since i'm working until likely midnight tonight, and am sitting in front of the computer all night, i figured i might as well upload my pics. triple-tasking - working, posting pics, and watching the warriors game. not bad :)
we stayed at cypress hotel in cupertino the night before the wedding. the hotel's decor is... interesting. lots of animal print. and leopard robes. and a leopard girl. oh my.
one thing i really appreciated that ev did was pad the schedule lots of extra time. we weren't rushed at all throughout the day, which made everything so much more relaxing.
getting ready in the morning - early start at 6:30 with 7 girls (bride + 6 bridesmaids) needing both hair & makeup done.
meanwhile... the guys get up 3 hours later, and decorate the car. they go a little crazy until the girls could come down to regulate.
bridesmaids all dressed up & ready
and now help ev get ready
beautiful bride all ready!
eating pizza for lunch!
super yummy favors!
first dance
saratoga girls + jason + mary (honorary saratoga girl)
big, big congrats to ev & jason, who tied the knot today!
ev was a beautiful bride, and the wedding went off without a hitch....
except for the minor part where i almost fell on my face in front of all the guests at the ceremony. yeah, i was even telling myself in my head - don't trip over the cables. and what do i do? trip over the cables while, in the middle of the ceremony, trying to walk from my place in the bridal party line in the front of church to the piano, where i was supposed to play for special music. luckily, i was next to the grand piano as i tripped, and instead of falling on my face as everyone watched, made a loud thud for all to hear as i slammed into the piano instead. all i know is the people who know about my knee who were at the wedding were all silently praying i didn't re-tear my ACL. haha. acl is intact. not to worry. and sadly not many people noticed the "special" music (Sons of California) while i walked down the aisle. major props to the pianist to the fact that most people didn't even notice - she managed to blend the song in perfectly. and some people actually did notice... like marcia and jason, who were grinning madly as me when i made my way to the front.
embarrassing, but what else is new with me, and i survived, and most importantly, evelyn & jason got married! may God richly bless them in their new lives together.
one of my coworkers suggested i get plastic surgery...
on my knee.
is there even such a thing??
i finally see my doctor (doctor #4, the pamf one) again on monday, the first visit since the initial checkups post-op (to inject cortisone in my knee & to make sure all stitches were ok, etc.) honestly, the thing i'm scared most to hear him say is that nothing is wrong with my knee. that's not what you'd expect, right? but i know my knee is far from working properly, and if he glosses over my problems like my first doctor did, i have no other orthopedic doctor to turn to - he was the last out of my back pocket. i think the way i was treated by the first doctor has just totally made me paranoid over other doctors' bedside manners.
and i know i've said it before - but this whole knee thing has been such the thorn in my flesh over the past 2.5 years.
God's response to Paul when he pleaded to have his thorn taken out?
"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."
and Paul's response to God's words?
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Gotta keep posting that to remind myself... to find delight in this situation. and actually, one praise that's come out of this is that i've been able to help several other people who have had knee problems or have torn their ACLs. practically everyone at my company who has been working there for a while knows about all my knee surgeries (seriously - i still get stopped by random strangers in the cafeteria or around the halls asking how my knee is), and so many people have asked me about rehab, doctors, and more. and i'm glad to NOT refer them to my first doctor, and refer them to other doctors who i know are covered by our insurance and can do a good job. and i got everyone at our company 60 sessions of PT/year instead of our previous crappy 20. so praise God that i've been able to help other people avoid my situation. :)
anyway, totally different topic, i can't believe ev's big day is finally coming up! even better, it gave me the perfect excuse to not have to come into work on saturday (quarter end)! woohoo! let the good times begin.
to all the die-hard warriors fans... to finally end the longest drought in the NBA. i even endured using the machine next to the taiwan suitcase girl because that was the only free elliptical in front of the only tv showing the game at the gym.
and as an update to the post about the guy loitering on our street, the car left after a couple of hours on friday. saturday morning, when i went out, the car wasn't there. i came home around 11:30am, and there was the car again, parked right in front of our house, with the big guy sitting in the car. he was sitting there for a while and i seriously was about to call the police, but then i peeked outside and a girl was standing in front of his car, smoking & talking with him. eventually they went into her house (neighbor across the street, though i've never seen her before). he eventually left and i haven't seen the car on our street since then. totally weird, but at least he's not idling on our street anymore. and i don't understand why he apparently knew our neighbor but sat in his car for hours on our street without talking to her or going to her house. go figure.
