The eclipse!

I tried to take a picture of the lovely eclipse… but I remembered that my brother had taken our tripod… so basically all I got were blurs in the sky. Well, actually, you could see the moon… but it looked like it had crashed into the passing aircrafts as if it were an asteroid. I also have a few that looked like we have two moons in the sky… haha. There were a few shots I got on accident when my lovely dog jumped on me–these were rather funny since it looked as if an asteroid came landing on my neighbour’s roof.

So, I realized that trying to sit still in the frigid cold was too much work for me… and ended up making use of the blurs and wrote out my name with the eclipse.

Then, I got cocky and did it in cursive [almost]. Haha.

Scrabble, night drive, & the Roxbury!

Sherene and I went over to Nich’s to bake cookies and play scrabble! I haven’t played scrabble in two years. The last time I played was when I was helping out at an Alzheimer’s unit with old folks.

While we were playing scrabble, his folks [they're so cute] went to go tanning. At 9 in the PM? They’re getting ready for the Caribbean Cruise they’ll be on the next week!

Nich keeps his scrabble letters in an old sock…

it says “im awesome”

Nich brought out the scrabble dictionary. I’ve never played scrabble with a dictionary before! I had to keep checking it though, if it would accept words like “tranny”. I was so excited to discover it did!

we learned a new word: flam.

Nich took a picture of my putting “sexy” down.

Nich and I were SO CLOSE, but he beat me. But Sherene was far behind… hahaha because apparently I kept stealing her moves. Whatever! That’s loser talk. I’m kidding, I love her.

After scrabble, we decided to go for a drive and find the scariest parts around here and tell ghost stories. We ended up finding places that were TOO scary to tell ghost stories because we ended up screaming the whole time and driving away as fast as we could.

There were so many roads that branched off into the darkness and even with lights you could only see a couple of feet ahead. The dirt roads were lined with HUGE pot holes–already I was like… that is a bad sign… and it looked kind of like a trap for cars like in all the horrible movies! But what did we do? Keep going. Then we realized it was a dead end… and we were surrounded by these scary looking country barns and old butcher places that looked like they’ve been around for DECADES. That was the scariest part of the journey. Then we saw a scarecrow… right by it and that’s when we booked it. Haha. BUT, those damn potholes… we had to drive so slow, THEN we booked it.

Then we drove to the transit center parking garage–it has an open top, so we drove to the top to look over most of the city (the downtown part, anyways).

she sucks at floating, he’s better.

Then we drove to my house and watched Night at the Roxbury. And definitely danced around.

And that was my Friday night.

Will you be my valentine if I’m a world away?

I’ve been dreading valentine’s day. I’ve never liked it. Single or taken, I’ve never had a good one. This year was one of the best ones, though. I love all of my valentines.

The girls and I had a lovely afternoon tea party! We made many lovely treats and fattening foods. And ate them all!

There were maybe ten people in all of my classes today… is everyone skipping for Valentine’s Day? Are you serious?

Alex drove down to find me in the university’s parking lot and bring me lovely roses.

Then I met up with my mother, grandmother, and uncle at a Korean BBQ restaurant–which is delicious as always!

My mother’s favourite valentine’s gift is a gift of candies… which are my least favourite gift (candies or anything edible).

Venting.

Yesterday was a crazy day… & I just got home a little bit ago.

I had my biological anthropology midterm yesterday afternoon. It was awful. I couldn’t focus for most of the exam. And, I was about 15 minutes late, as well.

Of course, I had almost died at the most convenient time of right-before-the-midterm. I left my house a bit early to assure myself that I would have enough time. I arrived at the intersection waiting to turn left, staring down the opposing lane of oncoming traffic if there was a spot I could sneak through–but there wasn’t, only a small spot for the car in front of me followed by a load of cars. So I turned my gaze back to the other cars. Suddenly a huge black truck races into the intersection and takes out the car right in front of me.

The car that was in front of me had already began turning so I had pulled forward a bit into the intersection when the truck took him out. The car spun around nearly hitting me twice–Thank God he didn’t.

Pieces of broken glass cluttered the intersection and everything stopped. The man in the car was bracing his neck and head. Everyone was watching to see what was going to happen and calling for help. Then the black truck drove off in one direction leaving the man in the car alone in the intersection. He let go of his head and drove off in the opposite direction like he had important things to do despite the state of his car.

Meanwhile, I was experiencing severe stress and anxiety that (1) I was almost hit, (2) I just witnessed a car accident, (3) “Oh my god, that car was right in front of me!”, (4) I have a midterm to take, (5) “Oh shit, the midterm is in five minutes!”, and (6) my heart felt like it was going to pound its way out of my chest.

