Seriously... or not

sometimes it's hard being right

2007-06-05T23:58:00.000-07:00

so i spent my day at work finding other peoples' mistakes and making them fix it. unfortunately for one person, the issue encompassed months of work in which the mistake in question was propagated for over 6 months.

since i would not put my signature on the documents in question until the issue was fixed, i asked the guilty party to spend the afternoon fixing each mistake, crossing each one out, initialing, and dating.

at first i thought: is this my fault? did i not train properly?

no, silly.

the answer is that the analyst was a lazy mother fucker and didn't think i would catch it. this was also confirmed by the sheepish grin and apology which accompanied the returned documents, with a mumble of "i guess i wasn't paying close attention..."

it hurts to get burned!

my religion

2007-05-20T22:38:00.000-07:00

found this on the craigslist "atheism" forum. sums things up for me very nicely.

"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." [Voltaire]

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism." [Einstein]

"Faith means not wanting to know what is true." [Nietzsche]

"I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul.... No, all this talk of an existence for us, as individuals, beyond the grave is wrong. It is born of our tenacity of life – our desire to go on living … our dread of coming to an end." [Edison]

"The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma." [Lincoln]

"Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?" [Arthur C. Clarke]

"Religions are all alike – founded upon fables and mythologies." [Thomas Jefferson]

"Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile." [Kurt Vonnegut]

freedom

2007-05-17T23:38:00.001-07:00

i was just sitting here thinking about when andrea and i were in paris. the evening we finally went to the champs elysees, we walked up and down the boulevard and made it to the arc de triomphe. it was late afternoon and the sun was setting. there was a tribute going on at the base of the arc, commemorating some soldiers. a band was playing, and spectators gathered around the arc and across the street.

when it was finally over, we made it under the street and up to the base of the arc. we climbed the steps to the top, and the sun was about to disappear behind the horizon. it was a perfect view of paris on a fall day. the air was crisp, but not numbing. the sky was bright, lit up with orange and pinks amidst whips of clouds on the horizon, easing into white, gray, then light blue. we took pictures, laughed, talked with people, and absorbed the evening. as we descended to the bottom, we took the time to enjoy the sculptures on the arc. large flood lights were embedded in the ground and pointed right to them, illuminating the details. we ran around all 4 points of the arc, strategically standing over the floodlights to try and get an eerie photo basked in the glow.

that night, it felt like we spent an eternity there, when in fact it only was a few hours. i think it was because i finally let go of everything - i was on vacation. i was free to release the worries of everyday life and live in the moment in it's truest sense. it's really hard to do when you are thinking about it. but as i reminisce about that evening, i didn't even realize i was doing it. i had let go of everything. i felt relaxed, playful, and at ease. i felt happy. it was one of the best days i can remember.

music this week

2007-01-25T18:35:00.000-08:00

andrea was really nice and let me "borrow" (aka put on my iPod) her smiths and morrissey CDs.

i've always liked the morrissey i've heard, but i never actually delved into his full length albums. now that i've done that, it could explain why i'm melancholy this week.

i want to hug morrissey and tell him that i love him.

shine a light

2007-01-02T17:56:00.000-08:00

waiting for something that will never arrive kind of sucks. but the beauty is, if don't know that, you still wait. you can wait and wait and wait but it'll just never happen and you'll never ever know it. (unless someone tells you, of course).

stop waiting, start doing. new plans for a new year!

deep thoughts

2006-12-30T17:52:00.000-08:00

i think barry manilow should be the next willy wonka. he can sing and he's creepy looking.

blogger is new... sort of

2006-12-30T13:33:00.000-08:00

so i guess blogger is no longer beta and i can now log on via my gmail account. that is cool. however now a page of back-logged comments that i was unaware of requires my authorization to "publish" or "reject". i didn't even know this was there.

i initially set up my blog so that anyone can leave comments - that way i don't have to approve them. but i guess in some sort of transition from beta to the real deal, this changed and i missed:

rafi's $0.02 on how dumb it is that i have 2 blogs with minimal content.
hello! i didn't blog about my 2 weeks in europe.
other random comments on my rant and rave about the israel/lebanon war

other than this and the MUCH improved spellchecker, i don't see much difference on my end. maybe if i used my blog more, i would. :)

>:P

2006-12-26T01:13:00.000-08:00

step the fuck up. falling off my radar.

packing up and on alert

2006-12-12T21:40:00.000-08:00

well, it feels like i got laid off today. i'm packing up by desk area and i have to be out by friday. most of you know about the flood drama that happened at the office 2 weeks ago now - demolition of the office area will start on saturday. in the meantime, i'll be sitting in the lab, which means no coffee at my desk and loud freezer noise for a week. joy.

if you haven't seen the flood pics yet, go here.

in other news, someone hacked into UCLAs database and got a hold of information on over 800,000 people affiliated with UCLA (former and current students, faculty, etc.). the info includes social security numbers, addresses, dates of birth, etc. they are recommending everyone whose name was in the database (unfortunately, that includes me) to put a fraud alert and/or put a security freeze on their credit file. i'm not quite sure what i'm going to do yet. ARG! getting my credit screwed up or my identity stolen would be a bad, BAD thing for me.

MOHO and me

2006-11-13T18:01:00.000-08:00

so i recently coined a new term to describe a category of men: the MOHO. this stands for “making out, hanging out”.

