Seven years since

Yay, it's Turkey Day's Eve!

I got a lot done today too. All of my chores, grocery shopping for Thanksgiving dinner (and I only spent $6.03, too), but not too much of my homework sadly. I had only gotten halfway through sociology reading when I became drowsy so I settled down for a nap instead. By the time I got up, I only had an hour left before I had to start dinner.

Dinner was the rice and fish (typical Asian meal) and while I loved it, I'm afraid that the fish might be giving me a bit of an upset stomach.

My mom came home while I was frying the food and after I had dinner, we went to Publix to buy the turkey.

No luck. The turkeys sold at Publix were fully cooked and everything but too expensive and too much for us. I wasn't going to eat turkey this year and I highly doubt that the other three members of my family were going to finish off 12 lbs. of turkey. We settled on coming to the grocery store tomorrow to buy a fresh baked rotisserie chicken instead. At least this way, we will be able to finish it and we won't be knocked out with a turkey-induced coma later.

I watched CSI:NY when we got home (it's my favorite of the CSI's and the only one I watch regularly). I am not able to watch it at school and I had missed so much that I knew little about the context. That didn't stop me from enjoying the show however.

CSI:NY Newsflash--Lindsay's pregnant! Lindsay is one of my most favorite characters on the show (most of them are actually. I just find myself really liking all of the characters. Well, except for Stella. I don't relate to her that much.), and although my mom likes her too, she says that Lindsay looks like too much of a kind girl to be in a show with so much action. I agreed, but I was glad she was in the show anyway. I knew that lady was going places.

***

My mother just showed me a photograph of my grandparents. She wanted me to crop the picture and print it out with the focus on my grandparents faces. It was a nice photo. My grandparents were dressed up in it--my grandfather in the traditional Western dress of a black suit and tie and my grandmother in the traditional Vietnamese Ao Dai. They were standing next to each other and it looked like they were in a Chinese restaurant since I saw a picture of golden Oriental dragons behind them. My mom told me that it was taken a wedding (there was a white and pink tiered wedding cake to their left) shortly after the family had moved to America.

I stared at it awhile and the only thing I could think was: It's been seven years since my grandfather has died. I remember because he died a week after September 11 happened. The real kicker was that I had visited him in California before he died and I returned to South Carolina just one day before the attacks happened. I remember this because I had missed an English test on Monday and I was taking the make-up test when a voice came over the intercom and told everyone that New York and the Pentagon had just been attacked. Airplanes had flown in the Twin Towers and the Trade Center. Terrorists were trying to destroy the Pentagon.

A week later, my mother boarded a plane to come back to California. My grandfather had just died. She remembers that there were so few people on the plane--out of fear most likely.

My grandmother was heartbroken when her husband passed away. Even after he was gone, she would lie on her bed alone and call out for him. Sometimes, she would roll over and begin to say something...then realize that he wasn't there. When my mother came back to visit, my grandmother would always ask, "Where is he? Is he outside? Where did he go?" My mom would relate this to me and I could tell it made her sad. Probably not as sad as my grandmother was, but sad all the same.

A few years later, my grandmother died.

All this reminds me of The Notebook. I finally finished watching it today and it almost made me cry. It really was a sad movie. Not one I'd probably see again but sad all the same. I still remember seeing the light in Allie's eyes as she remembered who Duke was and the way they danced together. Before she forgot again, anyway. And the image of those two lying together at the end reminds me of my grandparents. I wish they could have gone that way. I wish everyone who loved each other could go that way--together. Even though my own parents were never a great example of love, my grandparents were. Many people are.

The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds, and that's what you've given me. That's what I hope to give to you forever. I love you. I'll be seeing you.
~Noah from The Notebook

"For June who loved this garden from Joseph who always sat beside her." Some people do spend their whole lives together.
~Anna Scott from Notting Hill

Tuesday before Thanksgiving

So what's up?

Nothing much for me on this end.

I came home for Thanksgiving Break today. Had a long conversation with Jenny about how we're going to hang out on Black Friday. My mom and I had a nice talk too. She told me about what was going on with the family and her life and I...didn't exactly reciprocate with the details of my life, but that's to be expected.

