miss you, grandpa.

i can't believe it's been a year.

i think about him all the time and miss him everyday.

i held my composure all day at a school event and then work, but tonight i've decided it's ok to have a good cry.

project life?

so. as if this blog isn't evidence enough, i'll go ahead and say it: i've been really terrible about documenting my life recently. i haven't been making time to post here. and when i do have spare time, it just doesn't cross my mind to come update the blog. i also haven't been taking a lot of photos or journaling about life in any way. no scrapbooking whatsoever lately.

it makes me super sad that i'm missing out on opportunities to capture stories and memories... and basically fulfill the purpose of this blog and the purpose of scrapbooking.

so. i decided to try something new, and i hope it will help.

i'm jumping on the project life bandwagon. :]

in the past, anytime i saw project life mentioned somewhere, i sort of dismissed it. honestly, i don't like the way it sounds... it's almost... too monumental.

but upon closer inspection, i've realized that it really can be whatever i want to make out of it.

all of my life, i've been a collector of bits and pieces... "momentos" as i like to call them. i have a drawer in my childhood room full of movie tickets, clothing tags, and notes from friends. i still keep my receipts [despite james' attempts to get me to stop. ha.] especially the ones from trips. shave ice from hawaii a few summers ago? yep. still have the receipt. :]

so like i said... once i took some time to really look into project life, i realized that it's right up my alley. i'm so excited to have a "home" for all of my momentos... all of the receipts, the movie tickets, the baseball game tickets, museum directories, disneyland maps, takeout menus, school programs, hotel room keys, flight boarding passes, fortune cookie fortunes, etc... and not only is it a "home" to store these things, but it's a place where i can capture what all the little momentos represent. much better than having them sit in a drawer with no order and no story to go along with them.

did i mention that i'm so excited?

for right now, i've ordered the style A page protectors and the grid journaling cards. i'm planning to pick up an album soon. i'm also contemplating getting the clementine core kit when it becomes available. i originally wasn't going to get a core kit [because i have an insane amount of scrapbooking stuff accumulating around here], but i think it might help me keep up with the project during weeks when life is too hectic to devote very much time to this, which... let's face it... will probably be most weeks for me considering pharmacy school + wedding planning among everything else.

seriously. i'm so excited. i clearly don't have time to devote to scrapbooking the way i would like to right now. and i think this is an awesome solution. i sort of see project life as something different. something so much more simple, yet comprehensive.

for me, making a traditional scrapbook layout is something that i do primarily to be creative. it's often not even driven by capturing a story... that tends to be secondary. now i can get everything documented in my project life album, but then still make traditional layouts when i happen to have time to fret over making a perfectly embellished page with the right patterned papers and proper photo placement. hehe.

plus. i don't always [or often, even] include movie tickets or boarding passes or other momentos on my layouts... they just sit around collecting dust. now i get to include them, tell the story, and not stress out about missed opportunities to document my life when i don't have time to sit down and fuss with layering paper and embellishments in a way that my perfectionist mind sees fit. :] [i'm sure i have probably mentioned before how long it takes me to make a single layout... way too long. i tend to push the paper and embellishments around for a few hours before committing with the adhesive. haha.]

so yeah.

here's hoping that this new adventure is something that works out well for me.

i'm so tired of feeling like i've missed out on documenting a memory.

i'm planning to start at the beginning of 2012.

wish me luck!

pharm.d x two!

james got accepted into pharmacy school today!

i guess i should backup... he's been on the waiting list since he interviewed back in december. school started on wednesday, so we pretty much thought it was a done deal. he had a bit of a quarter-life crisis [ha!] and was re-evaluating his plans for the future. i asked him if he would re-apply, and he said he couldn't really go through it again... i think it was just too much waiting and unknown for him to try to handle again.

