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3月30日 Trip of a Lifetime (TM)*I'm about to spend the next 32 days in Vietnam. My mom is making her first trip back since she left 34 years ago and I'll be there for the homecoming. This month also marks the 40th anniversary of my maternal grandmother's death. If nothing else, this trip will be extremely emotional.
This trip is wholly unlike any trip I've ever taken, starting with all the preparation. I've been reading guidebooks twice a day and taking notes. I've been visiting blogs and forums daily, contacting bloggers and posters requesting answers for my specific concerns. Rather than wait until the night before, I've spent the last week packing and repacking. I've spent hours reassuring myself that I've arranged a legitimate hotel stay. I carefully scripted my route from customs to the cab stands, contingencies included. I even made a visual packing list for my backpack so I know where everything is in the pack! While it's been stressful trying to think of everything, I know that having a handle on the details now will ease my stress later.
Obsessing about the logistical details is also a legitimate excuse for not worrying about the psychic toll this trip will have on me. I think I'm in for some life-changing revelations. I suspect it'll be hard to meet aunts, uncles and cousins and not feel guilty about we've never spoken before. I don't even know all their names or what they look like. I'll grapple with ideas about how best to help them out even as I live my comfortable life halfway across the world. Not to mention how I'll be struggling to imagine how differently my life could have turned out.
Slightly less heady but equally interesting to think about: what will it be like to be among so many Vietnamese? How much conversation can I really make with my pathetic Vietnamese vocabulary? How differently will I be treated when I'm traveling with my mom and sisters versus how I'll be treated when I'm traveling with Peter? Will the schemers and opportunists really be any worse than they are in any other tourist spot? Will we be going back?
As I get closer to my departure, the nerves I've been feeling since I bought my ticket earlier this month are finally being replaced by excitement. Though some of the challenges of this trip will be unique (and somewhat difficult to explain to someone who's not Vietnamese-American and not as thoroughly neurotic as me), I'll probably be able to handle anything that comes my way just as capably as I have on any other trip.
Now seemed like a good time to resurrect the blog because I imagine I'll be processing some pretty serious thoughts over the next month. On this particular trip, I hope my travelogue will be less of a catalog of what I ate and what I saw (though there will be some of that) and more of a meditation on what I'm learning and how my perceptions of Vietnam and Vietnamese people change over the course of the trip. I have a feeling this experience will explain a lot about my parents and my relationships with them, too. I hope to try a little something called "editing," too, so my entries are actually readable and entertaining. Access to the Internet should be pretty easy to come by, so I look forward to staying in touch with everyone while I'm gone! * Thanks to Beth for giving this trip a nice, succinctly descriptive name! 5月1日 EtiquetteThe following exchange went down in our kitchen last night.
Me: This morning, I sat next to a woman on the bus who smelled like bong water. It was very distracting, so I didn't get much reading done.
Peter: You should have said, "Puff, puff, give! Don't keep that bong in your purse, lady!" 4月29日 Flexing Various MusclesThis week and the following two weeks are chock-a-block with things I'm really looking forward to and some I also fear.
What happens if Casey, Casey's Brother, and Uncle Muscles come on stage and I completely lose it? Worse, what happens if Casey's really dead?? What if Professor uses me to demonstrate joint locks? What if Professor suggests we do the t'ai ch'i form and I have to admit I haven't practiced it at all since classes ended? What if I don't beat the bridge? Or, worse, what if I beat the bridge, but I injure myself in the second half of the race because of what I had to do to beat the bridge?? I'll report back on which fears were unfounded. 4月25日 Accuracy in Self-ReportingYou know how you can claim whatever height or weight you want (within reason) when you apply for a driver's license? I think it's an interesting social experiment. You don't see the honor system in effect much. I'm sure that celebrities, in particular, take advantage of this, adding a couple inches to their height and shaving a few pounds off their weight should the tabloids ever get a hold of this information. (Except Nicole Richie, who, perhaps because she's been scrutinized for being too thin, added pounds!)
