Rounding out the long weekend

Today I went to cookout number 3, where I stuffed myself silly. Again. Luckily I planned ahead and went to the gym earlier to minimize the damage.

Good food, good people, good times. Wish I had pictures to supplement the past few entries, but I am technologically limited. Also, I realize this blog has unintentionally been more of a series of "I did this, and then I did that" posts. Life's been variable lately with something new each day though. I like that. But perhaps I'll mix it up sometime!

Cookout numero dos

The Memorial Day weekend festivities continued on for me as I went to my second cookout/bbq in a row today. I finally played the ubiquitous-in-Richmond game cornhole. As prejudiced as I was about it being a "really Southern/country" pastime, I have to say it was pretty fun.. actually started getting a little competitive!

Afterward, my roommates and I made it a movie night and watched 127 Hours. Pretty intense.. makes me not take water for granted, at the very least. I think I freaked out the most when the main character (SPOILER ALERT) dropped his water bottle instead of the famous other part of the movie. But I also freaked out about that too and closed my eyes. And yet made my roommate narrate every detail of what was going on.

Eggrolls and window shopping

Chill Saturday. Went over to a friend's house to make some bomb eggrolls to bring over to a picnic.. they are seriously SO good. Def ate more than my share of them. :T Then went to said picnic. Afterward, we (M, N, and me) headed over to Stony Point to walk around and burn calories from all the eggrolls/other picnic food we ate.

At one point, we were checking out dresses at a store, and picking stuff out for ourselves to try. I suggested we up the ante and pick out a dress for each other.. the results:

 The dresses we chose for ourselves. 

 

The dresses we chose for each other. The dress worn is chosen by the person on her right.

It was a fun experiment! I actually really liked the dress M picked out for me, even though I never would have given it a second look on the rack myself. But I am saving my moolah so did not buy it.

Nacho Mama's

 

Yes, that is a non-birthday candle. Ukrop's cake FTW

Went to Nacho Mama's to belatedly celebrate one of my roommate's birthday. Better than I expected! I got the fish tacos. Mmm.

Also, we took a walk later and some guy came out of the bushes completely naked and told us his gf dared him to. I think he expected us to be startled or freak out, but we kind of just ignored him and kept walking. Hopefully it instilled enough insecurity in him to never do that again.

Charlottesville

Visited my friends in good old C-ville today. I actually did not do anything remotely related to UVA or the city.. just chilled at my friend's apartment and ate a lot. So the title of the post is kinda irrelevant. Anyway!

It was soooooo good to just talk and catch up with one of my close college buddies. Refreshing to be completely real after harboring all these burdens on my own. While it's sad that I live far away from most of my good friends, all I can be is thankful that I have these people in my life. They are living, breathing, answered prayers!

Nick of time

Almost forgot about this today.

Trying to find a suitable subletter is challenging.

Show me the money

Me: *Going on and on and on about the amount of debt I'll be in because of school, decisions I need to make, what should I do, etc*
J: By the way, I saw Black Swan with my family.
Me: Did I just remind you of that movie because I'm acting crazy? And the main character in the movie was crazy too?

HAHA. Funny because that was such a random interjection in the midst of my monologue about debt/loans. I know I need to just chill out about everything, but I guess I keep coming back to this idea of regret. I'm so afraid of making the wrong decision.

I'm not a very good free agent

Went home for an extended weekend since I have today off. But with school over, and work winding down, I really don't have much to do. It's a weird feeling. I actually kind of miss studying and I'm sorta looking forward to coming into the clinic tomorrow, perhaps because my days are finally numbered there. Crazy talk.

I think my perfect environment is one where it's stable/consistent but I'm thriving.. me and everyone else, huh. The semester had the stability/consistency down pat, but I wasn't exactly thriving. These days, I have potential to thrive, but the lack of stability is giving me a case of life-vertigo.

Praying that my D1 year has both.

I miss my Chocolate

  

  OWNS


I miss my old phone.

