anberlin-impossible

i just started listening to the radio again yesterday. wow, have I missed out on music. man. i miss listening to rock/emo music. haha. i basically stopped (except for one occasional night once every dozen blue moons) during college because i felt it was making me too emo, and that's just not attractive.

but, eh. can't help it. (:

currently loving anberlin-impossible.

The process of trying

Alright. I've come to a decision. It was tough. But it has to be done.

After the MCATs, I am euthanizing my basil plant. Putting down. Bringing to an end. Putting into tomato sauce.

Despite my pride in harboring stationary living creatures, this truly has gone on for too long. I've neglected it. Ignored it. Then come running back, watering it with... well ... water. It's overrun its pot, too freakishly tall because I've managed to forget to trim it every time it branches, which, by the way, has happened more than 37 times. (haha. whoops.)

Now, I'll have to find a bigger pot and new peat and moss for my orchid plant if I don't want it to run away too. It's definitely in the process of trying.

gotta keep moving.

dang.

taking the mcats. in september.

i don't know what i'm doing with myself.

gotta keep moving...

the whole night in 4 in gold heels

wow. this past weekend has been nuts.

first we finished classes. so that was rejuvenating. but now i'm sorta stressed because of final papers and exams. heh.

but john and i made sticky buns and cinnamon buns and a keylime cheesecake AND jenny and john and i made a quick cheesecake brownie for chang's birthday. whew.

and then there was dillo day (saturday). regina spektor and nelly came. so of course i went to those concerts. it was awesome. so awesome. loved dillo day. lots of fun in the sun.

then sunday was asian formal. and that was mad fun. we crazily decided to have a potluck dinner right before the formal because the formal was only going to serve dessert. funnily, none of the girls came. haha. (except vania. who came with john. and got ready here. with john. so she doesn't count) because they were all last minute with getting ready. hilars right?

but we went to hotel 71 which was used for one of the scenes of bruce wayne's penthouse. so that was pretty cool and awesome. :D i have a lot of pictures of that up on facebook. it was lots of fun. i got to wear a new dress and i thought it was overall an awesome night with good friends and greg. (:

hopefully will get pictures up and talk about everything more in depth. after finals. though.

i actually don't believe that i got through the whole night in my 4 in gold heels. and i only took them off for like ten minutes... dang.

mini crepe cake share

i tried to make pastry creme this morning. it didn't turn out too wonderfully.

well. let's rewind. two days ago, i made crepe batter and made a few crepes for breakfast with two girls, but well. still ended up with a lot of batter. at first i wasn't too concerned because i was having friends over for dinner too and thought i'd make crepes for them. but two of the three girls who came over brought cookies, so we had cookies for dessert instead.

so yesterday, i was worried about the crepe batter going bad so i made the rest of the batter into mini crepes. (used a 6" instead of my 9") I have about nine mini crepes (would have had 12 but i ate three :P) and thought i'd make a crepe cake. so after looking up some recipes, i decided to try making the filling this morning.

man. it was kinda hard. i think i didn't add enough milk the first time around (i hate washing measuring instruments so i just pretend to eye it... heh) and so it sorta seized up really quickly while it was supposed to "boil" and it was hecka lumpy. super lumpy. sigh. i was going to leave it as it was, but decided to look up some more specific "how to"s instead of just relying on the recipe directions. dude. there is a youtube video of a pastry chef teacher doing everything that took me an hour to do in just 8 minutes. sigh.

then i tasted it, and phew. it was disgusting. it tasted like raw flour with milk. so i figured i had to cook it some more. i added more milk and took out my whisk and beat the crap out of it while heating it. i furiously stirred it for seriously 20 minutes straight. so this time, it wasn't lumpy. but seriously. still tastes funny. although there is less of the raw flour-ness. it's sitting in my fridge now waiting to cool. i think i'll slice up some bananas and incorporate it into the crepe cake when i assemble it.

anyway. the bright moment of the morning was that I didn't want to make the whole batch of pastry creme because well.. i only have 9 mini crepes to coat, so i made just half the batter. and so i was left with half an egg. heh. so i made french toast sticks with it! woot! just added some milk and cinnamon and sugar.

t'was yummy!



i'm going to spend the weekend at greg's place so i can play with their new dog. i think i'll bring the mini crepe cake to share with them since i can't eat it all.

delicious giant golden mushrooms

made oatmeal pancakes with chocolate chips for brunch today with chang and jenny. too bad they weren't in the picture with me. the oatmeal pancakes were pretty tasty though. used smitten kitchen's recipe.

