* tiny but powerful *

It was nice to see my parents. But I have so much to think about and I'm so confused.

Something really very annoying:: It appears that mostly everyone bombed Part 2 of the ChemE110 midterm last week, so the professor has decided to let us redo it as a take-home midterm. This may sound good on the surface, but I haven't thought about the exam since then (since I had 2 problem sets and a Bio midterm waiting to attack me immediately) and I definitely wasn't one of those people who discussed the midterm at great lengths with their friends, which puts me at a disadvantage. So now I essentially have another midterm to worry about this weekend (it's due on Tuesday). Blarg.

I'm having lunch with my parents today! :) (My dad has his first treatment appointment at Stanford this afternoon. If he has to be doing this anyway, I'm glad it puts him closer to me.)

This week, instead of a usual problem set for ChemE120A, we were given a short research assignment on something that involves computational fluid dynamics (CFD). I'm doing mine on how CFD is used for modeling cardiac blood flow. Granted, this isn't like writing an English paper. Still, writing = sucky. The whole brain-constipation thing is still there. :P

Tonight, now that Opening is over, I get to go to a WHOLE Campus Crusade large group meeting, for the first time since September! I AM SO EXCITED!! :-D

Here's the story about my birthday yesterday! (I've been in class all day, so that's why I haven't been able to blog until now.)

Surprise #1::
When my parents picked me up for dinner, my dad mentioned that there was a "surprise in the front seat" -- which turned out to be my brother! He'd originally told me he had a Scout meeting and couldn't come for dinner, but he skipped his meeting just to have dinner with me (or so I thought). What I didn't notice at the time was that my dad timed that comment perfectly so that I wouldn't try to put my Viennese dresses in the trunk myself (I'd asked them to bring the dresses and my petticoat home for me).
      Dinner itself was very enjoyable. We went to Windy's, my favorite Chinese restaurant in this area. As usual, it was really nice to have family time with all four of us together, since that doesn't happen very often. We finished dinner just in time for me to go back to campus and pick up Chi-En for our scheduled girldate (or so I thought). My parents dropped me off by my car, and we said goodbye for the night. (They were very convincing.)

Surprise #2::
The girldate? -- didn't so much turn out to be a girldate. ;-) On the walk from parking the car to the Peninsula Fountain, Chi-En and I did start talking about semi-serious stuff that would have been appropriate girldate conversation, but as we walked in the door to the restaurant, I noticed four very familiar-looking heads in the booth right in front of me (especially Justin's, since he'd accidentally happened to have his head turned around to see who walked in the door). So yes, Chi-En surprised me at our "girldate" by turning it into a birthday celebration with Kari, Justin, Graham, (Bryan in spirit,) and Eric (or so I thought, again). The table appeared to be set for more people than just the 6 of us, but I wasn't sure whether that meant other people were showing up, until...

Surprise #2.5::
...my parents and brother walked in the door! It was so cute -- when my dad walked in, he tried to hide behind the nearest coat rack. ;-) It appeared that they were supposed to arrive before Chi-En and I did, but they'd been given faulty directions and were slightly confused when they found "Peninsula Creamery [something something]" instead of "Peninsula Fountain & Grill". But they made it, and I was definitely surprised to see them! How tricky of Chi-En to contact my family. :) I found out at this point that the *dinner* was something my dad hadn't intended to happen -- when I talked to him on the phone earlier that afternoon, he asked what my dinner plans were, assuming I already had some, but I didn't, so he felt like they ought to take me to dinner! How silly! Luckily for him, I played right into the existing surprise plans, because I requested that we have a late dinner (right before the "girldate") so my worktime would be left in one block between classes and dinner. The dessert party at Peninsula was a lot of fun -- I really enjoyed spending time altogether with my closest friends *and* my family. Shortly after the bill was taken care of, my family said goodbye to me again (after an awkward exchange about whether my brother had a friend picking up something from our house or not, which I didn't notice was awkward at the time), and the rest of us continued to finish our ice cream/milkshakes and hang out for awhile. In a quite natural fashion, we got ready to leave, and I said goodbye to Graham who'd biked there -- but then Kari stopped him as he was unlocking his bike and said they'd like give me a birthday dance back on campus somewhere. Everyone seemed to think this was a good idea and Chi-En casually suggested meeting in the Trancos lounge. I was definitely quite clueless at this point, having already been surprised by the girldate-turned-dessert-party. Graham said he'd bike there, and Eric/Justin/Kari left in a separate car.