MOHOs don’t take you out on dates. there are no outings, no dinners, no meeting for cocktails, and no checking out the latest movie. there is only making out and hanging out. the guy achieves MOHO status by calling late in the evening to see if you’re free to “hang out”, then if meeting up actually occurs, he does everything in his power to get you naked without being too pushy.

yes, i know what you’re thinking: “denise, a MOHO is just another way of saying ‘bootie call’.” oh, details, details!

of course i don’t have to buy into this lazy MOHO's bullshit. but i am. the key to doing this successfully is having awareness – i have no illusions about the fact that there is no potential for anything long term and i am frankly not into him on any sort of relationship level whatsoever. it helps that he is INCREDIBLY hot and hooking up has been super fun, but i’m not gaga over him and i could care less if i saw him again.

am i turning into a man????

no, i’m not. because at the end of the day, getting naked with a MOHO becomes less and less appealing since the very definition of a MOHO makes him less attractive. and when i find someone decreasing in attractiveness on all levels, i find it harder and harder to take my clothes off, no matter how hot he is or how much i really want to. (and believe me, i REALLY want to).

in the end, it’s a turn off. so thanks for the last 2 weeks, MOHO. it’s been super fun. i think it’s time to cut you loose to make room for the girl who is going to get really attached to you and make your life miserable. have fun!

back from the dead

2006-11-06T17:58:00.000-08:00

hi all. i haven't blogged in while, i know. it's been a busy summer.

i went to the mountains twice, i went to the delta twice, i went to LA for a long weekend, i had a birthday, my friends had birthdays, engagements occurred, i went to vegas, i cycled hundreds of miles, i commuted, i went to concerts, i went to BBQs, i went to the beach, i went to seattle, i went to a middle east peace camp, i went on a business trip, i hosted friends from out of town, i read books. oh yeah - and i worked. :)

here's to an equally fun and slightly less hectic winter.

brought to you by google calendar - keeping my life organized since April 2006.

:'(

2006-07-24T11:30:00.000-07:00

i can't stop crying. i just cry and cry. i cry going to bed, and i cry in the car on my way to work, and i even lock myself in the bathroom and cry AT work. i shake. my hands literally shake. i need to stop being so emotional about this.

on leaflets passed out to civilians in lebanon, israel says: "Because of terrorist acts against the state of Israel which come from your villages, the Israeli Army must respond to these attacks. For your security, you must leave your villages immediately. Signed, The State of Israel. In the coastal town of Tyre, residents say they they've received similar warnings in the form of phone calls with a recorded message in Arabic ordering them to flee. But yesterday, on the outskirts of Tyre, Israeli aircraft bombed three carloads of Lebanese families who were all trying to do just that." -NPR

and thus, i cry again.

a new habit...

2006-07-21T14:17:00.000-07:00

i just wrote my congresswoman. it's the first time i've ever done that.

i plan to write more!

a sickening situation

2006-07-20T12:05:00.000-07:00

i am so incredibly livid about the situation in the middle east. how is it that israel can justify this extreme aggression, over the 10 killed/kidnapped israeli soldiers?

if this kind of aggression was imposed on israel by outside countries for every wrong they have done and every international law they have violated, there would be no israel left:

1. building illegal settlements in the west bank and gaza
2. building that hideous wall that snakes in and out of the green line = illegal
3. the occupation itself
4. cutting off water, electricity, services, imposing curfews, etc. on innocent palestinians
5. utterly humiliating checkpoints requiring hours of standing in line, searches, interrogations, just to move 10 miles
6. the sheer fact that palestinian casualties outnumber israeli by thousands and thousands

you want to talk about terrorism? these things sounds like terrorist activities to me. israel’s actions are no better than those suicide bombers. to me, they are worse. how long to they expect the palestinians and their arab neighbors to roll over and get fucked. the people in the area have had enough. they are reacting and defending themselves. how is this terrorism? this is not coming out of nowhere. WHEN WILL ISRAEL GET A CLUE!?

the international community reaction is a joke. a complete joke. what happened to the israeli soldiers was not right by any stretch of the imagination. but when the israeli response results in over 300 people being killed (mostly civilians) and Israeli casualties add up to only 30, there is something fundamentally wrong. not to mention the devastating destruction of infrastructure. and US marines have arrived in the area only to help evacuate people. what is everyone doing? NOTHING. just watching it happen. halting israeli’s aggression immediately is what should be done, with the world speaking against it in one united voice.

then israel needs to take a good hard look at why these so called “terrorists” are against them. they can start with # 1 – 6 above, and start cluing in to the root cause of problem: OCCUPATION. denial of basic human rights. denial of total freedom. denial of quality of life.

it disgusts me that getting the vote and getting funding from the israeli and jewish lobby prevents anyone from implementing ACTION against israel for all their wrongs. palestinians have paid dearly for the actions of suicide bombers, “terrorists”, and the like. when will what is right and what is wrong overcome money and politics?

delay of posting

2006-07-11T19:01:00.000-07:00

hi all! sorry it's been a while since i've posted.

for starters, check out my bike blog, i've posted there. here is a link reminder: http://www.dsnicebike.blogspot.com

i went to LA last weekend and got drunk 3 nights in a row. now i haven't been drunk in a while, and apparently when i get drunk these days, i fall in love with ferns. according to andrea, i bolted out of the car while at a del taco drive thru at 2 am and picked some ferns from a planter in the parking lot. i proceeded to sniff them and exclaim how good they smelled, very, very loudly.

