you should see my business card
lately i've found myself in the position of being "that girl". that is to say, at many given moments my entire world has been brought into focus with a single lens, such as "karate" or "creative" or "worker". it's as if people blur the big picture and i'm just that girl who will kick your butt (that would be the "karate" concentration), picking up one facet of my character and washing me over head-to-toe.

not that it's necessarily a bad thing. but it is certainly a common thing as of late. and i don't know why it's bubbling up to notice in me as it is definitely complimentary. this weekend i was the sporty girl, and the artistic girl, and it was such a featured focus... i feel like every time it happens, i'm silently screaming "but that's not all! there's more to me, i swear!" but instead i smile, and blush, and wait for the epithet to wear away to something more inclusive.

i promise nothing *too* embarrassing this year.
6 months of un-, 7 weeks of on-, and 4 years of "off-"...
happy birthday, anyway. : )

"tadaima!" times two
today marks my second year back from japan. oh how time (sometimes) flies!

due to a plethora of other celebrations 'round this time (9 birthdays in 2 weeks?!) i've decided to postpone, and perhaps forego, the annual tadaima karaoke excursion. i'm open to persuasion, however...

and then she says, "something smells like toilet paper..."
yeah, that would be me. i'm sampling "love" from victoria's secret, and liked it until... well, now i just can't smell it the same way.

it could be that i'm just a snob
for any of you who might be venturing into the world of cyber-hook-ups, a few tips:
* if you're going to post a picture, make sure it's a picture of you. not you and your buddies, not you and a small child (that causes questions), not you on top of a mountain and the person taking the pic is on the bottom. just you. preferably with clothes. trust me.
* spell check. even if ur trying 2 b cute w/abbr. it's not "kewt".
* it's a good idea to comment on the person's hobbies if listed, as you may be able to show common interests. but lines like "you could probably kick my ass" and "can i come watch you belly dance" are not charming, because the truth is i probably could, and no you can't. especially now.

...this has been a public service announcement from someone whose overwhelming curiousity got the best of her and posted a profile of a sentence or 2 and a pic. and oh how it has poured in...

i heard the streets are made of cheese

good bye, decker.

dear members of the haircutting community,
what, exactly, does "NO LAYERS" mean to you? i would love to know, as apparently it's not what i thought it was. please use the comment function below to divulge this industry secret.
thank you.
ps - is there better term than "trim" and indication of "i'm growing my hair out" to prevent you from hacking off inches?? please clarify.

i can't dance... ?!
i didn't think it was possible. i had hoped it wasn't true. but last night revealed a painful discovery: it is absolutely impossible to dance to 80s music without looking like one of the nameless crowd in the prom scene from "pretty in pink". or if you need another molly ringwold reference, think of the "breakfast club" library post-doobie dance scene. kayleen and i went to meet up with a friend of hers from work at shooterz for 80s night, and spent the first, oh, 3 hours or so talking, scrounging for quarters (there were chips to be bought and pinball to be played!) and rather embarrassing ourselves with a round of pool. the music just wasn't inspiring us to really shake it down, so we headed down the street to a taco shop and relived college memories... except this time 'round, i was serenaded by an older gentleman who was spitting rather large chunks of taco during his cancion. it was sweet. back to the club we went to bid adieu to the friend, when we caught the tail end of the 80s set: dead man's party, and when doves cry. 2 of my personal favorites in the select few songs i will claim from that decade.

and that is when we discovered that the only thing to do when an 80s tune is all around you is to just flap your arms and your hair and kick your legs and look like an idiot, just like everyone else. lesson learned.

back in action
with kristina's departure, along with it went my computer access at home, so i decided to pull out the ol' tower and plug in my dusty hunk o' plastic and parts to once again feel a part of the world. it didn't really want to work for me at first, causing me to fumble around with its cumbersome monitor and excessive wires, painfully aware of how much i want to be rid of the clutter and have a new little pet: a laptop. while leaving a desperate message for my sister, who had set up the account and therefore i decided could solve the problem of why it wasn't working, it decided to connect itself to the internet, instantly popping up the programs i used to use when i actually logged on to the computer. i immediately received an instant message from someone i hadn't had contact with for about, oh, i'd say 5 years? it was great; cathy, the first friend i had at ucsd, and i caught up over 2 1/2 hours, typing in the last 5 years.

technology, oh how i adore and appreciate you so... the only problem is, i have a list of about 150 screenames from the past, and can't really remember who is who anymore... should be interesting to see who pops in my life!

living single
in a few short hours i will be all on my own (scary!) and living single as my roomie/sister/best friend/temporary employee (ha!) sets off for a land that could be considered almost as foreign as my little adventure into j-land. she's taking a 10-day roadtrip and a 2 year program at east carolina university to go and be a master in sociology. and although she will be back next month (when the brother and the future-mrs.-brother make it official) and christmas, and all that, i will surely miss her, especially considering how close we've been over the past coupla months (i'm talking she worked about a foot away from me)...

good luck, kris-a-lis. you'd better not come back sayin' "y'all."

the money shot
munching on a giant pile of soul fries (think cheddar, think bacon, think blue cheese, think heartattack waiting to happen) in the dimmed light of the belly up, i offered a savory spud to the baseball-capped man walking by. he looked hungry. on his way by, he mumbled a friendly "no thanks" and spun around to give me the wink-and-pointed-gun-finger ...

right then, the flash went off and someone got one of the coolest pictures of mister mraz shooting me a smile.