slacking

alright people, i admit i have been slacking on my blogs... so here's my attempt at an overview of what life has been like and why i've been such a slacker!

first and foremost, work has been CRAZY. our usual breakneck speed of pushing a release a week was shortened into 3 releases over 2 weeks (trust me when i saw that our usual speed already is madness). not sure if i mentioned it, but i had made a career change - not just a change of another group in the old department... i am now with the most crazy insane stressful high adreneline group at my company, we deal with real time decision-making 70% of the time. that means i, ALONE, with my mouse click, can make a multimillion dollar booboo even if the booboo only last 30 seconds. talk about stress eh? but it's nice to be in a position where i have that much power. work has been 10-12-15 hours of insane reactive mode. the reason for the specially crazy speed is other groups which has made a few booboos, thankfully we didn't have *much* customer impact, but the potential for that was unimaginably HUGE. once i get on my feet and learn the rest of the skills i need, i will likely be on call at nights and some weekends too like my teammates(and people have asked why i was crazy enough to join this team)

add to the mix hurc came down during the holidays and that was cool... i even took an entire day off during the week :) anyways i would try to leave work "early" which still mean ATTEMPTING to leave at 5pm and making it home by 7pm (i live 15 minutes away). but the holidays were great, lots of good friends, good food, arcade games, playing hockey games, watching hockey games, playing hockey video games, playing party games... no complaints at all, it was wonderful and tiring but lots of fun.

then i finally went for my lasik evaluation to see if i am a qualified candidate. here in california, you can put aside money into what's called a flexible spending account (fsa) - which takes money out PRE-TAX from your paycheck to pay for medical related expenses (however if end of calendar year comes and you did not spend the medical care money, you lose it ALL, finito, no rolling over or cashing out). after thinking and talking about it for 5 years now, i was referred to an awesome lasik surgeon, had my extensive evaluation done... i have an appointment for the surgery, which will take less than 15 minutes and should have my eyesight fully recovered within 12 hours - i can't believe it, i don't feel much anything like excitement or nervousness, as much as i just feel disbelief that it's going to happen after all this. so before the surgery i need to figure out how to get my money out of the fsa to spend on the lasik, lots of paperwork and research...

besides that erin's mom's come down (she lives 2 hours away) to help organize the space in the living that erin, ben and i live in - we really have 3 household of stuff jammed into 1 living space. we've made numerous passes at goodwill runs to get rid of things we don't need ( i have given away no less than 20 garbage bags filled with my stuff alone), but we're basically down to the point where most of us don't own much anymore, and whatever remains are what we would want to continue to own (books, music, dvds, games mainly). over last weekend we ran around trying figure out what furnitures would open up the space and still look nice and be affordable, what we can do with the space... and put together a few IKEA puzzles (on a side note i am always amazed by IKEA products - their instructions has no text, yet they are able to convey CLEARLY how to build that 6 level fancy bookshelf from materials that comes compacted in a little box) - and never doubt IKEA, everything is made to fit somewhere, for some purpose - you just have to trust it and follow the instructions verbatim and at the end you will see the "why" as in "why is this part fit in that way". Also, now that we have nice shelves up in the living room, there's room to display stuff, i have my sushi-candles out. the other night i 'operated' on the shrimp sushi because the tail came off... so i melted the two sides and stuck it back in place. mind you it's kinda offset, but from some angles, it looks fine. yum... sushi.

i've managed to be popping ibprofens at work this whole week, the super crazy insane stress has been taking a toll. i wake up tired, i go home tired, i'm just tired inside.

hockey's been my salvation - when i'm at hockey, the world, stress, worries just disappear. it's me, the puck, the sheet of ice, and no one in my way! i've been more confident in recent months in hockey, bootcamp has gotten me to better cardio shape than ever before so i skate harder and faster (still out of control with the puck handling, but one flaw to work on at a time..) i've even intentionally cup checked a big guy who's probably the most skilled player at the rink (we were in a mixed level holiday tournament game together), apparently i tripped someone on the opposite team in my women's league (she was angry because we both fell but i got up and just went after the puck again - afterall, i have LOTS of practice falling and i'm VERY GOOD at picking myself up quickly). i also got a goal last week assisted by my defense, and almost had a shot at another goal by creating my own breakaway... i love the game, and i just want to be continually pushing the envelope to increase my skills/speed/control of the game every week. it also lets me be competitive and leave that on the ice so i can be Nice Amy off the ice *wink*

ok... updated: i was supposed to finally have lunch with my qa coworkers i hadn't seen in over 2 weeks but last minute we were pulled to react to an issue so 5 minutes before lunch i had to cancel :( sorry mary & alap!
just goes to show my schedule is now no longer my own.. will write more later

Do you know the way to San Jose?

It was great visiting Amy and company during the holidays. Other than the Sharks game, I hadn't planned anything else at all, and that was just fine by me. We mostly played it by ear, and just went with the flow. And the flow was really laid back. Here are some restaurants we went to:

Maggiano's - Italian food. "Family style" if the only way to go. Their salad is excellent if you can stand the strong blue cheese.

Korea House - Korean food. Unoriginal name, but excellent Bulgogi.

Banana Leaf - Malaysian/Thai food. I love their roti and sauce. For once, we ordered enough for everyone. Great mango chicken as well.

Michi - Japanese food. Known for their never ending selection of maki sushi. Many are just different variations of each other, but damn, they still came up with a name for each one.

Pizz'a Chicago - Pizza. Name a little too clever for its own good. But pretty good Chicago style deep dish pizza.

For once, we didn't have In N Out Burger or The Cheesecake Factory like I usually do everytime I visit the Bay Area. I did however have a taste of some great homemade spaghetti sauce.

Other than eats, there's always good shopping. If you know where to look, you can get some pretty good stuff. I got a couple of things from Abercrombie and Fitch and Banana Republic. I also bought things from Bath & Body Works for my sisters. But if you read my blog, you'll know that I don't have these things in my possession at the current moment.

And last but not least, there is always one other thing that I have to do to make these trips complete: Derby Owners Club - World Edition. This game is so addictive, you have no idea. I don't even want to say how much money I've put into this game.

Ok. I think that's enough links for one night.

hurc in town :)

hurc's in town! (well he's leaving town tomorrow)
we'll blog about his adventures later, but here's a pic of all of us at the Sharks game... Nabby fell apart and gave up 4 goals in under 3 minutes in the 3rd period - painful to watch.