so i went to work, and i had three large mugfuls of water and a pibb xtra. i pissed three times before my scan. and by then, my urine was totally clear. awesome!

i went back to PAMF at noon, and i was told to remove everything from my pockets, my glasses, and belt. i was allowed to keep my watch on. i then lay on a platform in front of this huge machine, and the platform hoisted me up in the air, and two gigantic things rotated around me and performed the scan. they performed three scans: two 5-minute ones (pelvic and chest), and a full-body one that lasted about 12 minutes. and then i was done.

so that’s that! i don’t know when i’ll find out if i have paget’s disease. i scheduled an appointment with the referred endocrinologist on the 23rd, but i wonder if they’ll call me sooner with the results. *shrug* i’m sort of anxious to know, but it’s not killing me or anything.

on the way back to work, i got some yoshinoya. my standard: spicy combo, extra sauce. yum. other than that, it’s been an uneventful work day for me.

last night’s GNO was a bit weird for me. it started off great, but near the end of it, i started feeling a bit panicky and paranoid. i don’t know why. i think i started having a nervous attack or something. i notice that i tend to get this way when i am around crowds. it happens when i play basketball, too. anyways, when i drove home, my brain felt like it was shaking. it took me about 40 minutes to calm down after i got home. hm. i need to get to the bottom of this. do social situations freak me out? this is a serious problem. i don’t want to be like this.

otherwise, GNO was good. we went to hunan homes to celebrate (VERY belatedly) chinese new year. we had one cancellation, so there were 8 guys in the end. the food was good, although as usual, jeremy didn’t get enough to eat. we introduced jose to peking duck, which i think he liked. we talked about all sorts of random stuff, thanks largely to jack’s knowledge of trivia. did you know that pilots’ offspring tend to be girls? go figure!

i had a dream last night where i was getting my portrait taken with three dogs. apparently, i loved those dogs. later on, a blue dog appeared as well. one item that has a recurring appearance in my dreams is this SLR camera. actually, there are two SLR cameras; they have slightly different aspect ratios, and every once in a while, they’ll pop up in my dreams. anyways, the more often-used camera came up again in this dream with the dogs, and i used it to take some pictures. ah, i’m going to miss the nicotine patch giving me funky dreams when i’m done with the regimen.

two of my cousins started using twitter. yesterday, i also started following conan o’brien. he’s pretty funny. i wonder how celebrities incorporate twittering in their lives. i mean, are they doing their celebrity thing (shopping, acting, etc.), and suddenly they have an idea, and they stop in their tracks and reach for their cell phone and tweet away?

i’m almost at 500 tweets now. are you guys following me? honestly, i’m not that interesting. but just to let you know, i’m at twitter.com/choccobo.

i hear that daylight savings starts this sunday. (thanks ann.) spring forward one hour. while i don’t like losing an hour of sleep, i definitely look forward to it getting darker later on in the night. that makes me feel more alive.

i still haven’t tried 5-hour energy yet. i could have certainly used it today. i crashed at 4pm in my cube. but frankly, i’m afraid of 5-hour energy. what if i go bonkers/berserk? the last thing i want to do is get on some weird high and not be able to come down from it. i have had caffeine affect me twice in my life. once was when i had my very first cappuccino, and i couldn’t sleep that night. the second time was when i drank like 3 dr peppers in 10 minutes, and i started shaking. neither of those times was fun for me. 5-hour energy is like a caffeine shot, so i’m afraid of similar adverse effects. hm. i wonder if i’ll ever try it. i sounds like a bungee jump for my brain.

i wonder why much of the world is trained to believe that a beautiful girl is expected to have a hairless body (i.e. legs, armpits). who started that? i mean, in victorian times, did they shave those areas? when did it all begin? they didn’t have razors/wax all throughout history, right? i mean, i am one of those brainwashed people, but i do question it sometimes. i do love the look and feel of a smooth shiny leg of a girl, though. *lick*

i feel bad for women who have mustaches. when alan and company and i went to southland on sunday night, one of the younger waitresses who served us had peach fuzz on her upper lip. it just didn’t look right.

i remember when i had peach fuzz. i didn’t start shaving until late in high school, so i had this black shadow on my upper lip until then. it looked very awkward. oh, btw, i’m thinking about upping my shaving frequency. right now, i only shave every wednesday and sunday. but by the time sunday rolls around, my stubble is so long that shaving is a bit of a hassle. so i’m thinking about changing it up a bit to three times a week. maybe tuesday, thursday, sunday.

ok, 6:19. special time. it’s one of those numbers that looks the same upside down as upright. i’m off!

basically, in my first blood test after my latest physical, my alkaline phosphatase levels were through the roof. like i got a 290, and a 140 is considered the high threshold. so i got yet another blood test, and they looked for a problem in my liver, which there wasn’t any. it turned out that 92% of my alk phos was from my bone, so my doctor is suspecting something called “paget’s disease.”

