so, astoundingly, happy hour was a success. i neglected to put that in my weekend update blog over at the group place. but karaoke went.. swimmingly, someone actually had an adaptor so we were able to hook up yong's microphone to ingrid's labtop to the lcd projector and some dinky computer speakers (all in one unit people!) and ta-da! karaoke! however, some songs have been forever ruined. dust in the wind, we are the world (ok that wasn't necessarily high up there anyway), bridge over troubled water and hotel california will never be the same. there of course were cliques. the v.z. lab decided they weren't having anything to do with it for the first hour and a half, and then later on decided it was all theirs and would only sing if they were the only ones doing so. weirdos. there was tons of food. way too much food, i kept telling them we had too much food, but what does the 22 year old know? apparently only enough to be the one to make the beer decision.

the 18 mightly mountain warriors show was hilarious. especially if you were asian, you got a lot of it. it was the perfect kick off to a great weekend. thanks go out to joy and greg for making it awesome.

so this week has been thwarted work wise. things don't work, things are working but my boss forgets to put them away at the correct time (after i've gone home, i'm not sitting around for 2 hrs after 5pm doing nothing just to take something out of the 37°C incubator, forget it!). stuff like that. it's ok though because he's not mad at me therefore i can sit around on my butt and read episode recaps etc.

this weekend is going to be ok, i've decided. no running around (except in the i must find a wedding dress in 2 weekends category), no excessive partying, and no karaoke.

so, with southern california lit up with fires, the whole, what would you take if you had to flee an anticipated natural disaster topic came up. there are reports that people are grabbing pictures their pupils drew, photographs and clean underwear all over. i've had this conversation with a fair number of people, and depending on time constraints, i think i'd take all my pictures and important documents first (ie passport, birth certificate, etc) then, maybe jewelry and some sentimental stuff like bebo and my orange quilt. the question came up of, what about all the data on my hard drive. well, a lot of it is mp3s and software you can replace, but what about all the old school papers and years of accumulated email. i need to get a removable harddrive, i can't leave that behind! ;o) or a laptop. but that's if you have time and are rational about it. the clean underwear woman apparently left behind all her important documents, her multiple degrees, and years of research for 3 different books she was writing. i would think that a lot of those are irreplacable. but all she brought was clean underwear. sort of sad and devasting to think about. funny how when it floods 10 feet above flood levels in seattle or a hurricane or twister tears across some other part of the country, you think about it for a second and then move on. but for some reason a lot of people i know have really been impacted by these fires. not that they had to abandon houses and flee impacted, and not i'm going to cry over the depressingness of it impacted, but that they have started to think what they'd take, how they'd collect their pets etc. and maybe it's better that way.

maybe we'll have more than just clean underwear.

the non-work work

so this week is my turn (along with a couple of other people) to host happy hour for the 4 labs that share our work space. you would think this would be the mother of easiest things to organize, buy some beer, some food, bring some tunes, sit back and enjoy. but then someone (kim, followed by elsa) brought up the idea that we should have karaoke. uh, yeah. who has a machine? of all people, yong! i so didn't think my boss was the singing type.. but i guess i could see it. well, but where will we hook it up? how? do we have english dvd's? simple questions, yet 2 days later we're still trying to figure out the logistics. ingrid's friend had english dvd things, yong's player is a vcd player with s video to a tv that's so old it doesnt have s video, we have no red, yellow and white outputs and only the stereo size plug mic. put it together and it doesn't boil down to karaoke.

but we're scientist! so we'll hook up to computer speakers to the red and white outputs of the karaoke machine with the stereo size microphone. meanwhile, we'll hook up a laptop with a dvd drive to the lcd projector. play both simultaneously. does anyone think this will work? all i can say is watch this space.....

so freesh and i are back from vegas (ok, we've been back since monday) where we had a blast and ate far too much food. we arrived on friday, had a buffet dinner, did some shopping and a little gambling and called it a night around... i don't know.. midnight? 1am? no clue. saturday, we had a normal sized lunch and the bellagio buffet dinner at 8:30. we didn't leave the buffet until 11pm. that's 2.5 hrs of food ingestion. be proud, very very proud. we had approximately an average of 3.5 plates of food and split 5 desserts. sunday, we didn't really eat too much. i wonder why. so in between the gluttony, we did some shopping, did lots of walking, took the stairs (mostly), visited the hard rock cafe club (we would have gone to ice, but boy george was playing, so it would have been hard to get in..), looked at pretty things and visited the wax museum. i might have to censor those pictures before freesh puts them up. i mostly did the pull my finger pictures. really, the castors (casters?) made it far too easy to do stupid stuff like that.

we checked out most of the newer casinos on the strip, but aside from our trip to hard rock cafe, we didn't leave the strip at all. i really liked the paris one, it was cute and reminded me a bit of it. have faith, not that an indoor replica of an outdoor city really can compare, but it was cute.

but as freesh posted (on her on her blog, we didn't get back until the wee hours of the morning. actually i think we were scheduled to arrive at 1:03, but i don't think we got in til 1:30-45am. i don't actually know as by that point in time, my mind had degraded to seeing red anger from the delays and the lack of sleepy (read: i was grumpy). i didn't get into bed until 2:30ish. i slept through 2 alarms going off for over an hour utnil my dad woke me up and drove me to work. good job that i didn't schedule any mentally involving work whatsoever for that day. lord knows what i would have done wrong and how many times.

that knot of excitement...

