Yes, I would LOVE to get fat, thanks for asking.

I had an epiphany this morning. I realized that I am such a pleasant and happy individual when I have been properly caffeinated. No seriously, if I seem super bitchy [excuse my language] on certain days or at certain times, it's probably because I didn't have enough time to grab coffee. Or I did and the caffeine wore off.

I was walking to class after going to Peet's this morning, thinking about how wonderful it would be to drink 4 or 5 cups of coffee just to get a caffeine high, just for fun. And then I realized:

a) I'm addicted to caffeine. Oh wait, I realized this a few months back when I got a caffeine-withdrawal-induced-migrane two days in a row when I was too busy in the morning to get coffee before class.

b) Caffeine high = happiness. Wait...isn't that what people tell themselves when they get addicted to drugs? That it's perfectly harmless and it makes them happy. Except I also tell myself it's perfectly legal. I find it alarming that I am impulsively tempted to down caffeine just for funsies.

I also realized that I'm starting to use sarcasm a bit too much to get through my day. Sometimes I wonder if my friends get sick of it. And I worry that I'm starting to be too sarcastic around people I've either just met or don't know well enough. I should start being more careful...

A friend just asked me who I was going to the garlic festival with. I replied, "My pet garlic."

'nuff said.

Crafty

I love being crafty. Sometimes I wish I grew up in some family that celebrated the arts and I somehow grew up into some artsy girl who is some starving artist, or designs the interior of Anthropology stores, or knew how to make some amazing bookshelf using popsicle sticks and a hot glue gun. Damn the expectation to have a six figure salary...

Sometimes I think domesticity allows for creativity and just time to be artistic. Man, if I'm busy working, who's going to put together scrapbooks of my kids? Sigh, having kids means having to be superwoman. Anyway...

It's been awhile since I've had the excuse to take pictures and glue them to pretty card stock, or totally spray paint something shiny gold and make my own stencils, rummaging through random boxes for pipe cleaners and squiggly eyes. I miss doing all that stuff.

It was my goal this summer to be crafty and have a little fun with it. Well, photography has been fun but a little stressful. Before I leave the Bay Area next month, I think I'll put together a collage or poster of some sorts. Just for funsies and to decorate my room in LA.

I also made it a goal to sew something this summer...something I would wear. I still need to get around to doing that.

As much as I want the school year to start, I just realized there's a lot I want to do before summer ends. But that's okay, I miss LA too much.

"Missing LA is like missing an abusive, wealthy step father." Haha sooo true. Less then a month before move in! I'm stoked :)

Trash Cans

I realize I have disappeared for awhile now. There's just so much that has happened in the last few months! I guess I fell behind and never caught up. From Seattle to Singapore to New Orleans to Texas to starting classes, this summer has been a whirl. It's now a goal to write once a day. Just little tidbits if I don't have time. And if I'm not blogging, I want to be writing on paper. We'll see how this goes.

So when I first decided to blog, I was debating whether or not I wanted a tumblr or this. I guess i erred blogspot because my brother had one. Haha, I have a tumblr account...but I don't what to suddenly switch and become a traitor. Hm.

Today has been quite interesting. Well, lets start with last night when a bug flew into my room and made this horrendous buzzing noise and grossed me out. Well, to my horror it landed on my bed *puke in my mouth*. At 12:30 AM, all I wanted to do was kill it and sleep. So I killed it. On my bed. Then picked up my pillows, went to my brother's room [he's in Japan] and slept there instead because I wasn't going to be cleaning sheets at that hour!

This morning I woke up to a phone call from my dad asking me where I was. Apparently my mother walked into my room and saw that while my stuff was still there and I didn't leave yet, I was not in my bed. So she freaked and thought I had been kidnapped and panicked...yeah, that was interesting.

So last semester, my lovely roommate showed me the following clip from Modern Family:

I walked out to my car this morning to leave, started the engine, shifted to reverse, and backed up only to hear a thud and dragging noise. Lo and behold, I had reversed into my neighbor's trash can and knocked it over. Haha, I had to run out of my car, put all their trash back into the bin, and placed it upright again. I think the neighbors saw. Story of my life.

