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Happy Endings

April 21, 2011 Family / Food / Pictures / Post-A-Day 2011 / Television
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Just fin­ished the first class in the NERT course. (More on that later.)

As I walked to the bus stop, I made an impromptu detour at Bi-​Rite Cream­ery, which I had not been back to since Chi Ba and Mike E came to town. Tried the Cof­fee Sun­dae this time, and it was awe­some. I’m a sucker for tof­fee bits. A happy end­ing to a good day.

Oh, and speak­ing of happy end­ings, any­one watch that new show? It’s a new sit­com about a group of young friends. (In fact, the girls seem to have a 1 – 1 cor­re­spon­dence to the girls of Friends.) The twist is that this show starts with Rachel leav­ing Ross at the altar. I picked it up for Elisha Cuth­bert, but the chick from Scrubs is also pretty good. Daman Wayans seems so mel­low, it’s weird. The other folks don’t stand out much to me one way or another.

Secret Santa 3.0

January 4, 2011 Family / Post-A-Day 2011
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Three years ago, my fam­ily (mostly the cousins, but some of the aunts and uncles as well) started a “Good Enough” Secret Santa game. The idea is that we would each make a wish­list of up to five items, and they could be as extrav­a­gant or out­ra­geous as we could imag­ine. We’ve had peo­ple wish for trop­i­cal islands, pri­vate jets, uni­corns, and more. Then, when names are drawn, you could only spend a max­i­mum of $5 on the gift(s) for your Secret San­tee, and include a note explain­ing why your gifts were good enough. For instance, some­one who asked for a sports car might get a Match­box car from a Happy Meal.

There’s always a cou­ple of San­tas who “cheat” the price limit and actu­ally get wish­list items (Dong Ha got her 7 jeans the first year, and Dang Quang got his motor­ized scooter last year), but that’s OK. We give each other gifts out­side of the Secret Santa gifts any­way, and I always looked at this game as a way to flex my oft-​neglected cre­ative muscles.

This year, though, I was a bit dis­heart­ened to find that par­tic­i­pa­tion had dropped, but we held a round any­way. Then I was even more sad­dened to find out that a lot of the gifts were sent out late. There are always some great “good enough” gifts given each year (I was really proud of my crotchet purse for Chi Be the first year, Mike E’s gift to Gio Linh last year was so clev­erly tied together, and Dong Ha’s gift was a great mix for Chi Ba’s tough list this year) but per­haps it’s time to retire this tradition.

Or maybe, to go Hol­ly­wood on this, it’s time for a reboot.

Off The Wagon

February 17, 2008 Family / Health / Money / Movies / Music / Video Games / Work
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So I haven’t been stick­ing to my fit­ness plans at all over here in MN. it’s actu­ally harder, because in Davis, I was lim­ited by money and acces­si­bil­ity of food, so with lim­ited options, it was eas­ier to go with healthy choices. Now, I’m sur­rounded by unhealthy choices, and my fam­ily keeps push­ing me to fin­ish things. Despite my set­backs in that depart­ment, though, the week­end was awe­some. Got to chill, played a lot of Rock Band, and I’m now com­fort­able with medium on every­thing except drums, which I con­tinue to suck at. Hand-​eye coör­di­na­tion just isn’t my thing. That’s why I did wrestling in high school rather than any sport with a ball.

Last night, Chi Ba and Mike E took me out to see an Irish band at an Irish bar in the down­town area. The only Irish music I had really lis­tened to before was Flog­ging Molly, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Turns out, the band — Paddy Wagon — is pretty cool. It’s offi­cially six men, but I believe I counted more last night, Chi Ba said some­times they have so many peo­ple that some of them can’t fit on stage and have to stand off to the side and play. Their set is mostly Irish folk songs, and audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion is strongly encour­aged. Some­times it’s just clap­ping along, but in one song, every time they say, “Alice,” the audi­ence responds, “Alice? Who the fuck is Alice?!” In another song, every time the wife in the song calls the hus­band, the audi­ence responds, “Hey, what?!” But as peo­ple get drunker, it turns into things like, “What bitch?!” How can you go wrong with enter­tain­ment like that? :)

Any­way, I start work at 6:30 tomor­row, so I gotta go to sleep extra early tonight. :(