.:: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 ::.

an overly friendly (in a strange and sort of creepy kind of way) coworker stopped me in the break room today and said "hey! what's your name?! is it a chinese name???" and i looked at him and said "i'm not chinese" and continued to rinse out my tupperware. he said "oh, sorry. i'm steve." and i said "okay."

i went back to my desk and told some coworkers about my strange encounter, and S, who is cambodian, knew exactly who i was talking about. apparently he harrasses her on an almost daily basis about what nationality she is. but it's not just us asians he targets. my boss said if he's in the breakroom, she turns around and leaves! hahaha...i'm just waiting for the next question he asks me...i'll keep you posted. ;)

:: joyce 6:53 PM [+]::
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.:: Monday, November 27, 2006 ::.

i dragged W all the way to silverthorne to go to the banana republic and j.crew outlets. i got some good deals on a couple pants, a skirt, long-sleeved shirts and sweaters. but the best deal of the day was my le creuset 5.5 qt round dutch oven. i got it for about half the price, what a deal!

the fake, pre-lit tree we bought is huge. it's consuming our living room. we'll have to rearrange some of our furniture to accomodate it. i can't wait til it's all decorated!

i definitely ate too much this weekend. i seriously need to lose a few pounds. or ten. but we still have a quarter of the chocolate pecan pie left to eat. oy.

we've had a very warm, dry november, but that's all changing this week. it's supposed to snow by tomorrow evening, with wednesday night down to a toasty 4 degrees. brrr.

and lastly, i want these!!! if anyone can read and understand japanese, please help me buy these!!! LOL... i'm serious.

:: joyce 8:15 PM [+]::
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.:: Friday, November 24, 2006 ::.

playing around with our new digicam.

:: joyce 5:49 PM [+]::
...

.:: Thursday, November 23, 2006 ::.

a new thanksgiving tradition in our house...pumpkin pancakes with pecan maple syrup!



W has been very eager to take pictures with our new camera. so we have lots of pictures of me cooking and baking. we don't know where to go here to take cool pictures. it's not like in the bay area, where you have your default SF skyline and bridges to take cool pictures of.

today we were planning to go snowboarding, thinking there wouldn't be any crowds. well, we haven't had much snow this month (even tho it's our 2nd snowiest month of the year), and it's been pretty warm this past week, in the upper 60's. so instead, we're just being lazy. :) however, we postponed our big thanksgiving dinner to saturday (since i have to work tomorrow, so lame), so i wasn't prepared to make my turkey feast today. i guess that's okay.

since i do have to work tomorrow, i won't be doing too much black friday shopping, but i do want to get our [fake] christmas tree tomorrow. luckily the stores open at 5am, so i'll have plenty of time to do some shopping before work. ;)

on a sidenote, i discovered the outlets at silverthorne (on the way to vail) has a BR and j.crew outlet!! woohoo!! so i'll have to drive about an hour, but hell, i had to drive that to get to gilroy too!

hope everyone has/had a wonderful thanksgiving!

:: joyce 12:19 PM [+]::
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.:: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 ::.

ohmigosh!! my family friend, yul, the one on survivor, will be in People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive issue! he was a finalist! what?! this is just too weird. the article in sfgate is pretty interesting though. there definitely seems to be a bigger presence of asians in general on TV these days. also on the list is john cho and daniel dae kim. go koreans!! hahaha...

:: joyce 5:12 PM [+]::
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.:: Saturday, November 18, 2006 ::.

a while back, in the pursuit of a good internet radio station, i discovered pandora. it's a free, commercial free internet radio station that you customize. you type in a band or artist you like, and pandora searches for other similar bands or artists that you would also like. you can rate each song, so it won't play the ones you don't like. the best part is that it's free and commercial free. i didn't think that existed anymore! you can upgrade to a paid subscription that removes the ads on the site, but the ads don't bother me since i'm not staring at the site all day. i usually just listen to my sansa at work, but there are days when the battery is dangerously low. one of the cons of the sansa is that you can't charge it and listen at the same time. so while that's charging, i listen to pandora. another great way to discover new music!

:: joyce 10:29 AM [+]::
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.:: Sunday, November 12, 2006 ::.

i love pumpkin. i love this time of year cuz everything pumpkin is available. so far, i've had the following pumpkin food (and drink) items:

1. tall pumpkin spice latte with nonfat milk, no whip, extra hot, from starbucks
2. pumpkin cream cheese muffin, from starbucks (so bad for you, don't look at the nutrition facts)
3. pumpkin muffin, from panera (much better for you, but not nearly as good)
4. pumpkin cheesecake, from cheesecake factory
5. pumpkin pecan cheesecake, cheesecake factory (my favorite dessert...soooo gooood!)
6. pumpkin pie in the sky, from coldstone creamery
7. pumpkin pie, probably just from some grocery store (work potluck)

pumpkin food items i still want to eat:

1. pumpkin frozen custard, from CJ's, the best frozen custard ever
2. pumpkin banana mouse tart, recipe from the barefoot contessa
3. anything else pumpkin i run into!!!

:: joyce 12:27 PM [+]::
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.:: Wednesday, November 08, 2006 ::.

thanks emc!

