Random Thoughts from a Random Taru

This past weekend, a water pipe broke underneath Western Avenue south of the 405 entrance. It was patched, but it seems it broke again last night. Nice! So when I took my Western route to work, I had to take a detour and that kinda sucked. On my way home from work, more detours, yippee!! >_<; The 405 South ramp from the 10 East was closed so I ended up exiting Robertson because there was a long long for the National exit. Ugh. Then when I tried to get to the Venice and Sawtelle 405 South entrance, I found out that ramp was closed, too! Good old Culver entrance was still open. And that was my adventure for the day. Election Day tomorrow. I'm so nervous. Ugh.

His butt was dirty again. He needs another good hair (fur) trim around his butt. Laura comes home sometime today, so I’ll get her to help me (or me help her) when she recovers from jetlag.

I tried to go donate blood today at a blood drive near work. Everything went good until it was time to stick the needle in me. The guy who was going to to draw my blood decided to go with a different vein than the one that normally gets pricked, and then I somehow manage to convince him to use the heavily used vein instead. @_@; Poke, in goes the fat needle, but no blood comes out. After digging around a bit, he calls for someone else, and she tries digging around, too. >_<; They give up and check my other arm, but the vein on my left arm is too thin for the needles they brought to the blood drive. So I ended up not saving a life today. :( Dave was going to donate blood, too, but I kinda ran off in the morning without him since I figured he forgot about it. Later in the afternoon, he was going to go, but the nurses had already left for the day and they're not coming back tomorrow. Doh. Maybe next week! I can still donate blood without having to wait 8 weeks because they got only a few drops out of me. Yipee! ^o^

There was a costume contest at work, so I dressed up as a gothic lolita for Halloween. The dress was a little shorter than I would have liked it, but not bad on a short notice. I bought dress at Hot Topic at the mall near work, the platform shoes were from Ardith (she didn’t want them because they were too big on her), the petticoat, stockings, and briefs were from Aahs! in Del Amo.

Picky-tures!

Overall, I don’t look too bad, but I had a very very hard time walking around in those platform shoes.

So the wedding went off without a hitch, thank goodness. My family and Jeannette left the house at 10 am, and we arrived to the Wells Fargo Building after a bit of trouble with blocked off streetch and such (Die Hard 4 was being filmed in the area). The security to the building was moderately tight, we had to pass through people detectors or something. Once there, I helped Laura set up and I took several pictures of the area.

Laura’s high school friend Arisa arrived and all we had to wait for were the groom’s family. It seems Laura gave Steven some bad directions so he got lost going the wrong way. Haley, Laura’s flower girl was so cute. Once everyone was there, we had the rehearsal for the wedding ceremony. We ran through it twice. Right after that was down, the photographer arrived and everyone went to get dressed for the wedding.

While I was getting dressed, I realized that the spaghetti straps on my dress were too long! >_< I couldn't zip up the dress all the way so I didn't know that the straps were too long until I was putting on my adjusted dress. Stupid me, I should have tried it on as soon as I got it back from the seamstress, that way any minor adjustments I could do immediately. Also, tying an obi when you've only had a few days of practice is very very tough. I had to help my mom with her kimono before I got dressed. I messed up and had to re-tie, messed up again and had to re-tie, messed up once more and had to re-tie... and messed up and then I had to get dressed. >_< I figured since most of the guests (like 98%) aren't Japanese they won't know the difference anyways. The nervousness begins. Since there weren't any little boys to be the ring bearer, I had to carry the ring Laura was going to put on Steven. I suppose if there was a boy to hold the rings, the chances of him losing it is pretty good. Heheh. The wedding goes pretty smoothly. I felt my eyes water up when the music changed and Laura started walking down the aisle. The words don't cry don't cry don't cry kept on running through my head. After the rabbi said a bunch of words, and Laura and Steven exchanged rings, and Steven smashed a glass cup and then they were married. Married! My mom and dad were confused when to walk down the aisle, so they stood up and bowed to the rabbi and tried to sit down again. I had to point to them to walk down the aisle instead. Afterwards I went to find my high school friends and Dave. I didn't see Dave during the wedding, but I found him after the wedding. It seems like the power of Die Hard 4 prevented him from getting to the wedding on time. >.>; Anyways, Lauren and her husband were there and it was very wonderful to see them after not seeing them for at least a year.