Monday, April 16, 2007
my heart can't help but break hearing about the tragedy at virginia tech today... i was so busy at work and wasn't at my desk for most of the day for coworkers to tell me, that i didn't even find out until i got to the gym and saw it on one of the tvs. all i could think to do was to pray for the people affected during my entire workout and wonder God's purpose in all of it.
before i get to the pics of the hole in esther & andy's cake...
i'm a little creeped/freaked out. when i drove home today, there was a big guy sitting in a car parked on the corner of our cul-de-sac. i noticed right away because he was just sitting there, doing nothing and i've never seen him before. as i pulled into my garage, he started his car, turned into our cul-de-sac, and then parked right across from our house. he's been in there ever since just sitting in the car. when jenie came home, she said there were actually two big guys. they were outside of their car, just looking across the street toward our house/other houses on our side of the street. she said she's seen these two big guys here the past two days, driving in and out of our street. i don't think they don't live on this street - at least i've never seen them before. it's been a few hours now. creepy. i have all doors/windows closed and the chain on the front door, and i don't want to leave our house either since jenie went back out and they know our house will be empty if i leave. not sure what to do, but i told jenie to take down their license plate number as she went back out. besides that, i don't know what to do with the info.
anyway...pics courtesy of arex... the hole in the cake.
we picked up the top tier, rotated it so the hole was in the back, and tried to cover the gaping hole up.
since the hole was so big, i had to pick up the chunks of cake on the table and shove it back in the hole before trying to spread the icing around to cover the hole.
it still looked horrible, even after trying to cover it up as best as we could , so we did the next best thing - stick flowers over it.
i'm itching for another berkeley trip. nice weather, good food, good memories... what else can i ask for? jean & i have plans to go sometime in may (just not during graduation weekends). i need to satisfy my berkeley craving :) anyone else wanna go?
work is SO busy. there have been so many organizational changes in our group and everyone has shifted around in their responsibilities or left our group to go to another group within the company. and even though it's quarter end, i'm not actually that busy with quarter-end activities anymore since my responsibilities are moving away from quarter-end related stuff. what i'm swamped with now are multiple projects that require sooooo many hours in meetings. i'm barely at my desk nowadays, and i miss my dual monitors that make my work much easier to do. and my business trip got pushed out AGAIN. to june. now i'm going to be in taiwan in the dead heat of summer... ew. plus next quarter is going to be crazy when another person will be leaving in may to a diff group in the company and i have to cover that job until the person replacing her (YAY for AM!!) joins end of july (i hope no later... right??).
For easter service, we had a children's choir from uganda - it was an awesome reminder of how people all around the world in all different cultures & languages are worshipping the same Jesus as we are.
the rest of my weekend in pictures:
carnage:
Austin was surprisingly good on Saturday - no temper tantrums or anything. the first thing he said to me when jean opened the door was "auntie karen, we're going to toys r us!" he's quite verbal for three years old. you gotta watch these videos... i wish i got his carwash story, but didn't take out my camera in time.
ga-gung! up and over and back down! sooo cute.
celebrating dean's bday a couple weeks late:
dean swiped his credit card at least 15 times. the last 6 swipes were his "last try" before switching credit cards.
i've never seen two people so crazy about the nose game on warioware. hideyo & dean played it seriously... at least 15 times, if not more. it would have been even more except that julia insisted on playing something else.
another couple married... God bless the newly married couple! it was a fun weekend - good times with canaan people.
got a chance to fly down (thankful that i did, since i got to skip over the horrible traffic i heard other people got stuck in trying to get to rehearsal) to visit reni & beth!