1. Flip to page 18, paragraph 4 in the book closest to you right now, what does it say? haha, no words, just a really cool black and white picture (Mastering Digital SLR Photography)

2. If you stretch out your left arm - as far as possible, what are you touching? the giant throw blanket i crocheted for W

3. What’s the last program you watched on tv? evening news

4. Without looking, guess what time it is. 6:10PM. (off by one minute!! i'm good!)

5. Except the computer, what can you hear right now? The TV and the vent over the stove (W is cooking me dinner tonight!).

6. When was the last time you were outside and what did you do? nothing exciting, just walked to the mailbox.

7. What are you wearing? nothing exciting, haha, black t-shirt and grey sweatpants.

8. Did you dream last night? If you did, what about? can't remember right now...but i think it was a work dream.

9. When was the last time you laughed? Not sure exactly, but I'm sure it was at the TV.

10. What’s on the walls, in the room you’re in right now? large circular tealight holder from pottery barn. and speakers. we don't have much wall space in our family room, just mostly built-ins and big windows...

11. Have you seen anything strange lately? other than the horrible fashion "don'ts" at work...nothing that jumps out at me. :P

13. What’s the last film you saw? Friends With Money (pretty good)

14. If you became a multimillionaire, what would you do with the money? invest it so my money can work for me!!

15. Tell us something about yourself that most people don’t know. sorry, i tried, but i really can't think of anything.

16. If you could change ONE THING in this world, without regarding politics or bad guilt - what would it be? can i get rid of all the stupid people?

17. Do you like dancing? i used to love to dance, but as i get older, i feel like i'm losing my rhythm. is that possible?

18. George Bush? ooooh, don't even get me started...

19. What do you want your children’s names to be, girl/boy? hmm...i have some thoughts, but i don't like to share them with anyone. plus, it changes all the time. :)

20. Would you ever consider living abroad? i would LOVE to! seriously, just give me a job and i'm there!

21. What do you want God to tell you, when you come to heaven? that i get another chance to live on earth, as someone completely different...

* * * * * * * *

on the weather front...we broke a record today, it was 80 degrees!!! i really wish the weather would make up its mind. is it winter or summer? pick one! how am i supposed to get amped for boarding season when it's so freakin' warm?

:: joyce 6:15 PM [+]::
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.:: Sunday, November 05, 2006 ::.

i don't wanna go to work tomorrow...

J came out to visit this weekend. she was technically here for work on friday, but hung out with us for the weekend. we didn't really do too much, but we ate a lot. a LOT.

friday morning she worked, and then we went to oshima ramen for lunch. we walked around the mall by our house after to kill time. then W got home from his trip to vegas and we all went to dinner at via baci for some pizza and salad. i found my new favorite pizza there, prosciutto e rucola. yum!!

on saturday, J and i had massage appointments at spavia. i can't believe my swedish massage was only $39! J's hot stone massage was only $59!!! i still can't figure out why massages are so cheap here. maybe cuz there are sooooo many day spas. whatever the reason, i love it!! and i really needed a massage after clearing a butt-load of leaves from our front yard friday morning. for lunch we decided to just have sandwiches at jason's deli, because we were preparing ourselves for a BIG dinner. :) that dinner was at lola in downtown denver. we both saw it on rachael ray's tasty travels, and we were all curious about the 100+ types of tequila they feature! the food was sooooo good, and i was soooooo full. we had the guacamole (prepared tableside), salsa sampler and their famous lobster barbacoa tamale (soooo gooooood!!) for appetizers. i had the scallops two ways, and it was seriously the best scallops i've ever had. it came with a really yummy chile relleno too. the portions were very generous. you should've seen the flatiron steaks W & J got! and we had the chocolate bundt cake for dessert, but replaced the dulce de leche for the orange tequila liquer sauce. i was so full, i had about 2 small bites.

sunday we decided to explore boulder. we went to the boulder dushanbe teahouse, which was REALLY cool. the teahouse itself was painted and decorated so intricately. the food was delicious! they had a million teas, there was no way i could read thru them all. i got their chai, which was really good. we walked around the pearl street mall and went into some really neat shops. this part of boulder reminded me of berkeley, but much cleaner and friendlier. hahaha... we still had some time before having to head back home so we went to celestial seasonings to take a free tour. it wasn't as cool as the coors brewery tour, but it was pretty interesting. afterwards, we came home, had mongolian bbq for dinner, and then said good-bye to J. it was kinda weird, cuz it didn't feel like she had flown out from california to visit us in colorado, it just felt like before, when we lived in california, and she was just visiting us and hanging out. haha, weird. but it was great having her here. and we finally got someone to stay in our lovely, newly decorated guest room!

and now it's sunday night, time for me to get ready for bed. it's gonna be a slow month or two...but we all keep telling ourselves that we should enjoy it while we can, cuz it'll get really busy soon enough. at least, i hope it gets busy soon enough, cuz it sucks when it's slow at work. the days just draaaaaaaag. well, hope everyone has a great week!

:: joyce 10:18 PM [+]::
...

a friend and former coworker wore this t-shirt on one casual friday, i recall it was orange, and the back of the shirt had the phrase "y'om say'n?" on it. i asked him, "what's that?" his response: "y'om say'n?" and from that day on, everytime he wore that shirt, he'd see me and say "y'om say'n?" and i'd respond with "word."