so today i was sitting in a lecture trying to pay attention, and one of the graduate fellows came into lecture and asked me for my fiance's name. ??? needless to say, it was game over for paying attention to the lecture. i started playing out every scenario and reason why she would ask me for his name in my head, but it all kept coming back to "maybe he's getting accepted today!" i didn't want to get his hopes up since i didn't know anything for sure, so i just sent him a text to answer his phone if it rang. he replied asking me why? and i just said "i don't know. just do it." hahaha. this all happened around 10 or 10:30 am, and finally around noon, he sent me a text saying that he was accepted into pharmacy school. a minute later, the same graduate fellow came back into the lecture and gave me the good news too. i couldn't help but hug her. :]

side note: she is also the same faculty member that i broke down crying to when i had to take my triple jump written exam with a fractured rib and pneumonia. hehe.

it feels like our whole world has been flipped around in a day... but in a really good way! i am so excited for him. i know he wanted it so bad, and he has wanted it for so long. it hasn't really hit either of us to the full extent yet, but slowly i keep thinking of new things that make it seem more real. like how i will get to see him during lecture breaks. and when i'm freaking out during block exams, he will be right there with me now. how we can plan lunches together. and of course, how i'll study so much more now because he'll be studying too. he's always had way more self-discipline than me when it comes to studying. :]

to be honest, i am a tiny bit apprehensive that we'll be in the same job market now... and that job market is not doing so well. the unemployment rate of pharmacists is going up, while the number of new graduates is constantly expanding with the new schools opening. but as long as we remain flexible and work hard to set ourselves up for success, i think we'll be ok. i'm still crossing my fingers though, just for good measure. ha!

also.

i do realize that it's now august.

and i haven't blogged since may...

oops!

i ended up getting two jobs this summer [so maybe the job market isn't so bad. haha.] one was at target pharmacy, and the other was at kaiser, in the outpatient hospital pharmacy. i basically worked at target until my position at kaiser started three weeks ago. i'm going to try to keep working at kaiser as much as possible throughout school. i love it there. i won't say too much about target except that i wasn't very happy there. i'm glad i had the experience though... partly just because it has helped me appreciate all kinds of things about kaiser that i might not have otherwise noticed. :]

i've been trying to do some wedding planning, but mostly i'm just realizing how indecisive i am. seriously. i cannot make decisions. planning a wedding seems impossible right about now, and i'm not really sure what to do about that. my sister got engaged last weekend [!!] so i'm hoping that as she starts her planning process, she can help me? haha. i don't know what else to really do.

i guess the other main thing to update about would be my dad. he seems to be doing pretty well. he'll have a follow up with his surgeon soon, so we'll probably know more then.

otherwise, the summer was over for me way to quickly! it basically just consisted of work, work, and more work with a giant's game or two, a couple visits home to reno, and a visit from howie and sarah. we finally got a grill near the beginning of summer, so we've been cooking more meals at home. it's more fun that i thought. :] we also planted a tiny garden on our patio... we only have a little spot that gets good sun, but i wanted to try planing a couple things. it's been fun to watch everything grow, but i should confess that james really does most of the work. he also joined a golf league in napa with bryan, and he's been playing softball tournaments every couple weekends... he actually went home tonight for another one this weekend. i hope he gets his fill now that he'll be back in school!

i'll try to update more frequently now, but who knows if that will work out or not. i have a feeling this school year is going to be insanely busy for me... but have i mentioned that i think you can subscribe to my blog on google reader? i think i've fixed the setting to allow it. :]

i'm engaged!

i mentioned in the last post that my dad was having surgery in LA, so i came down to be with him here for about a week. james was able to come on thursday night for the weekend, and he proposed on friday night!

we had plans to see a new water show at california adventure friday night, so after watching the show, which was neat but very crowded and hard to see, we walked over to disneyland as the fireworks were starting. we finished watching the fireworks in the park, and decided to ride matterhorn mountain because we hadn't been on it yet. when we neared the front of the line, they announced that it was broken. :[ so we headed over to space mountain instead only to find that it was also not running. at that point james asked me if i just wanted to go take some pictures in by the castle... i guess he knows me and my picture taking habits well enough to know he would get a definite yes to that question. as we were walking on the pathways near the right side of the castle, he said he needed to tie his shoe. i looked at his shoes and said "no you don't. your shoes are fine. come on!" [i wanted my photos by now. ha.] so i kept walking, and he stopped. when i turned around, he was on one knee with the ring. :] i basically just kept saying, "babe! what are you doing?" and he kept saying, "look!" and then he finally said, "will you marry me?"