basically, paget’s has something to do with my bone cells turning over faster than a normal person’s. it can cause pinched nerves, arthritis, abnormal bone growth, etc. so i’m doing a bone scan tomorrow to see if there are any irregularities in my skeletal system. i’m not too worried about it; it’ll just be yet another “condition” that i’ll add to my list of current disorders. *sigh*

anyways…

last night, i watched the blu-ray that i borrowed from tim: _the girlfriend experience_. i was interested in the movie the moment a friend of mine told me about it: it’s about a high-class call girl, played by sasha grey, a real-life porn star. who wouldn’t be interested in that? sex fascinates me. tim hated it, so much so that he fell asleep. but i actually thought it was fairly interesting. i thought it was an interesting look at the emotional and physical detachment in the escort profession. *shrug* i can’t say that i’ll watch it again (even though it’s a short 80-minute movie), but i definitely feel like i got something out of it.

i like sasha grey. i think she’s attractive. (but not hot) she has a nice smile, a sort of genuineness. the only thing that i noticed was that her eyebrows seem sort of abnormally dark.

tonight’s GNO! t-minus an hour and a half! i double-checked my reservation with the restaurant, and we’re all set to go. unfortunately, cliff just texted me and said that something came up, so he’s bailing. that makes our party 8 people, still good and large. it’ll be fun.

how did jake (or any other bachelor) handle dating more than one person? did he just shove his emotions for the other women under the rug when he was with one particular girl? i can see how a person can like more than one girl, because i’ve been in situations where i really liked two girls at once (jo-ann and k3). but in the end, you have to choose just one, right? how do you make that decision? do you go with your heart? your mind? your gut? a combination of all? it must be tough.

i had a dream last night where i was hanging out with cobie smulders (who plays robin in HIMYM), and we wound up eating at this place called “por: the world’s best steak burgers.” we were trying to decide between por and five guys, and we were given this map that showed that the two places were really far away, and we had to navigate through this maze of streets and alleyways.

i had a huge crush on cobie smulders. she was the sole reason why i started watching HIMYM in the first place; i thought she was so hot. now, she’s just ok to me, but i’m hooked on the show. (read: obsessive compulsive)

last night, i picked up nelson at the MV caltrain and met up with paul and leeya at st. john’s. it was 50% off cheesesteak night, so i got the “beg for mercy” cheesesteak. it wasn’t that spicy, but damn, at 5am this morning, i woke up with a huge stomachache. i had to drag myself out of bed and hop on the toilet. and you know what happened next. things got so bad that i was afraid for my sheets, and i had to put on boxers when i went back to sleep as added protection.

yup. that’s me and spicy food. sometimes i can take it fine, but other times, it wrecks me. i really hope that i can continue to eat spicy food without frequent repercussions like that. i adore it so much.

speaking of food, i watched jamie oliver’s 20-minute speech at TED this afternoon. we really need to change the culture of food in the world. sugar, fats, processed food, etc. obesity and unhealthy diets are ingrained into our lifestyles, me included. i mean, i’m relatively slim, but still, i definitely could use healthier eating habits. i think my killer is sodium and a lack of vegetables/fruit. i love strong-tasting food, as my mom cooked with a lot of salt when i was growing up. i detest blandness. and that’s a big reason why i don’t eat vegetables/salad.

if you saw a hot girl, would you think less of her attractiveness if you later found out she had gotten cosmetic surgery? how much do you value “natural” looks? to me, being natural is very important. i don’t care if you look perfect, but if it’s because you went under the knife, then it doesn’t matter. it cheapens the look. when i found out that one of my ex’s had gotten the eyelid surgery, i felt really ill. i remember standing there next to her, looking at her, thinking something was different. she told me that she got the surgery, and i immediately felt like throwing up. people should accept their natural looks. (i mean, unless they have a cleft palate or something extreme like that.)

however, i guess there is a twist in that thinking. i mean, what about weight/diet? haircuts? these are not considered “surgery,” but they are definitely less drastic ways to change appearances, right? hm. i guess to me, going under the knife is just where i draw the line; surgery is too extreme for me. natural ways of changing one’s appearance are acceptable to me, but paying thousands of dollars and going under and getting all cut up and stuff is just too much.

ok. i’m leaving in 50 minutes for GNO. eek!

i still can’t get over that dream i had yesterday morning where i was making out with my junior high school crush, P. it was SO vivid and sensual. tongue, lips, sweat, everything! it was hyper-real. and there was a bicycle thrown in that dream somewhere, too. ha! random. and what’s truly odd about that dream is that it happened when i was sleeping on the couch in the living room, and the tv was on the whole time. who knew that i could dream with that kind of a distraction?

everyone needs a cell phone. really. today, oh, william and i went to choi’s, and we were waiting for viet to come. he responded in an e-mail that he was going to come, but we waited and waited, and we even ordered for him, but he didn’t show up. now, viet doesn’t have a cell phone, so it wasn’t like we could just call him up and ask him where the hell he was. so we had to pack up his cold food and take it to him (at least the other two did). when i got back to the office, there was an e-mail from him saying that he didn’t get a confirmation, so he thought lunch wasn’t happening. *doh* damn!

