i've had a lot of strange dreams the past couple of nights. on monday night, i dreamt that i was at stanford or mit (i'm not sure which, cuz i said something about getting two degrees at the school, and i haven't done that at either) for some event. i was staying at a large dorm. at some point, i locked the keys inside of my room, and i went down to the lobby to see if someone could help me. the three people, presumably students, told me that it was against policy to let me into the room. i freaked out and started to yell at them. (this was when i went into the tirade about getting two degrees at the school and how disgusted i was at the lack of hospitality to an alumna.) it was really bizarre. i don't usually yell at people. i can't remember the last time i did out of anger. i was really disturbed when i woke up from the dream. the funk lasted all day.

last night, as i was going home from a movie (the lives of others), i started to get really emotional, and i'm not sure why. maybe i was just really tired.

then last night, i had more strange dreams. fortunately, they didn't put me in a funk.

in one of my dreams last night, i was staying in a *huge* mansion. it seemed that i had rented it with some friends (i'm not sure who) for a big party. as we explored the house, we kept finding new areas, one of which was this enormous ballroom in the basement. it had beautiful floors, high ceilings, and french doors around the perimeter. we must have been on a tour with the person who had rented it to us, as she indicated that it was off limits. we were disappointed.

at some point towards the end of the party, i was sitting with someone (again, i'm not sure who it was except that he was male), and this fat pigeon started walking towards me. it looked straight at me, and although i tried to deter it from getting close to me, it wouldn't stop approaching. it wasn't really doing anything except staring and walking, but i didn't want it to touch me. i couldn't stop it. it was annoying.

then i woke up.

*****

i've been fairly busy lately. work is starting to ramp up and i have a feeling i'll be busy through june. socially, i've been more active than i would have anticipated. souris and silvio were in town last week; they stayed with me. we had a bbq during their visit. silvio and i went to see the vivienne westwood exhibit at the deyoung. it was fabulous. i had friends over for dinner a few nights ago, and i was ambitious in my menu. it was exhausting, but i really enjoyed it, too.

i've been out to a few new places - district, amelie, and cha-ya - and a few old favorites - absinthe, oola, cav, and tokyo go go.

the other night, i went to the symphony to see the eroica trio perform beethoven's triple concerto. it was great to see live classical music; i hadn't been in a long time. it sort of made me want to play again. i haven't picked up my violin in months.

*****

this weekend should be fairly mellow. i've got little to nothing planned, and i'm looking forward to the break. maybe i'll actually get back on my bike.

my mom is visiting for a couple days at the end of next week. she hasn't seen my apartment yet. i can't remember the last time she was in sf. i think i'll take her to the moma to see the picasso exhibit, and i remembered that it's women's day on friday at the kabuki springs and spa. we went there once during one of her previous visits. i haven't been in a long while. maybe we'll go to the market on saturday or just play it by ear. it'll be good for her to get away for a bit, and i'm looking forward to her visit.

*****

i feel like time is passing very quickly these days. maybe it's cuz we just finished up a short month. maybe it's cuz i'm getting older.

this weekend marked the beginning of the year of the golden pig. a friend of mine had told me that there hadn't been a year of the golden pig for 600 years (or 60, depending on how you calculate) . it was going to be a special one.

after doing some research, i found some conflicting information. i saw several references to the year of the fire pig. fire doesn't sound as good as gold, especially considering that i was born in the year of the metal pig. anyway, i found that there are two ways to determine the attribute of the animal, and it turns out that both are accurate for this year.

here's how my year started. my rat turd supplier/massage therapist had told me to sleep backwards - feet where my head usually is - on the eve of the year of the golden pig. i did that. i did not get a good night's sleep. i woke up briefly at 4.30am and was groggy when i eventually got out of bed at 7.30.

the first day of the year of the golden pig, sunday, i went to santa cruz to visit patrick and dave. it was great to see them, but the morning was kind of stressful. i was back in the city by early afternoon. i was in a haze for most of the afternoon. fortunately, a shower woke me a bit, and i made dinner for my boyfriend and his friend. it ended up being a great end to the day.

yesterday, i took a ride around the city with haena. i hadn't been on my bike probably since the end of october. i was glad that she motivated me to ride. we went down the embarcadero and hung out a bit at the beach in the marina. after a bite at lettus, we headed back towards the mission. i was getting lazy and i dreaded the ride back. i always forget how small the city really is. it was an easy ride. i had a lot of fun. i have to get back on it more regularly, especially since the weather seems to be turning somewhat.

last night souris asked me how my bed was placed in my room. according to feng shui, it was actually in the 'coffin position'. yikes! it actually kind of freaked me out that there were several things about my bedroom that were bad luck. she pointed me to a couple of links and i determined that my bedroom is actually a really difficult room. ultimately, i found the best configuration possible and arranged the room before going to sleep last night. i slept pretty well last night, but i woke up feeling a bit out of sorts. i'm hoping that it will get better with dinner tonight.

i don't think i'm particularly superstitious, but i will take all the luck i can get.