afterward, we walked around the rest of the little pathways and fountains. then i called my dad and found out that my family was in the park near the front gate, so we went to tell them the news. when i walked up... no one seemed to be reacting in any sort of shocked manner. it turns out that they all knew. ha! james called to ask my dad about two weeks ago when he was on his way to s.f. to buy the ring, and my mom was with my dad, so she knew. then my dad told my brother and sister here at disneyland... so they knew too. as we were walking around, i jokingly told my mom and sister that i was surprised that in my family of criers, no one cried!

i guess i should also add that he definitely got the right ring. :] we had never gone to look or anything, but he knew what i wanted. i have tried asking him questions about how he picked it, and he said he just went to tiffany and said he wanted the classic tiffany ring. ha.

here are a bunch of random photos. the first two are from immediately after he proposed:


this was the next day at haunted mansion:
and over by thunder mountain:
this is later in the evening also at thunder mountain with my sister:
and with james:
this was sunday morning in toontown:
and a partial [my dad has taken it very easy and spent most of his time in the hotel watching movies] family photo:
this is the spot where he proposed during the day:
and a few castle pictures! :]

anyway. that's the latest news! james is back home for work, and i'm still here in LA because my dad's post-op appointment is tomorrow morning. we'll find out at that point what the pathology reports showed, and hopefully it will be good news. he's doing better and better each day. he has six holes in his abdomen. five of them are about 1-2cm and one of them is around 3 inches. that's the main source of his pain, but his prostate was much larger than they thought it was, so they had to make a larger hole to take it out. his birthday was on saturday, and he was able to come to out to dinner and even ride a couple rides. it's nice to see him smiling and joking around, even if his is in some pain.

i'll be back with more soon! :]

sad news.

i found out on the 16th [which was my first official day of spring break] that my dad has prostate cancer. i was back home in reno, and he came down to my room in the morning and told me the news. i tried not to cry in front of him, but it was hard... i definitely got teary. i still do now when i think about it.

he's had an elevated PSA for a while, so he had a feeling. i had a feeling about it too. but he decided to wait until his dad passed away to get the biopsy so that his dad wouldn't know...

[you might remember that my grandpa had prostate cancer too.]

anyway. he is going to have surgery towards the end of may in LA. after his surgery, my sister and i will spend about a week with him down there, and then i will take him home. [thank goodness i'll be done with school by then.] the rest of my family will come down as they can get time away from work, and we're going to spend time at disneyland... leave it to my dad to put a fun twist on a crappy situation. :]

he decided to go with the da vinci robotic surgery, and his surgeon has excellent records and lots of experience. so i am trusting that he is in good hands and that everything will be fine during and after the surgery. i'm also hopeful that they will be able to get good margins during the surgery, so we don't have to worry about it anymore. with the da vinci method, the recovery time is generally much quicker than traditional surgery... so maybe he will even be able to enjoy a ride or two. either way, i think he's happy that everyone will be able to come see him during his initial recovery.

i'm not sure if i mentioned that my grandma also found out that she had cancer after my grandpa passed away. she didn't want to have surgery or anything, but her doctor convinced her to go ahead with it. a few days after she got home from the hospital, she collapsed. it turns out that she had a DVT, two pulmonary embolisms, and a stroke because her doctors didn't give her anticoagulant therapy post-surgery, like they should have. :[ she's lost a lot of her speech, memory, ect. it's heartbreaking really. she gets very frustrated now about her situation, but she has made some progress with therapy. my sister told me that she was able to play a whole song on the piano the other day, which is so exciting. but then... she has a hard time setting the table for dinner. and when she was making breakfast the other day, she put the whole egg in the frying pan and forgot to crack it. people keep telling me that they "know someone" who fully recovered after a stroke, and i really want my grandma to be one of those people too. i hope she has the will to continue working on getting better. she's such a strong woman, but i know it's very hard for her to be in this spot now.