GNO is happening tomorrow night. i grabbed the reins this time after consulting peter, jay and alan, and declared that it was going to happen tomorrow. it’s a belated celebration of lunar new year, and we are going balls out and ordering peking duck. i LOVE peking duck. i already made a reservation for 9 (the entire gang is coming!), so i’m pretty excited about this. it’ll be good to see all the guys again.

i heard there was some small hail falling today on stanford campus. crazy weather. while i was driving back from lunch today, it was raining like crazy, but the sun was out. i should have stopped to see if there was a rainbow somewhere.

so far the 14mg nicotine patch hasn’t made me jittery or anything. i haven’t noticed a change in the dosage, so i think i’m good to go. no physiological withdrawal effects or anything. nice! i have noticed that i get a craving for a cigarette most when i am bored. not when i have had a meal, not when i am drinking, not when i am driving (altoids help me in that case), but when i am bored. i need to find something to do in those instances.

i think i’ll do my taxes next weekend. i wonder how much longer it’ll take now that i have a mortgage and property tax. i really hope i get a lot of $$$ back.

tonight, i think i’m going to watch _the girlfriend experience_. tim loaned me the blu-ray version of that movie that he got from netflix. i almost never watch recorded movies/tv at home. i dunno. i guess i just don’t like the feeling of watching something that’s not “live” when i could be doing something else. yes, it doesn’t make sense, and it’s something very psychological. i mean, tv is tv, right? what’s the difference if it’s recorded vs. if it’s live? it’s all entertainment, no? but i don’t want to hold up tim’s netflix queue, so i feel an obligation to finish this movie ASAP and get it in the mail tomorrow morning. and besides, i was the one who recommended it, and i already feel bad because he said the movie sucked. i just want to watch sasha gray. luckily, the movie is only 75 minutes or so.

i only watched a bit of the oscars last night at jay’s place, but one thing that i was glad i saw was ally sheedy during the john hughes tribute. i had SUCH a crush on ally sheedy after i watched _st. elmo’s fire_ (which, by the way, remains to this day my favorite movie of all time. yes, surprising choice, no?). and, she looked kinda cute at the end of _the breakfast club_, too, when molly ringwald’s character cleaned her up. ally has definitely aged now, but i can still see a bit of what made me attracted to her. what is she up to these days? i guess i should look her up on IMDb.

sometimes, i go into the men’s bathroom, and a guy is standing there, peeing with no hands involved. how does he do that? i mean, yes, i can understand that his schlong is freewheeling it (and oh, what a wonderful feeling that must be), but how does he keep his pants up? i am too afraid to try that. what would probably happen to me if i did that would be this: my pants would start to fall down, i would panic, and i would clutch at them, and then my schlong would flap around, and i would wind up pissing all over the place, including the ground, my jeans and my shoes. yeah.

ok, time to go look for some food.

dishi arrived next, and then, gina finally got here. i stood up and gave her a big hug. we ordered the food, and then spent the next hour or so eating and catching up. i really, really hope gina gets her fellowship at stanford. the only downside is that if she gets it, she’ll come in 2011. too long of a wait!

after dinner, we went back to dishi’s house, where gina packed, checked in online and printed out her boarding pass. then, we said goodbye.

when i got home, i got an e-mail from a random girl, A, and i saw that she was online. so we IM’ed for a little bit, and one thing led to another, and we wound up talking on the phone for an hour. it was cool. i love meeting people randomly.

saturday, i got up early and waited for my dad to arrive. i watched _the suite life of zack and cody_ (you know, how i like ashley tisdale), and then, soon after, my dad rang my doorbell. he looked tired. he asked for some whiskey, so i opened my new $40 bottle of jameson 12-year.

tim called me, so we took both of our dads out to shanghai dumpling in saratoga for lunch. our dads got to know each other, and i thought they had a good time conversing.

then, while my dad took a nap upstairs at home, i went to stanford to watch a taiko concert. this concert featured three collegiate groups: UC irvine bakuhatsu, UC cal raijin, and stanford taiko. i met up with gwen, barden, eddie, and some other ST alum. some of the pieces were a little rough, but overall, i enjoyed watching taiko again.

when i got home, my dad got up, and we went to the golf driving range at shoreline park. my dad corrected my form, and we split 155 balls before the sun went down. i’m sore today.

then, for dinner, we went to chevy’s. we both got steak fajitas. midway through our meal, this old chinese guy at the next table ditched his 3 companions and came over to talk to us in mandarin. he was from china, and he basically talked to us for the rest of the meal. he was to intent on talking to us that when his party left, he didn’t even notice. he gave me his name, address and phone number and told me that he wanted me to visit his house and “play.” oh, and to fix his printer. what?

when i got home, my dad and i had some whiskey, and we watched some tv. by 9:30, my dad went to bed, and i texted A for a bit, and then i was in bed before 11pm.

sunday, i got up at 8am to say goodbye to my dad. after he left, i took a nap. i had this CRAZY vivid dream where i was making out with my junior high school crush, P. i mean, i clearly remember there being tongue, and us being all sweaty and stuff. it was so detailed. the funny thing is, i haven’t seen P since high school. what brought that dream on? P actually live in the bay area and has two kids.

at 11, i went to dynasty to have dim sum. we eventually had 11 adults and 2 babies. then, we went to merlion plaza and got pearl tea at verde and froyo and yogurtland. i miss hanging out with the bowling crowd.

