It’s HAPPENED! and NO, I’m not talking about the new awful m.night movie… which was not surprisingly dreadful and even laughable at parts… I’m referring to the best thing that has happened in the past year! A NEW APARTMENT! wooohooo! Aliki and I moved in about 2 weeks ago and even though the moving process was no cup of tea, it feels super good to be in a fresh new place. This apartment is much smaller (-300sq/ft) than the latter, but has way more character. We bailed on the bottom floor living and upgraded to 3rd floor. I feel more in shape from the endless stairs already. No fun carrying up groceries or anything not under 10lbs, but the view is 100x better (even if it is of the parking lot). I love our balcony and sitting out there reading books in the evening when the Dallas heat is not so brutal. BUT, not only is the new internalness of the apartment badass, the grounds of this complex are like nothing I’ve ever seen. Tons of foilage filled paths with covered arbors and hidden benches are everywhere. The pool is surrounded by pretty trees and rocks and resembles more of a lagoon with a hot tub and multiple levels, than an actual apartment pool. We are also way closer to downtown Dallas and other more interesting places than before the move. It must be the feng shui or something cuz I feel a million times better living here than that other place. Only thing now is, who wants to decorate it? teehee…

So, it’s done. Time to settle in, drink some tea and get back to the normalcy of my life which includes everything entertaining.

Some pics? sure, why not.

My Dad emailed me today and told me to look up ‘Mindfulness’ on YouTube and try to watch one of the videos in one sitting. Being the awesome daughter that I am, I did just that. The first video that I found features Jon Kabat-Zinn talking doing a talk at Google about meditation and awareness of the mind (link). Being that my dad is a karate instructor, prolific meditator and well versed on anything metaphysical, I could expect nothing less from him. Surprisingly, I was able to watch the whole 72min video and only waiver my attention a few times. I’ve never been one to meditate routinely, but I found the talk very interesting.

One of the Googlers near the end of the session brought up something very interesting that reminded me of my own qualms with mediating. He described how every time he attempts to quiet his mind and meditate, he can’t stop thinking about how great it is that he is actually meditating. Because he is so proud that he is actually taking the time to meditate, he is not actually meditating. His mind is full of these thoughts of meditating and therefore never actually clear. It kinda reminds me of real life. Sometimes I get so happy or proud of myself for actually starting to do something, that I let it plague my mind with elation and never actually finish it. The idea of certain aspects of life… a good job, love, friendship, often never progress past the imagination as well. Why is that? It’s almost as if living within the depths of the mind are just that much more satisfying than reality. I guess probably many people are like that these days. Living amongst dreams that never come to fruition. Actually, how unsatisfying.

At the end of the talk, he recited one of his favorite poems. I found it quite nice…

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott

I’m feeling super good lately. like super good. Coming home to Dallas after being in NY for a week actually felt rather nice. I think my trip back home was much needed though. I got to play golf with my dad (potential new hobby!), garden with my mom, watch the star wars series and play with my dog and cats. I’ve never felt so refreshed, rejuvenated, re-energized and countless other words starting with ‘re’. Who knew all I needed was some good family loving and kisses from my dog.

I think another reason for my good mood as of late is my new sleeping routine. I’ve actually been going to bed in darkness (around 11pm) and waking up early morning (8am). I never thought this to be possible again, but alas, it’s true, and it feels amazing. I had forgotten how nice it feels to actually feel tired and wake up with a whole day ahead of me. Good Times!

Anyway, my good mood has also inspired me to start a video podcast/blog/whatever it’s called. I’m hoping to have a first episode up in the next few weeks. As much as I love to read, visual entertainment is often so much more stimulating. Don’t you agree?

ps. Awesome basketball games last night. Lebron did his thing to take it to game 7 and Kobe did his thing to end it in Utah. Can’t wait for the games tomorrow and Monday. Go Cavs and Hornets!!

Me and My bestest friend from NY. Even though we are completely different, we’ve been through 19 years of craziness together. Looking forward to many many more. love you tons Jen.

So a few weeks ago I decided to book a much needed trip back home to visit my parents, friends and pets back in Orange County, New York. Being the good daughter that I am, I booked the trip to cover Mother’s Day as well. My flight leaves at 5:30am Saturday morning, and I arrive in NY around noon after a brief layover in Atlanta. I’m soooooooooooooooooo excited. My parents are awesome, and I miss them a ton. So, it’ll be really great to see them again. I feel like I was just home, but really, I haven’t been back since Christmas so it has been a decent amount of time. I get to see my dog, Tinkerbell, and my cats, Pippin, Ryu and Scout and my bird Luigi too. Woohoo!! I miss them all sooo much. Feels so weird living without any animals in my life these days. I have one fish in a 10gal fish tank, but doubt he’ll be around much longer. I’m too afraid to change the water and clean the tank because I think the shock will kill him, but instead he’ll probablly die of toxic water. It’s a no win situation. Regardless, I’ll have to clean it when we move, so I guess that’ll be the test.