(please note the overripe banana begging to be used in something...)

Visited the lakeside with Greg this last weekend. We look pretty happy, too bad I'm sporting a double chin. eh. oh well. we had fun playing the ukulele there. OH! Greg bought me a ukulele, it's pretty cute and petite and really easy to play (lots easier than guitar because the strings are easier on your fingers than the guitar metal strings). i can play all the four chord songs. :P and i know the first three chords to "a whole new world" too bad you need like... at least six more chords to play the whole song right... my repertoire of songs is pretty limited, just "i'm yours", the song from music and lyrics and i'm trying to perfect the four chords for "hey soul sister" which actually are the same chords as the ones for "don't stop believing". ukulele + greg + lake side + camera = fun + tired fingers + too many pictures...




Also made some rum cake with Jenny. They tasted so much like alcohol though! lots more than I had expected, and I definitely let the rum boil for a long time to try to take away the alcoholic-ness of the syrup. Anyway, ended up not using all the syrup and just eating the cake as it was. It was pretty tasty. Used the mini bundt pans that Greg got me a long time ago. I didn't expect the cake to rise this much (for some strange reason) and well they look like giant mushrooms. Delicious giant golden mushrooms.

spend some

hah. it's been a while. but i've been browsing online sites. and i want to get a swimsuit!

i <3 anthropologie. i wish i was making money so i could actually spend some. :P

good to go.

3 As and 1 A-.

i am finally good to go.

for you i would change the world

... but i cannot change myself.

haha. i love this. hilariously dramatic. by yours truly.

as much as you thought you did

i was thinking last quarter, while i was chatting with my sister, that there is a friend i have whom i am fond of, but i realize that i am friends with her because she thinks like my mother, really traditionally, family-oriented. and somehow i feel that i might gain something from talking to her so i can convince her that not everything should be forced into that traditional view, because that traditional view isn't the only "right" option out there.

but then it makes me realize how much i don't like her.

sad huh? when you realize you actually don't like your best friend as much as you thought you did.

(i have to update this thing. i haven't been penned up all my life this last quarter. just some of it. and the rest of the time. i got out pretty good.)

lop off

yay! my hell weeks are finally over. two midterms, two presentations, then two more midterms are now over! and the good news? i don't think i did too shabbily. first midterm i got 90, second midterm i got 98. and according to my ta from endo, i'm not doing too bad with the first half of grading!

anyway. after endo, john and i endeavored to make the most ultimate cheesecake. okay maybe not most ultimate. but pretty ultimate. :P cappuccino fudge cheesecake. recipe is here.

we actually split it into three. because john didn't want to use a spring form, and i ended up really liking the idea of putting it into three 1 inch cake pans (HAHA! I got to take one home! woot!) however, i'd really like to go out and buy a springform and try it out! i don't think the cheesecake layer came out thick enough, although the ganache layer was definitely thick. :P i wish i knew how to reduce the sour cream layer better, it seems so... drippy. i really liked it thick the one time i had it.



Anyway. I also got bored and decided to braid a giant headband braid starting upside down from my left ear. the first two and half inches don't look too great because my hair doesn't like bending that way. oh well. i'm not going out with this anyway. just testing. but the rest of the braid looked nice! and then i just pinned it right above my left ear right where i started and tucked the end under the braid. i did half a french braid, half real braid, so it was easy to tuck in..


