We need to meet at a beer place, not a coffee place
Seriously, don't y'all think so? Beer gets the conversation flowing faster than coffee.

Yesterday's impromptu STL Bloggers meetup was awesome! I never had so much fun in my life. The only problem, hmm, problem is probably not the right word, is that I don't have enough time to go around and talk to everybody. The couple of people that I talked to, we had some really good conversation. I think most bloggers are more matured than I am, and therefore have a lot of insight to different facets of life that makes the conversation so interesting.

Mae and Mr. Geek: The first person I saw when I walked into Culpeppers was Mae. I recognized her immediately and was so excited that I hugged her. I think she was caught off guard. She's very interesting to talk to, and have a crazy sense of humor. I'm sorry I missed the whole conversation about having sex with a tree (or so I read in someone elses blog)!! But we decided we should go bowling for our next blog meetup. Bowling and alchol. That'll be fun.

And I have a confession. Please, don't laugh. I'm turning red as I type here. I think I've confused myself with this: I associated Mr. Geek with Confession of a geek, which I now realized is two different person. Would you ever forgive me? I must've sound pretty incoherent then. Sorry! Let's blame it on the 4 rum and coke that I had last night. By the way, the nose ring was pretty cool (or was it earring but in my haste I mistook it for your nose? again, um, alcohol impaired judgement.)

*whew*

Christy: She's cool! She can tell a story like nobody else, and crack us all up. And she can talk about serious stuff like blog privacy. And to top it off, she knows couple of cheap places for beers that we can go to the next time.

Leesa: It was nice to see her again. Her blogs are very intelligently written. Makes me want to go back to school even more. :)

Ben, Ryan, and Joster: It's always nice to see Ben and Ryan again. I'm actually planning to move this site from Blogger to Ben's devblog. Ben's going to give me a quick overview on how everything is setup, and I'll be ready to move the site. It was nice meeting Joster, after hearing stories about Beer and Bitch thursdays and lunch outings. It's good to finally put the face and the name together.

Don: Had a golden opportunity to ride in his famous, newly chipped VW Bora. It was like a scene out of Gran Turismo. It was va-va-vooming all the way. Awesome ride!

Vince: Wanted to chat more with him but we seemed to end up on different ends of the table :p. He was saying that his site received lotsa hits from my work place, I was amazed I hit his site so many times, but later realized that I kept refreshing the Humor page to see those random jokes. Hah. That explains everything.

Michael Ko: Finally, the person that everybody wanted to meet did show up.

And to the rest of the gang, it was nice meeting you all. I was disappointed I missed the whole thong scene, but oh well... we should do this again soon!

Birthday gift from Mike
Mike gave me my birthday gift last night ... he got me a beautiful robe from Banana! I really liked it, especially because it was white. It was a little long -- it fell to my ankles when it should really fall mid-calf. When I hung it up in my bathroom, I also noticed that the waffle design matched the waffle design on my shower curtain!!! How awesome is that? The only thing that I would have preferred different is the trim -- it's gold. So maybe in the future, I can make my bathroom design white and canary yellow ... and everything will match without much work. Trading Spaces was great yesterday, Doug created this beautiful checkered wall with 3 colors of the different tones. Maybe I can do something like that for my future bathroom, it'd be pretty cool coz it's go well with the waffle design, only this is more obvious and bigger.

Sorry ... I'm just randomly blabbering coz I just got back from lunch and really don't feel like doing much except going home and playing computer games. Ooh, Friends premieres tonight! *bounce*

Site Updates
I've added the rock climbing pictures to the photo gallery, although there're no captions yet. Elaine, I promise I'll get to your Toronto pictures soon!

Also, Don just put up the picture of my new car on www.stlvw.org. Yes, I am a proud new owner of a VW Jetta now. I'm moving closer and closer to my dream car. It'll take a while but I'll get there.

The captain of the ship
I read this piece not long ago on Ryan's blog, and Christy suggested that he send it to Über.nu - which publish non-commercial zany funky stories and poetries. It's called Inside My Head - by Ryan Suther, and it's freakin' funny. Go read it for yourself.

Three friends, one day, and an amazing self-discovery journey
Diana and I were in Lexington over the weekend to join Elaine in her rock climbing expedition. Now mind you, before this, I thought the rocks were at a 45-60 degrees angle, and was expecting sort of the hike/climb throughout. Needless to say, when I saw the rocks that we were suppose to scale, I nearly pass out. Feelings of betrayal came rushing, and I was at a point that I'm ready to run back down the trail and hide in Elaine's Accord's trunk. I'm not kidding you. Diana, being the stronger, more athletic one, went first. I could tell she has a lot of upper body strength because her biceps and triceps were showing when she's climbing the rock. Sam and Elaine were coaching her through the climb up, after some struggle, she made it. I'm sure the feeling was awesome, because she kept saying she wants to quit halfway, and Elaine just WON'T let her come down. I am extremely proud of Diana for finishing it, and Elaine for refusing to give up on her friend.

