In preparation for Valentine's and...
... because I'm in love. :) New colors!

Eye hurts
For some reason, my right eye started getting irritated today. When I looked at my contact lens, I saw that it had a small tear on the side. That's probably the reason why. Oh well. I'm gonna change them tomorrow. It's almost time to anyway, since it's the end of the month.

Can't wait for Vegas!
I'm taking Friday off, since we're leaving for Vegas in the morning!! I'm going with all my girlfriends from Santa Clara (about 12 of us!) and we'll be there all weekend! I can't wait to gamble - blackjack and craps! I hope I win. :)

Bye Bye January
This month has gone by so quickly! It seemed like it was just last week when Alan proposed...

Shocking!
For some reason, here at work, I get shocked a lot. Meaning, when I open the door or when I touch the metal desk, I get a huge electric shock that is starting to hurt every time. Today, I even saw a little blue spark between my finger and the doorknob. Yikes. This can't be good for my heart.

Somebody stop the noise!
This past weekend, my laptop started doing something really weird. The fan became extremely loud, and it's non-stop! Plus it completely slows down my computer. I don't know what's going on :( It's so annoying. Any IT people out there wanna help me?

Almost there!
On Saturday, Alan and I checked out 3 different places for receptions. These 3 are definitely our top choices so far. Now it's a matter of trying to pick one. But hopefully we'll have one decided by the end of this week! Yay :)

XYZ at the W
Sunday night, us girls (Johanna, Rowena, Eileen, Jane, and I) went out for a nice dinner at XYZ in the city. It's the restaurant at the W Hotel on 3rd and Howard. It was one of the restaurants that's part of the Dine About Town, SF program, with prix fixe menus for $29.95. The food was really good!! I had a nice salad with special dressing (Really good dressing), the pork entree (which was really tender and full of flavor), and the pineapple upside down cake with ice cream. We also got wine with dinner. Overall, an excellent meal. A nice girls-night-out!

Tuesday night Sushi
Last night, I had dinner with most of the crew at Sushi House in Alameda. So, here's who the 'crew' usually is: Alan, me, Eileen, Rick, Johanna, Jane, Oscar, Rowena, Chris, Eric, and Marjorie. We waited about 1 1/2 hours to get seated. I didn't know it got so busy at night! So good though... Island roll!!

Afterwards, we went to Albertson's to pick up some chips for the salsa at Jane & Oscar's place, and we also picked up some ready-to-bake cookies and milk. We went over to their place, and just hung out. We played Texas Hold-Em poker and blackjack with all the coins in Oscar's coin jar. Johanna showed us pics from her trip to Thailand and they showed me pics from their Vegas trip this past weekend! We had lots of fun, especially for a weeknight and especially without any adult beverages :)

Still hunting
Alan and I are still on the hunt for a reception place. We've visited half a dozen places but only liked one so far. We have more appointments this weekend and at one of them, we finally get to have a food tasting! Alan is very excited about that! :)

Work is busy!
I've been so busy at work these past couple of days! It's crazy! But I guess when I go to Vegas next week, I know I'd have earned it.

Covad Winter Gala
We went to Alan's company holiday party on Saturday night at the Hayes Mansion in San Jose. Great place, great good, and great entertainment/music. I got to meet a lot of his co-workers and talk to them and their wives. He introduced me as his 'fiancee' for the first time and they all asked how he proposed. It's fun telling people the story.

ALIAS!
It was soooo good. Can't wait to see what happens next!

Over-snoozed
I usually set my alarm for 6am, and then keep hitting the snooze button until 7am when I usually get out of bed. The snooze goes off every 9 minutes, but after an hour, the alarm completely turns off and no more snoozing. Anyway, so this morning, I snooze til 7am and I go back to sleep... Next thing I know, my mom walks into my room and tells me it's 8:00am! Oh man. My heart was beating so fast, I got ready in about 20 minutes and was out of the house by 8:25am. Usually it takes me an hour to get to work, but fortunately the traffic into the city wasn't bad today! So I got to work at about 9:10am, which is the normal time I get in. Whew! Maybe I should stop using the snooze button and get up when the alarm goes off...

