上 。。。下 It’s all a Rollercoaster

It’s early in the evening on a Saturday night, yet here I sit… in my apartment… alone.

I woke up this morning feeling sick, sad, and blue. My throat was a little sore, my body was achy and tired, and friends were leaving. It’s that transitional time where some friends visit home, other friends move home and new (potential) friends move in. All of these things overlap over 3 to 4 weeks so there are many goodbyes and many more hellos.

I really didn’t think it would be this difficult… but it is.

I know there is Facebook and Skype and all sorts of things to keep in touch with friends overseas… but there is nothing like being able to hug a friend or hold their hand. Especially when you’re feeling down.

So happy to have forged the friendship. So sad to have to say goodbye to their regular physical presence in your life.

Resolutions… You’re Talking Pixels, Right?

One thing I never do at New Years is make resolutions because I have always felt that if there was something I needed to change about myself, why wait until the end of the year to set yourself up for an epic fail by adding so much pressure, right?  Well this year I’ve decided to change it up a bit… only because it was already close to the New Year when I decided to make this change.

I'm on the far-left.

When I was a kid, I’m talking maybe four or five years old, my mother decided that my siblings and I would sing a song together for Easter at church.  Now before I go further, just realize that this is coming from a woman who sings regularly together with her sisters in churches; who’s mother and sisters sang regularly together in churches.  My family is a singing one.  Anyway, I told my mom that I didn’t want to sing.  She didn’t care, she said I was going to do it.

I spent every home rehearsal either begging her to let me out of the “gig” or pouting.  She was not fazed.

Easter morning we get up, get dressed, go to church and when it’s time for us to do our number, I cry through the entire song; I lie to you not.  But even though I cried, I still sang the whole song; I would just like to point that out.  After the performance was over, my mom says to me, “I can’t believe you cried through that entire song!  I’m not going to ask you to sing anymore…” and I responded through tears (and even a snotty nose) “That’s all I wanted!”

I used to tell people this was the reason why I didn’t sing in public like my siblings went on to do along with practically everyone else on my mom’s side of the family.  My mom thought I was making it up or something until about two years ago when we stumbled upon a video recording of this traumatizing moment in my young life.  When I watched it (in agony), I pointed out to my mom that this epic moment in my personal history is the story I relate to people and the reason I don’t sing in public… she just shook her head.

Lately a good friend of mine (who has heard me sing several times) told me that that’s a lame excuse for not singing in public, even though I love to sing; even after that terrible incident… after his encouragement (and a little bit of nagging) I’ve decided that my New Year’s Resolution will be to get over my irrantional fear of singing in public and just do it.  At music gigs or jam sessions… just do it.  So that’s what I’m gonna do.  egh.

I’m definitely gonna have to 頑張って.

Favorite place to shop?

So being in Kobe I now have a disposable income.  I really never had that luxury in college, so I’m enjoying it while I can.  Kobe is known for its metropolitan atmosphere and fashion savvy… and also its bakeries, apparently; which would explain why nearly every other store downtown is a womens shop and about every fourth store is a bakery or parfait place – no lie.

Anyway, after being here a couple of months, I have realized what store I love to shop in most…. the Hyakuen! Hyaku En literally means 100yen and these stores are AWESOME!  My personal favorite chain is Daiso because sure, we have a few back home in the Bay Area, but for some reason, they don’t sell all the same stuff.  Daiso in America is a little more boring.

You can get so much stuff at a Hyakuen for so cheap!  Like, every element of home life exists in these places: plants and gardening, toys, food, pet supplies, stationary, home decorating, craft (knitting, sewing, crochet, etc.), cosmetics, etc. etc. etc.  A new Daiso just opened up near a train station one stop away from my neighborhood. I think everyone knows that’s pretty dangerous, haha!

I could waste so much time in there finding things I just realized I needed…

There are probably some “real” clothing stores I will come to love but for now, the Hyakuen is king.  I mean, I can buy 100% wool yarn for about 1 US dollar!  I worked in a fabric store and couldn’t even get a decent amount of acrylic for $1.  All you can get for a dollar back home is that weird eyelash crap that makes it look like you maimed and killed a muppet.

