September 30, 2005:

Happy 15th birthday, Andy!  I still remember the day my little cousin came home from the hospital.  He was a tiny little bugger.   If I have some free time, I'll try to scrounge up the pictures of me holding him over at my aunt's house.  (don't hold your breath...heh)

September 27, 2005:

The past couple of weeks have been such a blur.  After months and months of "intensive" training, (heh-heh) I finally did the Race for the Cure.  I was supposed to do the race with my friend Emily and her friend Karin (plus her daughter) last Sunday but unfortunately Emily had to drop out last minute.  Her brother-in-law was admitted into the hospital due to an undiagnosed illness and unfortunately he passed away.  I babysat her kids while she went to her job, and then rushed home to pack her suitcases to fly to Florida to be with her sister at the funeral.  It's really sad.  Then I get a call from my friend telling me that she and her bf had to put their dog to sleep.  This dog had a lot of behavioral problems stemming from living in an abusive environment and home.  It was a hard week for them as well.  On a brighter note, I went to my classmates' graduation ceremony last Sunday.  We all started out in Massage 1 together with Debbie Taylor, a wonderful instructor.  They're done with school but I still have another 9 months to go. (I'm part-time, whereas they were all full-time students... had I done the full-term schedule I would be graduating with them, as well.)  Later on that week, I went to Molly's graduation party at her friend's house.  I had such a fun time!  Great food and great drinks!  Everyone I met there was so super sweet and friendly.  I'm gonna miss them...  <sigh>

Anyhoo, you'll never guess where I'm going tomorrow night!  I am going to see Green Day live in concert! :-D  Oh, and Jimmy Eat World will be the opening act! This is gonna be so wicked cool!  I'm very, very excited! I can't wait!  I haven't been to a concert since the Goo Goo Dolls/Bon Jovi concert back in April of 2003. I'll post the concert pics later on this week, but for now enjoy the updated pics of the kids playing over at Jordan's house.  Her dad lives right next to the Hillsboro airport and last weekend was the big Oregon Airshow featuring the Thunderbirds.  Afterwards, we headed over to their baseball game. (They won, btw!)  :)

September 15, 2005:

Today was one of the coolest, most spiritually uplifting days of my life.  I went on my usual morning walk with my friend Emily today.  Every day we try to take a different route on our walk just to mix it up a bit.  Well, half-way thru our walk we passed by one of those "lost cat" posters on the mailbox.  I stopped immediately because I recognize the cat in the poster.  This poor, pathetic fat cat was roaming my neighborhood just yesterday meowing this pitiful meow, almost sounded like a crying baby.  I tried to coax it to my house for some food and water (the cat looked very pregnant) but it wouldn't go any further than the edge of my porch.  We called the phone number just to let the owners know that the cat was spotted in our neighborhood.  She was relieved that _he_ was still alive and that _he_ (Goliath was his name and a very fitting name, too) had been missing for over a month.  We told her we'd keep an eye out for him and let her know if we find him again.  She sounded so happy to know that at least he was ok for now. <happy feeling>

We continued on our way and walked passed the boys' elementary school just as the bell rang.  It was a good thing that we went by the school because Emily's daughter came running up to her to tell her that the chain broke on her friend's bike.  Emily took care of the problem and we headed into the school so I could deposit the lunch money into the boys' accounts.  We walked down the hall and spotted Patrick and gave him a "high-five" and he gave us a look like, "hey what are you two doing at school???" and then we walked into the 3rd grade pod and surprised Jarod in his classroom <happy feeling, too> and then left to continue on our walk.

Towards the end of our walk we turned and headed back up Emily's street to go home.  Before we got there, we encountered  two odd people, a frumpy middle-aged woman and an older Asian gentleman,  who seemed so out of place standing there on our street.  The  woman was looking for an address concerning a job or whatever but she wrote down the wrong address.  (I didn't catch her whole story.)  But turns out that she was just looking for a part-time job and Emily suggested that Costco might be hiring and she was grateful for that bit of info since she lives so close to that store.  Meanwhile, this other person was an old Chinese grandfatherly guy who was urgently speaking to me in Mandarin.  I tried to gently explain to him that I only spoke Toisanese and I couldn't understand what he was trying to say to me.  We asked the woman if they were together and she told us "no" and that he followed her to this address.  Because of the language gap she couldn't do anything for him and he clung to her like flypaper 'cause she was the only other person he saw this morning.  We wanted to help him but we couldn't communicate with him and he was on the verge of panicking.  So, I asked to borrow Emily's cell and I called my friend Li-Ying to talk/calm down this poor man.  You should have seen the expression on his face as soon as he heard my friend speaking Mandarin to him.  He was talking a mile a minute and talking feverishly and pointing in every single direction.  He was very animated and I could see him give a heavy sigh of relief that _finally_ he was able to communicate with someone. 

