the past few weeks

12/31 – watermark party at the kus’ house. it was good to see hank. good ol’ hank. lots of high school/college watermarkers. raymond nearly killed us while we were driving there, which put me in a rather nasty mood, but that dissipated gradually. at the party, we did what we do at the watermark new year party every year. 1) eat! potluck! yay! yum! 2) worship. hank and chongai led. ah, i love the sound of two guitars and 40 voices. 3) reflection activity. this year we all wrote a resolution on an index card, folded it, put our name on the outside, and put it in a shoebox. melissa and cathy will keep it safe until next year, when they will pass back our resolutions. 4) game. this year it was a board game called… um, … “tri…” i forgot the name. tripods. tribox. tri something. the point of the game was: you were in teams, you wanted to get your piece to the end first, and you took turns. in your turn, hank read you three statements, and your team had to figure out the right link. some that i got were….. “broadway theater, microscope, childbirth” = stage; “a jealous person, the hulk, _[something i can’t remember]__” = green; there were some other clever ones that i forgot… oh, one that another team had included “luke skywalker and princess leia” as one of the items, and the link was “movie siblings” … oh our team got this obscure one that was something like “sage of springfield, the emancipation president, and the [i can’t remember… might have been ‘railsplitter’ or something]” … and the answer was NICKNAMES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, can you believe it? haha. anyway then 5) the skit thing. this year it was “make a music video with a song of your choosing” and my group did a pretty sorry interpretation of pretty woman where 5 girls hit on 2 guys (the guys being the pretty women) and yeah. like, yeah. the best video was made by the group that had my brother in it. they did “we are men” song from mulan. it was funny. 6) gift exchange. i got the game of life. cool. 7) pass out martinelli apple cider. this year there were those fancy disposable plastic cups shaped like champagne glasses. and, finally, 8) watch some happy party on TV. we meant to watch something in san francisco that was live, but we couldn’t find it when we turned the tv on at 11:58, so we settled for some other one. or like, something. but then we found the sf one and watched the fireworks. then we went home. yes. this is going to be ONE LONGASS entry.

1/1 – drove to reno. was in pissy mood. continued to read third his dark materials book, titled the amber spyglass. got to circus circus. mood improved. the 5 of us ate at the circus circus buffet.

1/2 – went to northstar. found ryan! yay! but after waiting in traffic for 2+ hours and riding a northstar shuttle to the actual place from some far-away overfill parking lot. snowboarded half day. lost ryan on the slopes because he skiied and could do blues. fell asleep at about 3pm. found ryan again. went with my family and ryan to truckee and ate at some little diner. had peach pie for dessert. ryan was born in truckee. i think when we got back to the hotel, we brought up the gamecube and the little tv. yay new little tv.

friday 1/3 – went to mt rose for 1/2 day. i snowboarded greens with the first-timer package cuz it was cheapest. i figured i didn’t really need access to the whole honkin mountain anyway. regained lost toeside skills. went downhill with annie and raymond. was great fun. developed headache at night at the seafood buffet at circus circus (we only found out it was a special seafood buffet because it was friday after we paid… it was cheaper the first tnight we ate there) so i went back to the room, ate advil, slept. woke up at 11 to the sound of the soap opera in my room happening between my dad and my brother because my brother wouldn’t stop playing the gamecube when my dad asked him to. so i told my brother to shut up because by this point my dad was threatening again to smash the game cd and i helped put away the cube. the three kids in our room decided to read to calm our nerves. i finished amber spyglass by 3am. i cried. those are good books. thank you, ryan.