...in my stomach is for my vegas trip. or is it a stress knot? anxiety? who knows. your stomach really only has three responses to any sort of events:

· naseous - well that's pretty self explanatory, but basically feelings of disgust.
· hunger - when you need food.
· knotty feeling - this is more complex, pretty much spans all other emotions. anxiety, love, fear, excitement, stress and the good old ulcer.

so yes, my stomach is knotted, which could mean anything. let's hope it means i'm excited. i really see no reason why i should be stressing or anxious.

hey that's right, vegas, baby, is this weekend. i don't actually know how many people read this blog. so i won't even speculate how many of you think this is old news and how many of you are thinking 'what the heck? why didn't she tell me?' i'm guessing that the estimated number in my head of people who read this (3), already all know about it.

so i was at this joint lab meeting this morning, and i saw of all people this girl from junior high school and high school that i was decent friends with. coupled with the fact that another girl from high school is a med student here (i don't know what girl number 1 is here for so i won't speculate other than she was crazy smart), things are getting weird. i mean, how many people in your high school class do you end up working at the same company with when the diversity and quantity of companies in the surrounding area is as high as it is here? and then there's the guilt feeling of, 'i should have kept in touch better' so when you are finally communicating again with friend from the past you don't sound lame for not having talked to anyone from your old school since the last days of that senior summer. actually, i'm pretty lame in that i never really talk to anyone except for like 6 people. so yeah. i just bolted straight away after the meeting so as to avoid speaking to girl number 1. it's not that i have anything against her, but how awkward could that be?

i don't really know what caused my name to be so cool - i did say i was about as tough as tender chicken breast after all..

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What's my Pirate Name? mwWlat's ml pirate'N-m?
brought to you by fidius.org


Your pirate name is:

Captain Bess Rackham


Even though there's no legal rank on a pirate ship, everyone recognizes you're the one in charge. You have the good fortune of having a good name, since Rackham (pronounced RACKem, not rack-ham) is one of the coolest sounding surnames for a pirate. Arr!

will wonders never change? the scientific approach to eating vegemite for americans. i think it's for americans. it could be for every other nationality EXCEPT the australians. i was rotflmao at this site.

if anyone was wondering, here is the history of vegemite. be afraid. be very afraid.

why the vegemite kick you might ask? cuz i was bored.

Back to the world of the living

god it's been too long. so here is the list of excuses:
· i was really busy last week.. no i don't really remember last week.
· i was really busy all weekend, no not really.
· i was really sick -- this i can say with absolute certainty is true!

sick like ... why do people say sick like a dog? are dogs often sick? they don't seem to have these terrible problems with vomitting. nor do they have inherent character flaws that make them act sick. so why the expression?

but yes, i was horribly sick. my stomache is still not ready for more than clear liquids, which is ok by me. well, not really. i want all sort of things. eggs, pancakes, cookies, kettle corn, enchiladas, chinese food. none of which it's gonna get for another day or so.. (insert 'aww' here) so sick i've missed 2.5 days of work. and read like 6 books (again, not new ones) between naps.

aaaah! i can't believe it's thursday. seems like a lot of down time to me. and i liked it. i desperately need a break. yeah, another one, without the vomitting. that'd be nice.. but 6 month probationary period... *sigh*

looking forward to..

it's beginning to act a lot like fall up here in sf. i can't really say what it's acting like anywhere else in cali, as sf is such a variant microclimate in comparison to the rest of the state. the fog starts rolling in shortly before i leave work and lingers into the early, to mid and even afternoon somedays. that is if it bothers clearing up.

in a way i'm looking forward to the cold weather, it means you can once again enjoy lasagna and udon steaming hot. split pea soup. but it also means cooler weather (yay! i hate being sweaty) and more clothing to wear. while i'm all for the less sweaty, sometimes there isn't much more you can put on before you start looking like that poor kid from a christmas story who couldn't lower his arms for his life.

it also means the impending end of baseball season. those of you who know me, know i'm not really down with baseball and i don't necessarily feel that it should be our national passtime or whatever. so i never thought i would find myself asking people at work what website would work the best to tell me what is going on down on that pacbell park field. but here's the reasoning, i've got to drive home with all those loony fans who swarm out of the stadium, crowd up the streets and freeway to parking lot status and cut people off with no regard for safety.

today so far it's been 40 mins and they're in the bottom of the 2nd. if they continue at this pace, on average, that means 9 innings ÷ 2 innings= 4.5, 4.5 × 40mins(per inning) = 200 mins, or 3 hours 20 mins. that coincides nicely to about the time i leave work. yesterday it took 1.5 hours to get home. looks like today is going to be another bad day.
must now shamelessly plug my newest favorite blogger, Little Yellow Different. it's just too funny. plus he finds great links!