Last Update for awhile

To all you faithful readers, I apologize, for there will be no posts for the next two weeks or so., as your faithful biographer will be abroad. It is unfortunate that no one has taken it upon themselves to document Leina as she celebrates New Year's, takes a trip to Hawaii, has the Buddhist ceremony with her parents' remains, returns to the US, gossips with Sanders, talks to Patrick and Keith and Rica and Miki and the rest on the phone, makes Japanese curry, takes care of Dom, works at the CDC, writes her theseis, and does the other fabulous things that make us so interested in her life.

For instance, today Leina didn't have to work. So what did she do? she went shopping. But she has nothing to shop for, you might say. You would be wrong. She went and bought some new shoes. They were blue. Keith also rebuffed her requests to be a guest blogger with another 'hell no' but I think that was yesterday.

Tomorrow, in her infinite kindness, Leina will drive us to San Jose airport in what will likely be pounding rain, and then drive back and go to work. Go Leina!

Over for Pizza

Leina had a crazy morning which involved meeting her friend Latrisha at the airport in order to give her a bridal shower gift. Latrisha was wearing a blanket over her head or something because of the rain and there was trouble meeting up because her phone had died. She talked to Latrisha a few times and Keith all before 9:00.

Her afternoon was slightly less crazy, but then she came over to Erica and Tony's for pizza. She wore her new pink sweater which was really pink. Leina brought that up several times, though Tony didn't see what the big deal was.

After dinner the three of them smoked some apple tobacco out of Tony's xmas gift, a big Jordanian hookah, then Leina made some super weak hot cocoa and they sat in front of the fire and Leina was given a hard time about how specific yet vague her critera are when it comes to the opposite sex.

Fourth-to-Last-Day of 2005

At work today, Tony consulted with her regarding the cheapsest way to subscribe to Sunset magazine. Leina didn't know off hand so she called him from home and it turns out that one can get it for a few dollars cheaper if he/she gets it online from one of those wholesalers.

Leina and Sanders had an interesting day together. They were at work together and then they went to Stonestown looking for a hoodie/sportcoat combination that would look flattering on Sanders but it was too crowded. On the way home from the mall, while sipping on an Orange Julius, Leina suggested that Sanders could guest blog while Tony is abroad. Sanders said 'Hell no!' and Leina was insulted. But she soon got over it.

Leina called Erica six times today. And Erica called Leina three times. It has been quite busy, but not much busier than a normal day. This evening, she had coffee with Joe at Tart to Tart, but actually she had hot chocolate and some chocolate hazelnut coffee cake which sounded a lot better than it tasted. Leina didn't really want to eat anything but Joe asked if she wanted to eat anything so she impulsively ordered that. Joe tasted it and agreed that the chocolate hazelnut coffee cake was a good idea, but poorly executed by the chef. Too dry and too sweet. Leina asked Joe to guest blog on this site and Joe was super excited to! But he still hasn't told Tony whether or not he has the time or the creativity to take on the monumentous task of semi-accurately documenting Leina's life.

still working

Leina had a day that to the untrained eye might be considered boring, but to a discerning individual, was wrought with excitement. She got up and her auntie and cousin and nephew came over, and they visited. She pounded out a few pages of her thesis. And she watched some TV. And she got a Christmas present from Will, which was not what she expected, it was a pink sweater. Leina thought she would get peppermint ice cream because he always gets her peppermint ice cream. Leina loves peppermint ice cream but not the stuff from Mitchell's, which, though it has great ice cream, in Leina's opinion, has inferior peppermint ice cream to Dreyers.

Working on Christmas

Tony and Erica slept over at Leina's house last night, and woke up bright and early on Christmas morning. It wasn't actually bright or early, with lots of fog and scattered showers, and Erica was super tired and grumpy and Leina wasn't particularly sprightly, either.

After about half an hour of sitting around grumpily, Tony and Erica bid a tearful adieu to Leina and went to spend the holidays with their parents. Leina spent much of the day working on her thesis or procrastinating on doing her thesis. It was semi-productive. She spent almost an hour on the phone with Ben, who was driving across the state of New York.

This evening, she carefully packed up her parents in Tupperware and bubble wrap in preparation for the upcoming trip to Hawaii to lay them to rest.

A request

I am under the impression that there are a few people who read this blog, some even regularly. However, I regret to inform you that this blog will go on hiatus from December 30-January 15. Your humble narrator, spinner of yarns and faithful documentarian, will be out of the country and unable to fulfill my duties. However, for the public good, for the benefit of mankind, I am hoping that this blog will continue uninterrupted. Does anyone want to be a guest blogger for two weeks?

It is not difficult; I will show you how to do it. You should have at least a passing acquaintance with Leina. On a daily basis, write what Leina is up to, or just make stuff up if you don't know what she's doing. If you can't do it daily but can do it occasionally, that's okay. However, operate under the idea that future generations will thank you for faithfully documenting the minutiae of her life.

p.s. blogger's spell check doesn't contain the words 'blog' or 'blogger.'

Xmas Eve

I don't know what Leina did this afternoon or morning, but around 6:00 she pulled up to Erica's parents house to have christmas eve dinner with Erica's family and mine. Leina brought some tofu salad which, despite the fact that eyebrows were raised when she announced she was making it, was quite good and apprecaited by all. She spent some time eating dinner with us, learning about my mother's Italian-American holiday traditions, making conversation with Erica's mom, her cousin Paul, and my father, and eating crabs and calamari spaghetti and her salad and a potato gratin and a different salad with Point Reyes blue cheese and walnuts and pears and then she had a little dessert which was a chocolate hazelnut tart and some cookies. We toasted our departed families, and it seemed like Leina's night was over, and she was ready to go, but then I called her out in front of everyone and wouldn't let her go because we had some gifts to exchange. So Leina had to sit and watch and act amused while we did our family gift exchange and finally, after we were finished and she got a Zagat's from Erica's mom, she was able to slip out and go home.

On the phone

So I'm not too sure what Leina actually did today--I was happy to hear that she was working this morning, getting that thesis done, but then I found out it was that kind of working where you get paid, not where you get your degree. I hear she spent a lot of time waiting for her auntie to come over for a lunch in her honor, then she ate the lunch. Finally, I heard that she spent/is spending a lot of time on the phone with my wife, who has yet to give me the down low on her day. So you eager readers will need to wait until a later date for more updates.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and an extra napkin was purchased for Leina (who makes lucky number 13 at dinner!). Now she has to come to Christmas Eve dinner with us. She pretends that she's ambivalent about coming, but secretly she's happy that she's so loved by us.

Picture day!

Today was an exciting day for Leina. She went to the DMV to get her new drivers' license. So she figured out what to wear (not something too common because she didn't want to get pulled over or carded and have the police officer or bouncer say that she was wearing the same shirt that she had in the picture) and did her hair a little bit so she could look older than 9.

She had her appointment but she still had to wait a little bit. Finally it was her turn and the woman took her form and sent her over to the picture taking person. The woman told her to stand in front of the background, and she said, ready? Okay, one... twothree! and the picture was taken and it wasn't too good of one. So ask Leina if you see her how her photo was.

No, Really, this is a picture from her 27th birthday.

My lovely wife dug up this photo from our archives. It shows our protagonist along with her cousin, and Jun, her husband. Noriko is unhappy that Jun has not provided her with an apartment that can hold more toys. Can't you tell? Yuto is hidden behind Leina.

Leina revealed!

You may be curious about who this mystery lady is. I hereby am giving you, my faithful readers, a glimpse at the one, the only, Leina. Sadly, this is the only photo I could find of her on my hard drive. It is luckily a photo where not only do you get your heroine in an ill-fitting dress, you get me, from the mouth down, and my sister, from the nose down. Yes, Leina was the maid of honor at our wedding. And she even wore that fuscia dress two sizes too big without complaining.

Don't you worry, however, for she'll look much better in her driver's license photo, which will be taken tomorrow. 

Early Christmas

So tonight Leina is celebrating early Christmas. I have no new news from her today, but let me speculate what is going down. Why early Christmas? Well, she has an uncle, who shall remain anonymous, who can't be around for real Christmas. I should rephrase that, won't be around for real Christmas. He is going to hang out with some friends in L.A. or S.D. or S.B. or somewhere on Christmas day, so Leina's family has so generously decided to have an early Christmas for it.

Leina baked a cake, and it was peppermint. She used the Kitchenaid she borrowed from her Auntie. And she used the brand new, multi-colored, Crate and Barrel measuring cups that Erica gave her yesterday to bake it (like that hyperlink? you can see her exact present)!

They had a nice meal with turkey and some sushi and Japanese curry and then they gave the little babies a lot of cash and a few toys because Noriko's apartment is too small to fit any more toys. They sat around telling some stories, and then they went home. There was much oohing and aahing about how big Yuto has gotten in the past few weeks. Then Leina went home and called Erica on the way to give the update. She's thinking about coming into Berkeley tomorrow morning early so Tony can teach her how to drive a stick, but she probably won't make it.

Day Three

Leina seems pretty good. She's decided she's actually going to write her thesis so that she can get her MSW (that's Masters of Social Work for the layman) in time for May graduation, which means that she's got to finish it by February. Which means she's got to get crackin'.

So she was back in work this morning, lamenting that she didn't have a cake for Nestor's birthday, which is around this time, not that he's spending much time at the office. It sounds like it was a typically productive day at the office, filling in spreadsheets and gossiping.

For lunch, she had a tuna fish sandwich but there were too many red onions that were giving her bad breath so she didn't finish it and bought some mentos.

