I got Bertrand an Atari Classics 10-in-1 games joystick as one of his Christmas presents. I bought it as a little joke to the 80s and the days of the old 8-bit video games. This thing is so cool. All it is is a joystick that has all of the games inside and you just plug the joystick into the T.V. and play. We had some friends over last night and that little joystick provided us with hours of entertainment. We had little challenges on who could get the highest score on Centipede, Breakout, Asteroids, Pong... It was a little trip down memory lane.

A conversation with a 4 year old about his 2 year old brother

Jordan: Kirby can't talk, not until he's 3.
Me: Oh really?
Jordan: Yeah, right now he's just deaf.

My back is aching, my shins and thighs are tight, and my stomach muscles cry for help everytime I laugh or cough. I went snowboarding for the first time this season yesterday. It was a little awkward for me at first. I started out on the bunny slope and ended up riding on my edge the whole way down because I was afraid of actually going one foot in front of the other. It was almost like re-learning how to board all over again. Luckily, I got over it and got the hang of it all over again. There was a storm the night before and freshly fallen snow the morning that I got to Tahoe. The powder was great while I was moving, but when I stopped to look behind me, I fell into the powder and couldn't get up. I struggled for about 20 minutes, constantly trying to push myself up but ended up just falling deeper and deeper into the snow. I ended up unstrapping myself and walking out of the hole that I had dug for myself. Hopefully, I'll go a lot more this season and I'll also start working out regularly so that I won't be so sore in the future.

Aside from the boarding, I've been playing around with my new gadgets that I received for Christmas and watching the various DVDs that my brother got. I especially like the camera feature on my Zire 71. I also got to talk to a few of my closest friends over the phone and catch up. Hope you are enjoying the holidays.

Merry Christmas!

It's been a long..3 days. My family and I went on a trip to Southern California for the weekend. Within the past 72 hours, I have..driven to LA and back, went to the UCLA vs. Michigan State game, cheered so hard and loud that I lost my voice, shopped in Westwood, gone to a family reunion and Christmas party, got a mini rice cooker and steamer in the white elephant gift exchange, spent some quality time with family, visited with family friends who recently moved, taught a 2 year old how to pedal on his tricycle rather than just wave his legs around, went to the Getty Museum of Art and saw some gorgeous pieces along with an exhibit on Houdon, visited the other side of my family in Anaheim, learned and played my first 'real' game of Chess, ate some yummy Thai food, took a bazillion pictures, and finally came home in time to finish wrapping all of my last minute gifts last night.

And now, time to relax.

Happy Birthday Bertrand!

I went to a Christmas party with a bunch of my close friends on Wednesday night and one of my friends told us about a great deal for flights to New York from San Francisco. He proposed that we all take a trip together in February over President's Day weekend. We all thought it was a great idea...but ideas like that never really seem to go through. He emailed the rest of us the next morning and showed us that he had already booked a flight and told the rest of us that if we wanted to go too, we'd have to book by that afternoon. I don't know how we did it, but we managed to get almost 16 people booked on one flight to New York in February.

I've never been to New York and have been dying to go for years. I am soooo excited!!!

Things are starting to wind down now, or maybe they are just starting to get busy. I've been preparing for the holidays for awhile and finally finished all that I needed to do before the time came. I am going to see my extended family for a few days and spend some 'quality' time with them. This year was going to be a 'big' year since Bertrand was going to come with me this time to meet all of my aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. This means a lot in many different aspects. My family has known about Bertrand and I for awhile, but I think that the act of me bringing him home to our large family gathering also means a lot. Luckily, Bertrand is great in these types of situations and is actually very excited.

When we had first met, my cousin and I were talking in a group about our last family gathering and Bertrand was sitting there. We had talked about how much fun our family has playing the white elephant gift exchange, Taboo, Killer, and Tic-Tac-Boom. We were both laughing so hard reminiscing about how even our youngest cousins and our grandfathers were playing. Bertrand said when he first met us then and heard the stories about our family, he was thinking about how much he would like to be a part of a family like that. It's so neat to think back to that time and how this year that thought would actually come true.

Unfortunately, with this big flu epidemic going around here, Bertrand became a victim of it and has come down with a bad case of the flu. He's been lying in bed for the past couple of days and will probably not be able to go with us tomorrow morning. I can't really say that I'm not dissapointed, since I know that there will be plenty of other opportunities later, but it's still a little sad. Especially since tomorrow is my honey's birthday and I won't get to spend it with him. I wish I could stay behind, but I can't.

I was awakened at 8AM Sunday morning by a 180 pound male jumping up and down on my bed and having a Snoopy doll shoved in my face.

Yes, my brother is home for Christmas break...

WAHOO!!!

I am DONE with my Christmas shopping! Let the celebration begin...

I did it.

I stopped debating and finally bought a new digital camera this morning. I've been holding out hoping that my camera would miraculously fix itself after being dropped on cement a few months ago. It was quite painful for me to not only not have a camera, but to know that I ruined a great gift by not being a little more careful. But the new one should be on it's way in a few days, just in time for Christmas. I bought the same exact model and am going to pretend that I never even broke the first one and that this new one is the original.

