sarah and joy

Congratulations on your new running time, Joy!!!

2009-09-08T12:24:00.000-07:00

That is awesome. I´m so proud of you! ...must be a great feeling !!! :D

Thought I would post some bike ride and Labor Day weekend photos here even though you may have seen these already....maybe I should have saved them for our blog huh??! ; )

well...until the Mac photo program unfreezes, let me show you an interesting painting I found online while searching for a "Patron Saint" image to Joeify with some running shoes...haven´t found a great one yet, but this is called "Patron Saint of Television" by Antonio Roybal (2007):

hi Joy ! : )

2009-08-28T03:13:00.000-07:00

It's 3am...why am I awake !!!?

I don't know!
.
This is the August Fool Moon. ; )

Do you like the new header image? It's from a screen shot of my Second Life avatar (one of several versions, haha). Like "my" dragon tattoo?? :D

This is an ancient tree in the Inyo Wilderness (~10,000 feet above sea level) just west of Death Valley, where we went camping recently. The Great Basin Bristlecone Pines here such as this one are all thousands of years old. It might look dead but a small part of it is still alive. Many of these trees look mostly dead but then they have a couple of branches bearing green pine needles and tiny cones with sap.

And this is a nighttime photo of one of the trees, taken by a part-time professional photographer friend (getting these shots with the stars took him in all about 2 hours, and for each shot he left the shutter open almost 30 seconds (if I remember right), using a tripod.

A few weeks ago I took over a hundred pictures of the full moon. This one reminds me of a floating Eye of Horus. Most of the shots looked like a more or less blurry bright round disc...this wide shot is closest to what the moon looked like without the aid of a camera lens.

Now for more Second Life pics....

Second Life is great: It's very easy to dance and change appearance and clothing at will. Also, to sit with a giant bird in her nest, wear dragonfly wings (even stand on a tray if I want...oops), sail on a magic flying carpet, float in a desert hot spring, catch a ride on a flying dandelion, visit an ancient unicorn tapestry in a castle with eagles flying past, sit on a bench with a meowing cat, be very tall, dress like an Indian superhero, etc. ....

Unfortunately, one thing I have yet to learn how to do either in real or in virtual existence is get the hang of eBlogger formatting !!! Working on this post, I have accidentally deleted four images while trying to shift text and pictures around. Why does it always load the image at the top?? or is that something I'm doing wrong...? grumble....

What else have I been up to? Well...besides camping in the Inyo and cultivating a thriving imaginary life, I've done a little writing and the rest of the time: trying to learn to understand the stock market, using someone else's capital! eeeeek !

...so far so good (cross fingers).

Then there is trying to learn Java...theoretically,
to help me get more work as a technical editor, and in case my ego is too fragile for me to ever be able to compete as a working writer...it's going kind of slow.

Maybe I need a cuppa joe. :D

'Til next time, Joy, I hope your real life is thriving & you're having fun whether pounding the pavement or in your shop or touring with Eddy! ... ... much love,

....Sarah

it's been a while.. since my last post!

2009-07-28T17:48:00.000-07:00

hi sarah!

how are you doing? how is your workweek going? and how was your weekend? (too many questions!)

last weekend, i had skipped work, left my shop to my cousin and went out to have fun with pt. we went to a nice place established to attract more tourists to visit the area but still not many people knew the place. we rented 2 bikes and biked around. it was quiet and there were few joggers jogging around. firstly we didn't know that there was a long wooden bridge snaking and leading into the forest of mangrove trees standing along the lake. so we followed the way. it felt like playing a treasure hunt! getting inside there, we saw that the surrounding was very stunning and serene. the sunset was impressive. we stopped along the way to take pictures and read the signs. there were signs of the names of the tree along the track and some resting pavillions to sit and look around. very informative. and i want to share some photos with you.

after getting out of the bridge, i saw the green well-manicured grass and felt the urge to try a handstand. god! it was harder than i expected. i fell flat on the ground way too many times. but my bf did it effortlessly.. he is much stronger than i am!!! it was fun, though!

we have to do it more often. it's a real joy!

much love!

..joy.. ;]

p.s. i am missing your posts!!!

first day back to work..