To Felix

Dear Felix,

I still remember the day we met...Montague brought friends over just to hang out. You went straight for the kitchen and raided our pantry. True signs of being part of the Hung family: never ending stomachs :). Throughout all these years, you have been a friend, an older brother (one who is more overprotective than Montague!), and (how can I leave this out) a lover ;). I will keep my promises and always be faithful :P.

Felix, you have always been an inspiration to me. I don't know anyone on this earth with a bigger heart or a bigger smile. Even through struggles that I cannot fathom facing myself, you endured and always kept your head up. You have taught me to always have hope when times are tough. So let me make another promise to you: I promise to live life to the fullest, to keep a smile on my face, to appreciate the little things that I may take for granted, and to spread love to everyone around me.

Rest in peace, my dear friend. I miss you. Thanks for everything.

Love always,
Chanel

P.S. I joined gospel choir for fun last semester...it's probably one of the best parts of my week when I'm at school. Just thought you would be excited to know that I really enjoy it.

8:00 AM

Los Angeles, CA

Saturday May 1, 2010

8:00 AM

The Last Stretch of Freshman Year...

It's crazy. At 2:00 pm, I walked out of my last class of the semester. Of the school year. Of my first year of college. Did it really fly by that quickly? It still really hasn't hit me that I'm not waking up at 8:50 and running to class this Monday. No detour to Annenberg coffee cart. No sudoku when we enter the second hour of lecture and my mind begins to wander...I'm not ready to leave!

It's pretty surreal. I walked out of my last class holding this:

In one week, I will be taking finals.

In two weeks, I will be at LAX and leaving this country. What? Really? I thought I just got here. I thought our trip was months away...

More later. Today was full of adventure :) But I'm tired and it's time for bed.

xoxo [hehe]

Music

In light of Andrew's blog post on music, I've decided to write a little bit too. Actually, I was planning on writing this post, but I'm just so darn busy and lazy...I need to get myself to blog consistently.

*note to self: if you're going to procrastinate [like I am doing at the moment], you might as well blog and be productive*

Anyway, Andrew talked about how college kids are key consumers in the music industry. College kids are the ones who search and find unknown songs. Slowly but surely, these songs are passed on from one person to another, heard across the courtyard, and at small gigs in the campus cafe.

At the beginning of the year, I heard a band named yOya...they were playing at some point on campus at USC and I just happened to stick around. [They're also playing this Wednesday at Ground Zero here at USC. Unfortunately I can't go due to other obligations. Sad days...] They were simply amazing...back in the fall, they were in the middle of changing their sound. A two man band, with one guy on the keys/percussion and the other on the guitar. Both sing. Somehow something stirred in my soul as I watch them live. Real, raw talent. I'm not musically savvy, but the guy on the keys/percussion was maintaining all of this through some kind of machine that lets you add sounds and such [or at least I think that's what it was!]. Anyway, he was adding various percussion and wow...I watched him intently listening to the timing and snapping out the rhythm so fast in order to put in the next sound at the perfect time. I love their focus on the various elements of percussion.

Since hearing them, I've been really into indie rock. While Top 40 is great when going out, it makes me laugh and die a little inside to think that this is our generations "music". Okay maybe that was harsh, but in a time of auto-tune and whatnot, I am in love with the sounds of raw music. I'm pretty sure I'm just going to shell out my non-existent money to buy their cd.

Anyway, if indie rock is anything up your ally, or want to check out something new, yOya is releasing their album and has a free preview right now for the next week. All you have to do is put in your email, so if you get a chance to listen I'd love to hear what you think. If you don't want to listen to the whole thing, my favorite tracks are Fireworks, Looking in the Window, Lovers On, and New Years Morning.

Click here to listen to their album!

Time for bed. It's going to be a busy week!

"Velvet? I love my velvet..."

Hello non-existent readers!

I definitely haven't been blogging as much as I would like, but things are getting really busy. And update on my life:

I have two more weeks of school left before finals. And then freshman year is over! It's crazy...I'm not ready!!! I just got here! I'll probably freak out about this later when it starts to hit me.