school is done in three weeks, and i am so excited to be able to focus on my family and not have the stress of school adding onto everything else that's going on right now. wish me luck on getting through this last stretch of class and exams!

photo adventure.

my poor blog has been severely neglected lately. i am almost always short on time thanks to school, and when i do have time to relax, blogging is just not high on my list.

but in an attempt to fix that, i decided to post some photos i took the other day while walking helix. i'll work on updating from the past month and a half soon.

my school is on an old naval base, and while some people find it unappealing... i love old buildings [even abandoned ones... which there are no shortage of around here] and places that you can just tell have a solid history behind them.

i have no idea what either of these buildings are or if they are in use today... but they just seem like they were probably important at one point. ha.
i walk through the same park area a few times a week, and i had never noticed these flowers before... they are actually covering a wooden arch in an out of sight corner of the park. it's so beautiful.

there are plenty of gigantic eucalyptus trees all over the island... and can you see some of the cement bunker things? i totally thought this park was a graveyard for quite a while after first seeing those because they reminded me of the punch bowl in hawaii. i would never walk near this area, and would rarely even drive by it! and then one day i said something to james about how i was too scared to walk over there, and he told me they are just bunkers or something like that... now it's one of our favorite places to walk. :]
these old mansions were the officers' quarters back in the day. the original ones were damaged in an earthquake or something, and these were rebuilt around 1898. the architecture is stunning. we've peeked inside one, and the insides seem to be just as impressive. [there are better photos of the houses coming...]
i love the variety of trees and shrubs that grow here too. i recently read that this area was used by the department of agriculture as an arboretum in the early 1900s, and they introduced a lot of rare plant species to the island. so while i don't get to visit the arboretum at the bellagio very often anymore... i guess i can think about that to get me by.
here's another picture of one of the officers' quarters. not too shabby, right?
many of the trees have these old plaques in them that tell when they were brought to the island. apparently the navy captains were encouraged to bring different trees back from their travels to plant here. amazing!

and one more photo of a different mansion. they are all so pretty and each one is a little bit unique.

that's all for now. i plan to take more photos of the other areas... eventually. :]

weekend visitors + ventures.

james played in a softball tournament this past weekend, and at the last minute his friend howie decided to come play too. so sarah and i got to do a little exploring and hanging out while the boys did their activities. on saturday, we wandered up to yountville and st. helena. i've been wanting to stop by bouchon bakery to see what all of the hype is about. while we were waiting in line, a lady was talking it up and saying how there is always a line and whatnot. but really, i think it's just that the place is teeny tiny. i mean there are probably only four or five customers in there at one time. the line moves pretty quickly though. we each got some bread and treats. i loved my banana nut muffin... perfect breakfast. :]
one day i would like to try the restaurant... but i doubt it will happen any time soon.
we stopped in downtown st. helena to go to one of sarah's favorite consignment stores, then we made our way to her favorite winery, seen below. it different than any of the wineries i've been too... it was much more cozy and less commercialized. i liked it. i even sampled the wine and found it almost tolerable. i still don't think i'll be a wine drinker any time soon. ha!
on the way back home, we decided to stop into dean & deluca, another place i've been wanting to visit just to evaluate all the hype.
it's actually pretty cute inside, but my oh my... the prices are outrageous. they do sell acme bread [the same bread place that is in the ferry building] and pretty much the only other thing i found that i felt was priced reasonably enough to consider buying was their cheese selection. but now that i type that... i'm realizing that since moving here, i have probably become a bit skewed in what i view as reasonably priced cheese. but since i don't drink wine, and thus don't spend money on it... i feel like it's ok to splurge on this. :] [and yes. i think i have used that same rationale for cupcakes... so i'll probably need to think of something else soon... ha!]
that evening, we met up with the boys for korean bbq in oakland again. howie and sarah had never been, and i'm pretty sure they loved it. we decided to get a different combination with more meats this time, but i still stuck to my usual bulgogi for the most part. i did try the korean bacon [i prefer calling it that instead of pork belly. ew. ha!] and the chicken, which were actually pretty good too.

