it's good to be back home. 3 days in costa rica was very relaxing, contrary to my pre-trip jitters. thank you all for your prayers. it was fun being with the in-laws of my sis-in-law and my own family to celebrate my nephew liam's 1st birthday. what a big deal! it felt like the entire city of san jose celebrated his b-day.

and guess what: there was a KOREAN RESTAURANT in san jose. isn't that unbelievable? koreans are asian jews - we just went everywhere, i guess!

last night, i saw a great sony classics film that'll be coming out at the end of june called VITUS at the tribeca film festival. wow...check it out.

that nor'easter was a BIG BAD NEWS FOR ME. no, it's not that i don't have good raingear: it's because of this:

i went off by amtrak to rochester on that saturday to attend my friend's baby shower. saturday in rochester, while nothing going on, was a blissfully peaceful day. i tinkered with their new steinway grand and it was good. sunday was the baby shower AND the storm hit (NYC, that is, not rochester). my jetblue flight was (OF COURSE) cancelled and i ended up renting an SUV to drive down. my coworker was out on vacation on monday and that meant only my boss would be alone in the office on monday.

so i started to drive in rochester, which was fine...then within 1 hour of driving on I-90, i got pulled over.

have you ever been pulled over? it's like COPS show LIVE - you feel like a criminal and there are sirens and lights & tapping on the windows with their flashlights saying "ma'am, license & registration please."

that's what happened. i had no idea why i was pulled over, so i was very (already) prickly and not at all nice. i was very impatient to get this LONG DRIVE out of the way. this was our convo with the state police:

"do you know why i pulled you over?"
"no. why?"
"you were going 90 on a 65 mph road"
"WHAT? no way."
"didn't you see the speedometer?"
"it's so dark out here, i can't see anything."
"you couldn't see anything? where are you going?"
"there was a storm in NYC so my flight got cancelled so i've rented a car and going down"
"do you have the license & registration?"
"i have a license but no registration. i have a car rental agreement"
"i'll be right back"

10 minutes goes by and i'm getting more antsy & prickly. like...I WANNA GET OUTTA HERE AND START DRIVING AND GO HOME!!!

"okay ma'am, here's the summon."
"...what do you mean, a summon?"
"it's a speeding summon and you have two choices: either plead guilty and pay the fine or plead not guilty & show up at the court listed below."
"how much is the fine?"
"it depends on the judge who reads your summon."
"...."
"have a nice day, ma'am"

that was it. and i got a print-out of a 2 pager that said i was speeding at 80 mph. at least he reduced it!

then later i found out that speeding is REALLY BAD, not because i get a ticket but because it affects your insurance - which i don't really have to worry about, since I don't own a car.

that was the beginning of my bad luck: it started to snow, like there was no tomorrow. not just snow, but SIDEWAYS and it was sticking. I barely made to Albany in 4 hours (should've been 3 hours from Rochester), checked into a Marriott there, which of course, they charged me an arm & a leg, and slept fitfully for 4 hours. Got up at 4 AM, started off again, but it was STILL snowing in Albany, and then started to hailing & sleeting. It was as if the Mother Nature was telling me "DO NOT GO TO NYC!"

on NY state Thruway, i drove from Albany to NYC in 7 hours. YES SEVEN HOURS. It should've been a 3 hour drive on a normal day, so i thought maybe 5 hours. No 7, because twice, I was crawling like with other cars, because this stupid TOLL WAY was FLOODED!!! good thing i had an SUV. and yes, it was STILL POURING.

by the time i got to my apartment, i was majorly fatigued & hungry AND it was already 11 AM on Monday morning. Needless to say, I've already communicated with my boss who told me to take it easy and come in when possible.

i was in the office at 12:30 PM, after showering & lunching.

that was the end.

OR SO I THOUGHT.

this past friday, i got a call from my storage: in the entire building, 4 storage units have been affected by the nor'easter and 1 of them is mine. please come & check if anything's ruined.

i go in and 75% stuff are WET. my keyboard is there, all wrapped in bubble wrap and miraculously, it's not wet. but all my spring & summer jackets & blazers are COMPLETELY wet. i am told to go home & get camera, take pictures and file a phone claim. i go home & get camera. i do the claim. then it's time to move everything to a new unit. which i do. then all the boxes are wet. so i have to come back, as the storage is closing soon. this weekend, the weather was gorgeous on saturday. i did not see much of it. i was inside, moving things around, throwing out things, etc. i ended up taking all my jackets, about 20 of them, to the cleaners, threw out 3 due to the rust water marks on the white jackets. it was pathetic.