Even though I'm short, I've always been honest about my height on my driver's license, even though lots of people would round up instead of down with that half inch. I used to be honest about my weight, too. In fact, the driver's license I got at 16 and then replaced at 18 was extremely specific about my weight. Back then, I'd been the same weight for years, so I didn't need to round up or down at all to account for a range. It was a number I was happy with, too, so it's not like I would have been embarrassed about rounding up three pounds or rounding down two, but I didn't need to. It was more important to me to have this totally accurate record. (In the same way that the IRS can tell you've fudged your taxes, I think you can usually tell someone is being honest or is at least being a good liar about something if they're specific like that. For example, if someone tells you they weighed 109 when they graduated from high school and then that they weighed 176 at their heaviest (!), you know they're not fudging because they didn't say 110 and 175 or some other conveniently round numbers. This person was not me, by the way, and I'm hoping that thought didn't even cross your mind!) But then, college happened... I kept the same driver's license until I moved to Washington, feeling all the while pretty guilty about what I knew was no longer accurate reporting.
When I moved here and got on the scale at the doctor's office, I was confronted with a number that scared the bejesus out of me. Until then, it hadn't registered with me that things had slowly gotten out of control. So, when I got my new driver's license, I fudged my weight by, oh, fifteen pounds. (See here? I was being less than completely honest about that. It was a little more than fifteen pounds...) It was not a proud moment, but I couldn't handle the truth back then and I certainly didn't want anyone else to know my shame either. By the time my driver's license expired two years ago, I'd lost some weight, but I still wasn't quite as thin as my driver's license claimed. This was right around the time I said I was finally going to "get serious" about losing weight, though, so I joked with the clerk as I filled out the form and said, "This doesn't look unrealistic, right? If you were a cop who'd pulled me over, you wouldn't look at my driver's license and write me a ticket for providing false information, would you?" He laughed and said, "Well, since you're working on getting there, I don't see any harm in writing that!"
I figured that shaving another fifteen pounds from the public record was at least one way of guilting myself into losing those pounds in real life. I tried different diets and even exercised more, but that number felt more and more unattainable as I never got within seven pounds of it without rebounding (sometimes a lot, sometimes only a little). So, I stopped thinking about it. If you'd asked me two months ago how much my driver's license said I weighed, I wouldn't be able to say with any certainty. (I actually had to double-check it just now.) But then, when I weighed myself last week, a few days after we returned from Madrid, I saw that I'd reached that unreachable number! Peter was in the room. I actually stepped off the scale, then back on, and then I had him confirm what I'd read. For the first time in years, I actually weighed what my driver's license reported! It felt really good, but sometimes good things don't last.
We ate out three times the following weekend, Ethiopian at Ras Dashen, sushi at Maneki, and then a hearty brunch at Cafe Flora, and I gained almost four and a half pounds in the process. While I knew I should be good this week to compensate, we had already made dinner plans with friends on Tuesday (four courses of New American at Crush), Thursday (four courses of my own, relatively healthy cooking), and then again tonight. I didn't weigh myself all this week, but since it's Friday, I needed a reality check going into the weekend. Somehow, inexplicably, I'm back to that nice round number from last week! Since I've hit it twice now (and it wasn't therefore a temporary fluke), I decided it was okay to announce it here. I'm pretty pleased with myself. Ever since I started restricting and counting calories, I knew I'd get here eventually, so I didn't rush myself or beat myself up whenever things fluctuated. Looking back, it doesn't even feel like it's been that long, though four months is the longest I've ever stuck with any "diet". Not that this is a diet... I imagine that I'll have to report a new number the next time I renew my driver's license, but I'm pretty sure I can go back to being honest about it from now on and that's a wonderful feeling, too. 2月19日 Device DramaNot too long ago, we suffered some drama with our projector. The death of the projector thwarted our plans to showcase Rock Band to friends the very same evening. I shouted. I yelled. I suggested canceling dinner plans. I blamed the new media PC. I blamed the wiring in the house. I blamed us for spending all that money on a TV. I wanted to take down the whole electronics industry. Then, I did the most reasonable thing I could think of at the time and turned my attention to InFocus. Because there were instructions on the Internet for soldering in a new fuse, I knew others had experienced the same problem and that it had nothing to do with us and everything to do with InFocus. When we found out their repair and return process would inconvenience us for a month, I was livid. Turns out I boohoo'd a little prematurely. Only a day (or two?) after InFocus received our broken projector, they had already fixed it and put it back in the mail! The best part? We didn't get a bill for the repair job on the fuse or for the shipping, just a UPS tracking number! About a week after we sent it in, the projector was back at home in my loving arms. I don't know why they'd estimate four weeks for something that only took a day, but I guess it's better that it wasn't the other way around.