I went to Google's Christmas party this past friday night. It was extravagant to say the least. We walked into the walkway to be greeted by a lady dressed in lights and men playing with fire. There were several large rooms with plenty of people, music, dancing, and food with a different theme in each room. There were also smaller rooms with different themes. Bertrand and I got away from the crowds for awhile and played a few rounds of pool and he taught me how to play pinball. We ended the night acting like little kids and jumping around on this big jumpy thing with a tons of other people. Something about a bunch of adults in dresses and suits jumping around like crazy totally cracks me up. It was great to see all of my coworkers and their guests looking all beautiful and handsome in their dresses and suits.

What a small world we live in. A couple of months ago, I was showing Bertrand my pictures from the Blogger offsite. All of a sudden he goes, 'Hey! I know that guy! It's Rudy!' and points at one of my coworkers. He asked me his name and sure enough, it seemed like it was the same guy. I emailed the guy the next day to ask him if he had ever worked for a small start up a couple of years ago and knew a guy named Bertrand and whaddya, they used to work together. They were both pretty excited to hear from each other after losing contact when the company started to go downhill. Today, Bertrand came to pick me up from work to go to see TSO in concert and came up to check out the new place. I was showing him around the kitchen when all of a sudden he goes, 'Rudy!'. There was Rudy in one of the meeting rooms sitting in on a meeting. Rudy doesn't work in my building but happened to be there at that time for a meeting, which happened to be the same time that Bertrand ever visited me at work, and we happened to walk right by the room he was in. There are millions of people working in the tech industry and thousands of companies to work for. What are the chances of Bertrand and Rudy, who worked together at a 30 person start-up a couple of years ago to meet again because I happened to show my boyfriend pictures from my offsite? Apparently, the chances are pretty good. =)

I just got back from a really great concert. We went to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra perform at the Flint Center in Cupertino. This group plays classical music mixed with electric guitars, keyboards and orchestral instruments. I have been in the Christmas spirit since July, but after tonight, I'm even more so after hearing some of my favorite christmas songs rocked up. Sometimes artists don't sound as great in concert as they do on CD, but this group sounded even better. My ears are still ringing and I feel like I'm underwater from the blasting electric guitars but it was worth it. How could I not love cute tuxedo wearing guys rocking away on their electric guitars?

I feel like so many things have happened in the past few days and that's probably because a lot has. Thanksgiving was great as usual. My brother came home and I fought the airport traffic just to pick him up and a bunch of other family members came home also for a night of blessings, teasing, and of course eating. Of course, with my luck, I woke up Thursday morning feeling like a truck had run me over. I had gotten my flu shot a couple of weeks ago, but somehow still managed to get the flu pretty bad..and on a holiday too! I ended up lying on the couch going in and out of consciousness the entire day until the family started to arrive. But, even being deadly sick didn't stop me from waking up at 6am the following morning to do my Christmas shopping.

All I have to say is...people are CRAZY. I was able to avoid the Walmart mania that was going on and headed to Target instead. The mayhem going on there was crazy enough. They had a worker in every single aisle standing there to help people and guide the masses around each other. Shopping carts full of items were set along the center of the aisles with huge sale signs on them. Somehow, I made it to the toy section, or was rather pushed in that direction and found some adorable remote control cars for $5. There were plenty of them in the racks and a shopping cart full of them in the aisle. I spent my wee little time picking out various colors and then continued throughout the rest of the store. After going on to another store, I realized that my remote control cars were a great deal and that I had forgotten to buy gifts for a few other kids and headed back to the store to buy more. By this time, the mayhem had picked up even more and every single car was GONE. The entire rack full and the shopping cart full. My brother called me later on to tell me that he had gone to Best Buy and was able to grab a $20 DVD player but was standing in a line that winded around the entire store and out the door. I saw later on the news that some poor lady had gotten trampled at a Walmart over a $30 DVD player. If that had been me, I would have pulled some people down with me too. I managed to get 99.9% of my Christmas shopping done that day by 10AM and went home to collapse. In all honesty, I enjoy the hustle and bustle of it all. It's a day to be focused and get everything done so that the rest of the month, I can relax and just enjoy watching everyone else.

We moved into our new building today. It was pretty exciting walking around and trying to get acquainted with our new surroundings. There was a bit of confusion that goes along with moving and rearranging. I must admit that getting settled was eerily similar to Office Space, "Umm...yeah...we're gonna need you to move" I also tried out the Japanese toilets that we have in the bathrooms. That was an...um...interesting experience.

I went to a Spa for a morning of pampering today. I've never done this sort of thing before and my wonderful boyfriend gave me a gift certificate to the local spa to have my first experience. I made the appointments for an hour of a pampering facial and then an hour for a swedish massage. Everything was so nice and relaxing, it truly made me forget about where I was and all of the things that were going on around me. I walked in and felt a little out of place at first. All of the other ladies there seemed to be 'experienced' with this sort of thing and knew exactly what they were supposed to do and where to go. I changed into my robe and then went out to the lounge and sat in a big comfy chair pretending to be relaxed while I listened to the two other women in the room discuss Michael Jackson and his ordeal. We all sipped our juices and ate our fruit until called individually to our rooms. The facial was very relaxing and different. It felt great until the lady started to poke, pinch, and scrape at my nose and my forehead to clean out my pores. I tried so hard not to flinch everytime she scraped something from my nose. There must have been a lot of junk in my pores because she worked on that section for a while. I have some little red marks all along my my nose, forehead, and chin now. After that I went in for my massage which was more than relaxing. The hour breezed by and I wished that it could have gone on another hour. Overall, it was a totally new experience for me and very enjoyable. Thank you honey.

