one grande nonfat almond latte a day @ $3.12

workdays in march = 23

total spent on lattes in march = $71.76



hmmm.

pictures from the whistler trip are posted now. check it out trip was awesome. there was actually quite a bit of powder and the snowboarding was amazing. we got such a workout on saturday. all of us. sunday was just beautiful, with gorgeous blue skies and sun sun sun. i think i sat for 10 minutes by myself on top of the rabbit tracks run just soaking in the fresh air and reveling in the beauty of my surroundings. i really love how i can just get away and literally leave the country for a weekend...be so away from everything. i really needed that over the last few days. and ah, the idylwood inn, how comfortable you are to us. it was interesting to be back when there wasn't as much snow at the bottom...like, i could actually see the entire deck of the townhouse we stayed at this time. this was a fun trip with some excellent snowboarding, good food, chill shisha. yay.



while hanging out near the longhorn in whistler, pierre and i saw tammy from the apprentice walk by. random.



aaron was accepted to harvard design school today. congrats little bro. he was also recently accepted to a very cool school in italy, near milan. tough decision.



soooo warm in seattle today, hitting around 73 degrees. jigna and i ate lunch in the sun. 'twas nice. sadly, it's not going to last as the forecast for the rest of the week is in the 50's. bleh.



bummer, jayhawks lost to georgia tech yesterday. in overtime too.



i think the boy is on the beach right now. so jealous.

argh, the metal frame futon that i bought over the weekend finally got delivered......unassembled. i wasn't aware of this! ugh. and it's not an easy ikea-like assembly either...these instructions suck. i don't feel like dealing with this right now.

i love that i have such great friends to talk to. there are too many people from work that apparently visit my weblog for me to rant about work issues. if you're interested, just call me.



right now, i'm just counting down to when i'll be sitting at the top of whistler, breathing in the fresh air and enjoying the scenery. two more days...

the rainy weather today reflects how i feel right now.

wow, i can't believe it---kentucky and stanford are already out of the tournament. well, lucky for kansas--that increases our chances of getting into the final four. i don't know much about UAB...plus, i don't know much about the new coach for ku. this year's tournament has started off all funky. cross 'dem fingers....



after months and months and months of persuasion from friends, i finally caved in and bought a TIVO series2 DVR. ha ha. i have nothing against tivo and think it's the coolest thing...it's just the idea of throwing more $$$ towards my tv viewing habits. [sigh] i must say, it's been pretty cool so far...no more scrambling around trying to find a blank tape to tape something. plus, since i got the series 2, i got the home media option so that i can program shows from the tivo website at work...i don't even have to physically be at home to remember to record something. pretty cool. also, it'll be cool to get music from my computer playing through the tivo..and hence, my stereo system downstairs. ah, but now i've got to get a wireless router and everything...still haven't quite gotten that "home network" set up quite yet. it's funny how i lived off of dial-up up until a few months ago. as gadgety of a girl i like to think i am, i'm pretty old school in other ways.



been productive in the furniture shopping department too--over the weekend, i finally got a futon for my guest bedroom so that, well, guests have a place to sleep....and a new dining table--my current one is too small. yay!



over the weekend, brendan invited me to his friend simon's loft party---turns out it's the exact same loft that my friend, scott, lived in for years. wow--i have so many memories of the crazy parties that scott threw there. i was walking down memory lane just being there. what's funny is that the mural that eugene painted for the miami vice party is still there...and the paper skeleton & fake cobwebs i put up right outside the door for scott's last halloween party are also still there.

The NCAA tournament has started this year...but the regions have all been renamed to Atlanta, St. Louis, E. Rutherford & Phoenix---what the hell? That's strange and confusing. Kansas's first test should be Kentucky...we'll see.

Banff is a really beautiful little town---the scenery there is incredibly gorgeous and breathtaking, no doubt about that. We got in on Thursday evening, just enough time to lose ourselves in the massive Fairmont Banff Springs hotel and get a full fondue dinner at the Grizzly House...yummy. In addition to the cheese fondue, we cooked ourselves up some prawns, scallops, lobster, beef, buffalo, elk & venison on a hot granite block. What a Canadian meal, eh? This place was quite interesting--there were little phones at every table...and you could call up another table. Talk about a pick-up joint. Friday was my spa day, which was way too self-indulgent for words. This was the first time I've ever done anything of the sort: a turkish scrub, massage, facial, spa lunch, soak in a Hungarian mineral pool, manicure & pedicure. Whew. On Saturday, we hit the slopes of Sunshine Village for our half day....god, it was gorgeous. We were lucky as it was super sunny and the visibility was 100%. There are 3 mountains at Sunshine: Goat Mountain, Lookout & Mt Standish. Since it was just a half day, we expected to just stay on one mountain all day....but, much to our disappoint, this mountain wasn't as big as we expected and we hit all 3 in the 4 hours we were there. As Pierre put it: "it's like a big, beautiful Snoqualmie". The runs were incredibly short (like, 5-10 minutes) and many areas were very flat, making it not that fun for snowboarders. Definitely a skiers' mountain. Any spots of powder lasted for about 5 seconds. And the black diamonds were a joke---at one point, we went through the "Bye Bye Bowl"...afterwards, Pierre was like "what bowl?" But--to give it some credit: it's a GORGEOUS mountain. The view from there is just incredible...and it was a really relaxing, beautiful day to just be up in the mountains. It was definitely worth going just for the views. All in all, it was a great, short, relaxing trip. Some friends are heading up to Whistler in two weeks...can't wait for that!



