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September 04, 2008
another poll
Some of you may have received this in an email but I figured it wouldn't hurt to throw it up here as well...
I'm having trouble deciding on a name for my up and coming jewelry business. Will you vote on a name? :)
1. Lavender Tree Design
2. Wild Orchid Design
3. Starfruit Design
Here are a couple pictures of my jewelry so you can look at the style and feel.
Now go ahead and vote!!
posted by karel at 2:33 PM
September 02, 2008
our BIG weekend!
Okay, so... the fair was amazing. I've never been to a state fair and I was prepared for all sorts of campy over-the-top-ness, but I still could not have possibly expected the amount of fun and craziness (and food prices! Ugh) we saw. Here is a Picasa slideshow, provided it works:
A note about the hypnotist: we saw the show Saturday night, and I encouraged Brian to volunteer but he was hesitant and wanted to watch the show first. It was hilarious - at one point he gathered all the onstage men and had them behave as if they were pregnant, giving birth, and nursing. It was ridiculous! He also had a group of guys 'perform' as *NSYNC, as well as the Lady Marmalade women from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack. You can imagine how much I'd wished Brian had gone onstage!!
The next day Brian decided that he would give it a whirl, and as you can see from the photos he did make it onstage and past the first round (some people just don't relax enough for the show and are sent back to their seats), but soon after that it was clear that he wasn't fully hypnotized and was asked to leave the stage as well. Oh well. Maybe next time!
Some FYI: I've been hypnotized onstage before, roughly 8 years ago during freshman orientation in college. It's probably somewhat different from therapeutic hypnosis, but at no point are you completely unaware of what you're doing. The point is to get you so relaxed and compliant that you don't care how big of a fool you are making of yourself, and you'll let the hypnotist guide your actions because you've relented control of your inhibitions and your mind is loose and pliable. My guess as to why Brian didn't go completely hypnotized is because - you guessed it! - he is unfailingly stubborn and will not let anyone control him no matter what or who they are. He may beg to differ but I know the truth!! Haha.
Our Labor Day was quite nice as well; we slept in and did some housework, then headed out to a nearby nature park to pick blackberries. Oh, they are prickly! I didn't realize how thorny they were, but we came out with two and a half pickle jars (thanks Wendy! hehe) full of blackberries and many little red scratches on our arms and legs from the thorns. It was a great time, though, and very rewarding as last night I baked about a third of them into a pie:
And tonight I made a blackberry glaze to pour over some pan-seared pork chops:
Yummy! They were both extremely delicious.
Well, I've written enough here, I think. Tomorrow is the first day of school! I haven't written about work yet, but that will come later after I've had time to digest it all. Hope you all had a lovely holiday weekend!
(P.S. A year ago tonight was the fateful night that Brian's friend Dennis shoved him into me on the dance floor at Keith and Theresa's wedding. I think we should have a dance in honor of that. You think he'll let me? Hahaha...)
posted by karel at 10:14 PM
August 30, 2008
YAYYYYY
posted by karel at 9:21 AM
August 27, 2008
No longer NH
Hi all.
I have officially become a resident of Oregon as of today. And it was EXPENSIVE!!!!!
Because I am new to the state the cost of a license was very high. To retain my CDL class B license was $130 and on top of that my motorcycle endorsement was another $75. $205 total. In NH it was under $100 so I wasn't expecting this much. I have also registered to vote here even though I hate politics and politicians entirely.
I just returned from the library where I got my library card which was FREE! Yipee, something I didn't have to pay for feels nice. I can take out the X-Files that they have on DVD for free for 3 weeks at a time for each season. Very excited about that.
After the library I decided to visit the park next to the school where Karel currently is which is also around the corner from the library. To my surprise and excitement there was for some reason a trampoline in the middle of a field with nobody or any signs around it. So of course I got on it with (my shoes off) and did my usual stunts. Backflips, frontflips, twisty tricks and so on. It wasn't until about 15-20 minutes after I started that a guy came up to me and asked if I was part of the photo shoot. "No". Apparently it was part of a photo shoot that was at the time in another part of the park. I was kindly asked to stop jumping not for my own safety but if I were to break the trampoline. Oh well, I had fun for 15 minutes or so. A guy sitting on a bench was apparently watching me the whole time and when I got off he said "pretty cool man". I knew the rest of the park with the parents and their kids were already watching me and I liked it. Every time I flipped I heard some kid go "wow" or make some kind of amazed noise.
So now I am back home and going to sort the final pictures I'll be putting on the website and with a little more work and lots of Karel help we'll finish soon. Also I will be making slide shows of the places we stopped at on the trip out here on my new Flickr account. But that won't be until the website is finished so don't bother looking yet.
Bye!
-brian-
posted by brian at 2:21 PM
August 26, 2008
some good news - and some bad news
Good news: I will be starting work bright and early tomorrow morning! My background check cleared today and my new colleagues are so eager to have me start (read: so desperately in need of help) that they called me up and asked me to start tomorrow. So I will be showing up at the school at 8:00am. My regular hours will be 7:30-4:00, meaning I'll be out of the house even before Brian! Crazy. But I think I'll love getting out at 4:00, as opposed to 6:30 or 7:00 as was the norm at my previous full-time gig.
Bad news: Portland Public School employees are paid monthly, and payday is the last teacher working day of each month. This means that I will not get my first paycheck until September 30th. Yes, September 30th.
Incidentally, September 30th is also Brian's and my one-year anniversary... so it will DEFINITELY be cause for celebration, for many reasons!