I'm cold.

All you out-of-staters and in some cases out-of-country'ers are probably thinking, "Californian...you don't even know what a REAL winter is like." And you know what I have to say to that?

I don't care! I'm cold.

I'm wearing a turtleneck and a big courduroy peacoat, yet I'm still cold. I'm still very happy though despite my chills. Cold here means snow in Tahoe and snow in Tahoe means snowboarding for me. I just went to the dealership and picked up my snowboard rack for my car yesterday. The guy across the counter handed me a gigantic box with the rack in it. It was a long rectangular box. I tried to pick it up and also hold the other things that I had in my hand. When I got to the narrow door, I couldn't push the door open and also walk through with the box. I ended up trying to push the door open with the box and run out, but ended up dropping my wallet and cell phone all over. Then I had to bend down to pick up my wallet and ended up losing grip of the box. In the meantime, the service guys sat at the counter and watched me struggle. Thanks guys. By the time I got outside the door and collected all of my items, one guy runs out and says, "Do you need help?" Gee...ya think? By that time, I was already at my car though and putting the rack into the back.

We're packin' up to move to another office and I can't help but feel like it's my freshman year of college again. A new environment with new people. How fun.

I found out on Friday that one of my friends growing up was killed in a car accident the night before. Initially, I was just in shock and wasn't really sure how to react or what to do. I called my brother to tell him and the silence over the phone that followed made the news a little more real. He was so quiet and said, "she's my age..." My friend had IM'd me while at work to tell me the news.

While I was calling my family and our mutual friends, I kept thinking, "I hope I'm not spreading a rumor...maybe it's a different girl" However, these thoughts disappeared when I heard news about her mother and the devastation she is going through along with reading another news article with her picture and name.

Although she was younger than the rest of us in our little 'group', she and my brother had no problem making their presence known among the group of 'older' kids. The rest of us were 9 and 10, while the two of them were 7. The older kids made up their own 'secret language' and wrote it down on a 3x5 index card and hid it in our bag. While we were playing on the playground, she and my brother devised a scheme to steal one of our cards and try to figure out what we were talking about. I haven't seen her in nearly a decade, yet the memory of her still sticks strong.

I know that she is in a better place and know now more than ever, how precious life is.

I've been playing around with one of my Noogler gifts, a Rubiks cube. Initially I tried to keep it perfect so that it looked like I was somewhat smart and solved it, but then I figured...what's the point. So I messed it up all nice and good and now it's just stuck in that phase. This thing is going to take years for me to solve. Maybe I should get one of these.

My site host is terrible.

My site has been going down every so often. Apparently they are doing some 'server upgrades' or whatever, but did not notify their users of these problems. Not until I realized that my site was rarely working. My webmail got moved and was not notified of where they moved to. I checked their help pages several times (being a fellow support person) in order to try to find a resolution before contacting them. No luck. I went onto their site again today and saw some 'FYI's' and updates on help. The site indicated that the paths had changed to a specific path that they indicated on the site. I entered this in and still no luck. I ended up just doing my own trouble shooting and correcting the problem myself.

I hope my one year contract is over and soon to be over. Eekman is pushing for me to switch to DreamHost. As soon as these people respond to me, I'm going to find out how much longer I have on this contract so that I can move.

I think that this is my favorite time of the year. I really love this time of the year. For so many reasons. It starts to get cold...and the snow starts falling in Tahoe which means more snowboarding for Kimmy. Yeehaww. It's the big time shopping season. If you haven't already figured it out by now, I love to shop. I love walking around the stores and window shopping along with watch all of the people go by. That is probably why I love this holiday season's shopping more than any other shopping day, because this is the time when all of the people come out. The streets and towns are beautifully decorated with lights and other festive decorations, while families, couples, and friends stroll around. I like to watch people interact with each other and imagine the story behind the people that I watch. This is also the time when I get to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas and spend time with all of the people I love. There is a special vibe in the air from the excitement of all of these events that are coming soon and starting now. I'm getting so giddy from excitement.

I went to run some errands this weekend and also started a little bit of my holiday shopping. It was raining pretty hard this weekend, and I guess all of the people rushed into the malls and stores as a result. I loved it. If I could just sit on a bench and watch the people go by all day, I would. Maybe I will one of these days.

Today was also my first day as a permanent Googler. Several months ago while I was sitting up late at night in the computer lab's, never would I have imagined that I'd be working at one of the 'funnest' companies only a few months later. I guess it just goes to show that hard work and prayer really do pay off.

Wahoo! Yippee! Yay! So the day has finally come, and I was offered a permanent position today at Google. After three months, I start as a permanent employee this Monday and will go through orientations.

Congrats to Graham my contracting, now permanent, buddy too.

I got to go see the opening of The Matrix Revolution today along with all of the other Google employees and it was awesome. I'm not much of a 'sci-fyey' kind of gal. I've never seen what the big thrill was with Star Wars or any of those other 'types' of movies. It actually took me a good 5 times of seeing the first Matrix until I could watch it all the way through. I fell asleep halfway through the first four attempts. It took much encouragement from Bertrand for me to get through the first Matrix in order to be prepared to watch the second with him the next day. But...I'd be lying if I said I wasn't enjoying the movies once I started watching them. This last one had a few 'hold my breath' scenes but the end kind of left me hanging. So many questions are still left unanswered. I didn't really feel like it was 'the end' and that there was more to come. Despite the minor confusion, I enjoyed the movie and had a good time. It's always fun to see a movie on opening day.