She then went back to Redwood City to visit Miki and her mom, who is doing well. And I have been informed that Miki's mom had an aneurysm, not a tumor. Sorry to incorrectly write the latter in my previous post. Something I failed to mention, however, is that Leina ordered a big latte coffee of some sort at the hospital and she hated it and all the cream and caffeine made her nauseous. She was lucky that it didn't keep her up all night, in this narrator's humble opinion.

So for some reason she was waiting for a parking space at the hospital (perhaps there was a Christmas party and all the spots were taken), and while doing so she called Tony, who was riding BART into the city. Tony was surprised to receive a call while in the bowels of the city, and he asked Leina if the whole San Francisco part of BART got service. Leina said it did, and Tony was in the middle of telling her the story of this movie called Dreamer or something of the sort with Dakota Fanning and Kirk Douglas when wouldn't you know it, the phone died because Leina was dead wrong, you can only get reception from Embarcadero through Civic Center. When Tony called her back from 24th and Mission once he was above ground, she gasped, 'Are you going to put that in the blog?!' Damn right I am.

Later, Leina visited Tony and the Turners and ate some dessert, some leftover trifle from the party that she had arrived so late to on Sunday. I've been informed that she didn't actually eat the dessert, but she should have. They talked and looked at travel magazines and were generally normal and then Leina had to be talked out of giving Tony and Erica a ride back to Berkeley, so she finally relented and just dropped them off at the BART stop on her way home. Leina then went home and watched TV for awhile before going to bed.

Monday's addenda

I forgot to mention that Leina's morning was fairly exciting. First, she discovered the existence of this blog. Who wouldn't be impressed to have their own biographer!? And at such a young age and with no real accomplishments to date! So she also told her sister about it. And she went to work and talked to Sanders about how his brow was sweaty at the party the day before but it was really hot in the party and he was standing directly under the halogen chandelier so it was excusable. And work was pretty good but same old same old.

And she left a message on Tony's machine that sounded pretty excited except that he was working and extracting human cells from their culture in the lab and couldn't take her call. So he called her back a few hours later she wasn't there and never returned his call. But that was okay because he knew she still loved him.

Going South

Today is not completed yet, but for those interested in what Leina might be up to at this moment, I believe she has gone to Mountain View or Redwood City or one of those ridiculously named cities south of San Francisco to visit with/support her friend Miki, whose mom is sick with a tumor and I think she is having brain surgery today. So we all hope that Miki's mom is okay, and thank Leina for being a supportive friend and spending some time with Miki during a really stressful time.

That is a theme you will notice with this blog. Leina is super supportive and always doing nice things for other people. Even if they don't deserve it (though Miki definitely deserves it).

And for breakfast she probably had shredded wheat and some melon.

A long day

Today Leina got up and was ti-red (that's tired but said super emphatically, stressing both syllables), or so I presume. She hauled herself to the airport where she was excited to catch her flight which was around ten am back to San Francisco. In San Francisco was a super exciting event, the Turners and Tony and Lei(n)a party, where she'd have the opportunity to hobnob with various exciting older people who were moderately important or interesting in one way or another. She was tired, but ready to schmooze.

Then the bad news began. Her flight was cancelled. and then delayed. and delayed. There was no great explanation she ever got (aside from some crazy weather in San Francisco--thunder that Tony thought was an earthquake), and it was tragic--she waited and waited in the airport, wanting to sleep but scared one of those other air travelers was going to take her bag. She talked to Erica a few times. She left a message on Nicole's voicemail. She tried to read. She looked out the window at the planes.

Finally, she got on the plane and it was a boring flight here. She ordered sprite or seven up and ate the pretzels they gave her but wished they were peanuts instead. No bother, there was going to be hella food at the party. She got home at about 5:00 pm, which was just when the party itself was ending! Her cousin picked her up at the airport and Leina got her car at Noriko's place, then drove over to the Turners' place. She got lucky for the first time that day and found a good parking spot.

Then she went inside, where the party was almost over but she was greeted like a rock star, getting adulation and greetings from the few stragglers, who included the hosts, of course, as well as Joe, Kristin (Christine's co-worker), as well as Auntie Diana and family. She ate food, and Tony was kind enough to save some of the gravlax for her. She went back to the buffet a total of five times! There were cookies and foccacia, and other delectibles. But she held off on the liquor because she had taken a pepsid AC only just before arriving and didn't want to glow.

Tony convinced her to have a drink after awhile, and they shared some Kendall Jackson Chardonnay. She drank it out of a paper cup, though, because they were all cleaning up. Leina was clearly tired, but showed spurts of her gregarious self. She participated in the general conversation but was bummed she never met the woman in the green felt who had invited herself into the party. She wasn't alone, Tony hadn't noticed her either.

Finally, it was time to go home. Erica wanted her to take Joe home but she was too tired so she didn't and she and Tony did instead. She arrived home, and went to bed, only to be surprised the next morning that Tony indeed had blogged about her life!