I guess you still sorta see it there, but oh well. from the front it looks fine. heh. i really have to figure out a way to hide the pins a bit better. fortunately, my hair is JUST the right length for this to work. it's going to be sad when i chop it all off again.. i think i'll do that over spring break or at the beginning of spring quarter. it's not quite long enough for me to lop off to donate again...

my name is geraldine, i'm your social worker

i think hugs are the best.

and i'm terribly bad at blogging. oh well. this is more for myself than anything..

here. have a hilarious scottish band talk about a girl named geraldine. who needs to be called mandy?

let go already

I remember having a very hard time telling opinions from facts when I was in grade school. It was so hard for me to figure that out. My mother would get so frustrated with me and demand that Annie teach me, but of course Annie would get frustrated too and would just be saying "FACTS ARE TRUE, WHY DON'T YOU GET THIS. THIS IS JUST HOW IT IS." Well, now, after some retrospective thinking, I've figured out why I grew up that way. Because my mother always stated her opinions as facts. That's how they were, no one could dispute them, everything she said was truth.

Yup, I know I'm really hung up on this "blame my mother for everything." It's not too good for me to focus so much on how she raised me. It's disrespectful. But I suppose that's what bothers me most. When I sit and think about it. I'm 21. This was the age my mother was when she got pregnant with Annie. This is the age that she chose to be a parent. And all I can think is that my mother wasn't mature enough. I'm definitely not mature enough. And from all my thinking back of how she reacted to everything we did, I feel like my mother was probably years less mature than I am now.

I know that's a huge thing to say. But honestly, I think it's true. And I realize that probably makes me immature to not have let go of all of this already.

sweet pea

how old is this baby? man.

Sweet pea
Apple of my eye
Don't know when and I don't know why
You're the only reason I keep on coming home

Sweet pea
What's all this about
Don't get your way all you do is fuss and pout
You're the only reason I keep on coming home

I like the Rock of Gibraltar
I always seem to falter
And the words just get in the way
Oh I know I'm gonna crumble
I'm trying to stay humble
But I never think before I say

Sweet pea
Keeper of my soul
I know sometimes I'm out of control
You're the only reason I keep on coming
You're the only reason I keep on coming yeah
You're the only reason I keep on coming home

euthanasia for depression patients

I was reading blogs of the survivors of family members who have committed suicide. I've recently forgotten how horrible it must be for those people. When studying psychology, it's pretty easy to get lost in the numbers and forget there is a family back home mourning.

It got me thinking, though, reading from those people's views. I wish people wouldn't view suicide so negatively. It is tragic, definitely. But sometimes I feel some families place the guilt on themselves. It is sort of like a family whose parent developed cancer and died. Depression is a long term illness, it doesn't just set upon a person and cause superficial pain. It rewires your brain, makes you think differently, changes the chemical balance of different integral neural transmitters and it HURTS. There are a lot of ways to develop depression, just like there are a lot of ways to abuse your body and develop cancer. And there are times where you are just genetically predisposed to it, and you'll get it no matter what great of a life you lead—both cancer or depression.

Also, it is completely possible that even through strenuous therapies and heavy drug dosing, that a person can't be cured of their depression. Or that they might be okay, in remission, and then have the depression suddenly come back full throttle. It's a tough disease to manage.

For the most part, I think euthanasia is still viewed more positively than suicide. I would never want anyone to commit suicide and "give up", but they're not "giving up"—that's too light of a term for it. They have to battle feeling worthless, and in pain, even though it's neurological and there is no actual physical affliction, they still feel actual physical pain.

I always hear families of cancer victims say "at least they are no longer in pain" and that's what families of depression victims should come to realize too.

i dislike my mother's way of thinking.

i remember being so frustrated in highschool that my conversations with my mother were so mundane. for the most part, she usually let her emotions decide how she felt about situations and never really had any good reasons for why she would decide her view was the correct view. (i.e. tiger woods having an affair is bad, because that's a bad thing to do, not.. having an affair completely invalidates the purpose of marriage and he screwed up his family-- although this would be a very basic example.)

but it also bothered me that i couldn't have intelligent conversation with her and reason/philosophize on different topics with her simply because she didn't think the same way we did. and another thing, my parents are so single-minded. almost like narrow minded, they only think in one purpose- get all their girls into med school and make them all doctors. so whenever i talked about anything unrelated, they'd pretty much shut me down and tell me not to think about things like that.

seriously? gah. so frustrating. i remember whining to my sister about how i can't have intelligent conversation very much, and she countered that with "well you can't have intelligent conversation ALL THE TIME". but the point was, i wasn't getting much intellectual growth from my parents, and it bored me.