Anyway, it seems as if I will have a lot of work to do tomorrow. I have church, homework, paper, projects, cleaning the house, practicing piano, and grocery shopping for Thanksgiving dinner all in one day. Whew. Good thing I'm planning on sleeping early tonight.

My mom made me some rice and fish today--fried and scrumptious. The fish, I mean. Not the rice. It feels as if it's been forever since I have had home cooking. Glad I'm actually home for the next five days or so.

Yeah, then my mom did my nails (blue with sparkles! Gah, I'm girly.) and I unpacked while watching Jeopardy! and A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. I always watch Charlie Brown. Good tradition...And to think I'll be twenty-eight when it reaches its fiftieth anniversary. Wonder what I'll be doing then....

Then I watched The Mentalist (I really miss watching TV. I don't get to watch any at school). And then I tried to look Jenny up on Myspace and now I'm here blogging. Yeah, not that exciting, I know. But that's my day.

I am junk

My Sunday school teacher used to say that God doesn't make junk. Well, I guess God didn't make me then.

I just realized how depressing I am yesterday.

Got up and showered this morning. I usually only shower at night, but the cold weather is making me lazy so I think I'll get into the habit of showering in the morning, just so I can get it out of the way.

I skipped class today! Woot! Well, only one class but I never really needed to go to that one anyway. I did go to Statistics class though, just to see what I messed up on my exam. Since class wasn't mandatory, only a dozen people showed up (out of 55 total).

After Stat was music practice. I couldn't practice my carillon skills because I forgot my sheet music back in the dorm but I still had fun trying to play "Seasons of Love" over and over again on the piano.

Lunch was short--a bowl of cereal and some of Melissa's croissants (and it's a good thing I'm eating so many of those, too. There's, like, a million of them). Johnathon hung out with me at lunch but we both had work to do afterwards so...yeah.

Around 2:20 p.m...I just walked past Craig and he didn't even see me! *laughs* So oblivious. At least when he has his headphones on. I could just imagine him singing along with Amy Winehouse or something, unaware of the people around him. I should surprise him one day, jump him and make him yell, "Whoa!"

In French class: WHAT?! I spent a whole hour studying for a quiz we don't have?! Figures something like this would happen to me.

I don't know why, but I was feeling really giddy after French class. I actually skipped out of the classroom, down the stairs, and part of the way back to the dorm. There I spent the next few minutes snacking and dancing around the room to my iPod. Quite literally.

After that came an hour of playing music in the bell tower. I actually had fun playing every Christmas song I could get my hands on (I'm sure I must have driven people crazy with the constant Christmas music).

Homework followed, interrupted by a phone call from Jenny (my friend back home who wants to see Twilight with me), and one from Johnathon who said that he had too much work to do and that he couldn't go to the CU symphonic band concert with me. Figures. This is why I don't invite people anywhere anymore.

I was practically dying of hunger by the time the concert let out and that Subway sandwich tasted so good that I ate way more than I should. Uck. Too much tuna will give one a tummyache.

Anyway, yada yada yada, then I finished my paper and now I'm sitting here in Brackett writing this blog post. It's actually not as interesting to read about what happened in my day as much as it is to read about how I feel about what happened in my day. Lord knows I'm not putting that on this blog.

Oh fine, I'll do Craig

No, I don't mean do him do him. I mean, I'll write about him.

Ahem.

This what I know about Craig:

His favorite color is green. I think. Aside from that...eh.

Anyway, Craig is one of those people who is polite to strangers and...not so polite to his friends. He is tall (compared to me anyway), wafer-thin, and wears glasses. He is also usually arrayed in a variety of t-shirts, , either shorts or jeans, depending on the weather, and sneakers that have to be strong enough to withstand his mad DDR skills.

Craig has a unique way of walking. I noticed this because I study people when I think they are not looking. His hair is brown. Brown like...a tree trunk. Melissa (his evil twin if he lived in a musical) dubbed him "Barkhead" because of this.

Cats are his favorite animal. He has a few cats back at home and they used to knead his butt before they fell asleep on them. You can ask him. Apparently, his cats miss him when he goes away to college. Aww...

Craig likes to laugh. A lot. At anything. He will laugh at jokes that no one else understands, laugh at people (even when they're not trying to be funny), and even make up his own jokes that crack him up. Yeah.

