Tight Squeeze

So we had a little remodel scare this week. When we arrived home on Tuesday, we were pleasantly surprised to see that they had installed the faucet (a functioning sink!), the dishwasher, and the washer. However, we also noticed that the stove was sitting in the middle of the kitchen in front of the area where it should be. Why? Because the counters were just a smidge too long. We're talking like an 1/8 inch. The contractor was very precise about the location of the cabinets, so we could see that the stove would fit between the 2 cabinets. However, the countertop was hanging slightly over the cabinet and plywood template. Here's the thing about remodel errors- you never really know what to freak out about when things go wrong. How bad is it really? We were afraid that it was going to take a lot of time/effort to fix- we didn't even want to think about the blame game- who's fault is it and will there be additional cost? Luckily, we made a call to the granite people the next day and they came out and had it fixed the next day by the time we got home. It just looked so scary because things are glued, grouted, sealed, and seemed so final. We've been really lucky because the hiccups that we have experienced are all pretty minor. We've been talking to our neighbor who started their remodel a week or 2 after us and it looks like their remodel is going a lot slower. Granted, they are also remodelling 2 bathrooms at the same time, but they have had more frustrations than we have had.

Our contractor said that he should be done on Friday. I can't believe it. We're going up to Tahoe this weekend, so we'll need to clean next week before the parents come, but there's nothing like company coming over to give you a deadline to clean up fast. I don't know if our house would ever get clean if we didn't have people coming over.

This triggers a memory of the conversation we had with the Schneiders a few weeks ago. You know that you are good friends when:

• You don't feel like you need to clean the house because it's just XXX coming over.
• You can fall asleep while you're hanging out with XXX.
• You can bring over half of a cake to share (instead of a whole cake.)
• You can take your socks off at their house.
• Your kid pees, pukes, etc. on the rug and you know where to get the cleaning products in their home.
• You clean their house for them. (I really like this one- thanks Ellen!)
• You bring your own slippers or have a toothbrush at their house.
• You bring your laptop over to their house and you can access the internet via their wireless connection.
• You do your laundry at their house when you come over to hang out.
• You can talk about the fight you just had with your spouse, in-laws, etc.
• You help them move all their crap even though you know it's going to be a pain.

Looking forward to fun with friends this weekend.

Nooks and Crannies

It looks like we are on the home stretch of our kitchen remodel. We got our granite counters this week. Just like a wedding, things don't always happen perfectly. This time, it wasn't our contractors. Apparently, when you replace counters, they use a plywood template to support the granite countertops. The contractors had routed out grooves underneath the peninsula lip so that it could be supported with metal L supports. It turns out that the plywood was a little wider than the counter guys needed it, so they shortened from 36 inches to 33. That would be OK except that they shortened the side with the grooves which meant that the grooves were now too short. So now, our contractor has to fix that because otherwise, the plywood rests on top of the metal instead of the metal being flush with the rest of the plywood. Also, when they screwed the pylwood back over the counters, they screwed it too close to the edge and now there are 2 spots where the wood is "bubbling" under the counter. It's nothing that anyone will see, but you just hate knowing that it is there.

They also finished tiling the backsplash and started painting. We're told that they should be finished this week. I'm looking forward to it just so that we can clean the house from all the dust. It definitely seems closed to being finished. One of the things the contractor is waiting for us is to decide where the light over the breakfast nook goes. We're having a tough time deciding because we've been waiting to get one of those L shaped benches with a round table, but we're not sure if we have enough room. Ideally, we would want to have the light fixture over the center of the table, but that means that we have to figure out what size table goes there. Geez, what am I going to talk about once the remodel is done?

This weekend was pretty relaxing. We went out to dinner with Show on Friday. On Saturday, I volunteered with the Princess Project while Edwin went surfing. This is the third time I have volunteered with Princess Project and it was fun. It's not the most altuistic- we're giving away gently used bridesmaids dresses to high school girls to wear to the prom, but it's fun. On Sunday, Edwin went surfing again and then we pruned the lemon tree in the backyard and used the BBQ in the backyard for some burgers for the first time. Next weekend, we're heading up for our annual Tahoe trip. Should be fun as always.

Little by Little

This weekend, I went on a booze cruise for work on Friday. I've been on cruises like this before in NYC, but not in SF. It was fun, but I'm glad that I didn't have to pay for it!