but let's think about it a different way. maybe, my parents just think differently from me. so i should learn the way they think, because knowledge, any knowledge is good for people. so i figured though, i can pretty much go through any conversation and tell you exactly what they would say.

so that makes pretty boring conversation right? unless you have new information, everything is boring? well guess what, that's what my family is made up of now. with the exception of the talks i have with annie, and occasionally conversations i have with my father, in which he simplifies way too much, about architecture, that's all my family thrives on during conversation. NEWS.

so this is another infuriating thing about my other sister. oh man. she loves giving "shock" news. i call it "shock" news, because it isn't really shocking, she's just giving us "shocks" because she wants to illicit a certain emotion in us. (typically pity).

example: one time, we were talking about a topic in which she couldn't exactly jump in on, (which is dumb, she's gone to northwestern, she's pretty much taken all the classes i've taken, so she should have already been pushed to think "outside the box" whatever that means anymore) and so she'll make a new topic and divert the conversation COMPLETELY out of the sphere it used to be in. "martin's patient died."

oh em gee girl. you want me to cry for you now? Okay. so in reality, of course, it is terrible that martin's patient died. but seriously. this girl is just trying to put the spot light on her and illicit some sort of pity for martin, and indirectly then her.

i hate "shock" news conversations. they're so ridiculous. i never respond anymore when michelle tells me ridiculous things like that. it makes me seem harsh and cold, but really, it's not her right to just go around jerking people like that so she can feel "appreciated" for really nothing at all. my mother also did this a lot. but mainly to scare us into not doing anything dumb. she'd love telling us news stories of who got kidnapped, raped and killed. that was seriously her thing. she'd scour the news for any sort of thing like that. killings were good desserts ("oh they were lucky they didn't get raped") but rapes were her main course. (yes this metaphor is indeed because she'd tell us these stories during dinner.)

you can see how angry it makes me. she wanted us to live our lives completely sheltered by her train of thoughts. so it came to the point that i just yelled at her "you think the news is going to tell stories of girls who walk to school/the store/the mall and don't get kidnapped/raped/or killed?"

i dislike my mother's way of thinking.

sync your heartbeat to mine

you know it's bad when i'm getting my daily social interaction when i say hello to my doorman.

facebook actually makes me feel a lot more disconnected.

i've been considering closing my facebook. for like. the last five minutes. haha. well i guess, i don't like how i feel so disconnected. so many people are having intimate conversation with their friends, and although it's a great way to stalk people and "kinda" figure out what's going on in their lives, it makes me sad that i can't talk to them like that. or that i wouldn't have the opportunity.

social development. i built up relationships through highschool that i would say are still okay in strength. i can't reach eric shum anymore. although at least i can say that i tried. i can still talk to some people on and off and still feel like i'm friends with them even though i sometimes go 6 or more months without really talking to them. but then again there are those like eric shum whom i just never really know if they are still around...

on a different note, love songs don't mean anything to me anymore. i mean. sometimes they can be pretty melodic and make me bounce up and down a bit. but i never get that wide-eyed feeling of warm fuzzies imagining what that kind of relationship is about. i suppose i'm pretty settled and happy with my relationships and because i know the "real deal" those images of first sights and crap just sorta make me barf a little. haha. wow. i'm so cynical and it's not like i was dumped or anything. i suppose i'm feeling a bit numb inside. i still have intimate conversations, but it's a bit limited to just one person. i suppose it shouldn't be so bad that i can trust my feelings and dreams to not be ridiculed by *just* one person. at least i have one person. but somehow i feel like i should have more friends than that.

you know it's bad when i'm getting my daily social interaction when i say hello to my doorman.

i already started the count down

Went to Bob Chinn's for dinner. It is delicious. This is the only picture I have with all of us (sorta) in it. Martin, Michelle, Mom, Dad and me.


Who needs pictures of people when you could have pictures of these? Porterhouse 32 oz steak. Delicious. Too bad, we ate very little of it, because...


... the crab was too delicious looking to reach over...


Yup.. we got way too much food.

And after the dinner, we headed back to Evanston for some cake and raspberry beer.