Lastly, Craig is a good friend if you ever need cheering up. Seriously, I bet he could cheer you up even if your dog just died.

A memory, if you will

One of my fondest memories of the aforementioned species is the following anecdote.

I remember going to eat breakfast at Harcombe with Craig. They were usually on mornings where he had an 8 o'clock class and I had a 9 o'clock so I just woke up an hour earlier so we could eat breakfast together. I would usually get a bowl of cereal while Craig took a grapefruit (he was always worried about keeping up his petite figure, the poor guy). Anyway, he would try to peel the grapefruit and the funny thing was, even though he always had on glasses, the sly citrus would always find a way to squirt him right in the eye.

Grapefruit: Now if I angled this just right then I could...*squirt*
Craig: Zow! $%^&*!!!
Grapefruit: *cheers*

And I would just sit there laughing at him.

Craig would then take off his glasses and try to see just why they didn't protect him this time, and he never could (to his vexation) find a drop of grapefruit juice on them. Of course, I always thought Craig looked funny without his glasses so I just laughed at him some more.

I'm surprised I never squirted milk out of my nose or something, laughing at his antics...

Craig

This post is about Craig.

Well, here we go again.

What did I do this morning? I got up, I got dressed, I went to class.

That's what my friend Johnathon said when he heard me thinking this question out loud.

"Don't write that," he says. Well, I'll show him.

Anyway, no real progress in my life today. I guess my life is not interesting enough to write about.

My friend Melissa gave me a present today! I came back from working on my group project in the library and she was showing me these gifts she had bought her family and one of them was for me! It was this round box a little larger than the palm of my hand with beauteous, intricate carvings in its wooden stucture. Carvings of flowers and branching trees and blooming petals. I love it. I think I'll put tidbits in it. Little souvenirs and memories from good times in my life. I told Melissa about how I used to collect things like shells and coins and put them into little boxes. I'll probably do the same thing with this one as well. Find little things like paper clips and marbles, foreign coins and random pipe cleaners to put in there. Then I'm gong to fill it up with sand and bury it somewhere. Hopefully someone will find it someday...Little round wooden box with all the treasures of the world inside.

Gah, I'm such a hopeless romantic.

Hehhhhhhh

Should I blog tonight? Eh, I'm too lazy.

Hehhhhhh. Now I'm just rocking back and forth in the chair waiting until I fall over and hit my head on something.

Baaackk. And Foorrrrrttthh. WHOA!!! *chair tips over*

Five minutes later...

Heh, what d'ya know? I have one of those bumps on my head that cartoon characters get when someone drops an anvil on their head. Maybe I can push this back in or alter it somehow. Well...then I would have a dent in my head. I guess a bump is better than a dent.

Peace. Out. Peeps.

On being a yellow-bellied, lilly-livered, rainbow-flavoured coward

Yep. If you can read all that above, then it would be just the thing to describe who I am. I cannot believe myself.

So we were learning about human verbal language today and towards the end of class, my teacher was saying how the Chinese have five different ways to pronounce the word "Ma". One of the students in our class (who studied Chinese) actually gave an impromptu demonstration. Very cool.

Then, almost as an afterthought, my teacher mentioned Vietnamese...Well, that should have been a red flag for me since it was my native language. I perked up and listened. She told the class about how they had seven different accents and therefore, seven different ways to pronounce something. I nodded and apparently she saw me where I was sitting (all the way in the back of the classroom) for she turned to me looking for confirmation. I said..."Yeah."

After class, I wanted to go up to the board and show her the seven accent signs but then someone else was talking to her and John (from CGSA) was telling her about Swahili so I decided to wait instead. Unfortunately, by the time I had my turn, I had lost my nerve and just walked out. I intended to go see her after class, but then I thought about how Johnathon and Melissa might want to come with me. Pish. I was wrong. Johnathon had a lot of homework to do and Melissa was just...Melissa.

So I went by myself. Now despite the fact that Johnathon had pointed me out to her office, I still got lost trying to find it. Luckily, Andy (the TA for Dr. Vogel's anthropology class) pointed me in the right direction. I found her office and read the little comics strips she had posted on her door and a note that said, "If my door is open or ajar, please come in. Please knock first. If my door is closed then I am not here or not available. Please come back later or try again." At least, that's what I think it said.