Buffalo Wings just for you Aldy

Come home soon!

I haven't dressed up for Halloween since my senior year of high school when I worked at Cost Plus imports and dressed up as a cat to entertain the little kiddies. Last night while working, Tine and I started talking about costumes and talking about how we should dress up. We originally wanted to be an old man and an old woman, but I didn't have any old woman clothes and Tine didn't have any old man clothes. It was also getting late and we wouldn't have had enough time to run around the thrift stores searching for the right clothes. Then I got the idea that I could be Little Bo Peep and she could be my sheep. Unfortunately, she wasn't too enthused about the idea of walking around with cotton all over her. Then...that was when the perfect idea came to use through a quick search on Google. A pair of dice! We started calling around and then made a run to Mail Boxes Etc. to buy some boxes. We got some huge white boxes (I wanted even bigger boxes, but I wouldn't have been able to walk), came back to the office and started tracing out the dots and coloring them in with our fatty black markers. This morning we cut out the holes for our heads and arms. I measured the head hole perfectly and even did a little test, but then when all the taping and cutting was done, the box wouldn't go over my head. I forgot that I had ears... After some special angling and wiggling, I got my head in. Our costumes were a huge last minute success. Why didn't we think of dressing up earlier? I don't know. I just hope nobody decides to roll us.

Happy Halloween

24: I am sooo stoked for this!

The English language amuses me. Pretty much, if you use a word enough, and enough people use it, it becomes an official word. I started thinking about this the other day when I realized that I'd never heard of the word, 'hoodie' before I came to Google. I have always known hoodies as hooded sweatshirts. I just assumed that it was a word that someone around here had made up. So out of curiousity, I looked it up and other people in the world use the word 'hoodie' too. Seems like some people can do that. Like when somebody says, "Hey I Googled it" or "That great! I can't wait to go and blog that". When I have a cold, I use a Kleenex, to blow my nose and not a tissue. After a shower, I clean my ears with Qtips and not a...what are they called...cotton swab?

Maybe one day, you'll be able to Kimbalina something or maybe Kimbalina can be a feeling. Wow...I feel really Kimbalina today.

I went to LA this weekend to see the UCLA vs. CAL game. It was my first "real" sports event that I have ever been to. The sun was scorching and was in the mid to high 90s. There was absolutely no shade in the bleachers of the Rose Bowl and we were all sweating like crazy. I nearly fainted a couple of times from heat stroke and missed a part of the game while trying to recover, but the rest of the game was very exciting. It's even more exciting to be in the middle of the screaming crowd and to watch the rivalry between my brother who goes to UCLA and my boyfriend, a CAL alumni. CAL came and tied the game in the very last 18 seconds of the game making the game go into overtime. UCLA ended up winning but CAL gave them a good run for their money. I think that I'm starting to actually understand the game of football now.

Happy October 16th

I don't have any shoes.

Well...I have plenty of sandals, sneakers, and more than enough flip-flops, but I don't have any closed toed shoes. Now that it's starting to get cold, so are my feet. Last year, three pairs of my boots died at the same time. THREE. One day while trudging through the pouring rain on campus and heading to the bus, the heal broke off my favorite pair of brown boots. Limping and whimpering from my loss, I trudged home not sure whether the water flowing from my face was from the rain or from my tears. Not even a week later, the zipper on my pair of tall black boots broke and split open leading to another bout of limping around until I got home. Losing those two pairs was sad, but I still had one more pair of black shoes to get me through the rest of winter. I wore that pair nearly every day after that until the day I noticed something white on the toe of my foot. I bent down and quickly brushed at it and continued walking. Later on I noticed that that white thing was still there. I bent down once more and rubbed even harder...until I realized that I was rubbing my very own toe and looking at my sock!!! Unfortunately, the department stores did not notice that it was still raining outside and had already brought in their spring fashion clothes and my boots were no longer in stock. I wore my trusty Reefs from there on out waiting patiently for the next winter season to arrive....and it is here!

I'm going shoe shopping.

Site Referrals

It's interesting to me how search engines work or how people stumble upon other sites. Like how I found Steve's site through the 'Fresh Blogs' list on Blogger or how I found Tony through a bunch of other blog's links. I was looking through my site referrals list and noticed that I have been found through the most random searches. Here are a few examples:

• fake toenail
  
• effects vicadin
  
• rascal flatts lyrics
  
• joe schmo cast pictures
  
• naked pics shutterfly
  
• bubb rubb whistles
  
• wear sandles everyday
  
• buying pantyhose
  

I got a few hits with the 'fake toenail' search along with 'wear sandles everyday'. Are there that many toenail-less people out there who wear sandles everyday?

I got my diploma in the mail last night. It had Gray Davis' signature on it. Just imagine, the next graduating class will have Arnold's.

This morning on my way to work, while sitting in traffic I noticed a motorcycle zoom by the left side of my car. The guy on the motorcycle zoomed into the left lane and cut off a Toyota Camry. I held my breath when I saw how close this guy came to running into the Camry and even more so when this guy turns his body completely around only to flip off the driver of the Camry. This guy is an idiot. First of all, he was the one who cut the other person off, secondly, he was so into giving the other guy the finger that he didn't pay attention to the road ahead of him. He turned around just in time to gather himself and balance his bike in time to avoid slamming into the car in front of him. What a Schmo.

