Ericaland

Back home for a friend’s wedding.

Air Canada LOST MY LUGGAGE.

I spent the night looking for stuff to wear to the wedding tomorrow morning. I hate flying.

On Friday, my work had a house pool party out in Atherton. There were about 30 or so people there, but the house was huge. A coworker mentioned it seemed a lot like the house party in Garden State, and I think that was a good description.

The next day was doing more mundane things like buying stuff from Target, going to a dog park (first time I’ve done that) and eating butter shoyu. Sunday, I went to a craft fair somewhere close to the Marina in SF. I got totally lost on the way there, and of course while trying to figure out where I was, some tourists asked me for directions. They had a map, so I at least helped them locate where they were and where on the map they wanted to be, but overall I think they were unimpressed with my navigating skills.

The craft fair was pretty fun and interesting, lots of stuff to look at. A circus, punk marching band performed in the middle of everything, and I actually enjoyed that a lot. I think there should be a circus, punk marching band at my wedding if Weezer is unavailable.

Tonight I went fencing for the first time in ages. It was kind of a scary experience, and I reacted in my normal shy, mousy, helpless manner. I dropped in at an intermediate class at the club I looked at in the Mission. There were only 10 people there and after saying that I’d been fencing for a long while, I felt pretty self-conscious the rest of the night, as I sucked at everything.

Why can’t I parry eight? Why can’t I remember how to do a feint-disengage well? This is all sorts of frustrating.

Work is crazy busy as usual. I’m going to try to work part of the weekend that doesn’t involve loli bachelorette activities.

Yay. I smell.

Jeremy is out at some karaoke club with coworkers tonight and I’m waiting for him to come home. Our upstairs neighbor lady is stomping around her apartment loudly after walking through the hallway talking loudly on her cell phone about someone’s dead cat. She is one of the main reasons I want to move.

I have walked home by myself several times lately, and I’ve figured out a lot of characteristics and behaviors in people I see that make me either nervous or not nervous. The main thing that makes me feel less uneasy about someone is that they have an obvious reason for doing what they’re doing. So a basic list of non-sketchy to sketchy person would be:

Person with a kid. I remember seeing someone loitering by a car just kind of looking around. I wasn’t feeling too happy about walking by them until I noticed they had a baby carriage nearby and there was a woman on the other side of the car putting a baby in the back seat.

Person running, especially with other people.

Person walking with other people (especially ladies) involved in deep conversation. People seem to want to go on walks around the lake and vent.

Person walking their dog.

Person listening to music and not really paying attention to anything.

Person walking quickly, making it seem like they’re on their way home, just like me.

Person kind of looking around, not really walking quickly or consistently in the same direction.

Person looking at me and walking behind me for several blocks.

Person coming up to me on a quiet side street at night and asking for money. This happened, and happily I wasn’t mugged.

So I’m thinking about fencing again and the most convenient club is one in the Mission close to the 16th St. BART. This means a short, but potentially scary walk from and to the BART station in the Mission at night and walking home at night, which makes me nervous because it gets pretty quiet after 10 pm.

So yeah, sometimes I wish we had a car.

Tokidoki Onitsuka Tiger shoes.

They are orange.

It’s so hot right now. I was getting used to the not too warm, not too cold, sort of windy weather, but it got all hot this weekend. We’re puppy sitting again, and I’m starting to feel like I can take care of living things without anything terrible happening.

It’s my second 4th of July here and I can’t really remember the first one at all. We went to my coworkers house party and bailed before there was an opportunity to see any fireworks. We did see fireworks on the BART ride home past West Oakland station, which was kinda cool.

I have three trips to plan, two in August and one in October.
I have to clean my incredibly cluttered/mess of an apartment.
I have to go buy an iphone next week.
I have to weave in the last couple of ends on my completely (finally) seamed best friend sweater and attach the buttons.
I have to stop watching so much America’s Best Dance Crew.

Jeremy has agreed to move! Now I just need to find an apartment. My happy new place would include a dishwasher and neighbors that don’t make tons of noise at 3 am on a regular basis. I think hoping for an in suite washer and dryer would be unrealistic, but that would be pretty awesome.

Our collective laziness/busy-ness means that we won’t be moving any time soon, but I will do my best to make it happen. Eventually.

Jeremy’s project manager got married last Saturday in Mendocino, so we went up there for the weekend. I ditched work last Friday a little early, but still an hour behind schedule as Jeremy got stuck at the car rental place for almost and hour and a half. This meant we were stuck in rush hour Friday traffic trying to get out of the East Bay and a 3 and a half hour trip was more like 4 and a half hours. The wedding was nice though, all pretty and outdoors-y with good food. I did pick up some yarn in Mendocino. I’m going to make Hilary’s mini sweater with it as soon as I finish my two sweater projects.

There was more onsen tonight, I feel all warm and mooshy. I’m spending the rest of the week working from home and puppy sitting.

