i love thursday evenings. i usually spend it working on some sort of dish I've never prepared and watch the whole thursday night lineup. i think i'm going to take a bath before heading to bed. i haven't taken one of those in a long time.



last weekend was amazing, weather wise. it got so incredibly warm....to the point where you could feel the blanket of heat cover you as you step outside. i was lucky enough to be able to take care of phoebe and ray's dog over the weekend...so i got to spend a lot of fun time playing ball with the dog and walking her. went rollerblading along alki with thomas on saturday...which was so much fun. it's days like that, where i get to cruise along alki on my skates, inhaling in the salt-infused air, and staring out at the amazing city skyline and puget sound that just make me love seattle so much...and how wonderful it was to share that with thomas on saturday. [sigh]



later on that night, i went and saw sasha & digweed dj at a warehouse in south seattle which was so cool. i just love their music. i hear they'll be performing at area:two, which is so awesome. I can't wait.



i finally turned in my application for a new passport! what a big sigh of relief to finally do that. but it turns out that i won't need my passport as soon as i thought because....



...Aaron found a job! well, he actually got a really kick ass internship this summer with Sony working as the only designer in a team of 6 for this thing called Project Desire. He'll be well paid (hell, more than I'm making right now!) and get an amazing experience while he's at. I'm sooo happy for him and so proud of him right now. And of course, I can't help but feel like I've helped out by supporting him with his website all the time. So, anyhow, because of this, the family probably won't be taking a graduation trip during the summer since he has to work. Hmm...I wonder if I should go to Europe now....



Wednesday, I saw Yo-Yo Ma & the Silk Road Ensemble at Benaroya with Fred and a bunch of other people...what a fabulous concert, made up of a Mongolian long song singer, a Korean drummer, and so much more. Have you ever seen a performance with a prepared piano? I only saw it for the first time recently when I saw the Ahn Trio. Wednesday night, the musician utilized the piano in so many ways---whether that be drumming against the wood, banging the bass strings or plucking them gently. I would love to learn any technique associated with that. And of course, it's always a treat to see Yo-Yo Ma performing.

last week, jigna and i went down to boeing to play with a Boeing 767-400 Flight Simulator, courtesy of Shawn. What an amazing experience it was...and how realistic it was also. I had no idea that pilots taxi down the runway only using a little lever on the side....or that they can crank open the windows while taxi-ing to get some fresh air. The simulator was able to reproduce every type of environment--night, day, dawn, dusk--and every type of weather imaginable.



i saw the new spider-man movie on friday night which was a lot of fun. i loved tobey mcguire in that role. it's about time we had a superhero that we can all relate to. you know, someone asked me once if i had a superhero power, what would it be? and at the time, i said that i wanted the ability to not need to sleep so i could do as many things as possible in my lifetime....but I don't think so anymore. that wouldn't really be a useful superpower if everyone else always needs to sleep anyway. plus, i like sleep. so...i change it to: flying.



i've been working more on aaron's portfolio website so he can find a job. he's such a talented guy...i hope he lands someplace that he's happy. he's worked so hard all of these years. This is one of the more recent things I've added to his site.



i have this one dark brown stuffed bear that usually sits on my bed. the other night, just before going to bed, i knocked it on the floor while pulling my comforter together. when i woke up in the morning, it was sitting right in front of me on the bed, staring at me. weird. either i subconsciously picked it up in my sleep and brought it right next to me in bed (possible but strange as i don't usually do much in my sleep movement-wise) or something's spooky in my apartment. i know it's more likely the former..but i get easily scared. see, i live in this super old house.....old for seattle, that is---it was built in 1903--and that's old for seattle. at one point, it was a brothel and had over fifty rooms in it! charming history huh? but because of that, i have a fear of seeing a dead soldier or prostitute in my room one of these nights. i know, silly thoughts...but i can't help thinking such things.

work is starting to get stressful again....i haven't felt this stress in awhile. i'm kind of balancing two jobs right now: my current position as web dev manager and also as program manager...which is a little crazy. i can't wait til all this madness goes away. but it's good: I like it when I'm busy as opposed to doing nothing really.



it's such a gorgeous gorgeous day in seattle. i went out last night to REI and finally bought a pair of Salomon inline skates...about time. My last ones were stolen when my car was stolen last September...and State Farm wrote out a nice $200 check for me to buy some new ones. I think I'm going to go out to Alki and use them today...I can't wait. Really need to learn how to stop in those things though....



I saw Thomas last night at salsa class...it's always a weird experience seeing your ex for the first time---there are completely mixed feelings of anger and love. I'm glad that we did, though....especially since we had a really good talk afterwards. My perspective of his thought process completely changed...which was really fortunate as I thought he was some close-minded bastard all last week, based on things he said that were of course misinterpreted. It's kind of "too bad" that things happened the way they did considering that they could have worked out...but it was a little too late to realize that I guess. [sigh] Oh well. I hope that the free spirit within him comes out soon....he's happier that way, I know it.



speaking of salsa class, my instructor amended what she had told me in the last class....she now wants me to enroll in Salsa 4 for the next session!!! Wahoo! Damn, I felt good.



going to take fred out for his birthday dinner tonight at avenue one...can't wait.

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.