Surprise #3::
On the drive back, Chi-En suggested that I go get my dance shoes. I was like, "hm, okay" (still clueless. At most, I thought maybe a couple other Tmony boys would be there too (Bryan, for example, who at the last minute couldn't make it to dessert) but that was all). We parked, stopped by Mirrielees, and walked over to Wilbur, all the while without me noticing that we arrived at Trancos at exactly 10:45pm. I also didn't notice that the lounge lights turned off between the time when we walked by the front door and when we got inside. What I *did* notice was a couple people frantically trying to hide from me as I approached the lounge. And what a surprise the lounge held for me when the lights turned on! SO many of my friends were there waiting -- people I know from Opening, Testimony (past and present), Crusade, ChemE classes, old dorms, and my roommates! AND -- get this -- my family was there AGAIN! How exciting, for the third time! That's why they had to leave early from the Creamery: so they could bring the cake and drinks and set up the party before the group brought me back. (Going back to Surprise #1, you'll note that that's why my dad had to keep me from looking in the trunk).
      It was so wonderful (and odd too!) to have so many important people from different parts of my life, all in the same room! They sang to me a very beautifully harmonized Happy Birthday song (Testimony signature) and I blew out my two candles on each of the two cakes (one for each decade; yikes, I'm in my 20's now!). And then my awesome friends gave me a wonderful birthday dance to one of my favorite waltzes, "Runaway" by The Corrs. Thanks to the boys (and girl) who danced with me for that: Graham, Jeremy, Eric, Kari, George, Brian, and Qi. Heavily weighted towards Opening people, I know -- but I got to dance with Tmony/other dance friends later, so that's okay. And the 20 pivots weren't that hard (thanks Graham!). ;-) Many thanks to Brian who took pictures of the party!

Surprise #4::
"This is the last surprise, I promise," said Chi-En, as she loaded up her wirelessly-connected laptop to show me... my birthday card in the form of an online guestbook! They created a guestbook for my friends to sign, saying where they know me from, what they admire most about me, and a birthday message. That is such a COOL idea and it was so touching to read everything that people wrote for me! THANK YOU so much, everyone!!! And a special thanks to my dearest friends who were the masterminds of all this. :o)

I finally said goodbye to my family (for real!) and hung around the Trancos lounge with the remainder of the party people. We had a Tmony quartet + percussion/soloist, so we informally sang through some songs at the expense of Jeremy, who was the only non-Tmony person left at the end. Then Kari and I went back to her room to watch my dad's videotape of the real Opening Ceremonies at Viennese Ball, and we had some good hangout time for a little while, too.

I had a totally incredible birthday. Thank you to all of you who were a part of it and for making it so special!!!

I have AMAZING friends and family. What a night! I'll share the many-tiered story with you tomorrow! Wow. :-D

God is blessing me with a beautiful day. The sun came out for me! ;) The sky is gorgeous. I spent the 40 minutes between classes this afternoon lying on one of the planters in the Quad, enjoying the sunshine and talking to my dad and brother on the phone. My brother is so cute -- he asked me last night to tell him exactly what time my watch said, to the second... and then proceeded to call me at exactly midnight, so he could be the first to wish me a happy birthday (too bad I was already asleep!). He beat my dad by 10 minutes. ;)

Thank you everyone for remembering! I've been hearing from a lot of high school friends, whom I don't get to talk to very often. And with any luck, I'll be going out to dinner with my parents tonight. :)

My throat is better this morning. :) (Yes, so are 'they', Justin.)

The one night I actually get to bed early, the stupid fire alarm makes me go outside in the RAIN. >:-| And it keeps going off again randomly. SO ANNOYING.

Highlight of my day:: Richard Powers asked me to partner Social Dance I with him next quarter!!! Oh my goodness! I can't do it, of course, but I'm so excited that he would ask me. When I told him that I wouldn't be here next quarter, he said, "Oh no! You would be my first choice." And then he asked if I was senior, and upon finding out that I'm only a junior, we agreed we'd try for it next year. :) ! (Side note: I turned in my second dance essay of the quarter, about the waltz competition at Viennese. Now I'm all done with my dance assignments...yippee.)

Other highlights::
1) Having the Advil I took at lunch finally start to kick in around 3:00.
2) Starting two-step in SDI. I like two-step!

This comes close to making up for the three strikes the day had against it earlier: 1) sore throat & head-stuffiness, 2) times when you hate being a girl, and 3) the rain. Rain makes everything cold and dreary and dirty. Yech. It's thundering now, though, which is kind of cool. I'm glad I don't have to go anywhere tonight. Except I don't really have food...

[ Written at 10:00pm last night, but the Blogger server was down all night. ]
I'm still recovering from Viennese. And by recovering, I mean getting sick. The hint of a sore throat I woke up with on the morning of Viennese returned today with a vengeance. It hurts to swallow. :-(

It's been a full day. I had a great time with the kids this morning, and I particularly enjoyed today's craft project; I made the example to show the kids: pasting a Psalm onto thick paper and decorating the border with white crayons and watercolor paint. I had fun with it and I like mine. ;-) I found Pastor Keith's message this morning about Moses (Part 1 of 3) especially stirring, but I'm too tired to write anything insightful about it here. The best part of the morning was a special treat we had during closing worship: a guest artist on stage molding clay on a potter's wheel, creating a large vase from what started as a solid cube of hard clay. It was really powerful and I couldn't tear my eyes from watching the pottery-in-progress all throughout my singing. I even couldn't sing for awhile. I have some thoughts and reactions to process through once I have the energy.

After church, Eric and I went straight to Testimony rehearsal, which was a bit slow because everyone seemed really tired, so we took lots of breaks. Then, since Core had a meeting planned for dinner, we spontaneously decided to go out to dinner off-campus instead (since we were all hungry and didn't want to wait for a dining hall to open). We went to Hunan Homes for Chinese food, which was a ton of fun, and we were really productive in the meeting, too. Go Core!

Another thing (I'm annoyed this won't get posted today): HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JASON and LITON!