i went home and caught the end of the lakers/magic game. kobe couldn’t deliver.

at 5pm, i went over to jay’s place to have dinner. his mother-in-law cooked all this korean food. baby jaden was the center of attention. it’s so cool that he knows rudimentary sign language. it makes communication so fun and effective.

after dinner, we watched some of the oscars, and then alan called. i met up with him and ting and ting’s dad at cupertino village. i accompanied them for dinner, and then we shopped for groceries at 99 ranch. ting’s dad used to own a chinese restaurant, so he kept on wandering around, mesmerized by all the ingredients on the shelves.

then, i went home and caught up on the oscar news. there were no surprises at all, i.e. sandra bullock, jeff bridges, _the hurt locker_.

all in all, it was a great weekend.

but the best time, one that i will always remember, was when she made me “her bitch.” i met her on stanford campus one day, and she was like, “dardy, i’m going to make you my bitch.” and i obliged. so i carried her backpack, did everything she asked me to, etc. it was awesome. and i wouldn’t have done it for just anyone. i don’t know why gina and i get along so well, but we just do.

one thing, though, is that when she went to NYC for medical residency, she disappeared off the face of the planet. she never returned my e-mails or phone calls. it really bothered me. i’m going to ask her about that tonight when i see her. and i hope she has a good reason for it. i’m guessing that residency just sucked the soul out of her, which is something that she alluded to in one of her e-mails last week.

speaking of disappearing, i still want to know what the hell happened to mallory. i have a feeling that i will never find out unless i get one of my friends to ask her for me. wtf? we were decent friends, and nothing bad happened the last time i saw her when we had dinner. it truly, truly baffles me why she just dropped me as a friend.

my dad’s coming tomorrow! i’m very excited. i called my parents in taiwan, but my dad was out doing something, so i talked to my mom. apparently, my dad is shipping out his golf clubs. my mom says that he is completely obsessed with golf, and she is mad at all the money he has spent on the sport. well, if my mom has jesus, then my dad can have golf, that’s my take on it. haha!

it’s very flattering when you know that somebody likes you. but the question is: does it make you like them back? i think, the answer lies in whether there is a seed of attractiveness in that person. if there isn’t, then when they profess their affection for you, it’s a little bit like a sad puppy dog nudging you at your feet. it’s flattering to you, yes, but it makes them seem a little pathetic. but if there is, then i think it’s very endearing, and i do think it helps you like them back.

i’m doing better, emotionally. steady, steadily. i think all of my thinking has made me realize my mistakes, what i am looking for, etc. i’m trying to learn and grow from my experiences, and that’s what it’s all about, right?

one thing, though. still, when i see her name spelled out, my heart skips a beat. she’s got a uniquely spelled name, so the visual formulation makes quite an impression on me.

i got up at 9:30am this morning. i just didn’t feel like sleeping anymore. that’s an hour before my usual get-up time. so what did i do? i went to safeway and bought my “step 2″ set of nicoderm patches. yup. tomorrow, i start my step 2 regimen. i’m curious as to whether i’ll feel the difference of getting 33% less nicotine through my system. obviously, i’m hoping i won’t. i don’t want to feel any withdrawal symptoms. maybe i’ll go through more altoids or something.

i wonder how my dad will react to my not smoking. i wonder if he’ll still want to have smoking breaks. and i truly hope he won’t ask me to have a cigarette with him. i’m fine with him smoking and me standing there with an altoid in my mouth of something. i’ll gladly accompany him on that.

for lunch, 9 of us went to the korean food court near lawrence and el camino. the place was packed, so we couldn’t find a place for all of us to sit together. we found a table for 4, and next to it, at another table for 4, there were two people sitting down. a table for 2 opened up, so V kindly asked those two if they minded moving to that table. they shook their heads and said, “no, we’re eating. we don’t want to move.” hm. what do you think about that? would you have moved? i mean, if i were them, i would have gladly moved. i wouldn’t have cared, and i would have done something small like that to make a large party happy. fuck.

what’s even weirder is that when three of us were standing around the table for 2, next to us were two women sitting at a table for 4. they saw us, and they said that they didn’t mind moving. but then, when i finally asked them, “ok, we’re ready for you to move,” and one of the women shook her head and said, “no, i don’t want to move anymore.” WTF?

so i scheduled my bone scan for next wednesday. the process is that i have to go in at 9am and get an injection. (eeek, more needles.) then, i have to wait for 3 hours (i guess i’ll go into work) and then go back for an HOURLONG scan, during which i have to be still. WOW. how the fuck am i going to do that? dude, i better have this stupid paget’s disease, or else it’s going to be a waste of my time!

ok, almost 5pm. i SO want this weekend to come already! gina! dad! dim sum on sunday!

there was just too much pressure. i mean, i liked her so much that i was totally self-conscious and nervous. i think that paralyzed me.

