ready. set . jump.

I want to be the little yellow guy. I want to be hardcore.
I will be the little yellow dude.

"Sometimes good things fall apart so that better things can fall together."
I hope this is true.

Either way. It's time. It's been long enough.

Ready. Set. Jump.
...and never look back.
.i hope.

tribute to my max-oh.

"A dog has no use for fancy cars or big homes or designer clothes. Status symbol means nothing to him. A waterlogged stick will do just fine. A dog judges others not by their color or creed or class but by who they are inside. A dog doesn't care if you are rich or poor, educated or illiterate, clever or dull. Give him your heart and he will give you his."

I can still remember the first time I saw him. I was 13 years old and excited beyond belief that my parents had finally agreed that I could get a dog! I had waited a long week for the weekend to come so I could go to the local pound and find my puppy. It was a Saturday afternoon, and I went to the Human Society, practically running to the puppy kennels. I can still remember the smell of the kennels, that doggy smell, just like at the pet store, but better. I was too excited for my own good. I walked up and down the aisles of the different kennels, looking for the perfect dog. I couldn't find the one though. All the puppies and older dogs were so cute, but I didn't see the one that I really wanted. Then I walked to a kennel with a sign that said, "Dogs in this kennel are sick. Please do not touch." I remember my mom telling me, "Maybe you shouldn't get a dog from there. They're already sick and it's probably not a good idea. Look at other ones." I shrugged off what she said and looked anyway. Then I saw him, in the back the kennel was this cute little 6 month year old puppy, a Rottweiler and German Shepherd mix. He was sitting at the back of the kennel, didn't even come up to the fence. He sat there and starred at me with these sad puppy eyes. I fell in love in an instant and thought to myself, he's the one.

Well, I'm sure you can guess what happened after that. I adopted him and took him home 3 days later. I named him Max. What? I was 13 and not that creative okay? Well, Max turned into plenty of names, Maxie, Maxwell, Maxie Pad, Maximous and my all-time favorite, Max-Oh. I got a great 11 years with my Max-Oh. 11 years filled with oopsies on the carpets, naps by the piano while I practiced, long walks, toilet paper dragging, door scratching, stair sitting, nose butting, cat-like habits, screen breaking, hole digging, kisses, laughs and tears. 11 years that went by all too fast.

It's been a little over 4 months since my family and I had to put Max-Oh down. I miss him a little more every day. Going home isn't the same without this crazy guy barking his heart out and wagging his tail in circles when I walk through the door. I miss him. The only male in my life who never disappointed or judged me in any way for 11 years. Now that's unconditional love.

Max-Oh, you will always have my heart. I hope you are enjoying doggy heaven. I'm sure it's filled with all the goodness that makes you go circle tail wagging happy. Miss you.

Shut up. I believe in doggy heaven okay? If you haven't watched All Dogs Go To Heaven... you really should, because it's true.

... a few steps forward ...

So here is a small update on the past few weeks that I have failed to log into this blog crap and update anything that has been happening in my life. MAJOR FAIL. Well, in the past few weeks, I have managed to accomplish a few of my goals on my list. So here we go!

#18. Watch the sunrise

This was probably one of the most major failures in life on how to actually complete this goal. But hey, a completion is a completion... no judgment allowed here. About two weekends ago, Carol's little brother, Jason, was home for a Saturday night. Mind you, he had JUST turned the big 2-1 a Thursday before. The only proper way to celebrate my pseudo little brother's big birthday was to take his butt out drinking. So that's exactly what we did. Little did we know that this night would not only end up in havoc due to the multiple Irish Car Bombs, Jaegar Bombs, Kamikazes, Gummi Bears, etc., you name it, we drank it that night. However, after all the alcohol consumption that we did, it didn't seem to stop us from the gangsta rapping, flow spitting, shit talking that happened in the car the whole ride home... which ironically, I do not seem to have any recollection of. Ah well. What can you do? But was that the end of the night? No. In many cases, a typical night of a Carol and Elaine (C Pop and Back End hahahaha) outing would consist of drinks, drunken fun times, a fun car ride home and would definitely result to the both of us passed out in bed and waking up the sounds of each other painful hangovers the next morning. However, apparently, this night, we both thought it would be fun to act like we were 21 all over again. Yeah, not a good idea. We ended up at one of Jason's friends house, hanging out until about 5:30am. I definitely realized I was out of my age zone when Carol and I were approached with the question, "Oh, did you guys graduate in 07 too?????!!!!" Our response? "Yeah, COLLEGE!" Sad.

On the way home (we left Jason there, young people like that don't seem to ever get tired), we got really hungry and made a pit stop at our favorite, disgustingly delicious place, McDonald's. Oh good ol' McDonald's at 6:00am. There we sat in the parking lot, watching the sunrise in my little egg, called the Prius. We watched the sunrise, realized that we had been partying way too hard for our own good, felt our bodies start to give in and came to the conclusion that it was time to go home. Not exactly the greatest idea of all time, but nevertheless, an interesting way to know that we still can hang with them young'uns and a success to one of my goals! :) My body sure did pay for it for the next 2 days. Ouch.

43. Eat at Phil's new restaurant in Boston, East by Northeast

This past weekend, my family and I decided to take a weekend long trip to Boston to meet up with some family and all go visit Phillip Tang, my extremely talented cousin who just opened up a restaurant in Boston called East by Northeast. His restaurant is a small, quaint, cozy little restaurant, seating approximately 25 people at a time. The food served is a selection of different Chinese dishes with his own French twist on them. All I can say is amazing. It's great to see one of my cousins finally get to live his dream. I can't wait until I get to go back again when the menu changes in Spring! Well, I hope so that is. Since Boston's weather decided to be extremely mean to me and decided to rain the whole entire weekend that I was there. Maybe next time, Boston will be kinder. Overall, it was still a great trip. Great food and time with the family??? Couldn't have asked for better. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, look at the creeper girl who decided to smile in my picture while I was taking a picture of the restaurant. Great.

44. Quit smoking

Don't do it. Don't think about it. Don't smoke. Haha. So far? So good. It's been about 7 days since my last cigarette and amazingly, I feel good and the cravings aren't too bad. The first 72 hours were probably the hardest ever. My lungs were kicking out that wonderful tar its been building up for the last 5 years, so working out was really difficult. I felt like it was harder to breathe now that I wasn't smoking than when I actually was. I almost wanted to light up just so I could breathe normally again. I did not! It's only been 7 days and counting, but I have been good. Even when I had a beer over the weekend, I refrained from buying cigarettes and bumming from someone. Yay. This has been a long awaited goal of mine and hopefully I will be a quitter for life.

I must say, it does feel pretty damn good to smell good all the time and have no hint of the smell of cigarettes anywhere on your body. Especially your fingers! On my way to work the other day, I did not light up a cigarette, I didn't have any for one and well, I was trying to quit. When I got to work that day, I stepped out of my little egg, and the wind blew my hair across my face and I smelled the delicious scent of my shampoo from my just washed hair. Well, it was fabulous. It's nice to smell delicious rather than smell like the poo smell of cigarettes.

Hopefully, day 7 will turn into day forever. We shall see.


So these are my updates so far. Maybe in a few more weeks, I'll have more to update! We'll see!

i'm in love...

Meet Cara Elaine Chang, born January 31st at 7:56pm - 7 lbs, 3 oz, 20.5 inches... a complete beauty the moment she was born. So this my niece... and some people might say that I think she's absolutely gorgeous because she's my family, and I'll tell you go to hell, because she is absolutely gorgeous, not just because she's my niece. It's the truth.

So I can now honestly say that love at first sight does exist. I never knew it was possible to lay your eyes on a single person, and know immediately that you are head over heels and incredibly in love. But I knew. The moment Cara was rolled out of the room and I saw her, I knew. It's incredible to have that feeling of the most innocent and pure love there is out there. I can only imagine what my brother and sister in law feel for her when they look at her. It's crazy what such an innocent baby (and beautiful!) can do to people. Nothing is stronger than family love.

I'm officially an auntie! I never thought I would be this excited about it. All I want to do is spend all my time with her and hold her and take pictures of her and tell her I love her all the time. Haha. I'm pathetic.

settling is unacceptable.

"raise a glass to mend all the broken hearts of my wrecked up friends."

To all my ladies who have had their hearts broken and/or are in crappy relationships:

I raise my glass to you, in hopes that this year, we will mend all our broken hearts and find someone that will love us back the way we love them. May this year bring us the strength to say no to assholes who don't deserve our time, to keep our self-respect and dignity in tact, to acknowledge the fact we are not just a convenience to people and we deserve so, so much better than everything we've put up with in the past. I hope this year will bring us closer to letting go of all the walls and insecurities that our broken hearts has forced us to have. There should be no more settling, feeling belittled, worthless, non-existent... men who cannot grow a pair and be the person we need them to be, should have no right to play any part in our lives.

We all deserve so much better than the crap that we have all put up with, thinking that this is as good as it can possibly get. Why settle? When there is so much better out there.

And this is exactly what we should do to the stupid boys that come into our lives and don't deserve any time.

ready!

#1. Make the 101 Goals in 1,001 Days and post online

I'm a few days early! Yes! I finally finished up my goals list after many hours spent blankly starring at the computer screen. After finishing up the list, I realized that all of these goals will end up costing me a bit of money. So, there may end up being some changes here and there to the list. We shall see.

I'm still not planning on starting anything on this list until January 8, 2010. I get a few more days of being completely content with not accomplishing any of these goals.

So until then, I guess there will be no posts unless I do something. :) Who knows? Maybe I'll be productive and actually post something. Highly unlikely though.

dear 2009...

I was supposed to have accomplished creating my 101 goals by January 1, but that still hasn't happened yet. I'm giving myself another deadline, January 8, 2010. I will for sure have everything up by then, I hope.

But with the new deadline now being set, I will be more determined to think of more goals. I'm at 65. I'll keep going.

With that, here are my final thoughts for the year 2009:

This year came and went quicker than I could have imagined possible, but I'm definitely glad it is finally over. 2009 was a year of tests for me, testing myself in ways that I will never, ever do again. Things started off rough and are ending only a tad bit better than they started. I'm having high hopes for 2010, at least I'm trying to. With all the bad juju that came with this year, I still managed to weasel in a few good things: I finally got a good grasp of judgement of character - I think that I finally got a hold of weeding out all the bad people in my life and filled them with the good ones, I have an amazing family - including a new sister-in-law and a baby niece on the way! and friends that have been there for me through it all, despite the arguments, bickerings and misunderstandings. So here's to the new year... may it bring the people I love all the love and happiness they deserve. It wouldn't hurt if I could get some of that too. ;)