I went to Irvine to hang out with my family last weekend. My baby cousins [they're brother and sister] are starting to fight a lot...it was driving me crazy. And then my aunt declared that they're fighting the exact same way my brother and I used to fight. Thinking about it, it's so true. We probably drove everyone around us crazyyy...but I if my brother and I are to be an example of the relationship between siblings, I'm glad the two are fighting because it's a sign that they're close! By the way, fake crying is super cute the first time, but after awhile it gets realllly old reallly fast.

Anyway, wow it's been awhile since I've updated! So a few weeks ago was Relay for Life which was an amazing experience. Sleeping in a tent, wind blowing, freezing my butt off...good times :) I was napping from 12:30am and around 4:00 someone decided to be SUPER annoying with the speakers [which was blaring music throughout the night] and was pulsing the volume. So I woke up and got out to walk the track and someone decided to hold a mini fundraiser [at 4:30 when tons of people were sleeping]. They declared "Hey guys! We're going to play this same song over and over until we make $50!" They played Hanson's "MMMBop" over and over for thirty minutes to my dismay [I love flashbacks to the 90's, but that song annoyed me back then and annoys me on the second repeat now], and then announced, "Hey guys! We've raised $10.75...only $39.25 to go!" Haha, pretty clever. I would have forked over my wallet if I had it with me. I think they could have made a lot of money if people were awake. I also chopped my hair and donated 9 inches the next morning. It was really traumatizing, but honestly, my hair is my life. If I ever got cancer, I'd probably just go screaming and declare I'd rather die with my hair than lose it. So go cancer patients! I hope my little sacrifice makes a little difference in the world...

Also, I tried red velvet chocolate chip pancakes at a truck called Buttermilk.

In all honesty, I think I could make it. It seems like the pancakes themselves were just colored with red dye, and the chocolate chips were the chocolate flavor. I think I could detect a slight cocoa flavor in the batter, but I was disappointed because I didn't know if I was just imagining it there because it should have been there. Anyway, I plan on trying to make these myself. Tasty, but not worth $5. However, the butter on top was really interesting. It had almost a slightly sour hint to it...not in a bad way. I think it might have been made from scratch.

Hope I will post again soon!

Sunshine, Food Trucks, and Drives

Today I was chatting with a guy sitting next to me in class right before discussion started and I was talking about the weather [haha I'm lame but nice weather is an actual conversation!]. Anyway, I was just telling him about how I really wanted to just be outside and have summer already because sunshine is such a tease! Anyway, at that moment, he looked at my TA and asked if we could have discussion outside. My TA looked around at the room [only half of us were in attendance] and then said "we'll have discussion outside if five more people show up." After a few minutes, five people randomly trickled in. YAY! So we had discussion out on the grass outside. I think this has made my week. I guess simple things really make me happy...sitting on the grass in the sunshine + banh mi = a lovely date :)

A recap of random things in my life since my last post...

I went to my first food truck in LA!!! I was actually intending on finding a truck called Phamish because I was craving Vietnamese food SOOO badly, but they weren't there near USC like their website said they would be =/ No worries, I ended up eating at Bull Kogi, and just had a bowl. It was just okay...I want to try the original Kogi truck though!

Hehe so Asian...they had plastic trash cans [more like buckets] flipped upside down for you to sit on right where the lunch truck was.

Last weekend I got picked up by a friend to go eat dinner in Westwood, and I was telling him a fairly lengthy dramatic story. The next thing I know, I look around and think "wait...I don't recognize this...this isn't how you get to Westwood..." Well, I guess he wasn't paying attention to driving cause of my story and we ended up taking the 10 all the way to Santa Monica, and then ended up on the 1. After a few miles going on the 1, I was like "we should turn back!" but there were no places to make a legal u-turn so I suggested that we turn right onto a small street and then turn around. We ended up randomly turning onto Topanga [Canyon Rd.] which is basically a winding mountain road that was rather dangerous and not exactly ideal to u-turn, especially with cars tailgating us due to the lack of horsepower in the hybrid we were in which was struggling to drive up the mountain. Anyway, using the fabulous technology of 3G, I used my phone to figure out where we were and decided to just keep going through Topanga state park.

