Another obscure reason to chew gum

An announcement on the tour bus at Hearst Castle:

Food and drink are not allowed. Chewing gum is permitted to clear your ears.

Eventful week

Highlights of the past week:

• Google IPO
• Another year older
  
• Surprise Party!
• Google Picnic
• Human Foosball - one of the funniest games ever
• Napa Valley Wine Train
• Getting motion sickness from the train and passing out...in the aisle
  
• Playing volleyball and bruising my arms once again
• Groping our way through the pitch black theatre to find a seat for Anchorman
  
• ...and TONIGHT! Josh Groban at Shoreline
  

Me and the Mini

I have a new favorite toy. I finally got my pink iPod mini and it is even more cute than I ever imagined. The interface is so intuitive, it fits perfectly in my hand, and it is oh so pretty. Even the packaging it came in was pretty. According to some bystanders, I jumped pretty high when I opened up my birthday gift from my absolutely wonderful boyfriend. Some really cool people also got me some accessories so that I could be iPod'ed to the max. Now I can rock out wherever I am in style.

Surprised!

Bertrand has reserved this weekend for awhile now and told me that he had some special plans for my birthday. While having dinner with my family earlier this week, my mom asked if we would be busy on friday night and if we could have a family dinner on my birthday. Assuming that we had plans already, I looked at Bertrand for a confirmation and in response he told my mom that we had 'no plans' and that we could have dinner with them. I was a little shocked after all this 'reserving' that was done especially since he knew that I wanted to spend some time with my friends. Later on, I asked him if we were going to do anything with my friends since he seemed to not have made any plans at all. He told me, "You ask too many questions." I talked to Tine about it and vented to her about how I wanted to spend time with my friends on my birthday and was kind of bummed that Bertrand hadn't made any plans despite what he had told me previously. She just listened to me vent and then said, "You just wait until Monday and you're going to come in telling me how stupid you are." I thought about it a little more and thought that maybe he was planning a 'surprise' for me on Saturday with all of our friends. I soon convinced myself of this and was satisfied with waiting until Saturday to see what all was planned.

After a pretty exciting week, we planned to have a date night out at Armadillo Willy's tonight for some ribs. On our way there, Bertrand suddenly groaned and said that he was having some stomach problems. Somehow, he was sly enough to get me to make the decision to go home to his house before dinner so that he could do his business. There were many following little events that happened that I somehow did not clue into and that just fell into place. As we turned the corner to his house, I saw a long row of cars on the other street and said, "hey look, someone's having a party." Right then, the car started jerking and I turned my focus onto my sick boyfriend who was having trouble driving. We got to the house and I decided that I would sit in the car and wait for him, but after a second thought, followed him into the house only to be completely blown away by the faces of my closest friends screaming 'SURPRISE!'

I still can't believe that my friends were willing to drive all the way up to where we live during rush hour traffic, that my friends and family knew about it for weeks and were able to keep it a secret from me, and that someone loves me enough to put all of this together.

I am the luckiest girl ever!

FHS Reunion

I went to my five year high school reunion this past weekend. Usually high schools have reunions every ten years, but our high school has the first one after five years and then every ten after that. Five years doesn't seem like that much time to really accomplish that much. A couple of friends and I debated for a long time about whether or not we really wanted to go to a reunion so soon after actually graduating, but curiosity got to us, and we ended up making a decision to go at the last minute.

The first word that comes to mind about the whole event was...weird. Everyone looked the same and yet different. Some of us have changed a lot and most of us have rarely changed at all. Almost 75 percent of the people there had gained weight since high school, a bunch of people went to college and graduated, a handful were married, a smaller handful with kids, and everyone was mostly just 'hanging out'.

I'd always thought that I was good with names and that I had a good memory. I can remember the most minute details from almost any event in time, but this event just proved to me that my memory really sucks. I could hardly remember anyone's name outside of my close group of friends. Everyone's faces looked familiar but I couldn't put a name to the face. I spent most of the night leaning over to hear my friends mention people's names and identify who was who. At one point in the night, when I asked who someone was (who I was actually pretty good friends with back then!), my friend said, 'Did we go to the same high school?'. Sad.

I'm glad I went. Although there were no big surprises, like seeing the nerdiest girl come back as a supermodel, it was interesting to see where everyone was headed. I'm definitely looking forward to the ten year and twenty year reunion now when we all come back and see where everyone ended up.

2004 Summer Olympics!

My happy time has arrived. I absolutely love the Olympics and plan on either being glued to the T.V. or have my VCR set to watch as many events as I can. Opening ceremonies start tonight. Go USA!

Ancient

While visiting some friends, I went into their office and happened to catch their pre-teen daughter chatting online. I noticed that all of the screennames on her buddy list were about three words long or sometimes even full sentences. I thought it was kind of funny and pointed out to Bertrand how I guessed the 'new thing' was to have long screennames like, 'iLikeButteredPopcorn' or whatever it happened to be. We both kind of chuckled about how different things were even with chatting styles or screennames with different age groups. It made me feel a little old especially when Bertrand mentioned to the girl that I'd been chatting online since about 1996 and her jaw dropped open. The kicker was when she said, "I didn't think you knew what it was."

Grow old along with me

When we were at Innoventions at Disneyland a few weeks ago, we tried out the 'aging machine' that showed what you would look like when you got older. Of course I jumped at the chance to catch a glimpse of what I might look like. Surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, my 'older' picture looks a lot like my mom and lucky for me, my family ages very gracefully. In fact, whenever I am with my mom, we are mistaken for sisters. Unfortunately, Bertrand's run in with this machine wasn't as fortunate. He somehow ended up with a third eye and a deformed face.

One Year!

*Dun Da Da Daaa* Today is my one year anniversary since starting work at Google. Wow. Time flies.

Hoarsey

A lot of fun was had when I went to Paramount's Great America, a roller coaster theme park, with some friends yesterday. I hadn't been there in about five or six years and was nervous with anticipation as we walked into the park and heard all the screams from the people on the roller coasters. I spent the entire day screaming my lungs out and laughing until my stomach muscles couldn't handle it. On the ride Invertigo, every two rows were set to face each other during the ride. My brother sat facing my friend and I, and it took him almost 20 minutes after the ride to recover from his laughing fit from watching the two of us scream and cry to our death. After our long day, we went to the awesome Michael W. Smith and MercyMe concert. Today, I am suffering from a hoarse throat from all my screaming, laughing, and singing.