Anyway… yeah.

Chock-full of Random-ness Today

Christmas is Tuesday. I have absolutely zero funds but the fam all sorta voted on foregoing the traditional Christmas because The Wedding beat it by 10 days and that was an all-too-realistic financial experience. So I have asked the immediate fam: Momma, Daddy, Big Bro, Lil Sis (Big sis and brand new BiL don’t really get presents for Christmas because they’ve gone to Kauai Hawaii and NYC for the honeymoon and still haven’t opened 99% of their wedding gifts).

I want to make everything with stuff already in my stash, so far I think Im doing pretty well, even though only one person will actually receive on the 25th. Moms will get a reusable heating pad, you know the kind with rice in it? I found a tute aqui. I figured it would be pretty awesome to have at work.

Im knitting a cap for Daddy, he’s the only person who will get his gift day-of because we don’t live together and we’ll be doing Christmas breakfast. It’s always sorta hard trying to figure out what my dad wants besides a giant flat-screen HDTV… Big Bro will also be getting a hat, but we went and picked out some dark heather gray yarn for his because he wants a hat like the style that Common wears a lot, only a knit version.

I mean, you can’t fully see the style of hat in this photo, but Common is my #1 celebrity crush, so who cares because he’s just GORGEOUS!

So anyway… the Lil Sis… I don’t know what she wants yet, but I’ll ask her. She’s usually pretty cool about what she wants. Plus, she just got a Pink DS Lite (I’m only slightly jealous… she let’s me play it) so she’s still stoked about that.

Also, I was thinking of creating a Painting as a gift for another friend of mine, I’ve got a spare canvas that just about the right size… but I’ve got to sketch it out first and then think about it. I think it would be a pretty awesome gift and they’d definitely be stoked about it.

In other news, I had an interview last Friday for an internship at a videogame website that I’ve actually had a profile on for about 1.5 years. It’s paid, it’s in The City

(only 3 blocks from my mom’s job/BART [our subway]), and it’s an industry gig. That would be pretty awesome to score, without even thinking about the possibility of free stuff! They want to start the position in the beginning of the year, so I won’t find out for another week because they’re interviewing several candidates and I was the first one. Sooo…. hopefully they liked me best! [in that photo, btw, I can totally see in the almost bottom left-hand corner the building I had my last internship in; right next door to Second Life offices!]

I guess that’s it for now. I’m going to go watch The Little Mermaid in Spanish and get some work done on Daddy’s hat. Merry Christmas everyone!

Picked up a new crafty book!

It’s the end of the semester and so, book buy-back time. I didn’t have very many books this semester, so I was just expecting to sell back my books and get some lunch with the money they gave me. Before I left the house this morning, though, I grabbed a book I’d never returned from a class I’d taken probably 3 semesters ago.

So on campus, 5 bucks for the first book, $7.50 for the second book and a whopping $28 for the oldy oldy book! I wasn’t expecting that much. With some extra cash I went and checked out what the bookstore had to offer. I picked up LOTR: RotK widescreen version for only $4. Sure, Return of the King is like, 4 years old, but that’s the one DVD of the trilogy that we didn’t have, and it happens to be my fave one.

I also bought a cute little planner for next year, and a book from a Smithsonian show called “Captive Passage: The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Making of the Americas” for only $8, it was like, 60% off. It looks really interesting and Dad and I have been trading Black History books lately, which is really cool. Makes for good discussions.

The final thing I got was a more recent release title Subversive Seasmter.

I saw this book earlier in the semester when it was first released but I was flat broke. So I’m totally glad I could pick it up today. Another awesome point is that their Store, Stitch, is located in San Francisco! I go to school in The City! I live here in the Bay Area! I totally want to go there now and check them out.

The projects in the book look so fun(ky) I can’t wait to try them out. After I finish my last paper of the semester tomorrow. I’ll be going to bed now, though. So good night!

She’s not Bridezilla, everyone else is!