I have a problem set due tomorrow for ChemE110 (Thermo), but when I went over to Castano to work on it with Felix and Phil I was totally out of it and practically passing out while sitting up. So I decided to give up on the work and come back here to shower and take it easy and probably go to bed soon. My throat really hurts. :-(

[ Update from 10:30am today. ]
So, the going to bed early didn't happen so much, but I did still get a decent amount of sleep. My throat still feels terrible, and today gets the joy of being an Advil day... urgghghgh.

Okay Mirrielees just had a building-wide fire alarm at 2:20 IN THE MORNING. That thing HURTS MY EARS. And it's freezing outside. GRR. >:-[

Viennese Ball was wonderful. :o)

It was certainly a long day (which will be told here in a very long story), but in the end it was all worth it. I suppose a good place to start would be the beginning...

Kari and I started our "Day O' Insanity" by picking up flowers for our dates and Chi-En's date. We were splitting a dozen white roses between the three of us, and Kari and I each used one (armed with floral tape, floral wire, and ribbons) to make a home-made boutonniere. Justin and Graham were each other's "dinner dates", so it was appropriate that their boutonnieres were matching. Chi-En graciously served as our flower delivery person when the dinner group met to leave campus. I was pleased to hear that the boys were surprised.

Speaking of surprises, Jeremy surprised me and Kari with cards and some flowers, when he picked us up to leave for the hotel. Luckily, we had a surprise for him, too -- a home-made card from both of us. It's been really fun to have a common partner with Kari, and in addition to being an awesome dancer, Jeremy did a great job of putting up with us. ;)

The pre-Ball rehearsal from 3:00-5:00 was, unfortunately, quite stressful. I think I was tired and oversensitive from the craziness of my week, and overall people were feeling the pressure of our impending performance. I think one thing that really affected my mood was how concerned I was about my ballet slippers on the slippery dance floor. I was seriously slipping all over the place, and feeling out of control of my own dancing disturbed me immensely. Not to mention that I was having stupid problems again with my sash pinning, and I was really unsatisfied with how the hair place did my hair. Some people said they really liked it, but it didn't turn out how I wanted it at all and I felt like the guy was being somewhat incompetent and I didn't feel confident at all that my hair would stay up properly for the next few hours through the Opening Ceremonies. So, basically, I was cranky in the afternoon. Cranky enough to start crying midway through rehearsal, but luckily no one really noticed. I got over it soon enough.

Kari and I had dinner with my parents in one of the restaurants inside the hotel. It was the same place at which a huge group of Opening people were eating, too, but the four of us got seated separately at a nice table next to some of the cascading fountains. Having the water around was actually very relaxing. The food was great and the company was wonderful -- I was so happy to have my parents there. (They stayed to watch and video-/photograph the real ceremony performance and then left shortly afterward.)

The real Opening madness began after dinner. There's something uniquely fun about getting ready for formals with other girls. The dressing room was bustling and it was exhilirating in its own way. I like feeling useful when other girls ask me to pin something for them or adjust their hair flowers for them or something. I had Kari help me put on some lip gloss (makeup being my area of girliness-deficiency; we joked earlier about how the flower project was one of hers) -- which wins the prize for the most makeup I've worn to any formal dance (I really never wear any).

Logistically, the beginning of the Opening Ceremonies started off a little shaky. They announced our entrance and started playing the music without sending someone to let us know, so my polka partner Justin (we're at the end of the procession line) heard the music through the other back door and it took several minutes for the urgent message to make it to the front of the line. After all of us marched out and lined up, the music kept playing...and playing...and playing... with no Honored Guests to be seen! I thought we were going to die before they finally brought them out; it appears that no one had retrieved the Honored Guests procession. But eventually, we found our Honored Guests and bowed to them properly. On with the show...

And quite a show we put on, indeed! I'm not entirely sure how we performed objectively speaking (and partly because I concentrated more on me and not slipping), but our performances felt good. There's something about performance mode that brings out the best in us. It happened at our Pavilion performance, but this time it was better because we were as prepared as we'd ever be. I'm pleased with how I danced (for the most part) and I think we performed well as a whole. It really did feel fun and exciting to dance for the real thing. Go us!! (Now I'll just have to see the video....) The audience particularly loved the part in the waltz choreography where the girls slap the guy after a particularly harsh dip. I didn't expect that sort of a reaction, but it went over really well. I don't think the audience really understood that the whole waltz was choreographed as a love story, but it seemed to turn out fine anyway. Many people acknowledged to us afterward how difficult the choreography was, and it was great to hear positive comments after all the effort it took to achieve it. Thanks to everyone for your support of Opening!

As fun and exciting as the Opening Ceremonies were, I was very relieved and glad to be done afterward. I reappeared after changing out of my white Opening dress into a dark shimmery-blue dress that is (in my opinion) much more my style. I had these awesome velvet-y black gloves with furry trim to go with it, and I was happily back in my real dance shoes. And thus began a wonderful evening with my wonderful date. :o) I was so glad to be there with Graham, someone with whom I can relax and be myself and dance so effortlessly.

The night passed by quickly -- or, put differently, my energy lasted longer than I expected it to. It was really fun to watch all the other different performance groups, many of which I have friends in: Decadance, Danse Libre, Double or Nothing, Swingtime, and Cardinal Whirlwinds. I had many amazing dances with Graham, of course, but I also had lovely dances with Gavan and Eric and the traditional first waltz (well, most of it) with my Opening waltz partner, Jeremy. Graham and I stayed mostly in the waltz room, due in part to the fact that the swing room dance floor was kind of dangerous... but mostly, it was more of a waltzy evening in our formal dress.