Then, this past Saturday, after a night out in the north end of town with Mark and Beth, we left the karaoke scene at Rickshaw to sing and play music on Rock Band at home. Not two minutes in, one of the many wires connecting the instruments and microphone to the Xbox 360 is pulled hard and the console is jostled. Instantly, the console decides the disc is unreadable. We remove and reinsert the disc again and again. We power the console off and on. We try other discs (which seem to work just fine). I even blow on the console and the disc like we're dealing with a Nintendo here. This is all in vain because the disc's been marred with what I later find out is a well-documented circular or ring scratch. Lots of boohooing ensues. I even proclaim our media room cursed. We watch Tim and Eric via the media PC and I wait for the PC to melt down too.
Before I get a chance to purchase a replacement disc from EA (because their site is down; overloaded, no doubt, with people looking to replace their Rock Band guitars and drum sets), Mark sends me information about smearing bananas, toothpaste, or some combination thereof, onto scratched discs to make them readable again. He also tells me that Game Crazy down the street can buff out scratched discs. Roger, ever the evangelist, also suggests enlisting help at Game Crazy. Two dollars and seventeen cents later, I find I've boohoo'd prematurely yet again. Game Crazy buffs out most of what looked like terribly deep scratches. They even agree to pop the disc into their demo Xbox 360. Lo and behold, it gets past the read errors. While we haven't verified the game plays properly at home, I want to believe it will.
I can only assume that, very shortly, either our new media PC will spontaneously combust or the projector screen will fall from the ceiling and rip in two when we come down the stairs too quickly. When these things happens, though, I can also assume that our media fairy godmother will still have our backs. 2月12日 Weekend PolitickingIt's primary season and with candidates out campaigning, my friends and family back home clearly have gotten into the spirit. They have one issue top of mind.
PROPOSITION No. 1: Are you going to have a baby soon or what?
EXPLANATORY STATEMENT: You need to have a baby. You need to have a baby now.
STATEMENT FOR:
You are 29. That is when I had my first. If you're going to have kids, now is a good time. If you wait any longer, you'll be too tired.
We have been waiting forever. You've been married for over five years already!
Your parents have been waiting for you to have a baby. They want to be grandparents.
Your aunt has been waiting for you to have a baby. She wants you to have a baby, too.
You are so cute! It would be such a waste if you didn't have a baby.
It is so sad when I see people dying at the hospital and they don't have any family.
I want my bambinos to know your bambinos! This is something we always talked about.
I didn't get any stretch marks from being pregnant. All my labors were fast too. It'll probably be the same for you. It's not about youth. It's about genetics.
It's a part of the feminine experience. You don't want to live life as a girl, and then as a wife, and not ever know what it is to be a mother, do you? (Quite frankly, this was the most intriguing argument I've heard.)
(Statement prepared by: aunts, great-aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, even my own mother)
STATEMENT AGAINST:
If you like your life, don't do it. If you like your life as it is, there is no reason to have a baby. No reason at all.
If you like to travel, don't have kids. You won't travel with kids. Get it out of your system now.
The only mistakes I regret are the ones I made for other people. (That was as much as was said, but it was delivered with a very meaningful look.)
There are some moments when I think it was worth it, but that's only 10% percent of the time. Maybe 20%. Seriously.
All I do is wipe up shit and wipe up vomit. Does that sound like how you want to spend your time?
I basically don't have any free time.
Kids are nothing but stress, worry, and heartache. Your entire life, you worry about them. If I had to do it again, I wouldn't have. It's too hard.
Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it!
(Statement prepared by: cousins, mom)
REBUTTAL OF STATEMENT FOR:
What if I'm a bad mom? You only remember me as a kid. What do you know about my ability to take care of other people?
I just don't know yet. I'm not ready and may never be.
It just seems really hard. I suspect I'm too selfish to spend that much of my life taking care of another person.
This is coming out of nowhere! Nobody breathed a word about kids to me until now. My mom even said she didn't think I should!
REBUTTAL OF MY REBUTTAL:
No problem. Send them down here and we'll raise them for you. (This was an inarguably great rebuttal!)