Then it was Elaine's turn. She's a seasoned climber - needless to say it looked like a piece of cake to her. After Elaine the moment that I've been dreading came. I took my first stab at the rocks, and voila, up I go. It was really tiring, but I was determined to finish this. I still remember closing my eyes and kept saying my prayers, and then I would open my eyes and go like "f#$%! f@#$! f#$&!". To me, it was easy going up, I did it my own way which is grab and go, grab and go. But because I wasn't careful enough to survey the rocks carefully, I fell a couple of time. I would bounce against the rocks couple of time, then grab hold of a ledge, and then go again. When I got to the top and grabbed hold of the anchor, it was absolutely exhilirating! However, the worst wasn't over. The repeling down back to ground was rather scary, though I suppose it's te gravity that's making me feel eeek.

On the drive home, Elaine and I were talking about the climbing experience, and being the wise sage that she is, observed that all three of us climbed with very different style, and it completely matches with our personality.

Diana is always very careful. She looks and looks before taking the leap into anything, and that was reflected in her climbing style. She would just hang back sitting on the rope, surveyed the situation, talked it over with Sam and Elaine, and then start hoisting herself up.

Elaine's personality falls somewhere between Diana's and mine. She's careful too, but is not as cautious as Diana. If she knows where she's going, she'll go for it. She takes a little but more risk, but most of the time she's sure-footed. That's exactly how the girl is in real life. Which is pretty amazing.

As for me, you can tell, like to take risk. I'm a bit more fearless going up the rocks, cause all I want to do is climb to the top. If I slip, then I'll be hanging on the rope, and I can try again and again. What's interesting was that when they lower me back to the starting point, I was really afraid and out of breath. That's funny, cause falling is like failing, and that's one thing I don't do very well, failures are basically not acceptable in my books. And to realize that about myself, and have Elaine pointed that out to me, was really enlightening.

All in all, the weekend was awesome. We did talk about how Holly would have climb if she was there. Holly, we missed you. Hope the four of us can get together real soon!

The perfect NFL pick
Guess what?! I won the office pool this week! I didn't even miss one pick! Not even the Rams game, (yeah yeah, I picked TB over STL). So now I am sitting at my desk waiting for Darren to hand me my $$$.

The best birthday weekend!
What a great weekend this has been! It all started Friday night when Diana arrived at about 8:30pm. With no directions, the girl managed to find my place by memory. *kow tow to you, Diana* Since she hadn't had dinner yet, we headed out to Mr. Wok to get some Hu Tieu Soup to bring home to eat. Then Angeline arrived at about 10:30pm, and immediately asked for her Yong Chow fried rice (with an extra egg). We slept rather early that night after Diana finished doing her laundry, because the very next day we were supposed to wake up at 8am.

We all get up on early Saturday morning and got ready to go climbing. Obviously the girls didn't know what they were signing up for, because they were happily preparing the spam sandwiches and grapes and getting all dressed up in athletic clothes. :) We arrived at the Red River Gorge rest area at about 10:15am, and met up with a few climbers. Left Flank (scroll down to Left Flank Rehab Project) was the climbing area we were going to head to that morning. So off we go, hiking there ... and then the girls saw what they signed up to do. I believe a couple eyes widened and jaws dropped to the ground. "You expect me to climb this?!" "Yes." "BUT THIS IS VERTICAL!!!" I enjoyed myself immensely. ;) *evil chuckle*. After Sam finished the lead, Diana top-roped the 5.8 climb first. Being the very careful and cautious girl she was, she took a while to climb it, but nonetheless finished it. *I'm so proud of you girl!!* :) I went next and was pretty pleased that I did not fall. Angeline went next, and completely surprised us. This risk-taker scaled the rock about as quickly as I did (and I've been climbing for a year now). She finished it too, I'm so proud of her.

I always get nervous when I think about climbing. As I'm typing now, the palms of my hands are sweating ... the girls sure got a good dose of adrenaline rush. :)

We get back that afternoon and absolutely collapsed on the bed, the couch, anything. Arms were aching, abs were hurting, bruises were a-swelling ... Mike made it all better with some home-cooked nasi lemak, asam fish head and red bean soup that night, and the 4 of us had a good dinner with some jazz music in the background. Then we decided we wouldn't let the day conquer us, so we headed to Meijer to do some cosmetics shopping. :) You have to admit that we are a pretty tough bunch.

This morning, again ... arms were aching, abs were a hurting, bruises were a-swelling. Angeline did her laundry, and we headed to Bella Notte for some lunch and peach bellinis (the aunties' favorite mixed drink). An hour later, we went to the mall for some shopping and to walk lunch off. At about 4pm, it was time for the aunties to go home. :_( Hugs and thank yous ... and then Angeline gave me my birthday present ... another shopping expedition to Ann Taylor or Loft!! *bounce* :) I didn't expect anything since it was already good enough of a birthday present that they agreed to let me torture them through climbing, but nonetheless ... THANK YOU!!!

........ so it's back to the real world. Laundry is a-running, dinner is a-cooking ... at least the apartment is still clean and I don't have to clean it. *phew* I get to sit back and relax, watch some TV, fold some clothes, and get ready for the week. I still get to look forward to Mike's birthday present for me this Thursday, so I have to say this is been a major high for me ... the aunties coming, getting gifts, shopping, more gifts coming ... ahhhhh ... life is good. :) Once again, MAJOR KUDOS to the aunties for being such a good sport at climbing!!! :) *hugs & muakz*

There was another interesting discovery about our personalities, but I'll let Angeline blog about that. Holly, we missed you. I hope you're feeling better.