it's a good thing that i remember none of it.

hail to radiohead

2006-06-29T00:18:00.000-07:00

last friday night was radiohead. i'll try to be brief.

seeing radiohead live is always a surreal experience for me. it makes me want to close my eyes and let everything around me melt away. the music is a journey to a haunting place. to an almost alien place.

as the fog settled into the greek theater before the show, i thought about how appropriate that was to the ambiance that is radiohead. misty, mystical, and utterly moving.

highlights for me were: morning bells, a wolf at the door (seeing thom "rap" is very cool), exit music, and as always, idioteque. the drum beats on there there were spot on, and i just couldn't help jarring my body along with the beat. andrea was ecstatic to hear exit music - one of her favorite radiohead songs. she took digital footage of the whole song with her camera. i wish i could post it, it's totally amazing.

although i thoroughly enjoyed the show, i have to say it wasn't the best radiohead show i've seen. this show seemed subdued to me, a little mellow, a little calm, as was the crowd. a far cry from the highly charged "radiohead or die" vibe from 3 years ago. still though, no regrets - a solid, captivating show that did not lose my attention for an instant.

(photo credit: andrea, who was up so close!)

where do we go after this life?

2006-06-21T22:01:00.000-07:00

i got solicited by mormons today. sneaky little bastards. struck up a really nice conversation with me about biking, then sweetly handed me a postcard with a picture of some monstrous temple, saying:

what is the true nature of god?

can families be together forever?

where do we go after this life?

answers to these and other eternally significant questions can be found by visiting www.mormon.org

what a load of bullshit. i wanted to ask if they plan on having multiple wives and raping their daughters (ok, i really don't believe all mormons are like that, but after reading jon krakauer's book, i just can't help it crossing my mind). highly unfair of me, i'm sure. but anyway...

it bugs me because they don't have the answers to these questions. i KNOW they don't. no one does. any religion that claims to have the answers to these questions (namely the first and last) is totally missing the point and trying to con vulnerable people.

there is no heaven. there is no hell. there is no such thing as god. maybe saying that is equivalent to someone saying that there IS a heaven and a hell and there are answers about an afterlife. maybe i'm just the same as the believers in my strong sense of non-belief. probably.

we are no different from any other organism on the planet, except for our capability for reason, emotion, and innovation. i don't believe that these exceptions buy us an afterlife in a heaven. it just means that we are able to experience the earth in a different capacity than other living things. damn, we're lucky. we get to exist on a planet spinning through a vast infinity for a quick flash of time. better enjoy it while it lasts and make the best of it. i don't think anything else comes after this. THIS IS IT. that's my religion. maybe i'll make postcards.

family... sigh

2006-06-21T00:07:00.000-07:00

it was a nice, unexpected surprise to see my favorite aunt at my parents house tonight. here is how our visit went:

me: hi auntie! how are you? you look good!

auntie: i'm fine sweetie! i always look good, don't i? are you wearing a padded bra?

me: what?! no, i'm not.

auntie: why not! (slaps me on the hand) i told you to always wear a padded bra!

me: well auntie, i'm fine the way i am. i don't need a padded bra. i can't believe that i get a slap on the hand for not wearing one.

auntie: i told you to never leave the house without a padded bra! (slaps my hand again)

i continued the conversation by pointing out that because my aunt is endowed FAR beyond the average woman, her point of reference is skewed. she didn't buy it.

i defended my girls the best i could. i hope their feeling weren't hurt!

new blog

2006-06-19T18:15:00.000-07:00

hi everyone!

i have decided to start another blog dedicated to biking happiness: Adventures (and Mishaps) in Cycling!

so if you want to know about my biking escapades, check it out. i'm not going to blog about cycling here anymore.

potential disaster

2006-06-12T23:00:00.000-07:00

i think i may have seriously fucked up my iTunes library. i got a program to transfer the existing songs on my iPod to my music library. however, in this process, it changed most of the filenames to 4 or 5 digit numbers.

i made sure to specifically turn on the option that would prevent this before i launched the program. it obviously didn't work.

the files display the artist and track name on the iPod and iTunes just fine, but not in the original files. so if i want to clean up the original files, i have no idea what the file is.

fuck! i'm trying not to hyperventilate.

cool, it is

2006-06-12T14:42:00.000-07:00

i just solved some issues at work with another co-worker via back and forth emails written purely in yoda-speak.

*sigh* i love my job.

system error

2006-06-08T18:27:00.000-07:00

i consider myself to be decently computer savvy, more than the average joe. so when i bought an external hard drive and more memory to add to gigi (my home computer), i thought i'd have a nice upgrade to enjoy iTunes and my iPod, which i really haven't used with my computer very much in the last 10 months due to my lack of space. read on if you'd like to hear about my trials and tribulations.

well, the external drive install was fine. i transferred all my music, pictures, and other large files that were max-ing out my other drives. images of a fantastically fused denise/leslie music collection danced through my head! however, when i ran iTunes, everything froze. when i attached my iPod with iTunes open, everything froze. i thought the solution would be more memory.

i installed 1024 MB more memory. my computer recognized it. wonderful. but it decided to then reject my keyboard. WTF?? i have no clue how one has to do with the other, but the driver for the keyboard went out the window. and i couldn't download it from the web since i couldn't type. INSERT CURSE WORD HERE.

well, because i'm more computer savvy than the average joe, i figured out a way to find the driver on my computer without requiring the keyboard. great. wonderful. things are looking up.

let's run iTunes! or not! same deal - froze up upon the double click. i uninstalled and reinstalled the program back on the C drive. at that point iTunes didn't even bother opening when double-clicked.

did i mention that during this time, my system decided to spontaneously reboot itself and tell me that "your system has just recovered from a serious error." twice.

and again the next day, after the new memory was removed and other clean-up measures were utilized, right in the middle of a fresh iTunes install.

so now i am now looking at returning everything i just bought and a) buying a computer from bryce, who helped me with this mess (it's better than gigi and for about what i bought the upgrades for) or b) reformatting my whole damn computer and starting, literally, from scratch. somehow, i think i'm going to end up doing both.

how much is your head worth?