*****

i started working on my semi-annual self-evaluation today. i don't think it was a good day to do this. although i realized that i actually had done a lot in the last six months, i'm not feeling particularly positive about work these days. i abandoned it until tomorrow. hopefully my malaise is temporary.

now, i'm off to a birthday dinner.

the article


thanks to dave for including me.

i'm on lots of mailing lists and every day, i look through my email inbox and sift through the stuff that could be interesting. today, i read about a new store that opened in nyc's chinatown. as i read the article, one of the owner's names jumped out at me. it was familiar.

i decided to email him to see if it was in fact that same brian who used to teach at urban with me. it was. how cool! we exchanged a few emails today and i read about his highlights, and relayed some of my own, since 2000. this is what i love about technology.

*****

i'm in the february issue of chicago magazine. my sister had a few copies at home when i arrived, and i eagerly read the article the first night. although i don't feel all that attached to my high school experience, and have not attended any reunions, i was definitely curious to read what the other profiled people were doing 18 years after graduation. one of the most interesting vignettes was about a kid who was in the orchestra with me. he's now a yoga teacher in a town near chicago. i thought that was great. i remember him from high school. he played the cello, listened to the dead and adrianne belew, and was smart. i wouldn't have thought that he'd become a yoga teacher, but apparently it has done a lot for his health, which i totally believe, and he wanted to help other people experience the same benefits. he looked happy in the photo (and very flexible).

the article included a summary of a survey that was completed by about a third of the class. it was not surprising that a large majority returned to the area after college. many have children. many own homes. many make a good living. a large percentage said that they were happier now than they had been in high school, but i suppose that's not hard to achieve. high school can be a pretty rough time.

i hope i didn't sound like too much of a dork in my interview. my mom saw the snippet and photo and called me today to tell me that she 'was proud of me'. i'm not sure why. i didn't do anything.

*****

today my sister mentioned a story she saw on the news about a 23 yr old phd student at stanford who had also studied at mit. apparently, this woman worked at qualcomm, although i can't find anything online to verify this. she was missing, but then was found in the trunk of her car. crazy. there's speculation it was suicide, but that seems odd. she had just completed her phd (at 23 no less)! anyway, the news hit my sister since this poor woman's educational and professional history were earily similar to mine, except she was way more accomplished. hopefully there wasn't any foul play.

she seemed worried that maybe someone would stalk me as a result of the article. i guess stranger things have happened, but it's a bleak thought.

*****

genghis imed me today. i haven't talked to him in a long while, but i think of him often. he's a friend from my old job, and he is by far one of *the kindest* people i know.

i know the last several months have been difficult for him; his father has alzheimers and genghis is one of the primary caregivers. he pointed me to a blog that he just started to talk about his experiences with his father, and i read a bit today. it made me sad, but genghis seems to be handling it like the superstar that he is. i admire his strength during this difficult time. i'm pretty sure i would not handle it as well.

although my parents are still able to live on their own, relatively, i know there will be a time when they will need help from me and my sister. i don't look forward to that day, as i'm not sure if i'll be up for the challenge. my sister and i talked about it briefly today, and she seemed to suggest that my parents would live with her. she may be right.

part of me thinks that my mom would probably enjoy living with her more than she would living with me. they get a long really well. they talk about almost everything. they call me the secretive one. apparently, i forgot to tell my mom about the article.

it's not as if i think my mom loves me less than my sister. we just have different relationships. they talk daily, about what i'm not sure. well, no. i know they talk about me, cuz they both worry. i feel responsible when i've called her twice a week. i think my sister misses hanging out with mom, too. at the bakery yesterday, she told me that she and mom used to go there to have a pastry and coffee at the outside tables. i wish i felt more comfortable with my parents. i know it's my problem. they don't usually do anything that makes me uncomfortable, but i often i can't think of much to say to them. hopefully this will change before it's too late.