You'd better decide in the next three years. Your cousin waited. Look how tired she is. She stays at home and she's still tired! (I'm thinking maybe this is why she's so tired!)
But it's worth it! Look at this one (a perfectly sweet, extremely precocious, five year old girl)!
We didn't want to pressure you. But everyone's been waiting. 2月11日 Coyote SightingI just saw a coyote! I was out on a walk with the Podengos when we spotted the coyote about 100 feet ahead of us on the nature trail right behind building 36. I stopped dead in my tracks. So did the coyote. The pups stopped their sniffing and looked up at the coyote, but instead of barking or tugging on their leashes, they went back to sniffing. Further confirmation that coyotes are more like brethren than poodles?
The coyote and I sized each other up. I waited for it to make the first move. While I briefly imagined how bloody a coyote-Podengo interaction might be, the coyote decided to amble on its way into the wooded area rather than towards me and the pups. When I couldn't see the coyote any longer, the pups and I hurried along the trail back to the parking garage. The pups were less interested in the spot where the coyote had been standing than I thought they would be, though they did sniff noisily and explore the area in small circles for the few seconds I let them.
Knowing next to nothing about coyotes, I'd guess the coyote was less than a year old. It was skinny and stood a little shorter than the tallest full grown German Shepherd I've ever met. Its ears seemed a little large for its size and its tail hadn't fully puffed out.
Although it didn't seem very interested, I kept turning back to make sure the coyote wasn't following us on our brisk return trip. I was sweating and my cheeks were totally flushed when I got back to the office! 1月28日 Clickers in the ClassroomWhoa. Look at the smiles and undeniably eager postures of the students in this picture. Electronic audience response systems, also known as "clickers," are starting to make their way into public and private school classrooms around the country where students are using them to take quizzes. What a cool idea. Where was this when I was in school?? In my pre-college school days, I only ever felt at all invested in my education in one of two situations: 1) when I participated in any kind of competition (speed drills in math, spelling bees, stuff like academic pentathlon or decathlon, etc); or 2) when I felt my reputation was at stake (when test scores were publicly posted, when I performed in front of an audience in concerts, plays, or academic competitions, or when people asked each other about big test scores like the SATs).
Schools seem to be trying to use clickers to achieve some pretty cool things. By using clickers, they're appealing to kids' inherent interest in games and new technology. By presenting material innovatively and providing instant feedback, clickers will probably help teachers generate more interest in the material. Most importantly, I think that by taking quizzes a little more public, kids will hold themselves more accountable. I think detractors will say that some students will find themselves discouraged or humiliated now that their academic performance is subject to more public scrutiny. But how many kids are already feeling discouraged by school and aren't finding the motivation to turn things around? I truly think that if schools try new tacks like this, there is a real chance that so many more students will end up feeling engaged and excited about school (ie., paying attention to lectures, studying for quizzes, etc). I'm not against "tricking" reluctant students into inadvertently learning something! I'm really excited to see if this takes off. You do have to wonder, though, what the cost of these systems is and how, exactly, disadvantaged or financially strapped school districts are supposed to incorporate clickers into their curriculum. 1月24日 The Perfect Heath MemorialDana Stevens over at Slate wrote an incredibly thoughtful memorial to Heath. She figured out what made him so great and why we're all so terribly sad he's gone and summed it up as such: "...the movies themselves will miss Heath Ledger." I don't think anyone could have said it better.
I have been thinking a lot about how his death was probably an accident and how that actually makes it so much sadder. 1月19日 I Wish I Was a Look-a-LikeI've always been fascinated by look-a-likes, wondering even as a kid if there was someone out there who looked exactly like me. There are over 6.6 billion people on this earth, so chances are, we've all got at least one passable look-a-like, right? We once saw a very convincing look-a-like for our friend Fumi, so I'm pretty sure my doppelganger's out there too.
