ack, i'm single again. [sigh] glad to have good friends around when i need them.



some girls like to go shopping after a breakup....i decided to take a last minute weekend getaway. i found a great deal on united for $113 RT to san francisco. so i jumped on it and hung out with willie all weekend, which was so nice. i got to meet his current new girl, rhoda, and saw cindy and sabry again. on saturday, i visited berkeley for the first time---what a cool college atmosphere. and yesterday, we did some wine tasting in napa valley---only had time to visit mondavi, beringer and merryvale...but had an excellent lunch at mustard's grill.

had a really unexciting weekend since the weather was so BLEGH. this is probably the time of year I hate---when the rest of the country is warming up and enjoying "spring" and seattle still feels like winter, if not worse, and it rains every freakin' day. i'm completely unmotivated to do anything but sit inside and clean/organize my apartment...and watch movies. if anything, i did a lot of cooking, making a really yummy mushroom risotto on sunday evening...how satisfying to make a good dinner.

there've been a lot of articles in the media recently about the dilemna that highly successful, ambitious women deal with in weighing out having a family vs. a career (such as in this Time magazine article) A lot of the daughters of the feminist movement who've focused on establishing their careers are finding themselves unable to have children at an older age as women's bodies have not changed...and technology hasn't done anything to change that. A woman's ability to conceive begins to decline at the age of 27. By the age of 42, 90% of a woman's eggs are abnormal. A recent national study found that the more money a woman made, the less likely it was that she had children (on the contrary, the higher a man's salary, the more likely it was that he had children). there is currently a lot of controversy over marketing these facts (for example, a picture of a baby bottle shaped like an hourglass) so that women can become better informed (the president of N.O.W. sees this marketing as pressuring younger women who aren't ready to have a child, to do so). So many of my ambitious Smith co-graduates fall under this dilemna: wanting to be successful and wanting to have a family, including myself. The corporate lifestyle isn't tailored to allow for successful executives to be good parents also. I know I want to have a family eventually but there are so many aspects of my career that I want to explore also. My former manager set up a "breakfast club" for women at the company to meet once a month and I'm looking forward to hearing opinions regarding this topic (she sent out an article similar to the Time magazine one to the group recently) later this week.

thomas and I are taking Salsa 2b currently at Century Ballroom, and at last night's class, the instructor--Hallie--pulled me aside to dance with me. I was pretty nervous as I didn't know if I was just doing something competely wrong..but after we danced, she just said to me "perfect". At end of class, she came up to me and told me that for the next session of classes, I should move onto Salsa 3---which is SO exciting! Talk about a nice pat on the back!

did i mention i've been obsessed with watching abc's most recent reality show, the bachelor? it's actually not as sleazy as "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire" or Tempation Island...this bachelor, Alex, started off with 25 women..and in 6 weeks, he will propose to 1, slowly eliminating a number of women with each episode. Anyhow, last night's episode brought him down to 3 women--oh, the excitement! i have to admit that I just LOVE reality tv shows...it's my guilty pleasure.

went out to see the pacific northwest ballet's "Tango Tonight", made up of 3 separate ballets which were all so wonderful to see. The first was a very romantic, almost Parisien-like rendition of the dance using chairs...which led to the second (my favorite) which went back to the roots of Tango in Buenos Aires at a time when the population of men exceeded that of women by practically 100,000. This dance was very raw and sensual, using ten men and only four women, wearing simple black, "Chicago"-like outfits. Because of the imbalance of genders, they had several same-sex duets which was also reflective of the origins of Tango in which men often had to practice together. The final ballet ended very classically where everyone was dressed in a more formalized manner in the way that we associate tango with today. I really enjoyed last night's performance...and have really enjoyed the entire season. Phoebe and I don't know if we want to renew our subscription or look into other areas to subscribe to. I really want to be able to go out to the theater more and the symphony, both things that I also love so dearly.

i'm sooo bummed: KU lost to Maryland on Saturday evening...all for dumb dumb mistakes. That game was at the tip of our fingers...we even started out ahead at the beginning..but then went to 20 down..and came back up to closing the difference to only 2. [sigh] But I guess it wasn't mean to be. What a sad evening in Lawrence, Kansas.