No fuss, no muss. Battery life lasted for DAYS.. instead of all of 2 seconds. Sturdy, functional, reliable. Should not have been lured by the bells and whistles of the new phones these days. I could change it back, but then I would waste the new phone and contract. Plus, the Cosmos' one redeeming quality is that texting is a lot easier. That is not enough to overcome the regret I feel over getting it, however. Ah well, you live and you learn.

Habitat for Humanity

Volunteered today for Habitat for Humanity. I painted the trim around windows, doors, etc. I always start off gung ho about projects, but then as soon as it gets tedious, I just want to give up and lie down somewhere. Not a good habit.. I kept going as far as I could so in order to instill some diligence in myself, motivated by the fact that people are actually going to live in the townhouse and they deserve quality work. But after my hand started cramping from painting, and I looked up and everyone else was just chillin, I called it a day. I hope that my small part was helpful to the organization.

My expert opinion on plane tickets

They are too expensive. Good night.

Day off

Had a nice Thursday off. I think I appreciate it all the more because I've been working a lot the past few days. Got my tire replaced, with the help of my favorite brother, and had a lovely dinner with my mentoring group from church. I've grown to truly be thankful for this group. At first, I really had my doubts about whether I could really be myself around them and they would actually care about my problems/victories but I see God in them, using them and working in them, and it's so encouraging. Plus they're just a fun bunch. :) We had a good laugh over trying to push my mentor's extremely heavy TV back into place (she just got it repaired and it was too heavy for her to move into its proper location on her own) by sitting on the floor, placing our feet on the set, and shoving it in with all four of our weight combined.

Trouble sleeping

Weird day. Lately I keep waking up around 5:30-5:45am, even though I usually fall asleep around midnight. I feel perfectly rested at first, but my mind is like "Body, what are you doing? You definitely did not get enough sleep. Take advantage of the hour you have left!" so I just stay in bed and eventually get sleepy. But then the sleepiness lasts through the whole day. I'm chalking it up to stress? Lots of things on my mind these days.

Then work.. it's nice to work all day, and then have no responsibilities whatsoever afterward (ie no schoolwork), but I was literally about to go bananas doing the same. repetitive. thing. over and over and over again today. Monday is ok because I'm recharged from the weekend, Tuesday I get a little tired of it, but by Wednesday I'm sooo over it. While I'm thankful for the job and experience, super glad that it's only temporary.

And then I'm driving home, and my car starts shaking violently as I'm driving. Turns out I had a flat tire. :( Sigh.. thankfully I'm off tomorrow so I don't have to worry about getting to work and have time to get it replaced.

Yeah.. so weird day.

It's official!

Yay! My acceptance into dental school truthfully did not feel real until I got this letter today! Even though I knew I technically got in because I held up my end of the deal this year, and there wasn't really any suspense as I was opening my mail, it somehow didn't take away from the giddiness of seeing those words written down on an official letterhead. :) Praise God for getting me through these past couple of semesters and leading me here.

Now I just gotta throw down an $800 deposit.. WOO. Still excited... yay....

I take responsibility for myself

They cannot take away our self-respect if we do not give it to them. 
-Gandhi

On a completely different note, I'm putting up my post from the other day that I couldn't submit because Blogger was being wack.. I ended up just saving it somewhere else. So I've really only missed 1 day so far..

Regret

Randomly started thinking about the idea of regret while I was walking/running. Like everyone in the world, there are some things in my past that I wish I had/hadn't done, but for the most part, my philosophy is that everything happens for a reason. If I make a mistake, I learn a lesson. If I choose a different path, God will still use wherever I end up for his glory. But at the same time, I try to minimize the "what if I had just (insert action here)" thoughts in my head by actually (insert action here) before it's too late. I think this is a recent development, as a way of learning from past regrets.

Fail

Did not post the past 2 days because 1. Blogger had a meltdown on me and 2. I was waiting for an opportunity to write yesterday but then I forgot.