2009-07-09T04:27:00.000-07:00

hi sarah!

what a busy day for me!!

it's thursday but i feel like it's monday. it's my first day back to work after having a long break from saturday to wednesday.. i still feel way too lazy and longing to get back to bed.. worse than that i caught myself nodding off from time to time while trying to get my dragging translation work done!.. but i promise myself to submit to it to my customer by tomorrow.. becuase my sister is going to give birth to her baby boy by this weekend!! i am so thrilled to meet my nephew!!!

here are some photos from my mini-road trip with my girlfriends. we drove to songkhla to swim and eat yummy seafoods. it was wonderful to get back there again, feeling the sea breeze while driving. it's not so far from where i live but it's just the tight schedule that kept me away from this beautiful place..

and on the last day of my holiday, my folks and i had dinner together at a restaurant near my parents' home. py was very cheeky and talkative, as ever. and she love that wooden rocking horse so much.. i think i am going to buy her one.. and here are some photos of flower from the restaurant.

p.s. watch out your mail box!!

4th of July

2009-07-07T18:52:00.000-07:00

Here's how we celebrated Independence Day:

me & A's buddy Lance...

...hope you can tell which is which !! ;D

Your cheeky friend

Sarah

(:D much love)

I got the coolest postcard from Thailand !!! :D

2009-07-01T20:04:00.000-07:00

Hey, Joy, thank you for the super cool postcard ! wow, I can't believe you had this for 15 years...wow.... I love it! (Those salt fields must be incredible to see.) I also really dig your handwriting! it's so pretty : ). It was such a thrill to open my mailbox and find a postcard from you! (It looks like it took ten days to get here...that's not too long.) Nice stamp, too (but not a good picture :P).
Eh, Joy, I owe you some snail mail now don't I ?? :D I've been promising....(ok, no more promises, only deliveries! ...promise...haha)

Much love,
Sarah

p.s. thank you
thank you
thank you !!! : )

my tattoos

2009-06-29T22:21:00.000-07:00

i managed to get photos of my tattoos today. but couldn't find the third one. it's an elephant. i will look for it later or will take new picture of it..

this is the first one. it was taken about 5 years ago.

and this is my second tattoo. it's a kind of fish. not sure about the name..

this is the photo of hippie py and hippie joy, taken in phuket when py was 7 months.

in our family, my sis, her hubby, my sis-in-law and i have tattoos, except my brother. he is afraid of the needle and does not intend to have one. but it seems to me that py is going to have at least one too when she is older. she likes to touch mine. and when she saw my blue nail polish on my toes, she went to get her mama's polish and polished her toes too. now i can imagine her style when she grows up!

much love ~ joy!

p.s. as promised, sarah, this is my third tattoo and my most fave so far.. it's a joyful elephant. i had an inspiration to have an elephant tattoo when i rode a elephant for the first time in my life at lanta island.....

Inspiring photos, Joy !

2009-06-29T12:53:00.000-07:00

I couldn't decide whether to comment on your post or just...I'll write another post. I was away from the computer Saturday/Sunday am...but did you see where I wished you luck on the other site? :D (think you did) Haha, you are living on the edge, eh? Why sleep the night before a run when you can watch a season of Prison Break instead?! hahaha And you still got a great time, 28 min!

It's nice to see pics of you and your family and your bf and all. It must be cool to have someone to go running with. (Don't you love looking at shiny home accessories? I do....haha) You have a Swensen's !!!!!! Me & my family used to go to Swensen's too!!! for special occasions when I was a kid, for years (back in Louisiana)..... I thought Swensen's had gone out of business. Just because I haven't seen one lately (and you know, of course, if I haven't seen one, it must not exist anymore, hahaha ;D ). That's an awfully cute picture of Py (what a great photo subject she is!) next to the ice cream sundae pic. Nice ice cream sundae picture too...mmm, chocolate ice cream.... and what is that food at the top? It looks like rice pudding with parsley and chili peppers...that looks good.

Nice reflection pictures of yourself, too: there's something very humorous about them that I really like. And I like the way you posted your photos here. Nice collage effect.

