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Todo
- Write up the rest of the honeymoon report. With my memory being what it is, without those entries, I’ll never be able to remember what we did years from now. Or even a month from now.
- Review French Laundry Potluck experience. Work on planning another one soon!
- Plan our trip to NY & Philly in October to visit Seppo’s parents and attend friend’s wedding.
- Take more notes for this year’s NaNoWriMo and maybe start some of the exercises.
- Go get a complete physical. I’ve been meaning to do this for months now. I have no idea what my cholesterol level is. I don’t even know my own blood type.
- Post pics more regularly to flickr.
Being Married
A lot of people ask us how our married life is. Frankly, it’s the same as before, except with the wonderful memory of having celebrated the public affirmation of our commitment in front of loved ones. On a day-to-day basis, things are the same. We’ve gotten our insurance under the same company, but we haven’t yet set up a joint bank account, although we keep meaning to. The only weird things so far:
- People have referred to me as Mrs. Helava
- People have called for Seppo, asking for Mr. Choi
- My new dentist just called Seppo instead of me to remind me of my appointment
On a related note, my dog’s antibiotic prescription was labelled for patient “Mobius Choi”. LOL! That’s just… weird.
I command you to live!
Incite a Novel has been revived and moved from blogspot to our regular domain. It’s only the end of July, but I’ve been kicking around a few ideas this week. So if you have any interest in participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month for those late to the party) this year — and barring that, just interested in doing some writing — head over to the site because we’ll be working on various writing exercises for the next few months.
As an example, an idea that Seppo came up with is that we’d each write a short scene unrelated to the main stories with our respective main characters having a meal with a minor character. Then after posting all our scenes, we’d take the characters that other people have introduced and write a little scene with them. This would test the original writer’s ability to get the character across, as well as the second writer’s ability to translate that into a new scene. Hopefully, it’ll also help us “find” our characters too.
Pardon the geek-out
So my first credit card after college was with Bank of America’s America West Airways frequent flyer miles card. At the time, I didn’t care about direct flights and I was just so happy to qualify for a card (I had crappy credit coming out of college — I didn’t get this card until like two full years out of college after I did a lot of “credit cleaning” via calling and check-writing) that I didn’t really pay attention to what program I was enrolling in.
I accrued 50K miles on that card over the last few years. I spent none of it, because it doesn’t go anywhere I want it to directly.
In the meantime, when my sister started having babies, I signed up for another credit card that accrued miles with Asiana Airlines, which flies to Korea directly from SFO, as I intended to visit her often. I have, to date, accrued 80K miles on it, 10K of which was used when we flew from the Korean peninsula to the Jejudo (imagine flying from Italy to Sicily) on a weekend trip while I was visiting her.
However, you may note that she’s now in the US, as are my nieces. Neither Asiana nor America West fly to ATL.
At some point in the last two years, AWA either merged with or was bought outright by US Airways. They had been working on merging the frequent flyer miles programs for a while now, but I hadn’t been giving it much thought, frankly.
Today, I discovered that all my heretofore useless points have been converted to US Airways points. Then to my further glee, I found that US Airways is a part of the Star Alliance! So is Asiana! That means that we have enough points (pooled in the right way, to boot) to book four econo tickets within the continental US, three econo tickets to Hawaii, or two econo tickets to Europe. Well, realistically, I know that the lowest level of award fares have so many blackout dates that this isn’t really possible, but it should be able to get us at least one ticket for free.
Wheee!!!!!!!! *gleefully waves fists around face*
Which means that as soon as Seppo and I both have enough PTO, hello vacation!
What to write
I’m tossing around an idea for this year’s NaNoWriMo. I’m not married to the idea yet, but I’d really like to get the idea fleshed out and see how it feels.
Back to work
I always forget how useful to-do lists are for me. I’ve changed over my firefox homepage to point to the google personalized homepage (w/ The Google 15 prominently displayed on the top left) and to my list of daily to-dos on Joe’s Goals.
I’ve been formulating a blog post in my mind for about a week and a half, tentatively titled “Unified Theory”, covering my (very derivative) theory on social conflict. I’m not sure when I’ll get around to writing it up.
Coming back to work from a vacation is always hard, but I feel energized and ready to go. I have a list of items that I am excited to get done. This doesn’t mean that I don’t wish I had another several months of vacation, however.
Rockstar: Supernova
I call one of Toby, Patrice, Dilana, or Lukas to win it all, with an edge on the latter two. Dilana was insane. Patrice is the weakest link of those four. These are the only ones that look & sound right for who they will be playing with. Most of the rest are great, but just not right.
Chris will go home.
ETA: Storm Large looks just like an older, taller Lindsay Lohan, but rocks out hard. I liked her. Love that that’s her real name.
Mid-minivacation Post
Man, it’s been a good break. I wish I could remember what I did on Friday night. Or even Saturday. I wish I could say it was because I was sloshed or something, but it’s just that age-old old-age memory failure kicking in. Uh… Actually, Friday is when Mobi and Maddie got into a scuffle and I had to take Mobi to the vet. Everyone is ok, but Mobi lost a chunk of skin on his face. I was so wrecked on the way to and back from the vet. I held it together because I figured I had business to take care of, but once it was over and the vet reassured me that Mobi was ok (and he is), I sobbed in the car, just from the relief and release. Saturday is still a blur.
On Sunday, we met up with a couple of out-of-town friends in San Francisco and proceeded to shop the crap out of the Ferry Building (chocolates, oilive oil, bread, cheese) before eating at The Slanted Door and going on a whirlwind tour of SF. We drove by Pier 39 and Fisherman’s Wharf and Ghirardelli Square, then headed over to The Palace of Fine Arts, my personal favorite of the SF sights. Unfortunately, the grounds were getting fixed up (all the lawn had been dug up) so we couldn’t walk by the water.
After that, we drove by Crissy Fields on the way to the Golden Gate Bridge. Man, I love that area. It’s just so pretty. I also realized & commented to Seppo that it was precisely 8 years ago that I first saw the GG Bridge, on my visit out to the Bay Arey for the first time the very same weekend during the summer after college graduation. Aww.
After taking numerous pics there and walking about a third way over the bridge, we attempted to head over to the de Young museum in Golden Gate Park, but accidentally ended up winding around the Presidio, exactly like we did last time. It was… sad. I mean, it’s not like we hadn’t been there before. We did eventually make it to the museum, looked around a bit, then headed over to the Japanese Tea Garden. I like the tea garden a lot, except it’s always full of people. It’s less serene than I imagine it should be, whereas the San Jose Japanese Friendship Garden is just a serene as I think it should be. Plus, they have crazed koi, ready to eat your face off, should you get too close to the water.
I think we then drove in some convoluted path to try to maximize the experience of driving up and down the hills of SF, but actually managed only to drive on the semi-hilly streets, rather than the insane streets that actually make me clutch the dashboard in fear. We dropped off the tourists then headed down to Los Gatos to our dinner at Manresa, which, by the way, was TOTALLY worth the close to 1.5 hour drive. Full disclosure: I didn’t drive.
We ate for something like 3 hours and went home and slept soundly due to our food-induced comas.
On my actual birthday, we laid low and went out to Korean BBQ for dinner, where I ate like a madwoman. Oh, during the day, we received delivery of some yard furniture that I had been waiting for. Yay! I fell asleep embarrassingly early this day. I don’t even know why.
Yesterday, we went to see the Oakland Municipal Band play at the bandstand by Lake Merritt, roamed around the gardens and bird sanctuary, then randomly decided to rent a pedal boat. It was a strange day where it felt like we were playing tourists on vacation in our own metaphorical backyard, but it was awesome.