Edit 05/16/11: Posted the entry from said meltdown (Thursday).

Jambalaya

Attempted to make a poor man’s jambalaya today.

Essentially, I did not feel like buying all these herbs and spices that the recipe I was looking at called for, and reduced it down to a $1 Kroger Italian seasoning blend. Aww yeah.. getting fancy up in here! But for real, it just isn’t economic for me to buy $3/$5/etc canisters of thyme/bay leaves/etc (respectively) when I know I’m rarely going to use them. So off to a ghetto fabulous start.

It turned out just ok due to a series of mishaps. First, was the above-mentioned “improper” seasoning, but that really wasn’t a big deal. The main problem was that I did not have a big enough pot/pan for everything! I couldn’t add the meat back in with the other ingredients because the pan was already brimming with water that I added for the rice. In the end, I had bland, but nicely cooked rice/vegetables, and really salty chicken/sausage. I would have liked to let them mingle together as they cooked to balance it all, but that’s life. I had to eat at least a bite of meat to counter the blandness of everything else, and a bite of everything else to counter the saltiness of the meat. aka it wasn’t cohesive.

In conclusion, next time I will:
-Still use the same seasoning, if others aren’t available. Ain’t no shame with cutting a few corners if it works.
-Find a bigger pot. I would say to reduce portions, but honestly, what am I going to do with half a can of diced tomatoes? Well, I guess there are tons of possibilities, so..
-Reduce portions, if applicable

That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet.

My friend randomly invited me to go see Romeo and Juliet in Maymont Park today. I've never gone to an outdoor play like this, so I was game. It was packed! And we came late, so we sat kinda far away and couldn't really hear anything. We ended up leaving during intermission. Even still, it was a good experience. The weather was nice, and I liked the ambiance of sitting around, watching a live-acted play. I would go again.. only next time bring food, folding chairs, and show up earlier. And maybe brush up on my Shakespeare.. it's been a while since I've read R&J and I kept having to think back to my English lit days to remember who was who (especially since I really could not hear anything they were saying). But this is one of the many little things to check out in Richmond.. hopefully I'll never run out of them while I'm living here!

And if you have a minute why don't we go, talk about it somewhere only we know

Glee cover of Keane-Somewhere Only We Know

Randomly found this when I was searching for the original version on Youtube, and I have to say, Glee does it some kind of justice. And I say that as someone who loooooooooves the Keane version and is not a Gleek (or whatever they're called).

Had an almost full work day.. came in a couple hours late, but I probably won't be able to get away with that anymore. :T I forgot how exhausting it can be! Until this week (when I'm picking up more hours), I would still have enough energy at the end of the day to go out for a run, but now all I want to do when I get home is pass. out. I think I'm gonna try to run anyway.. the weather has been too awesome to waste! :)

D.5 no more!

Yay! Officially done with school as of 9:00am today! Took my test, turned that puppy in, and as a celebration... worked all day. Ha..

The turnaround for the test results today was pretty fast-secured my A in phys. Praise the Lord for real, because at this time yesterday, I did not think that was possible. I realized that my study habits follow a distinct pattern, and that it's the last few weeks of the semester that really define my grades.. and because I have oh so much time now, I drew up a graph a la MS Paint illustrating this. It was pretty fun making it.. more graphs in the future of this blog?

Happy Mother's Day

To the best woman that I know-my mom! I don't know a stronger person.

I was rooting around my computer for a picture to post, and randomly found a series of shots at the airport when I was a 1st or 2nd year in college. I still remember that.. I think we were coming back from Atlanta, but there was a major delay in our flight, causing us to stay at the airport nearly overnight. I was probably bored out of my mind and took pics to kill time.

Anyway, this reminds me that my passion for travel and seeing new places was definitely instilled by my mom from a very young age. So thankful that she sacrificed time/money to take me on vacations and showing me that life extends beyond the little city I grew up in.

