Fish Sticks and Green Jello

Same couch set, new add on piece. New dining table that was given to me for my birthday, new chairs. New look!

Thanks to Brenda, Rebeccah, Grandma and Dad for the table and thanks to Larry for the spruced up look. You guys rock!


Mod Living Room



New table

Framed picture of Toby
from my dad for my birthday

My cousin was in town from Kentucky for about 9 days. We drove down to LA the weeknd of the 17th to see our family that we haven't seen in a LONG LONG time. It was a GREAT trip and GREAT to be with everyone. Aren't my cousins the cutest? My grandpa is around 95 and still kicking!


My cousin Larry and I

My cousins Larry, Diem and I

Larry, our Aunt Huong and I

Lots of cousins, Aunt Kim, Uncle Bang and Grandpa!

This was the mellow birthday dinner at Clementine on June 4th. Clementine is a french restaurant in San Francisco on Clement and 2nd. Excellent food, small portions, big prices. The service was excellent too. I got a free bottle of wine as a birthday gift. Nice! I also went to Fischerpooner at the Fillmore later that evening (thanks for the ticket Katherine!). Great show! I love Fishcerspooner!


Me, Anna, and Katherine

Jeremy (haha again!) and Johnny

Fred, Dave and a better photo of Jeremy!

This happened June 3rd and oh what a fun evening it was! We started out at Cha Cha Cha, a tapas restaurant with a location in the Mission and on Haight (we were at the Mission location). I LOVE Cha Cha Cha, the food is fabulous! We then moved on to Beauty Bar (fun fun! Dave got a manicure with glitter polish! :P) and then Lone Palm (super fun! I love this place). It was a total blast! These photos are from Cha Cha Cha. There were a ton of photos from this evening so I'm just posting a handful.


Mango Mousse Birthday Dessert!

Jonathan and Dave

Shawn and Libby

Me and El Bobo!

Haha, Jeremy!

Jason and Kari

Lovely portrait of Sabine

Dave (again!) and Sean

So I'm sure all of you recall the drama and craziness in my life earlier this year. There was a lot going on which was impacted by the social scene and the dramatics which went on that scene. I of course was definitely responsible for a lot of that and don't want to play down my part by any means.

Because of that, I decided to change a lot of things in my life socially and start keeping to myself a lot. I kept the friends around me that had been really supportive of me and the friends that were also less involved in any crazy drama/party scenes. Of course as a result that cut out other people that may have been on the fringe as well. But that's what I needed to do to normalize things. It was a drastic enough situation that I had to be... drastic!

Anyways since then I've definitely gotten some flak. There's been some nasty emails, some uncomfortable social situations and some gossip going around. Thankfully I didn't originate any of it this time around. Also, I haven't responded to any of it. Sure it's hard sometimes when people aren't being so nice, but I've learned it's better to just let it go. Particularly in the situations where you know it's just completely pointless to do anything about it.

I mean honestly, it's hard to sit there and read mean emails or hear mean things and not write or say anything back. I'm not going to allow stuff like that to take away any of the good things going in my life or the good feelings I have right now about life. In the past this sort of stuff would have really been bad for me. But now it's just a bump in the road really. If that.

I wanted to blog about this to say hey, things are fine, really. It's okay. So, on the one hand you could say, well if it's so fine why blog about this? On the other hand, sometimes blogging is my only outlet... and honestly, none of those other people read my blog. All that ranting I did in the past? The only people reading those posts were my friends, family or complete strangers. Hey, I'm writing to have an outlet. It's a blog! That's what all this stuff is anyways. An outlet to throw out my own ramblings. Sometimes interesting, a lot of times boring.

Life shuffles on. Another day, another whatever...

Yes I'm still alive! I know I haven't blogged in awhile but my cousin was just in town from Kentucky and I've had lots of other things going on as well. I can either chalk up my non-blogging to being busy, things being good or a combination of both! Well I could complain about a few things but whatever.

Anyways, I have photos from my birthday weekend and from LA that I want to post. I'll do that in the next couple of days. In the meantime I'm spending my free time focusing on my jewelry design and trying to figure out how to get some sort of business off the ground doing this. While my cousin was here we brainstormed all kinds of ideas for doing this and I'm really excited about it.

I'll be working on packaging and a business plan as well as new design ideas over the next couple of months. My goal is to get the jewelry line going then eventually have a boutique with a different name that sells the jewelry line among other things. My cousin and I came up with some great ideas but I can't post them here yet! I'd like my cousin to focus on managing the business while I continue to work my day job to help pay for the business. Well ultimately that's the goal. I think once my cousin moves out here though he'll probably have to work for awhile before that happens.

We'll see how things go... I really hope this succeeds. It's always been a dream of mine to own a shop! I told my Dad, when I was a kid, that I would own a store one day and that he could work the "cashray" for me. I even promised him a big cushy seat to sit in while he did it. Maybe he'll still take me up on that offer. :)

Awhile back I wrote asking for store name suggestions. I got some interesting feedback on how to come up with names and urls. I finally decided on something a little while back but never got around to posting about it.

Spun Sugar

There you have it. I also now own www.spun-sugar.com. The non hypenated dot com name was taken by a baking co. in Berkeley.

Why I chose the name: Spun Sugar is that hardened sugar decoration they put on fancy desserts. It's also what Cotton Candy is made out of. Cotton Candy being pink and fluffy. Pink, a color I like. Fluffy, like... bunnies. Yeah. Anyways you get the picture.

I love the name actually. Now for the hard part. Doing something with it. The key thing here would be to get a partner. Doing this on my own is rough, particularly when I have other things going on in life that demand my attention. I'll get to it eventually.