We had a cool weekend, but started it off by getting up so early that I was half-asleep and forgot my camera. :( (It wasn't really that early. I'm just lazy!! :D ) While A and his friend worked on some coding project, I visited a lavender farm with Linda (who is A's friend's gf) and she let me use her 2nd camera & even started teaching me how to use her Real Camera, which has interchangeable lenses & such. Now I'll have to nag her to send me copies of the photos from Saturday so I can post for you: lots of rows of purple lavender plants, a small labyrinth made of circular avenues of lavender plants entered through an archway of pink bougainvilla. Bees everywhere drunk on lavender nectar. A giant metal vat full of lavender plants having their essential oils distilled out. Me & Linda both wanted to jump in the vat, although it wasn't really that large. Can you imagine sleeping on a big pile of lavender? or a mattress stuffed with lavender plants?? I hope you like lavender-scent, Joy, or this entire paragraph might be annoying. ; )

Then we spent hours walking around at two different street fairs, one without the guys and one after we dragged them away from their engineering project. One was right next to the ocean, by a beach called, strangely enough, "Ocean Beach." It was great to smell the salty breeze and see a beach that was new to me. After dark we went with the guys to another fair with a lot of rides. There was also an excellent band with a lovely-voiced female lead singer & a cellist. And I got a tattoo at the fair. Unfortunately, it is a fake tattoo which will probably be gone in a few days, airbrushed and hand-painted. But I like it. (If I ever get a real tattoo, it will probably be on my stomach, and definitely not on my arm......(too much trouble thinking about, "Should I hide my tattoo today?" if it's on my arm.....)

Hey, Joy, do you like my tattoo? :D

Much love, & hopefully more pictures soon (here's a new one, the paper version of my favorite plastic-fake tattoo).

Sarah

ps This evil bunny lives in our neighbor's yard. The tree and moon pic is from last week's walk, too.

our funrun

2009-06-27T17:44:00.000-07:00

hey sarah!

i was back from fun-run. it went well and it was great. there were quite a lot of people there. my bf managed to get home at 4.30 am and we went out at 5.45 am. we started running at 6.10am. this year, i could make better time, finished at 28.23 am for 4k. my bf arrived before me about 1-2 mins. and after running, they provided us some breakfast. good fun seeing other fellow runners.. and now time to shower and back to bed! will talk to you again soon...

cheers!

joy~

sorry that the photos don't come out so well. i used the smaller one..

it's our ice cream day!!

2009-06-27T03:29:00.000-07:00

hey sarah -- how is your weekend going? i went half-way through saturday already and it was great. py was here this morning. her parents dropped her off at my shop and at lunch time we went out for an ice cream at carrefour. i had some random photos to share with you.

i didnt' crave for sweets or something but i craved for time spending with family, so i told my sister that we'd better get some ice cream at swensen and so i would have a chance to take heaps of pictures too.

after ice cream, we went to homepro to buy some accessories for the bathroom in our new house. there are so many shiny things in there and i took loads of pictures too..

tomorrow is funrun day and it's nearly 6 pm now and i'd better move my ass to apply for the run.. talk more soon! have a great weekend!

much love!

joy!

p.s. : call me crazy, last night i watch prison break from 6.30 pm until 6.30 am this morning and tonight will be going to bed around 1 am after the whole season 2 is watched! so wish me luck with my early morning run!!

; ) situation report

2009-06-25T17:56:00.000-07:00

Well, I feel like I haven't much to report, but that's not strictly true. Two weeks ago we drove to Puerto Nuevo in Baja California with Alf's parents and brother and brother's gf J. to eat cheap lobster, and the next weekend visited Santa Barbara wine country for his dad's birthday. His mom enjoyed the first winery.

Maybe I'll also post tales of the family drama. In the end, what is family drama for, if not to provide entertainment to others outside the family, who can only point and laugh? ;D And here is A's dad, brother & brother's gf: another winery, another mirror picture. And a bowl-shaped fountain I liked.

Here are some other random photos I wanted to show you. That first is one of me is what I usually look like and where I am to be found, mostly, these days: at the desk. Sometimes I look less scruffy...man, look at that pasty face! I really need to go play outside in the fresh air. If I find any fresh air in Los Angeles, though, it will merit a post all its own.