saturday 1/4 – left reno. went to auburn to meet ryan, since auburn is approximately half an hour away from nevada city. my family went back to san jose. ryan whisked me away. that night we ate with ryan’s high school friend jeremy, and jeremy’s girlfriend meredith. we ate at schezuan restaurant. i don’t know how you spel that. i know what it’s supposed to sound like though. they didn’t give us chopsticks and everyone was white and the dessert menu said “schezuan’s sinfully delicious desserts!” and had things like new york cheesecake and decadent chocolate pie on it and stuff. hehehe. but we had mushu vegetables, which i always enjoy. jer was disappointed by his favorite dish there, the fried shrimp, because it was revealed to him that i am weak sauce so we got it mild. yeah. like, yeah. and then we went to this place called cafe mekka which had old things used decoratively around… like there was a piece of ceiling (particle board?) with a chandelier hanging down from the actual ceiling, and the menu on the wall was in a bed frame. and stuff. i had a hot caramel apple cider and it was yummy. but i was still suffering from the headache that i got the night before, and my body was all achy and strange, so i might not have been as agreeable as i wanted to be.

sunday 1/5 – ryan and i went to the empire mine. you pay an entrance fee of $2 and roam around. they turned it into a museum. they have one part where you can go into the “office” buildings and they have it set up like it might have been set up a long long time ago. they have a section with mining equipment and signs explaining them, and you can go into the main mineshaft but only for one short flight of steps. it’s steep. ryan’s dad says that people are thinking about building some kind of tour ride that would take you down into the mine, but it would cost 12 milliion dollars. we read on the signs that they used mules, and some mules lived their whole lives and died down there. poor mules. and then the other side of the museum-mine-park had these cottages that were built for the guy who ran the mine to live in. ryan says in the summer, the gardens are really nice, but of course on january 5 they were kinda all dead. that was ok though. we looked around the buildings and had fun. for dinner we made eggplant curry, which i rather liked, but ryan was severely disapponited by it. i was disappointed by my Indian flatbread, which i had worked long and hard on. hehehe.

monday 1/6 – went hiking. we took a small trail that we found off of the highway and wandered all the way down to the river. the trail might have actually been just a dry creek bed, for all we knew, and ryan kept saying “i don’t think this is the right trail… the trail i’m looking for would be really hard to miss and is wheelchair accessible and stuff…” … at the river, there was a little board bridge with cables to hold on to on the sides. it was cool and rickety. so we went back up the trail-creekbed and i got really tired because i have no endurance, and eventually we found the independence trail and indeed it was wheelchair accessible. this trail led to the waterfalls. the water at the bottom of the waterfall was dark green. we made this really really yummy cheese stuff in fillo dough. fillo dough is cool. i think we watched “catch me if you can” on this day. that is a fun movie! -knock knock. -who’s there? -go fuck yourselves!!! hahahahaha.

tuesday 1/7 – i can’t remember what we did. i think we did a whole lot of nothing. we made dinner again though. “easy cheesy lasagna.” oh, and shortbread! mmm shortbread. and letterman. “OH MY GOD! I WON THE BIG SCREEN TV!” hahahaha.

wednesday 1/8 – ate at “wonderful III,” another chinese restaurant in grass valley. again i will ponder how strange it is to be in a chinese restaurant and be the only asian person there. of course again there was no chinese on the menus (something i’ve never seen at a chinese restaurant) and, again, they didn’t give us chopsticks until we asked for them. *ponders* hmm. ryan asked me if i felt out of place in nevada city/grass valley becuase there were only white people around, and i didn’t really feel out of place. i strangely felt that i ought to feel stranger than i did, which is stranger than just feeling strange about being there. what? yeah. and then we went to the pet shop and looked at the parrots. puppies are really expensive. we wondered why the $600 pomeranian was so cheap, since the other puppies were upwards of $800. you could get a pair of parrot finches for $1000. geez. and the rest of the day, laundry, snow, chess. snow! snow snow snow!

thursday 1/9 – watched all three old star wars movies. was great fun. got dessert at lyon’s.

friday 1/10 – came home.

1/11, 1/12, 1/13, 1/14 – sat around at home. today i read “summerland” by michael chabon, a children’s book that i got my sister for christmas. i wonder why children’s book authors are so fascinated with “quantum indeterminancy trees” nowadays. everybody is writing books about multiple overlying worlds and the children that are destined to save them. hehehe.