as a side note, i bought my airplane ticket to time around chris' flight so i could hitch a ride off him from LAX to her place. but since we landed in different terminals, i had to meet him at the rental car place. on the enterprise shuttle, i ended up chatting with this african-american woman (about my age) who spoke fluent japanese. it turns out her parents are missionaries (still there) in japan, so she grew up in japan, and came to the US for undergrad & now law school. pretty cool. she was also here for a wedding, and when i told her i was reception coordinator at the wedding i was going to, she freaked out a little and told me she'd pray for me. haha. she just got married last year and said she never wanted to plan another wedding in her life.
anyway, beth was shy at first, but warmed up quickly. we actually tried to get her to take a nap, but she was so excited she wouldn't sleep. she kept jumping up and down and trying to do somersaults on our head. we pretended to sleep to try to get her to sleep... and we ended up falling asleep instead! haha... such old ladies, we are.
our visit with reni was too short... hopefully i can make a longer visit next time after derek is born!
so... apparently, the lock/door to our hotel room was broken, and they had no other non-smoking rooms available. so ghetto of all ghettos, the only way into our room was through our window. besides the fact that we looked really suspicious climbing through a hotel window (a guy a couple doors down from us gave us a really weird look when he walked by), it was kind of inconvenient to have to lock all our stuff in our cars everytime we left the room.
shally climbing through the window
andrea set up a so-called booby trap to deter people from coming into our room and stealing our stuff. when i get a chance i'll upload the video showing how she easily avoided her booby trap. yeah, it obviously worked well. haha.
before the ceremony, we had a chance to stop by crystal cathedral, which was right next to our hotel.
moses & burning bush:
er... baby Jesus looks a little funny:
esther & andy pre-ceremony
me & janet, who was one of the bridesmaids (and is having a boy! congrats!)
this was their cake... pre mishap:
so... a chunk of the top layer of the cake fell off even before the doors were opened to the banquet because the florist had put in some heavy orchid branches that fell out. alex was the one who discovered it, and shally and i went into panic mode because the hole was HUGE. we ended up lifting the top layer of the cake and rotating the hole to the back. but the hole was still huge, so we had to pick up chunks of the cake off the table, shove it back in the hole, and use the icing all around to try to cover it up (err... andy & esther... don't eat that portion of your cake!). it looked pretty awful, but we managed to make it look decent by then plucking the flowers off the branch and sticking flowers directly over the hole. in the end, you probably couldn't even really tell the hole was originally there. alex has pics of the whole process. good job team!
cake post mishap (you probably can't even tell... pretty good job, i do say so myself.)
some of the guys sang a song for andy... here's the end of the song. nice job, i even heard one of the photographers say that it was the best song they've ever seen at a wedding. loved byron's part. hehe.
with some of the gals
after the banquet, they invited all their friends up to their presidential suite (which was huge!) to hang out and play some games. that is where andy & esther had their first fight as a married couple... boxing fight, that is. and esther won :)
-there was a LAN party/convention going on at the same hotel as the reception. our company was actually a major sponsor... but anyway, andy, of course, being the big gamer and all (and apparently owning about 120 video games!) went in and asked if his photographer could take pics of him & his groomsmen inside. they did even better and invited him on stage, interviewed him, let him play some games, and got some free stuff. sweet.
on sunday, bob, shally & i got to service an hour early, so we decided to try to drop by huntington library since it was supposedly somewhat close by. except it took us half an hour to get there, and for some reason there was a huge line in front of it. so we ended up driving by the library instead. yeah, that wasn't too eventful. after service, we headed to westwood to eat lunch, get ourselves some diddy riese, and found pinkberry! we ended up dilly-dallying so much we didn't leave until after 4pm. oops. but we got home safely, and happy to have a chance to see great friends get married.
p.s. sunday was my five year anniversary at nvidia. easy to remember... april fools day and all. but anyway, the important part is that i now get to pick out a $2500 one of these:
anyone want to join me in picking it out?
p.p.s. my wii is finally getting good use. check my videos to see an entertaining boxing match. the guy in the front was using the Jesus mii we created a while ago.