Swear; like this whole wedding thing makes me want to elope when I find The One. I’m the Maid of Honor so it’s my duty to help keep the Bride from stressin’ out too much, right? Well, my sister is probably one of the more mellow people of the bunch even though she’s still got mad stress from trying to decide between what she and her fiance want and what other people want.

Mom, who’s is charge of decorating the church and the reception hall, making all the flower arrangements and coordinating almost all of the groom’s family who are here from another country, is also totally buggin out. I live with Mom so I hear her vent. And on top of that, it’s also a touchy subject planning how she and my father will interact throughout the ceremony. They’ve been divorced for 11 years but for a lot of stuff we still take a LOT of caution.

Then today at the Dress Rehearsal there was such drama when one of the bridal party got mad and stormed out during a run-through because they were dissatisfied with their placement. They didn’t want to be on the end, and they didn’t understand why they could not stand on the stage (even though myself and my younger sister, the other MoH, are the only bridesmaids onstage). It was an extremely selfish move and caused undue stress to the future To-Be’s and to Mom as well.

To try and mellow them both out, I kind of had to just tell them to screw it. Screw the tantrum. This person likes throwing hissy fits and having people come back and beg them to change their mind. So screw them for this rude outburst and when they realize what they’ve done, they’ll be sorry. And I’m glad Big Sis/Bride has firmly stated that she and her fiance will not be making any concessions for anyone, they won’t beg, and they will do this their way. Seriously, the ceremony is two days away, they shouldn’t have to change anything or deal with something like this.

I really wanted to say Come on, dude, where’s your head at? Are you for real??!?!? I mean, they’re family and all, but I don’t have a high tolerance level for that type of immaturity… especially if you’re nearing 30… it’s ridiculous.

So tomorrow is the last day before the wedding. Still a lot to do. A lot of stuff can happen. I hope everyone else tries their best to help destress the couple…. and I will start looking at Drive-Thru chapels so that when my day comes, I can avoid the drama.

Word.

I gave thanks… a lot

Surprisingly I only ate once today. I’ve been so drained all day because of trekking across the Bay Area to various gatherings. First off we went to Brentwood to spend time with a small family from our church. We had dinner there last year and we thought it would be nice to do it again this year. For some dumb reason, my younger sis had to work until 3 today. She works in a small electronics store. I say, who needs to buy a radio on Thanksgiving? The only places that should be open on Thanksgiving are the grocery store, gas stations, and Denny’s/IHOP/Whatever for people who can’t cook.

Anyway, after that we (me, my brother, 2 sisters, and my bro-in-law) drove 50 miles to Richmond to spend time with my Dad’s side of the family. We hadn’t spent the last 2 with them, so we felt a need. Especially since the wedding is in three weeks, my grandmother is in town, and one of my Uncles just had his first child two months ago. It’s about time he had a baby, he’s around 40 and the last of a brood of 7 to have his own children. I have the “finally” attitude because he is my favorite uncle and I know he’s going to make a great dad.

Nicknames are big in my family, my Dad, his older sister, and this uncle don’t go by their first names; my brother (who is a Junior) doesn’t go by his first name either, and no one ever really calls me by my full name. My Uncle’s nickname is Bucky (not because of a dental problem, but because he was kicky in the womb), so everyone’s been coming up with potential names for his little boy. Some suggestions were “BJ” (Bucky Junior), “Lil Buck”, or “Baby Bucky” (my contribution). My sister suggested “Young Buck”. I said that was cool….. if she wanted him to grow up to be a rapper. My Uncle’s GF didn’t like any of them, haha. She said he’s just going to be called “Evan”. He’s cute anyway. I see both of them in him.

After being there for a few hours, we then drove about 15 miles to my Grandfather’s house where my mom and aunts and uncles were. I was exhausted and still full so I didn’t eat anything. I just sat on the couch and sort of had conversation. I think Grandaddy was on the same page because he was in the middle of everyone and I saw him kind of nodding off in his lazy chair. I don’t blame you, Grandaddy. You’re 80. You’re still pretty darn lucid with your right mind about you, but… you’re 80. Eh, I’ll give him credit… he looks 70, but he cooked a lot and it was a long day for sure.