2006-06-02T11:35:00.000-07:00

so i just discovered that the fall i took on wednesday night cracked my helmet. i wasn't kidding when i said i hit my head *really* hard on the sidewalk.

total bummer since i love that helmet and it cost me $60. it's pretty much useless now. but i guess another $60 is worth protecting my priceless head!

war wounds

2006-05-31T22:18:00.000-07:00

i took caltrain for the first time today. i biked ~5 miles to the tamien station, got off at menlo park, then biked ~3 miles to work. this all took 2.5 hours. i suppose it's really only about 2 hours 10 minutes since i wasted 20 minutes by getting on the wrong train. getting back took almost exactly 2 hours.

now a 4 hour commute each day is not exactly ideal. but if i consider 2 of those hours to be "working out", then commuting on the train is roughly equivalent to driving. except for the fact that i can knock out book club reading while on the train! ah-ha!

if i bike it/train it to work 3 times a week from now until the end of september, i will save roughly 2500 miles on gloria. train tickets will cost me $320; a wash when compared to what i'd spend on gas. i think the free time, exercise, and reduction of wear and tear on gloria make it worthwhile.

on the way home i fell yet again - scraped up my shoulder and my knee, and hit my head hard on the pavement. that knocked the wind out of me - i can't imagine what it would have felt like without a helmet.

my only remaining challenges are to get over my fear of traffic and to remember to bring underwear. it was a nice surprise when i got out of the shower at work at and realized i did not pack any. oops!!

goodbye to a great series

2006-05-22T23:08:00.000-07:00

i am wiping away my last tears after the alias season finale. i can't believe i just watched the last episode. i can't believe it's over. and i wasn't kidding about the tears - i cried.

i'm not really into TV, but i've been dedicated to alias for the last 5 years. i am sad to see it go. no more alias parties, no more post-alias discussions at work the following morning, no more michael vartan, bradley cooper, or david anders (the alias "hotties"). *sigh*

in andrea's words: "well, at least there's LOST!"

the bell of "no"

2006-05-09T19:55:00.000-07:00

on sunday, while spending the afternoon with some friends, i was asked by a newly introduced woman "so denise, are you married?"

my answer was a resounding "no", spoken with not a moment passing after the question was delivered. the "no", however, was not at all spoken in an irritated tone - it was spoken, almost like a bell being hit hard and deliberately with a hammer, with loud, crisp, and sharp clarity. i think this tone shocked the inquirer, because the silence that followed in the next 10 seconds seemed just as loud.

for some reason, i can't get the manner in which i said "no" out of my head. why was i so quick with my answer, lacking both hesitation and embarrassment at my non-married and, better yet, single (gasp!) state?

maybe i'm proud to say no. maybe it came out that way because i had just seen a guy i'd dated the night before at a party, happily introducing his wife to people, literally thinking "thank god that's not me." maybe it was a "neener neener neeeeeeeener, you're married and i'm not, so i can fuck whoever the hell i want and you can't!" maybe my tone was a candy coated "fuck you" and your marriedness (don't assume everyone around you is in married bliss, because really, that's just YOUR little bubble that does not encompass the entire world, and i don't need it, so let me ring my little bell of "no" to remind you of that). i'm not sure.

but really. anyone who knows me well is aware that i am not a bitter, wallowing single woman, despite the paragraph that you just read, so further explanation and justification to my above statements is not necessary. please don't misunderstand.

since we're talking about misunderstandings, here's one i will clear up; it's not that i never want to get married, because really, i'd love to be married someday. but i am also totally and completely content knowing that i am totally and completely OK on my own, without hesitation.

ding!

now is later

2006-05-07T20:49:00.000-07:00

ok, it's been a while, dear readers, i know. it's last week was a little crazy - no time to blog! but now i want to tell you how awesome coachella was. as leslie eloquently put it, a weekend of sun music sun music sun music sun music is really hard to beat.

for those that don't know, "coachella" is a 2-day music festival in the coachella valley, about 15 minutes east of palm springs. 5 stages, 94 bands, lots of heat and sunshine!

arrival in palm springs involved lounging by the pool, the hot tub, drinking beer, dinner at the usual "los consuelos", and margaritas!

in no particular order:

best bands - wolfmother, madonna, mates of state, ladytron, paul oakenfold, she wants revenge, franz ferdinand, imogen heap, kristina sky

lukewarm - bloc party, kanye west, the go! team

disappointments - depeche mode, wolf parade

that's the weekend summary. all in all, it was fantastic!

more to come later...

2006-05-02T08:12:00.000-07:00

... i saw madonna in the flesh.

oh my god...