Anyway, this story about a local girl, Lynsey Nordstrom, who was hired by the New York Post to pose as a fake Jessica Simpson at the most recent Cowboys game, got me looking for the Ocean's 6 celebrity look-a-like group she's joined. I didn't find them at first, but I did find this website for other celebrity look-a-likes. A lot of the impersonators advertising on that site are clearly relying solely on costuming and customers with bad eyesight or questionable judgment. (It's like that one time I answered the door on Halloween wearing my painstakingly homemade Dorothy Gale costume and a two-year-old wearing the same costume exclaimed, "You look like me!") I can see "Christina Aguilera" attending a small child's birthday party, but wouldn't expect to find "Kirstie Alley" making animal balloons. "Penelope Cruz," you don't even look like Monica Cruz. "George Clooney"? You wish! Juan-Carlos across the hall at work looks more like him than you do and he doesn't even have the right face shape! And "Ashley Simpson," this is a prank, right? Because you don't even look like the old Ashlee Simpson. They're not all bad. The "Justin Timberlake" impersonators aren't half-bad and a few others are pretty impressive. But, if costume vérité is where it's at, I'm thinking I could advertise as a Punky Brewster look-a-like. What do you think?
Some of the better look-a-likes are Lynsey's friends on her Myspace page, including two of the members of this group billing itself as "Ocean's 6": Tiffany Claus, the Angelina Jolie look-a-like who made some headlines a few months ago and Danny Lopez, a Johnny Depp look-a-like. An even better look-a-like is Andy, a David Beckham look-a-like who has supposedly "made millions" as a stand-in for the real Becks. The Mariah Carey look-a-like is pretty good too, and she obviously knows it. I don't think you'd go to the trouble of making those mirror images of you and the real Mariah Carey if you didn't think it'd impress people.
This morning, while vacuuming, though, I wondered what happens to the look-a-likes when their celebrity namesakes are no longer famous? What kind of job do you get if the only work experience you've ever had is impersonating a has-been? It's kind of sad to think about. Like when I found out in my teens that Susan Olsen, the girl who played Cindy Brady, became a grown-up with an office job. I was pretty depressed about that. And the fact that she no longer wore her hair in those darling pig-tails.
Perhaps better than the celebrity look-a-likes are the real-life look-a-likes. I love Francois Brunelle's "I'm Not a Look-a-like" photo project. 1月10日 Tent in the Backyard vs. IKEAWho hasn't ever fantasized about living in a department store after hours? Those display beds look so inviting that I'd even contend with mannequins coming to life. I always figured I'd have to do it by hiding and then escaping the notice of employees closing up for the night. Apparently, all you need to do is ask. (And then make a website and amusing series of videos about the experience.) 1月7日 Retrospective and IntrospectiveI don't make new year's resolutions anymore. Past resolutions have always been flimsily vague (lose weight!) and similarly unsuccessful and disheartening come February. This year, more than ever, I don't need to make resolutions. Peter's got a list of about thirty. I figure he's got us both covered if he sticks with even one of his.
People have been asking about resolutions, though, and I realized that, while I wouldn't call it a resolution per se, I do want to continue doing what I started to do in earnest last year: challenge myself. I want to try new things (as well as retry old things, especially things that I have previously found hard to do). Like exercise. This past year, I joined the Pro Club (which I had sort of sworn I'd never do) and I ran a 5K. I also picked up biking. Prior to this summer, I'd never taken a bike out onto a major street, but when I actually bought a bike, one of the first things I did was ride it from Seattle to Bellevue. It was way more fun than it was hard so I'm glad I didn't let myself get daunted by it.
Then there's dieting/losing weight. Rather than try another quick solution, late this summer I decided to try being conscious of portions and calories for once. For the first time ever, I set a reasonable weekly (as opposed to daily) caloric goal and tried to meet that. I didn't restrict the types of foods I ate, but I did look at every label and measure out portions. I lost a bunch of weight right away. While I've veered of course over the holiday season, I am still wearing the skinny jeans I bought years ago and then promptly found myself unable to wear once I fell off whatever quick-fix diet I was on at the time. I'm sure they'll get looser as I get mindful about food again and continue with the exercise.
... And crafts. This summer, I got my tub of art supplies out of storage and found tons of tubes of nearly brand-new acrylic paints from high school and college. It was pretty embarrassing. I bought a bunch of supplies back in college only to find that I didn't like painting because it didn't come naturally. Even so, I got it into my head to paint Gina and Roger's baby some paintings. I didn't even have to buy any supplies to get started. Once I'd made them the promise to do so, I couldn't very well back out. In the end, two out of three paintings turned out pretty good!
This past year, I also made a stuffed kiwi bird for Mike and Emily's baby. It was one of the most complex things I've ever sewn. Coming up with the design and planning out the execution was scary, but I got started too late not to finish. I had to either make the bird or show up at the baby shower empty-handed.