The Butterfly Effect
Last night, I saw Ashton Kutcher's new movie The Butterfly Effect which isn't even officially out yet. Auds got some free passes to a preview showing from SCU and so Mike, Abby, Auds, Ben, Alan and I went. The movie was pretty good... good effects and a different type of story. Some parts were really scary - like jump-out-of-your-seat scary, some parts were funny (although I don't know if they were meant to be), and some parts reminded me of The Sixth Sense. Overall, I give it a B+.

Oh My Gosh!!! THAT LIAR!
That's all I have to say about last night's new episode of Alias!! If you don't know what I'm talking about, let's just say that FINALLY the real truth about someone I didn't like came out!! I can't wait for next week's episode... :)

House Party II
Friday night, I had another house party (since my mom was away! hehe). The whole Berkeley crew came over (except Johanna who is out of the country) and we ate, drank, played Mafia, and of course Kings!! Alan and Oscar got the king's cup this time... they almost made me believe that I got the second one, but I noticed it was only the 3rd king! Anyway, we had lots of fun rules this time... like everytime a guy had to drink, the girls had to do 5 pushups!! But we got them back by saying that everytime we had to do 5, they had to do 10 of these up-and-down pushups.... Needless to say, everyone was tired from laughing and doing pushups that night.

In search of a reception place
Alan and I started visiting different reception places this past weekend, and we definitely know what we want/don't want. It's fun to look around though, to see what places offer... Hopefully we'll have a site set soon.

My preciousssss
After being apart from my ring for almost 4 whole days, I finally got it back from the jeweler last night... and it's so pretty. I love the new band, and now it fits! I can't help but stare at it and see how it catches and reflects every ray of light.... It's so pretty! My precious...

Thank you!
Thanks to everyone for all the well wishes! I was happy to share the good news with my family and friends.

Great start to a new year!
Last Friday night was Alan's birthday dinner at F&A's. I had planned out the whole thing, dinner and then dancing afterwards... Little did I know that my life would be changed forever...

The dinner was fun! We had the whole restaurant to ourselves. Since we had a group of 30, F & A's didn't take any other reservations. We had a whole table of family - Kitchie, Damon, Heidi, Abby, Mike, Auds, Ben, and Alan's parents. Then a whole bunch of our Santa Clara friends came by and some Berkeley friends too! Dinner was pretty good... I had the 7-seasoned fresh catch (which was salmon that day).

Towards the end of dinner, I see my mom and dad walk into the restaurant! I was really surprised, because when I left the house, they were already in their pajamas getting ready to go to sleep!!! So I was a little confused, but was starting to think of why they were here....

Hmm.... my whole family, Alan's whole family, our close friends, and Ben and Auds taking pictures all the time and even taking a video of the night?? Suspicious. Also, before I left the house, I heard Alan call Kitchie on her cell phone. Now why would Alan call her, I thought? And I was evesdropping when Kitchie tried to secretly talk to my mom and dad about "something".

Anyway, after dinner, Alan stands up and starts making a thank-you speech. He quoted a poem on friendship and made a toast to all his friends, he thanked his parents and toasted them. Same to his sisters, MY parents, and MY sisters... And last .... GOD. It was pretty funny when he said "God" because I, and probably a lot of other people, thought he was gonna toast me.

But after thanking God, he started to tell the story of how we met 4 1/2 years ago... how his eyes didn't shy away when we first met, how he wanted to get to know me better, how I asked HIM to be my boyfriend when we were driving back from Jack-in-the-Box in Berkeley, how I am the "wind beneath his wings", how he always asks me "When are you going to ask me to marry you?".

(By this point in time, I kinda knew what was coming. I started tearing when he was saying all these things to me. I noticed that everyone on the sides was gathering around us, waiting with their cameras in hand for something to happen.)

So he said it was his turn to ask, and he got down on his knee, asked his mom for the ring (she was holding it for him... hehe) and proposed. And of course, I said yes!

So now we're engaged! :) What a great birthday! I'm so happy, and I love my ring! :) And we have the whole night on tape. What a great memory...

Check out pics from the most wonderful night of my life on Alan's site...

Happy Birthday!
Happy 26th Birthday Alan!!! :)

Happy New Year!!
Welcome to 2004!! Last night, Alan and I went to his sister and her husband's house for a last-minute party, which turned out to be pretty fun! Lots of food, we were watching LOTR II, and we played Mafia! It was a good chance from the past few years where we didn't really do anything for NYE except watch the ball drop.

Happy New Year! Can't wait to see what this year has in store for everyone :)