argh. i'm sick again. my immune system sucks. i've gotten sick 3 times since august. my glands and sinus started feeling a little swollen early yesterday...by the evening, i was not feeling well and shaking. now i'm staying at home, drinking as much OJ as possible to shoo away whatever i have.
i've decided to have a holiday party--a white elephant one where there's anonymous gift swapping...it'll be fun and i can't wait! project for the next month: decorate apartment for the holidays. this'll be my first apartment party. yay!
i forgot to mention: i've got a new gadget to add to my collection. when i went home, my dad surprised me with an early christmas gift: the samsung i300 pda mobile phone. it's actually pretty cool and much smaller than the kyocera one that came out earlier this year. the width is about the size of a regular cordless phone that you'd use at home so, ergonomically, it's quite comfortable. i love the color screen---i downloaded the latest version of Launcher III, which is the palm interface that i live by (it's shareware now damnit...oh well, definitely worth the $10) and was able to colorize each of my tabs. The best part is being able to call directly from my address book. I always had problems synchronizing numbers between my cell phone and pda...often, the most up-to-date numbers were just in my cell phone as i always had that on me. And then, the phone still comes with all the usual great features: voice recognizition dialing, speaker phone, recording conversations, wireless web, etc. Speaking of, I was able to download the Blazer software for the wireless web interface to improve upon the current look for cell phones--that text only version. Because my screen is larger and in color, I can literally go to any website now, regardless of whether it's written in hdml or whatever and see it. crazy. i wonder what sort of future pda phones there will be and if it'll catch on. I'm definitely excited about this device.

I've been doing the usual since coming back to Lawrence: Thanksgiving a the Wongs, singing karaoke with Jed at Duffy's, getting coffee with Dan at Java Break, watching a late movie with Matt McGuire, braving the crowd at Oak Park Mall, eating dim sum at Bo Ling's, wandering through the Plaza, etc. It was really nice hanging out with Dan the other night--we stayed up til 5am talking...can't believe he's going to get married next summer. well, i believe it... but it's weird. he'll be my first ex-boyfriend to get married. jed's got a new girl named amy...seemed sweet but a little overly sensitive. god, it was weird being at duffy's...saw all sorts of random people from high school: david morrisey, aaron butler and meredith wales were also there.
time has flown by so fast..and i leave tomorrow. there's still so much i feel like i want to do. [sigh] wish there was more time to be at home.

okay, it's been a long long while since i've written here (as someone in lawrence recently reminded me)...i don't really have an excuse except for that work has been killing me. work work work. what a boring theme in my weblog. and given, i know people who work many more hours than i do....but still.
now, i usually dodge writing about my dating life for i don't want someone whom i'm dating to find out what i think about them via the internet...but i feel good about this one. i met him at that halloween party. i actually met him first way back on the salsa cruise in july....and things are going damn well. we're gettin' along just dandy--it's the month of november! did i ever mention that? i have this weird thing with the month of november. no, seriously. i don't know why. it's always an inside joke with my closest friends...and it's purely coincidental...but for some reason, november seems to be my month. since graduating from high school, most of my relationships have started in november--the one exception was last year, when matthew and i broke up in november; however, sophomore, junior, senior and first year in seattle-- each year, in november, i met somebody. and i try hard to not anticipate something happening each november, like this year, but somehow it does. my first date with thomas was on november 2nd technically. it's odd. and random. anyhow--so point is, wahoo--dating life is picking up again.
i'm actually back in kansas now for thanksgiving break--arrived back home only a few hours ago...and haven't been back since turkey break last year. boy, it was nice to get away from the craziness of work...but i digress. at KCI, while waiting for my suitcase at the baggage claim, i glanced to my left and realized I was standing next to carol schaeffer--this girl that was in my high school that i haven't seen in 6 years! talk about a small world...we were on the same flight coming from denver, where she currently lives. and furthermore, matt watkins, another classmate, was picking her up. it's so surreal to come back home and run into people from the past. we chatted briefly, trying to come up with names of former classmates and updating each other and what we currently know about them.
then the 45 minute drive back to lawrence...the old alvins is now some health food merc store...and the total fitness/former hillcrest theatre apparently burned to the ground! how sad. i went to that theatre all the time as a child. and home--well, my parents always have new fun toys that they're crazy about.
ack. my dad's telling my grandmother about thomas. eeks.
okay. i'm tired.

so now i'm driving a lovely red chevy metro...with no power steering. i didn't know that rental car places even rent cars with no power steering.
saw the ABT's Giselle last night at the Paramount with Phoebe...very dramatic and kind of sad.

Exciting: saw Ethan Stiefel dance the part of Count Albrecht who played the part of Cooper in the movie, Center Stage.