We're only taking turns, holding this world

The Fray-Trust Me

I guess this can be classified as one of my favorite songs, because it's been a few years now since I first heard it and I still haven't gotten sick of it.

Feeling so restless right now. Spending another Saturday night hitting the books. This cycle of studying over the weekend for a Monday test is getting really old.. three weekends in a row! But I'm so close. The final stretch before I'm free!

Putt putt

Played miniature golf today. It was actually fun.. especially because I hit a hole in one! :D So exciting! And then I hit another one in 2 shots. Wish I had a picture to document the awesomeness. :)

Weeping Woman

Give me a museum and I'll fill it.
-Pablo Picasso

Went to the VMFA to see the Picasso exhibit. I'm not too sure if I'm a fan.. in it's entirety, it evoked a strong sense of sadness in me. With revisions of the same technique in a given period, it was like he was trying to understand something about the human character, but couldn't quite grasp it. A pretty lonely thought. Not to mention pieces like Guernica. I guess my emotion is a testament to the power of art, and maybe I can appreciate it later. But right now, sad and depressing is not what I need.

The title of my post is the title of this painting.

B is for NOT GOOD ENOUGH

Somewhere in me, an Asian mom is incubating.

So I got my grade for histology. 95 on the final exam, but B as an overall class grade bc I messed up earlier in the semester.. due to laziness and random distractions in my life.

Honestly, I was mad! It was (and is still) killing me that I have this on my dental school record now. Yet everyone I've told is like "-______- Are you being serious.. chill the freak out. It is not the end of the world." And when it comes down to it, they're right. Plus, it could've been worse. I could have ended the semester with a C and gotten kicked out of the program, soooo.. yeah. Could have been A LOT worse.

So I am chalking it up to the Asian mom in me getting some training.. my imaginary kids better be getting 4.0s! Just kidding.. I will love them unconditionally..

Tousle me softly

Went all-out grocery shopping for the first time in a long time. I usually just pick up 1-2 items that I need at the moment when I go, but I've been eating so unhealthily lately bc I've been running out of food. It's so much easier to pick up dinner or eat random carbs lying around.. aka haven't gone out of sheer laziness!

I replaced a lot of items that I ran out of as well.. like this!

  

Just the shampoo. Also, I did not add the hearts but they're cute. Thanks Google! 

The best shampoo ever for people with thick, crazy hair! I do not have typical Asian stick-straight hair. It is really wavy and sometimes has a life of its own. I don't usually believe the hype in the front of the bottle (ie I was convinced that shampoos for curly hair vs straight hair were basically the same product in a different package) but this really does bring out that "tousled" look in my hair compared to other shampoos I've used. I love it! Except my hair is really long now, so I have to use a lot.. and run out of it faster..

Odd couple

Kimchi and cheese is honestly one of the best food combinations ever. Macaroni and cheese is not complete without a nice side of kimchi. Or in my case today, pizza! Just so many different ways to eat them together.

It's like trying to make sense of two very different people as bf/gf. At first, you're like "hmm.. i really don't get it," but then you see all the chemistry they have together and BAM! They're winning all kinds of cutest couple awards. And kimchi and cheese are definitely adorable.

Anyway. Done with histology for the rest of my life.. until dental boards? And now all I have to do is survive the next week.

Summer is just around the corner.

Sunday morning

Faith is not conjuring up, through an act of your will, a sense of certainty that something is going to happen. No, it is recognizing God's promise as an actual fact, believing it is true, rejoicing in the knowledge of that truth, and then simply resting because God said it.

-May 1 entry of Streams in the Desert

Did not make it to church today, and instead did a short devotional. I tend to do the former than the latter when I seek faith, because it is so hard to just let go of control and let God work in me. I like the phrase "actual fact". God's promise is an actual fact, just like we breathe in O2 molecules, or 2+2=4.

Histo all day! :( Ok, so tooth development is pretty crazy to learn about.. but even still, I can't wait until this class is officially over tomorrow!