*****

i had a really painful session this morning. towards the end of it, while i was clearly agonizing, she asked me, 'does it hurt?' i told her yes. her reply: 'if it didn't hurt, you wouldn't need to be massaged.'

part of me is relieved that i only have two more sessions with her before i go back home. part of me is not looking forward to leaving, as i think that i've still got a lot of stuff to work out of my body. i guess i'll be back again in a few months, but who knows if i will get better or worse during that time.

i wondered today if part of the reason that my recovery has been slower than i'd like was cuz i was expectant. i like to think that i'm not someone who expects things. however, i know that i came here with the hope/expectation that the massages would help me. today, i tried to release myself from the expectation (and the pain) and to envision peaceful scenes, happy moments, like surfing in sydney last year. it helped a little.

*****

i've been reading a book called 'happiness' by matthieu ricard. he is the french translator to hhdalai lama. i heard him speak at the commonwealth club several months ago, but only recently got the book after i read articles in the economist and the nyt about the recent interest in achieving happiness. it feels like i see another article every day about the value of happiness, how to achieve happiness, or the new interest around happiness. many of them cite the finding that people make twice as much money as they did a few decades ago, but people's self-reported level of happiness is generally the same. another interesting nugget is that people seem to feel lasting happiness when they help others. i think this is true for me. it made me think about ways i could do this more regularly, indiscriminately. it's easy to help people you like. i do this a lot. it's much harder to help those who are annoying or disagreeable in some way. i don't do this very much.

this morning, i started the day off like most of the days since i've been in chicago. i went to see my rat turd supplier/massage therapist.

this morning, i was running a little late, but still ended up getting there on time. she was still in the middle of breakfast when i arrived. i gave some love to their maltese, lucky, and then headed into her room. it's a modest setup, but she doesn't seem to need much. i get my treatment on the same heated surface on which she sleeps, lay my head on the same pillows, and cover myself with the same blanket.

the session always starts off with my laying on my right side while she probes different parts of my head. it's fascinating. her hands seem to zero in on the places where the stuff i'm not supposed to have gets stuck. she pushes down on these areas to try to move them through my body and eventually out of it through my bowel movements.

after she's done with my head, she moves down my neck and shoulders, which happens to be where she sensed more clogged areas. the areas can vary; on my last visit, i didn't have any issue with my neck and shoulders.

something interesting happened today. as i was getting my massage, i could hear a lot of noise from her stomach. i thought it was from eating her breakfast quickly due to my arrival. my stomach was also making noise. i knew it was a combination of my breakfast and the massage. after about an hour and a half, she told me to turn onto my left side and then got up to use the bathroom. when she returned, she explained that the massage was actually transferring the bad stuff from my body to hers and that she had just expelled it. weird. i vaguely remember my sister telling me that this is how it worked, too, but i must not have paid attention.

another interesting thing this morning was that i did not feel exhausted after the session, which has been the case on every other day. i actually felt kind of refreshed, but maybe that was cuz i knew i was taking the morning off.

after i got home, we headed downtown to take a look at some furniture. we went to a showroom called luminaire. they only have showrooms in three places - two in florida and this one is chicago. it reminded me of a smaller, less edgy limn. i had checked the luminaire website while i was in sf and found it to be horribly unfriendly to users. there was no way to bookmark items of interest. when you went to see a product in detail, there was no way to go to the next product; you had to back out to the main menu and make your selection. there were several other things i found annoying, and i mentioned them to the salesperson who initially started to help us. i was incredulous when he told me that all of those design decisions were intentional, that it was not intended for ecommerce, and that they wanted to encourage people to come into their showrooms. this is all well and good, but i thought they were shortsighted. there are a lot of people who would be interested in their furniture who do not live in chicago, miami, or coral gables. anyway ...

i saw a couple of chairs that i liked. one of them was $603. crazy. after about an hour and a half, my sister was trying to convince me to spend $1600+ PER CHAIR. uhm, hello? reality check? the second guy who was helping us (the first guy to whom i directed my website critique was the store manager) initially didn't get that we were sisters. by the time we started discussing/arguing about the $1600 chair, he said something like, 'oh, yeah. you're definitely sisters.'

i love my sister. she is really *great*. she's totally taken care of me while i've been here. however, she can be pushy, and i started feeling that at the store. however, i know she's not doing it intentionally. she knows that it's my decision. nonetheless, i'll always be her little sister.

on the way home from chicago, i got really tired all of a sudden. when i mentioned it to jin, at first she said that it was probably just a delayed reaction to the massage, but then suggested that it was probably due to arguing with her.

*****

i have three more days in chicago. i really can't wait to get out of the cold and back to sf.