We also had a nice weekend hanging out with friends. The Schneiders stopped by on Saturday and we got sandwiches and ate in the park here in Alameda. Then, we had dinner with the Banerjees at Ruth's Chris in Walnut Creek. Good stuff- all that butter... but it tasted really good going down. I had the Cowboy Ribeye which is just a ribeye with the bone in. Very tasty. I still say that prime rib is my favorite cut of meat, but a ribeye is pretty good too. It's funny, with the remodel, we've been doing some extreme eating. One night, we're eating ramen and the next night we're eating steak. I thought we would be using our grill more often, but we haven't used it at all yet. 2 weeks without a kitchen hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be. I hate not being able to wash dishes, but we've been eating pretty well.

Today, we had brunch at the Thai temple and then went to the Alameda antique fair with Monica. We're not really into antiques, but it really interesting and there was just so much stuff. Our next door neighbors offered to have us over for dinner since they knew that we were without a kitchen tonight. It turned into an impromptu neighborhood BBQ with 5 couples from the block. We've been really fortunate to have such nice neighbors. I can't wait to return the favor once the kitchen is done.

Speaking of the kitchen, they completed the cabinet installation this week. Now we're just waiting for the counter, sink, and faucet to be installed. There are still a lot of little details, but we can really start to visualize what the kitchen will look like. We're still deciding on wall colors, but we're leaning towards a yellow or orange. I can't believe that the remodel is already half over.

Houston- we have a problem!

So we are in 2 weeks into our month long kitchen renovation. We've been pretty lucky so far. A few holes here and there in the ceiling and walls, but not big surprises. Today, they started installing the cabinets and we noticed that they switched 2 of the cabinets. The issue is that it puts the sink not centered with the window. We're hoping that it can be corrected without too many issues. It looks like it should be a relatively easy fix, but you never know with these things. The kitchen is beginning to look like a kitchen again. The cabinets look good and we're still trying to decide on a color to paint the walls. We're about half-way into the remodel and so far things have been pretty smooth.

Updated photos- Can you see the difference between the placement of these cabinets?

Let There Be Light!

This week there's been a lot of activity in the house. We decided to also have recessed lighting installed in the living room since they were going to do it in the kitchen. It has made a world of difference. It used to be so dark in the living room because all we had for lighting was the torch lamp in the corner and a little night table lamp. You can see that old lamp and the holes for the new recessed lights in the picture below.

This past weekend, it rained a lot. We were able to find a faucet for our sink and we ordered the knobs and pulls for the cabinets. They started laying down the tile floors, so it's starting to look like a kitchen again. We can't wait until it's done.

Edwin also went to Tahoe this weekend, so I hung out with Show-Lan and went shopping. We also watched a movie called The Lookout. It was actually very entertaining. I would recommend it. We also both got colds this weekend, so we're trying to take it easy.

What a Zoo!

Things have been pretty busy here lately. Laura, Alex, Hannah, and Timothy came to visit for a week from 2/8-2/14. Alex had a conference in SJ, so he brought the family to visit. I took a day off of work to hang out with Laura, Hannah, and Timothy. I originally wanted to take them to the Exploratorium, but unfortunately, it is closed on Mondays. So we ended up going to the Oakland Zoo instead.

Fengs Visit Alameda

We have officially begun the kitchen remodel. They started and finished the demolition on 2/13. It's amazing how fast they removed all the cabinets, flooring, etc. in literally a day. Again, I'll start posting pics once I can find the cable. Right now, we have our microwave set up in the guest bedroom and most of the contents of the kitchen in the dining room. On Friday and Saturday, they moved some of the pipes and changed them to copper and installed the backer board on the floor for the tiling. Today, they started putting in the recessed lighting. It's actually happening very fast. The only thing that is in the kitchen right now is the refrigerator. So far, eating out hasn't been too bad.

This past weekend (hooray for Presidents Day!), we stayed up in Napa with the Banerjees and the Schneiders. It was a very relaxing time. Jamie's sister Jenny is engaged to one of the owners of Dutch Henry Winery and they let us stay in the house that is part of the winery. This is the second time we've stayed in Napa and it was just as relaxing as the last time when we went up with Priyanka and Matt. We did a little wine tasting at Whitehall Lane and also walked around St. Helena and Calistoga. It was just what we needed. It's been pretty stressful trying to find things for the kitchen and not being able to find things that used to be in the kitchen. We are still looking for a sink, fixtures, and knobs/pulls. I'm happy that the renovation has started, but it also means that we need to make some decisions and find things quickly. We're also discovering things that we never knew could cost so much in a kitchen remodel like lighting or knobs.

