five things

i've been kinda crazy busy w/ work and getting stuff ready for christmas, but thanks to MB for tagging me so i have something to write about other than how frazzled i've been the past week. so here goes: 5 things you probably didn't know about me (unless you're my mom or my brother).

1. i am a sucker for condiments. 'where's the beef?' who cares?!?! just slather on the ketchup, honey mustard, chipotle mayo, sweet pickle relish, chopped onions, BBQ sauce, salsa, hot peppers, etc and i'm in condiment heaven…i don’t really even like the taste of meat if there are no condiments involved. cadence seems to be following in my footsteps in this regard. she will repeatedly dunk the same french fry in ketchup and lick it clean over and over again.

2. i have never been to europe. or africa. or south america. or australia. or antarctica. i bring this up now because my friend bokumbop and her family have already been to paris this fall and now they’re getting ready for a trip to peru for the holidays! i feel so provincial in comparison. truth be told, i am no cosmopolite. the only other countries i’ve spent any significant time in are canada and my motherland. my friends matt and laurel have been teaching english in spain for the past year, and reading laurel’s blog often makes me want to sell all my possessions and move my family to a quaint village in europe where they have things like siestas and olive groves and whitewashed walls with bright blue doors. i am neither an anglophile nor a francophile nor a spanglophile (?), but europe holds a special charm for me for some reason. even the word itself, EUROPE--the fact that 4 out of its 6 letters are vowels is something i find utterly irresistible. i will admit that i have a special interest in belgium. how such a small country could produce so much good beer and chocolate is beyond me. i’ve never had belgian cuisine, but i guess if you just add the right (e.g. copious) amount of chocolate to anything and wash it down with any one of the fine ales available in that country (esp. one brewed lovingly by monks), you really can’t go wrong. someday, our little family will make its way to belgium, i just know it...

3. when i was in high school, i was on the boys’ swim team. i have the photo in the yearbook to prove it, although i won’t post it here (all the guys were in these skimpy speedos. i think josh would kill me if i posted that photo). the funny thing is, i barely even knew how to swim back then (i’m not much better now, either). i got roped in because so many of my friends were on the team that i was at every single swim meet. the coach finally told me to make myself useful, so i became the scorekeeper. i can still recall the smell of the chlorine, the humidity, the adrenaline flowing as we cheered for our guys. to this day, i get a thrill out of watching the olympic swimming events on TV. and no, it’s not because of the skimpy speedos. yuck!

4. the month before my family moved to the U.S. from korea back in 1978, i was 5 years old and apparently too much of a distraction to have around while my mother packed for the Big Move. so i got to spend my last few weeks of life in the motherland in Wonju, a town located in the heart of the korean peninsula, where my grandfather ran a kindergarten. although my memories of those weeks have faded into a sepia tone, i can still recall the simple joy of playing in the countryside. i had a lot of freedom for a five year old and often wandered about on my own. i was SUPPOSED to be attending classes with the other kindergarteners, but since my grandpa was in charge, i basically came and went as i pleased like the wind, and the teachers never said anything. i still remember having the playground all to myself while the other kids were inside at class. and every afternoon, there would be the delicious aroma of freshly baked donuts wafting from the school kitchen. good times...

5. about 6 years ago, i spent a week canoeing with 3 other people in the canadian boundary waters just north of the minnesota border in quetico provincial park. my good friend john berton was our very able guide. i’d been such a city girl for almost all my life that i had no idea what it was like to be out in the middle of nowhere with no electricity, no running water or plumbing, no stove, no warm bed, nobody else for miles and miles. being the only girl on the trip, i was expecting john to be a little easy on me. boy, was i wrong. some of those portages were long and steep and rough, and i still had to carry my share of the load. he also made sure that at some point on the trip, i carried my own canoe, gathered and arranged wood for the campfire, pitched the tents, and did whatever else needed to be done. that week changed my life. it was my introduction to caring for the environment. i can’t begin the describe how absolutely beautiful it was up there. the mist on the lakes in the morning as the sky starts turning pink…the echo of the lonely loon calling out to its friends as it runs across the lake and flies away…the perfectly calm waters mirroring the nearby island and sky…the warmth of the sun as you bake sleepily like a lizard on a rock…holding your breath as you catch a glimpse of a bald eagle and its chicks in a nest…gliding silently across the waters in a canoe as a gentle rain envelopes you…and at night, the blanket of stars so bright and numerous like you’ve never seen them before…*sigh*…that was probably one of the best weeks of my life…

and now, it's my turn to tag bokumbop, lakeline and ESY.

i could use a bicycle right about now...