Speaking of Schmos, the other night while flipping through the channels, I stopped at the SPIKE channel, AKA: The first network for men. Hey, if there is a network for men, I want to see what shows are on it. I had flipped right in time for The Joe Schmo Show, The Reality T.V. show where nothing is real. The entire cast of the show are hired actors aside from one guy, Joe Schmo, who doesn't realize that nothing is real. There was so much drama and funny stunts, that were all an act and that everyone knew about except this one guy. Right before commercial breaks they would say, 'When will Joe Schmo realize that it's not real." It was the sadest and funniest thing I have ever seen.

On my drive home yesterday, I could barely see from the tears that were streaming down my face or from the gagging and coughing that I was doing. Before leaving the office yesterday, I grabbed a bag of chips for the long drive home. Luckily...I decided to grab a Snapple at the last minute too, just in case I got thirsty. So about half an hour into my drive, I started to get really really hungry, so I opened up the bag of chips. When I had grabbed these chips called, 'Death Rain', I went for the black bag that was labeled 'XXX HOT HABANERO'. XXX Habanero Shmabanero...I am a big fan of spicy food. Really...nothing is every spicy enough. I had had this brand of chips before and they had a little kick in them, but nothing that I couldn't handle. My stomach started growling like crazy, and I started munching on the chips. At first my nose started to itch, and then my throat started closing up. Next thing you know, I'm crying and saying "Ahhhhh" out loud to myself. But hey, I was really really hungry, so I continued to eat. I cried as I ate, and every time that I opened my mouth and took a breath, I would cough again from the remaining chili powder caught in my throat. Even though I was suffering and gasping for air, I was somewhat happy. I have finally found something spicy enough to bowl me over.

But I hear that I am not the only one who ate spicy food yesterday...his was probably worse.

Woah....this is trippy. I'm getting a headache from looking at it!

After taking a look at Tony's, Eric's and Jason's neat little picture features from Buzznet, I knew I had to get one too. You may have noticed the four most recent pictures that I have added on the right. Hopefully I will get my camera headset soon or my camera fixed.

I'm sad. Yesterday, I was dumb and dropped my camera and now it's all funky and messed up. The camera no longer adjusts itself to the lighting and it seems like part of the shutter is constantly stuck. My poor little baby. I'm used to carrying it around with me in my pocket or my purse everywhere I go, and now I feel naked without it. I might just have to bring it into the camera doctor this weekend to get it all fixed up and better.

Can somebody please explain to me how I lose so much hair everyday and am not yet bald? I don't understand it. There is no possible way that my hair is growing at the rate that I am losing it. I know that it's pretty normal for girls with long hair to lose a lot of hair throughout the day, but lately, I have been losing literally handfulls of hair a day. I'm worried. I'm pretty used to contantly pulling hair off my clothes and picking up a considerable amount when I brush my hair, but at the rate I'm going at now, I'm going to be bald in a month. Maybe it's time to get a haircut.

I went to a sports tournament this Saturday to see some old friends, cheer my brains out, and of course, watch my man kick some butt. One of Bertrand's greatest loves is to play volleyball. Before I had even met Bertrand, I knew about his reputation with volleyball. If his name was mentioned, something regarding volleyball usually followed. When we became friends, I would hear about him going to tournaments to play here and there with his friends. Being from a volleyball family myself (my brother played) and having been to many volleyball games and tournaments, it was nice to hear how much he loved the game. Yet, for some odd reason I had never actually seen him play. There were a couple of times where I would take out a volleyball and ask him to teach me, but after all the screams and ouches on my part, we usually stopped after a couple of minutes. I had seen him pepper with my brother before, but never seen him actually play competitively. I saw him play this weekend, and my heart was overwhelmed with pride. I saw all his dives and spikes and jump serves at the opposing team. At one point, a couple of guys in the crowd started yelling at the other team, "Don't hit it to him!" After nearly a year of being together and the couple of years that we have been friends, I finally got to see what all the fuss was about.

I got to dance with Goofy. He was a great dancer, a little clumsy and stepped on my feet a couple of times, but otherwise it was wonderful.

So...the cruise was fun. I ate waaayy too much good food and spent a lot of time in the sun. I ate as soon as I woke up, did a couple of things, ate a couple of hours later, and then ate again a few hours after that. I almost died when they had a dessert buffet with all of my favorite food groups, chocolate, cheesecake, and...chocolate. Even though it was a Disney cruise, they had plenty of activities for adults and non-kiddie people. There was plenty to do with lots of shows, activities, and movies. We ported at St. Maarten, St. Thomas, and Castaway Cay. St. Maarten was half French and half Dutch. It was interesting to see the different types of people and the culture that they have there. St. Thomas was gorgeous and had some grrrreat shopping! The beaches were clean and the water was warm and clear. Ahh...I miss it already.

While waiting in the airport last week, I started to wander around and ended up at a bookstore. In one of the new arrivals racks was a book that was titled, 'Why Girls Are Weird'. Thinking that it was a weird title that was probably some handbook for guys or something, I picked it up and started to read the back cover. That's when I realized that it was a novel about blogging. haha. A fiction book centered around the idea of blogging and how a girl created a blog. She started to write about things that weren't true and people started to fall in love with that fake person. Somehow her real life and her blog life got intertwined and she had to try to keep all of her lies straight and make some big decisions.

