Kevin akan berada di Malaysia untuk setidaknya tiga minggu

For those who don't know what the title says, it is Malay for "Kevin will be in Malaysia for at least 3 weeks." Yes, Kevin left last night to go to the western digital factories in Malaysia for at least 3 weeks. He is super excited because it is a rite of passage to go and I am excited because I think he will thoroughly enjoy this time. Despite all of the excitement there is still the sadness that we will be apart for so long.

He left late Friday night for the airport and when he got in his stretch limo (yeah he travels fancy style) I cried like a baby. I cried for probably about an hour because I already missed him. I had trouble sleeping but hopefully I don't cry or break down again.

Kevin going to Malaysia has quite an impact on my daily life because he is my ride to and from work. I can still get to work during the week by taking the bus. I took the bus when I first started at the bakery so it is just like old times. The only complicated day of the week is Sunday since I have to be at work at 7 am. The buses do not run this early which complicates things a bit. Kevin and I have ridden our bikes from home to Los Gatos but with the impending pouring rain I don't really want to ride my bike at 5:30 in the morning. The only other real option to get to work would be to take a taxi. This is feasible, slightly expensive but would get me to work on time.

Me being the paranoid person I am cannot wait until the day necessary to try something new. So today I had a taxi scheduled to pick me up and take me to Los Gatos. This trip answered many questions such as would the reservation insure that the taxi would arrive on time? Simple answer is yes, in fact my taxi was about 10 minutes early. Secondly I was able to determine how much the ride will cost so that I will be prepared. After taking the taxi to downtown Los Gatos I waited at the bus stop and proceeded to take the bus right back to Campbell. A bit of a waste of time to most people, but a stress reliever for me.

I made it home, reserved my taxi for tomorrow morning and now it is simply time to relax. I feel relatively prepared for the time without Kevin. Although I may be lonely, I know that I will be able to get to and from work which relieves almost all of my stress.

Here's to hoping for an enjoyable few weeks without Kevin and that I find many fun things to fill my days :-)

I am a "To Do List" addict

They always say that the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. Well the title says it all. I am addicted to making, following and dedicating myself to to do lists. I make a to do list all the time but especially on Mondays, which are my one day off by myself.

The list includes things like laundry and doing dishes but ends up being about 2 or 3 pages long because I have to include things like play video games and watch movies. This is how I know this is a problem. In order to justify watching TV or playing video games it must be on my to do list.

Then again, is it really a problem if everything gets done and I still have a good time. Regardless of whether this addiction is good or bad, it does relieve some stress and helps organize my thoughts into tasks that can be completed.

To do lists help me feel accomplished since I no longer have homework and work to take home so it is my own homemade assignment list. For all of you who love your to do list, keep at it. For those of you who find to do lists overwhelming or unnecessary that is fine too. As long as we all enjoy life while still getting all the necessary tasks done.

Come to think of my to do list for today I did not include writing a blog post on it. Hmmm.....should I simply add it on and then cross it off because I completed it or just count this as some sort of extra credit?

Regardless.....I love my to do list and I love to do things whether they are on my to do list or not.

Here's to finishing my to do list and maybe having a little extra fun along the way. :-)

Happy excuse to do something special day!

Well as everyone knows, I am not a fan of valentine's day. It is simply another day in the year that has convinced everyone in the world to feel required to buy candy and flowers and go out to a fancy dinner with their special someone. Now I know that for the single people in the world this day is yet another reminder of their singledom, but even for some of those in a relationship this day is just forcing love and romance down their throat.

Especially with working on and around holidays at a bakery I am engulfed in each and every holiday of the year so I am over holidays weeks before they actually arrive. So Valentine's day is a long finished holiday in my mind. I don't want heart shaped cookies or cute little candies of valentine's cupcakes. All just overly priced sweets that have no meaning because everybody in the world gets these treats on this oh so special day.

