Engagement Photos!
On Sunday we went to take our engagement photos with our photographer. We went to the Palace of Fine Arts and wore more formal wear (but not too formal!) and then we went to Baker Beach, changed into more casual clothes and just had fun at the beach! At first I was a little uncomfortable with the camera being so up-in-your-face, but after a while, I got used to it and it was fun! The beach shots were really fun to do... I hope we took some good ones!

Cake!
We did the cake tasting on Saturday and picked out our cake! It's very yummy and we gave our cake a unique look... There's both chocolate and vanilla, to satisfy both of us :)

Food!
We did our food tasting last night at the Westin, and I thought it was only gonna take less than an hour, but it took about three! We actually went into the hotel restaurant and they served us exactly how the meals will be served at our banquet, complete with the plates they'll be using, the salads, entrees, and even champagne! By the end of the night, both Alan and I were really full :)

We then discussed more details about the reception, and we went into the room where it is going to be held and she told us that there are two ways to set the room up - the 'friendly' way where most of the guests are closer to the head table and the 'grand' way where even though the guests at the back are farther away, it looks nicer the way the room is set up (more lighting on the head table, etc) and our entrance would be 'grander' since we would have to walk longer to get there. We're still debating...

Is that all I do?
Wedding stuff... yup, at this point, pretty much. Only 3 more months people! Of course this is what I'm doing.

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff
Read it. I started this week and it's really good. I'm learning a lot.

I miss...

• egg and bacon breakfasts with marmalde or strawberry jam


• sock wars from fortresses made of laundry baskets


• Easter Sunday pictures all dressed up


• seeing Hunter perform his tricks and his race through the rings


• random fun facts recited by the little one


• picking someone up from school


• free rent in Berkeley, but priceless company


• quoting movie lines which no one else knows but us


• going shopping for school supplies


• grouchy morning people who complain about people being too loud upstairs


• breakfast mornings at Denny's


• holding tickets or money because someone thinks she's going to lose it


• watching piano recitals at the Presidio


• the house being filled with loud, high-pitched excited voices


• the house being filled with piano music

I miss my two best friends.

New Bridget Jones movie!
Yay, the new Bridget Jones movie is coming out on November 19th! The preview is hilarious... watch it here! I can't wait!

Girls Slumber Party!
On Friday night, I drove to my friend's new house in Tracy for an all-girls slumber party weekend! We ate dinner, played games like Spoons, Animal, Concentration, and Truth-or-Drink, drank, and girl-talked :) Then on Saturday we went to Wente Vineyards for a tour of the winery and tasting! And we had a yummy lunch at the restaurant there too. It was great to hang out with just girls, without our boyfriends/husbands/fiances. But we had a rule - what happens in Tracy stays in Tracy! :) hehe

Rained out
Sunday morning the weather was really weird. It rained really hard for about 30 minutes but then cleared up and turned out to be a beautiful sunny day! We were supposed to take engagement photos, but when we saw it was raining, we called the photographer and cancelled! He said it would probably be best to postpone, since the grass/sand would be wet and we wouldn't be able to take as many shots as we wanted. Hopefully it won't rain this Sunday so we can finally take our engagement pics!

Why? Why do I play?
I think I'm going to boycott playing Texas Hold 'Em. I've never won any money, and on Saturday night at my friend's birthday dinner, I didn't even win a single hand!! Why do I keep giving my money away? That's it. No more!

Get me outta here!
It's Friday!! And I'm going over to my friend's new house in Tracy for an all-girls slumber party :) Sounds like we're kids, but I think it'll be fun hanging out with just girls. I was thinking about it, and more than 50% of our group will be married... It's close though - 6 married to 5 not married. But if you count me as 'close enough' to married since I'm engaged, then it's 7 to 4 :) We're gonna play games and hang out tonight, then go to Wente Vineyards tomorrow for wine tasting and lunch! Can't wait!

Back To School
Last night was my first UC Berkeley extension class in SAS Programming. It's pretty cool and I'm excited to learn the language. It'll be helpful for me at work! I think I'll take BART next week since parking was kind of hard to find... but we'll see. I liked not having to go underground at 9pm at night like the others who took BART.

Raining in the sun?
I look outside my window today at around 11am and it's nice and sunny, then water starts pouring down the side of the building against the window. At first I thought it was rain, but after really thinking about it, I figured out that the people outside were cleaning the window and hosing it down. Just another distraction for a Friday morning, not that I needed any more.

"WASH ME"
My car needs a major car wash. Anyone know of a gas station in the east bay that still gives out free car washes with a full tank of gas?

Frustrated and Tired
Recently I've been feeling frustrated and tired at work. Got me thinking about things like - do I belong in this field, is this what I want to do with my life, am I learning/growing/advancing? Hopefully it will pass. Maybe it's because I have a presentation to do in two weeks and I'm not ready.

I think it's also because there doesn't seem to be anyone around here that I can relate to on a personal basis - like out of work. I come in, do my work, then go home. Totally different from people who have made friends at work and go out after hours or even on the weekends. Maybe it's b/c I've only been here a short time? I doubt it.

I need to vent.

Wimbledon!
We just got back from watching a free preview of the new movie Wimbledon with Paul Bettany (from A Beautiful Mind) and Kirsten Dunst. It was a cute love story with a tennis background. My mom and Heidi got there at around 5pm (it started at 7:30!) but it's good cuz we were at the beginning of the line, so we got good seats :)

Engaged couples all around!
Well... just because we went to our marriage seminars this past Friday night and Saturday. It was nice to see so many other engaged couples and to talk about some of the issues that were discussed. We got the results of our FOCCUS test and we talked about the areas where we didn't have the same answers. But don't worry, nothing major!