My biggest craft challenge of 2007, though, came at the end of the year. I made holiday cards for the first time ever and sent them out to all those people who've ever sent me and Peter holiday cards in years past! Although not particularly creatively demanding, this project was challenging in that it required me to do the following: come up with things to write in each card, look up addresses, and go to the post office (twice!). Now that I've set a precedent, I will have to make cards again next year, but it turns out there weren't as many to make as I'd initially thought there'd be.
By being less of a dilettante and actually digging in to some things, I guess I'm hoping to find some things I'm really good at. At the very least, I'm going to enjoy exploring my interests. I can't lose either way.
Challenges for 2008 MAY include:
Again, I want to reiterate that these aren't resolutions. Just some challenges that I think I've grown enough to pursue. The fact that I no longer think of a challenge as something negative is a big deal too, I guess. If this change in my outlook is all that's happening in 2008, well, I consider that plenty. 12月20日 Why This, Why ThatSlate's "Explainer" column is always worth a read. What the column is about is self-explanatory, or so you'd think, if you ever bothered to read the column's subtitle: "Answers to Your Questions About the News". At the end of every year, they list the questions they didn't answer. Readers get to vote which question is most worthy of being answered.
I like how this guy tries to disguise the non-news-related nature of his question with a preamble: "Mitt Romney is running for president. His father, George Romney, a former governor of Michigan, ran for president in 1968. Is "Mitt" named for the mitten-shape of Michigan?"
Most people don't bother to veil their questions at all: "I am an Afro-American woman. I am in my youthful 50s. My hair is strong and a little past the shoulders. I wear it pressed (hot combed or flat iron). It is also a salt-and-pepper color; I get great compliments on it. The problem I have is static. Could you give me some tips on what to use to stop this?" Admittedly, this woman may have meant to send her question somewhere more appropriate (like "Dear Prudence"...ha!), but I love that the Explainer, aka Daniel Engber, has listed it among the ones you can vote for.
The Explainer also lists the following question for which I'd like to see a response: "Who is Daniel Engbert? I'm sure that I'm spelling his name wrong, but he's one of a few guys that you regularly go to as a reliable source—and I want to know who he is and why he's qualified."
There are lots of good questions, so I'm having a hard time voting. Which question are you voting for? "We love you, Natalie!"I think I saw "The Professional" for the first time when it first came out on video. I instantly fell in love with that movie. More importantly, I fell in love with a preternaturally adult Natalie Portman. I was about thirteen at the time and feeling insecure about all manner of things. To my surprise, I was more admirous of her perfect looks, intense presence, and flirtatiousness than I was desirous of those same qualities even though every girl that age wants those same things. I loved watching her unsettle Leon. Hell, I still do. Although, when I watch "The Professional" these days, Natalie Portman kind of unsettles me because I remember how much I really wanted to be just like Mathilda. Some of that was acting, but some of those qualities you can't teach.
Anyway, there was a link on NYTimes.com labeled, "Screen Goddess". Intrigued, I clicked through. It was a link to an interview with (we love you) Natalie from the New York Times' style magazine! The interview was far too short, (where are those 11 page Vanity Fair interviews when you need them?) but the photos alone are worth looking at. She's like a goddess from the planet Beauty. (Sigh) 11月30日 MeatyI don't want to disappoint anyone who stumbles across this page looking for an adorable bulldog, but this is not a post about Rob and Big's puppy, Meatbag. (If you are looking for Meaty, my favorite Meaty moment ever is at -1:18 in that video.) No, this is a post about the smell in the hallway outside my office. They have been installing new Flor tiles in the building for the last couple weeks and they just completed the hallway outside my office yesterday. It smells like raw beef out there and I keep thinking about pho. It's a little disconcerting, that smell. Either Flor tiles inherently smell like raw beef or one of the guys who installed the carpet misplaced his roast beef sandwich in the underlayment. 10月26日 When Monkeys AttackUs monkey-lovers know that monkeys are cute, cuddly, and would never even dream of flinging poo at anyone, but I guess some monkeys become killers when they sense monkey-haters. Don't monkey-hate, y'all.
In case you are ever threatened or attacked, follow the simple advice in this handy article. 10月4日 Deja NewsThen, just two days later, John Stamos says he's ready for a baby.