Willie comes to visit me tonight from San Francisco--yay!

got a phone call early this morning from the police....in federal way. they found my car: all of the seats are gone and the ignition was ripped out. the policeman found the car on the road, still running...and since the ignition was stripped, he couldn't turn the car off. i headed down to auburn after work (with my new chaffeur, jon) where they transferred my car to a collision repair center...and saw the poor thing. it's actually not too terribly bad. i don't think there are really any exterior damages...there's just not much inside. it's strange to see my car with no seats. they took that, the lid of my center console storage thing, my stickshift knob, my inline skates and the game of Cranium that eugene had gotten me for my birthday. surprisingly, they didn't take *any* cd's or tapes...they didn't even rip apart the stereo system. good thing i didn't leave too many valuables in there. i'll get an estimate tomorrow and hear from insurance how they're going to proceed...it's most likely that they're going to just repair my car instead of totalling it and writing me a check for blue book value. [sigh] must make trip to enterprise-rent-a-car soon.

i'm sorry. i haven't written in awhile. two weeks after the tragic events on 9/11, i don't know if i can even use words to express the emotional thoughts that have been running through my mind. so i'll just keep my thoughts simple here. i woke up quite early that morning - 7:15am - by a phone call from my father yelling frantically in the phone about war, planes, and the world trade center...and telling me to get up and turn the tv on. i stumbled over to my living room, turned the tv on and suddenly woke up with disbelief. "this can't be happening" i thought. at the time, one tower had already collapsed and the other remained burning. fifteen minutes after waking up, the second tower finally collapsed and the silhouette in the nyc skyline was no longer. i spent the next hour or so waking up friends in seattle whom i knew might have some connections in nyc and dc....i then tried frantically to reach my close smith friends. i immediately thought of debbie who used to work in the wtc but i didn't know if she did any longer. i was too distraught to go to work and just stayed at home, online and glued to the tv. my friend alex came over and we watched some tv together...and finally forced ourselves to take a walk along broadway to get something to eat and get our minds off everything. that evening, jon took me out to dinner for my birthday at salty's, a really nice restaurant in west seattle. it was a little unsettling knowing that i was enjoying a nice seafood dinner with a gorgeous view of the seattle skyline and puget sound while not knowing if someone i knew may have perished earlier that day.

the next few days, i started hearing more from close friends..and fortunately, they are all safe and sound. a smith bulletin was put up by some alums to account for other smithies...really reassuring to see many familiar names there. the patriotism here is like none other that i have ever seen in my lifetime. flags everywhere, patriotic songs playing all the time. i went to the symphony the following saturday and they began the whole program with everyone standing up and singing America the Beautiful. And last week, i went to the first opening show for the Pacific Northwest Ballet, and the finale consisted of a number choreographed to Stars and Stripes....and the donations to the red cross and all sorts of other funds have been incredible. i just hope we are careful and make the right decisions.

this last weekend, went up to bellingham for juli and todd's wedding (cancelled plans to go to L.A.)...absolutely beautiful...my first evening wedding. it was so enchanting with all sorts of candles lighting up the air of love and friendship. i've never been to bellingham except to stop to grab something to eat coming down from whistler. the next day, jon and i ate at a great cafe for brunch and then wandered around some shops, listening to some music. i really liked that town.

finally saw Hansa, the new baby elephant, on Sunday at the zoo with Phoebe and some other Smithies---it was so adorable and way too cute, playing with its bouncing balls. i think we were lucky in that we didn't have to deal with all the horrible lines that i had heard about.

so, bad news from the past 2 days: a) my cell phone's earpiece finally died and is pretty much useless..and b)my car was stolen last night. yup. i'm bummed and was pretty pissed off this morning. i last used my car last night to go over to fred's place for dinner..and came home around 11pm. when i walked out this morning to go to work, it was gone. i immediately called the police and insurance company. supposedly, most stolen vehicles are found within 2 weeks. i guess i shouldn't be too surprised considering my car is one of most stolen vehicles in america...and that seattle is one of the top 10 cities for car theft. ugh. so now i have to wait to see if it's gone and lost forever...or if they find it with who knows how much damage. as for my cellphone, ran out and bought a new one immediately so the police could contact me in case they found my car.

week's starting out lovely, isn't it? on a brighter side, saw the most twisted bizarre movie tonight--David Lynch's Mulholland Drive. I have to think about that one for a bit.

i'm so bummed. recently got the wedding invitation to juli and todd's wedding...but i've already booked a super cheap flight down to L.A. to visit my grandparents leaving that evening. just tried to change it but the cost to change it is greater than the cost of my initial flight. argh. oh well.