S’s energy was totally attractive, and that’s why i adore her. but, it’s probably not for me now. i think the reason why i liked that about her was because it reminded me of a time when i was like that. a la college dardy. college dardy and S would have been a perfect fit. remember k1? she was like S. so i guess S was like remembering of a youthful exuberance of a better, funner, more idealistic time not weighed down by age and maturity and boredom.

just some thoughts for me to chew on, as i digest this past weekend further. man, what a hell of a ride, though, this past february. by the way, S wrote me a short e-mail today. i appreciate that. i told her that i want her to keep in touch, because i really do believe that i’m better off knowing her. she is quite the luminous and radiant beacon of personality, and it’s something to appreciate and behold. i don’t want to forget that there are people like that in this world, even in their 30’s.

so, let’s talk taiwan. after basketball today, the project manager told me that i will most likely have to delay my trip by about two weeks. drat. i don’t totally mind that, but the biggest bummer about it is that i won’t be able to fly back with my dad. oh well. work demands it, so it shall be, i guess.

i am still getting over siobhan magnus’s NOTE during _american idol_ last night. if you watched it, you’ll know what note i’m talking about. it was THE note. holy shit, was it crazy and fucking brilliant. last night, i voted for her, lilly scott and crystal bowersox. i watched all three performances twice, and i watched the note four times total. ha! like simon, i, too, think siobhan is a curious little creature.

guess what? my company brought back the monthly ice cream social! well, it’s not that big of a deal to me, since i’m not an ice cream fiend (i only had three small scoops), but i think the bigger underlying point of this is that i think the company is seeing better times ahead. i hope the corollary of this is that we’ll get raises/bonuses this year. *crossed fingers*

i had some crazy ass dreams last night. in the first one i can remember, my old friend jacob had replicated into multiple dopplegangers that had slight differences, and they all started chasing me on a beach. i remember running as fast as i could, but everything was in slow motion, and i was scooping up sand and throwing it in their faces to slow them down.

then, in another dream, there were these machine guns (like the mega-gun from _predator_ that jesse ventura was using) popping up from the ground shooting at me, and i think i got shot, and that’s why i woke up. and in the final dream, cheryl’s water broke, and the reason why i knew was because she had this booklet that had a light that indicated so. nuts.

i wonder if my dreams will get tamer when i step down on my nicotine patch this saturday. shit, which reminds me, i need to buy the nicoderm step 2 kit tonight or tomorrow night.

it’s funny, now that i’m quitting smoking, i know more people who are quitting, too. there are three other coworkers who are trying to quit, too. and when i announced it on facebook, quite a few high school friends of mine happened to be quitting as well. while i was a smoker for 14 years, i never knew one person who tried quitting. go figure. i guess compadres step up for each other.

oh! i finally watched a sasha grey porn clip last night. i found it on the internet. i didn’t watch the whole thing, because it got kind of ridiculous. when the guy put in his schlong, she started screaming and cursing like a madwoman. at one point, it got so crazy that i couldn’t even understand what she was saying, something like “smack the red” or some gibberish like that. anyways, it wasn’t very attractive. i do like her face, though.

i will always be a face person first and foremost. physically speaking. the face is the part of the body that i look at most often, so it better be damn good. after all, no self-respecting dating profile shows another part of the body, right? it’s not like you log on and start surfing through pictures of boobs or ass dimples. (though i have to admit, i do love those as well.)

S did show me one thing (among others), though. she showed me that a girl’s personality can truly shine through like a flash of light in pitch black darkness. i mean, she was definitely cute and all, but what i will remember about her most will be her amazing personality. no doubt about that.

gina’s here! i haven’t talked to her yet, but her plane touched down from NYC at around 2:30pm, i think, and now she’s somewhere in SF. i canNOT wait to see her. it’ll happen tomorrow night. she’s here interviewing for a medical fellowship. it would be awesome if she moved back to the bay area, so i’m crossing my fingers for her.

ok, that’s it for today. i’m feeling better about stuff.

don’t get me wrong, though. i adore S. i feel like i’m letting go of something beautiful, something so far out of my reach that i don’t even know if i can coexist with. but hey, that’s life.

during our Talk at 18th street lounge, S asked me whether i thought that my trip out there was “a waste.” i shook my head and said no. life is about taking chances. it’s about creating memories. carpe fucking diem, you know? i felt like i was actually *living* during the time that i was getting to know her. it was a great ride, albeit one that ended up at a place where i wish it didn’t go.

as far as i’m concerned, S will always own february 2010 in my heart.

ok, on to other things.

ann, you’re hilarious. yesterday, i write a heartfelt, thoughtful blog entry, and you leave me a comment about food. typical ann! btw, frankly, i didn’t think five guys was all that great. it was just a greasy burger with choose-your-own toppings.

i’m still a little baffled at the whole chemistry thing, though. looking back at my past dealings with various women, i really do think a lot of it has to do with me. i just haven’t been that engaging. i need to step up my game. the last time i was really animated and awesome (if i do say so myself) with a new girl was with A. but i wasn’t interested in her, we were meeting under the pretense of just being friends, and we spent most of our conversation talking in mandarin. our conversation got so heated and silly that she called me “bai tzi” (idiot). hehe.

so what gives? how do i improve myself? i think it’s really my inherent shyness that is cock blocking myself. hm. gotta work on that. i keep on thinking that if the girl is “right,” it’ll be magical, but i think that’s just fucking bullshit, and it really does take work and mental sharpness to be good on a first date.