People slowly started to drive across the intersection again, so I finally made my left-turn. Then five minutes later, a car nearly turned in to me while I was driving. This really confused me. There were NO CARS for the entire block ahead of me, and he decided it was convenient to wait until I was next to him in the other lane to make his turn!

Finally, I managed to arrive at the university parking. Luckily I found a space–even though it was the farthest away–because many people usually can’t find parking spaces. However, the lot has one machine to pay for everything–and it is incredibly too slow to keep up with modern times. It didn’t help either that one gal kept inserting her folded-up dollar bills [insisting they were flat!] despite the machine’s obvious disliking and resisting of the dollars. After about five minutes of that [five minutes can be excruciatingly long] she took out her debit card to use, which it accepted. Then she said in exasperation to the machine “You never take my bills! Only my card!”. This annoyed me because she obviously used it man times before. She was holding everyone up. She was also missing her exam. And… she had another form of payment she knew worked but chose not to use it until she had successfully annoyed everyone in line.

When I finally made it to my exam, I couldn’t even think about the answers because my heart flipped thrice over from the whole car accident experience. It didn’t help that all the questions were phrased awkwardly and all the answers were pretty much:
a. [one solution]
b. [one solution]
c. [one solution]
d. both a and c
e. both b and c
f. both a and b
g. all of the above
h. none of the above

Because of that, I spent way too long on each question thinking is it all of the above? Or just these two? As pretty much everyone else in the class had done.

My confidence level in that exam = Low, bordering non-existent.

However, I risked driving again that night to downtown to hang out with Julia and Jess. I had spent the entire weekend being anti-social and studying for my exams. We had a lot of fun. We went to a nice park near/on Broadway/Capitol Hill around 10 in the PM. The basketball court was full of guys playing a hockey-type game on their bicycles. This was amusing because every once in a while one of their sticks would go under another’s tire and flip them over. However, the most amusing game was the dodgeball game happening in the tennis courts. It was all-guys, with the exception of one girl. I wish I had my camera, there were way too many interesting moments.

Then we went back to the apartment, had some tea and strawberry hookah, and then watched Beowolf. Everyone there said it was an amazing movie and I must watch it… so I did. I guess it was alright?

It was a fun night, met more new kids. I think I get my psych exam back today!

MIDTERMS…

I hate when you go to class, and watch a ridiculous video or documentary–say… lesbian chimp porn for example–because I always have to laugh, but everyone is so serious! They’re taking it ALL IN… while I get to feel un-scholarly and juvenile.

MIDTERMS….

• PSYCH…
• URBAN STUDIES…
• BIO-ANTHRO…

& on top of that i have like a 92837520834827 page research paper I have to write for psych… & I have no idea what topic to do.

our version of a banana split? So ANNA [THE LOVE OF MY LIFE] & I watched Hot Rod [along w/ Atonement & The Ex]but it inspired us.

Ami did it too!

Oh, & I keep playing oregon trail on facebook… I was so annoyed w/ kids that kept sending invitations… until one boring morning I decided to play it and now it won’t let me study. Damnit.

Girls night!

Well, a mini girls night because some couldn’t make it this time!

Consists of… my favourite girls, dinner at INDOCHINE, and our very own, private theatre room!

We are amazing.

Happy Holidays.

Merry Christmas.

My brother and his lovely girlfriend came up from Palo Alto, CA for the holiday :] I finally got to meet her! And I love her so far–so that is quite good!

On a sad note, my iPod froze a few days before Christmas… fantastic.

But, my brother thinks he might know how to bring it back to life again! Hurrah!

New Years is coming up… I really want a sequin dress for the eve!

I should probably make some resolutions that I can actually keep to next year…

Winter adventures.

Julia and I met up in Seattle, waiting for Jessica–apparently she lost her driver’s license haha. So while we were waiting we decided to go look for a hookah bar. We didn’t find it. Everyone gave us different, horribly incorrect directions. Finally, we decided to go to the 24-hr Starbucks. We stayed there from 1-2 in the AM when Jessica finally made it out here… but the hookah bars were already closed anyways haha. So we had no idea what we were going to do. Until, Jessica realized that she had her own hookah in her car already… which was stupid because then we didn’t have to waste all our time! But, we had fun nonetheless.

LOVE: that picture of Jess
HATE: how bad you have to pee after beer… Haha.

The three of us came together again a few nights later to see I Am Legend at IMAX. However, when Jess and I arrived Julia said we weren’t allowed to see the movie because we weren’t twenty-one yet. I guess they decided to have a mixer type thing and serve alcohol before the showing because it was a special… and you had to buy the tickets together–Which, for us, SUCKS. haha. So we ended up seeing The Beatles Laser Show… I mean, I love the Beatles, but we didn’t drive all the way out to downtown and pay for parking at Seattle Center to watch a Beatles Laser Show. Parking was extra expensive because there was a sporting event going on at the same time. Lame. I don’t even say lame… Haha. The show was alright, but we all felt like we were on drugs. Then we left and went to get thai food–which is the BEST :]–on Broadway.