We have heard that you should be prepared to find things when you open up the walls. So far, we've been pretty lucky in that there haven't been any surprises so far. We suspect that the worst is over because they have openned up most of the walls and already boarded up the floors. Still, we'll keep our fingers crossed. Hopefully, by the end of this week, we'll have new floors installed. We were even able to save a few of the cabinets to put up in the garage. I wonder how long those cabinets will be sitting in our backyard...

Happy belated valentines to everyone. Now, Edwin and I have never really been into celebrating this "holiday," but this is how we spent our valentines day. We didn't get each other any gifts. I tried to buy him a card, but gave up because I couldn't find parking in the city on my way to pick him up for dinner. We had a quick dinner of pho because we had to hurry to make it in time for the real highlight of the evening- our romantic stroll through.... Home Depot (closes at 9!) to shop for some grout for the floors. Yes, that's right, we bought a 25lb. of grout in Pewter for the floor tiles. Some women get flowers, chocolate, a romantic dinner. I get grout. For all you ladies who are still unmarried, please make the most of your valentines dates because this could happen to you.

Happy belated bday, Jamie! Glad that we were still able to celebrate with half a cake!

I Made You Breakfast in Bed

In preparation for Valentines Day, this is a shout out to all my guy friends that I hope their Romeo skills are a little better than this:

http://www.imadeyoubreakfastinbed.com/

Ladies, please chime in if this sparks any favorite Valentine memories. :)

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Happy Chinese New Year. We went out and celebrated by having dinner with some friends.

Here are some cool things that I got via email this year.

Swimming fishes: Click on the link, click your cursor on the center design to open the door. Move the mouse around the card; the fishes will swim following your mouse.
http://www.etnet.com.hk/LunarCard/2007/ecard_etnet.html

Chinese New Year Quiz: 1 I got 8/10 correct, but I missed one because I hit the wrong button.

For Crying Out Loud!

So this past weekend on Friday, we saw a great movie called Juno with Michelle and Mike. If you haven't already seen it, I highly recommend it. It was such a funny and witty movie. There are a bunch of famous people in it, but mom played by Alison Janney (CJ from the West Wing) was my favorite. She plays the step-mom who is really into dogs. She's just so good at playing these quirky characters. The movie is about a teenage girl who gets pregnant. I was laughing out loud and I would definitely watch it again. Probably will be one of my favorite movies of the year. I generally don't like to pay money to watch dramas or comedies in the theatre (usually action films merit the theatre experience), but I thought that this movie was worth the money. I guess that's what it really comes down to- how many times have you seen a movie in the theatre and you walk out disappointed and saying to yourself, "Why did I just spend $10 and 2 hours of my time watching that movie?"

On Saturday, we attended a wedding in San Jose. It was a surprise wedding because we didn't even know that Joe was dating someone until he sent out the engagement email in December. It was all in Vietnamese which was cool. They had a banquet very similar to the Chinese wedding banquet with a few different entrees. There was the squab which was like a small game bird- very tasty. This banquet also had shaking beef. There were only 7 of us seated at our table for 10 and 3 of the 7 were vegetarians, so we ate more than our fair share! The live band was OK, but we would have enjoyed it more if it wasn't so loud. It didn't really matter if you knew the people at your table or not because you couldn't talk to them anyways. We felt like we were at a concert. Maybe I'm just getting old.

Joe & Helena's Wedding

Did anyone else watch the Super Bowl on Sunday? We went over to Jamie and Kaori's to watch the game. It was probably one of the most boring games ever during the first 3 quarters. I'm glad that we missed the first 1.5 hours. I didn't even know who was playing until that morning. I didn't have an affinity to either team, so I didn't really have a vested interest in the game- though most people said that the NY Giants were the underdog and that the Patriots were favored to win. It's hard for me to imagine any NY team being the underdog. Isn't that kind of an oxymoron? I didn't even find the advertising amusing. I really only remember 2 of the ads. The one with the talking baby for e-Trade, the dancing lizards for some flavored water drink, and the Coke commercial in the Macy's Parade. I definitely think that ads from years past were much more memorable and amusing.

