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Tuesday, January 31, 2006 ( 6:50 AM ) teahouse Back in the Saddle Again Hey, everyone..I'm back in town! Whew, what a time it was. I'll download my photos and post them as soon as I can. But in the meantime, here are some observations I have about our trip: 1. It was really cold. And it snowed while we were there. But it was so beautiful. And the fact that it was so cold meant I could eat lots of cheese and strudel without feeling guilty. Mmmmm, strudel!! 2. People are way into Mozart. There were concerts, people walking around dressed up as him, he was all over. Being in the city of Salzburg on his birthday was pretty amazing. 3. I had way too many of these, or as we called them, "Mozart's balls." Heeheehee. 4. Ok, Americans cannot make bread. The bread there was so good! Even the cheap stuff in the supermarkets was divine. 5. There is nothing more lovely than an evening spent seeing The Marriage of Figaro at the Vienna Staatsoper (for the first time in my life, moved to tears by the music), followed by tea and the famous Sacher torte. 6. While in Salzburg, we watched another opera by Mozart - an earlier one, La Finta Gardiniera. Not familiar with the plot, we struggled with following the story. It was in Italian but with German subtitles! And on top of that, it was a modernized production where, instead of being a gardener girl, the main character was an employee in the Garden department of the Home Depot. We had no idea what was going on. It was pretty funny, actually. 7. I love the Viennese breakfasts. It's all spreadable cheese and pate, cold cuts, soft boiled eggs, lots of that good bread, and amazing coffee. 8. The public bathrooms are cleaner in Austria than they are in the U.S. 9. This is the cheesiest tour I've ever done, but it was still fun. And funny. And now I'm home. I don't want to go to work!! Wahhhhhh!! # 0 comments Sunday, January 22, 2006 ( 10:02 PM ) teahouse Vacation, All I Ever Needed I'm going on vacation for the next week. I'll be back at the end of the month. The Boy and I are going to a birthday party. Our friend Wolfgang's 250th, to be exact. I'm so excited! We're going to be in the city of his birth on the actual day he was born! And we'll be catching The Marriage of Figaro at the Vienna State Opera House. I'll be standing in front of this building in person in just a few days. Preparing for this trip was fun. I found out that the Boy must have grown up on Mars, because he'd never seen The Sound of Music. So of course we rented it last weekend and watched it together. The hills will be alive when we're there!! Everyone take care, and I'll be back before you know it. # 0 comments Friday, January 20, 2006 ( 2:56 AM ) teahouse Surprise It was a good day. I told the conductor of my orchestra that I wanted to play the principal part in a piece in our upcoming concert. I told him that he should let ME play first instead of bringing in an outsider. He told me to audition for him if I wanted the part. So I did. I practiced a lot, and took an extra lesson with my teacher, and I played for him tonight. He gave me the part! Say hello to the PRINCIPAL, the SECTION LEADER, the one who gets the phat SOLOS. "Ho, ho, ho, Solo..." I rock! I'm so excited, I haven't been able to calm down enough to go to sleep. # 0 comments Wednesday, January 18, 2006 ( 12:40 AM ) teahouse Spendthrift I've been reading a lot of financial books lately. You know - the ones that give advice like: "The Cappuccino Factor - stop buying coffee in the morning and you'll save $10 million by age 30!!" "If you bring your lunch to work every day, and invest it in a stock that has an annual yield of 48%, in 10 years you'll have $500 million for your retirement!" "All you have to do is put your change in a jar at the end of each day. Doing that, you'll have $1 million by the time you turn 65, assuming a savings account with a 64% interest rate!" "If you send your kid to community college instead of an Ivy League University, you won't have to eat dog food when you're retired!" "Foregoing that one manicure a month could mean the difference between having a private nurse when you're 90 and living in a Medicaid-approved nursing home where the orderlies abuse you daily!" These books have me convinced that saving every penny possible can have a huge financial impact on my life 50 years from now. In the meantime, I haven't gotten around to buying any 2 cent stamps for the postal rate increase that went into effect last week. I still have some 3-cent stamps from the previous postage rate increase, a couple of years ago. I've been using those to make up the extra rate. So technically, I'm overpaying each letter I send by 1 penny. According to the people who write these financial books, as a result of sending out 10 letters last week, I've already screwed myself out of approximately $486,254.58 in retirement funds. I might as well start stocking up on the dog food now. Assuming a 64% rate of return, that's 1000 cans of dog food I can have ready to start eating by age 65. # 0 comments Tuesday, January 17, 2006 ( 8:09 AM ) teahouse Impure Thoughts I went to mass this past Sunday. About 20 minutes into it, I was sitting and listening to the choir sing, when I suddenly became aware that several people were moving into my pew, and also into the pew immediately behind me (I could here whispering and rustling and people moving around). I had no idea what was going on, so I ignored it. During the offertory, I turned around and saw the hottest guy ever..I mean he was model hot. He looked like Gaston from Beauty and the Beast. He was in the pew directly behind me. And he was alone. No wonder all of the ladies in the congregation were moving in. They wanted to be in position to shake his hand during the "Peace Be With You." He shook MY hand first. But he was not my type, of course. I don't have thoughts like that during mass. Anyway, I had never seen him before. And judging from the twittering girls around him, he wasn't a regular attender at that mass. Afterwards, I thought about it some more. I wonder what particular need drew him on that particular day. Was he praying for success at the next Mr. Olympia pageant? Praying for a sick relative