Thank you for viewing / reading my blog posts! I appreciate it!

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

As I was on my way to work this morning, it occurred to me that this is the first job that I was not eager to return to after a vacation. It's such an odd feeling. I always considered myself the type of person who loved their job and was a pathetic workaholic, but not anymore. I guess it's a good thing because hopefully it will be an incentive for me to focus on my writing.

Still, it feels like I've sort of lost a part of my identity and I'm a little sad about it. If I'm not my job and my career, then who am I really? Until I earn money from my writing, I don't think I will ever consider myself a proper writer.

Monday, January 02, 2006

New Year's eve was great! I spoke to M-Square three times, including one last time at midnight. What a fun way to start the new year. A couple of guy friends called which was very, very nice.

I spent New Year's Day talking to more friends and getting caught up, in between watching the flooding in the North Bay on tv. I even did a couple loads of laundry so my vacation from work wasn't a complete waste.

Today, it was more cleaning after watching a very rainy Rose Bowl parade. I would love to see it in person although I don't know if I could deal with all the crowds.

I rescued my very expensive ($50 each) star-filled linen Pottery Barn curtains that hung in my last apartment from a bag in my closet. I washed them and unfortunately lost a couple of them as they ripped from all the washing. Ah well, I have four left. I can't use them in my present apartment, but they're too pretty to give away so I'm going to keep them until I can use them again.

The rain has finally stopped but we're supposed to get another storm tomorrow. What a drag! My New Year's resolution is to get to work at 7:30 am so I can leave by 4 pm. My plan is to head to the gym and work out. Hopefully, it won't be very crowded at that hour.

It's January and as usual the gym will be crowded, but thankfully by February most people will hae dropped out. I'd like to get home by 6 pm so I can eat by 7 pm, which will then give me the rest of the night to write and relax.

I'll have to change my sleeping habits and try to be in bed by 11 pm. Tomorrow will be awful getting up and getting ready for work since I've been going to bed at around 2 am. If I didn't have a job to go to in the morning, I'd get up very late and go to bed in the wee hours. I am such a night owl naturally.

At least I rearranged my closet while on vacation, threw out another bag of clothes, and even did my ironing. I didn't accomplish everything I wanted to do while on vacation, but I did get a ton of stuff done. I am so not looking forward to going to work tomorrow. Thank god it's only a four day week.

Saturday, December 31, 2005

Okay, I guess I should do a 2005 recap and analyze what kind of year it's been. After a shaky beginning having to do with me getting over my breakup with the red-haired guy, it's turned out to be a good year.

In June I met M-Square which was so cool! I haven't met a guy I've really, really like in a long time, and I mean really liked. RHG was fun but M-Square so blows him away. And we just had our six-month anniversary which is so phenomenal. It's been years since I've been in a relationship that's lasted this long, and I'm still not bored. This is definitely a very good sign.

What else? I bought a laptop early in the year which has been such a god-send, that I don't know why I didn't buy one earlier.

Finance wise, I managed to save 10% of my income and also contributed to my 401(k) at work. This is good news for me. I paid off my car loan finally.

Writing wise, it's been an up and down year but I am writing. I submitted a story for publication and got turned down, but I'm happy that I was able to even get to the point of submitting a story. I've got to do more of this in 2006. I joined a new screenwriting class and learned that I can hold my own with writers who have agents. This was a good feeling, and has given me confidence about my own abilities.

Health wise I'm fitting back into my size 8 jeans, jeans that I outgrew some time in December. Hopefully, 2006 will be the year I get my weight down to a number I can maintain easily and control.

Friendship wise, I made four new friends this year. I like when I make new friends. S is a writer too and we're planning to go to a Learning Annex class about agents in February. S is cool and is interested in many of the same things I'm interested in. Then there's my ex-cubemate from Stanford, M. M is cool. She's also a writer and we have fun hanging together. We saw Rent, Memoirs of a Geisha, and The Chronicles of Narnia, together. D & C are also new friends whom I met at work. D left the company but we're still keeping in touch. C is also a writer and she told me I inspired her to start writing again. I think she'd make a great editor for me, since she has PhD in English and was hired to be a writer at my company.

My old friend D was just hired by my company working for HR. When we worked together, we used to hang out and go to lunch every week. She and I are planning to resume our lunchtime habits in 2006. It's so great to have a lunch buddy at work.

Creativity wise, other than writing I took two beading classes and am making my own jewelry. I even made M-Square an earring from these extra beads I had and sent it to him. He thinks it might be a little too feminine for him to wear, but I don't think so. I like that we have matching earrings. It's so cute!

So all in all, it's been a good year.
I'm sure everyone has seen this list but it's very interesting anyway. How many of these gadgets have you owned?

The Complete List of PC World's 50 Greatest Gadgets

PC World's list of the top 50 tech gadgets of the last half century was assembled after we polled our editors for nominations. We then rated the nominated gadgets for usefulness, design, degree of innovation, influence on subsequent gadgets, and the "cool factor." Here are the results. (For more on our 50 Greatest Gadgets project, see the full story.)

1. Sony Walkman TPS-L2 (1979) - my favourite - I was addicted to mine for a long time and owned several versions. The last one I had finally broke last year.
Apple iPod (2001)
(Tie) ReplayTV RTV2001 and TiVo HDR110 (1999)
PalmPilot 1000 (1996)
Sony CDP-101 (1982)
Motorola StarTAC (1996)
Atari Video Computer System (1977)
Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera (1972)
M-Systems DiskOnKey (2000)
Regency TR-1 (1954)
Sony PlayStation 2 (2000)
Motorola Razr V3 (2004)
Motorola PageWriter (1996)
BlackBerry 850 Wireless Handheld (1998)
Phonemate Model 400 (1971)
Texas Instruments Speak & Spell (1978)
Texas Instruments SR-10 (1973)
Diamond Multimedia Rio PMP300 %281998)
Sony Handycam DCR-VX1000 (1995)
Handspring Treo 600 (2003)
Zenith Space Command (1956)
Hamilton Pulsar (1972)
Kodak Instamatic 100 (1963)
MITS Altair 8800 (1975)
Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 (1983)
Nintendo Game Boy (1989)
Commodore 64 (1982)
Apple Newton MessagePad (1994)
Sony Betamax (1975)
Sanyo SCP-5300 (2002)
iRobot Roomba Intelligent Floorvac (2002)
Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer (1999)
Franklin Rolodex Electronics REX PC Companion (1997)
Lego Mindstorms Robotics Invention System 10 (1998)
Motorola DynaTAC 8000X (1983)
Iomega Zip Drive (1995)
Magnavox Magnavision Model 8000 DiscoVision Videodisc Player (1978)
Milton Bradley Simon (1978)
Play, Inc Snappy Video Snapshot (1996)
Connectix QuickCam (1994)
BellSouth/IBM Simon Personal Communicator (1993)
Motorola Handie Talkie HT-220 Slimline (1969)
Polaroid Swinger (1965)
Sony Aibo ERS-110 (1999)
Sony Mavica MVC-FD5 (1997)
Learjet Stereo-8 (1965)
Timex/Sinclair 1000 (1982)
Sharp Wizard OZ-7000 (1989)
Jakks Pacific TV Games (2002)
Poqet PC Model PQ-0164 (1990)

The Link.