I've seen a few books on how to blog or about what blogging is in general, but this is the first fiction novel I have seen centered around blogging. Interesting.

I was telling my coworkers about the book today during lunch and thought that it would be interesting if the author had a blog with Blogger because the title of the book sounded pretty familiar. I did a Google search for Pamela Ribon, the author and found her blog which is hosted with us.

Neat.

Home sweet home. No matter how fun it is to travel and to see different parts of the world, it is always nice to come home. I just got back from a long awaited weeklong trip to Florida and the Caribbeans with my family. We had planned on taking this trip a couple of years ago, but we encountered some obstacles and different things happened that caused us to push it back until this year. We took a Disney Cruise to the Caribbeans and Bahamas and managed to avoid the hurricanes the entire time. I didn't get sea sick at all or even air sick from the plane ride from California to Florida. I'm quite proud of myself...and the Dramamine. Although I didn't get sick on the plane rides, I did get to 'experience' some fun with the man who reaked of B.O. and sat next to me during the 6 hour flight. He also loved to lift up his armpits every few seconds just to torment me. I ended up pulling out a gigantic bag of chips and eating each one very slowly so that I could smell the Sour Cream n' Onion rather than the man. I think that I must have passed out from the smell sometime during the flight but then was awakened by the extremely LOUD laughing and singing from a large man who sat behind me and the newborn baby crying in the row ahead of me. That was on the flight to Florida. Today, on the flight home, I sat next to a man with a fairly large beer belly. He was a very nice man who was just a little cramped in the teeny space that they gave us. After the plane took off, he fell asleep and snored a little bit, but I didn't mind since he seemed to be a very nice man. However...I did get uncomfortable when he started to scratch the bottom of his belly in his sleep and continued to do so for most of the flight. There was nothing bad about it...but I felt like I was seeing something that I shouldn't have and was really uncomfortable.

Anyways, I'm home now and a little tired. I'll tell you about my trip when I have more energy.

I am going to be away for the next week and during the time that I will be away is my blog's 1st Birthday! I started a blog out of curiousity and it turned into something that I absolutely love having. So much that I even work for Blogger now! Throughout this past year, this blog has moved from my simple school site to my very own domain. I've met so many people and made many new friends through it. What a great year!

Happy Birthday dear blog, I am sorry that I won't be here to celebrate but I will make it up to you. I promise. =)

During my four years in college, I was lucky enough to find a great group of friends who I not only spent my time with but also lived with. We all met our freshman year in the dorms and lived on the third floor across the hall from each other. Once the first year was over and we had gained our freshman 15, it was time to move out of the dorms and into our very own apartment. There were five of us and it was great. Not only did I get to have great roommates, but I also got to live with my best friends. Late at night we after we all went to bed, there was always one of us who woke up in the middle of the night who went to the other rooms to gather the others for a 'bonding night'. At about 3 or 4 in the morning, we would all gather in one room spread out on the beds, trundles, and chairs and just lie there and talk about life until the wee hours of the morning. Many marveled at how all five of us were so alike and got along so well. We had the same interests and dealt with situations in a similar way. It was almost too good to be true.

One of the girls moved out of the apartment our Junior year for various reasons and we were left with the task of finding another roommate. The girl who moved out suggested one of her friends who also happened to be looking for a place. (We all swear that she was scheming to screw us over, although she probably didn't know at the time) . Since none of us really knew her, but badly needed another roommate, we asked her to come live with us. And that...was when all hell broke loose.

This girl was so different from us in every way. Imagine a drama queen....and multiply that by 1000. In the beginning of her lease with us, she didn't really live there because she lived with her boyfriend. Until the day that his parents (devoted Muslims) caught the two in his apartment and literally chased her out of the apartment screaming. That was when she started to actually live with us 8 months after her lease started. A week later she came home with a swollen face and a black eye after taunting some random person and getting socked in the face. She had no respect for others around her nor did she ever learn simple courtesy. She left her open unused pads on the counter in the bathroom, rarely ever took a shower, or did her laundry. It was disgusting. One day, we took out all of her stinky laundry and put at the front door along with laundry detergent. Even though none of liked her, we thought that we would be nice and invite her on our road trip to Reno. Before we had even gotten out of Davis, she had made a scene at the gas station while we were pumping gas for our trip. She jumped out of the car and screamed, cried, cussed at us until her entire face was red and our faces red from embarrassment. After many many many similar episodes of drama had happened, every single one of my roommates had gotten into a fight with her and stopped talking to her....except me.

It was bound to happen. I had not gotten into a fight with her the 2 years that she lived with us, but at the end of the year, I had stopped going out of my way to talk to her and avoided her at all costs. I thought I was homefree when graduation came around. The night of my graduation, many of my friends and family had come to celebrate the event. After the ceremony, a few of us stopped by my apartment so that I could gather up my duffel bag for the weekend. On our way out of the apartment, I heard a *stomp* *stomp* *stomp* coming behind me on the stairs. The crazy roommate swung open the front door and chased me, my family, and my friends out the door, through the pool gate screaming at me for not inviting her to my graduation. Uh...I wonder why. As she followed after me screaming and hoping to get a rise out of me, I continued to walk my path and ignore her. This drove her even crazier. My family and friends stared at her in awe....could this really be happening? The saddest part of this whole story is that I am not exagerrating one bit...if anything I'm undermining the craziness.