Forgot to give Timothy my nephew a shoutout for his second bday. He turned 2 last Wednesday. Given that he can't read yet or has any real concept of time, I think he'll forgive me.

To LA/Seattle and Back

Last weekend, we flew down to LA to pick up Edwin's old bed, dresser, and BBQ from his mom's house. At least that was the plan. We were going to pick them up from his mom's garage and then drive them back. The dresser and BBQ made it back, but the mattress is another story. The mattress has been in the garage for the last 5 years and while it was wrapped in plastic, a rat decided to make it his home. You'd be surprised how hard it is to get rid of an old mattress. The dump charges $70. I mean, shouldn't the dump accept everything for free? I mean, isn't that the definition of a dump? They receive all the junk that no one wants?

Well, I should start from the beginning of the weekend. We were flying on Southwest on Friday flight at 5:30PM. We're on the plane, but then for some reason we were sitting at the gate for an extended time. They finally made an announcement saying that someone on the plane was feeling ill and that they were waiting for a paramedic to determine if the passenger would be able to fly. Now, it's not that I didn't care about this passenger, but why didn't they just put this passenger on a later flight so that the rest of the passengers wouldn't be delayed? The person behind gave me one plausible answer, but I'm not sure that I liked their theory- maybe this person is contagious and they didn't want to risk exposing others beyond the people on the plane. So an hour and a half later, we are on our way to LA.

After we arrived, we had dinner with George and then went to see a movie called Cloverfield. It's a post-apocalyptic thriller that was directed by JJ Abrams. He's the same guy that created Alias and Heroes, so I thought it would be entertaining. Unfortunately, the cinematography was so shaky that I couldn't watch 90% of the film. I get motion sickness pretty easily. I just thought that it might be one of those films where it was shaky for part of the film, but it was literally the entire film. Don't they make videocameras with stabilizers nowadays? I managed to actually be in the theatre for most of the movie, but I did have to fight the nausea at the end. Note to self- no more movies that have crappy cinematography.

On Saturday, we had lunch with my grandparents, George, and Edwin's mom. We picked up the truck from Budget (since we hate U-Haul) and then packed the truck. We had dinner with Binh and then she took us to a new Indian ice cream place called Saffron Spot. Now, most of you know that I'm not a fan of Indian food, but she was also the one that introduced me to Pinkberry, so who am I to argue? It was in an Indian Plaza near Cerritos- Sujay's hometown. I still am not a fan of Indian food, but ice cream is hard to turn down.

On Sunday, we drove back in the rain. It was pretty uneventful, but we were happy that it only took about 6.5 hours given that the truck had a governor that basically capped our speed at 70mph. Monday morning, I flew up to Seattle for work. After my meetings, I stopped by Edwin's cousins' house in Issaquah. This house was huge. They just moved from San Bruno and they moved into a newly constructed house. It was about 5000 sq ft. 5000! That's like a mansion! Especially since our house is only 1237 sq ft. Their house is 4x the size of ours. I'm not saying that I want that much space, because my second thought is "how do you keep a house that big clean?" We have enough trouble cleaning our small house.

We had a maid service in the apartment right before we bought the house and I do miss it. The funny this is that I think it kept our apartment more clean because we would clean the apartment before the maid service would come because we didn't want them to think that we were slobs and because while they would clean, they wouldn't organize our things or put them back where they belonged. I used to think it was strange to hear about people cleaning before the maid service came, but I totally get it now.

Anyway, it was great to catch up with those guys. This weekend, we are attending a wedding and attending to house stuff.

Who Cares?

Here's a funny and recent article on a Microsoft product that I have been working on: MS OneCare article.

While the article does not bode well for the product that we are trying to promote, I found something else even more intriguing- the author's bio. I have never seen a bio like this before:

During her seven years at CNET News.com, Ina Fried has changed beats
several times, changed genders once and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days most of her attention is focused on Microsoft.

You gotta love the Bay Area. I can't think of any other place where you would see a bio like this. What ever happened to "don't ask, don't tell?"

