deceit

I went to Target last week to purchase bath tub cleaning supplies. Of course I walked out with 5 other things that didn't have to do with Lysol or Scrubbing Bubbles. As I stood in the check-out, I was tallying up my purchase to see how much the total would come out to be. In efforts to save money, I asked the cashier to take back the pint of coffee Haagen Dazs that was finally on sale.

In my head, I rationalized, 'Even if it's on sale, it won't be worth adding the extra $3.25 to the bill.'

As I was paying for my order, the gentleman behind me laughed to himself and told me, "You have so much self-control. Most ladies don't..."

Self-control? It was more of an effort to save money. Haha! I think the world is trying to tell me something...

rendition

I can't seem to get this version of the cult classic 'Disarm' out of my head. JPW and Joy Williams send chills down my spine. So much reverence and longing in their voices.

Simply amazing.

Mondays

I've got a bad case of the Mondays. Not only did I wake up late and with muscles aching (right before my practical exam today too!), but I also had to wage war against my coffee machine as I hurried to get out the door!

My cheap machine sometimes folds the filter over, causing the grinds to drip out with the rest of the coffee. On the filter cup, there's a little stopper, so coffee won't drip unless the carafe is underneath it. Being the smart girl I am, I figured that if I poured the coffee back into the barrel with the filter, I could filter the grinds out... Bad idea.

Coffee maker = 1, Alice = 0

The stopper didn't work for jack! Instead, I ended up with coffee spilling onto the warmer and as I struggled to find something to put underneath the machine, there was coffee all over the kitchen counter! Now I was already 5 minutes late and there was a brown drippy mess to clean up.

So I guess this means war.

Sugar cookies

"As Harold took a bite of Bavarian sugar cookie, he finally felt as if everything was going to be ok. Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies. And, fortunately, when there aren't any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort, not to mention hospital gurneys and nose plugs, an uneaten Danish, soft-spoken secrets, and Fender Stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days, are effective for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives. I know the idea seems strange, but I also know that it just so happens to be true. And, so it was, a wristwatch saved Harold Crick."

- from "Stranger Than Fiction"

Thanks Melissa for my sugar cookie today. It reminded me of this quote.

guilt

I just had a cupcake for dinner at 10:50 pm. So much for new year's resolutions...

hope is irresistible

This semester has been tough with usual 14-16 hour days and seriously no time for anything besides school. I'm at about a third of the way through the semester and in spite of how chaotic life has been these days, I find myself really blessed with the little things that keep me from going nuts:

• finding the single parking spot next to my apartment upon coming home after a late night in lab
• being famished at school and yet finding a hi-chew on my desk (happened twice with two different friends!)
• having friends offer me their dixie cups, plaster, PVS material, acrylic, help, etc. after a rough day in lab re-doing a ton of work
• an understanding boyfriend who not only always drives up to Hollywood to meet me, but also shows up at my apartment with groceries cause I didn't have time to go
• friends to commiserate with during those long nights!
• a friend who would sort through extracted teeth for me and take x-rays of them (in addition to her own) because she knows I'm still trying to get faculty help on other work
• the unexpected text message from a friend saying she was blessed by the praise set during Sunday worship
• church friends who always keep me in the loop and meet me more than their fair share of half-way even when I'm always MIA
• a certain friend in lab who never fails to crack me up with his absent-minded tendency to lose things and replay youtube videos of 'Glee' numbers
• having gym buddies to burn off steam on frustrating days

Just to name a few...

it was always you ♥

happy 3 years, love!

pressing on

What is thy only comfort in life and death?

That I, with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit. He also assures me of eternal life and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.

- Heidelberg Catechism, question 1

what it is

Love is patient and kind;

love does not envy or boast;

it is not arrogant or rude.

It does not insist on its own way;

it is not irritable or resentful;

it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.

Love bears all things,

believes all things,

hopes all things,

endures all things.

Love never ends.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

Excitement

The First Winter's Snow

(35 mm f16, 1/320)

gold diggin' [Part Two]

(continued from part One below)

I seriously considered option #1. Let's just forget about the whole matter and call it a day... But after some pushy encouragement from my bf ('Alice, you've sliced through human cadavers before. You can do this'), I realized the only rational and responsible thing was, well... It was time to go gold diggin'!

