people watch

it's the typical story: i ride the subway to and from work every rush-hour morning and evening. usually, i fall asleep. or sometimes, i manage to stay awake and read my latest newsweek or some other magazine or book.

but today, i looked up.

some people say that subways and public transportation are primarily built for the lower income populations. in all honesty, i think that's a bunch of boloney. public transportation is for the convenience of the urbanites: it's easy and straightforward, and it brings revenue to the city. it's better for the environment, it reduces traffic and angry drivers, and it makes sense. and in some ways, it equates us all. no one's sitting in a mercedes versus a chevrolet; everyone's sitting on orange vinyl seats.

so today, on my evening commute home, midway through reading, i glanced up at the other passengers in the train. most everyone was in dark coats and dress pants, shiny shoes. some had fallen asleep against the windowpanes; others stared blankly into the aisles, lost in their own thoughts and lives and worries. a middle-aged woman with 4 gold rings and two purses sat uncomfortably close to a younger, but weary, woman wrapped tightly in a warm jacket. one man, possibly hispanic, sat staring at the ground, dressed in a nice gray coat, tan pants, and black shoes, but with a multi-colored scarf laying in his lap. another woman, red lipstick and fancy upturned collar, shifted her weight and revealed her book of choice: a tattered, library copy of the latest harry potter. a tall man stood near the doors of the train, looking out the window: he had a full mustache and beard, gray-tinted and harsh.. but i wondered if maybe he was the type of guy whose eyes twinkled when he smiled. another guy, younger, maybe in his late 20s grinned in conversation with his taller, blonder friend.


every once in a while, it's nice to un-absorb yourself from the daily grind and own ponderous musings to look around. people are interesting... crazy and annoying, loving and stupid, but undeniably interesting.

i wonder if anyone else was watching.

crraaaaasssshhhh

hehehe hohohoho. oh man, this must really suck.. tie your shoelaces, people!! or wear flip-flops :)

CAMBRIDGE, England (AP) -- A museum visitor shattered three Qing dynasty Chinese vases when he tripped on his shoelace, stumbled down a stairway and brought the vases crashing to the floor, officials said Monday.

The three vases, dating from the late 17th or early 18th century, had been donated to The Fitzwilliam Museum in the university city of Cambridge in 1948, and were among its best-known artifacts. They had been sitting proudly on the window sill beside the staircase for 40 years.

"It was a most unfortunate and regrettable accident, but we are glad that the visitor involved was able to leave the museum unharmed," said Duncan Robinson, the Fitzwilliam's director.

The museum declined to identify the man who had tripped on a loose shoelace Wednesday.

Asked about the porcelain vases, Margaret Greeves, the museum's assistant director, said: "They are in very, very small pieces, but we are determined to put them back together."

The museum declined to say what the vases were worth.

it's spring in january!

today's high is supposed to be 64. that's 64 degrees fahrenheit on january 30th.

ridiculous!! beautiful!! sunny!! but i'm inside!!

five for you

are fevers supposed to be recurring events?

i think i need more angry, feminist music. everything i have is too mellow sometimes.

happy chinese new year! it's the year of the dog. woof.

today was sunny and 55. it's still january? i went running in shorts?

everything is a game of hide-and-go-seek.

yesterday, one of my close friends abruptly told me that she's recently realized, all of a sudden, that her future is so uncertain and vague. and that her priorities, once so clear, are lopsided and flip-flopped and off-balance in comparison to before.

i laughed understandingly at her epiphany. but then, now that i think about it, my future's always been kinda uncertain. really cloudy, up in the air, flying by the seat of my pants. it's been that way for a while now, for at least the past couple of crazy years...

but i still worry about tomorrow. just 'cause.

sports confusion galore

the news of the week (at least in baseball (in my opinion)) is that theo epstein, the former GM of the red sox, is returning.. to be the GM again. yeah... wha? huh?? just a few months ago near the end of 2005, there was an uproar and backlash of reaction that the owners of the red sox were being meanie-butts and irresponsible and failing miserably to keep one of the youngest (and most successful?) general managers in his position. players and management were unhappy with something-or-another... so theo went g'bye, two others moved up to titles of "co-GMs," and the red sox world sighed.. and turned their attention to the blasphemy that is johnny damon.