Speaking of waltzing... Graham and I danced in the waltz competition, and as he put it, we "completely unintentionally found ourselves in the finals." How true -- we hadn't talked about the competition at all, and when they announced it he asked if I'd like to dance, and we just danced around the room like any normal dance and when the song ended we were like "oh look hey we're in the finals...". I was really surprised! They had four couples in the finals, and two of the other couples were Kari & Qi and George & Vanessa. It was slightly scary at first because during the finals each couple dances by themselves on the floor and everyone is watching you and I'm not used to being in the spotlight, but I felt better once I let myself focus on Graham and just dancing how we normally dance. We went as the first couple in the finals round, so I think it was a bit harder on us because we didn't know which song they were going to play nor when they were going to stop the music, but I think we did just fine -- most importantly, I think we accurately represented how we waltz. I was surprised we even got 3rd place, because it's not Graham's or my style to do anything flashy, and the other couples did a lot more crowd-pleasing moves. George & Vanessa got 2nd place, and Kari & Qi got 1st place!!! I was so proud of her! She looked stunning in her bright blue ballgown and doing all those lifts. YAY KARI!! (Testimony represent! ;-) )

Graham got a lot of good pictures of everything; I, sadly, mostly ignored my camera the whole night because I wasn't feeling very picture-inspired. (My parents did use my camera to take pictures of the Opening stuff, though, which I'll have to put up later.) In the meantime, here are some of my parents' pictures (I'll take down that link once I've subsumed those pictures onto my pbase site).

Overall, Viennese turned out to be a great end to my week. Thanks goes out to Graham, Kari, my Opening partners, and everyone else who made my evening special. I had a wonderful time.

The day has arrived!

In 12 short (or not so short) hours, Opening will be over. The 2003 Viennese Ball Opening Committee performs the Opening Polka and the Opening Waltz at 8:30pm. That is still a very surreal thought. It has not sunk in yet that I'm getting my hair done in 3 hours, arriving at the hotel in 4.5 hours, and presenting the fruits of our hard work in 11 hours. In many ways, it feels like going to Viennese for the first time, too: it's at a different location than last year, and I'm doing way different stuff to get ready for it than last year. I think I'm starting to get excited. I'm still sort of shell-shocked from all the school stuff this week. I actually had fun last night at Heuriger Abend -- I wasn't sure what kind of a mood I'd be in after my midterm. But Toyon was less crowded than I expected it to be, and I had some very enjoyable low-key dancing (being very very VERY careful about who came near my left ankle). I didn't expect to stay the whole time, but I did, and helped Brian/AWComm clean up all the food garbage. That boy has been working so hard this week -- you were a great Austria Week Chair, Brian, and don't argue with me! :) Anyway, also in 12 hours, this crazy week will be OVER. Well, it won't be completely over, but the stressful stuff will be, and then I'll get to dance with Graham! :)

I will, obviously, be occupied for the rest of the day. Thank you for all the well-wishes. Have a great day, everyone!

That was THE worst 120A problem set to have for this week. Any other week would have been better. A whole posse of us were up until wee hours in the 4th floor Mirrielees computer cluster trying to figure out this dang fluid mechanics simulation program. I hate ChemE computer program assignments (anyone else remember the joys of FastPharm in E20?). I gnawed at it all night and all morning, all the while becoming increasingly alarmed at the time not being spent studying for Bio. Now I've done all I could scrounge and scribble down, sent off the problem set with Phil to turn in for me, and I'm going to skip my third class of the day to study as much dev-bio, immunology, and physiology as possible.

I'm just aiming to make it to 9:00pm tomorrow. Making it to 9:00pm tonight would be a good first step.

I am about to embark on the most trying 12 hours of this entire week. This is not going to be pretty.

We didn't fall apart in front of Richard Powers. That's...about it.
Now onto other more pressing things, like midterms and problem sets.
Oh yeah, and boo to getting my left ankle stepped on! Always the left ankle! :( I had to hobble through the polka during the first time Richard saw it. And Kari got hurt too. :( I think Justin (was it him?) is right -- we're like voodoo dolls for each other.
Okay, really going now. I'm okay. :) (I'm trying.)

JuKa828 (5:50:27 PM): let's title you something
JuKa828 (5:50:33 PM): "squishiest"
TPiglette (5:50:35 PM): hey
TPiglette (5:50:43 PM): not cool
JuKa828 (5:51:12 PM): i like it!

Richard Powers (and Ryan and Monica Shen Knotts) is coming to see the Opening Committee perform tonight, because Richard has to miss the actual Viennese Ball (the first time ever, he says). That's so sad that he won't be there for the real thing! (For you non-Stanford people, Richard Powers is like the Guru of Social Dance at Stanford...he teaches all the social dance classes here. He always gets the most applause out of all the honored guests). I hope tonight goes well, but somehow...yeah.

In other news, though, I think I received a really nice compliment from him today, between the two afternoon dance classes I'm taking this quarter. He came over to mention again that he'd be stopping by rehearsal, and said:
Richard: "What's your role in the Viennese Ball?"
Me: "Oh...I'm just on the Opening Committee."
RP: "So you don't have a title or anything?"
Me: "No."
RP: "You should."