Time After Time

You never really mean to lose touch with your friends. I've always prided myself on keeping in touch with my friends. When you are young, you have all the time in the world. When you're single, you are busy, but you make the time. When you become a couple, your time gets split further into time with your significant other and both sets of friends. After you buy a house or have kids (I presume, since we are currently without!), that time dwindles so much that you're trying to plan things weeks sometimes months in advance. Heaven forbid you achieve the house and kids- does that mean that you no longer have any friends? Either because you don't have any more money to spend or you're too exhausted to hang out? Oh- and time for yourself? Is there any time left?

We keep telling ourselves that we'll have more time after XXX. First, it was planning the wedding, then it was buying a house, now it's the kitchen renovation. I think this is why we delayed starting the process for so long. We moved in 4 months ago. We probably could have started the kitchen about 2 months ago. Part of it was getting ourselves mentally prepared for the project. Now that we have started the timer, we find ourselves looking at flooring, counters, knobs, etc. during all of our free time. This is not necessarily something that you can do with your friends. Being single and a homeowner must be easier. There's no one to tell you you're spending too much and you don't have to agree on anything with anyone. You get everything that you want and you get to decorate it however you want. Cons- you got that big old mortgage to yourself too.

Edwin and I actually agree a lot- we estimate that we agree on 70% of what we both like in a kitchen. However, it's that last 30% that's hard. It's true what they saw about planning a wedding- if you can last through planning a wedding together, you should be able to withstand the challenges that come with being married. Decorating a home is a lot like planning a wedding. There's a lot of coordination required, both from an aesthetic perspective as well as a timing perspective. You may like this one tile and these other cabinets, but then they just don't look right together. I just have to keep on telling myself how awesome our wedding day was. It's also similar in that you're spending so much money at once and you don't want to make any mistakes. (I guess we could say the same thing about buying the house in the first place. And again, we're both pretty happy that we moved to Alameda.)

The Money Pit

We spent this weekend split between hanging out with friends and family and shopping for house stuff. On Friday, we went to dinner at the Park Chalet and to listen to the Pimento Project again. This is the same band we saw a few weeks ago at the tiki bar in Alameda. On Saturday, Edwin went snowboarding while I ran errands and shopped with Matilde. Jon and Jeannette were also visiting here this weekend, so I met up with them for a Cambodian dinner in the Mission. It was my first time eating Cambodian food. It seemed a lot like other Asian food. A cross between Thai and Vietnamese. Not bad, but I'm not sure that I would seek it out again. After dinner, we went to this dive bar to hang out. It was really loud and it would not have been much fun had I not been with good company. Jeannette and I chatted for hours until the wee hours of the morning- 3AM. I can't do that stuff anymore- I'm way too old. It hurts too much the next day. Anyway, it would be really cool if they moved here so that I can stop losing so much sleep!

We also did a lot of research for the house this week. We have been looking for flooring for the kitchen and we think that we have found it. It's a porcelain tile that is made to look like slate: Edilcuoghi Rocks. We are getting the blank for the floor, but the actual tile looks more black than this photo. The photo makes it look like a tan color. We're also going to be using this type of tile for the backsplash as well. We also decided to buy the same dishwasher that Laura and Alex have at their house. It had some cool functionality in that it has 3 racks and 1 of them being adjustable and the price was pretty reasonable. We haven't ordered it yet because we're waiting for it to go on sale at Lowes. It's the Maytag MDB8601AWS. Am I boring you all yet? If not, keep reading. That movie Old School really wasn't that far off when Will Farrell's character said that he was going to the Home Depot as his "plans for the weekend." You can spend a LOT of time looking at this stuff. We're thinking about painting the kitchen walls yellow. I kind of like the idea of having a sunny kitchen. Kind of a Meyer lemon yellow. We have been looking at granite counter tops and will probably go with one called China Black which doesn't really have a lot of specs in it. Wonder why they call it China Black since the granite looks all black- thought the stereotype was that Chinese looked yellow. Sinks, door pulls, and recessed lighting- oh my! It's funny, I feel like we keep going to the same 4 stores- Home Depot, Lowes, Sincere Hardware, and Home Expo. If you don't have these stores in your area, where do you look for this stuff? There's a few stores here that specialize like Lamps Plus and some kind of supply shop in Oakland Chinatown, but then is that it? I can't wait until the remodel begins so that it can end! It's funny, Laura and Alex will be here to help us clear out the kitchen since demolition begins on 2/13 and my parents will be here when they complete a month later.

We also got our washer fixed this week. A few weeks ago, our washer started flooding the kitchen floor with water. It was just spilling out of the detergent drawer like the water was plugged up from the inside. We were lucky on 2 fronts. First, we haven't started our kitchen renovations yet, so I don't care so much if we flood the kitchen. Second, since the washer is still brand new, it was still under warranty, so we called and they came out to fix it without any cost to us. The issue? Edwin's sock got stuck and was blocking the hole where the water fills into the washer. You know how everyone eventually loses a sock in the washer? Well, now we know where to look!

More house stuff- I was dismayed to find that in 2 of the corners of the living room we have these small cracks forming. It's not like we didn't know that they would return, but I just thought it would be longer than 2 months after we just finished painting it! To our friends that are looking for housing right now- we can't wait until you all experience the joys of home ownership! Though maybe they'll be smarter than us and just buy something that is move-in ready rather than a fixer upper.

It's Raining, It's Pouring!

Last weekend, we had a bad storm out here in the Bay Area. Some of you may have heard about it, but it was our first bad storm in the house. It has rained before, but this was the worst by far. We didn't really have any damage, but our neighbor told us that a tree in his backyard broke. A few of my coworkers didn't fare so well- one had a portion of his fence broken and was without electricity for a day and another had a broken window. In the past, we haven't had any water seepage, but this storm caused a little bit of water to pool up in the basement. The sump pump doesn't seem to be working and probably needs to be replaced, but at least we didn't have any real damage. The weather has been pretty bad lately, so I'm looking forward to a nice, sunny day soon. Guess I shouldn't complain since most of you out there are battling the snow. How soon we forget...

Since the weather was so bad, we didn't really want to go out too much. We ended up spending Saturday night at Sujay and Matilde's for an impromptu sleepover. We also got a chance to hang out with the Schneiders there which was nice. It's been a while since all of us have been able to hang out. Time passes by quickly in the company of good friends.

The next few weeks are going to be busy for us. This weekend, Jeannette and Jon are going to be visiting us because Jon has interviews for residency. The following weekend we have plans for a friend's birthday. The weekend after that, we are going to LA to pick up Edwin's old bed and dresser for the guest room and the BBQ for the backyard. The weekend after that we have a wedding. And then Laura and Alex might come for a visit the weekend after that. Not to mention that we need to pick out all of the stuff that we will need for the kitchen renovation during this time since we are hoping to start construction in mid-February. I really thought that things would slow down after the holidays. I guess maybe in the spring???

Happy New Year!

Hope everyone had a good holiday. You would think that since I had 10 days off of work, I would have more time to update the blog. It's been so nice to have the time off. We had a great time in LA with the families. We got to see Grandma and she was looking great. It seems that they will be taking her off of chemo now, so it shouldn't be much longer. It would be easy to be sad about her leaving us, but we've known about her cancer for a year now and I'm thankful that she has not been in any pain. She's been with us longer than we had expected and we have had some time to mentally prepare ourselves for the inevitable. Still, we will probably be going back to LA next month to see her when we go to pick up some furniture from Edwin's mom's house.

While we were in LA we got to spend time with both sides of the family. Unfortunately, Laura, Alex, and Hannah all got sick with some kind of virus. We stayed in a house in Culver City and had some great fried chicken at a local restaurant called Honey's Kettle. It had great fried chicken, but the service was horrible. It was supposed to open at 10:30 AM and I was at the door at 11 which was locked. There were 3 people working inside and they all looked up and then kept working. After about 5 minutes, one of them decided to let me in. If the chicken weren't so tasty, I would probably not recommend it. We took out from there twice and I would go back and recommend it as long as you have the time to wait for it.

We did a lot of stuff around the house this week. We put a deposit for our cabinets which we will receive in mid-February. It's the first step in the kitchen renovations. We also bought a Viking stove off of craigslist. It's now sitting in our garage. We had to unpack some more to make room in the garage to store it and the cabinets that will be coming. We also painted the dining room, hallway, and bathroom closets with some help from my aunt, uncle, and cousins. It was nice to have the time to devote to it. Our bedroom is going to be the last room that gets painted and we still need to paint the trim, but then we should be done with painting. We also took down the Christmas decorations. It took a lot less time to take them down than it did to put them up.