we topped the night off with boba tea from sweetheart, which i am already craving again.

on sunday we made a big breakfast... i nearly went into a food coma from it! the boys went golfing in napa, so sarah and i ventured to berkeley for a little window shopping. after walking around for a while, we grabbed a slice of pizza to share when we saw people eating it on the sidewalk, and it was sooo good. i need to find out the name of the place to see if they have more locations because i definitely want to go back for more. :] [and when i do, i'll actually remember to take a picture!]

i also had to find some time to write and submit my candidate statement for an office i am running for next year. i gave my candidate speech on monday, and i was sooo nervous. usually i can sort of calm down after 30 seconds or so, but i could not manage to calm down this time. ahh. i will find out the results on thursday, and i can barely wait. i am still super nervous when i think about it. ack.

ok. we have a quiz tomorrow, so i better get back to my notes! i hope everyone had a great weekend!

&& happy march! i'm sad that february is over, but that's the way it goes... all in all, it was a pretty good month. :]

scraps.

i have been challenging myself occasionally to find time to scrapbook. usually what this means is that i try to make a page in under 30 minutes [generally while i watch a tv show as a little mental break. haha.] so here are a few pages that have resulted so far:

my instax camera batteries died, but i thought maybe it was just out of film... so i opened the film door, thereby exposing five films to light. i thought i'd ruined them, so i just shot random photos to use up the film. well. apparently i only ruined the top film, so i had four random [bad] photos. this photo was my favorite though, and i just like how i happened to capture the pretty blue sky that has finally appeared around here after so many rainy & overcast days.
i guess i will also mention that it's made with the studio calico summer camp kit. this is the same kit i used for the last page i posted a couple weeks ago, so it will still spread out on the floor. gasp. i wanted to get two more layouts to meet my three layout/kit quota, but i haven't made a third just yet.
i'm thinking about just using photographs like the one below to show my layouts because the square ones [like the top photo] just get kind of weird sometimes... but i can't decide, so i'll post both kinds for now. haha.

the next two layouts are a few months old by now, but i never remembered to photograph them to post.
this photo is from a little while ago... i think over the summer? and i can't imagine how much bigger she will be by the time i see her for her birthday. eek!
this layout and the next one were made with the on the easel main kit and en plein air add-on from studio calico. i wasn't so sure about the chipboard window frames that came in the kit... but i deconstructed one to house the title above, and i'm happy with how it turned out.
i loved these papers from sassafras for this type of quick layout challenge because they have already done so much of the work for you... i just added a few accents here and there to have a little dimension on the page.

the photo in the next one is from erin's wedding. i love it, and james really dislikes it. but i have it in a frame in the living room too... so he can't escape it. ha.
the title is indeed inspired by a song, but probably not the one you're thinking. towards the beginning of our relationship, i was super into jenny lewis [well. i still am, i just haven't been keeping up with music as much lately.] and she did a cover of "handle me with care" with ben gibbard and conor oberst that both james and i really like. so yeah. the title was inspired by that song.
again... a really simple and fast layout because i let the paper do most of the work for me and just added a few stickers and things here and there.

hopefully i'll have more soon. and if you're short on time these days, i would challenge you to take 15-30 minutes and see what you can come up with in that amount of time... let me just say that it has really helped me overcome my old habit of pushing the paper and photos around the page for days. :]

day trip.