So for five days, I dug through my "waste," hoping to find gold. With an exception of one time when I was in a very public place, I dug very consistently (to put it tersely), triple glove-ing up and making use of lots of aluminum foil (go watch House if you want to know how I did it). After five days of meticulous hunting, I came out disappointed and still poor. On the sixth day, it dawned on me that my crown had passed at the one time I couldn't possibly dig around for it.

So I could say that I walked away pissed and feeling dejected upon such good efforts to "salvage" the circumstances. I ended up with a ton of lemons, so to speak. However, looking back (now 3 weeks ago), here is the lemonade to it all:

• Whenever crisis (even the most minor ones) hits, your relationships become stronger. It was serendipitous that my friend M was there to assist during the appointment. What could have been frazzled K and freaked-out and bloody me was saved by M taking the best care of me. She even took me out for dinner to make sure I ate something and dropped me off at my car (which is a ways away from the dental school). I realized that my friendship with this girl was not just as some acquaintance, but as someone who would care enough to stick with me through it all and then some. Lucky me, right?

• Throughout the year, I've had the chance not to only learn under one of the most skilled seniors in my program, but also to become a good friend with K. In spite of the chaos of the appointment and how I traumatized poor K, he still told me everything would be okay and that it wasn't my fault. Albeit I've been constantly teased about getting a metal detector and black-marketing my gold by K and his buddies, I would say it's worth the price for forging a new friendship. Although I will always be MOD-gold-onlay girl to him, he will always be my favorite and most valuable senior friend.

• So the icing on the cake: K found a way to get the second crown under USC's tab. I don't know what strings he pulled to make it happen, but he convinced the school's Dean to pay for it. Lucky me, I know.

So here's to making lemonade. Regardless of whether M & K ever read this, thank you. This is definitely a dental school memory I will never forget.

gold diggin' [Part One]

So recently, I had a traumatic experience at the dentist. What should have been the easiest appointment to cement a crown ended up involving a visit to the campus health center and returning from the appointment crown-less (or so to speak).

You see, during the fitting of my expensive GOLD crown onto my tooth, I made a mistake: I swallowed it. In a matter of seconds, the crown went from my friend K's (or dentist's) hand down into the rabbit hole. As I felt the presence of a foreign object about to pass down my throat, I lept from the chair and dug my fingers down my throat in hopes of retrieving the disobedient crown. What followed was a bloody throat, a blood nose and the painful realization that maybe this crown had slipped away. Having been rushed to the restroom, I stood over the sink as my friend M passed me stashes of paper towels to replace the ones soaked with my blood.

I didn't really know what was happening, but somehow I ended up on my knees on the cold tile floor. My poor friend M didn't know what to do either, so she just kept passing me paper towels. As for my poor traumatized dentist friend K, I just remember seeing his face go ashen as he stammered to figure out what to do next. What followed was a lengthy visit to the student health center, where an X-ray assured all three of us that my crown had reached my colon. The doctor told me that it should pass in 3 to 4 days...

Once at home, I considered my options: 1. Forget about it and figure out how to pay another $260 for another one; or 2. Start digging.

You see, being a poor grad student, I really didn't have an option with #1... which left me with disgusting option #2.

To be continued...

Men in Outerwear: rePOST

taken from j's blog. I couldn't have said it better so I had to re-post:

"I must admit the men of this city exist in a different caliber of classy. from their long burberry trench coats to their sea green, sheepy cloud ties. it's toe up from the floe up: dandy style.

yeah, they look good in winter wear. but you know what it is about these suits that really gets me? besides their success, dignified elegance, and noble mannerisms? and super besides the sense of security that their consistent (large) paycheck could potentially bring...

it's the discipline.

these guys have to forego many things in life to study hard to get the internships that lead to the good positions in those good companies. think about the focus, passion, and self sacrifice that takes! diligence is super sexy.

it always comes down to a man's ability to prioritize, commit, and sacrifice. it's what separates the men from the boys. admit it, you can't help but revere a man who is able to work hard for what they want and be willing to make sacrifices in order to attain it."

Thanks J for putting into words what I couldn't. This is why I love fall and the outerwear that comes with it! I kid... (well, partly).

damages = total loss

Captured at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, April 2010

(35 mm f5, 1/80)

I'd like to think of myself as someone who is a good friend. I'm down-to-earth, thoughtful and loyal as a golden retriever (at least I think so). The friends I have have become my lifelong friends. For the most part, I've never really had drama in my friendships. I don't know if that's because I attract people who are easy to get along with, or if I just lucked out with the kindest and sweetest people to call my friends. Yet recently, I lost a good friend and it has felt as though I've had to grieve through the loss.

