pressure on the court

After realizing that I am not good at judging romantic partners based on first impressions, I decided to make these kinds of things my little brother's decision, because he judges people based on their personalities while playing basketball. Thus far he has been more accurate at determining personality.

Edgar: hahaha
that's what michelle obama's brother did!

Done deal.

last last hurrah

My brother, on the phone, walking around University Mall in Provo, waiting to go into the MTC.

Carter: Dude there are so many young mothers walking around right now

Me: How young?

Carter: Not like, 19 young

Carter: But I'd take their lunch money

reflection

My #1 realization of the last decade is finding out that other people eat the skin of baked potatoes. I now don't have to scrape around the edges to get the good stuff. It increased the enjoyability of the experience of by about 890%. Especially for little baked potatoes. Those were really frustrating to eat before.

Also, I've been wearing these contacts for 27 hours, a new all-time record. I understand that this is like a bragging about a running a fourteen minute mile, but that is okay. To me, it is as if I had a prosthetic leg.

Birthday card excerpt

"This was the best card I could find out of the whole Wal-mart aisle...There was one that had Steve Carell on it with a quote from The Office about birthdays, but it must have been from a recent episode, because it wasn't that funny." -DB

He is correct. That show is zero funny.

It's also called Blackjack

Sister has told me time and time again that real adults don't spend time reflecting on how adult they are. Probably true.

But 21 feels 21. Maybe it's because I'm an upperclassman. Maybe it's because I realized that 21 isn't as old and mature as I thought it was. Or I'm deluding myself in thinking that I am at all an adult. For instance. On gchat, when you do this:

~@~ ~@~ ~@~

it turns into poop emoticons. And I love it. It is my life force.

But anyway. I changed my blog background. Three years is long enough. And I was starting to hate the tan on brown, because it made pictures with white backgrounds look misplaced. Maybe it'll make me look more adult. If so, don't mention it. Act like it's natural.

Babyawaybe.

Nancy: She's kind of crazily attached to me to the point where if I leave the room and Brad's holding her, she starts hitting him

Drip drip drip

My head hurts. I think it's because I'm dehydrated. I think non-stop rain misleads you into thinking that you don't need to drink water. It has also made me bitter about showering and about doing laundry. Which is what I'm putting off doing as I type. Why would I introduce more water into my life? I can just stay under the covers until the rain goes away, or forever.

Tomorrow I'm staying in bed till 11.

I was going to complain about my 8am class in the torrential rain, and then I read Gar's blog, and she did it already.

So I sleep.

Monday

Today I took Baby to the park in her stroller and we played on the slide. On the way back I made small talk with the crossing guard about the weather. We both agreed that a little heat was better than winter in Nebraska.

I just started a small fire

in the kitchen. Very very very small. And not grease.

He's probably right.

I can't explain it, but I can't get enough of these Japanese videos of little beans who pop up and surprise people with fun facts. When Jo showed me, I watched all 15 of them. Then watched them all again.

Alex: Um. Connie?

Me: Yeah?

Alex: This might be one of those things that you don't want to show to other people.

Declaration

In preparation for my trip down to Glendora for baby's ladybug themed birthday bash this weekend, I purchased a cardigan with red roses on it. I'm afraid no one's going to get it, so I'm blogging about it.

BSC teaches USA

There's a corner by my place in Berkeley that is the unofficial free-stuff corner. It's always covered in items newly banished from basements, be they baskets or bowls or books. The stuff rarely catches my eye, and oftentimes unexpected rain makes the junk into piles of pulp that will get swept up by the next street cleaning. I paid little attention to the pile up until about a month ago, when on my way to church I stumbled upon this:

Stacey McGill, Super Sitter! (Baby-Sitters Club #94)

The morning was dewy and I didn't want any more harm to befall the book, so I scooped it up right away and threw it into my purse. Referring back to 2004 (which, by this point, was six years ago. Nuts? yes.), where I decided one day to go through every BSC book that I've read, you can see...I hadn't read that book. (Also, upon a second look at the list, I realize that I've definitely read #80, Mallory Pike #1 Fan. I don't know what I was thinking.)


A rescue from the curb isn't the only comeback the BSC is getting. It looks like the club will be entering a few more homes this year. Scholastic is reissuing copies of the old BSC books, and Ann M. Martin is writing a prequel!
And to bring the girls up to 2010 date, they're modernizing the writing:
Editors at Scholastic updated some of the references to technology and outdated fashions in the reissued books. So a “cassette player” has become “headphones” and a “perm” has become “an expensive hairstyle.”