Got an interesting email from a friend: "Lift your right foot and start making circles with it clock-wise. Then take your right hand and start drawing a six. Your foot will start going the other way, no matter how hard you try"



What happened in Madrid is so horrible. I remember going to Atocha a few times while I was there...it's such a beautiful station, right across from the Museo de Arte Reina Sofia, a very cool museum that housed a painting that I wrote a paper on. Sri & I have been talking for the last few months about going to Madrid this spring....I still want to go. I miss that city.

I'm very much looking forward to the weekend. I'll soon be getting a massage, snowboarding in fresh powder, eating fondue and walking around the town of Banff, Alberta in Canada!

interesting, check out queryster and queryster shop.



my brother had me download skype the other day to talk to the family...seemed pretty neat until i got a random phone call from a guy near provence, france on monday morning. eeks.



my weekend was a blur but very fun. went to two parties: friday night (kutta's housechillin' on lake union) and saturday night (brendan's classy evening of wine tasting)---i had a blast at both. i haven't stayed up so late in awhile....took quite a toll on my body. also went to a birthday dinner for sandra (oh so young..just turned 23) at marrakesh on sunday night---i was extremely dead by that point. pictures from the weekend are posted....



should i go back to kansas in 2 weeks? i can't decide i can't decide...it's so short...

I turned on my TV today and had a little envelope icon appear at the top. As usual, I pushed the Menu button to retrieve whatever new message Comcast had to send to me---to my surprise, I got a different menu---I simply had 3 choices: TV Guide, Menu, or On Demand. I read about this new service last year in Newsweek and had gotten a notice from Comcast last week about the rollout of this new feature, which has rolled out to about 50% of Comcast's customer database so far across the country. I must say--it's pretty darn cool. Basically, users have a large database of shows, movies, music videos, tv extras to watch from---at any time they want...in addition to having fast-forward/rewind/pause capabilities. Depending on the program, you have access to it either for the next 24 hours or the next month! Some programs are completely free, some will cost a $3.99 charge, similar to going to Blockbuster down the street. There was a database of movies, HBO Movies, Showtime Series, Cinemax late night features, etc etc. I found the entire last season of Sex & the City, The Sopranos and every other single HBO Series show (only current season shows)----that is really cool. A lot of the movies on HBO, Starz, etc are totally free. Right now, the current database of movies is limited (I read that as of the end of January, it was only about 150 titles)....it'll be really interesting to see how a service like this will take off and affect other businesses---things like brick-and-mortar stores like Blockbuster or even my all-time favorite, Netflix.com. While Netflix is oh so cool with the "check it out for as long as you like", there is still a slight wait factor. The advantage Netflix has right now is its huge database of movies you can check out. But for people like me, watching movies is such an instant gratification sort of thing. At any given point, you feel like watching a particular type of movie right then. I currently have 3 movies checked out by Netflix...but just haven't been in the mood to watch them yet. I think that there is also a possible threat to gadgets like TIVO or ReplayTV---why decide what to record onto your hard drive when you can have access to a large database of shows and movies? Movies aside, the On Demand feature is a really good resource for other regular cable programs that one may've missed--there's CNN, E Channel, Style, Tech TV, etc. I'd like to see access to major shows--whether they be some TV movie like Kingdom Hospital or an awards show like the Oscars for the public to have access to. This service could really take off but there's a lot to do right now to change viewers' movie-renting & TIVO'ing habits.

Tonight, I headed out to the Cowgirls, Inc. bar down in pioneer square for katie's 30th birthday---the scene here was straight out of the coyote ugly movie: girls wearing little jean skirts, dancing on the bars to a choreographed number, smoke everywhere, 21 yr. old guys getting whipped with belts and a mechanical bull. Yes--a mechanical bull. Tonight---I rode a mechanical bull for the first time...it was awesome! It was free--all I had to do was sign the "if you die, it's not our fault" form and boom, I was on the bull. I want to go back and try again but faster. It's all about the thigh muscles, I tell ya. Woo hoo! I feel like I've checked off one of those "crazy things to do in your life" goals.

sometime last year, a friend sent me an email telling me to sign up on the website www.musiccdsettlement.com---i figured "why not? i bought music between 1995 and 2000". i had practically forgotten about it when i got a check in the mail over this last weekend for $13.86. rock on. the total settlement was apparently $67,375,000. damn. bet those lawyers got a healthy chunk.



weekend was a ton of fun---hung out with brown derbie friend, jed, who's in town for a few days. we had dinner at ohana with christina and felix and ended the evening at bada lounge with the usual asian posse crowd. saturday morning, woke up at an ungodly hour to join sri, brendan, kutta, laurel and some of kutta's friends for a day of snowboarding at crystal mtn.. fun fun fun. rented silly british movie, johnny english, with brendan later that evening, which i never saw since i passed out from exhaustion. sunday---oscar time! i love this event. LOTR, clean sweep....good for them. i wasn't really surprised for any of the categories...although, admittedly, i would've preferred either "you will be my ain' true love" from cold mountain or "belleville rendez-vous" from triplets of belleville to win best song.



i need to catch up on sleep.