i remember being so excited to move so close to san francisco, but now that i'm here i rarely have time to actually go to the city. james was going regularly to play softball each week, but i never managed to go along with him because of school stuff. since we decided to stay here for the long weekend instead of going home, we made plans to go for the day. initially, i thought we might check out a museum or something, but i had some gift cards and coupons, so james agreed to just go to union square. i feel kind of silly for always going there, but it's one of the parts of the city that i'm most comfortable with aside from north beach and the embarcadero. hopefully over the summer i will have more time to explore different neighborhoods. :]

anyway. we started out with lunch at this little place my sister actually showed me. it's a little bit hard to find, but the tri-tip sandwiches are amazing... so it just stuck in my mind. i didn't even know the same of it, but i managed to find it without attempting to look it up. ha! yum! they pour some of the juice over everything, and it soaks into the bread... nom.nom.nom. it's so good. i didn't eat the tomatoes, but james said even they were delicious.

after a trip to lush [i'm going to do another review post soon.] and an unsuccessful trip to anthro, i met james back at macy's so that we could look for the finishing pieces for our bedding. not only did they have what we wanted, but it was on big time sale! all the way home james kept remarking that he couldn't believe the deal we got. haha. i've always felt like our bed looks very comfy because it's just nice and big and we have a down comforter, but now it looks cute too. :] after that little shopping victory, we decided to get some cheesecake and eat it out in union square. i always get adam's peanut buttercup fudge ripple, and i feel like you really can't go wrong with that choice. but james usually gets something more classic like white chocolate raspberry [which is also always good.] or strawberry. my favorite tip for people heading to union square is to do this as a snack. getting it to go and eating it outside is definitely the way to go. that restaurant is always so busy no matter what time of day, but you can usually get cheesecake to go within five minutes... and let's be honest... that's really the only reason to eat there anyway, so why wait over an hour for a table?

i loved that it was such a pretty day. i mean... i guess it was a little chilly, but i was just so happy to see the sun and a clear blue sky after so many days of rain! we tried to take a photo by one of the hearts, but it didn't quite work. oh well.

after a few more stops into little shops like cb2, which is slowly becoming a favorite of mine, we decided to go to the ferry building to get some bread and cheese. but. when we got there... everything was closing down already. :[ so we just got dinner at gott's. it's one of my favorite places to go in napa [possibly because it's right next door to kara's cupcakes. ha!] and i heard there was one in s.f. too, so i'm glad we found it.
i got my usual chicken caesar, and james got a texas burger plus some sweet potato fries.

i love the presentation on trays. and their branding line is "tray gourmet"... so clever. :]

that was about it for our day in the city. it was simple, but it was fun to get out of the house for a bit.

james had to work today, but i spent my day off getting things organized and cleaning... and contemplating paint colors. recently, i decided that i really want to paint the office/work room. actually. i want to paint the whole condo, but that's not really possible right now. haha. so i decided to focus on this room first, and see how it goes. i know i want a very light blue-ish teal color, but i'm having such a hard time narrowing it down. james and i picked up paint swatches at lowe's on saturday, and i felt like the adopting mom in juno when she has three similar shades of yellow and says, "they're all so different." it really is hard to decide though! james wants something more bright and bold, but i think i might be winning him over... if only i could make up my mind on the color. any recommendations are welcome. :]

oh and one more bit of excitement... yesterday i booked a flight to vegas for victoria's birthday weekend. i figure since i couldn't go for mine, i can make up for it by going for hers. i'm beyond excited. i miss las vegas so much. i can hardly wait.

i'll be back soon with the lush post and some layouts. i hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend!

february = food.

february is flying by as fast as ever it seems... and it's well past time for an update here. yikes.

this is random, but it seems like this month has meant a lot of asian food... haha. for some reason, i can't get enough! we had korean bbq the other night to celebrate my birthday [again. hehe.] with some friends, and it was amazing. plus, anita and i introduced greta to pho during block exams, and she's been wanting to eat it all the time now. haha. i'm not a big fan, but i'm slowly starting to like it more. we've also found a new chinese place not too far away that's super yummy. our other favorite local restaurant is also asian, and we've been there a few times recently too. here are some photos from our dinner at sura korean bbq, which is in oakland.those little dishes are filled with all kinds of sides [called banchan] ranging from the typical spicy pickled cabbage to yummy fried potatoes and all kinds of other stuff. most places bring around six or eight different dishes, but this place brought a ton!
mmmm... meat. you get to grill it at the table, which is lots of fun. my favorite is always the beef, but we had pork and chicken too. we decided to go for all you can eat, and i think we did pretty well because we had like three more servings. haha.
from left to right: james [i don't know what that face is about], amy, brandon, denton, & anita.
and a group shot from the other direction. it has been raining so much here that i'm having to embrace my curly hair more than ever... sometimes i don't mind it, but sometimes it just gets so frizzy! haha. oh well.