We also hosted a New Years Eve Game Night & Potluck. Show & Derek made a seafood stew (yum!) and the Benerjees made apps, Alfio & Michelle brought pizza, the Tachikis brought a salad, and Michelle brought hummus & veggies, we provided the dessert, lemonade, and cheese. It was a good time. With the new year, it made me think about resolutions. I didn't make any this year. I don't like committing to exercising more or losing weight because I just know I'll break them.

Merry Christmas from LA!

Just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. We're here in LA to celebrate with my parents, Edwin's mom, my sister, and Edwin's sister. It was a lot of family time. I'll post pictures soon, but in the meantime, here are the pics from our anniversary trip to New Orleans. I finally had some time to finish them!

New Orleans Anniversary

Who's that in the big, red suit?

Last week was super busy. On Monday, Edwin was Santa Claus. On our street, the men take turns being Santa Claus until December 23rd in the evenings 6:30-8PM. Edwin, I mean Santa, sat in the sleigh while kids came up to him. There was a steady stream of kids. Some of the kids were pretty docile. Most gave him their Christmas list while their parents watched, listened, and sometimes laughed at their requests. I overheard that Hannah Montana products were very popular for the girls and video games were popular with the boys. Who is this Hannah Montana? Anyway, we had a great time.

I also participated in a gingerbread house making contest at work. It definitely makes work a lot more fun. There were 10 teams of 2-3 people. We had kits with prebaked houses that we had to decorate within one hour. My coworker Renee and I created a replica of our 2 work buildings. Here's a few pics...

I also previously posted a few pics of the decorations from our house, but here are some updated ones.

Simplify, Simplify, Simplify

Though each holiday season brings a lot of celebration and festivity, it also can be very busy. In years past, I feel like I have enjoyed the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. This year, I'm going to try and relax a little more. Most of the time, I am the person that is constantly making lists and checking things off. I enjoy buying gifts for other people. However, lately, I have been reminded more and more that Christmas shouldn't be a time where I have to do stuff like buy a gift or write Christmas cards (or decorate our house!) It should be a time to reflect on God and family. Since we moved this year and we are hoping to remodel the kitchen, we still have many of our things in boxes. There are still a few things that I would love to find (like our can openner!) but for the most part, do we really need those things? Not really. I find myself looking every quarter for things that we don't need and being able to find a lot of stuff that we can give away- yet our house is still full! And of course, we are also buying a lot of new things for the house. Though it's still tough to get rid of something that is perfectly new and nice, but we never use.

On Friday, we attended my company's holiday party. It was held at a club called Mezzanine. It was fun, but I realized that there are still a lot of people that I don't know. It was pretty posh with open bar and lots of appetizers. They even had a photographer there who would take pictures of you "prom-style." There was also dancing, so it did feel a bit like high school. There were people dancing on the stage and I kept thinking to myself, "I like dancing onstage like the next person, but these are people that I work with. I just don't want to make a fool of myself and then have to explain it on Monday."

On Saturday, Show and I baked Christmas cookies. We made sugar cookies, cupcakes, and snickerdoodles. It's funny- I don't particularly like eating Christmas cookies. Chocolate is usually my dessert of choice, but I do like to make Christmas cookies. I don't really bake very often, but I do like doing it around Christmas. I think that we end up giving away 90% of what we make so that we don't become complete gluttons.

Today, we also went to see a really cool band in Alameda. That's right- I said Alameda! The band was playing in a tiki bar called Forbidden Island. The bar itself was pretty cool, but the live music was really great. It was pretty crowded for 4PM in Alameda. The music was kind of bossa nova/ Jazz/ 60 style. One of the guys was playing a thermidor. I have no idea if I spelled that correctly. It's this really cool instrument that works based on 2 antennas and the left hand controls volume while the right hand controls pitch. If you have ever heard the theme song to Star Trek, then you know what this thing sounds like. It's a little twangy and kind of electrica. I wish that I could remember the name of the band. I also found it very amusing that the lead singer was pregnant. It was unexpected how cool this experience was. The music was great and Edwin really liked the bar.

Redo!

Tonight I went out with the girls to watch the Brian Boitano Skating Spectacular at Pac Bell Park or whatever they're calling it these days. I think that most of you know that I used to skate in my younger days. My parents also used to take us to the ice capades a lot too. I didn't realize how much I missed it. For some reason, Edwin didn't want to go see the show... totally his loss. Though we were one of the youngest people in the audience, we had a blast. The added bonus is that the show had Barry Manilow singing live. Though they advertised that it would be set to Barry Manilow music, I just figured that they would play his music, not have him singing it. So, we got a 2-for-1. Now, I can say that I have seen Barry Manilow in concert. I went with Michelle, Monica, and Jen. None of them knew each other, but they all knew me. Surprisingly, there were 4 guys sitting in front of us who also went together (and they weren't even gay!)

I really enjoyed it. I forgot how much I admired the people that could do that and make it look so easy. I had fun skating, but I never thought it was easy. Dorothy Hamill was so graceful and I have always really liked Yuka Sato- she's just such a great jumper. Viktor Petrenko was another highlight. All of them were former Olympic skaters. There were also these 2 Russian skaters who were just amazing. It was like watching Cirque du Soleil on ice. They were doing one-armed handstands while skating. I've never been a huge pairs fan, but I think that it's just crazy that someone can carry another person with one hand and make it seem so easy.

We might also be on TV because they were broadcasting the show and the cameraman sat next to Michelle to get some close-ups of us watching the show. (Like I said, we were one of the youngest people in the stadium.) Here's what we didn't know before the show: after they tape the whole show, the skaters got to redo parts of their routines in case they didn't do a jump well or if they flubbed something in the routine. I guess that since these guys are getting older and not training everyday, they make more mistakes than they did for the Olympics. The jumps definitely did not seem as big until they got to do the redo. Made me suspect that Barry Manilow was lip- syncing too.

It made me think about being able to redo things in my life. Some would say that's like admitting a regret, but I disagree. Redoing doesn't mean not doing something that you have done, but I think of it as just being able to improve upon something that you did, not replacing it with another experience. What are some things I would re-do? I would have purchased things that I like that are girly. It's a lot harder when you have to share a bank account to make big purchseses. There's not too much that I can think of that I want to do again. Maybe our wedding day, but I don't want to actually change it, I just want to do it again.

I'll be posting up photos when Michelle sends me copy.

Lights Up!

Some of you may be wondering why it's been a while since my last posting. Both Edwin and I got colds last week. I found out that Laura, Alex, and my dad all got colds. I guess that at least it did not ruin our holiday. I just uploaded some photos from our Thanksgiving in Cincinnati.

This past weekend, we put up the Christmas lights on our house. We spent most of the weekend shopping for lights and then putting them up. Everyone on our block was supposed to have decorations up by December 2. It was quite the experience. We have a theme, but I didn't realize how much work it would be. We're not quite done yet, but here are some photos of what we have so far. Edwin is in all black on the picture to the left and the right picture is a close up of our surfing Santa. He's going to get a surfboard and we'll be making a wave, but that's still in production.

We also attended our first block party on Sunday night. There were over 100 people that showed up for the potluck. It was fun and very interesting. We got to meet a lot of our new neighbors. I think that the remarkable part is that the party started at 6 and promptly ended by 8PM. We weren't even finished eating and they started taking down the tables.

So the Christmas decorations have been a little distracting from the home renovations, but this week we had a contractor install a new furnace. We're still getting used to it, but it's louder than the old one because it has a blower. However, we're hoping that it's going to be more efficient. This nice thing is that we got all new ducts and they moved the furnace to the crawl space, so now we technically have more room in our unfinished basement in case we want to finish it.

So the parade of cars has already started. They come to see all the lights. It was so embarassing to be one of only 3 houses on the block to not have their lights on Saturday night. Though we were told that we should have lights on by Sunday, there were a lot of people that had their lights up by Saturday. Note for next year. If anyone wants to visit Santa this year, Edwin will be making an appearance as Santa on our street this year on Monday, December 10th. I'll be the elf beside him.

This video was something that made me laugh. It really does describe some of the experiences I've had getting my nails done. Michelle- remember in San Diego? They kept trying to upsell me all these services and I would say yes, then they would tell me the price and I would say no. Funny how that works.

By the way, most of you were right on the poll- Edwin is 36 this year.