When he handed the cell phone back to me, I was able to get the story from my friend.  It turns out that he went on his morning walk and got all turned around, and got lost.  (Trust me, it's very easy to get lost in our neighborhood because all the houses look identical and all the streets have very similar-sounding names and so the confusion is understandable.)  The problem was that he just moved to Portland to live with his son & family and they just bought a brand-new house.  He didn't know the telephone number nor the street address to his son's house.  <d'oh> The only piece of information he had was the number on the house.  He would draw the numbers on the palm of his hand and we would hold up our fingers to figure out his house number.   1-5-3-9-0.  oh, and he said "QFC" which was the grocery store down the street.  So, having nothing more to go on, I decided to drive him down to QFC and go from there.  I pointed to him and then I made a driving motion.  I think he understood.  (Man, times like these, I wish I took Mandarin in college!)  We drove around for 1/2 hour trying to find his son's house.  No such luck 'cause he was all turned around and nothing looked familiar to him. 

Ok.  No name.  No phone number.  No address.  No way to contact his son @ work.  I knew his son's last name and that he worked for either Microsoft or Intel but his son's last name is so common that it's like asking how many Smiths work at Intel?   Anyhoo.  Then I remembered that the school district had a link to a Washington county website where you can punch in your addy and it spews out detailed info on what schools your child is eligible to attend.  I recalled that you can type in partial addys and it will list all the streets with that same house number.  Hm, well it was worth a try.  So I told him that we were going to drive back to my house so I could go online to try to find his house.  Ok, so I knew he didn't understand a single word I said to him, but it was better than driving around in awkward silence.  When we got back to my house, I invited him in but he politely bowed and waved his hand.  I gestured again, but then he smiled, waved, and shook his head and just walked onto my driveway.  I felt like I should invite him in and offer him a cup of tea or something.  (The way he walked with his hands folded behind his back kinda reminds me of my dad a little.)

So, I hopped on the computer and access the Washington County website and found four listings for houses with that particular house number, and I picked the two closest to QFC.  Then I googled his addy (www.maps.google.com) and printed out a map of the area.  We drove to the first house and luckily it was the right house.  YAY!  Mission accomplished!  I was so happy that we found his place and he was so relieved to be back home.  I called my friend again just so I can have her confirm with him that this was indeed his son's house and if there was anything else he needed.  He wanted both our phone numbers 'cause he wanted to take us out to dinner. (He's such a playa. j/k!  lol! )  Anyway, so this was our good deed for the day.  I'm grateful that we were in the right place at the right time to help out these people.  It was so bizarre because Emily and I commented earlier in the morning (after calling about the missing cat) that this morning walk felt a little different.  We even joked that we might be called upon to rescue a litter of helpless kittens from a burning house or something.  Anyhoo, here's my all time favorite inspirational quote:

"Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty."

- Anne Herbert

September 12, 2005:

Mickey passed away two years ago today... I still miss him terribly.  He'll always hold a very special place in my heart.  Last year, DJ commissioned an artist to paint a portrait of Mickey from old photos.  It was such a beautiful painting and it was one of the sweetest things DJ's ever done for me.  I couldn't bear to look at it 'cause I'd get all weepy and sad.  I finally hung up the portrait up on the wall this weekend in his memory.  Now when I look at the picture, it makes me smile.  I also printed and framed four Chinese characters to place adjacent to the portrait: happiness, spirit, loyalty and devotion.  Mickey epitomized all these four qualities, especially devotion.  Even though he was a bit dopey at times, I knew he loved me unconditionally.  <sniff, sniff> 

September 3, 2005:

It's feels like summer is just about over.  <sigh> The boys are going back to school in a few days and I'll be doing the same.  Kinda bittersweet feeling, no more lazy summer days, but there's the beautiful fall season to look forward to.  The boys' swimming lessons are done and now it's the start of Little League season.  It's going to be a little more challenging than T-ball but I think the boys are up for the challenge.  As for myself, I've been walking/jogging with my friend Emily for the past couple of weeks.  Our "training" is progressing very well.  She's lost some weight and feeling good about herself and I'm feeling like I have more energy now.  The Race for the Cure is coming up in a couple of weeks.  We've made a pact to encourage each other to adopt a healthier lifestyle as well as make a positive difference in this world. Every little bit helps, right? 

Hm, what else?  Oh, I went to see a movie last night with a bunch of friends from school.  My friend suggested we go see Transporter 2.  Now, I did see the first one and I actually kinda liked it, so I thought how bad can the sequel be?  Well, it was pretty bad.  I kept looking at my friend Molly and she and I both had the same "ugh" look on our faces.  We decided that this was the last time we let a guy pick out the movie.  heheh.  The other guys thought the action sequences and fight scenes were cool. Granted there were some pretty nifty moments, especially the incredulous scene where the protagonist disarms the bomb from his tricked-out Audi right before it explodes, but it's not my type of movie.  Afterwards we went back to her house and hung out for a bit.

Oh, and on Thursday, my friend Tina took me to "First Thursday".  It's pretty cool.  On the first Thursday of each month (hence the name) lots of art galleries stay open late to showcase different art work from various Portland artists and beyond.  It's a fun event, and it's great to just walk around the Pearl district and people watch.  Later on we went to eat at Manzana Rotisserie Grill.  I got the roasted chicken sandwich and fries.  The portions are large and the prices are decent.  I got a yummy but potent "peartini" drink.  Overall, a fun couple nights out with the girls.  :)