Last week I received a voicemail from the crazy girl on my cellphone. She spent about 3 minutes telling me that I needed to call her back and blah blah blah. My phone died that very same day and I lost all of the phone numbers that I had stored in it....including hers. Darn.

I love three day weekends. But you know what I love more than three day weekends? A weeklong vacation. Oh yesssss....finally. I'm going on a little vacation with my family next week and can't wait!

For the past two weekends, I have gone up to San Francisco. The Bay Area really is a beautiful place. Last weekend Bertrand took me on a surprise dinner cruise on the bay for my birthday. It was so romantic. The sky was clear, the fog had not yet rolled in, and we were able to view the whole city in lights and the surrounding bridges. The boat went under the Golden Gate Bridge and then came back to go through the rest of the bay. I never realized how big the bridge really is.

This past weekend, Bertrand's college friends got married. The event took up the entire day and was a bit tiring although still very nice. I have never seen a wedding so meticulously planned. A timeline was sent out to those participating in the wedding marking nearly every 5 minutes and every detail possible. It was kind of funny. They also had not one, but two receptions in one day! Overall it was a very nice day, although at the end of the day, I was exhausted. I can't even imagine how tired the bride and groom must have been.

My phone has been dying on me slowly over the past month. It all started when something went loose on the inside of my phone, so that everytime I picked it up, it would rattle. After that, it would occasionally turn of on its own and I would have to power it back on. Yesterday, on the drive home from work, my phone died completely. There was no bringing it back to life, even with my usual little tweakings. When I got home, I took it apart and checked out the chips and pieces and then put it all back together. Still...nothing. If you've called me in the past two days, I haven't received your call or voicemail. Also...if I'm supposed to have your number, please let me know because along with the dead phone, I have lost about 250 phone book entries. =(

Since I've been doing the long commute to work lately, I had decided that I wanted to do something productive while I drove. I have been aching to read some books since I finished school and had more time to but just haven't gotten around to it. Until...I fell in love with audio books. These things are great! I get to 'read' through about an hour a half of a book everyday. For my birthday my brother had gotten me a couple of audio books, one of which was Don't Sweat the Small Stuff in Love. I kind of giggled when I got it. My brother said, "I thought this might be useful for you and may help Bertrand out a bit." Everyone kind of laughed and Bertrand said, "I love you Man!" =) I think that they must have had some secret plan going on and Bertrand told Vincent to buy that for me because it would have meant something else had he given it to me. And they think they're so sly....! In all seriousness, it was a good book and a great present. It had some interesting ideas and some funny stories. While I was driving I would laugh out loud at some of the stories that the author and his wife told. People are so amusing. As soon as I finished that book, I headed to the library and borrowed a couple more. I'm almost done with the book that I started on Monday called, Homecoming. After my drive home from work today, I sat on the driveway for nearly 20 minutes so that I could finish the chapter. It is getting to a really good part that I am almost tempted to go to my car and get the tape to listen to the rest of it tonight.

I am so happy right now. I have just had one of the most successful shopping experiences in less than half an hour. JCrew is having a sale! Not just any sale...a humongous, Kimmy is so happy, kind of sale. I heard about it thanks to Jorge, Tine's boyfriend. I didn't realize what a great sale it was until I was in the store and saw all of the prices. The same bathing suit that I had bought a few months ago was on clearance for 1/8 of the cost. It was a different color, so at least I don't feel completely ripped off from before. While I was in the middle of shopping, another one of my friends IM'd me about the sale knowing full well how happy it would make me, but I was already deep in the pages of shopping glory. I just checked out with 10 items in my cart and a big smile on my face. And I spent as much as I did on just a bathing suit and a shirt only a few months ago!

Ewww...poor Aldy. Come home!!!

A day at work...

This is a test post from my phone...Yay Blogger!

Kimbalina.com has been having some problems loading these past couple of days. It takes about 10 minutes and 5 refreshes for anything to even appear on the page. I contacted Drak.net support to see what the dealio was and received a fairly prompt response. I guess all of these darn viruses are killing the servers and making it super slow for anything on the net (or so they tell me). What was interesting was in the response email that I got, the support person included a conversation that she had over IM with a coworker. That was....um...interesting. I think she might have just been trying to prove to me that she tried to find out what was wrong. Anyhow, viruses are dumb. They ruin everything.

Today I am 22.

Wow, who would have thought that little girl in the picture would turn into me 20 years later. I'm no longer worried about getting older, it's inevitable. Besides, I'm still young. Time to party and celebrate!

You're only as old as you let your heart make you. - anonymous

I like this one too...

Age is something that doesn't matter. Unless you're a cheese. - anonymous

I want a moblog like Shellen.

I just finished watching The Sound of Music on dvd. I love that movie. I don't think that I could ever get tired of watching it. Sometimes I'll catch myself humming or singing a song from the movie. I had downloaded a couple of the songs in mp3s onto my computer awhile ago, and one day while I thought I was at home by myself, I had turned on the songs and started to sing my heart out. I got to the song that they sang during the puppet show that they performed for their dad. There is that one section where the goats are singing to each other and yodelling. I of course can't just sing the song, but had to sing it in the 'goat voice'. I was yodelling my lungs out in the little goat voice when I heard a little something and turned around. There was my roommate standing in my doorway smiling at me. I was so into my singing and yodelling that I hadn't heard her come through the front door and stand at my doorway. I'm still kind of embarrassed about it, and everytime I watch the movie again or sing that song, I turn a little red thinking about how I had been found out singing in my goat voice.