That brightened my day. :)

Ew, it's raining. :(
At least I got a lot of sleep last night. I passed out fairly early. Thanks for the story, Graham.

Today includes:: Fluid Mechanics problem set, studying for Bio midterm, 4 classes, and final Opening dress rehearsal.
It's going to be a long week.

Why am I ChemE? I'm not cut out for any of this.

Oh, and it turns out that the problem set that my study group told me wasn't due today actually IS due today. So I have to finish some thermo problems before 5:00pm, and I have class all afternoon.

This is just great.

Ah, the wake-up call chain. Reminds me of finals week. :P
Why is it that ChemE requires us to take 2 different thermo classes, when replacing them with even just one PDE class would be infinitely more useful?

I have two small knobby lumps on the left side of my neck, but not the right side. This strikes me as odd. I noticed one of them mid-last week, and the other one on Saturday. Should I be worried?

JuKa828 (12:01:30 AM): hence, transitively, i am your girlfriend
JuKa828 (12:01:35 AM): wait, that's not right
JuKa828 (12:01:44 AM): kari is tina's gf
JuKa828 (12:01:48 AM): kari is my gf...
JuKa828 (12:01:54 AM): ok math is just WRONG

Yay for prayer and good friends (and brunch). Thanks, Bryan.

Auto response from TPiglette (12:16:18 PM): brunch with blung
Auto response from Bryguy683 (1:51:45 PM): Brunch with 'bugsquish.

Boo to having 2 midterms (and 2 problem sets due on the same days) during Austria Week. And Viennese coming so soon in general. Sigh.

Addendum to the Valentine's Day story::
I forgot to tell you about how brilliantly Kari and I tricked Justin and Eric the night before Valentine's. The girls came over to Mirrielees after the Plantinga talk, and we were working on the candy bags & construction paper stuff in the 2nd floor lounge. At some point I went back to my room to check something on the computer, which gave Justin a chance to ask me if I knew where Kari was. I, of course, played dumb and tried to sound like I didn't, but that blew Kari's original plan to say that she came over to visit me after the soprano sectional. We finally settled on some story about how Qi came by to talk to her about a choreography change or something. But THEN, just as Nalani was about leave, she ran into Eric who was on his way to the laundry room! She dragged him away from the lounge door and avoided questions before pretending to leave the building, but then rushed back to tell us what happened. Just then, though, Eric walked past the door AGAIN on his way back to his room, and Chi-En and Jenny decide to duck (they were sitting on a couch facing away from the door). So, when I see them flinch, I duck too, and so does Nalani even though she's in plain view from the door window. I could've sworn Eric should have seen me since I was merely sitting next to the coffee table, but we weren't sure who he saw and who he didn't. Kari, who had no chance of hiding, just smiled and waved calmly (smart girl). At this point we were sure we blew it, but then we decided it was worth a shot to make up some story to feed Eric in hopes that he would buy it. Ideally, maybe he only saw me and Nalani (albeit both acting weirdly) and Kari, and not Chi-En or Jenny. So Kari ran up to his room, to tell him not to tell Justin that I was helping her with Justin's valentine gift after the sopranos finished sectional. The greatest thing is -- he TOTALLY bought it!! Eric says he didn't even see *me*! And it even served a double purpose to trick Justin, because after Kari surprised Justin the next morning, both Justin and Eric thought that all Kari and I were up to was Justin's thing, not anything for the Tmony boys. Justin had no clue I was playing dumb about Kari the night before, anyway. Tee hee. Surprises are so fun, even with excitement from near-spoilers.

FYI (For Your Interest):: Here are pictures from Valentine's Day and Opening dress rehearsal.
Due to difficulty in rounding people up and other unforeseen circumstances, I only took a couple pictures at the V-Day Jammix, none of which were interesting enough to be worth posting. For the record, though, the Testimony people who were there included: me, Kari, Justin, Eric, Chi-En, Jeff, Gavan, Steve, Jenn, Sanghyup, Adam, Katherine, and Annie. Woohoo!

Oh yeah. For those of you who are worried, my ankle is doing fine except for some residual soreness. It should be good after a few days. [Quick overview: My left ankle got stepped on during Opening dress rehearsal (not by my partner, though) and I had to sit out for a short while. But I'm okay.] Jeremy sent me a really sweet email in response to my thank-you for his brownies. He's so good to his partners, really. Kari and I are lucky girls.

Time for a Core dinner meeting. Yay for people who make me feel safe. :)