One hour later, it’s time for dinner! Yeay! Between the salad and main course, I give my toast to Laura. Of course, I had to embass her a bit. ^_~ Whoever listened to me could hear how nervous I was. I had a hard time giving a speech in front of 30 people, and this was in front of 120 people! Yikes! >_<;; So I told the story how Laura liked to jump on my bed, heheh. I was going to say how she sat on my thumb which caused it to bleed all over the place, but Dave convinced me out of that. Probably a good thing since we haven't started our main course yet. So I'm gross like that. :P After dinner was a Jewish dance where everyone dances around in a circle around the bride and the groom, and then the bride and groom sit on chairs and everyone lifts them up onto their shoulders. Luckily, no one got hurt (I think). Lots of dancing, the cake cutting, more dancing, more photographs and then the night was over! Yes, it went like that! Fast! Once I changed outfits, I thought things didn't feel different, but Laura wasn't going home with us. She was going to go home to her new house with her new husband. I'll admit, it was a bit lonely, but that's how it goes when your sister gets married.

After the incident with the heater and Shinta, I helped my mom make some kabocha and cheese gyoza. It was not bad, but I think it needed more cheese. The second batch we made had some ground pork and beef in it. I think that needed more cheese, too. My dad didn’t like it. He said gyoza should not be sweet.

Also, the kabocha was cooked in our rice cooker! Imagine that! My mom learned from Aru Aru Daijiten that you can have an easy to slice kabocha by putting the raw kabocha and 50cc of water into the rice cooker to cook. When the rice cooker is done, you’ll have one easy to slice kabocha! Nifty! :)

Shinta’s been urinating while sitting down again so his pee gets all over his fur. ;_; He might need to go on another visit to the vet again because I’m not sure if his UTI completely cleared up or not. So, being the good sister I am to Laura’s rabbit, I decide to give him a bath. Knowing he’s going to jump all over me while trying to escape the water, I get a poncho out and put it on. Everything goes fine during his bath after the initial get me out of here jumps for freedom and I pull out the towels to lay him down to dry him off. To make sure he doesn’t freeze to death, I plug in my Toyotomi ceramic heater. It’s a nice and quiet heater, to not scare the bunny. He’s about halfway dry when the heater has a mini-explosion inside. It’s spitting out sparks and I, being the girl that I am, scream my head off… into Shinta’s ears… Poor thing. ;_; After the initial panic subsides (like maybe 5 seconds or so) I quickly pull out the plug and the heater smolders, completely dead. My dad comes in to see what I was screaming about. My mom comes in worried. One of the heating elements inside must have overheated. The filter on it was relatively clean (nothing to cause the mini-explosion at least) and I know I didn’t splash any water on it. Yeah, Shinta was wet, but he wasn’t dripping wet. Like I said, he was halfway dry at the time the heater blew up. I even made sure that there was no way water would get on it. I guess it was it’s time to go. ;_;

As for Shinta, I think he wasn’t too happy being near me, because when I put him down, he ran away into his cage. :( I guess he would rather spend it cold and in the cage than near me, the person who screamed into his ears. ;_; I’m sorry Shinta! >_<

Out from human fat!! Or actually, from a soap making kit. Pink and purple soap for Laura’s bridal shower. Hm.

George, my chiropractor’s office manager and life partner, died on August 27th. It’s very strange. I saw saw him a few weeks ago at Mrs Winston’s during lunch and I didn’t say hello to him. I was too embarrassed that I had stopped going to Dr Kerew’s office. The image of me hitting my head against the wall comes up thinking back on it. I’m getting to that age where the people I personally know start dying and even though in my mind I know that everyone dies and that I will, too, in the future, it’s still incredibly jarring when it happens. It’s like… Whoa. Huh? Whoa. Wait. No. *whimper* I don’t know how he died, but my morbid curiosity would like to know, just not that much…