I'm hoping one day my friend can design a logo for me, then eventually a site, then eventually some stuff for sale. When I have more time I really want to take more jewelry, beading and glass classes. Hopefully I will be able to eventually.

Oh, I have a myspace page too! You can find it here at: http://myspace.com/spunsugar.

This is the first time in years of trying that I've come up with a concrete name and concept for something I would like to do that I think could really go somewhere. Wish me luck!

P.S. I used the Lucinda Handwriting font for the text on the splash page for my website. It's not working on my current setup though. If you can't see a nice handwriting font and instead you see a boring plain old font, let me know... I should make the writing a graphic instead when I have time.

I'd been meaning to blog about this movie recently but I've been doing a lot of other things lately that required my attention. Part of my blogging habits have been to log on late at night and write long rambling posts. Part of my new habits are to go to bed earlier and get up earlier... that requires not spending tons of time on here these days. I'll do my best though.

On to ROTS...

So, the first two star wars prequels were like 'dumb, whatever, who cares' movies to me. I just didn't get them the first time I saw them. They couldn't hold a candle to how I felt about the original movies so I didn't bother seeing them more than once. I went to see ROTS with low expectations. I figured it would be tie up the series and be yet another star wars "related" movie that couldn't compare to the originals. That wasn't exactly the case.

I loved this movie. Not every cheesy little bit, but the overall emotion, sadness and drama of seeing Anakin fall to the dark side and become my all time favorite character, Darth Vader. It wasn't a perfect movie per se, but what it did for me was bring back some of that excitement and wonder that I felt when I was a little kid seeing Star Wars, Empire and Jedi for the first time. My co-worker said that it must be so amazing to see ROTS as a kid right now and I thought if I were a kid seeing this it would be the BEST MOVIE EVER! I miss that. I miss being a kid and getting super excited by movies like this.

Someone recently wrote an amusing and very true review of this on Amazon. I wholeheartedly agree with their assesment of it. Particularly when friends of mine will criticize the movie as being cheesy or not as cool as the originals. I have to keep reminding them that the originals were just as cheesy, the difference was that we were kids when we saw it so we didn't see that aspect of it. Read this review and you'll see what I mean: "My Review of Revenge of the Sith" by Andrew Michael Parodi (No spoilers here so read away!)

I don't want to write about all the things that I did or didn't like about this film. Instead I'd rather you went and saw it for yourself. I've seen it three times so far. Twice on the digital screen as it was intended to be seen! Heck I'm even reading the book. When was the last time I did that with a movie like this?! When I was 12 maybe? I'm not counting Lord of the Rings because the books came first. Not the same thing at all!

After I saw ROTS for the first time I went and watched Episodes IV - VI again. It was great. Like seeing them again as fresh new movies. Not movies I'd seen a thousand times repeatedly. Now I could truly tie all the films together. I even re-watched Episodes I and II. They're still pretty bad films but everything makes so much more sense now then it did the first time through. I never really understood the politics of these films but I finally did for the first time once I'd seen them all. Who cared about the politics when you were a kid? It was basically bad guys vs good guys. Bad guys rule the galaxy. There you go. No Senate, Empire, Chancellor, Clones crap. Just plain and simple good vs evil.

A friend of mine has read every Star Wars book. I'd like to start doing that. I also have to watch the Clone Wars cartoons which fill in the time between Episodes II and III. They introduce you to General Grevious. That gets the ball rolling for you when you see Episode III. Anyways, this may all be yet another time suck but I think I'd rather be sitting around doing this, playing World of Warcraft, watching movies and listening to music then anything that I'd been doing for the last 8 months of my life. 8 months wasted that I can't ever get back. I guess all I can do is go up from here. At least Star Wars is helping me with a lift, in my spirits at least! Corny, yet true.

My last paragraph... In the ROTS book there is a descripion of how Anakin feels on the inside. Basically a young Anakin is taken to a planet where he learns that stars can indeed die. This scares him. Obi-Wan tries to teach him about how things pass beyond because it is the will of the force.

Excerpt:

"It is the way of the universe, which is another manner of sayng that it is the will of the Force," Obi-Wan had told him "Everything dies. In time, even stars burn out. This is why Jedi form no attachments: all things pass. To hold on to something --
or someone -- beyond its time is to set your selfish desires against the Force. That is a path of misery, Anakin; the Jedi do not walk it."

That is the kind of fear that lives inside Anakin Skywalker; the dragon of that dead star. It is an ancient, cold dead voice within his heart that whispers all things die...

In a bright day he can't hear it; battle, a mission, even a report before the Jedi Council, can make him forget it's even there. But at night --

At night, the walls hs has built sometimes start to frost over. Sometimes they start to crack.

At night, the dead-star dragon sometimes sneaks through the cracks and crawls up into his brain and chews at the inside of this skill. The dragon whispers of what Anakin has lost. And what he will lose. "

etc etc

"But locked away behind the walls of his heart, the dragon that is his fear coils and squirms and hisses. Because his real fear, in a universe wehre even stars can die, is that the being the best will never be quite good enough."

The passages go on at later points to describe this dragon in him. Like when he's anxious or angry the dragon will burn inside him. This is right about how I'm feeling right now actually. There's something that's slowly eating away at me too. Not that I'll run out and join the dark side but somethings gotta change, in a big way. I feel that the ball has already started rolling and so far so good. I meant to connect my current situation to the eating fire in Anakin but I'm pretty tired right now. I think my Ambien kicked in already.

Please leave comments if you like. Yes, I rambled, again. I welcome other more articulate points of view on this topic. Don't be suprised if I add some re-writes tomorrow night.