- My family (even my brother!) came to Opening's dress rehearsal this morning. I feel so supported. :) We also had a very nice lunch together and some family talk time. It was good to have all four of us together again.
- Bryan came to dress rehearsal too! (He won't be going to Viennese...*sniff*.)
- My white ballet slippers finally arrived, and I finally found white gloves! The gloves are (not surprisingly) too big, but my mom is going to take them in at the top for me.
- Jeremy brought me and Kari brownies again. Yum. Yay for our awesome partner.
- Miriam and Graham came (for the 2nd time) to demo some of their suggestions for improvement. I hope it helped, but I've kind of given up on looking around at the whole group. It's depressing, and I think I've reached a dejected state when it comes to Opening.
- Jammix last night was, speaking on average, fairly fun. I got to dance with people I don't see very often.
- I think I'm getting burned out on dance. Sigh. Bad timing. I just want to be in orchestra again. I was in orchestra for 9 years and I never got burned out on orchestra.
- Yeah, I know, I sound like I'm just emotionally vulnerable right now. Well, boo to me.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Yay for cute surprises! I woke up to find an email telling me to look under my desk calendar, where I found a very cute card from a cute friend. I'm not kidding, the card was sooo cute! :o) And then, there was no end to the surprises in Tmony rehearsal. Last night, the girls got together to make collage-like valentines for the boys, complete with little totes of candy and one yellow rose each (for friendship!). It was so much fun looking through magazines and finding little phrases for each guy's valentine. Today, the plan was to spend a short amount of time in sections on a new song, with the altos conveniently claiming the rehearsal room so the boys' sections had to leave and go elsewhere in Braun. Well, all was going well -- we set up each gift by where the guys were sitting, and decided to hide in the bathroom so we wouldn't be there when the boys returned to find the surprise. Unfortunately, in the process of doing this we managed to lock ourselves out of the room! We were SO CONFUSED in the bathroom when we heard the tenors and basses continue practicing IN THE HALL (because we didn't know yet that we'd locked the door behind us). The girls just stood around behind the bathroom door and kept hoping the guys would go inside, but they didn't! And they kept singing! So then the sopranos decided to exit the bathroom to see what was up, confusing the altos even more (I was an alto in this context) when we heard the sops join in on the singing. Finally, the rest of the altos poured out of the bathroom, long after it made sense for anyone to still be in the bathroom since the group had been standing there for about 10 minutes and no one had gone inside. Finally we got Beth Youngdoff to unlock the door for us, but not after we almost ruined the surprise that the boys had for us: a vase of pretty flowers sitting on the piano in the next room, with each girl's name attached to one red rose. It was very adorable. Too bad rehearsal ran late because of the lock-out fiasco. ;)

The boys' valentines turned out very well, in my humble opinion. ;) I started taking pictures of each one, but then the batteries for my digital camera ran out! Boo! I think I might have gotten 5 out of the 7. I'll post all of my Valentine's Day pictures on pbase after tonight's Jammix.

I had a very nice girldate lunch. ;) (I lubba you!) And now I'm going to shower and get ready for the rest of the night -- I've been out and about all day so far. But it's been a good day. I agree with Eric: "People who think Valentine's Day sucks for singles are silly :-)". There's plenty of love and joy to celebrate between friends and family. And as I prayed earlier today, I'm thankful that God has given us such a capacity to love, through His love which is greater than any love we could find in the world.

"I love you, Lord
And I lift my voice
To worship you
O my soul, rejoice
Take joy, my King
In what You hear
May it be a sweet, sweet sound
In Your ear."

I am having an extraordinarily difficult time finding long white gloves for Opening (in particular, ones that fit me). This is slightly disconcerting as we are supposed to start rehearsing in full dress on Saturday. Grrr.

I am also having difficulty with the CDC (Career Development Center). One of the companies to which I submitted a resume at the last Job Fair contacted me saying they wanted to preselect me for an on-campus interview on Feb. 25, but there's been a delay activating my Cardinal Recruiting status because of some confusion about me taking next quarter off (the CDC thinks I have some sort of hold on my account).

We got our Fluid Mechanics midterm back today. Not pretty. The Bio midterm didn't go particularly well for me either, although that one is less cause for alarm. I'm having a hard time keeping my head up. I'm really glad at this point that I only need to make it through the rest of this quarter. If I had to face Spring Quarter too...ugh.

In other news, there's going to be a really interesting philosophy guest lecture tonight. Come if you can make it!

Wow, I am so out of it. I just spent a couple hours working on the 120A problem set (which isn't due until Thursday, aren't you proud of us for starting early?) with my usual ChemE family, but my brain was definitely lagging. Brooke, Phil, and Felix are mostly done, with Karl slightly behind them, and me even behind Karl. At least all the problems have to do with the same concept, and hopefully tomorrow it shouldn't take me too long to finish once I'm in my right mind again.

The midterm today was...meh. It wasn't a hard exam, but I hadn't spent enough time studying the readings. It was one of those tests where you'd hit a streak of questions (Scantron, can you believe it? This class is the most like high school that I've ever taken at Stanford) where if you knew it, you were 100% sure, but if you couldn't recall that particular section of the textbook it became a guessing game. The short answers were a little rough for me, too. But I think I got by okay. The final is worth the other 50% of our grade, but it's not cumulative, so if I make sure to stay on top of things from here on out things should be fine. (I've learned to redefine "fine".)

Quote from tonight's worksession::
"What's atmospheric pressure?" - Karl
"...One atmosphere." - Phil
This was unbelievably funny.

HAHA -- look what Brian put as the caption for this picture. ;)
While we're on the subject, here are my pictures from the Pavilion performance.
(I've decided that I don't like my hair half-up. At least, not the way it was half-up that night. Stupid baby hairs.)

From a HumSex reading assignment:: This article about interracial relationships (albeit six years old now) reminds me a lot about the long group conversation we had over Tmony tour. Those of you who were awake for that might find this particularly interesting.

