"Hi. You look tired"

I hate getting that line. Especially on a Monday morning. It's like a nice way of saying "Hi--you look like crap" I heard it twice today.

Drive stick?

Parking has gotten so bad in the buildings I work at in MS that they hired a valet service beginning last week to basically illegally park our cars for us. Sounds cool. I went to retrieve my car today and it took forever. When they brought it to me, I was like "What took so long?". The guy said "Sorry--I was the only valet attendant that knew how to drive stick". Sheesh! Wouldn't you think that the basic qualifications for being a valet attendant involved the ability to drive a manual transmission car?

Weekend wrapup

Had a pretty relaxing weekend---started off on Friday night catching the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater at the Paramount with some girlfriends. I've been wanting to watch this troupe since I was young and I was absolutely floored by the passion and excitement that they exude in their body movements. The choreography was powerful and the dancers so full of grace. I highly recommend checking them out if they tour near you.

Otherwise, spent most of the weekend catching the first couple rounds of the NCAA Basketball Tournament. Man, I'm so incredibly bummed that Kansas lost in the first freakin' round (AGAIN) to Bradley. Who the hell is Bradley? They haven't even been in the Sweet 16 since something like 1955. [sigh]

On Saturday night, Matt and I had dinner with Betina & Justin (who were visiting from San Fran) and Owen & Amy at Chez Gaudy, which is this cute little restaurant down the stret on Bellevue (owned by the same folks at Bleu Bistro up on Broadway). It was a fabulous time catching up with all four of them and we all had yummy meals. I had a really simple "Verona" dish which was simply pasta with chicken, but it was done well and lightly..just the way I like it. Matt had a scallop dish which was very generous. Apparently, they have a wine night on Tuesdays where patrons can score $6.99 bottles of wine that they uncork themselves--I'll have to check it out sometime!

Also got a chance to see V for Vendetta in the theaters. Great movie---it was better than I expected. There were a lot of interesting controversial themes that weaved throughout the storyline, which is what I think draws the audience in. Although it takes place in the future, it's not some crazy futuristic setting like the other Wachowski Brothers movie, The Matrix. Definitely recommend checking this movie out.

Fallen tree

Here are pictures of the huge spruce tree that fell onto our driveway from the storm on Sunday. Sheesh. It's so huge---I still can't believe it got rooted out of the ground.

KU cancels classes

KU cancelled classes today because of concern for the safety of the students with falling debris everywhere----heard on NPR that 60% of the buildings at KU are damaged. Damn. Have I mentioned that my house is only about 5 minutes away from the KU campus?

There goes the tree...

The storms that hit the Midwest this morning actually hit my hometown pretty hard---Douglas County has been declared a disaster by emergency management. Fortunately, my parents are on vacation so they weren't there this morning. I called them and it sounds like there's a lot of property damage across the city. At our house, there's a gigantic tree that was planted ~20 years ago---apparently, the winds rooted the tree out of the ground and it's currently laying on its side in our driveway! Good thing it didn't fall the other way and hit the house, or else there'd be a huge hole in my bedroom! (my room faces towards this tree) Electricity and phone lines are out across most of the city, including our house. Strangely, our guest house still has electricity, which ended up being a savior because all of our indoor tropical fish at the house were suffocating with the water pumps being down. Some family friends of ours were gracious enough to go over today and, with some crazy-ass long extension cords, plug the water pumps back in and save all the fish. I'm going home in 2 weeks and will be curious what damage there is across the city. I read the roof almost completely tore off of Danworth Chapel up on KU---so sad. I've attended weddings there before.

How much is your blog worth?

Interesting--thanks to Eric for posting. This guy created an applet for determing the value of your blog based on data from Technorati and research from Tristan Louis, which essentially says that blogs should be valued based on conversation, as represented by links and indexes like Technorati. Wow, my blog is worth a lot!

My blog is worth $1,129.08.
How much is your blog worth?

IE 7 and Salon

Argh.  I’ve been dogfooding IE 7 Beta 2 for awhile—for the most part, I love it.  But it doesn’t work with Salon articles at all.

Are you in or are you out?

Watched the finale of Project Runway---congrats to Chloe! She was a favorite of mine from the beginning with her clean lines, outfits made for a woman's body, cheery personality, and of course--have to admit it--she's a fellow Asian American woman. At first, I wasn't too sure of her collection. It was a bit 80's prom-style to me with some of the pieces...but when I saw the rest of her collection, it made more sense. I thought Daniel was definite competition--I thought his collection was exquisite. I don't know what the judges were thinking but I definitely saw a theme in his collection, especially with the necklines in each piece. I was also extremely impressed by the diversity of his outfits---not easy at all. Lastly, Santino: ah, Santino. We all just loved to hate him, but knew that deep down inside he was one creative man. He will surely be seen more. I appreciated how he humbled himself more after seeing the show over the course of designing his collection. I was surprised by the judges' reaction after they spent all season pushing him to tone down his designs. Kinda funny. In the end, I think Chloe was a great choice. She does have the passion, has proven her ability to market and be a savvy businesswoman, and I think she'll fit right in with the fashion crowd. Congrats!

Face Transformer

Thanks to Hallett who pointed out a fun Face Transformer site. You just plug in your photo and then transform it to see yourself of a different race, age or whatever. Here I am!

original	baby	older adult
afro-caribbean	west asian	caucasian
modigliani	manga