keeping with the food trend, for valentine's day, we kept it low key and went to pizza with a few other couples from my class at a place called the fix. the restaurant was having a special where you got a heart-shaped pizza, two drinks, cheese sticks, and four scoops of gelato for $20. such a good deal considering the gelato is usually $2.50 per scoop. [i hate this photo because the flash is so harsh, but it's the only one i have... so here it is. also... we did not plan to match. i didn't even notice it until i was looking at this photo. haha.] we decided to try a bbq bacon pizza that was delicious. it was actually kind of funny because when we were deciding what kind to get, i asked james what he wanted and he claimed that it didn't matter because i'm the picky one... he said, "if i pick something i want like that bbq bacon one, you'll just say no." and i was like "actually. that sounds good. let's get it." HA. i think i totally shocked him. :]

we were able to go home the weekend after my block exams and had an amazing dinner at the atlantis steakhouse with my parents. since it was the weekend before valentine's day, they were really busy and my dad almost couldn't get a reservation. but we know the sommelier/manager there, so we were able to get on the list. at the last minute, i decided to see if howie and sarah could come along, and i'm so glad it all worked out because they put us in a private room, and it was just insanely amazing. haha. yum! i changed my order at the last minute, just so i could watch this. haha.
another photo that's not a favorite... maybe i'm just feeling old now that i'm 25. ack!

my dad was in a really good mood, which was nice. he's a lot more fun when he's happy and joking then when he's stressed out about work or whatever else. after dinner, james and i went downtown with howie and sarah for a little bit, and they kept commenting on how funny my dad was at dinner. :]

since i'm basically working backwards & according to meals, i guess the next highlight is dinner on my actual birthday. we went to an italian place in berkeley that one of james' co-workers recommended.

it was so cute inside! and the food was pretty good, but i'm not dying to go back anytime soon.
they brought tiramisu as a birthday treat, and it was soaked with so much rum that even after passing it around the table of six people, i think there was still about half of it left on the plate. too bad because i typically love tiramisu.

after dinner, we went to sweetheart cafe for boba drinks. sweatheart became my new favorite drink place when i visited it with my preceptor after volunteering at a clinic in berkeley a few days before my birthday. the boba/pearls/whatever you call them are so far superior to any other place i've tried... they are super soft and a little sweeter and all around amazing. not to mention their pineapple snow drink makes me feel like i'm back in hawaii eating fresh pineapple. :]

that's all i can think of as far as food... but i think i have more to talk about. i mentioned that i volunteered in the berkeley clinic. those experiences are always eye-opening for me, and this time was no exception. i'm amazed at how honest the patients are with us... for some reason i thought they might try to hide alcohol or drug use, but i guess they come to the clinic for help and they know that the best way to get help is to tell us what's really happening. it's kind of hard trying to counsel on things that you know might be out of their control though... for example telling a homeless person to watch their salt intake just doesn't seem too realistic. but i do learn so much from clinics that it keeps me coming back.

i also survived another round of block exams. yuck. physically and emotionally i made it through pretty well. i feel like each time gets a little better and wears my body down a little less. for the first time i can remember, i was actually able to eat breakfast on the morning before my last exam. i think my body must be learning how to deal with the anxiety a little better. as far as my academic outcomes, i did fine. there is room for improvement, but considering how much [or how little?] i studied, i can't really complain.

i'm going to head to bed now, but i have more updates to come... hopefully tomorrow i will find some time for another post. :]