I picture Scholastic copy editors crossing out entire pages with a black marker. (My dream job is BSC book fact-checker. If only I were born twenty years earlier.) Those books can be confusing. Did at some point in the 80's, everyone want loafers? I had a friend draw me a picture of a loafer the other day, because I was thinking about how Kristy wanted to know if she was old enough for a pair, and I realized I didn't know what they were.

So I picked up Stacey McGill, Super Sitter and read (of course, skipping chapter 2). Reading the book was a half hour emotional roller coaster ride. I rolled my eyes at classically bossy Kristi, and smiled with each additional bag of candy Claudia pulled out of some drawer. I got choked up a little at the hurt from parent/clients who didn't understand. I laughed out loud at jokes. This whole time, I was sitting next to Carter, and when he asked me what was so funny, I looked down at the text and realized it was impossible to explain. If another baby-sitter said that Jaime Newton cried, it's funny because there's an image of Jaime Newton, reinforced by dozens and dozens of books, surfacing to my mind that has been dormant for a decade. And when the sensitive little boy with the dark brown hair cries, you laugh, because you had forgotten about Jaime Newton--but of course he'd cry in that situation.

So while a single book from the series may be an unsatisfying read on its own, reading a Baby-Sitters Club book with a background knowledge of the entire series triggers enough of my emotions that it's like a five mile run followed by a hot fudge sundae. You cry, you smile, you hurt, there's guilt, you feel a little bit like you're better than this kind of behavior, but in the end, you know you're better off from the experience.

I have that necklace somewhere

My attention to the entire series had other unexpected benefits. As the child of immigrants, whose peers were almost entirely also children of immigrants, there were gaps in my knowledge of what typical American life consisted of. Until the Baby-Sitters Club came along.

They taught me about prank phone calls, diabetes, and farmhouses. I learned about beauty pageants, haunted houses, mysteries, double ear piercings (how adult!), sign language, club dues, boy-craziness, breakups, fairs, bridesmaids, Southern accents (though not how they sound), road trips, worst enemies, high school sweethearts...most of which exist in Taiwan, but I'm not sure my parents would have thought to, or known how to articulate to me.

Or consider where I learned basic organizational structure. From Kristi's Great Idea. We've got a president, a vice president, a treasurer, a secretary, and we can add on less important officers and their duties as they come along. When I started as treasurer on a board for a non-profit this year, there were times where I needed to make treasurer-ish decisions. And when I emailed the other board members, I had trouble thinking of reasons to justify my actions beside "That's how Stacey did it."
And she had Kristi's approval.

Two and two

I just realized I don't fully understand the idiom "put two and two together." Does it refer to a puzzle-type situation, where you line up a two and another two to connect pieces? Or do we mean "I'm adding 2+2 together" and it's four. Because that's an easy math problem. Probably the former.

Anyway. After I posted last night about the airport encounter, I decided to re-listen to the introduction of the radio episode that I had linked to on Mind Games, with Lori Gottlieb telling her story. The first time, I noticed in the episode summary "Gottlieb is the author of Stick Figure: A Diary of My Former Self and other books. "I read that book!" I said to myself. In 2003. And blogged about it, in probably the first and only book review I've ever written. (It's been six and a half years and my writing has developed astoundingly little. Though I had written "anyway" at the beginning of the paragraph, and in the eighth grade, I was still using "anyways." Never mind that I still introduce all my paragraphs with a lone adverb.)

As the segment came to a close for the second time, and Ira Glass is plugging Gottlieb's new book, "Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough," I realized why her name was even more familiar. She was the author of an Atlantic article that at some point last year, everyone kept sending to me, about "settling" when it comes to finding a spouse. (My answer was 'uh, stop sending me this, I'm 19,' but it was an enjoyable read nonetheless. Side side note: Can that count as another book review?)

"Lori Gottlieb!" I want to yell. Your harrowing tales of anorexia-induced hospitalization scared me off from eating disorders. And though I don't want to think about this right now, if I ever decide to have a kid, I'll find a husband first, the hell with idealistic notions of romance! If there was an award for author who has made the greatest impact on my life who doesn't have a Wikipedia page, it'd go to you!

Maybe I want her to be my Oprah. I want to keep a copy of her books in my purse. And I'll interrupt meals or dates by pulling them out and saying "Hmn, what does Lori have to say about this?"