Ok, I have not succeeded in obtaining any worthwhile photos of me and Alf hiking, as you requested, but I did get a good pic of him the other day when we were playing around at a craft store (I wanted a big orange fake flower to put in the tiny blue-and-white china bud vase that is velcro-d to the dashboard of my car which currently contains Royal Essence Egyptian essential oil which you can't smell, but I did not end up finding a flower I liked. Instead, Alf found a monkey hat. Aw, isn't he cute?

And last I have a photo [oops, editing and accidentally deleted the cat pic...still getting the hang of eblog editing...I'll have to find it and repost] of one of the many millions of cats who now live at my (future) mother-in-law's house. There are countless generations of cats in my (future) parents-in-law's yard and indeed the whole cul-de-sac now, all descendants of one first small grey cat and, apparently, all fathered by the same big orange tiger-striped cat belonging to another neighbor, because only four out of all those millions of cats were grey; all the rest have been orange. One of the grey cats had six toes on each foot (somebody adopted him). Alf's dad looked it up online and announced that this is what's known as a Hemingway Cat. Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of that cute kitten. But I do have this picture of what to do with an empty CPU box (there are six tiny kittens you can't see behind the mama).

Okay Joy, much love to you, too. Please have a beautiful weekend, yourself......I promise to post again, with some better stories and some pictures of wine country, and not wait so long this time!!! I can't wait to see more pictures of Py and your morning runs! and whatever else you're up to......
: )
Sarah

saturday at home

2009-06-14T01:10:00.000-07:00

hey sarah!

this is going to be a long post! i must warn you.. ;]

on saturday morning, i woke up at 6.30 am and got changed to running outfit. i like running along the hilly road in the village when i am at my parents'. but this week, py wanted to join me too. she put on ther running shoes and followed me. how could i run with her tagging along. so, i let her biked and jogged after her.

we left home with dad's 2 dogs, tarn and dam, following us along. we went along the sunshine filled-road slowly. with eddy in one hand, i had to help py balance on her bike and stopped here when she was heading on the roadside.

we stopped by to greet some people we knew along the way and we visited auntie and uncles along the way. i took some pictures of us and flowers at my auntie's garden..

when the sun started to shine stronger and py started to get hungry, we headed back home. when i stop to take some pictures of flowers or trees, she said "i want to take pictures of this and that too, auntie joei". afraid that she would drop eddy, i had to grab the string tight. i couldn't say no when she wanted to take pictures with my big camera. who knows she might use photography as one of her passions when she becomes a teenager. so i had to let her use eddy but i had to stay close to her..

she peeked through the viewfinder as i did but didn't know what it was for and then blindly clicked the shutter.. and this one was taken by her..

after we got home, py had her breakfast and i went to see one of my 9 month-nephew "dome" and brought him to my house to play with py and took some picutres of him and py. he was not so smiley so i had to tease him to smile.

and this is us together, exploring auntie's flower garden.

after breakfast, my sister and i brought py to visit another niece "tienpae". every time when i went to see my parents, i went to see tienpae too. this time, i left it too long from last time. she didn't let me get near her or play with her. but when i held my camera and snapped some photos of her, she looked stright to it and posed a happy face..

i like to bring them out to play in the dewy green grass in the soft morning sunray. the pictures come out nicer and clearer when they are in the sunshine.

(tienpae, her mommy and py)

in this picture, py was trying to hug tienpae but tienpae was heavier and bigger than py (tienpae is younger.), so they fell flat onto the grass. tienpae was stunned for what happened to her but she didn't cry and still held tight a piece of bread in her hand.. we let py play there for a while and then brought her back home when the sun started to beam stronger.. and this is some flowers i took when roaming around the village with py..

i wish you and Alf have a beautiful weekend!

much love!

joy~

another day in June : )

2009-06-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

hi Joy!

What a sweet picture of your sister and your niece Py ! So cute! I love the way you captured the moment & their faces. You take such great pictures! I can't wait to see the photos you take visiting your parents with your trusty Eddy (who is Edward Newton??).

(The name Py reminds me of a film from New Zealand called Whalerider. The main character is a young woman named Py. Have you seen it or heard of it? It's about her family and her Maori traditions which involve whales...and how her talents compel her to fill a certain role which her father believes should be reserved for men. ...as for movies, yes I would like to send you Orlando! I checked purchase availability and I can get it easily. However, now I'm not sure what version I need to get for you: do I need to get a certain "zone" DVD or an "international" DVD for you? or can you play a VHS? please let me know!)

Those walls are great colors. I totally agree with you about that deep blue sea color !! It's gorgeous. (I would like to paint our front door a kind of blue that is popular for doors in Santa Fe, New Mexico, but Alfonso (fiance) thinks that would be weird (also we would have to persuade the landlady and she'd probably say no.)

Alf and I took a short hike in the state park near our house yesterday. The hills were covered in dry grass and dead thistles (the green season lasted only a month or so this year because we've had so little rain) which made a sound like a small stream rushing over rocks when the breeze rattled the empty stalks together. Some plants, though, can never be killed, like this yellow flowering weed. Our small yard is filled with these (it's time for me to cut the "grass"....). And there were some shiny blue beetles enjoying the wind.

I enjoyed seeing your pictures of the different walls! Red is an unusual color that can look spectacular in a home if done right. For example, my landlady showed me the new bathroom in the house she owns next door to us, which has the upper half of the walls red and the bottom half white wooden paneling which matches the white porcelain sink, tub, cabinets, etc. The effect is beautiful and standing in the room makes you feel a lot of positive energy.

"butterfly" is a beautiful song. : ) thanks ... here is a link to one of my many favorite songs (& the video is from another of my favorite movies, the version of Romeo & Juliet called R+J, "When Doves Cry":http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/When+Doves+Cry+Romeo/video/x6cxy2_quindon-tarver-when-doves-cry_music usic

Hmm...as for the PhD I used to be more determined...now I am struggling....but I will write and answer more of your post soon, when I have more time! I'm doing some editing work right now. Just proofreading some reports for the college math department. Easy work, but tedious.

Here's a pic of me and Alf recently, the evening after his PhD graduation. And that's his late grandmother, smiling in the little photo near my reflected head, haha.

I hope you have a good visit with your parents, Joy! :D Talk to you soon!

ps. Here is a happier song than "When Doves Cry." This is Beth Patterson (I knew her in high school!! need to get back in touch...) singing a traditional Irish tune, "Heather on the Moor":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgWOeOKsm5A&feature=related at a pub in New Orleans....

heading home

2009-06-12T04:01:00.000-07:00

hey sarah!

this is a quick post. i am heading to my parents in an hour. it's about 45 minutes drive from my shop and i will be back to open my shop tomorrow afternoon. i will be back with loads of pictures. hope you don't get bored with my photos, as it will be a lot!
the picture is my 9 month-pregnant sister and my niece named py. py was just back from trang visiting her grandparents. tomorrow, we are going to walk around the village taking photos and visiting my other niece.

have a glorious weekend and talk to you later..

much love
joy~

my blue and red rooms..

2009-06-10T18:54:00.000-07:00

hey sarah,

wow! what a long "things about me", i love to read them. you are such an open and happy person. i don't find many people open up much lately. i am very open too, but to the ones who do the same. i am glad that i've found you and/or you've found me. ;] i am so happy that you love this blog. i love it too!! it's like we have someone to talk to and share each day, apart from our loved ones at home.. (hey sorry for my typing that i don't type in capital letters. i feel that it looks casual and relaxing this way.)