2006-04-24T21:27:00.000-07:00

... i'm online! wireless! at my house! yipee!

strange though, i got all the stuff today (modem, etc.), but the DSL wasn't supposed to be activated till tomorrow. i installed everything anyway, figuring it would tell me that i can't connect yet. but no! i'm connected!

so close, yet so far away

2006-04-23T23:19:00.000-07:00

i was this close (picture my thumb and index finger very close together) to winning AFI tickets tonight. caller #3. they wanted caller #5. ARG! unfortunately i can't buy them, otherwise i would not be in this predicament. this will be an excellent start to an upcoming excellent coachella weekend.

i only have so much time left in my life before the young kids will look at me and think "dude, look at the old chick going to a punk show."

i'm behind on concert reviews, and restaurant reviews (which i promised kevin). hopefully i'll get these in before leaving for coachella.

on a completely unrelated topic, i rode my mountain bike for the first time today! it was great. i also managed to run into a 14 year old-ish kid on his mountain bike (too detailed to explain how this happened, but really, i'm not *that* retarded on a bike), causing a tangle and a tumble. i cut my finger, have a welt on my thigh (think like a welt from getting hit with a paintball), and already chipped paint off my bike! i can't believe i did that...

so FRIGGIN' mad

2006-04-19T18:37:00.000-07:00

i just designed and implemented a great experiment. i used up the majority of my DNase enzyme, and i thought "god, i hope this turns out well, since that's almost the last of my DNase". stupid me, i think i jinxed myself.

4 hours later, i'm ready to read my plate on our snazzy plate reader which analyzes the data for you INSTANTANEOUSLY, which is a huge advantage over our old plate reader. i program the data software in 5 minutes - that's all the time i have to spend to set up the "automatic analysis". i read the plate. the numbers are WACKY. i think "WTF, i ran identical samples yesterday, and i didn't get counts like these". i check the parameters. all is well. i reread the plate. the screen then reads:

FATAL ERROR #405. Contact Technical Support

looking in the manual, #405 means "error caused by motor motion failure." i reboot the instrument 3 times. no luck.

so i run to the old instrument to read my plate before my samples go bad. it reads, but it's ancient, so i have to save my data to a disk, transfer the raw numbers into excel, open up GraphPad (a piece of shit statistical program), and manually copy the data into the program so i can extrapolate the values i need. this all takes about 1.5 - 3 hours. as i am copying the data using the computer that is operating the ancient plate reader, i get microshit's dreaded blue screen of death. i can't save my data to the disk, the computer isn't networked, and does not have excel or GraphPad on it for analysis. ergo, NO DATA TODAY.

to vent my anger, i called molecular devices and left a nasty message as to why i spent $70,000 on an instrument that has required service and repairs 4 TIMES since june 2005. we got a lemon, and i want a new instrument.

fuckin' waaaaah.

i'm so over this

2006-04-11T13:04:00.000-07:00

someone please shoot me.

so many things to share...

2006-04-10T17:33:00.000-07:00

... ok, i've got a lot of stupid things i want to talk about. i'm sure i could bore you with long explanations about each topic, but instead i'll just list them out and maybe i'll elaborate on them later.

1. i got estimates on gloria. the damage is going to be $2500 - $3000. what i expected, but disheartening nonetheless. most of the cost will be to fix the front frame of my car, which actually shifted about a quarter of an inch during the accident. this is why my hood looks crooked - but the hood is actually fine, it's the frame that's crooked. all i have to say is "major FOOPY!".

2. i've been calling canada a lot. and canada has been calling me a lot. i'm terrified to see my next phone bill. i'm going to be like one of those people on the cell phone commercials who open their phone bill, scream bloody murder, then faint. yeah, that'll be me.

3. why do drunk ex-boyfriends make their friends call me at midnight on a friday night? this is silly.

4. i bought a mountain bike yesterday!!!! it is SO PRETTY, but won't be for long because i plan to take her to quicksilver the next sunny weekend (if that will ever happen this century) and get her dirty. a name is forthcoming. i figured, what's another $450 when i'll be spending $3000 already to pay for gloria. a BIG THANKS to carol, who spent the whole day with me yesterday bike shopping, and dan, who put my bike together right away so i could take it home the same day. thanks for taking care of me you guys!

ok, that's all! probably a little longer than i originally planned, but i hope i didn't bore you. :)

deserves it's own entry

2006-04-10T17:29:00.000-07:00

i can't believe i forgot to blog about this 2 weeks ago. read carefully:

we
got
a
COUCH!

please, control your shock, dear readers! i think i heard you gasping from 30 miles away!

andrea and i can thank lilly and alex for this new part of our home - they wanted to get rid of it and happily delivered it to us. thank you!

vegas, baby!

2006-04-04T18:48:00.000-07:00

I'M GOING TO VEGAS!!!

finally, i will get my fix!

this is the official 2 month countdown - woo hoo!

boring feelings and news

2006-04-04T17:43:00.000-07:00

1. the rain needs to fucking go away. NOW!

2. i have been successfully sorting all the mail in my inbox at work since the beginning of the year. i no longer have 500+ emails in my inbox. now i'm down to less than 50 emails.

3. i miraculously have no more neck or back pain after the accident! i really can hardly believe it. unfortunately, andrea isn't so lucky. most of the impact was on the passenger side of the car. sorry, andrea!! feel better!

4. i've been at work since 7:30 am, and i want to leave now. but it's 5:45 pm, and traffic is at it's peak. what to do, what to do.

that's all.

glad to be here typing this

2006-04-02T21:13:00.000-07:00

ok, i don't know what the deal is: march, it's a heart attack and april, it's a car accident. WTF?

well, today i was in the worst car accident i've ever been in. and considering the fact that my sister and i are both OK and that my car (gloria) isn't nearly as damaged as i thought she would be, we are really lucky. i mean REALLY lucky. thinking about how much worse it could have been, what if this and what if that, really makes me nauseous.

while i was driving in the middle lane of highway 17 in campbell, a white ford focus and a white mustang were passing me in the right lane at ~90 MPH (i guessed their speed based on the fact that i was going about 75 MPH). when the right lane slowed down, these two cars obviously had to slow down too. but the idiot in the mustang decided to try and move into my lane without looking. andrea screamed b/c this mustang was about to hit us on the right, and my immediate (and i can't help but think "stupid") instinct was to swerve out of the way. this is a bad thing to do when you are moving at 75 MPH.

so i started losing control. gloria was skidding and fishtailing between the middle lane and the left lane. i thought i was starting to gain control of the car until i spun, hitting the center divide 3 times. my dad figured that based on where my car was hit, i did two 270 degree spins. the final hit stopped my car, resulting in our final resting place in the large shoulder of the center divide, with my car facing oncoming traffic.

andrea was screaming, crying, shaking. i, on the other hand, was completely deadpan. no reaction, initially, which is really uncharacteristic of me in a situation like that. once we realized that we were both OK, we called the police and my dad. at this point, mr. mustang was long gone.

the highway patrol didn't seem to think it was a big deal. it was a single vehicle collision, no one hit us and we hit no one. they said a report would be pretty much pointless, and that the only issue was going to be between me and my insurance company. i guess i can see their point. but they didn't even bother to ask if i was drinking or on drugs (i obviously wasn't), what my name was, if i had proof of insurance or registration. nothing. i thought it was strange that they didn't even see it fit to ask.

when i think about it now, i guess the way it happened, since it happened, was in the best possible scenario. i'm thankful that:

1. we weren't hurt at all. just sore necks and backs at the moment.
2. no one else was involved. car accidents bring out the worst in people, from my experience.
3. it wasn't raining yet. the rain started about 30 minutes later.
4. that the accident didn't happen another 500 feet up the freeway, where there is no left center divide. if the accident happened there, my car probably would have ended up in the middle of the freeway as opposed to the center divide. and who KNOWS what would have happened then.
5. the damage to gloria is not as bad as the accident felt. it looks like only about $3000 worth of damage. once we stopped spinning, i thought my car was toast, but it only looks like the front and back bumpers will need to be replaced, and my hood realigned... ok, maybe $4000.

in spite of all that, i can't help but be bummed that i'm going to have to kiss my nice tax return goodbye. and the new laptop that i was planning on buying. i know, i know, it's not important. i know it's not. i just can't help thinking about it. i'm alive! andrea's alive! our lives are invaluable! that's important.

montreal

2006-03-30T17:42:00.000-08:00

so it's been a while since i posted about my heart attack - i mean my "bruised esophagus". well, that's at least what they think it was...

i went to montreal for 4 days about 2 weeks ago. 2 days for pleasure, 2 days for business. the business part was actually really fun - we were conducting an audit at one of our contract labs. i found out that i'm good at finding what people do wrong in their experiments and documentation. i was repeatedly told that i would be good in QA. i don't know if this is a good or bad thing. but it was nice to hear my manager tell our QC director "over my dead body are you going to try to take denise away from me!" it's good to be wanted!

my 2 off days in montreal were awesome, but also very surreal. it was so incredibly refreshing to see and hear a different language around me. i think i was really needing a change of scenery. the cold (it was about -8 degrees C) was really hard to get used to. the first night i almost couldn't breath, it was so friggin cold. i could feel the cold in the core of my body, and it was just painful. so i walked into the first restaurant i found to have dinner and a beer (it was st. patrick's day). this is where i met pascal and sebastien, who entertained me for the rest of the night - we had some shots with the bartenders and shared a "meter of beer". yum. fun. i ended up spending the rest of the weekend with sebastien, who showed me all around the city. this was the best part of my trip, and i really wasn't ready to leave...

last night's adventure

2006-03-14T17:27:00.000-08:00

if you ever go to the ER and don't want to wait for hours, just tell the nurse you are experiencing chest pain, and you'll be seen right away.

i'm sure i pissed a lot of people off when i came into the ER at good samaritan hospital last night complaining of chest pain and therefore increased everyone else's wait time.

monday afternoon, around 4 pm, i began to feel an incredible pressure on my sternum, like someone had put 10 bricks on my chest. breathing in was really painful, but i just figured it would go away. i talked to leslie at ~8 pm and her diagnosis was that i was having an anxiety attack. shortly after talking with her, my left arm started to hurt, then began going numb, and that's when i officially started freaking out.

i will try not to drag this out into a really long story, but after having an EKG, a full chest x-ray, drinking a NASTY cocktail of maalox and lidocaine (to determine if it was my stomach or esophagus), and being interrogated about various aspects of my medical history (have i ever done cocaine? um, no!), they found absolutely nothing wrong with me. but the pressure was still there. and i still feel it now, after over 24 hours!

so that was my first, and hopefully my last trip to the emergency room. i see my doctor tomorrow morning to see why this is happening. i hope to be back to normal soon...

men are from mars

2006-03-13T18:27:00.000-08:00

it really amazes me how differently men and women are wired. i've been thinking about this over the last few days in the midst of my uncle's death. at the funeral, most of the women were crying, but not the men. my two cousins (men) were utterly straight-faced during their father's funeral today. not to say that they don't have emotions about it, because i know they do. but how do they control it so as to *appear* OK in front of everyone else? i know that if it were i, i'd be a complete disaster. even thinking about it sets of the waterworks. there i go again!

so i am wondering, what does it take for a man to cry?

someone once told me

2006-03-09T16:07:00.000-08:00

pain is a dark, beautiful, nostalgic thing.

it never fails...