or a successful job interview? Or was he just thanking God for blessing him with the body of Adonis and the face of a cherub? Not that I thought THAT much about it..I already have a wonderful and very cute boyfriend. And no time for thoughts like that. Of course. # 0 comments Friday, January 13, 2006 ( 12:24 AM ) teahouse Pep Pep Pep Hugs to everyone for the love and support. I'm back, and I'm in a better mood. I just needed to get a couple of nights' worth of good sleep, and have a drink or two. I'm looking forward to the long weekend, in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. It will be nice to relax. Today I had lunch with this lovely lady, and we were brainstorming about how we could get out of law and into something more interesting and fulfilling, which will still pay our bills. Like opening a business, writing a book, etc. What can two young and reasonably attractive Asian women do together to make lots of money and never have to work again? Heyyy...get your minds out of the gutter!! # 0 comments Wednesday, January 11, 2006 ( 9:45 AM ) teahouse Bad Day Yesterday was a bad day. I got two unpleasant emails within minutes of each other. The first was a nasty mean email from a client, angrily criticizing a draft I had just sent, with gratuitous nastiness and mean-spiritedness. The second was an email from my orchestra conductor. He's not letting me play first in one of the pieces the next concert. He's pulling me, and replacing me with someone outside the orchestra, and making me play second. I'm really pissed off. So don't mess with me today. If you have a problem with that, you can kiss my ass. # 0 comments Tuesday, January 10, 2006 ( 12:34 AM ) teahouse The Bachelor So I was bored tonight, so I watched the season premiere of The Bachelor. I have never watched this show before. I know, I've been living in a cave for the past 4 years. Maybe this is a dumb question, but...Is it for real? It's so awful! This season they decided to set it in romantic Pareeeeee. First, even though the Bachelor was 33 years old, I think only one of the 25 perspective girlfriends was over 28. Second, he was a doctor, and they were mostly secretaries or kindergarten teachers or professional cheerleaders - not that there's anything wrong with any of those professions - they're all noble and good, and yes, underpaid. So the show's producers definitely went for maximization of economic and educational disparities, didn't they? Probably to make the Bachelor that much more attractive. And the women that much more desperate-looking. There was one token doctor (she was the one over 28, and she ran around telling everyone how she really wanted to have babies NOW, and when he didn't pick her at the end of the episode, she went off the deep end and cried and yelled). The episode went like this: Girl 1: Omigod!! He's a doctor!! I'm so excited! Girl 2: He's a doctor? Oooh, that means he's my type. Girl 3: As soon as I heard that he's a doctor, I thought, "Wow, I know he's the One!" Besides, my eggs are rotting. Girl 4: I've focused on my career until now, but now I'm ready for the next phase of my life. That is, the reproductive phase. THB: (rolling my eyes) I'm so appalled! NONE of these people can speak any French!! # 0 comments Monday, January 09, 2006 ( 9:16 AM ) teahouse Brokeback Mountain The Boy went to Atlantic City with his buddies this weekend. He had a very specific limit of how much money he was going to risk. He's always very good about not going over that limit. The plan was that he was going to at least break even, maybe even win something, and he'd bring it back and take me out to a nice dinner. On Saturday afternoon, I got a phone call. Boy: Uh, it's me. Well, I'm coming home early. We all lost our limits pretty early, and we're all in a bad mood. So we're heading back now. THB: So no fancy dinner? (disappointed). Boy: Sorry, no. In fact, I'm actually broke. Uh, do you have anything to eat? I don't have any money in my wallet. THB: Yeah, sure, come on over. I'll see you in 15 minutes. Boy: Uh, the subway make take longer than that. Don't have enough for a cab. It turned out he did have a few dollars left, and he bought me some Chinese food and surprised me with it when he showed up to my place. Isn't that sweet? Much better than any supa fancy dinner. # 0 comments Friday, January 06, 2006 ( 9:33 AM ) teahouse Fingers Crossed One of my friends got engaged last weekend. She's from Pennsylvania, and her fiance is Italian. Right now they're trying to decide where to have the wedding - her hometown or his. They know that no matter where they go, half the family and friends will have to make a long and expensive international trip. Am I selfish for secretly hoping for a trip to Venice and not Pittsburgh? # 0 comments Thursday, January 05, 2006 ( 12:14 AM ) teahouse Deja Vu My friend R's divorce was finalized a couple of months ago. Ready to get back into the dating scene again, she signed up with several online dating services. She was pretty happy with them, until a couple of weeks ago, when one of the services matched her up with one particular guy. "We think he would be a great match for you" they told her. They sent her his profile and photo. It was her ex husband. And what's more, the photo he used was their engagement picture from 10 years ago, with her cut out of it. "I don't know what's worse," she told me. "The fact that they matched me with him, or the fact that he's out there deceiving other women with a photo that's 10 years old." # 0 comments Tuesday, January 03, 2006 ( 12:05 AM ) teahouse The Tables Have Turned Texas T-bone's recent post about Hooters reminded me of one time last summer, when I went there with the Boy and some friends, and the buxom blonde waitress was really attentive to me through the entire evening. They guys insisted that she was hitting on me. "She's totally into you!" they said. "Get her number!!" I didn't believe them. I think she just wanted a nice tip. And was probably glad to see another woman. Well, ok...she did wink at me. And the Boy insists that she played with her nipples while taking my order. But I think that was just wishful thinking on his part. # 0 comments |
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