My lack of blogging

I haven’t blogged in such a long time. I wish I had an excuse like I’ve been really busy studying that I haven’t had time to. That’d be nice. The truth is that I got lazy. Lots of stuff happened this past week that it didn’t even seem like it was even one week. It felt like a lifetime! But I want to mention what happened, but let’s try to do this cliff notes style:

Tết! My first married Lunar New Year. Chúc mừng năm mới!!! I spent the Eve at a schoolmate of John’s. It was funny because it was all guys, and the “food” was mostly food that their mothers had prepared and packed for them. Gotta love Vietnamese moms and freezing food for their sons. On the actual day, John’s Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association celebrated by having a luncheon. I came late and when I walked in the first thing I heard “Oh good, you’re here! You’re just in time!” I got confused, like maybe his classmates thought I was some other girl. Turns out THEY WERE WATCHING OUR FIRST DANCE ON THE PROJECTION SCREEN!!! Man, I haven’t seen that in ages. Anyway, John and I fully intended on giving some nice crisp $2 bills to his cousin, since we’re older, and married now, we have to give lì xì to those who are younger and single. And amazingly enough, we still haven’t seen him!

Then there was the Madison Nestie GTG that I attended. I really need to make an effort to make friends of my own, so I thought this would be a great start. Of course, I was late. I tend to underestimate how long it takes me to get places here, and how long it takes me to get ready. Anyway, I met four lovely ladies who provided two hours of fun. We went to dinner at PF Changs, which is the first time I’ve been there in Wisconsin. I can’t even remember the last time I went to one in CA. It must’ve been when I lived in Emeryville. Anyway, we have already planned our next one in March. They’re so awesome to accommodate my bar exam schedule. I really didn’t want to miss the next one, but my bar exam is Feb 24 (*insert screams here*) so they made it the first week of March. Woo hoo! I brought my camera (since I bring it with me everywhere) but didn’t get a chance to snag a picture. Maybe next month’s GTG! And we’re all facebook friends now too, which is always fun.

In the same night as the GTG, we celebrated a little Lunar New Year dinner with some of John’s classmates. Now I know I’m Filipino, but I cannot, repeat CANNOT eat Balut. His classmate Tin said he was going to bring some and he did. And they were all eating it. But dude I cannot hang with that. My mom and uncles and all the older generation can swing it, but I am not even going to touch that. If you don’t know what balut is it’s essentially a fertilized chicken (or duck) egg. Yuck right?!? They even had balut on an episode of Fear Factor. Filipinos around the world though that it was hilarious. Well, I’m sure some were offended that a delicasy of ours was used as a “fear factor.” But anyway, yuck! Couldn’t do it.

You can see me stuffing my face, but more importantly John’s classmate deshelling the chick. Uuughghg

At the dinner we also played some mad Dr. Mario, yo! Oh man, I think we played for an hour or two. We were all mesmerized. I knew that John’s classmate Jon had Dr. Mario, but I didn’t know that it was also on N64 and that you could play with 4 players. So that’s what we did. We played, and played and played. I used to play all the time when I was in 7th grade!

Can you see the concentration in my eye?

Yay for Asians in Wisconsin!

Continuing…John and I also managed to squeeze in 2 restaurant week dinner. We didn’t realize that people actually made reservations, so by the time we thought of it, all the ones we wanted to go to were booked. BOO! Anyway, our first place was La Brioche. We’ve had dessert there, but not dinner. The food was alright. The portions were kinda small. Of course dessert was my favorite. I had like a pumpkin parfait and John had creme brulee. YUM! The second place we went to was Tutto Pasta. Since it was pasta, their serving size was so much bigger. It wasn’t like a fancy smancy place, but the food was definitely good. Loved it! So overall, a good experience. But throwing $75 for dinner twice in a week was hurting our poor unemployed wallets.

I also FINALLY had my doctors appt. In November I tweaked my knee and John had been nagging me to setup a doctors appt. Since I had yet to find a doctor it took me a while. Like every freakin doctor was booked until July!!! It was seriously insane. We managed to find this one doctor who had availability Jan. 30. So finally I was able to see the doctor. I was relieved to find out that I hadn’t torn any ligaments or broken any bones. She diagnosed me as having Runner’s Knee, which apparently is common among women. I like to say it’s because I’m so fat that my knee can’t carry around this weight. But it’s basically pain behind the kneecap. She gave me stretches to do, and said I could take like Tylenol for the pain.

Finally Saturday hit (can you believe this was all in one week?) and we attended a triple birthday party for John’s classmates. It was pretty much an occasion to stop and make an appearance. John and I had a lot of work to do, so we stayed for the obligatory hour, but I don’t think the birthday celebrants would’ve noticed. They were soooooo gone!

Me with one of my best Wisconsin friend, Collette (she’s from AZ, and is the gf of John’s classmate. It’s like we’re in the same boat)

The birthday girl is taking pictures, btw.

Me and the birthday girl!

Our farewell picture.

So I’m totally only using pictures that were posted on facebook. Makes life SOOOO much easier.

John and I actually “celebrated” a milestone this past Monday. We celebrated our 6th month anniversary. Ironically, we didn’t do ANYTHING to celebrate. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but John and I literally celebrate everything. Like EVERYTHING. The funny thing is that when it was like 12:20am, I was turning off John’s computer when I realized it was Feb 2, and I said “Oooh, it’s groundhog day!” Then John looked at me and said “Happy 6th month anniversary!” And I felt like a douche, because I–just for that split second–forgot it was our anniversary and made a big deal about groundhog day. Ouch! Well, John and I have been really behind on our work, so instead we chose to go out to eat the day before, and the day after, but for some reason, not the day of. It’s ok. We’ll celebrate more on our 2 year engage-aversary, which is in 11 days.

Phew! That was everything that comes to mind. In between all that I’ve been “studying” for the bar. I’ve had to readjust my schedule like 5 times to accommodate my progress, or lack thereof. 19 days…geez, that does NOT sound good.

I also wanted to mention that I felt like every single week for the entire month of January I found out another friend got engaged. So I wanted to say congrats to my newly engaged friends:

Duc & Thuy
Mark & Genevieve
Christaline & Neschae
Vivienne & Virgil
Chuy “Kenneth” & Melissa

It’s no joke that once you turn 26, it’s weddings nonstop! Ok, time to finally hit the hay!!!