i like dancing too but never take a class or do professional dance. oh! i did take one class when i was in university. i took it as a selective subject but i was kind of hopeless about this thing! you are gifted in many creative ways apart from writing. (and you should pursue that!)
i understand when you said you listen to "hanging by the moment" over and over again, coz i do the same sometimes.. (actaully many times!). and same as "butterly" and you can watch and listen it here.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbErAYk3Imc and i want to get up and dance listening to this song. ;]
you talked about wedding, when are you going to get married?? i am thrilled to see your wedding photos now.. though, i don't want one but i am happy for the people who find the one for themselves.. you must be very gorgeous in your wedding dress..
i'm sorry for the lost of your cat, she must be very special. i am a dog person but don't hate cats. i think cats are too quiet and "miew miew" when they are hungry. i like dogs (though one of my friends said they are stupid) bc they are always cheerful to see you when you get home from work. always excited seeing you.
wow!! you have a degree in Liberal Arts! me too! but in the university i attended it's called "humanities and social science" but it is the same as liberal arts, it depends on each university what they want to call the faculties. i majored in english and learned a lot about literatures (but i think i give all back to my teachers now!).. this is why i crave in old movies, novels, characters in the movies and novels too much.. learning literatures then was not fun at all bc it took time and patience to understand them and my english was at level 1 then. but looking back now, i am glad for what i learned then. i love that my teachers looked for old classic novels and movies to teach us.. i learned "sense and sensibility" too.. i try to get back to read jane austen's now but still fail to make much of progress!
and you are trying to finishing a PhD! wow!! you are more determined than i am.. i don't want to study a master degree. i like to learn new things and i read a lot but i do it on my own. i see that there are some subjects that i don't like to learn but i have to if i study in universtity or studying master degree.. i think (for me) life is too short and if i further master degree, i would waste my time and i would hate myself for wasting time, instead of travelling.. ;] so i think, i'd do it in my own way.
you like orange? i must say i like different colors for different things. most of my fave are bright colors; red, yellow, orange, blue, green.. but when picking up colors for walls, it turns out blue all the time! and these are some photos that i can find in my computer.

the blue internet room which my bf just painted for me 2 months ago.

one of the wall in my bed room. it was red before but now it's light blue. i am thinking to turn it into red again but i don't have much time to do it now. maybe in october.

my room in my dad's new house. he didn't like the color. he said it was too bright and no one painted this color in thailand. i said i love it and i wanted this color. he ignored me and started to painted other rooms with the color he picked. we always have stupid fights about the color on my bed room wall. when he finished with painting on other rooms he asked me again. "what color do you want in your room? i still said "blue".. every single time i said blue. finally he gave in and told me to buy the color and he painted it for me 2 weeks ago!! i love it! it's deep blue sea..

and this one is light blue in my room at the shop. my bf painted for me when i was away. i didn' t like the color at first but after getting used to it.. i love it.. (not the same as above, i fell in love when i first see it.)

anyway, yesterday after creating our blog, i went around town looking for something to eat with my sister, i brought my camera with me too.. i did it all the time before and stopped a while and i started to do it again now so i will have something to post in our blog. i can write more with photos attached on the blog.. hey, forget to tell you, my camera has a name too. it's eddy! i like edward newton so much and so i named my camera after him..

aww! it's a good write.. i must get back to work now and talk to you again later.. ;]

p.s.: yes, i love to you to send me "orlando", i love to watch it. it's in 1992 and i am sure that i can't find it here.. but i don't want to bother you on this.., if it won't bother you, please please please.. i want to watch it.. ;]

Very happy to meet you, Joy! : )

2009-06-10T14:23:00.000-07:00

This is a big moment for me: my first-ever blog post (thank you, Joy, for making this moment a reality ;D haha). I hope someday I'll be able to visit you in Thailand, but until then, this shared-blog idea of yours will take the place of traveling and I am really looking forward to getting to know you better as our site evolves! About me...um...I might be one of those types who think too much....while time goes by, the house does not get cleaned, I do not succeed in finding a better job, my poems do not get published, etc. But every once in a while, my thoughts become reality, and then it's all worth it, right, Joy? ;D ok, here goes....

I am clumsy too. On the other hand, I have very quick reflexes. My parents put me in a dance class when I was 3 years old because I was so uncoordinated (born 2 months early, like many preemies I had trouble developing motor coordination: there is a Super 8 home movie of me trying to run at about age 2 or 3 & I look like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz movie). However, I spent the next 14 years dedicated to becoming a professional ballet dancer, and in fact I wasn't that bad when I gave up much to my college-English-teacher-parents' relief.
I would secretly still like to be a dancer. I dream of learning choreography.
I studied flute starting at age 10 and gave up after 2 years of being a college flute major. I was even less bad at flute than at ballet, but it took too much energy, I hated my college music program, and I doubted I could make a living at it.