the good news is that i have insurance. the other 3 ruined units DID NOT.

so. there's some sun on my nor'eastered life, after all.

i can't believe what the world is coming to. this VT shooting. kids who can just go & buy guns. it's insane.

then i read this.

it's nuts. i'm korean and to hear this kind of a reaction is just crazy. i don't particularly think koreans are "targeted" right now, but then i'm not a guy. men usually get more crap from others.

if the dude indeed wrote an islamic extremist thingy on his body/suicide note (that read ismail ax or somethin'), then i guess asians will now also be targeted at airport screenings and will take longer for trips.

oh well.

yesterday, i was talking to my mom and it was a very good in-depth talk, kind of like mother-to-daughter thing over marriages, relationships, etc. kind of talks i always wish i had during college years but instead we only fought over nothings.

during college, i had really bad manic depression and i was seeing a shrink who wouldn't given into my plea of giving me prozac. he was really a wonderful person, who listened to my crazyness (i guess that's what they're suppose to do) and saw me over the 6 years i was in school. i think i really grew to listen to my own self, etc. with him. he was really a special human being.

yesterday, while talking to my mom, i saw his face for a sec - i think because i used to vent to him about what a horrible mother she was, etc. HA HA! anyway, so i called his # - and sure enough, same #! so i said HELLO BLAH BLAH BLAH!

just now, he called me back! i too have the same number since 10 years ago (yes, i'm one of those consistent people) and he was SOOO HAPPY TO HEAR MY VOICE!!!! and he sounded exactly the same. of course, he can't tell me ANYTHING about himself as usual, except that his office moved to another location and he asked me all kinds of things - he remembered! it was so touching. he really was a good person. because i saw him for free @ school, when summers came, i couldn't afford to see him (as school was officially over, therefore didn't cover his fees), he asked me how much i can pay him to see him. at that time, i thought he was being very mean, when he knew that i had NOTHING to spend money on anything but school dorms etc. and he then gently asked "because i need to see you during summer, may i suggest something? please tell me if this is too much. how does $5 for the hour session sound?" i cried, needless to say, because of his generosity. and yes, i did work everything out. i was basically crazy because of my music, my family having gone bankrupt, etc. (plus i'm sure the hormones didn't help either.)

this made me very happy today! (i know, it's pretty random)

Your Score Summary

Overall, you scored as follows:

62% scored higher (more nerdy),
2% scored the same, and
36% scored lower (less nerdy).

What does this mean? Your nerdiness is:

Not nerdy, but definitely not hip.

worse movie (DVD) of the year 2007 goes to: Copying Beethoven. yikes, it wasn't even worth the DVD time. everything was fictionalized, terribly made. i'm usually a sucker for music-themed movies (NOT musicals, mind you) but this was just too...FUNNY!

also, read a book by Barbara Taylor Bradford. i don't understand how she's a bestseller. she's the worst writer i've ever read! and believe you me, i've read a ton of stuff from trash to trasher. i have a newly found respect for danielle steel after reading BTB. yuck.

on friday @ sg, we listened to this after the mini-seder and cried my eyes out! she was so admirable. as for the japanese...

omg, i just heard about my old cat, hey you. well, his new name is Boris. so apparently Hakan, the new owner (well, not new since i dropped him off in 2003!!!!!) has a chair for him in the dining table. so whenever they eat, hey you/boris jumps on HIS chair, puts his chin on the table and watches everyone eat.

i knew that cat was born a dog!!! i miss him!!!!!! awwwwwwww

i almost fell for this on april 1!

this is an amazing book. i must've lost half of the body water, crying my eyes out. i highly recommend it!!!

lost my blackberry on sat night AND i got sick: a double whammy. unable to reach people, except to actually get up from the bed and turn on the computer - what a concept! i called every single taxi & limo lost precincts in the 5 boroughs, nada. probably too early. wah! it's not that it's the device i lost i'm worried about: it's all the data in there: people's info (personal ones too like people's b-days, nicknames, fav presents, etc.), datebook, all my passwords, etc.

WHY DIDN"T I LOCK THE DEVICE?!?!?!?!!?!?!?

t-mobile said nobody has used it since sat night. which is good.

on another note, i went to see this on that fateful (for blackberry at least) night and he was amazing. the play was NOT GOOD.