Familiar priests
On Friday, the priest that led the discussion was the former principal at SI and is now the head of campus ministry at Santa Clara. I mentioned that I graduated from SI and throughout the evening he kept mentioning that he married lots of SI alum.

And today we saw our priest at Serramonte. I wasn't sure if he was going to remember us, but he did, and he also mentioned Gary & Bev! :)

Engagement shots
Alan and I went shopping for new outfits since we're taking our engagement photos on Sunday. We figured out the color scheme, and now if only we could find matching tops...

Registries!
We added some stuff to our registries, and I noticed that some people already bought some stuff! I can't wait to get them :) hehehe.

Sorry!
Ms. Super6rlee asked why I don't blog everyday since I said I would... sorry if I got your hopes up! I guess I've been busy at work.

Joey!
Who watched the pilot episode of Joey last night? I like it! I think he's so funny still... Hopefully the other characters will develop so that I learn to like them as much too. But I'll stick with it! I like how they put in a line about Chandler in there :)

Night of Must See TV
I also watched the first episode of The Apprentice too! It's interesting how much you can learn about someone only after 1 hour of watching them. I guess it's also how it's edited.... The leader guy on the girls' team reminds me of Andre Agassi - maybe it's b/c he's bald and I was just watching the US Open. It should be an interesting season...

So I kept watching NBC afterwards and saw the pilot episode of Medical Investigation which is kinda like a CSI but with medical mysteries. It's pretty good. It's on regularly on Fridays at 10pm, so I'll probably tape it... except for tonight, cuz i forgot to set my VCR! boo.

Marriage Seminar
Alan and I are going to our marriage seminar tonight and all day tomorrow. We get to discuss our answers to that questionnaire we took a couple months back. I wonder what other issues they'll talk about. I guess we'll just have to wait and see...

Happy Friday!
I love short weeks, don't you?? Have a nice weekend!

Birthday weekend
Friday night we went to Miyake in Palo Alto for a small birthday gathering with some friends. They totally changed the rules there since I went there last. Now, no one under 21 can go in past 7:30pm, so since Heidi is underage, I went in with her at 7pm and had food first before everyone else got there and got in. Everyone went in at around 8 and so Heidi and I just switched over to the other table, even though the mean bouncer said that we couldn't sit with them. Heidi was freaking out everytime the bouncer would look at our table, thinking he would kick her out.

But it all worked out in the end cuz she got to stay and see everyone getting up on the chairs and taking endless sake bombs, me do the birthday sake tower, and everyone getting a little tipsy and dancing on the chairs. What a great place to have a bday! :)

Afterwards we went to F&A's and danced some more. I had a lot of fun, despite the headache I had the next morning... Couldn't even eat anything at my family birthday lunch since my stomach was still queasy. We had lots of food at the house, and my family and Alan's parents had fun singing karaoke with the Magic Mic, and of course we played Hold Em and Cuajo, which is a Filipino card game kinda like gin rummy.

New York in San Francisco?
A whole bunch of my former professors and classmates at Columbia are in San Francisco for a big conference called MedInfo and last night our director had a reception in his suite at the Hilton. It was great seeing people again and having conversations with old friends and professors about what's going on in the department and about what I was studying before... Sometimes I wish I was back there in school... it was really fun and I liked doing research.

After the reception about 20 of us students/alumni walked to Chinatown and ate at Empress of China. I couldn't figure out when I had been there before, but I finally figured it out - it was for a wedding reception in 2000. Really good food and great service. Nice view of the city from the 5th floor restaurant too.

Ooops, missed a day!
Oh well.

Airport crazy!
So many people at OAK last night when I went to pick up my dad. It literally took me about 30 minutes to get out of the Park & Call lot just to get to the exit of the airport. I guess lots of people are travelling for the long weekend.

Weekend plans
Nothing much... dinner at Miyake's tonight (can't wait for the sake tower...yikes), bbq tomorrow at our house with the families, and hanging out with my dad while he's in town. I hope he can fix my laptop, which makes this weird noise 10 minutes after I turn it on, and the only way to make it stop is to pull out the power cord and pull out the battery. So my laptop's only good for 10 minutes every day... definitely something wrong there. It's good I burned most of my pictures a couple months ago.

Have a great loooooooooong weekend!

Happy September!
The first of the month... my favorite month of the year. I wonder why... ;)

Let there be light.
They're done with the construction outside the side of the building near my window, so they finally took down the tarp, and it's so much brighter now! Seems I'm more productive and awake when there's light.

Start of season premieres
I watched the season premiere of Scrubs last night, and I think I've gotten hooked again. I started watching it when it first started, but haven't been watching consistently until last season when Scott Foley was on. I think I'll start again. Tuesdays at 9:30pm NBC.

Here's a list of the other premieres I'm waiting for:
Thursday Sept 6 - Joey, The Apprentice (NBC)
Tuesday Sept 21 - One Tree Hill (WB)
Wednesday Sept 22 - Smallville (WB)
Friday Sept 24 - Joan of Arcadia (CBS)
Sunday January ??? - Alias! (ABC)

I didn't watch The Apprentice last season and I think I missed out, so I'm gonna watch this time :) What shows are you waiting for??