The Stanford network is being funky. Ah well. Tonight will be full of reading and studying for me. The HumSex midterm is tomorrow in class at 12:45, and it's worth 50% of my grade -- eep. It's not a challenging class, but I've been neglecting it in favor of my other more important classes. I guess I'll just have to hope for the best.

Oh, one more thing --
Brian's brilliant idea:: "I've decided that, if I ever choreograph for Opening, or otherwise have to lead a large group over a significant period of time, I will bring a rubber ducky to rehearsal. Not just any rubber ducky, but a rubber ducky that makes very loud quacking sounds when appropriately manipulated. Then, whenever I need to get people's attention, I'll use the duck. Other people may use shouts or whistles or cold stares to control large groups. I will use a rubber ducky with an amplifier."
Right...

A personality quiz from Kari's journal --
I couldn't decide between two answers on one of the questions, and it turned out to be a deciding factor between these two outcomes::

	Tenderheart Bear You are thinker, organizer, peacekeeper, and leader all in one. You have a power to command attention and people listen to you. However, you are often so concerned about not hurting others' feelings that you don't tell them what they need to hear and this gets you both into trouble. But you always have loyal friends to help you out.
Take the Which Care Bear Are You? Quiz!

	Funshine Bear You are filled with unlimited energy and extremely resourceful. You like to tackle problems and tasks head-on and you gladly accept any jobs that come along the way. However, you often take on too much and your stubbornness won't allow you to accept help from others. But you're always willing to have a good time!
Take the Which Care Bear Are You? Quiz!

TSF progress:: 17/17. Done. Woohoo.
Proofreading party at 7:00 tonight.

"God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea...
The Lord Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress."
- Psalm 46:1-2,7

I guess I'm on somewhat of a roll.
TSF progress:: 13/17.
(Doh, missed the pre-midnight timestamp by 21 seconds.)

TSF progress:: 12/17.
Thanks for your help, Felix & Graham!

Last night's performance went better than I expected it to (i.e. it could have been worse). Overall I think people came out of it feeling good, which is encouraging in the fact that the performance itself went more smoothly than our practices. My parents came to watch and videotape, so we'll have some footage to use for self-critique. This morning's rehearsal and subsequent choreography discussion were fruitful, I hope.

Friday Night Waltz (the last half of it, once a small group of Opening people migrated over there from the Pavilion) was fun. The Core meeting over dinner just now was productive - yay.

Something came up at home and I went back to Castro Valley to see my mom for a couple hours this afternoon. A lot is going on, and I'm a bit frazzled. I'd appreciate any prayers you can offer: for health, peace, and wisdom.

"I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden wealth of secret places, so that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who calls you by your name." - Isaiah 45:3.

Busy busy day today. Dance classes at 2:15 and 3:15, leave early from the second one to get to Testimony rehearsal from 4:00-6:00, rush back here to change into white dress/etc. for Pavilion, get picked up by Jeremy at 6:30, arrive at Pavilion at 6:45, start dress rehearsal at 7:00, dinner meeting with choreographers 8:00-9:15, and then the 2003 Viennese Ball Opening Committee makes its debut at 9:45. Wish us luck! (Please!)

Ha ha ha. At the end of ChemE120A lecture today, we were interrupted a couple times by people at the door because there was some sort of ChemE conference scheduled to take place in the gazebo right afterward. When there was just a couple minutes left of class, our ChemE110 professor walked into the ChemE Gazebo, and since pretty much exactly the same group of people are in both 110 and 120A this quarter everyone got really confused! Prof. Madix looked around and recognized us and said, "You mean you guys have to suffer through BOTH of us in one day??" Channing proceeded to call everyone waiting outside a bunch of goons or something, and Madix walked up next to Channing and started making doggy shadows on the projector screen. Quite amusing. Then, as I was walking out the door, Prof. Fuller (our ChemE100 prof from last quarter) walked in too ... which makes sense given the ChemE context, I guess, but it was weird to have all those profs in the same room!

TSF progress:: 6/17.

I have updated my quotes. ;)
And here are pictures from Bon Bon Ball and our family photo shoot.

Things of recent note::
- Evidently I have been recruited to help Jeff Lee teach a cross-step waltz lesson tonight in Okada. Should be interesting.
- Tomorrow night is our first pre-performance for Opening Committee, at the Pavilion. That should definitely be interesting.
- The teaser performance we did for Flicks on Sunday went okay enough. We had 6 couples dancing a small cut of the polka to some country music...yeah. The crowd was fairly small and unresponsive, but it was fine. The most interesting part of the night was: 1) practicing in the dark, backstage behind the screen, where the boys were practically invisible (in all black) and the girls were VERY visible in white shirts and petticoats; and 2) dancing lindy with Kari backstage while they replayed the country music!
- Last night I went around with Sherman to all the Wilbur dorms to make house meeting announcements about Viennese Ball, all dressed up in our Opening formalwear. That went well enough, though the freshmen in Wilbur seemed largely disinterested. Hopefully campus talk will get more people excited about it.
- It is very, very scary that Viennese is happening in 2 weeks...
- More scary is the fact that I have 2 midterms during the 3 days preceding Viennese.
- Current TSF progress:: 2/17.

Wow. Here's a good article on "Relatively Speaking" that Brian linked to on his weblog today. If the beginning distresses you like it did me (as stereotypical portrayals of Christians usually do), keep reading to end anyway -- trust me.