I am trying really hard not to look pooped and unamused by the picture taking. I wish I didn't seem so unappreciative, but I guess I was stressed because I have midterms coming up and I really wished my mother wasn't trying to stay here indefinitely. She told Michelle she wasn't going to leave. (SIGH! THEY TOLD ME FEB 6th! I ALREADY STARTED THE COUNT DOWN.)

half french braid

I have tons of more posts regarding my birthday shenanigans to come, but for now I thought I'd show off that I have been getting into semi braiding my hair. I know, it's kinda late in the game, and I have already tried this, but now I'm legitly doing french braids, and half french braids, and dutch braids, and eventually I will try the fish tail...

So, for now, have proof of my half french braid accomplishment.

I will wholly and completely admit that I was also driven to try these kinds of braids after watching Ever After. Oh man, she had beautiful thick braids to wrap her hair in.

How I was surprised on my birthday

it's my birthday!

and i am finally 21. woot. (i guess. more on that later.)

I had some very sweet friends who prepared a surprise for me. It's kinda funny how they just threw it all together. Tuesday, after class, Jenny wanted to have dinner with me because she couldn't make it Thursday. So I visited her apartment and we figured out which ingredients she had that we could mix with mine.

Later that night, Jenny came over and we made pasta! With my one zucchini and her mushrooms.



We made this!

Anyway, we spent the rest of the night trying to do hw, getting distracted, and then getting frustrated that we have to search for articles with so many constraints for endocrinology. Whew. Took us seriously two hours to find two articles for us to use. After that, we took a break and cut up some fruit to eat and then we talked about sex slavery and rape. Of course we did. Haha. (Jenny was really involved in One Voice, and I saw the movie Taken over break.)

Then around 11:30, I started getting this slight headache and decided it was time for me to hit the hay since I was really pooped and I was still in the process of fixing my sleep schedule. I knew that Jenny didn't exactly have a very nice place to study because she has a roommate and she tends to end up socializing when she's at home, so I told her she could definitely stay here to study if she wanted to, or even sleep over if she felt so inclined. Then Jenny started begging me to stay up and study for another 30 minutes. I told her I wasn't interested in staying up for my birthday cuz I wasn't that excited for it. Haha. Jenny looked so dissapointed so then I asked her if she wanted me to keep studying because she felt we didn't accomplish enough tonight (that made me a little sad). And she responded "no....", then it dawned on me. "Oh right, crap, Jenny did you plan something for me?" Jenny: "nooo!...... somebody else did....." Me: "Ah! Uhm. Well I really do have a headache, so I will go to sleep, but you can just wake me up when they get here..." Jenny: "I've got permission right?" "Yeah Jenny, you have my permission..."

So I fell asleep. I slightly came back to consciousness a few times, enough to hear Jenny on the phone mentioning that I went to bed, hear the door open and close, and then, I started to here these little "thumps". It was kinda weird. Thump, Thump.... Thump thump thump. I was seriously wondering what Jenny was doing out there.

Then Jenny came to wake me up for real. And she did this by exclaiming "HE'S HERE!!" (who? rain? or my gay husband from yale?) And I go out to see this cute cake lit up with the 2 and 1 candles and a few black haired head bobbing up and down behind the counter. And then out popped Barbara, Alan, Chang and Emily! It was quite adorable. Barbara had gotten me a balloon, nice magenta bright flowers, the cake and a bottle of Barefoot white wine. They all said it was sweet, but seriously, for me, I wasn't too sure.

Oh right, and all those little "thump" sounds, were the sounds of them looking through my kitchen trying to find the matches because they had forgotten to bring some. Haha. Oh and then they also forgot to bring a wine corkscrew and Jenny and Chang ended up going to other people's apartments in the building looking for a wine corkscrew. Haha, at 12:50 am. Woot!

Emily also gave me some very nice trinkets. Emily got me a very beautiful green and gold scarf from Spain! It's gorgeous. And a very nice bracelet from some place called Rostro, that I would have guessed meant face, but apparently meant "stain" more specifically, the blood stains from the meat market that was next door. How romantic right? haha.

We actually took a lot of pictures, but they were all on Jenny's camera, and I haven't claimed them from her yet. =\

And so, that was how I was surprised on my birthday. (:

deflated

look! it deflated!!

psychopathology

first day of class. yeck.

at least it's psychopathology. (: