Author: Doris

July 31

Well I’m back, finally. I’ve been without a computer for many, many hours now and now that Jeremy’s back, I’m not only complete emotionally, but electronically as well. This week that Jeremy was in Germany was a little trying for me, I haven’t had Vince and Edda around the clock with me for a long time and we didn’t really have any food and when Jeremy left, the gas for the stove wasn’t even really turned on… But Jeremy has a bunch of work friends who looked kindly on me and dropped by and had dinner with me and found a school for Vince.

Well, I hosted another poker tournament tonight again. the good thing is that I canme in second. The bad thing is that I came in second. sigh. It seems like heads up play is the weakest part of my game. I was okay in the beginning. I was great in the mid game, but my heads up play at the end really realyl suffered. I think I played better than I did the last tournament. I wasn’t as short stacked against Josh as I was against Dung. Tho I think I think I did make a couple mistakes. One was paying off Josh 2k on a questionable call….

sigh. well you learn, and you keep on playing.

All:

Both Rena & I are resigning from our current positions and taking on jobs in Denver, CO. As temporary contractors for 3-6 months, working for the same consulting firm, we will start our new assignments there in early August. Therefore, eight years + of our physical separation is becoming history. We look forward to enjoying our re-union and, in the meantime, we would still have time and can check out Denver and see what its exceptions with unique flavors are. One of my colleagues joked that after these 8 long years, one may not be able to get used to each other soon, or at least not so soon. I don’t think so and hope Rena feels the same way.

The bad thing about moving at this moment is that we just miss the upcoming wonderful Chinese musical performance by Judy and Allen in Tacoma and Bellevue, WA. She is very good as a soloist singer and, Rena & I are very anxious to hear her voice again.

One of the good parts of moving to Denver, besides sightseeing is that we will be able to meet SL’s younger son there. Yesterday, he called & offered his help to find us apartments. How about that? Younger generation takes care of the old; very thankful indeed. Oh, about two months ago, I had a chance to meet CK Kang’s younger son in Washington DC. He is such a promising young man, just graduating from college, with a lot of future ahead of him. To have eyewitness these personally was indeed a very gratifying experience.

The major good thing about our moves is, of course, if I face joyful moments or encounter problems, I can always turn to Rena in person. She is right there in front of me “Every Day Live” :), not just “Saturday Live” or in our situations right now, even worse.

After this pit stop, the chances of finding something together probably are pretty remote and nil, may be outside of our allocated future time for working. But, within a year or half, I still would like to find something in Alaska in the summer or somewhere that we like to stay for a while and visit, may be somewhere in the Canadian Rockies, northern States in the middle or southeastern States along the coast. No matter what, of course we are going to be together and carrying out our retirement plan in earnest.

rena & noel

It is back! It is back!

I finally got my powerbook from work today. It’s a nice machine, and it must have cost work a pretty penny. They gave me the one with the DVD burner in it… not to mention a bluetooth keyboard and mouse to go along wtih it. I’m pysched, except for the fact that one piece of software that I thought would run on it won’t. That’ll affect my work stuff just a little bit. ah well…

Today (sunday), I raced in the Downieville Classic in Downieville, CA which is about an hour east of Sacramento.

Me and Todd (dude from the shop) drove up there Saturday night after work to meet Jason and Don (more dudes from work) at some campsite that they reserved. Of course, like all great plans, this one was foiled as we couldn’t find the campsite. We ended up driving another hour and a half to a place close to the start line and slept in the car by the side of the road.

6 hours of sleep is always good for a bike race.

The race was about 25 miles long. the first 9 miles are straight up in the open. The last 14 are straight down thru some really really technical terrain.

My Quads cramped on mile 4. I walked until mile 5. I managed to pedal thru most of the pain, as the top section was pretty flat. But then on the decent, you have to pay attention to everything. Your arms burn from riding the brakes all the way, and taking the shock from the impacts.

At about mile 8 I realized that I was in pretty bad shape. My calves had started to cramp too. I thought about turning around, but decided to press on. Again I managed to ride thru my cramps on the descent.

I was doing rather well at the top. A place where I had crashed before. so My confidence was high. But I ended up crashing and almost falling into a ravine. After than I became pretty tentative. I didn’t help me that my hanmstrings and inner thigh muscles were cramping too, tho somehow it all went away if I was just pedaling.

I finished the race in about 3:43 (guess) I was hoping for about 2:45, but oh well. I’m out of shape.

My legs are so stiff right now..

Today we are still struggling with jetlag. Vince got up at 2am and pretty much refused to go back to sleep. As a result, we were the first ones in line at the 6am opening of the breakfast buffet. He loves the buffet, he loves choosing what to eat and piling it on his plate. After we finished breakfast at 6:30am, we headed to the pool on the 8th floor. I was planning that swimming was going to be our morning activity and we were done with it by 8:15.

This afternoon, we got the keys to our apartment, I saw it for the first time. The pool complex is amazing, with 3 different pools, one lap, one an adult swim and one toddler pool, all huge. Vince wanted to strip down to his underwear and jump on in.

Randomness abounding…

Looking like work is picking up even more now. I’ve apparently got a 2 week deadline to design, code, and test my module that isn’t even speced out yet. whee!. I went on a yelling spree today. I sent a not so nicely worded email that basically was like, “everyone talks way too much in this group.” a couple people in my group thought it was a harsh email. oh well. I wonder if people think I’m difficult to work with. Or if I’m the group asshole? or maybe they just think I’m weird. Whatever.

I saw Ted’s x-ray the other day. He totally crushed his collarbone. It’s in 4 pieces right now, and apparently they are _not_ going to do surgery and pin it. I don’t understand how it’s supposed to heal straight, but okay! No wonder it hurt a ton for him too. I was like, dude, you’re a wuss. it’s not that bad! :p

I got the dukes of hazard dvd from you doris! Thanks! Where’d you get the elvis card from anyways? It’s pretty cool.

I’m trying to go suit shopping for arif’s wedding. i dunno if i’ll make it in time as it seems like it takes 10 days for people to tailor it. ah well. I suppose I should get one anyways, since I really don’t have a suit to begin with, and it’ll come in handy for other weddings. Looks like I’m going to go with a black 3 button suit from Brooks Brothers!

In other news, I don’t know if I can keep commuting anymore. getting up at 7:30 is killing me. Rather I should say, going to be at midnight is killing me. but ah sa. I need to rethink this…

Donald out!

Ruby, with her carefully arranged flight schedule, made to carefully coincide with predicted bowel movements, arrived not with us as planned, but 12 hours earlier on the continuation of our first leg out of Frankfurt. Jeremy had spent many days trying to arrange a good flight for Ruby, which included a 12 hour layover in Frankfurt to insure her a rest and nice kennel. But the baggage people left her on the plane and allowed her to go ahead without us. Ruby the pioneer! She got to the airport 10 hours earlier than us. Luckily, the company we hired to help up put her in quarintine was already on-site at the airport and moved Ruby to the quarentine station without us. We are fortunate to have procured their services as they paid for the quarentine space before we even landed. Lucky for us, we also taped copies of all the import information onto Ruby’s crate. Visiting hours are from 4-6 today, so I’m hoping the kids and I can make it down there to see her new digs for a month.

It sounds like our apartment is fully furnished and ready for move-in, but the landlords are still waiting for the 2 month deposit from AMD. Hopefully, that will happen today and we can move in on Saturday before Jeremy has to go to Germany for 5 days.

I’m going to try and get a cool cell-phone today. I don’t know what it is about being in Asia, but I love cell phones here. It’s becuase I’m cheap and I love not paying for incoming calls and I truly believe that the cell phones are cuter here than in the US. My major goal for the next two years is to learn how to text message. Woo hoo!