but now, theo's back. yay!

yay?

i'm glad he's back. but i don't understand why he's back, and more importantly, can he undo/improve upon what's happened to my favoritest team in the past few months? we're disassembled and rag-tag, and we have no lineup. people!! there's no lineup!!

so while i continue to contemplate and worry about the future of the red sox, i'm also trying to focus attention on the upcoming winter olympics. i bet you forgot, huh? yes indeed, the 2006 winter olympics are coming up: feb 10 thru feb 26. i LOVE the olympics! but this time, it's getting very little fanfare, and no one seems excited. sadness. and there's also confusion: the olympics are being held in turin, italy. but half the time, it's called torino. the other half, turin. which is it? are americans butchering the name of the cute little italian town? or are we trying to pronounce it correctly? i don't get it. help please.

moola math

so at the very beginning, i was determined to make a budget. and i did. i made a budget for myself in mid-june -- a reasonable and practical one that took into account almost all of my necessary (AND fun) expenses. it looked right; it smelled right; it probably tasted like a good budget...

but it's not working.

i think money's just a scam. it disappears -- whoosh, be gone! and suddenly, it really is gone. "goodbye," not "see you later" or "until next time." and as i inspect my credit card statements, i can't figure out HOW the numbers add up to so much. and i CAN do math. car stuff, hair clips, a pack of gum, a visit to the eye doctor = yipes. how does this happen? i used to understand addition; now it seems foreign and with an evil undercurrent.

my bank account hates me. on the upside, my credit card loves me. so it's at least balanced? my only saving grace is the fact that i diligently put moola in my savings account, not to be touched. and i haven't touched it. woohoo!

by the way, i think coffee actually makes me sleepier.

i have glorious problems.

and that damned month of june is doing its "looming" thing again. why is it always june? but my birthday's in june!

in other news, i finally got a haircut. and it's..... short.

dear tummy,

i think i might be dying.

my tummy is grumbling. it churns and spits and lurches, and for the past 3 hours at work, i've been fighting off tendencies to run to the bathroom and puke or poop. fortunately, neither's happened. i just burp a lot.

i wonder what i ate that made my tummy mad. oh tummy, please get better. i like you.

gohan & aochan

gohan and aochan live together in a cardboard box. gohan is a 3.5-inch dwarf hamster; aochan is a 3-foot-long ratsnake. they share a box at the mutsugoro okoku zoo near tokyo. back in october, aochan was getting finicky and started refusing to eat his regular diet of frozen mice. so the zookeepers got creative and gave him a hamster that they jokingly named gohan, also known as "meal" in japanese. but good ole aochan, instead of gobbling up dear ole gohan, decided that he liked her as a friend, not as food. so now, snake and hamster chill together on a daily basis.

it's a true story: hamster, snake best friends at tokyo zoo

haha, awesome. :)

no brrrr

today is january 12, 2006, and it's currently 50+ degrees (fahrenheit) outside. last january, around this date, i think it was 10 degrees with a wind chill of -20. i'm not complaining, but this weather is just weird. i can't figure out when/if to wear a jacket, my toes are confused, and my scarves are being neglected. ummmm, dearest potus, can we say GLOBAL WARMING?

i feel bad for all the penguins and polar bears. and the igloos. can you imagine if your igloo started dripping constantly? that would really suck.

yesterday, during an intense period of frustration, i decided that i was going to:
become a hermit.
live in a hut on the beach.
in hawaii.
with two doggies and a turtle.
and go snorkeling whenever i want.
and still avoid the evil pufferfish.

but now that the whole world is warming up, maybe i'll get lucky and end up on a piece of broken-off land and drift into the ocean without having to actually pack up and move to hawaii. haha.

hark the herald...?

every morning on my way into work, i fall asleep on the metro. usually, i make it through 3-5 pages of the washington post's express newspaper before i fold it up and close my eyes, succumbing to the rhythm of the train and the silence of the other morning commuters (and probably sleep deprivation too).

typically, i also have mePod (on shuffle) playing. so whenever a sudden jolt does wake me up (or the person next to me has to get off, or i need to change subway lines), i wake up to music. it's kinda nice.