I'm so glad we decided to drive through Topanga State Park. Some of you may have already heard me bitch [excuse my language] about how much I hate LA [well I don't hate it, but the Bay Area is just better on an infinite number of levels. hella.]. But seriously, I concluded on my flight back to LA at the end of winter break that Los Angeles is just a desolate flattened grid of grey poured concrete and steel. At the sight below me with 7 minutes till landing, I finally saw this massive patch of green. I got superrr excited and was like "Wow a large park!!! I need to find this place!" We flew lower and lower and finally flew over it and I realized it was actually a cemetery and I could actually see a funeral going on. -_________- shattered dreams much?

Anyway, back to driving through Topanga. It's a little north of Santa Monica, and I never realized I could escape the city. I was so happy! We stopped by a liquor store [for a snack] and the owner of the store was telling us about how about 200 feet up the road, we could make a left onto a street called Fernwood[?] and at the first and only stop sign, make a right and go up around 8 miles. At the top, supposedly, is the best view of just the city and the ocean...we didn't go because a hybrid car would die, but I will be checking that out once I have a car in the next few years! :) We kept driving through and passed through a small town called Topanga. It was really cute!!! Ah, to live up there is like the perfect retirement...huge nice houses and secluded from the city.

Proof that we were in Topanga! haha

Okay, so I saw this RANDOM flying pig just on the side of the road and I demanded that we pull over so that I could take a picture. Haha :)

Eventually we made it to the other side of the mountain and you can take a slight right to a vista point and it was absolutely fantastic. The view of the city lights is just incredible and Priya's Hill pales in comparison. Hmmm, but I've never been to Hunter's point back home so I can't compare it to Hunter's.

So we took a 2 hour detour and made it back to Westwood around 10? 11? and had a very late dinner. The End!

Sugar

Hi kids!

Well this will be a rather short post. I just wanted to let you know that my teeth hurt right now! I basically ate too much sugar today. I shoved two poptarts down my throat while I headed off to my last midterm. And then was handed a sour punch straw right before my exam. Finished my midterm! Ate dinner, and then had the sugary top of donuts. UHHH yeah, obese to the max! And now my teeth hurt. Who knew that your teeth could actually hurt from eating too much sugar?! I thought it was just some parenting stories to keep kids away from candy. Ooops...shoulda listened.

Anyway, hope you have a good day :) I will try to post again soon!

what-the-f#%k-blanket

I, Chanel Hung, am an official owner of a Snuggie.

If you are not already aware, I had very strong feelings toward the idea of a Snuggie when it first came out. A blanket + sleeves = why don't you just wear a sweater or robe? My general sentiments toward Snuggies have not changed much - it's pretty much in line with that one YouTube video that calls it the "what-the-f#%k-blanket." If you haven't seen it yet, see the following:

So, if I wrinkle my nose at the snuggie, why do I own one?! Just to be clear, I would never spend money on this thing. I actually won it. Oh, and it's a USC Snuggie. Fantastic!

I decided that since I can now read, eat, sew, use the remote, talk on the phone, or work on my laptop in complete comfort, I would give it a shot and let you see how retarded I look in doing so. Except I don't exactly have anything to sew...or a sewing machine...or a needle...or thread. And I don't have a TV and therefore no remote...

But seriously guys, look how happy I am and creepy I look! I'm definitely going to be using this contraption all the time when I eat, sleep, study, go to class, play, drive, go to the beach, sew clothes, party, etc. Especially with Los Angeles' freezing weather. DAMN it must have been 75 degrees today. Time to pull out my snuggie since my blankets aren't good enough.

ALSO my aunt told me that when this thing first appeared on infomercials, it sold like hot cakes. Apparently so many people called in to buy the thing that they had to stop airing the infomercial because they couldn't keep up with sales. Whoever came up with this idea for a retarded blanket must be a fricken millionaire. Time to go find him and gold dig that.

Turbulence

So I know that my previous post said that my next one will be about snuggies, but I actually didn't get a chance to finish putting that together yet so, that will have to wait for when I get back to school! In the mean time...

Turbulence. After an interesting not-so-typical Thursday night in college, I hopped onto a plane to finally come home for spring break.