So I went to Jin Wang forever ago and found several dresses I liked. Unfortunately, they were all really pricey. A couple weeks ago, i was digging around a pre-owned wedding dress site and it had the Jin Wang dress I wanted the most. I emailed back in forth with the woman selling it and this weekend we made a trip down to Redwood City to check it out. I was a bit hesitant about buying a used dress, it’s a little weird wearing something someone else got married in, but in the end it’s just another dress I need and I’m not that sentimental.

We bought it, ate lunch at In and Out, took it home and today I dragged it into the city to have a tailor look it over and make alterations. They said that it was in good condition (her words were “I’ve seen new dresses in worse condition”) and told me to come back in 8 months, as my weight could fluctuate between now and the wedding. (We still haven’t set a date, but it’s not going to be in 2008 for sure) Seeing as I’ve gained 3 pounds maybe in the past 5 years, I don’t think that will be a problem, but who knows, maybe all the loli ice cream parties will start pudging me out.

So yay, I got the dress I wanted without having to spend a ton of money on it. It’s going to sit in the closet for a long time. Now to find a venue and do everything else.

Also, I figure I deserve a wedding cheong sam.

Spa day was fun. Sophy and I had the crap beat out of us by masseuses and were the only ones wearing bathing suits in the onsen. Despite not really knowing what to do/where to go, it was still relaxing. We still have half the amount on the gift certificate left, so hopefully we’ll go again in a couple of months. Afterwards we did all sorts of nerdy things in Japan town and I bought a ton of curry.

Now to do the meme from Hilary:

1) What was I doing 10 years ago?

Hmm.. I was 16, so probably starting to stress over finals and listening to a lot of Nine Inch Nails. Nothing all that interesting really.

2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today?

This was my list for today:
-clean fridge (done)
-do several loads of laundry (done, someone left their laundry in the laundry room for almost 3 hours, so I had to constantly shuffle their stuff around to get my stuff done)
-use dyson to clean hardwood floor (done, we have carpet in the apartment too)
-wash hardwood floor (not done)
-call Revenue Canada and ask them how to file my taxes online with a foreign mailing address. I tried using Intuit, and they won’t let me enter a non-Canadian address. (not done, I tried but kept getting a busy signal. They owe me a refund, so I’ve been lazy about this)

3) Snacks I enjoy:
Cookies, granola bars, tortilla chips, popcorn.

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
Be all philanthropic. Travel.

5) Places I have lived:

Grew up in Victoria, BC. Moved to Port Coquitlam, which is a pretty boring suburb east of Vancouver, for 8 months. Moved back to Victoria for a while, a year maybe? Moved to downtown Vancouver for 8 months. Moved back to Victoria and stayed there for over 2 years. Moved to Oakland. I’ve been in Oakland for a little over a year and I’m not planning on moving back to Victoria, maybe back to Vancouver eventually.

6) Jobs I have had:

Retail clerk/blister pack maker at a pharmacy.
Co-op student at a couple of software companies.
Developer at Mercurial, which I thought was defunct, but apparently isn’t.
Destroyer of monkeys at Rupture I’m kind of wishing that was my actual job title now.

7) Bloggers I am tagging who you will enjoy getting to know better:

Umm… I don’t really have any blogging friends. I guess I need to be less anti-social on the internet.

That’s it! Also, Adam is most awesome.

Today was a trip to Mills Valley to look at a small hotel we are considering using as our wedding venue. It had an outdoor lawn overlooking a bay where we could have the wedding ceremony and a pretty simple indoor reception area. It was nice, but there’s no backup plan if it happens to rain and I was hoping to have something more interesting than the standard hotel wedding, so there’s more wedding venue looking around to do.

Post venue visit, we grabbed some In and Out, which was crazy busy and a little bit of shopping. I picked up a couple bento boxes from the Container Store. Now I just need to start getting up at 4 am to make lunch

I’m pretty excited that I have Memorial day off, it’s the first time in a good while where both Jeremy and I have a long weekend. I plan on knitting, doing some cleaning (the hardwood floor and fridge are in dire need of some scrubbing) and going to the spa with Sophy tomorrow. It’s a Japanese spa with an onsen. That could be interesting.

Hilary linked me! And she tagged me for another meme. Next post

Google analytics has told me what I pretty much assumed. Very few people read my blog. Those who do read my blog know me. (I guess that’s to be expected).

Things I’ve done lately:

-I attempted to do some wedding related scheduling on Friday, which led to several unanswered phone calls and me leaving a message for some coordinator who has yet to call me back.

-I went to some coworkers’ housewarming. I’m no fun at parties, and Jeremy called me Stick in the Mud Kwan.

-Went to work in Loli. I don’t know if I’ll do this again, as it makes me feel like I’m 16 again and feeling embarrassed about having to wear my school uniform in public. It’s either character building or asking for unwanted attention. I’ll try to figure out which one. People have mostly said nice things though, when they felt the need to comment at all.

Hopefully I’ll make more headway with wedding stuff this week and run. I really should run.