Well, after I stood there for a while (not knocking or going in), Andy (the TA, I mean) came by and asked me if I had found it. I nodded. (I was standing right in front of it, wasn't I?) Then he asked me if I was going to knock and I said..."Maybe" in a very small, scared voice. He must have thought I was acting funny since he gave a laugh before he walked on.

Well, I never did. Knock, I mean. After standing there for another five minutes trying to steel myself, I actually turned and went up to the third floor of Brackett to find Professor Raymark instead. He wasn't there. I came back down and tried once again to muster up courage to knock on Dr. Vogel's door. That courage never came.

After another nerve-wracking few minutes, I decided I just couldn't do it and sank to the floor outside her office, sitting with my arms wrapped around my knees and and lamenting my miserable, sorry-a** self. The rest of the time I whiled away on my laptop writing apology letters that I would never send. When it was time to go to French lab, I packed up my stuff, exited Brackett, and walked all the way to Daniel staring down out of shamefulness and wishing I had more confidence.

And that is why I am a yellow-bellied yada yada yada.

57 songs in an hour and a half is a record

I wanted to create a facebook note based on Jessica's and since I didn't want any song I liked to be left off the list, I spent an hour and a half (after I finished my homework, of course) downloading music. Fun.

Oh, that's right. Here's how my day went:

8:30 a.m.--Woke up for anthropology (ugh, definitely need to get more than six and a half hours of sleep a night).

9:33 a.m.--Freaked out because I thought that I had missed the deadline to turn in my paper. I either would have pitched a fit or broken down in tears if I had. Luckily, the deadline was noon so I had two hours left. Whew.

11:00 a.m.--Facebook when I should have been doing homework.

11:51 a.m.--French lab. C'est difficile 'cause the program will mark my answer wrong just because I put punctuation too close to a word.

12:35 p.m.--Lunch.

1:00 p.m.--Mad rush to finish homework for American Lit. before class.

2:00 p.m.--American Lit. Apparently, it was so nice outside that my teacher decided to move the whole class outside. She was about to seat us at the Strom Thurmond Institute, but one guy suggested that we sit in the graveyard since we were going to be talking about dead people anyway. (This was true. We had just read a play about a murder.) So we had class on the grass. Hey, that rhymes. I think I'll write a poem about this.

3:17 p.m.--Sociology reading. Interrupted since Mary invited me to Starbucks. Frappaccinoes! I wonder if Starbucks give custom orders--Mocha frappuchino, extra milk, hold the whipped cream.

4:30 p.m. Took Mary up to the bell tower and...ran into my teacher. Apparently, she had a performance and tour to give today. Oh well, at least I got practice and a few Disney songs in.

5:00 p.m. Played cell phone game while Mary talked to her Aunt Grace. Then we went to straddle cannons and took a walk around campus before we parted ways. I think she went to get something to eat. I finished homework and then spent the next hour and a half...well, you know.

My obsessions

Melissa is writing about her obsessions (or one obsession really since she's just writing about teachers) so I thought I would write about my obsessions too.

The Many Obsessions of A Coo-Coo Kachu

1) Sailor Moon! Woot! Don't you just love pretty sailor soldiers fighting evil in those impossibly small miniskirts?

2) Sweets. But only some, like chocolate and fruit but not fruity chocolate or chocolaty fruit.

3) Baby animals. I adore puppies and kittens and ducklings and litle furry penguins and polar bear cubs and I could go on for a while.

4) Writing stories. I have this one story about a klutzy warrior and one about a girl who finds out that her best friend is really a mermaid and one about...you get the idea.

5) Being disciplined. Though I'm not really working that hard on this.

6) Australian guys or British guys. Very hot.

7) Anime guys. Also very hot.

8) Finding a song I like. If I hear a song once and find that I really like it, then I try hard to remember it so I can hunt it down later.

9) Symbolism. I'm obsessed with trying to find symbolism in everything. It's almost compulsive for me to look for signs or double meanings in things.

10) And the last one? People. Yeah, I know that I can be very anti-socializing but really, other people are what I think about a vast majority of the time. You would too if you lived my life. Seems natural, doesn't it?