Last week I found out that I would work on the 13th and incredibly I would have the Sunday of Valentine's Day off. Not that I need to the day off to celebrate the occasion, but I decided that Kevin and I would do something "special." So my romantic planning skills yielded the decision that Kevin and I will go to the Campbell Farmers Market on Valentine's day. It is not because it is Valentine's day, it is simply because it is one of the first Sunday's since working at the bakery that I don't have to work and we are not out of town. Kevin and I have each independently gone to the farmer's market but never together and this just seemed like the perfect occasion.

Other than those extravagant plans Kevin and are going to have a casual normal weekend day except that I will cook breakfast. Scary considering I have never cooked bacon before in my life. In addition, Kevin did surprise me with the "All Edge Brownie Pan." He even baked brownies in it during the night so that when I woke up this morning the pan had already been tested. How sweet. I am most excited to have brownies for breakfast.

Here's hoping to a fun day with whatever you may do. Just enjoy the day with the one's you love whether they be a spouse, a friend, a pet, or your children. Take this commercialized holiday and simply spend time together. It is a free and yet very meaningful gift.

Happy "Let's Spend Time Together" Day! :-)

the day has finally arrived!!!

Today is the momentous day of my endoscopy. In just a couple of hours I will have to cease eating and drinking (including water....which is tough b/c i LOVE water). So for about 6 hours I will sit around waiting for my test, but come 3:30 hopefully there will be answers to my illness and pain.

Hoping for a successful and informative day.

**UPDATE: The endoscopy went fine and apparently everything looked normal. No problems on the stomach lining and all of the biopsies came back benign and with no infection. The doctor says great news which makes sense since there is no problem. Unfortunately it leaves me clueless as to why I have been in so much pain lately. I am going to step back from solving the problem for a while and just continue living my life until I am ready to go through more tests.

Hopefully everyone is healthy and happy......I at least have the happy part covered :-)

doctor, doctor.....give me the news

so much for no hospitals this year.....

vacation with my family turned a bit more excited when I landed myself in the E.R. overnight. First, let's cover how wonderful my vacation was. I got to work around the house with my dad which included cleaning up, painting my bathroom, painting the side of the house, patching a hole in a ceiling, and scraping off a popcorn ceiling and painting the ceiling. I also got to visit with my uncle, survive what seemed to be monsoon weather, went to the disneyland, volunteered, bought a dress and overall had an amazing time.

Amazing except for that wednesday night (after disneyland at least). I woke up in extreme pain and I don't mean stomach ache, I mean somebody is repeatedly stabbing me in the stomach from the inside and out. After some coaxing by my parents I agreed to go to the hospital. They took my vitals and gave me a room in the E.R.. A few blood tests, IV and some medication later they still did not know what was wrong with me and told my mom that I would stay overnight until they could do an ultrasound in the morning. I survived the night....in pain, but at least it was pretty entertaining for me with the monitors I was hooked up to. The following morning they rolled me to the ultrasound room....yes I got to be rolled around on a hospital bed. Talk about a super exciting thing :-D. Anyways back to the story. Ultrasound completed I stayed in my room and the shifts changed so I got a new doctor and a new nurse (sad b/c the original staff was super fun and made me laugh, and the doctor was quite good looking). My dad arrived and in no big surprising turn of events the ultrasound showed nothing. Yes they still have no idea what is wrong with me. They prescribed some pain medication and a proton pump inhibitor and said to follow up with my regular doctor and to eventually get an endoscopy.

Well I returned to northern california alive with my stomach still in one piece....I think. I emailed back and forth with my doctor and have now been given a referral to a gastroenterologist. As weird as this sounds....that is like winning the lottery for me. Now I just need to set up an appointment and say a prayer that this doctor will be able to solve my problems and complete the simple task of telling me why I am in pain.

So instead of hoping for a hospital free year.....since that has clearly failed, I will hope for a year in which I find out what is wrong with me and can successfully treat it and/or find ways of managing it. :-)

Hello 2010

Needless to say this year started off interesting....or is it more accurate to say that 2009 ended on a crazy note. Regardless of the technicalities, on new years eve I awoke at 2 am nauseous and proceeded to throw up for 7 hours and endure severe abdominal pain.