Well, before I hopped onto that plane, I took the shuttle to LAX. One of my friends booked the shuttle for me and used SuperShuttle. I normally use Primetime. Anyway, Supershuttle told me they'd be there by 2:45. At 2:30 they said they had arrived and would leave without me soon. UH THANKS I was forced to scramble and throw all my crap into my luggage. I'm missing a few things, but oh well it won't kill me. Note to self, my patronage in the future shall be solely toward Primetime. SuperShuttle pissed me off.

Anyway, this post is about turbulence. On the decent into San Jose, my plane hit turbulence. Turbulence normally has a negative connotation, whether it be on a plane or in life. On planes, most people feel uncomfortable or uneasy. Some who rather hate flying actually panic. But I love experiencing turbulence on airplanes. It gives me a rush, a thrill, a sense of excitement. You never know what's going to happen next. How long will it last? Is the plane going to crash? Maybe I'll make it out of here alive with an interesting story. A plane ride without turbulence is a boring plane ride. Sometimes I think to myself, if I feel like I'm living on the edge of life whenever the captain asks us to return to our seats and fasten our seat belts, I must not be living on the edge enough.

Which got me thinking...

Life is full of turbulence. Sometimes this turbulence only lasts a minute of my life, and at other times stays with me forever. Normally when things seem unstable, I feel like all I can do is hang on and wait it out.

But I want to live my life embracing turbulence the same way I embrace it during plane rides. Life is an adventure! I want to begin to welcome turbulence into my life, because the product of turbulence is change and growth. Without it, I will someday wake up years from now wondering why I haven't lived.

On airplanes, when turbulence actually leads to a crash, I will come out with a great story to tell later on.

In life, when turbulence actually leads to a crash, I will come out with a great story to tell later on and also be a better person for it.

So bring it life! I am so ready for the next span of turbulence you give me. Ready for some thrills, excitement, and stories to tell.

I am weird.

On Sunday, I went to the bookstore to pick up bluebooks. I also bought a children's picture book called "Sunny Bunny" because it made me happy.

I have been awake for more than twenty four hours. I'm writing a paper on gang violence in Los Angeles. I still have not finished. It's due in less than two hours. I think I'm going crazy because I've been extremely happy the past few hours. I think I was really really really trying to look on the bright side and it kinda went beyond what I expected, because I am SUPER happy right now [shout out to Bryan...the whole "happiness depends on attitude" thing is seriously creeping me out right now because I honestly don't have much reason to be happy at the moment. But I am]. I SAW THE SUNRISE. That made me happy...at 5:45 in the morning. Now it is 7:20 and I have to finish my paper!

It's been super windy in Los Angeles.

Confession: I'm listening to Miley Cyrus' new song and I like it

You should listen to: Sunrise - Norah Jones

Stay tuned! My next blog entry will be concerning the infamous snuggie.

OVER AND OUT!

Potato, Tomato

So the layout of the blog is cutting off the right side of this video and I'm not sure how to change it :( does anyone know how to fix this? Anyway, if it bothers you, right click and you can watch the video on youtube.

This is really sad :( I admittedly am not the healthiest of eaters...although I'm getting a lot better about it. This classroom that Jamie Oliver visited is in West Virginia, which has been deemed the unhealthiest state in America. It's quite sad that these little kids can't even recognize vegetables. It's funny because I remember growing up as a kid, there were always ads and such which encouraged parents to force their kids to eat vegetables. And I assumed parents in reality would...I think mine did. Calvin's [of Calvin and Hobbes] and Zoe's [of Baby Blues] parents made them eat vegetables! Anyway, I guess I never realized how massive a problem this is! I know that America is getting fatter, but I think living in California, where body image and health plays a huge role in our every day lives, makes us oblivious to a very large problem...no pun intended! These kids are only in first grade...it's not their fault they have not been exposed to healthier eating habits. Americans need to start eating healthier. So do I.

Happy Birthday

This past weekend, I was at a birthday party. I love birthdays. I love getting together with friends, acting crazy, playing random games, having an excuse to eat recklessly, and relishing in the excitement of surprise presents. But there's one thing that I LOVE about birthdays, and one thing that I HATE.

I love love love cake. I've mentioned this before: I am the fat kid who loves cake.