...cuz i'd probably make better time than in a car out on the roads right now...yes, the snow has been falling non-stop here in the northern suburbs. wait, what am i doing at work in the northern suburbs when i live 30 miles away in rogers park in chicago, and the winter storm warnings have been broadcast nonstop for the past 24 hours all over the midwest? i'm an idiot, what can i say?

you see, i haven't been in the office since last tuesday due to the thanksgiving holiday, vacation days, being sick and what not, and i actually have things that i need to get done that required coming into the office. i was also wide awake at 2:30 am with no sleep in sight, so i got up at 5, showered, ate a bowl of cereal, futzed around, listened to NPR, bundled up real good with my pants shoved inside my granny snowboots, and trekked out to the train station. it was a blistery half mile walk, but totally doable. the train was on schedule for the most part, and we were only a few minutes late pulling into the Lake Forest station. the shuttle bus was waiting for us, and it was crowded today as more people than normal chickened out of driving. this was one of the few times i didn't get a seat on the bus and it also happened to be the longest shuttlebus ride of my life. one of the roads on our route had turned into a parking lot of wiped out cars to the left, the right, and the middle of the road. it took us 40 minutes just to travel 2 miles of that road. apparently, lake county prefers to plow its roads only AFTER all the cars are off the roads, which means, NEVER, thereby leaving dozens of cars stranded and hopelessly stuck and in the way of our rather large shuttlebus.

we did finally make it to the office an hour later than usual, but we got off easy; the people on the later train were late by 3 hours because the shuttlebus itself got stuck in the snow.

so that same road has been a mess all day, and although my first thought was to do what i needed to do in the office and then catch a cab back to the train station as quickly as possibly, it occurred to me that such a cab ride might cost me a fortune if the length of the shuttlebus ride was any indication.

so here i am. snowbound. at work. and i really could have gotten by with staying home until monday because everybody in our department except our VP and the guy who lives down the street stayed home today.

happy friday!

still sick...

...my cough-induced migraine did not let up until about midday today, and i still feel a bit of a bruise in my right temple every time i cough. i didn't go into the office again, although i did do some work this afternoon when i felt better. i'm glad i stayed home, though, because i've been coughing up a bunch of greenish yellowish mucousy stuff all day, and it would have been pretty gross to be doing that in the office. cadence thinks it's hilarious everytime i have a coughing-spitting-up-phlegm fit, but i have a feeling my coworkers wouldn't be as amused.

...i think cadence has really liked having both her P's around for over a week now. i'm not sure how she'll react when i go into work tomorrow. at least it'll be friday, and she'll have me for the weekend again. next week will probably be harder on her. it's hard on me, too. if it weren't for things like the mortgage or utility bills, i'd love to stay home w/ cadence full-time.

i seriously need to start playing the lottery.

two words for you...

...cold. migraine. been sick pretty much the whole holiday weekend and beyond. our whole family's been sick, actually. i'm afraid we may have passed on our germs to uncle charles and auntie ali who were visiting with us. i seem to be suffering from a meaner, nastier strain of the cold virus than ted or cadence as i have nearly hacked out a lung and given myself a migraine from all the coughing, while the other two have mainly runny noses. my head feels like it wants to explode. i'm actually blogging with my sunglasses on because i can't stand to look at a computer screen. so this is going to be a short one.

...although being sick put a damper on the weekend, it was still lots of fun having charles and ali with us. it's always sad to see them go because we know it'll probably be another year before we see them again. next time they see cadence, she'll be talking in paragraphs.

...cadence loved all the family time she got to spend during all the festivities. despite being sick, she was playful and happy most of the time, although her sleep got severely disrupted for a couple days when there was just too much excitement for a proper nap.

okay, i'm getting really nauseous, so i should probably stop now...

funny in a sad way...or is it sad in a funny way?

Conservative Christians Boycott Wal-Mart.

ok, at reading just the headline, my initial thought was, 'finally! conservative christians doing something sensible!' and then i read WHY they were boycotting wal-mart: the radical homosexual agenda.

i cannot tell you how much that makes me laugh every time i hear a christian use that phrase. it makes me laugh so hard until i cry and then evenually i just weep inside.

i cannot post on this subject coherently at this time as i would like to maintain some semblance of sanity for all the family events coming up this weekend. i have never 'come out', so to speak on my personal blog about my thoughts on this, (although i have been posting aplenty elsewhere) primarily because i don't want to upset or worry some people i care about. but i think it's time. i've got to come clean. more on that later...

for now, i officially start my thanksgiving extended weekend. no more work until tuesday at noon! cadence's uncle charles and auntie ali are coming in from seattle, and i plan on enjoying myself.