For the first time in my life I had to call work, or more accurately, have Kevin call my boss and let her know that there was no way I would be able to be back in northern california for work at 8am on new years day. The call went fine and just a few minutes later I announced that I needed to go to the hospital. Now if you know me, you know that I don't go to the hospital ever. The most recent trip before this was 8 years ago when I had my ulcer and was incapacitated with pain, so understandably I have to be in a great deal of pain to justify going to the hospital. I was in pain.

Kevin, his dad and I arrived in the emergency room easily dealt with the whole Northern vs. Southern CA Kaiser issue and they took my vital signs. No fever, normal blood pressure and a very high pulse. Probably about 15 minutes later I was escorted into one of the rooms in the back to wait for the doctor. I was alone and not sure what was going to happen. After waiting about half an hour Kevin arrived and what a relief that was. A little while after a nurse arrived and proceeded to give me an IV, anti-nausea medicine and morphine. They started all of the tests and I had to wait about 4 more hours for the results. After the whole ordeal, the doctor informed me that all of the tests came back normal. Not what I wanted to hear. I would have been happier to be able to blame the pain on something but alas I was not so lucky. He guessed that it was some form of gastritis and that it may have aggravated my old ulcer but no real conclusions were made.

I was released, picked up a prescription and headed back to Kevin's parents house. I slept, only felt a little pain, until 9 that evening. All of the pain returned and I was about ready to go back to the hospital. The next thing I remember is waking up the next morning on the couch and Kevin asleep on the floor next to me. I felt "ok", this being a relative term since I was still in pain but could at least move around a little bit. I convinced Kevin to pack up the car and we headed back home around 10am. I was glad to be going home and glad the pain had significantly decreased.

We made it home ready to start the new year. In the week or so that has gone by I have returned to work. I am feeling much better although still sick. My stomach does not like it when I eat which is a challenge because I love food. I am on a restricted bland diet which is frustrating because it eliminates some of my favorite foods but it helps with reducing the pain so I will sacrifice for now.

Hopefully as the year progresses my stomach will fully recover and I will be back to eating my normal foods and living my normal life without ridiculous stomach pain, but for I will go and eat some pasta or a turkey sandwich to get me through the day.

I hope everyone had a more pleasant new years than I did and I am hoping that everyone has a fabulous enjoyable and healthy 2010. :-)

What is a food quest?

While I'm sure there is some official term called a food quest, in the lives of Kevin and I it is an adventure that Kevin gets to go on.

Throughout our relationship Kevin has had an amazing to power to make me try and eventually like new foods. Just a few of the new foods in my repertoire are sushi, avocados, gourmet pizza, Indian food, Thai food, Hawaiian food....and I'm sure that list could go on forever.

While we have made good progress expanding my food horizons there is still a long way to go. So a few months back in a spur of the moment decision Kevin and I invented what we know as a "food quest." Simply put it is when Kevin goes out without me to find a place to get takeout but the catch is that the place must be a restaurant that we have never eaten at and the more unique the place the better. I'm not sure what the first food quest was but on the many food quests that have occurred I have been able to try kabobs, a variety of Mexican restaurants, new Indian restaurants, and Yiassoo (Greek food) that is now one of Kevin's favorite restaurants.

I'm sure some of you are asking why must Kevin go out without me and it is because I am too judgmental of restaurants. If Kevin and I went out to eat I would simply keep saying no to restaurants without even knowing what kind of food they have....my decision is based simply on the neighborhood and the building, because I get nervous that I won't like it. If Kevin goes out and gets the food without me, I will not be able to say no. The food he gets is the food we will eat which is a good way to get me to try new food.

Food quests are yet another method to increase my food repertoire and it is also fun for Kevin because he gets to go through yelp reviews and/or drive around aimlessly to find our next food adventure.

May we continue to quest for new and fun food :-)