. some people at work cut donuts in half because they don’t want a whole donut. this usually is for health reasons. so, the big question is, is it wrong of me to think that getting two half donuts is more healthy than 1 whole donut?

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so the winner of the ice cream flavor contest? mint chocolate chip. i have to say that there’s something quite wrong with mint chocolate chip if it lacks the green dye. next time i make it, i’ll have to remember to add some green food coloring. so much for wanting to get rid of the artificial.

my first batch came out ok. a little less firm than i was hoping, but it was ok. i think that i may have to adjust the proportions of cream and milk. i’m thinking that the more cream i use, the thicker the ice cream…but i’m still left to wonder…how do the professionals get their ice cream so hard? hmmmmmm.

but all in all, it isn’t bad, i’m impressed. i may have to get some powdered milk as well to see if that is a good thickening agent. there’s still something about the ice cream that is missing in texture. but not bad for my first try. i can’t wait to try again.

i watched bruce almighty last night. the movie was actually much better than i thought it would be. it is a fun movie and i really enjoyed jennifer aniston and jim carey. jim carey wasn’t over the top, like he can be, and i think that there was plenty of fun, comic relief throughout the movie.

i recommend the movie if you are lucky for something light-hearted and fun.
Continue reading bruce almighty →

my monday team won the championships last night. i went to cheer them on for a little bit and they looked like they were doing well. i’ve been sort of avoiding the volleyball courts lately on account of my injury. just watching other people play makes me sad because i can’t play.

i’m happy for the team who finally won the championships, but i’m sad that i wasn’t there during playoffs to be a part of it. it seems that i’m going to get a shirt, but it just doesn’t mean as much to me. it just makes me all sorts of sad.

well, hopefully i’ll get better by next season and we’ll be able to win the season over.

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i’m not sure where it is that i picked it up from, but somewhere, somehow, sometime ago, this spirit of not wasting food was instilled in me. i don’t know why that was the case. growing up, i was never really faced with the problem of wasting food because we never really had food leftover. we always had enough food to eat, but never really too much to waste. we just happened to eat it all up.

latetly, though, i feel compelled to finish whatever food i make or whatever food i have in front of me because otherwise it would be a waste. and i don’t know why i’m so adverse to having leftovers. i think a large part of it comes from the fact that i’m lazy and i don’t want to carry the leftovers with me…plus, leftovers never really taste better than the first serving.

i wonder why it is that i just can’t let it go to waste.

the other day, we were having ice cream cake and ann was about to throw away some ice cream cake because she couldn’t finish it. i yelped for the cake and quickly took it up before it could be thrown away and finished the last bit of it. i mean, come on, it’s ICE CREAM CAKE. you can’t throw that away!

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i’ve heard before that it is the tendency of women to squabble about petty things and get bitchy more easily than men do. i’ve heard before that a group of women have a higher tendency to get catty, whereas a group of guys wouldn’t.

i think it was [url=http://www.track15.com/]dardy[/url] who said that girls in groups will get catty and start fighting amongst themselves. i guess it really depends on what kind of girls are involved. but today i witnessed such a squabble and it was pretty frightening.

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man…i just spent what felt like an hour, but was really closer to 10 minutes trying to figure out why my application was behaving in a certain way. the answer seemed obvious. i thought it should be an easy fix. but then it got more complicated. i couldn’t figure it out and i was getting increasingly frustrated. i nearly lost it and admitted defeat, but finally i figured it out and it all made sense.

no more mystery about why my program was behaving oddly. no, there weren’t gremlins sneaking around in my computer making it act funny. no, there wasn’t some kind of mystical magic that took over my code and made it do things i didn’t ask it to do. no, there was an answer and it feels really good to have figured it out, yo.

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i was once talking to a friend of mine and he was telling me that one of the things that he could not stand about some people is how superstitious they were. he thought that it was completely ridiculous that you would have to, for example, consult a special calendar to see what day would be a good day to get married on. he found it completely ludicrous that people believe in hexes, voo doo, or bad luck if you do certain things.

i think that superstition is a relic of the uneducated. sometimes it’s fun to humor superstition, but there are people who believe that they are cursed and they have to do these drastic things to lift a curse off of them, and i don’t get it. there’s no scientific evidence that says that houses can be cursed and that bad things will happen to you if you live in a cursed house. i just don’t get it.

superstition is an easy way to blame your coincidental misfortune on some kind of mysterious force. i think what it really does is that it lets us place the blame somewhere and it lets us cope with these difficulties. it also gives the power back to us to allow us to do something about our recent misfortune so that we can feel that we’ve done something to make our lives better.

this sort of ties in to the notion of karma. my mom is a big believer in karma and she’s a steadfast pacifist. she believes that if people do bad things to you, they will suffer later in life. and that’s her salvation. she believes that there is this karmic force that will make everything all ok. i don’t believe that this is true, but i do believe that you should always try and be the best that you can be.

there are a few people in my life who i really admire. the one quality that they all share is that they are genuinely decent and good people who aren’t looking to find profit in others. they are good people because that’s just the way they are.

i remember this one guy who i met for a very brief moment. perhaps it was only in the span of a weekend, but he extended to me the generosity of a giant. he didn’t know me at all, but he welcomed me into his home. he fed me, he made me feel welcome amongst strangers. he probably doesn’t even remember me. he probably doesn’t know what kind of an impact he’s had on me. he probably doesn’t think anything of it…because it’s just in his nature to be very kind and generous. there aren’t too many people who i’ve tried to emulate in my life. i think that i’ve always tended to be independent, but after i met this guy, i realized that he was the kind of person that i wanted to become.

think positively about everything, make best of the situation you are in, and try your best. don’t try to blame others (animate or inanimate) on your misfortunes, don’t dwell on what could be, don’t live in regret. just keep moving forward. that’s what i learned and that’s what i take with me.

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