what’s interesting, though, is that if i were meeting a guy, i’d probably be much more relaxed. so there *is* a difference between it being a girl date and a guy date. why is that? am i trying to impress too much? am i trying to be too witty, funny, intelligent, charming? before meeting S, you don’t know how many times my friends texted me, “just be yourself.” hm. how do i dig down and pull out the “self” that’s the one that’s gregarious among my close friends? that’s the million dollar question there.

oh, i got my annual review back from my boss. he made comments on all of my bullet points (my listed accomplishments over 2009), and they were all pretty positive. one of the question marks, though, was “being on time.” hm. i guess people do notice that i come in a tad late. i need to work on that.

i also FINALLY e-mailed my boss and the project manager about my trip to taiwan. my boss said it was OK, but it was really up to the PM. the PM just came into my cube and said that i needed to wrap up some stuff before i could go. so it looks like i’m tentatively OK’ed for the trip. nice.

i need to schedule my bone scan for paget’s disease. probably after i come back from taiwan. i told my psych today about it, and he was skeptical about me having paget’s. anyways, i’m not too worried about having the disorder, but i just want to know why i have such a high alkaline phosphatase count in my bloodwork. if it’s paget’s, then let it be.

so i’m on week 4 of quitting smoking. during my trip to VA, i brought along a full tin of altoids, but i wound up only having two of them during the entire trip: one on the flight out, and one on the flight back. so it turns out that i’m *not* addicted to altoids at all! out of sight, out of mind, i guess.

this saturday, i’m stepping down from the 21mg patch to the 14mg patch. it’ll be interesting to see whether my body detects the 33% drop in nicotine. i hope i’ll be ok. *crosses fingers* so far, my cravings have diminished quite significantly. in VA, i didn’t feel like smoking much at all, even while i was drinking my slew of whiskies. (well, maybe after i was bummed out after getting rejected, haha.)

tim just IM’ed me. he got _the girlfriend experience_ on blu ray. i suggested he get that movie on netflix. i’m sort of attracted to sasha grey. (she’s a porn star, if you didn’t know that.) i haven’t seen her in action, though; maybe i should check her out on youporn or something just to satisfy my curiosity. but maybe that’ll shatter my image of her. so far, she looks like a cool girl, but maybe seeing her naked and getting reamed by a large schlong will color my perception of her.

i haven’t shaved in the longest time (relatively). the last time i shaved was friday night, before my flight to VA. i have a set routine for shaving: wednesday and sunday nights. i didn’t bring my electric razor to VA, so i skipped my sunday cut. i keep licking the stubble on my upper lip.

did you know that i grew out what little mustache/goatee i could muster back in the early 2000’s? it was pretty damn pathetic. i have such sparse growth. it was so embarrassing. it looked fine from far away, but up close, you could see that my follicles were like 1mm away from each other. ha!

ok, i’m having dinner with tim tonight. gonna head home soon.

i tend to make very quick and decisive first impressions, especially when it comes to women, and especially when they are negative. if a girl is not attractive, then i immediately write her off as a potential mate. i know, it’s really shallow, but i can’t help it. but i look at it as an initial screening process.

and then comes the conversation. and other nonverbal cues, i.e. facial expressions, hand gestures. is there a natural flow of speech, a playful banter? is the girl animated and energetic? witty? does she remember what was said previously and incorporate that into the conversation? are there awkward pauses? is she creative and random?

sometimes, we have to make an effort to make the exchange go smoothly. other times, more rarely, the interaction is effortless. those are the special ones. and what i can’t quite distill is what makes those special ones special, like what factors create those “sparks.”

one thing i have learned about myself this weekend is that i am, at my very core, a shy person. when i grew up, my parents never pushed me to go play with other kids. i remember being friends with the building blocks more so than other kids. my parents told me that my kindergarten teachers marveled at the elaborate structures i created with those blocks. of course, i had some friends, but those memories with them are very singular, i.e. i had one friend, or another friend, but not groups of them.

i also learned that i take time to warm up to people. i have two examples of this. first was my freshman year at stanford. i was dreadfully quiet during my first few months at college. then, after i was comfortable in my surroundings, i suddenly BLEW UP and became this crazy, wacky dude.

another example was during my trip to italy/spain. i went with 8 other people who i didn’t know. i was also very quiet at first. but throughout the course of the two and a half weeks, i became more and more vocal, and my travelmates told me that they definitely noticed that. so i definitely have an “incubation period.”

you guys read my previous post, “virginia,” right? well, i mentioned some of the silliness that ensued, a la the cartwheels, the mustaches, the dancing, etc. well, i held back and didn’t participate in that. i reverted back to my shy, reserved self. and it was not a good thing. and i am very disappointed in myself that i couldn’t dig deep within myself and open up more quickly. but the problem is, i think that it is just within my nature to be like that.

concurrently, i have this deep-set nagging thought that has been stirring in my brain ever since i talked to alan on sunday afternoon. and that thought is: am i boring now? i mean, all of you who have been following this blog should be able to answer this question. i used to be more outrageous and random in my writing, no? has my brain become more subdued, quieted, restrained?

