people are so damn different at times you wish there were more people like you. well, not LIKE like you, but similar to you enough that you wouldn't wish you could change a situation. BLARG (yes i stole this word from someone else) - i can't think of any better word to describe this feeling. am i naive? am i difficult? probably. but hell, i guess that's just the damn way that i am. there are just some things you can't change.

oh, and blog appearance is being worked on.

adorable kids selling lemonade i saw a handful of them as i was driving today, decked out in their american flag t-shirts holding plastic cups of lemonade screaming "fifty cents per cup!" it reminded me of me twelve years ago and how my friends and i stood at the street corner selling cups of lemonade to whoever walked by. there was also this one time we went door to door selling banana bread. i think there was also this other time we tried putting on a garage sale by ourselves - i forget if we were adventurous or just plain greedy.

what makes friday special a phone call from a friend up north recapping the week, complaints here and there, and having some good laughs.

absolute nothing i've been so good at that for this past month i'm excited to start work.

holy shit it's almost july. a third of the summer's gone already?!?!

miranda IS the least attractive character in sex and the city and god damn why is it that out of the four of them, i'm probably the most like her? i'd like to argue that i'm like carrie in the sense that i can probably pull off writing a column and (half the time) has great taste in clothing; and heck, i can even be like charlotte in the aspect that ... well, i love art too, and...and, i'm as idealistic and romantic as she is. as for samantha, she's the one character i will never be. but no, no matter how much i want to be carrie or charlotte, i have to admit defeat. i am the "career-driven 36 year old mother that just made partner at her law firm" whose "intelligence and determination translate into physical unattractiveness, a practical mind, and a somewhat full of herself attitude (which is attractive in men but unattractive in women)". | i cite the ever so insightful jihye on that one |

but hey miranda does have some great lines: "i'm on vacation, i just want to get laid!" hrm. i'm on vacation. i'll let you think about the other half of that sentence.

SUMMER. is not summer without the sun. i swear the strangest thing i've seen in awhile is my dad building a fire away in june.

emotions. don't underestimate them because they sometimes can creep up on you and scare the hell out of you. they're silly things really. sometimes i just don't understand. but then again, when have we ever understood our own feelings?

i feel my brain rotting away as is. never in the past six years have i had more than a month's break from school. this feeling is quite odd i might add, but i'm starting to truly enjoy it.

a day late but worth the wait (that didn't make any sense) HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my future roommate!! wow i cam rhyme! anyway i'm such a dork but happy (belated) birthday amy jin! thanks for coming down to visit too, though uneventful as it was, there were some good times. thanks mike, dan, and dave for being ever so gentlemanly (no sarcasm there, i think) and coming down as well =)

"i don't know what i want to do when i grow up"; taking the theme from my ever so wonderful godmother. hrm. you wonder that by walking down the "single lonely path of business" if you have shut the door on the possibility of grad school. i wonder that by walking down this crowded filled with some of berkeley's blond bombshells path of mass comm that i have forever closed my hopeful door of a successful career. then it gets me to think, god damn if i hadn't dropped stats, and if i had actually put effort into econ, and didn't take BA p/np, would i still have had a chance?

if i get lucky, when all y'all are out there making your money i'll be falling asleep on top of case book after case books, sleep-deprived, malnourished, underweight (haha yeah right), and ready to drop out of law school. five more years of this? shoot me now.

bringing home the bacon. specifically for you G. remember, you work at deloitte. i haven't yet started interning. let's do the math. you make (i won't disclose the amount). i make 0. hrm. so you said you liked home-made gifts? well a bunch of em you're gonna get!

i'm sick of this orange and black mix that somehow looked nice to me when i changed my template last fall. then again, it was october and i guess i was in halloween mode. so (being summer and utilizing the minimal knowledge i learned in IDS 110) i'm changing the template once again! oh, and scratch the lemon-scented dreams idealism. i'm way more cynical now.

epiphany. i love big desks (and NO i do mean desks, SICKOS). my desk last year was huge. my desk at home is huge. my current desk in my new apt, not so huge. in fact, its TINY. miniscule. dwarf-like. shit, this is going to be a problem.

so jess and i walked from her house, to south pointe, back around to her house. more walking than i do, even in berkeley. but it was refreshing. we wandered south pointe, reminiscing our middle school years and how ridiculously dorky we used to be. but then, seven years ago we thought we were the coolest people on the planet. ugh, i hope my kid doesn't go through (or at least side-steps it a bit) that stage.

there was this one time jess and i handcuffed ourselves to each other even when our volleyball coach specifically told us she did not have a key. she had to take us down to the district office to have some district police dude unlock us. we were then awarded "dumb and dumber" awards at our volleyball banquet.

seven years later, i have to say, we are still just as stupid.

unemployment sucks. summer job needed. reply to me ASAP.

i played tennis today with my dad right after he taught me how to saw wood. it's harder than you think, really. especially when your dad has these gadget saws that have weird teeth and you have to angle the saw in a specific direction and consistently pull back and forth for the wood to chip away. tennis is fun. i miss tennis. running for balls however, still not fun.

summer reading as follows:

jane austen | pride and prejudice (in progress)
joseph heller | catch 22
victor hugo | les miserables
leo tolstoy | anna karenin (what am i thinking?)
charles dickens | great expectations

finished:

alanin de botton | on love
ayn rand | atlas shrugged (oh okay, i had 90% done from before)

jane austen is my nemesis. i think i'm going to continue shopaholic takes manhattan now!

jihye: erika, you leave all your battles behind.
chris: i discovered a new criteria - being able to convince me to perhaps like what you like (something to that extent). and you know what? you've never done that. never have you tried to convince me otherwise.

ugh. i'm beginning to see that people have discovered my tragic flaw.

i have a love/hate relationship with my car. on one hand, i love how i can see above most cars when i drive, on the other, it freaking chugs gas like it's water. how am i supposed to go to work when i have to fill my tank like twice a week? damn diamond bar for being way far from santa monica. grrr.

as i was washing my wine glass in the sink at 2:45 in the morning after drinking cheap wine and watching sex in the city i felt the sudden urge to pound at the punching bag hanging in my backyard. it made me think of tennis practice when i used to smack the tennis balls as hard as i could when i was angry, frustrated, or irked. the force of your arm, the way the ball made a popping sound as it hit the strings on the racket, broken synthetic strings later, it just made you feel a bit better. i miss it.

sometimes when you're feeling a certain way, do you find that when you watch tv or a movie that there's just this one character that suddenly goes through exactly what you're feeling at that exact moment? it always happens like that. it's sort of freaky.

if i had a hundred dollars right now i'd blow it on candles. scented candles, candlesticks, candle holders, thick candles, tea lights, the works. you never know, the right moment to light your entire candle collection might just come up.

van gogh's cafe de nuit. quynh bought and framed a poster of it for me for my 18th birthday. i remembered feeling so happy when she presented it to me because she had remembered it was one of my favorite pieces. something about the colors, the swirls of blue and yellow, and the cafe that got to me. it's been awhile since i've sat and just stared at it. it's a welcoming feeling, like seeing an old friend.

flowers are a waste of money but oh how i wish i had a gorgeous bouquet of orchids sitting next to me. that or fire and ice roses. or that peach-ish orange color roses. scratch that. i still love flowers.