I saw this shirt at shirt.woot.com

Many years ago, Joey asked a question in the middle of one of his sermons. “What are the hardest wrinkles to iron out?”

Jennifer blurted “Ones you make yourself.”

Then she turned to the person to her left and gave him the most dorky know-it-all look.

Unfortunately for me, I was that person to her left.

To this day, when I iron, the image of her oddly contorted face burns into the projection screen of my brain.

I do my own ironing and I’ve been doing so for as long as I can remember. Ironing is easy stuff. I love the sound of the steam blasting through the fabric and the thick smell of it in the air.

I generally started with the front. There’s a certain pleasure I get when the wrinkles near the pockets and near the buttons smoothen out.

Then I do the arms/sleeves. I don’t put too much time into them because I usually roll up my sleeves anyway.

I iron the back. Every shirt has one or two of those creases that need to be iron delicately to create the perfect line. After the back, I do the shoulder. I always find this part to be the hardest. Ironing boards seem to lack the area to do this in one swoop. Tedious.

Last, the collar. Compared to the shoulders, this is child’s play.

Ironing is interesting. When I do it myself, I look at the finished product and I marvel at the changes. This wrinkly badly-placed piece of fabric has been molded to become presentable, smooth, fashionable.

I like to iron my own shirts. When someone else irons them, I can’t help but notice the places they missed, the forgotten areas maybe around the armpit or the difficult parts around the shoulders. But when I iron my own shirt, I see those places, but I’m willing to disregard them.

Sometimes, I have to iron my wrinkle-free dress pants. That process is harder than the shirts.

Then there’s life, which is a whole another story.

Jessica and I found ourselves in Palos Verdes with time to spare craving donuts. After driving to, to our dismay, a phantom Krispy Kreme, we settled for this no-name donut shop Jessica thought was named Douche Boys. This little ghetto hole-in-the-wall turned out to serve quite delicious donuts. I savored every bite of my raspberry-filled glazed donut. Even now, as I reminisce my mouth waters.

After “ruining our appetites,” we headed to a California Pizza Kitchen we had passed on our journey to the donut. CPK holds claim to be our unofficial favorite. Why not! I don’t even look at the menu when we sit down. I want my Pepsi, Yes, I want bread, and I want the brocolli/sun-dried tomato fusilli, no chicken.

After dinner, we had a post-meal dessert, Tiramisu. It seems Jessica and I have many desserts through out the day. We have pre-meal dessert, post-meal dessert, between-meal dessert. She lets me assuage my sweet tooth and that’s why suki desu.

While we waited for our food, I took this picture of Jessica squeezing her cheeks together. I feel like she looks like Thomas the Tank Engine when she does it. She’ll probably kill me after seeing this but I love it. I can’t stop smiling while I look at her.

This Saturday didn’t really turn out any way near how I thought it would. But it started great, ended great… and in-the-between, no one died, so that was great, too.

It’s been a tough last couple of months.

———

Driving home from church, my car lost her legs. Revving at 6000 rpm, I crawled down the 10 freeway. (I burned out the clutch). I stood in the parking lot of a laundry mat next to the Walnut Grove off ramp getting my bearings. My car had come to a dead stop about 10 yards away from the parking space. It was 12 midnight.

———

After installing the newest service pack from Windows, my computer would blue-screen during load. I’m usually pretty good at troubleshooting problems but this problem wouldn’t even let me boot to safe mode. After a few days of trying different things, I gave up and tried to reinstall old windows.

While the installation was in process, my computer started rebooting randomly.

Finally, after my computer rebooted one last time during installation, I literally saw my hard drive spark, then smoke. The hard drive was having issues earlier, but I never expected this. The hard drive was completely fried. It contained all my mp3’s and movies I’ve amassed in the last half year or so.

My hatred for Windows increases.

———

I went significantly over on my phone bill last month. The culprit was internet use. I had been checking mail, facebook and sports far too often during class. Now I had to pay.

———

I’ve been gaining weight like crazy. A little over a year ago today, I weighed myself at 155 pounds. A few days ago, the scale told me I was 176.4. I wasn’t even surprised.

———

My brown slippers, the slippers Jennifer Cha got me years ago have finally started to fall apart. I think I’m known for wearing these islanders. It’s so hard to find replacements.

———//////////———

As I write, I think Jessica’s buying me slippers from Nordstroms.

———

My weight has plateau-ed. For the past month, I’ve been able to eat anything and my weight has stayed at a consistent 175. It’s a relief actually.

———

While my computer was under, Jessica lent me her Macbook. I’m using it now to write this blog. Althought it was difficult in the beginning, I’m starting to really appreciate the little nuances a Mac offers. (Kind of like the Jetta). The great thing is this campus is full wireless. No more overminute charges.

Class time flies by.

I’ve always loved apples. But now I like Apple.

———

I had been meaning to install a new hard drive for my computer. My hard drives, DVD-rom and CD writer were all IDE and my motherboard had only one IDE connection. That meant, I could only use one hard drive at a time if I wanted to use a disk drive as well. When my hard drive fried it was the perfect excuse for me to buy a new one. I found a 500 gb SATA hard drive at Fry’s for 89 bucks and I jumped on it.

I had bought my motherboard from Fry’s last October and I always had some issues with it. Before I installed Windows on the new hard drive I updated my BIOS. Now i have no problems whatsoever.

After building my Core2Quad last fall, I never reinstalled Windows. I had been meaning to, but I always made excuses not to.

Now, my computer runs faster than before.

Because of my new love for Macs, I’ve been using ObjectDock, Safari, and Open Office. It feels like I’m using a new computer.

———

While driving home from church, my car began to struggle to keep 65. I pulled to the right lane and revving at 6000 RPM passed the 710 freeway, I drove 55 to my freeway exit. I called my dad.

“AhPah, my car is about to die.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m on the freeway.”
“Call me if it gets worse.”

By the time, I got to Walnut Grove, the clutch was gone. I cruised down the Walnut Grove exit. There were no cars in front of me so I didn’t need to stop. The two exit intersections were green so I didn’t have to stop there. My car cruised into an empty parking lot without any incident.

I called my dad and told me where I was.

A few moments later, my dad arrived with the AAA to tow me to my house.

Later, he gave me the keys to his car and I’ve been driving it since.

———

The last couple months haven’t been so bad.

this is what Jessica and I do
during our (upside)down times