You see, this person K (names have been changed to protect the innocent ;) was a friend that I valued. Even though we hadn't been friends for too long, there was a familiarity and comfortableness in being around this person. Not too much had to be explained and we just understood each other (or so I thought). Yet things between us drastically changed. We went from playing for the same team to being opponents on the field. In a matter of days, the friend I thought I had known became a completely different person.

Without revealing too much, I can say this: the inherent problems in our friendship (unbeknownst to me) were left unspoken and I only found out about them after the damage was done. Although I did what I could in damage control (i.e. confront, apologize, try to move forward), it was of no use. Too many feelings had been hurt and too much time had passed to try to fix things now. In the end, K and I walked away from the scene with what was considered to be a total loss.

As I've had to see K occasionally, the obligatorily courteous "hello's" and "how's it going's" have left me feeling blue. As I constantly (and deleteriously) think over and over in my head about what I could have done differently, I realize that maybe it wasn't meant to be. But I'm still hopeful. Maybe one day, things between us will change.

These empty pockets

What no one talks about when in any professional school is how hard it is to live off loans. You see, whatever you use to pay for rent, groceries, school supplies, restaurant dinners all comes from someone else's pocket. Every time I open my wallet, I'm reminded that I'm living off someone else's money. What's even worse is that my life these four years will be paid with interest over the following 25 years. It's definitely something that I can't seem to get over, even though I'm a quarter of the way through.

Tonight is one of those nights where I'm feeling a little nervous and panicked. Although I've tried to bring my living expenses down (my rent got cut by about $75 by moving to Hollywood), the cost of my materials for this semester and the new federal loan policies (that tack on ridiculous fees for taking out loans) have put a HUGE dent in my "someone-else's" wallet. Maybe it's time to find a part-time job (and find/make the time for it) or join the army...

God, please help me to trust that You'll provide enough to make it through this semester.

The Chef & Me

Tonight, I had the privilege of taking part of a cooking class with a chef I adore.

When asked what she deems as "good" food, she effortlessly replied that whenever someone makes you food, it's "good" food because they took the time and creative effort to create a meal for you.

That makes two of us.

The first meal that my boyfriend cooked for me was sausage and onions. At the time, we still hadn't defined our relationship and we were in this butterflies-in-your-stomach, giddy start to the relationship. Living in the ultimate bachelor's apartment (mismatched furniture and a fridge packed with meat and all), he had nothing in his fridge to feed the both of us except sausage. So he chopped up his sausage and onions and in less than an hour, there was a stir-fried bowl of sausage and onions on a bed of rice in front of me.

Although I'm not the biggest sausage fan, that had to have been the tastiest sausage I've ever had. Over the years, we've had so many food adventures, both cooking ourselves and trying new restaurants...

Michael's dduk-bokki.. which is hit-or-miss (in his opinion) but always delicious to me.

At Taco Rosa, a shameless Mexican chain restaurant in Tustin ('twas actually good that day).

At George's in La Jolla. The most delicious and yet most uncomfortable meal ever!

Our marmalade pork ribs and potatoes au gratin. Satisfactory, at best ;)

Dinner at Cous Cous in San Diego for our anniversary. The BEST middle eastern food I've ever had!

Our tried-and-true Beef Panamanian empanadas! Delish!

As someone who loves to cook and enjoy good food (although not yet a good cook), I will say this: Food is never better than with someone you adore.

Here's to a bazillion more of our Food & Wine adventures!

Ch-ch-ch-CHAAANGE!!!

I've gotten into a terrible habit of wanting to do something different to my hair every so often (i.e. see previous post). So I took a curling iron and went to town with my hair... I'm thinking about a perm now... What do you think?

Exams + Procrastination + Distraction = Dora

So I have this terrible habit of grabbing my scissors and trimming my bangs everytime I sit down to study for midterms and finals... I always end up with shorter bangs at the end of exams... They were finally growing in so nicely too. Stupid InStyle magazine, you taunt me with celebrities with blunted bangs!

Someone, PLEASE HIDE MY SCISSORS COME EXAM TIME!

I've returned to looking like Dora the Explorer :(

Dulux Walls

Love this. Nice song too.

Forever thine, ever mine.

So they lived happily ever after.