I hate hate hate the 2 minutes prior to cutting the cake: singing the birthday song.

I swear to freaking God, I don't remember the last time I was at a birthday party and people actually sang the Happy Birthday song decently. IS IT THAT HARD? I know that a lot of people claim they are tone deaf and can't sing, but I feel like they're just making excuses. It's as if they think they can't sing therefore don't even bother trying to keep a tune. Every time I have to sing the Happy Birthday song, aside from whenever we sang it choir, it somehow feels wrong to sing it in tune because everyone else is so off tune it makes my ears want to fall off and rot away. I always end up mumbling the song in tune.

Has it always been this way? 50 years ago, did people stand around lighted candles and sing very very off tune? When did people [not you necessarily, the individual, but people as a collective whole] become incapable of holding a simple tune? Most people can sing Mary Had a Little Lamb, right? Is the Birthday Song harder to sing?

I understand most people don't sing much because they don't think they can , but just try it. Try to sing Happy Birthday in tune. Please? I promise it's not that hard. If you find it hard, let me know. I would love to help.

Asian-Camera-Syndrome

I once heard a joke that Asians will take pictures of everything. EVERYTHING. Especially tourists. They take pictures of everything, such as exit signs. If they ever get lost, they can always look through their pictures to find where the exit is! [I know it's not funny retold by me, much less retold via blog entry, but just go with it]

Over the years, I've observed that tours that are organized by Asian companies love to visit campuses of higher education. At least whenever I was at Stanford, there would always be Asians hopping off their tour buses and taking pictures of everything in sight. Apparently they love coming to USC too because I've seen groups of tourists all dressed up in their touristy clothes and following their tour guide who holds some flashy flag or whatnot. ANYWAY, so the other day I was walking past the cinema building and witnessed the following:

Caption: Asian guy takes picture of random sign. He was really into it. Like, no joke, he was really excited taking this picture.

I cracked up and laughed out loud. Why? Because it wasn't an exit sign. The sign was:

Seriously, why the hell would you take a picture of this sign?! No Smoking, Bicycles, Rollerblades, or Skateboard Riding. First of all, you're a tourist probably from China. I assume the tour company isn't having its clients bike, blade, or board around. The only part of this sign that actually applies to you is the No Smoking part. But is the concept of "No Smoking" really that hard to grasp or that intriguing? No, it isn't. He must have a problem. I'll name it Asian-Camera-Syndrome.

It just seemed so absurd as to why anyone would take a picture of this sign. Watching him take multiple pictures of this sign greatly amused me because it reminded me about the whole Asians-take-pictures-of-everything issue. However, watching him made me realize that I do it too. I currently have 358 MG left on my hard drive, probably because of the millions of pictures I take. Whenever I want to take a picture of scenery or random flowers or even post-its for that matter [yes, I once camera whored post-its], I take a million shots of the same thing. So I admit it. I have a problem. I too have Asian-Camera-Syndrome.

I can't figure out why I do this [or why other people do it]. I don't mean to be racist or anything by saying that this is what Asians do. In fact, I'm not sure whether or not other Asians do this at all. Or if non-Asians do this. Do they?

Anyway, thank you man who loves taking pictures of random signs. Fifteen seconds of watching you allowed me to discover my own problem. And provided amusement. I think my hard drive will forgive me if I ever get around to purging all the random pictures. I should do it soon. I have gigs worth of pictures of blades of grass and insignificant looking clouds.

Why Try to Change Me - Fiona Apple

I love this song.

The video has scenes from The Nightmare Before Christmas, which I have not seen in forever. But I love Tim Burton, I can't wait for Alice in Wonderland to come out!!! I definitely want to go to the midnight premiere. I wonder if there's going to be a fancy premiere with red carpet and everything here in LA. If you happen to stumble upon information, let me know!

[Edit: Nevermind! The premiere is in the UK. I wouldn't mind going...anyone want to fly me there? Anyway, sucks that I would go out of the way to go to Alice and Wonderland's premiere but it's in another country. Sigh...]

Happy New Years and Valentines Day!

:) Happy New Years to all my lovely Asians. And [OOPS I DIDN'T KNOW I WAS RACIST.] everyone else, if you so choose to celebrate!