Anyway, so back to going home. I’ll be there from Saturday thru Thursday, which seemed like a good amount of time to balance between family, friends and shopping. Speaking of shopping… I’ve been on a huge buying binge lately. This always happens when a flight or trip is right around the corner. It somehow makes me feel better to fly when I have new gadgets or a new outfit. I think it just gives the items I buy more of a purpose, so they are extra special, therefore making the flight easier. Not sure if that makes sense to anyone else but myself, but whatever. With each passing flight lately, I seem to develop more and more anxiety about it. Kinda weird because I used to love to fly. Now I just get that feeling like, “get me off this plane”. Oh well. So I bought a 32gb Ipod Touch the other day. I was tempted to buy just the Ipod Classic, but my good friend who obviously knows way more than I do talked me into the Touch. Boy is he a genius cuz this lil gadget is amazing. I love it. I’ve been using it lately to help me fall asleep in bed when it’s 6am and I should already be passed out. It hasn’t really helped much because I tend to end up just playing with it til my eyes start to bug. I downloaded a bunch of podcasts and new music for my trip this weekend. Hopefully it’ll help me overcome any anxiety. I need to stop talking about that topic (the anxiety). I think it’s getting deeper in my head, and I’m starting to believe it more every time I say it. I love to fly. Really, I do.

Along with my new Ipod, I also bought a badass new Ed Hardy purse. It was almost as much as the Ipod (not really) but totally worth it. I’m such a sucker for anything Ed Hardy. so sad. The other day I bought an Ed Hardy watch over a way more sparkly BCBG watch just because Ed > BCBG. sigh. Anyway, I’m happy with all my purchases. Tomorrow I need to go pick up a game or 2 for my DS to keep me busy on the flight. I have so many DS games, but never play them because I usually only ever touch my DS when I travel. I haven’t been traveling much lately, so it’s been collecting dust. Oh well, at least it’s there for when I do go places.

Tonight was a night for basketball games… neither of which seemed to go the way I wanted. First Boston slaughtered Cleveland, righteously. As much as I love Lebron, there was just nothing he could do against Boston’s defense. They were clearly the better team this game. Hopefully Cleveland can pick it up back home like they did last year with Detroit. Either way, I’m sticking to my Boston vs LA in the finals prediction (probably like a lot of other people). After that game, San Antonio FINALLY took a win against New Orleans. Chris Paul was ridiculous as usual, but I think San Antonio knew how vital this win was and played like it was game 7. seriously. San Antonio just wanted it more. Big mistake on New Orlean’s part for letting them have it, but oh well.

One last thought. As I was bouncing around twitter tonight, I realized that Dallas just lacks cool people. Seriously though, why is every interesting twitter profile that I find from flippin San Francisco? I would think that San Francisco would be a more interesting place to live so people would be out doing things and not having time to update twitter every 2 hours. But they do. And Dallas… there is so little to do here that is interesting, I would think that people here would be all over social sites like that to stay entertained. But no. They are busy making babies and getting married before they are legal to drink. wtf. Who are these people? Obviously, it’s just that the interesting people move to San Francisco and, knowing how ‘cool’ they are, feel the need to make the little, bored people in places like Dallas feel completely useless by justifying how awesome they are through constant updates on their twitter with clever little jabs of wisdom. sigh. Who are THESE people? I can’t understand either types of people. I can definitely say one thing for sure, I don’t see myself planting any roots in Texas. Sometimes cheap living is just not worth it. haha.

Just another random blog rant without really a purpose. Hopefully I’ll have good pics and stories when I get back from NY in about a week.

So today began as any other. My alarm went off at 2pm. I woke up. Snoozed it twice. and then turned it off for good. Around 3:30, I woke up again, looked at my clock and had that ‘oh crap, I fell back asleep’ feeling. Not like I had anything to do, so the feeling didn’t last long, and I began to doze back off into my dreams. But nooooo. Suddenly, I had this incredibly sharp pain on my rib cage. I jumped out of bed super fast and shook out my shirt, bitching in pain. Not surprisingly, a not so happy lil ant fell out onto the floor. One of those damn Texas fire ants. How he got in my bed, under my sheets and in my shirt… I have no idea. But his lil life didn’t last long, that’s for sure. Just another curse of a bottom floor apartment. I love to sleep with my window open, but there is always a price to pay. One month. ONE MORE MONTH in this apartment and then it’s 8miles down the road to a brand new complex, and a third floor. Can you read my excitement? cuz i’m super excited.

In other news, last night I was up past sunrise, again, not really doing much of anything. My cable is still out in my room, no surprise, so I’ve kinda been sitting around in silence or with my xbox on almost nonstop lately. During a brief moment of non-gaming, I was looking around my room at how ridiculous it was, and I noticed that I’m seriously in game overload mode. I have a ton of xbox360 games just scattered all over my floor in front of my tv. I had to take a pic. I’m usually one of those people who are very careful with their games. I hate scratches or losing them or any other consequences that come with mistreatment. Sadly, I’ve been playing so many random games lately that I am just constantly changing them in and out and just leave them wherever. I really should clean it up I guess. It’s just so convenient to have them all right there whenever I want to pop a new one into the system. See pics below.

I guess it could be a lot worse… but for a neat freak like me, this is slowly destroying my soul.

I gave GTA IV a second try yesterday as well. It was a little better, I guess. Everyone is telling me that it’s just a slow start. So I haven’t given up on it yet. Strangely, I’ve been hooked on Oblivion lately. I played it years ago on PC, but thankfully, it’s still fun to play through it. In RPG’s, I always go with the warrior character, fast leveling and in your face combat. For some reason, this time I thought it would be nice to change it up and be a mage. man. What a pain in the ass. The spells are badass, but I do three of them, and I’m out of Mana (or magicka as they call it). Warriors never run out of their main attack, so why should mage’s? so frustrating.

One last thought. A simple confession, in fact. My newest obsession…

Not only do they remind me of being a kid and my mom making my school lunches, but they are only 50 calories AND a good source of vitamin C!! Simply Amazing.