2006-02-28T16:44:00.000-08:00

most of the time, i'm in the lab at odd hours compared to everyone else. i am usually by myself, so i have the radio to myself.

but it seems that every time i happen to be in the lab first to claim radio control, my slightly elderly co-workers come in the lab to work, and the nine inch nails song "closer" never fails to come on. this happened today.

now, i know what you are thinking: i could easily NOT listen to a station that would play that song while in the presence of other people. there are many other stations to choose from, but if i'm alone, that's the one i choose. i am a courteous employee - i always ask my colleagues if the station is OK, if it's too loud, blah, blah, etc, etc. they always say the same thing: "this is nothing! i have teenage kids at home!"

even so, every time that song comes on, i can't help thinking "oh GOD, not AGAIN!" and i can't help getting the slightest bit embarrassed! :)

creepy crawly

2006-02-21T17:37:00.000-08:00

i was in our department's biweekly meeting today, having just finished my presentation. discussions about my data were launched and our executive director began a spiel about his thoughts.

as i was sitting back listening, i felt something tickling my left hand, which was sitting on my lap under the table. since i was wearing a really fuzzy sweater which has a tendency to shed, i just brushed my hand without looking, thinking it was just a piece of lint. when the tickling happened again, i pushed my chair out from under the table and looked at my hand: there was a pincher bug on me!

needless to say, i leaped out of my seat and started flailing my arms around saying "oh my god, oh my god, there is a bug on me!", trying to shake the thing off. it landed on my chair, then crawled underneath it, out of sight. i was probably more dramatic than i needed to be, but that darn bug scared the crap out of me! we all had a really good laugh about it, and after i sat down, i had to bite my tongue for the rest of the meeting so i wouldn't have an attack of the giggles.

talk about professional!

concert review #1 - the lovemakers

2006-02-15T16:10:00.000-08:00

so one of the reasons for this blog is to post my concert reviews! excitement!

last night i went to see the lovemakers at the great american music hall in san Francisco. an appropriate band to be playing on valentines day. after dining out at my favorite taco joint NCTs, we walked down to the venue. upon hitting the stage, scott and lisa (yes, i looked up their names) released a ton of red balloons into the audience with some cool synthesized music in the background. it was a cool effect when combined with the smoke. their stage presence was great – they acted their parts and were over the top with facial expressions and body movements. this is something i like to see because it shows that they are really into putting on a performance rather than just standing there and singing. and with this type of music, they can get away with acting kind of ridiculous. Highlights for me were “falling apart” (you can’t deny the catchiness of this tune) and “shake that ass”. the thing i like about their music is that they make you want to dance! the electronic/rock dance genre is totally making a bigger dent in mainstream music, with bands like every move a picture, panic! at the disco, ladytron, etc. it’s very high energy, let your hair down, and move that body kind of music.

the only thing i wish they had done was to keep the momentum going throughout the show by not pausing so much between songs. at the beginning, after releasing the balloons, they should have launched into the first song right after the synthesized music ended instead of chatting with the audience, etc. other than that, i think they’ve got a promising career ahead of them.

and i actually bought a t-shirt, something i rarely do at shows – how can i resist a baby-T that says “oakland is for lovemakers”. i’m not from oakland, but… whatever!

snow!

2006-02-13T17:36:00.000-08:00

what a fantastic weekend! i was in the mountains with leslie learning to ski at kirkwood. there are a few things that i learned: a) skiing is fucking hard. b) hot guys are EVERYWHERE at ski resorts.

let's focus on point "b" for a moment. why did i not know this before? i was honestly shocked at the high concentration of good looking men skiing and snowboarding. seriously. and this includes the people who work there too. and they were from all over the world: australia, france, south africa, germany, sweden, ireland, russia, etc. etc. etc. clearly, i have been looking in the wrong places. i should have been going to ski resorts all this time!

as sort of a joke, i emailed leslie our goals for the ski weekend before we went:

1. teach denise how to ski.
2. find hot guy for denise.
3. find hot guy for leslie.
4. have hot guys buy us drinks after a long day of skiing.
5. make out with hot guys.
6. ski some more.

this gave us a good laugh, but we actually managed to accomplish #1, 2, 3, and 6. i had a half day lesson on saturday, in which i mastered the green slopes and turning while keeping my skis parallel (this was with leslie's help). i was feeling pretty confident by the end of the day. so sunday came and i moved on to some other green slopes which looked a LOT steeper to me. so i spent time getting the hang of that. other goals were accomplished when 2 french guys and a swedish one found us enjoying our beers at the pub on saturday night, and we (more like leslie) had some skiing buddies on sunday. the circle was then enlarged with the addition of 2 russians. this is how i got coaxed to get on an intermediate slope. it was 6 against one, and i'm sure if i refused, they would have all dragged me to the chair lift. so, white knuckled and scared out of my freaking mind, i managed to get down the blue slopes - once with leslie and the swede, and 3 more times on my own. i'll spare the excruciating details of how i got down the mountain, but let's just say that i made it back in one piece.

all in all, i would say it was a successful weekend. i'm sore as hell, but it was worth all the eye candy.

chemistry is cool...