After we left Grandaddy’s, we drove another 40 miles to get home and everyone is dead tired. Mom and Big Sis are going, but I know I’m not shopping tomorrow morning. For one, I’m broke; and for another, I have to work from 8-2 and I know after that the last thing I’ll want to do is go shopping. In fact, I’m about to go hit the sack right now.

Niiiiight.

As if I needed another thing to snatch my time…

Last week my sister and her fiancee gave me a Target giftcard for my birthday. The first decent thing I bought with it was Kingdom Hearts II for my PS2. “A videogame?!”, you ask… yes. That’s one of my other hobbies/loves. And not just the ordinary play-a-level-or-two-and-call-it-a-day games… I love Role Playing Games and Platformers. The kind of games that you can easily pour 80+ hours into and STILL not have done everything.

If that wasn’t enough, I also picked up embroidery this week, with the help of this book my mom got for me.

So far it’s pretty good, relatively easy without the other jumble of needlework activities thrown in. It seemed kind of hard to find a book strictly about hand embroidery. I didn’t want machine embroidery or cross stitch and just about every publication I saw jumbled them together. Also, the patterns/diagrams (whatever they’re called) are pretty and something I would actually want to use instead of just 2 out of 30 projects that I might think about doing.

Another thing I have to work on is that cotillion dress. I have the bodice pretty much done. I know that’s the hardest/most complicated part and if I buckled down, I could really get it done tomorrow… but then there’s the gaming and the embroidery also calling me.

Oh, and another piece of the pie is the fact that I could totally be working on the 10-page research paper for my music appreciation class. Yes, it’s not due for another month, but it is due only 4 days after the wedding and who knows that during that last week before the ceremony everything is going to be crazy for this maid of honor. Aaaand there’s my final painting assignment that I’m pretty sure is going to take 20 or so hours to complete.

I like school, but I’m kind of over this semester >.< Now would be the time for Time Budgeting and dividing my day up into different necessary tasks… but this week feels a lot like Christmas vacation because I have no school all week. It’s like an early taste. I know how I am the first couple of days… I know I’ll shape up in 48 hours… It always get’s cranked out in the end.

Current Work in Progress…

So my birthday was cool. It was mellow, but it was nice. That’s how I like things to be. We went to dinner at my favorite restaurant, then later we just kicked it, watched moves, and talked.

Another cool thing was that I didn’t have to go to school the next day. Awesome. So I took some of my Birthday cash and went to the Fabric store. I bought a couple yards of glittery black and green costume satins at $1.99/yd. Then I bought a pattern for $1.99 also. My friend’s cotillion is on the first and I want to make the dress. I can’t afford to go out and buy a party dress so at a total cost of around $15, it’ll be a whole lot cheaper. Plus, I know that no one else will have this same dress, which I love.

I’m going to use Simplicity #4070, view B

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I’ll post some pictures when I’m done.

Oh, and my brother’s pirate costume was a big hit! Thanks in part to the coat I made him. Check it out:

Starting late on Halloween Costumes, eh?

My brother wants to be a pirate for Halloween… go figure. We went out to the Spirit store to check out their stuff and I must admit, everything is really wack, so I decided that I would make him part of his costume. I’m using Simplicity #4923

I’m only making the jacket, though, seeing as how I only have 1 day to do it. I thought I’d be nice and do it last minute because the last time I tried to make him something, it turned out really horribly. I tried to make him some shorts and I measured his waist just fine, he’s only a 34 and they didn’t have that size on the pattern, so I went the next size up. I forgot that even though my brother has a skinny frame, he is still quite bootylicious.

Needless to say, he did not want to sport some nearly-skintight shorts so… that was the end of that. I figured it was time for little sis to try again. And I figure, there’s less room for error with a jacket, right?

I have Tuesday off so I hope this turns out well. On the plus side, my brother is the kind of person who would actually wear a pirate jacket out on a regular basis, he’s just a little funky like that (but then, on the other hand, so am I).

I’ll post a pic of the finished project. For now, it’s bedtime because I have class tomorrow. yay. :-/

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