At age 8 I wrote my first poems and have always secretly (or not-so-secretly) believed that I am a writer. It is still surprising to me that I have not yet learned how to make a living as a writer. Now I have a degree in English, a degree in "Liberal Arts," and am trying to finish my PhD in English Lit. I'm not good at teaching though so I'm not always sure what the point of that is anymore. Stupid existential crisis. I would teach anyway because there are bills to pay but I have a deep and abiding horror of becoming one of the many teaching zombies I have seen in my life. I'm also afraid that my next boss will be like my last one, and will also treat me as if I am supposed to be her mindless puppet presenting the students with her own personal writing-class equivalent of coloring-books in which they have only to stay inside the lines. Learning writing is about learning to think, or it is worth nothing. As you can see, I am also, um..."insubordinate."
My fiance just walked in and told me that one of his Math Department colleagues has got one of those $20 ministerial licenses and has offered to officiate at our wedding. This is a very funny idea. I really like the guy, but fear having the entire thing turn into a farce (which would be just fine with fiance, who is terrified of serious things...I think it's a control issue).

I like lifehouse a lot too! Once I listened to "Hanging By a Moment" over and over until it was ridiculous. Not sure if I know the song "butterfly" so I'm gonna have to look it up!

Fiance and I rent a small 100-year-old former summer cottage in kind of a ghetto neighborhood, and at the moment every time we wash the dishes it floods the back porch. Our landlady never fixes anything so fiance is looking for a pipe wrench. However, there is no reason we would own a pipe wrench, that I know of. It is going to be my job to talk to the landlady about it when fiance gives up trying to fix it himself. Then she will give me some long rambling story about nothing and the sink will still not be fixed. That's how it goes. It's kind of fun watching the porch flood while washing dishes, but the semi-clogged pipes are beginning to smell a bit.

Some of my favorite movies are Volver with Salma Hayek, Harold and Maude ("cult classic" from 1970s with music by Cat Stevens), Shakespeare in Love and the version of Romeo and Juliet by Baz Luhrman, R+J.

Some of my favorite novel-type books are The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, Blindness by Jose Saramago, As I Lay Dying by Faulkner, The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston and A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (especially funny to anyone born and raised in south Louisiana).

I am a coffee nut and my drink is a doppio espresso macchiato. I also like tasting wines. My favorite wine ever is a "honey wine" I tasted once at the Albuquerque Wine Festival in New Mexico.

I try to be good company, but many people think I'm too quiet. I really enjoy spontaneity but am always making plans.

My fiance loves roller coasters, but they make me feel like I am going to die. I would rather just jump in the ocean. Right now I dream about the ocean (literally) more often than I swim in it, so I should change that.

I love people who are intelligent, independent in thought and action, kind, caring, passionate, goofy, humorous, and who love life.

All my boyfriends have been either science or math or computer geeks, musicians, or something else but really into martial arts. I didn't plan that, but looking back, it's true.

I still miss my 17-year-old cat who died last year. She had a great personality. Now that she is gone, there is no one in charge of our household. The hummingbirds are trying, but when they fly inside the house, they get confused and have to be chased out again for their own good.

The color orange always makes me feel happy.

p.s. Hey, Joy, where is "the wall painted blue and red"??! :D

Joy

2009-06-09T19:37:00.000-07:00

hello sarah,

this is exciting. it feels like i do it the first time. yeah, acutally, it's the first time with you and it's going to be fun sharing our lives together here. first this is random things about me!

my real nickname is joei but everyone in 43t calls me joy.
i have craved many passions; writing, reading, traveling, meeting like-minded people, going to new places, trying new things, reading other people's blog (they are inspirational), running, swimming, writing poems, photography etc..
i love to experiment, experience and explore life.
i am the girl who mostly follows her own heart.
i am fun, funny and goofy.
i love taking photos of anything that inspires me.
i am laidback and hate official things.
i've made a lot of mistakes and might make some more.
i am a film freak and a music lover. my fave song is "butterfly" from lifehouse.
i am clumsy.
i am bookish.
i love postcards.
i am spontaneous.
i love the wall painted blue & red.
i get drunk easily.
i love tea and wine tasting.
i love good company and i am a good one.
i cherish old memories and old dear friends.
i love trying new coffee shops.
i love "love". i love my life.
i am not perfect...this is me..

and now it's your turn, take you time and have fun..