2006-02-08T11:25:00.000-08:00

citric acid certificate of analysis: PRODUCT IS DERIVED FROM FERMENTATION OF CORN STARCH & BEET MOLASSES

cool! i can picture gigantic tanks of corn starch and molasses churning at the sigma-aldrich headquarters. sometimes i look at all the stuff around me and wonder about the sources they came from. i mean, how much work does it really take to make a pen? or a hole puncher? all that plastic and metal has to initially come from some part of the earth that at some point was dug up and sent off to a factory to be "processed". who does the job of digging up raw materials that go into making all the crap that clutters my desk? hmm.

well, right now i need the muse of science to swoop down and give me some inspiration. experiments aren't giving me the results i want. searching the literature doesn't help b/c it's hard to research something that hasn't been done before. so it's time for new ideas and new methods. deadline is end of Q1. where is my muse?!

(check out ladytron's "destroy everything you touch")

funny stuff...

2006-02-03T19:50:00.000-08:00

i am listening to the radio and radiohead's "creep" just finished playing. a girl called the station right after:

girl: "what band was that?"
DJ: "uh, radiohead!" (with a tone of disbelief that the caller didn't know this already.)
DJ again: "wait a minute - how old are you?"
girl: "i'm 15."
DJ: "ok, you're off the hook." (or something like that - i missed the exact wording, i was laughing so hard.)

well that explains it! HA! damn, i feel old.

my thoughts on coldplay

2006-02-03T19:44:00.000-08:00

this week, i missed coldplay at the arena. i have mixed feelings about this, and on the night of the show, i tried not to think about the fact that i wasn't there. what it basically came down to was that i refused to pay $95 to see coldplay knowing i wasn't going to be within 50 feet of the stage. since i've seen this band perform numerous times and have met them on multiple occasions, i thought my money would be better spent on seeing 4 - 5 other new bands at 20 bucks a pop.

this decision, however, didn't take away the pain of knowing coldplay was only 5 miles away from me, and i wasn't there!

admittedly, i didn't like coldplay right away. i thought "yellow" (the song that made them famous) wasn't really that great and found it mildly annoying. so i never bought the album. andrea was a huge fan and had an extra ticket to their show in san francisco (summer of 2001, i think?). so i listened to the album the night before the show, thought it was OK, but nothing earth shattering. i saw them live, listened to "parachutes" again, and it started to grow on me...

as much as i love coldplay, i am let down. their 3rd album, X & Y, was utterly disappointing. weak lyrics, melodies and sounds borrowed from other artists, and horrendous song arrangement made this album fall very VERY short of what i had expected. i remember rushing to buy when it was released and as track one was ending, i thought "GOD, this is going to be good." but when i found myself skipping through "fix you" and "what if?" and hating how the album ended, my opinion changed. what happened to the sweet and somber melodies of "parachutes" or the edgy and thoughtful riffs of "a rush of blood to the head"? it's not that i hate this album - i can appreciate some of the songs. i suppose a band can't make a great album every time, and maybe it was wrong of me to expect that.

what i found utterly embarrassing about the whole thing was the enormous effort that went into promoting this album. previews claiming that this would be "coldplay's best album yet" and comparisons to U2 were serious missteps, in my opinion. has the general public come to expect less and less of music these days? i guess with all the britneys, jessicas, and avril lavigne's, maybe.

for coldplay to recover from this, they need to stop trying to make music that everyone will like. when you try to please everyone, something really really important is lost. so i will hope that this album will just be a fluke, and that the boys will get their creative juices flowing again for album 4, whenever that may be.

this is a big moment

2006-01-27T18:26:00.000-08:00

i have successfully cut and paste code (without help!) to link to some pics on my side bar. i am very, very stoked about this.

soon to come, years of archived concert pics!

taking a break

2006-01-26T17:07:00.000-08:00

i just finished major revisions on 2 SOPs, and my brain is fried! so i'm taking a break to defog my head.

i'm currently listening to live105, and i've realized what a shame it is that the bay area, has only one (ONE!) alternative/indie rock station. for a major metropolitan area in the US, this is embarrassing. there used to be another, but it was taken off the air in january and has turned into "la romantica". i wake up spanish love songs every morning since i've been too lazy to change my alarm clock. i did run across a station called "positive alternative", but when i realized that they give away new versions of the king james bible to listeners, i steered clear!

so live105 it is. i'm really into "signs of life" by every move a picture at the moment. it's very danceable and catchy. every time they've been in town i've missed them, but i have an inkling they may show up at coachella this year. woo hoo!

welcome to me!

2006-01-25T19:06:00.000-08:00

well, i finally caved in and have joined the rest of the universe in blogging happiness.

this blog will not be eloquent, it will not be polished, nor organized in any particular fashion. it will most certainly be random, uncapitalized, musically inclined, and potentially vulgar. i will, however, always spellcheck.

so read, enjoy, comment, and so forth. on with it!