and then, as i was talking to jay this afternoon, i started thinking: is it the meds? there is no question that haldol is the atomic bomb of psychotropic medication. has it killed off the spontaneity that was such a signature of the “me” of the past?

anyways, i have a gazillion thoughts of what went wrong this weekend, and i don’t have many answers. and i *want* answers. i want to know what i can do better next time. i want to conquer my shyness and jump into new social experiences like a fucking flaming chameleon. i want to be, well, like a normal person.

one thing that i know about myself are two phrases that i have always used to describe myself: “wallflower among strangers” and “fearless among friends.” i think that’s true about myself. when i am in a room full of people i don’t know, i, for the life of me, don’t know what the hell to do. i was never trained to do it. but once i get to know people well, i have no problems expressing myself. (ironically, the fact that i have this blog must mean that i treat all you darling readers as people i “know.” weird, huh? anonymity = intimacy)

anyways, S is an amazing, one-of-a-kind woman. she is a character among characters that i have never seen before. i adore her to bits, but my inability to connect destroyed what could have been. and i have no one to blame but myself. i can’t say that even at my best, whether we would have been compatible, but i would have liked to have given a better shot at it. a much better shot.

it will take me a while to get over her.

friday night, i took will out to maruichi for his birthday, and then he took me to the airport. i had a 9:50pm redeye out to IAD (dulles). i drugged myself up with seroquel and 0.5mg of xanax, so i was able to catch some sleep on the 5 hour flight. the turbulence was pretty bad during some parts, and it woke me up quite a few times, though. the virgin america is a pretty cool, swanky airline.

i arrived in IAD around 6am. IAD sucks. you have to ride these trams to get from terminal to terminal. by the time i got to baggage claim, my roller was sitting there, waiting for me. S was still on her way, so our initial greeting, which i had been planning out like a hundred times in my head, was not to be executed.

she drove up outside on the curb (and it was COLD outside), and we hugged, and then, it was off on a 2-hour drive to richmond, VA. we grabbed some coffee at a local starbucks first. we chatted on the way down, and then we eventually landed at a hotel in richmond, where her friend T was sleeping on the floor. they had apparently been drinking pabst blue ribbon (PBR: also affectionately called “the people’s beer of richmond”) the night before.

we waited for T to get up and get ready, and then we dropped him off at the convention center, where he was representing his company at a handmade bike convention. and then, S and i went to grab brunch at millie’s cafe. the food was excellent. i had a soft scramble with lobster and a jameson on the rocks. (yes, whiskey in the AM.)

after brunch, we headed to maymont park, this really random place that had a bear, two bald eagles, some deer, falcons/hawks, and a random assortment of farm animals. there was also this old, blind sheep with vertigo that drove it walk around in circles, poor thing.

after the park, we went to carytown, this strip of a street with various shops. we bought four cupcakes (carrot for me) and looked at stationary and music (i decided that i would look into buying the latest MGMT and bebel gilberto CD’s).

then, we picked up T and decided to check out this place called hollywood cemetery. creepy, but ok. T guided us on his iPhone, and we wound up at this big cemetery. ok, now what? we were kind of like, “uh…” and then we left. then, S saw a sign for “hollywood cemetery,” and she followed it and wound up at the real one. apparently, this is a place where famous people were buried, like jefferson davis and other big historical personalities. we drove around and then headed back to the hotel.

at the hotel, we did some silly stuff. S started doing cartwheels. i mentioned how i wanted to play horse, so we wadded up magazine paper, propped the ice bin against the tv, and shot the paper. T and S started dancing to “all the single ladies” by beyonce. we took a “what’s your spirit animal?” quiz. S and i were both wolves, and T was a hawk. then, S and T drew mustaches on their index fingers and started talking with them on.

for dinner, we met up with S’s college roommate K at this bbq place. frankly, i thought it smelled better outside than it tasted. i got a brisket sandwich. not bad.

after dinner, we went out drinking. we first hit this bar called helen. a double bushmills for me, a dirty martini for S, and a gin and soda for T. we shared stories. then, i got a jameson on the rocks. we then tried to buy some hard alcohol to take back to the hotel, but the ABC store (apparently, you can only buy hard alcohol in VA at the ABC store) was closed at 9. so we hit the 7-11 and bought 4 40’s.

at the 7-11, we saw this cheap publication called _gotcha_. it featured local criminals and showed their faces and the crime they were convicted of. we were astounded. there were sections like “stubble trouble,” “look-alikes” and “multi-taskers” (people with multiple convictions). WTF?

while driving back, we spotted a chili’s, so we stopped by for more drinks. they had $1.50 coronas, so T got two, S got one, and i eventually had two more whiskeys. the bartender was really cool. had made this one self-invented concoction called a “chocolate strawberry” and let us try it.

i was pretty drunk by then, so by the time we went back to the hotel, i just hopped into bed and eventually passed out. S and T apparently danced the night away.

sunday morning, we packed, checked out of the hotel, and went to kitchen 64 for brunch. we got a $12 pitcher of mimosa. i got a breakfast burrito. then, we dropped off T at the airport, said our goodbyes, and S and i headed back to the DC area. she dropped me off at my hotel, and i got a 3-4 hour block to chill out. i called up alan to debrief him, watched the mavs game, dozed off, etc.