I got 10.5 hours of sleep last night! Yay!

I just turned in my 120A midterm and my 110 pset, and now I don't have anything due (well, nothing to physically turn in) for the rest of the week!!! AHHHH! Time to tend to the things I've been horribly neglecting: namely, TSF, HumSex, arrangements for Spain, and a pile of emails.

Well, I went to Swing, but I found myself really bored and wasn't feeling so well so I decided not to stay for Social Dance I. Back to work, I guess. Or maybe a nap. I'm so tired. And frustrated with fluid flow.

There's the good, and there's the bad. I'm only going to write about the good for now. :) Testimony rehearsal went wonderfully yesterday. We actually finished "God Will Make A Way," one of our truly new songs of the year -- I so had not expected to get through it in 2 rehearsals! It's really hard arrangement--probably our most difficult song--but when we get it (and I'm confident we will) it is going to sound so awesome. This group really amazes me. God really blessed Testimony this year! I feel so privileged to be this year's director. I always leave rehearsal feeling energized and ready to face life. It's so great.

Recently I've also been reflecting about where I was at this time last year. (I guess that's what happens now that I have year-old blog entries to look back on.) I realized that last year's Bon Bon Ball was where I met Brian and George for the first time -- Brian, as Kari's friend from Opening, and George...well, it's just the first time I remember dancing with him. I remember I danced the last waltz ("Erin Shore," of course) with Brian because the crowd was thinning and he offered to dance with me (since most of the Tmony crowd had left). Last year's Bon Bon Ball was also where Kari taught me Lindy Hop (I think; it's either BBB or something else that happened in the Toyon lounge). I was in the middle of Social Dance II, and I blogged about BBB (Jan. 26, 2002) being the first dance event where I actually started to feel comfortable in the social dance crowd. And it's really only been a year since then? Wow.

Testimony? We were beginning the recording frenzy this month last year. I was working on the arrangement of Fool For You with Chi-En and Katherine (and now, I'm finishing my second Nichole Nordeman arrangement...how funny). I definitely fell in love with FFY from the very beginning and related very deeply to the lyrics -- little did I know that I'd end up with the solo in a few months! I think also right around now of last year was when I'd just joined Core -- again, who knew I'd actually be directing now? (At that point I hadn't expected Steve to leave.) Core was...quite the learning/character-building experience.

Reading back on old blog entries (and old IM conversations, which a stirring conversation with Eric last night prompted me to look through again), I realize that a year ago I was entering (or was already in the middle of) what was likely one of the darkest times of my Stanford career. Gosh... I was so unhappy last year. I mean, I had happy moments, but it was like there was some underlying rut that I couldn't get myself out of. I was vulnerable to so many things. I had a conversation with Eric in early February last year about spiritual warfare...and wow, reading back on that, I so do not sound like myself. It makes me realize how different most of this year has been for me (not that I hadn't noticed the good difference, but I hadn't quite done a direct comparison). It's really amazing; I feel like I've been really protected from all of that this year...except for that half-week period early this quarter. That was scary, but I got out of it. Last year, I don't think I could have. I've come a long way since last year -- both inside myself and in my relationships with other people.

Nabterayl (1:24:30 PM): reminds me of an Amy Grant song
Nabterayl (1:25:25 PM): "... but I know they're all around me, all day and through the night. When the enemy is closing in, I know sometimes they fight. To keep my feet from falling, I'll never turn away. If you're asking what's protecting me, then you're gonna hear me say: God has angels watching over me ..."

And I'm convicted again of that verse from 2 Corinthians 12... "But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' 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." How true it is, that God shapes us by showing us how to depend on Him.

Eric, you mean a lot to me...thank you.

May I always remember that God is ever-faithful.

Hm, so I wasn't back last night after all. Due to the way the day played out, my mom wasn't able to get to my dress(es) until after dinner, so I wouldn't have been able to leave until really late. By then I was really tired, and it would have been a bad idea to drive and risk getting sleepy on the way (thanks, Justin). So I decided to sleep at home, with the intention of driving directly to San Jose for church in time for Kids Community. Well, I did wake up in time, but I was feeling fairly yucky (one, not sure I was up for 2 hours of driving before returning to Stanford, and two, afraid I might get the kids sick with whatever it is I've been trying to fight off for the past week). So I slept for another hour before getting up to drive back to campus. I realized that if I'm feeling under the weather like this, I better get going on my Fluid Mechanics take-home midterm, because it's going to take even longer than it normally would (assuming I can figure out enough to get all the problems started...sigh). Anyway, that's what I'll be working on from now until Testimony rehearsal this afternoon.

Quick recaps (hopefully to be expanded on...riiight):: Bon Bon Ball was lots of fun (awesome job, Brian!). I've somewhat calmed down about Opening. Saturday morning's rehearsal at the Knoll (if you can call that "being at the Knoll") was quite ridiculous, but we finally finished learning the waltz choreography. Had a family photo shoot at home yesterday (minus my brother, who's on a backpacking trip). My white dress is all hemmed and ready! And the blue one is in the works. (Thanks Mommy!) Oh, and I have a date to Viennese. :o)

Happy Chinese New Year!
Gong hay fat choy; sun lin fai lok!

I'm heading home for the day, but I'll be reachable by cell phone. Be back late this evening.

Opening does not.