Exactly one more week left of my 21'dom. 21 was good....I would like to be 21 forever. Ahh...but it is time to move on. I must be getting old. Now that I've already finished school and am a little working woman, it's inevitable....I'm getting old. The only people who think that I am still young are young middle-aged professionals, married people, parents, and grandparents....to the rest of the world, I'm old. I remember when being old was a cool thing. I thought I was so cool in 8th grade, being the older ones in the middle school watching all of the 'kids' around me. And then I was even more cool, when I was a senior in high school. Now, I'm happy where I am even though I'm not so cool anymore. There are always the landmark ages to look forward to, but I've passed my big exciting one last year. I couldn't wait to be 16 to get my driver's liscense, 18 to be legal, 21 to be really legal. Now, I have 30 to look forward to. Woopee. All kidding aside, getting older isn't too bad. You experience more and get to appreciate life more. I still have a lot to look forward to.

I had written a really long post and was about to Post and Publish it when out of my own stupidity when looking for a link, I opened a new site in the very same window and lost my post. It was a pretty long one too. All deep and insightful which I haven't been in awhile. Oh well, it was my fault. I'm too tired and lazy to rewrite another post but Tony Pierce says that I should write a little something anyways, even though I can't think about anything to write about. It's funny...all day when little things happen, I think, "Wow...that would be a great thing to blog about, I should remember that." Or when I sit and think for a little bit, my mind wanders to thinking about something deep and insightful and I think, "Remember to Blog this." Too bad there isn't a BlogThis! for my brain. Yet, at night when I come to sit at my computer and open up Blogger my mind is blank. I try to pull up all of the events of the day and....nada. I'm kind of tired now. I had a long day today and got to eat some Indian food for the second time in my life. You know what I'm still trying to understand right now? When we were leaving the restaurant (there was a big group of us) the owner of the restaurant stood and shook each of our hands on our way out. As he did so, he handed a business card to each one of the guys, but when he shook my hand, he only said "Thank You" but no business card. Why?

On my way to go camping this weekend, I was listening to a mixed CD of a compilation of different songs. I was thinking about how easy it is to make burn a CD of your favorite songs so that rather than skip through the songs that you don't like, you can instead put all of your favorites on one CD and actually listen to it all the way through. Technology is so cool. I remember when I was little and didn't have money to go out and buy cassettes for my favorite music artists. My brother and I used to use a whole cassette tape to record the radio for a couple of hours. Then when the tape ran out, I would listen to the entire tape, and when I found a song that I liked, I'd dub it over to another tape. Then after a few days of doing this, Tadaa, I had my very own mixed cassette tape. haha...so ghetto.

Today my dad gave me this neato little pen looking thing that connects through USB and has 30MB of space. What a neato little toy. I used my new toy to transfer my pictures from my laptop to a properly functioning computer. Here are my pictures from Vegas.

My computer doesn't like me.

It all started when the wireless on my laptop started tweaking out and not connecting to the internet properly. Then while trying to troubleshoot what was wrong with my network connection, I decided that I would upgrade from Windows 2000 to XP. In the middle of the upgrade the hard drive died. I then had to go through all these diagnostic thingamajoos to see if there was a workaround, but alas, there wasn't. That was after about 6 hours of having to restart the installation before the whole thing completely died. Luckily for some odd reason, this 3 year old computer was still on warranty. I called up Dell and they promptly sent me a replacement. So now once the new hard drive had arrived, I tried to install XP once again. I took out all of my handy CD's to reinstall all of my drivers, and whadya know, they're not compatible with XP. I tried installing the drivers that I got from online for my network cards so that I could at least get online to download everything else. After about 2 hours of trying to install the driver that kept failing, the wireless started working....kind of. Then I ended right back where I started with the bad connections. I decided that I would try to connect directly rather than through wireless, and tried to install the driver to my network card. AGAIN, nothing works. Argh. I hate XP.

I have already downloaded all of my pictures from Vegas and my weekend onto this computer and due to the lack of network connections, I can't upload them. They'll be up eventually though as I had promised before as soon as my computer and OS start working with me.

Started my first day of work at my new job today. Wahoo! It was waay cool and a neato environment. Oh yeah, did I ever say where I was working? If you haven't figured it out by now from the picture, I work for Google owners of Blogger. How cool is that? When you walk into Google there are big ole' balls bouncing everywhere, lava lamps, and massage chairs in the lounges. There is free food galore in the fully stocked snack rooms and free gourmet lunches. Not only that, but the people are very friendly and cool. I've always wanted a job where I would love the company that I work for and love what I do. And whaddya know...I got it.

Since I was starting work this week, I went on a nice relaxing trip up to Sonoma County with a few friends for the weekend. We rented a cabin for the 14 of us...a cabin that only had one usable bathroom and a downstairs bedroom that strongly resembled something from Blair Witch or The Ring. Needless to say, that was quite interesting, especially when we ran out of toilet paper. We did some hiking in the hills and swimming in the Russian River. Riding the current down the river was so fun, but I was so tired after racing to swim against the current back to our spot on the bank. I finally learned how to play poker and was reminded once again what a terrible liar I am. We visited the Korbel Vineyards to take a tour of the winery and of course...did some wine tasting. On the way home, we stopped in Berkeley to have dinner and take a stroll down Telegraph.

And here I am now relaxing at home after a long day at work...life is good.