Jess and I were walking back to her car, when she realized she doesn’t have her car keys. She left them half-way out of the ignition… so here we were standing in the freezing, frigid cold! And, on Broadway. But, it turned out to be fine, because I guess there were many people willing to help us break into a car. It was great.

November.

Not much happened in November… so I guess I’ll just include photos taken this month since I’m not remembering much of it now, haha.

I did a fashion show around the start of the month. It was so much fun, I hadn’t done a show since over a year now. Plus, this one I got to keep some of the clothes! The other shows, usually we just get a bag [a BIG bag] of free goodies or promotional items. I received a lot of t-shirts, People’s Liberation skinny jeans [my favourite], and a romper. Couldn’t ask for anything better! I’m not a model, I just think that doing small shows is fun and exhilarating. I’d rather be designing the clothes, though. I also like to take advantage of spontaneous opportunities, because there’s no way of knowing if I’d get the chance again.

I’ve been working a lot. I’ve also been spending money I don’t have–or money I won’t have… after I spend it all. It’s all being spent basically on tuition, gas, and clothes–there’s a bit spent on music and food, but not much. I bought these badass cowboy boots! I’ve been wanting a nice pair for years, but I never found one that I loved enough to the point where I wouldn’t return it [point of no return?]. My boy in Texas started working in the shoes department [total hell, yeah?] so I asked him to get me some cowboy boots haha. But, then I found these babies. I tried them on for fun and started walking around the store in them, and then I realized… I must have them. Hooray for employee discounts! But, employee discounts are killing my wallet, I probably only save a mere fraction of what I’m actually making… Somebody needs to make me stop! Shopping is a dangerous thing… but I’ve become a tiny, teensy bit better at being more selective… :] *sigh* Lana, what are we going to do with you.

I guess I also paid homage to Wes Anderson and the Life Aquatic in November?

Thanksgiving. I usually dislike my family’s Thanksgiving get-together. It always is a bit odd or weird. There was on Thanksgiving a couple of years ago when my older brother came back home, and my -technically- only female cousin joined us. She had never been to our Thanksgiving dinner before–we have a big family, so a good number of us live in Washington, she was in California, and most of the others live in Hawaii. That was the best Thanksgiving I’ve had, because I suppose everyone was just happy that the two of them could make it to the table. We all shared one big table and just talked and shared stories the entire time. All other years, including this one, there’s about four different tables and everyone is separated the whole day and it’s not really a family thing.

Then… my best and I went to see [leslie] FEIST at the Paramount. She was FABULOUS. It was lovely because I missed out on seeing my beloved Broken Social Scene in concert. So, it partially made up for that tragic fact. Haha. We both got done with our classes, got ready, RUSH RUSH RUSH, then we probably drove into about three different parking garages and then turned around in them because we weren’t fond of the rate… or their garage closed a bit early and we would have not been able to get our car back haha. So we finally found a decent one, bumped into random old friends, collected our tickets, and made it in!

The Paramount is amazing as always. We got to sit at the balcony :] Her opening act was a fellow also from Canada, but he was amazing with his guitar as well. Leslie Feist is adorable, the concert was perfect. She also changed up the lyrics for some of her songs, which was lovely. There was a gal in the back playing “shadow master” for the background images–it was quite interesting. However, there was a point in the concert where a group of gay guys sat in front of us, right in the middle of her show, and just kept whipping out their iPhones. Haha, it was a little bit annoying, but it made me feel less bad about taking out my camera! So I did! We all started dancing along when “My Moon My Man”, “Sea Lion”, and “1234″ were played–as was everyone else!

When she left the stage, everyone wouldn’t stop cheering, so she came out for an encore. She probably did like six extra songs. I don’t remember how many, but it was more than I’ve ever had at any other encore!

Then we went out to take pictures at the balcony, then headed back out to find our car while dancing and probably scaring people in the street. Lovely.

I found this somewhere along the way:

& I loved it. Haha.

So concludes November.

R.I.P. Bawny McQuistin.

I don’t understand how the drunk-driver in the deadly wrong-way crash on I-5 can plead not-guilty. But! Maybe that’s just me. [http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/updates/story/185081.html.]

Bawny, you’re loved and you’re missed.

You had a thriving personality and lit up the room wherever you went. After ninth grade we went to different high schools, but the memories of when we were together always will be treasured. You had an amazing soul and always knew how to make any situation better. May angels lead you in, love.