exploring....

so i tried to get out and see the lovely scenery western mass has to offer while i've been out there. one saturday i explored a trail that parallels the railroad tracks and lets you see these lovely keystone bridges that are the oldest of its kind. unfortunately the trail was still really muddy so half the time i had to walk on the railroad tracks. that is.....until i saw signs posted that certain parts of the tracks had high voltage electrical currents running through them. so they warned you not to walk on them. which i thought was very nice of them.

i left my heart in san francisco.....

so sometimes i have to travel for my job. okay. i guess these days, it's more like all the time rather than sometimes. i know i've been very very bad at not updating my blog and i'm gonna try and do better. i promise.

last weekend, work needed me to do an emergency trip to san fran. and of course it was quite the trial for me to have to fly off to san fran and revel in the sun and good food and the wonder of japantown and shopping for 48 hours. but somehow i managed to do it.

with the help of a little elf named janelle. she came along for the ride and it was a whirlwind trip. our flight left at 8:30 am on friday and we called a cab to come and take us to the airport. on the way to the cab, ms. janelle took a spill down the grassy hill in front of my apartment. thank goodness there were no grass stains and no major injuries but it did jack up her hip a bit. but a star trooper she is....and she pressed forward and accepted the first class seat on the plane to san fran.

we landed a few hours later and grabbed another cab (cabs seem to be theme in this trip; i think we took 7 cabs in one day). i told the cabbie the address we needed to go to - a not-so-great neighborhood in san fran (which i had no idea even existed!). about two blocks from our final destination, he stopped the cab and told us to get out. he said that was as far as he could go and he had another "appointment" he had to get to. huh? i was super duper confused but not one to outstay their welcome, we scrambled out of the cab and i threw some money at him. and we walked the last few blocks.

our whole purpose of the trip was to deliver these secret boxes to a-place-i-cannot-name location. the original secret boxes had been shipped a few days before from alaska, but because of some volcano up there, fed ex had a hard time getting their deliveries out. so we were worried that the secret boxes wouldn't get to the secret location on time. but lo and behold, when we walked into the lobby of our final destination, guess what was sitting there? yep. the original set of secret boxes. so we turned back around, grabbed another cab to our hotel, shipped the extra set of secret boxes home, and played the rest of the day in japantown.

now japantown is a slice of heaven because it reminds me so much of the motherland - korea. with its yummy food, grocery stores that contain unimaginable treasures (like eyebrow razors, car air fresheners that smell like magical apples, and soft candies that feel like pillows in your mouth), sticker photo booths, and of course stationary stores that have notebooks that say: To produce music is also in a sense to produce children.

several hours later, we took another cab back to the hotel, ordered room service for dinner and watched mindless tv. we had tickets to see Leslie and the LY's that night so we had to regain our strength after doing so much mindless shopping and eating. we had a minor disaster on the way to the concert that involved some lost credit cards in a runaway cab. but we didn't let this slow us down and we kept pressing on .......to see below woman rap and jiggle on stage with her backup singers dressed as lions. it was pretty dang awesome.

we slept in sunday morning and explored nob hill. we ate at this little cafe and stuffed our faces with omelets and french toast before heading off to the shopping district. oh and i bought some new eye glasses on the way too. and then it was back to the airport to catch our flight home. yep. i could get used to spending my weekend like this.

no more ESPN.....

so as i lay on my bed in my hotel room, contemplating life and my purpose here, i flip through the channels of my cable tv and the same pressing thought keeps returning my mind: why are there so many dang channels of ESPN? we've got just plain ESPN. then we have ESPN HD. then ESPN 2. and finally ESPN classic. next we'll have ESPN real world. ESPN true hollywood story. and ESPN office.

i'm sick of all the ESPN channels! especially when my hotel tv doesn't get the CW!

attending mass...

so i've been spending the past month in western mass and ct for work. western mass by day; ct by night.....or at least on the weekends. since the beginning of the year, i've spent two full weekends at home in utah and the rest on the east coast. as much as i'm tired of living out of a suitcase, i haven't minded the commute. the best of both worlds.