Yesterday, I went to a driving range for the very time ever...holding a golf club in my hands for the time ever. What an interesting experience..and I have to admit: I liked it! I don't know if I could ever have the patience to play a whole game of golf..but it sure is fun just hittin' balls for half an hour. It was more athletic than I expected..my arms, hands and back were a bit achy afterwards.



I just ran this "old fart" script to view statistics of my employee ID number compared to everyone else currently working at Amazon and figured out that 81% of the current people working here started after me. So, only 19% of the current company started before me. Whoa.

Boy, it's been a long long time since I've updated this. Well, I've been on vacation--Thomas and I went to New York City and Puerto Rico for about a week and had a great time.

Highlights from NYC:


• Had dinner with Anna and new boyfriend, Steve, at Guastavino's...a few days later, drinks at Fez
  
  
• Saw the Blue Man Group's performance of "Tubes" which was fantastic. If you ever have the chance to see them perform, do.
  
  
• Had a swanky evening of food, drinks and dancing at Lotus with Debbie, Gina, Jimmy and others.
  
  
• Ate yummy dim sum with Li-Mei in Chinatown
  
  
• Caught the Surrealism exhibit at the Met with Judy, who later on took us on a stroll through SoHo
  
  
• Had drinks with Josh and new girlfriend
  
  
• Went down to Ground Zero and Battery Park on the 6-month anniversary where we were able to see the two new memorials: "The Sphere", a sculpture that used to sit in the WTC plaza and "Towers of Light"
  
  

Highlights from Puerto Rico:


• The sun, sand and water.
  
  
• Staying at ESJ Towers again in Room 261.
  
  
• Hiking in El Yunque, the Caribbean National Rainforest, and swimming in La Mina Waterfall
  
  
• Nighttime kayaking and swimming off the coast of Fajardo through mangroves to eventually get to Laguna Grande, a bioluminesent bay that is home to millions of glowing plankton. It's this natural phenomenon in which the movement of water produces a chemical reaction that produces light. Here are some pictures from a website to give you an idea of it--so incredible.
  
  
• A visit to the Arecibo Observatory, home of the world's largest radio telescope and where the S.E.T.I. research is conducted. It's also famous from the movies Contact and 007.
  
  
• Meeting up with Carlos for dinner
  
  
• Salsa dancing, yummy Cuban food
  
  

I will have pictures up soon. The trip back wasn't too bad either---we had an insanely long layover in Ft. Lauderdale---from 9am - 6pm---so we took advantage of it and rented a car to hit the beach! Spring break had just started and all sorts of high school and college-age teeny boppers were walking around the beach, cruising in their shiny cars. It was absolutely hilarious.



After returning, I took Eugene to see the Ahn Trio at Meany Hall. I've always been curious to see these 3 Korean sisters...really enjoyed the concert, especially the modern pieces that they played. I loved the fact that there were so many young people at the concert. I find it interesting how lately there have been a number of young, hip, stylish classical performers--such as Vanessa Mae and Bond. Hey--if it gets more young people listening to classical music, I'm not going to argue.



The Oscars were on last night, a show that I watch religiously each year. Halle Berry made Oscar history by being the first black female actress to win the Best Actress category---she was practically hyperventilating upon winning. To further make a statement, Denzel Washington won for Best Actor and Sydney Poitier was given an honorary Oscar. Even though the show went over by an hour this year, I didn't feel like it was as long as in year's past. I liked how they showed snippets for Best Song from a Film instead of having each performer play their piece in its entirety throughout the program. I also loved the special performance by Cirque du Soleil, a troupe that I adore watching.

I finally got these stylesheets to work correctly in Netscape---so for all you netscape users that have been reading my log, everything should look fairly the same as if you were reading in IE. More later on the past few weeks...

saw the pacific northwest ballet's "cinderella" last night, which was just beautiful. i loved the costumes, the dancing, and the music of prokofiev. it's been really fun being a season subscriber to the ballet. i've gotten to the point where I know what certain principal dancers look like by name and who dances like what. the last one i saw--their version of "carmen" was really interesting. it was a sort of modern twist where the audience doesn't know if they're watching the ballet or real life. kent stowell has some very unique ideas in choreographing these ballets.