So...my thoughts for today

So today I resumed my classes at Clemson. Oh, I could just jump for effin' joy.

Anyway, class was okay. I should have skipped out.

Sociology Class: Lecture that I didn't listen to and Prof. Davis took up half of class talking about all of these extra credit assignments that we could do. At least, I think they were extra credit. Oh well. I wouldn't bother with it anyway. I have, like, an A or something in this class. Basically, I just spent the class period rifling through my old papers and seeing if I annoyed the people next to me by ripping pages out as obnoxiously as I could. Hah. Fun. Oh, yeah. And we had to write down our favorite song on a sheet of paper that she (the profess0r) passed around. I wrote "At the beginning". I don't know. It was the best thing I could think of...eh, I should have written "Simple and Clean." That's been my favorite song for the longest and I never get tired of it. "At the beginning" is not even on my iPod.

Statistics: Group experiment with toilet paper. Basically, we took three different brands, soaked them with water, and then see how long they would hold up two half dollars (those are the big fifty cent coins). Charmin Basic won. Angel Soft lost. And the super thin Clemson University paper lost big time. Nice to see that this is what we're wiping ourselves with. *laughs* "Enough to wipe an army." Ahem...old high school joke.

Lunchtime was spent trying to finish the paper that I should have done yesterday instead of being on Facebook (I swear, this social networking thing is going to kill all my time). But I got it done and I even ran into Jason Yang while I was printing it out in Martin Hall. He was pretty nice, said hi to me and everything though I didn't exactly know what he meant when he told me to enjoy CGSA tonight. Was he not going?

French was very...French. Spent the time reviewing for our exam on Monday and I actually did well this time (unlike the time the teacher called on me and I was like..."D-huh-wha?").

Post-partum French found me going back to the dorm to do homework only to be sidetracked by running into these two guys (one of whom told me to come eat with them). Interesting fellows they were. This was our adventure:

First, they stopped by the ATM's behind Holmes and each went to their respective machines while I took the empty BB&T one and stood there spread-legged, pretending I was urinating on the wall.

Anyway, we ended up at Chili's Too and one of them sat around not saying much while the other one stuffed his face and made us watch him eat. Haha. What a fatty man. Um, I mean funny man.

Well, I finally got around to doing homework because the guys said that they were going to someplace called...Moe Joe's? I excused myself and skedaddled out of there.

Ahh...the refuge of my room. Oh, Melissa's sleeping in here. That's right. Better be quiet...

Well, after homework came CGSA. Short meeting this time too. Apparently, the execs didn't really have anything planned so we pretty much just had updates, introductions of new members (wait, make that potential new members), and went around asking people's opinions to the outcome of the election. Bradley squealed, Tasha made her brutally honest jokes, Josh was not pleased with the outcome (he had voted for Bob Barr) while others were just glad that Sarah Palin got nowhere near the White House.

Surprisingly, we ran into Steven Sweat while we were going to Chili's for dinner and who should also be in Chili's but the two guys I met earlier? Well, after that we just had a ball with everyone seated at the table sharing dinner. Except for me, of course. I just spent the time tracing words on the really shiny tiles of the table and then making those alternating word sentences with Tyler.

After dinner was...clean-up time! I plugged my iPod in and listened to the shuffled music as I cleaned, cleared, and threw things away. I was almost done with Melissa's side too but she came back earlier than I thought and then...well, then the funniest thing happened: She told me to stop. She said that it made her feel guilty if I cleaned. Then she hugged me and said that I was too nice. Yeah, right. As if. I just stood there laughing because no one had ever given that reaction before. I've gotten thank you's and "You didn't have to do that" but never "I feel guilty." I thought that was just hilarious.

Melissa cleaned a little after that and then she changed into her pajamas and left for the boys' room. I had just come back to the room from taking out the trash when Johnathon came in because he wanted to show me some music. It was so pretty to listen to and then we ended up talking for a while about music and languages and anime. I never knew that he had seen so many.

Well, midnight came and Johnathon left to finish up homework. I vacuumed, showered, and had just finished prayer when Melissa walked back in.

Then she told me that we should blog together and...here I am.

Infiltration

Craig has infiltrated my blogspot. Holy. Crap. How did this happen??? Oh yeah. A certain somebody told him.