Do I hear the pitter-patter of little feet???
These two should get together! Oh, wait...been there, done that.
(Back then, finding out these two were together was a little confusing, but it gave me hope that John Stamos would someday meet and fall in love with me, another short ethnic woman.) 9月20日 I am a STUD MAGNET.I've been told I "look a little bit like Asian people". Now, this:
[I decided to amend this post, save for a few choice bits...]
...Technical writer must be a good job for a girl, coz it is quiet and smoothly. ...I am thinking you are Chinese then, but you are not. And your name sounds not like a Asian name, (or maybe I am wrong). 9月17日 Clothing that works.I just received my ship gift. It's a jacket:
Mind you, this is no ordinary jacket. It's "Technical. Fashionable. Comfortable." Maybe this means I can offload some work... Jacket, I've got a technical reference that I think is "write" up your alley...
Sorry. I couldn't resist. 8月31日 Best DMV Experience EverThe state of Washington allows you to renew your car tabs online. This is something I discovered approximately seven years ago and is the only way I've ever renewed my tabs. It's very handy. You can use the renewal tool to have your tabs mailed to you or you can go pick them up if you're short on time. Like me. Or, rather, like my husband, whose car tabs expire today. Normally, I wouldn't care if the expiration date on his tabs came and went, but I'm driving his Turbo Turtle around while my car's in the shop! It's been pretty fun and I think I'm actually getting better at driving a stick-shift (manual tranny!!) every day. Pretty soon, I'm going to force him to ride around in that car with me in the driver's seat. I don't care how much he cringes.
But back to my story...
I got the emissions testing done this morning before work, which meant I was able to go into the office afterward and renew the tabs online. (The tool cleverly prevents you from renewing if the system doesn't show that you've had your emissions tested that year.) Four o'clock this afternoon, I drove over to the Department of Licensing sub-agent, Bel-Red Auto Licensing, at Crossroads Mall in Bellevue. It looked like a shitstorm when I rolled up. Last day of the month. Last hour of the day that the office is open. There were ten or fifteen people standing outside the office looking miserable in the light drizzle. I walked in and there were another thirty or forty inside! Sure enough, the designated window for online renewals was in the same place it's always been, but there was someone being helped at that window right that very moment. There was also someone standing directly behind that first person. I spoke to the woman standing there and this is the dialogue that ensued:
Me: Hi. Are you in line for this window?
Lady: No. They're calling numbers. You have to take a number over there.
Me: Oh. I renewed online. Did you? Are you in this line?
Lady: (Pause) You have to take a number.
Me: Well, there's a little sign right there that says you don't have to take a number for online renewals... You can just pick up your tabs at window 6.
Lady: I don't know. You have to take a number.
Me: I know. I was just asking if you're in line for this window.
Lady: (Pause) I'm not.
Me: Okay. Thanks.
So, I don't go take a number. I just stand there next to her and wait for window 6 to open up. The moment it does, sure enough, the person working the counter gets on the microphone and calls number 39. I step in real quick and say, tentatively, "I renewed online..." She says, "Oh. Okay. Your receipt and ID?" Grateful, but not surprised, I step up and give her the paperwork. While I'm standing there, I hear the lady from earlier start to grumble.
Lady: Well, that just doesn't seem fair.
Some Guy standing next to window 6: She didn't have to take a number?
Lady: She renewed online.
Some Guy: (More grumbling)
Lady: (More grumbling)
I don't want them to hate me too much, so I turn around while I'm waiting for the lady behind the counter to locate the tabs and I offer a suggestion, "I always renew my tabs online. It's so much faster. The paperwork's ready when you get here and you don't ever have to stand in line. It's really nice." I get nothing in response, so I shrug and turn back to the counter.
Lady (talking to that guy again): That just doesn't seem fair... You can just renew online! I could have done that.
Um, my point exactly!
That lady's shooting daggers at me when I turn around to leave approximately fifteen seconds later, but I'm feeling so victorious, it feels more like she's blowing kisses. As I walk away, the lady behind the counter gets on the mic and helpfully announces, "If you renewed your tabs online, there's no waiting at window 6." And not a single person moseys on over... I am positively skipping and giggling as I cross the parking lot to my car! Why wouldn't you renew your tabs online?? |
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