dal was a sweetheart and introduced me to his good pal AM who lives out here in west hartford. AM had a smashing party last night where i got to meet he and his roommate's coolio friends. the beer lawyer was one of those people and he gave me a great lesson on the importance of winning competitions. or may just winning period. someday i will become competitive. but until then, i'm fine with just watching from the sidelines.

the beer lawyer

AM's roommate and friends

the beer lawyer and AM

wishlist #692 names brand tees.....

so you can pretty much go to this cool website and pick from a slew of color-customized shirts with the names of members from your favorite bands, tv shows, sports teams, etc. this one was my favorite. for a cool $23, not too shabby, gossip girl.

xoxo....

a helpful diet book....

so this book cracked me up. this "diet" book reads like a novel while imparting words of wisdom regarding everything from how to navigate takeout menus and the drive-thru, to why you can't eat like he does, to how to grocery shop with him without losing your sanity.

i don't know why i find this so amusing. probably because it would be very helpful if i indeed had a boyfriend. and there is no way a guy could get away reading a book like this about his girlfriend.

meshing worlds....

so i was able to spend two weekends in a row (make that three, counting this weekend) on the east coast. i split my time between the big apple and ct, which are both considered second homes. i got to spend a lot of time with the uncles, matty, mastah p, and cat.

i think heaven is when you introduce friends to other friends and they end up becoming friends! aka mastah p and matty, cat and matty, and the uncles to mastah p. i love it when worlds begin to collide and mesh together and we all get along and hold hands and sing, "its a small world after all..."

uncle t, clarkie, and matty

me and mastah p

mastah p and matty looking very wide-eyed.

matty and i's engagement photo (ha ha)

getting luv from ms. cat

the lovely cat

baked...

i know i know. i'm a slacker. a very bad blogger. these days. my creative juices have just not been flowing so far into 2009 and i haven't known what to blog about. but i guess we don't always have to be creative geniuses to write, right? (ha ha, that was pretty dang funny).

i guess its a combination of not having anything interesting to write about AND facebook. i post pics and let people know what i'm doing on FB so i figure why update my blog? it would just be the same ol' stuff. but i forget that not everyone is on FB and not everyone is on blogs. so i guess its important to cover both technological, networking territories.

i did just get back from a lovely trip to the dominican republic with my two sisters, mickey and ayer. it was in celebrating mickey's 30th birthday and i think we should all have 30th birthdays every year. a shout out to the rhyders, mickey's bosses, who treated us to their time share in puerto plata. we ended up getting a three bedroom/three bathroom house which included our own private pool, maid and cook. yeah, not too shabby.

this was pretty much our daily agenda:

• 9:00 am: wake up for breakfast that was being prepared by our cook.
• 10:00 am: let the food settle by watching episodes of the office or friends
• 11:00 am: go take another nap by the pool or take the golf cart to the VIP beach where they have beds you can sleep on.
• 2:00 pm: remember to wake up to go and eat at the all-you-can-eat buffet at the resort. the food wasn't too good, but if you stuck with the salad and fresh pineapple, you were fine.
• 3:00 pm: let food settle again by going home on your golf cart to watch more episodes of the office or friends.
• 5:00 pm: another nap by the pool
• 7:00 pm: dinner at one of the restaurants on the resort
• 9:00 pm: watch a movie or play three hours of mexican train dominoes and get beat every time by ayer.
• midnight: go to bed to get ready for another big day.

yeah, this pretty much was my schedule for four days. and can you believe that i still need another week to catch up on my sleep and recover from vacation? and i guess its no surprise why i'm almost as dark as mocha and people keep telling me how filipino i look or even better - that i look like the r&b singer Brandy! because we all know that black is the new white and i've always wanted to be white.

the resort

the beds on the beach

me and mickey at our last dinner
mickey and ayer