this week is a busy week in the birthday calendar. paul had his day earlier this week and mike and cheng have theirs coming up. we’re going out to celebrate tonight their birthdays at a place called faz restaurant & bar in sunnyvale.

it should be good fun. i’m trying to see if this is the appropriate venue for the lensbaby. i still haven’t taken a good picture with it!

i am what people in the “biz” call fashion-retarded. i’m completely not into trendy clothes. i’m not even into fashionable clothes. the one fashionable moment i think i had in my life was back in third or fourth grade. i was wearing cargo pants WAY BEFORE anyone else was. do you see all the cargo pants now? man, i was like 18 years ahead of the industry.

so whenever it comes to having to dress up nicely, i am a little fashion-challenged. it’s weird because my sister is a total fashion expert. like, omigawd, totally! no, i kid, she’s not an airhead. but she is fashionable and i’ve always wondered why i couldn’t have shared in some of those genes of hers.

there was a phase in my college years that i really liked plaid. i don’t know why but everything that i wore was plaid. sometimes i see pictures from that phase of my life and i cringe…not that i know any better now. speaking of which my mom bought me a plaid jacket for xmas. it’s quite tacky, but it’s warm so i wear it from time to time.

but i actually am in need of shopping for new clothes soon. nothing outrageous, just need to spruce up the selection a bit. and then i run into the same problem that i run into whenever i have this thought. i have no idea what kind of clothes to buy. if left to myself (which i have been for a while now) i inevitably buy solid t-shirts and shorts. it is a little alarming how many t-shirts i have. what’s probably more alarming is that i will go to the mall, look at clothes, and come back with more t-shirts even if i tell myself that i don’t want to buy t-shirts.

grrrrr.

so i’ve been thinking, maybe what i need to do is employ the aid of some female assistance. the problem is that i have a hard time trusting a lot of people with clothes choices for me, so finding someone who i can trust may be a difficult task in and of itself. we shall see.

when i got into work this morning i saw my desk had been completely cleared. i was looking around and saw that everything had been moved and i thought that this was some kind of joke. as i got closer to my desk i saw that it was wet.

apparently the roof directly over my desk had sprung a leak and it was wet everywhere. my keyboard, mouse, and phone were drenched. looks like i will be without a phone for a while. darn.

last night someone from my volleyball league came and handed out a flyer about this fundraiser for a school. all you had to do was have pizza at pizz’a chicago and 20% of the proceeds for that evening would go back to the school. i thought that this was a great way to give something back to the community and recruited some friends to come and eat some good pizza.

in all, we had 14 people show up for dinner. i think our meal contributed something like $30 to the school. heh, not much when i think about it, but i guess every little bit helps.

i think it’s wonderful that places like pizza chicago are willing to help our their community with programs like this. it was a total bonus that we got great pizza and were able to help out a good cause.

people asked me how i met the girl at volleyball. i am a little embarrased to say that this was angel girl whose real name is not angel. 😛

i’m wearing these new jeans that i got a few weeks ago. i’ve been a little unsure about whether or not i wanted to wear them or return them. they are just a little bit more fitted than i’m used. i usually wear pretty baggy jeans though, so anything that doesn’t have me swimming in my clothes just feels pretty restricted.

i’m beginning to think that clothes are way too much of a hassle.

the weekends are just far too short. i don’t know where the time goes, but it goes by quickly. i’ve been trying to organize my thoughts from the weekend, so much had happened.

saturday was warren and viki’s wedding. i have to admit that i was a little apprehensive about going to the wedding alone. i thought that i t might be too painful of a reminder that i’m single and to see all the couples about might really get me down, but it was actually quite the opposite. the wedding was wonderful.

when i saw the happy couple at the banquet and i can see how really happy they were, it struck a chord in me. it was a reminder of what true bliss is like. it reminded me of times where i was the happiest person around. it reminded me of the time when i didn’t think that life could get any better. i can’t say that i recall living in bliss often, and i can’t say that it’s easy for me to remember what it is like, but on saturday, i felt like i was living around it again.

sunday was a pretty lazy day. in the late afternoon, dardy and i met up for some pearl tea at the fantasia near mike’s place. that fantasia is weird, very americanized. i got a strawberry smoothie there and it was quite tasty.

after that we headed over to mike’s place where we met up with other people and then headed out to celebrate paul’s birthday. i have pictures from the evening, but haven’t really looked at them yet, so there’ll be a post about that later.

after having too much ice cream cake, i was feeling tired so i retired for the evening and went to sleep.

a friend’s wedding is coming up and i was going to give the couple a red envelope. i asked my roommate if she had any and she said that she did.

she gave me a red envelope and i looked at it and blinked at her.

me: “uhhh, this isn’t the right envelope.”
her: “sure it is.”
me: “what does it say on this envelope?”
her: “joy, happiness, and prosperity.”
me: “yeah, this isn’t the right envelope.”
her: “what do you mean?”
me: “there’s a special one for weddings. double happiness or something equally chinese.”
her: “oh, i suppose there is.”
me: “yeah, i want that one. give me that one.”
her: “i don’t have any of those. this is good enough.”
me: “no, i want to be a real chinese person. get me one of those special envelopes!”
her: “fine, fine, i’ll go get some later.”
me: “sheesh, and you call yourself chinese!”

i’m not chinese, but i’ve ALWAYS used the same kind of envelope for weddings. it just wouldn’t feel right any other way.

i asked mia today if she would help me out with some clothes shopping tomorrow. i’m not completely convinced that i have all the clothes that i need to wear at a wedding tomorrow, so i’m going to go and buy a few necessities. i think all i really need is a nice dress shirt that goes well with a tie.

i’m going to try very hard not to buy a blue dress shirt. the last wedding i went to had a zillion guys wearing them, including me. it’s time for a new color. but what? i’m not so sure…

i think i may need slacks too. *sigh* too much shopping for too many things!

last night, as i was headed to meet up with abe for dinner, i realized that i had forgotten to take home the LCD that came two days ago. this was the second night in a row that i had forgotten it!

this time i wrote a big note on my whiteboard to remember to take the LCD home. let’s see if i can somehow forget it now!

but yeah, i have some great ideas on how i’m going to be using that LCD. we’ll see if it pans out. i guess this means that i need to clean my room a little bit tonight. it’s a good thing the weekend is coming soon, i think i’m going to need the break to relax just a little bit.

last night i met up with abe and dounya after far too much time has passed. i met their beautiful daughter, melina. she was supposedly very cranky yesterday but i thought she was pretty delightful for most of the time. parenthood has really changed them, but in such a good way. i played with melina for a little bit, she is just adorable.

it really made me think about what is important in life. spending time with abe brings back to me this kind of exuberance that only he can really muster out of life. i remembered what it was like to work with him and how much fun it was. i remembered what it was like to be so passionate about what you did that you looked forward to going to work everyday…even weekends.

spending time with him and dounya does really warm the heart and i wish that i would spend time with them more often. they are truly blessed people.

i also saw their wedding album. i can’t believe it’s been nearly five years since they’ve been married. the album was beautiful and it gave me several ideas about what kind of pictures to take at a wedding. i haven’t really spent a lot of time taking pictures in that kind of setting so it was really nice to see. looks like i’ll be getting a little practice this weekend at warren’s wedding.