Happy Valentines to all my lovelies. Especially the tallest and most handsome Takahashi brother. CH&JS&CG&GT4eva. The Mormon Way, of course.

Hope you have a wonderful day! I love you!

Sarcasm and Meeting an Old Man

This made me laugh. Well, I mean, it's really NOT funny. But because it's not funny, it actually is. I used to think that I was pretty sarcastic. That side of me has slowly but surely disappeared. Perhaps this is a good thing. I guess when sarcasm isn't directed at you in a hostile situation, it can be fun.

HMMM...well, I guess I'm still sarcastic to certain people. Like Miss Lee. And my mother.

On another note, I was at a master's dinner today and the guest speaker was Dr. Sidney Harman. He has a wikipedia page. Legit.

Anyway, he's an extremely successful business man and entrepreneur. His resume and list of achievements is quite long. Well, you figured it would be since he is 91 years old. UH he looks, and is, physically well as if he were an extremely healthy active 63 year old. My hypochondriac-yet-actually-healthy-70-something-year-old grandmother wouldn't stand a chance against him. Heck, maybe I wouldn't. Seriously, this guy is amazing. At 91 years old, he's teaching, flying around, doing business, maintaining a lovely marriage with his wife Congresswoman Jane Harman. He was so cute when she called in the middle of his talk and he picked up just to say hi :)

I just thought that I'd put this out there because meeting a cute 91 year old man who will probably live another 30 years made my day. He remembers WWII. Simply amazing :)

Whatever happened to bake sales?

To begin, I'd like to declare that this blog is simply for random musings. I'm not quite sure where I want to go with this, but for now it will be...random. And just that. So hi there! Come back and read as you wish and leave a comment to amuse me please :)

Lovely memories from freshman year of high school: I distinctly remember loving getting out of 7th period [ha! what a joke...how did I ever make it through such a long school day?!] and being super excited because every week, on multiple days, clubs would be outside of the auditorium after school selling random sweets, snacks and drinks to the delight of the fat-kid-who-loves-cake inside of me. Oh wait, that's outside of me too. Hehe, anyway...so while it was common to grab a pearl milk tea at jacked up prices, it was even more common to see clubs having bake sales. Now, these bake sales disappeared during what must have been my sophomore or junior year.

As part of CHEF Club, I was so excited to be on leadership and organize hosts of bake sales! I love baking! I love getting other people fat around me and consuming the flour and sugar I lovingly tossed into the oven! Baking cheesecake was our THING for club day! So why in the name of Mister Bunbury did this end? Well my friends, IT happened. IT, being bureaucracy. Red tape from administration informing me that we could not make our own cheesecake for club day, and could not have a bake sale fundraiser. Apparently they were worried we were going to poison the poor kids...or something along those lines. Maybe around finals time, they wouldn't have minded if we did. [I kid you...]

So, this was pretty upsetting to me in high school...all I wanted to do was bake cookies, make homemade lemonade and feed it to the masses.

Fast forward to today. I heard it again. I was mildly day dreaming [while still listening of course] during announcements at the end of choir practice and I heard the following utterance of blasphemy: "We will be selling Diddy Riese cookies instead of baking our own cookies for the bake sale fundraiser because apparently the school won't allow us to sell things we bake ourselves."

I'm sorry, WHAT? For some reason this brought back all the sorrow that I had from high school from not being able to cook and bake our own things to sell. We're not going to poison anyone, we promise.

I'm upset because all this red tape detracts from the fun of bonding while baking, and being proud about being selling something you made by yourself! When we were kids, my brother and I used to sell homemade lemonade on the sidewalk at 25 cents a cup. And aside from that one time that my brother decided he didn't like his lemonade with sugar and decided to omit this key ingredient, I was proud that people enjoyed what we made. In today's world we rely so much on manufactured goods [and don't get me wrong, I love Diddy Riese] that we don't recognize the sugary goodness that can be made by our own hands. Instead we shell out a few dollars for some gas and store bought cookies.

So to everyone involved in this evil attempt to destroy the classic bake sale, I beg you to stop! I promise to bake you cookies and they won't make you sick :)