for dinner, we went to five guys hamburgers. amyM raves about this place so much that i had to try it. so we went to the dupont circle area of DC, parked, and walked to five guys. it was decent. then, we walked over to the 18th street lounge, which was another place i wanted to hit. they didn’t open until 9:30pm, so we walked next door to this placed called “public bar,” which turned out to be this MASSIVE sports bar. i mean, it had like 20+ flat screen tv’s and one huge screen. S got a peroni beer, and i had two jameson’s.

we watched the closing ceremonies of the olympics there, and when 9:30 hit, we went next door to the 18th street lounge. S got a guinness, and i would eventually have two bushmills. the music was pretty cool, as i remembered it to be. we would have a serious talk there. we left around 11 or so, and she dropped me off at the hotel. i called alan up, and we had a long chat of the happenings from that night.

monday, i woke up past 10, checked out, and we went to georgetown to have lunch. we walked around, and ate at la madeleine. sausage, mushroom and spinach omelette. we went to a stationary store and when walked along the waterfront. then, it was off to the airport.

i would spent the next four hours at the airport. my flight was delayed by two hours because of the SFO low cloud cover, which caused one of the runways to shut down. my 4:30 flight was delayed until 6:15. thank goodness for my iPod, which i almost didn’t bring. i slept for the first hour of the flight, and then, i checked out their “red” interactive service by watching various satellite tv shows and music videos.

will picked me up. i made him rush me home to watch the final 15 minutes of _the bachelor_ (man, jake picked the wrong girl), and then we went to fu lam mum for dinner. then, we went home, and i wrote an e-mail to S and called it night.

so yeah, that was my weekend. thoughts will come in the next post.

the guys’ result was even more astounding. the worst singer by far (also votefortheworst’s champion) got spared. i was baffled. and even *he* was baffled. that look on his face was priceless, like “WTF?!” i think that he was ready to go, but now we get to experience at least one more week of his horrible singing. i can’t wait to hear simon’s scathing criticism. i mean, this week he told him, “we made the right decision the first time in not electing you to the top 24.” OUCH.

i made a lot of good progress this week at work. however, it did not end on a high note. i wrote a register test yesterday, and for some insane reason, it just hangs there after the first register read. this test was built on a template, and the another templated test runs fine, so what the fuck? i am utterly confused. i’ll need some help in debugging this one.

i slept for a good 11 hours last night. i think my body was not expecting it. i woke up at 2am, 5am, and then at various times in the morning. i really wish i had seen kim yu-na’s free skate, but i really needed wanted some extra sleep. i heard yu-na KILLED it. good for her.

the skiing aerials are nuts. how do you even begin to do some of that stuff? stuff like 3 flips, 5 twists in one jump. i mean, the amount of body control required to do something like that is just astounding. pretty neat. it’s a nice juxtaposition to ski jumping. both of the activities involve massive jumping action, but on one hand, you’ve got a crazy, frenetic twist/turn stuff, and on the other hand, you’re completely motionless.

so more alkaline phosphatase test results came back. my doctor called me yesterday afternoon. one test in particular says that my ALP is mainly coming from my bones (something like 92% of it, and only 6% liver, 2% from a third source), so that points to a hyperactivity in my bones, which could be something called paget’s disease. this disease involves a fast bone growth, which could cause misshapen bones in the future, which could cause pinched nerves or a tendency to get fractures more easily. anyways, my doctor said that i need to get a fully-body bone scan sometime soon to verify that i do have this disorder. fuck.

the human body is amazing. it’s amazing that everything works most of the time. it’s so complex; there are so many systems (nervous, circulatory, digestive, endocrine, etc.) that have to function just right to keep us alive, and for the most part, they do. of course, sometimes, things to terribly wrong, but the fact that most of us are generally healthy is a very impressive thing. if you really think about it, it’ll blow your mind. life is truly a miracle.

i’m not 100% sure about this, but i think i’ve been having fitful sleep. sometimes, i wake up, and i find the pillow that i hug to be completely off the bed. it’s like i’ve flung it onto the ground while i sleep. the other day, my three blankets were rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise. what is going on here? usually, i’m a peaceful sleeper, but now, weird stuff is afoot. am i tossing and turning a lot? is it the nicotine patches? am i dreaming of wrestling somebody and acting it out?

shit, i gotta find some time to do my taxes. I WANT THAT REFUND!

i think my jaw is going to have massive arthritis when i get old. every time i yawn, it clicks and pops. when did this start happening? i think it was when i developed TMJ back in 2000. i still remember why i got TMJ. it was when i bought the internet stock CMGI during the internet boom. i bought 6 shares at $198 per share. i was so stressed out because the stock was so volatile. i eventually sold it a few weeks later at $199, after it had split, so i doubled my money. i remember being at CES in las vegas and trying to log onto yahoo finance on a public computer to check the stock quote. it was so fucking stressful. funnily, though, i get more stressed out when a stock i own is going up than when it’s going down.

ok, this is my 99th wordpress entry. time has really flown by on this blog. and i’m telling you, entry #100 is going to be a doozy. just a warning.