anyway, this morning, like most, i fell asleep. but i didn't completely pass out and drool. instead, after halfway or so, i woke up and stayed semi-awake. why? 'cause i realized something: i haven't taken my christmas music off of mePod.

so in between black eyed peas, counting crows, and bob marley, i'd randomly get a dose of silent night or let it snow. the first time it happened, it was kinda weird. but then.. i dunno. i like it. :) christmas music is relatively uplifting -- so after eminem's rant and john mayer's mellow stuff, the next thing i got was the muppets cheerily singing, "now bring us some figgy pudding". hehe. life's random. :)

happy monday

hehehehe. i love foxtrot. and for your information, no, i did not solve the equation for F... but i was tempted. :)


and don't you wanna know what apple's going to release too? :)



in other news, did you fart on saturday? I DID!

PBBBBT!

hahahaha --
for saturday :)

steph's brain is clogged with useless thoughts

i'm in crisis mode.

some of the problems are relatively important -- but the other ones?? totally minor. however, "minor" doesn't prevent me from spending hours debating the pros and cons of the decision-to-make.

like -- i can't decide whether or not i want to buy a comforter. my awesome quilt, which i've had since like.. 9th grade and all through high school and college, is finally dying; the edges are separating, the corners are frayed, the patchwork is coming apart completely. but it's so soft and perfectly thick. moo. i have another knit quilt, but it's not as perfect and it majorly sheds. every morning, i wake up with fuzzies all over me. and dark-colored sheets + shedding knit quilt = no-no. it's as if i had gigantic dandruff or something. ew.

so comforter? would it be too warm? and a duvet cover! it could be plain.. or patterned.. or kiddo-designs. hmm..

minor crisis #2: i need a coat. a "nice" coat -- as in, formal and respectable and work-worthy and.. well, boring. i already have a nice black, wool coat, but unfortunately, after pretending for the past 3 years that it fits well, i've finally come to the sad conclusion that it's way too big and therefore relatively uncomfortable, lumpy, and rather useless in keeping me warm. so i should go get a new one, right? except that uno: a new one costs money, dos: i could technically get away with just wearing my casual-er jacket/fleece/stuffs to work everyday (not boring, but not so "right" either), tres: it's pretty warm in dc. there are other reasons too, but those are the most concrete.

hmmm again.

unsolvable problem #3: i need a haircut. and/or a new style? my hair, which hasn't been chopped at since early march, is in desperate need of a trim -- or more preferably, a drastic cut. but i don't know where to go or which salon to trust. if i was just gonna get a straight cut, i'd go to supercuts without hesitation. but... yeah. and i have no desire to spend $90+ at a super-fancy, chic and urban, spiky-hairstylists place. you know what i mean. currently, my budget for shampoo is overdrawn -- that's how long my hair is.

yeah, this is actually what i think about. so much for bioterrorism.

hola january

it's the new year!

whooopppeeee?

so i'm back in dc after having spent a glorious 10ish days in norcal. yay. back at work, in the office, in my oh-so-lovely beige cube. on the upside, alan isn't coughing (yet) -- maybe he finally got enough sleep this vacation! knock on wood, keeping my fingers (and toes) crossed.

currently, i can think of 12 other things that i'd rather be doing right now than sitting on my butt amidst papers and computers, but alas, i guess this is how things go. but really, i could:

1) go grocery shopping: i need food.
2) go for a morning run, take a hot shower, and crawl back under the covers. mmmmm.
3) go to the mall? really, i kinda just want to snuggle into a corner of borders or barnes and noble and find something to read in the quiet.
4) download and reminisce over pictures from vacation-time.
5) catch up on my magazines.
6) run errands.

okay, i'll stop.

is it really only 10:30am? oh man. give me the weekend; i promise i'll be more upbeat next week.

i finally signed up for a real membership at sportrock yesterday night. oh dear, mooooooola! they forced me to get a 12-month though.... 'cause with a 6-month signup, the waiving of the initiation fee didn't come into play. hmm. mmm. mmrm.

do you really think my parents will move to california??

oh 2006, what will you bring?