Will think about this more later, I want to go for a run.

back in the US, back in the US, back in the USSR

Back in the city. Eating Cheerios out of a box by myself, which I think is the Mormon fanatical-grandma-type auntie equivalent of drinking alone.

The lines at Ontario were minimal, even though it was the end of a holiday weekend. I was standing in the security line, when I turned and made eye-contact with a girl behind me in the security line, and realized "hey! She was in my precalculus class in high school!" She'd lost some weight. I smiled, and she smiled back. Which is good. I wasn't sure she'd recognize me. She waved. "What a coincidence!" I said. "What are you up to?" "Oh, just flying back," she said. What is her name, what is her name, what is her name should I mention math should I mention high school I hope you don't remember my name either.

She walked ahead, and I caught up my confused family members on whom I was speaking to. "She's probably on our flight back to San Francisco," I said.

And she was. She passed me on her way to her seat, and stopped to chat a little bit.
Me: What are you doing in Ontario?
Girl: Weird look. Oh, you know. Going home. My dad dropped me off. Are you going back to Oakland?
Wait. This isn't the same girl from high school. I don't think I know this girl. How did she recognize me? Maybe I know her from somewhere else. But she looks like the girl in my math class.
Me: Oh, I'm from San Francisco
Girl: Oh, I always thought you lived in So. Cal.
Me: No, I'm...
Girl: Oh, that must have been 5, 10 years ago.
Me: Um. Yeah. Yeah. Must have been.

We didn't know each other 5 years ago.
So by this point it's clear we've never met. So I smile and turn back to my book (thanks Nelson!) and get ready for takeoff, while she finds a seat.

"She's so nice!" My family members say as she walks away. "I don't think I know her," I whisper. "What?" "I'm pretty sure we've never met in my life."

As luck would have it, there was a third and final interaction when my entire family left me with all their suitcases and piled into the bathrooms outside the gate, (Is it still gate if you're exiting?) while I stand there with our belongings. Girl walks by and we have another chat. This time I make an effort to stay away from specifics. But the end was still awkward--parting moments should look to the future, right? I'll see you at so-and-so's, let's be friends on Facebook, look for me at the ten-year reunion. But I couldn't even fake it. To make it even more awkward, there was a distinct "we should hug" moment; friends hug when they're parting, and we're kind of friends. I hesitated, though, and didn't follow through. Not because hugging a stranger would be weird, but hugging a stranger who thinks you're someone else probably would be. Plus, she can't be that close to the girl she's confusing me with, because she clearly can't differentiate her from a stranger from the airport.

I did say "it was good seeing you again," which was deceptive, but it was good seeing her again. Since the plane. Or the security line, where we met for the first time. "It was good seeing you too!" she said, as she walked off. Maybe never to be seen again. Or maybe she goes to Berkeley and I'll see her on campus, and I can explain "I thought you were someone else, but you're actually a lot nicer than the person I mistook you for," and then we'll be friends, and years later we'll laugh because our friendship was based on a lie. Or, based on a mistaken identity perpetuated by a lie.

Carter: It's funny, before this, I was just thinking "man, what are the odds that you'd see someone you know at a random airport?
Carter: Turns out, not that high.

A Christmas Tradition

Every Christmas Eve, members of the Chung family walk to the nearest drug store for last minute Christmas shopping/stocking stuffers. Usually by this point we've already purchased any big ticket items, but use the trip for little items to flesh out the bottom of the tree. This is the moment that tongue scraper, or that six pack of AA batteries that you've been lusting after can be yours.

This tradition predates even my own memory. Chung folklore says that it originated when the two younger Chungs still believed in Santa and older members of the family were scrambling to fill their stockings before morning. So, the older Chungs piled into the car and rushed to the nearest drugstore before closing, to fill the stockings before the young ones woke up the whole house at 6am. The older Chung's enthusiasm grew dim as the years went on, however, and the younger Chung's skepticism of Santa's existence was all but confirmed the year Santa just dropped ten dollars in everyone's stocking before Christmas morning.

This year we're in Glendora, where the nearest drugstore is CVS. It's no Walgreens, but its selection of Chia Pets and Christmas candy lets us stay true to tradition.

Carter: What's the Clapper?

Me: You know. Clap on, *clap clap* clap off.

Carter: Oh.

Carter: I thought it was the clap.

Carter: I was like "they can sell that kind of stuff?"

Onto wrapping presents. I'm tired though. I'm going to try and convince Sister that tying a bow to close CVS bags is an acceptable presentation of a gift.