So, we'll be living like paupers for another month at least. Builds character I suppose. :)
Okay I think Brian has some news to share so I will let him take over:
So today I quit my job. that's correct! But don't worry because I had already secured a position at another place I had interviewed with after our my arrival here. Did you ask why? of course you did and I'll explain. It's simple.
It turns out that the company I was just with operated in ways that I didn't feel comfortable with. I know I should have inquired about it before but I didn't think about them since I have only known one way so far.
I contacted another place I interviewed with and asked them loads of questions that I couldn't think of before. I liked what they said a lot! I talked for about an hour with their main service tech and got a great deal of info from him. I knew I'd be more comfortable working with them so I made the switch and will start Thursday.
That is what happened and I feel better now because I was getting quite uneasy and feeling like I made a poor decision. I hope I'm right because if this doesn't work out like I think then AAAAAAH!. But I really feel this is a good decision on my part.
Good day or night, whenever it is you're reading. Or maybe good noon, afternoon, or possibly pre-noon time. Make sure to brush your teeth after every meal to help prevent cavities.
-karel & brian-
posted by karel at 7:24 PM
a poll
Hi everyone - quick poll, because I like to gather lots of opinions before I make decisions...
I've found a place in town that offers Asian language classes for adults at all levels. We won't be able to afford to enroll in them this fall, but are thinking about it for next spring. Brian will be taking Mandarin Chinese, of course, so he can have Chinese conversations with my parents, but I've been thinking about my options.
Here's what it comes down to:
Should Karel take Japanese or Thai language classes next spring?
Vote away, folks.
posted by karel at 3:15 PM
August 25, 2008
this post took me over an hour to write
Okay. It's come to my attention that my Chinese characters are not being viewed properly by some browsers. The only thing I can think of to fix it is to go to your toolbar under 'view' then choose 'character encoding' and choose 'unicode.' That's on my Mac - Brian's PC isn't on so I can't look at the options for that. But it should be something very similar for PC-users. Hope that helps them look nice even if you can't read them haha
We've been making great strides here. Although I still don't have a start date for my job, Brian and I are finally taking steps in the right direction in terms of making a presence for ourselves in the Portland community.
The block party wasn't as disastrous as he made it seem (sometimes he speaks in hyperbole, as I'm sure anyone else who knows him is aware) - it was a small and relatively quiet neighborhood affair. We did meet several older folks who were very welcoming, some of whom had noticed us in the past few weeks and were quick to offer their help if we ever needed it! I've never really been very well acquainted with any neighbors of mine so I felt very grateful for that. We did meet the couple that he mentioned and chatted for a bit - they live just a handful of houses down and I think may be a bit older than us (they were married last November and I think the guy mentioned he'd been working for five years), but hopefully we can have them over for dinner sometime or something.
I'm not sure if I've mentioned this on here before, but I've joined Meetup.com which is... well... their 'about' page says it best:
Meetup is the world's largest network of local groups. Meetup makes it easy for anyone to organize a local group or find one of the thousands already meeting up face-to-face. More than 2,000 groups get together in local communities each day, each one with the goal of improving themselves or their communities.
I've joined several groups so far - Young Women Meeting for Friendship, Tennis Club, Book Club, and Chinese Language and Culture Group. I had my first meetup last night with the Young Women's group - about 10 new members met at a little coffee place down in Sellwood (a bit west and further south of us). I was a little shy at first - I've been a Meetup.com member since I was new to NYC but never actually made it to an event! - but soon opened up and had a lovely time chatting with the other women and getting to know them.
They're actually having a really cool event in mid-September... it's called 'Swift Watch' and something that I'm sure Wendy et al will be very interested to learn about (if you don't already know!). Every fall a huge group of Vaux Swifts make the chimney of a school in the NW quarter their temporary home before their migrate south for the winter, and in the evenings they swirl around the school and chimney for about an hour before settling into the chimney for bedtime. It's a huge family and community event, and I'll be bringing Brian along to the meetup. You can learn more here.
On top of that Brian's made some mountain biking buddies already - every time he's out riding he runs into someone and they make instant friends! I think I'll feel a lot better knowing he won't be hurtling down narrow trails by himself, and I think you'll all be a little more at ease too.
And the most exciting news I have for today is that I have finally learned how to stop on my bike without falling. Yes, at the tender young age of 25 I have conquered my fears of toppling over on my full-size big girl bike without having the seat lower than it rightfully should be. I'll spare you the gory details that brought me to this point but suffice it to say that it involved considerable tears, circling around a grassy park, and buckets of patience from Brian. (Mom and Dad... think of that video of me on the slide in Chicago. That's pretty much what it was like.) I went out for a little ride today on my own and did very well with the stopping, and I'm quite proud of myself.
爸媽：我終於學了怎糜用中文打字！：）我作天晚上夢見（不知道’見‘用得對不對）我回家了，而我們全家在紐約玩，但是當您們要送我回去時，我突然發覺我在 Brooklyn 沒有家了！ 但是我不可能叫爸爸開車送我回 Portland ﹣ 怎糜辦？！我沒計畫坐飛機，沒買票，而且先在也沒錢，只好讓您們帶我回 New Jersey 了。在那時候我才醒過來，發覺還好我還在我的新方間呢！我最近作了很多怪夢，原應大概是睡太多覺，一定要趕快開始上班了！！！
我也想真心得謝謝您們幫我過這些日子 ﹣ 我知道您們借我的錢不是很容已拿來的。我會努力得作工，存錢，慢慢得還您們這些錢。（希望可以 ‘快快’ 得，但是我不要給您們 'false hope' - ha!)
好了，柏安下辦回來了，我們要去買菜！希望我的中文沒太糟糕！：）
Okay we're off to Trader Joe's. Yay!!
posted by karel at 5:28 PM
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