Blog Catch-up Part 2

Okay, where were we? Ah yes, last week, well, it only gets better :)

Thursday: I go to campus resigned to the fact that my ID card is hopelessly lost, prolly in one of the gutters around USC, and that I have to pay for its replacement, which I should do anyways because it's my own fault I lost it. So I go to USCard Services, and as they're getting me a new card I ask about paying the $18 fee. The guy who was working with me said that there would be no fee. Umm, come again? He said he gave me a brand-new card with a new number so he's treating it like a first-time card he's giving me. He said if I lost this new one then I would have to pay the fee, but not this time. I still do not quite understand it, but hey, I am not arguing! I was so happy and thanking God for that little gift and I went straight to the gym because I hadn't been in 6 days and I was feeling a bit overdue. So had a nice, long workout, and when I was finished I met up with my friend Jane and we went to have lunch together. I had to make a pit stop to my car to change out my workout bag for my normal one and I had parked at a meter that day and didn't pay for it. Normally this is nothing new because I have a handicapped placard (another perk to having rheumatoid arthritis!) and it allows one to park at meters for free (and green, limited time spaces for unlimited time), but this time I had forgot to put it on my rear view mirror! I put it on right away and was thanking God that no one gave me a ticket! It might not seem a huge deal, but those parking citation people around USC are extremely intense and if you're one minute off you usually get a ticket - I was about 4 hours off and no ticket! So basically God saved my rear end *twice* in the same day!! It was quite exciting :)

Friday: one of the other women on staff with me, Anya, had her birthday on Friday so the two of us, plus her twin sister (who I staffed Project Impact with in summer 2008) and 3 other friends all went out for hot pot that night. I don't know if you've ever had hot pot before, I'd only had it once, but it was so delicious!! We ate at a place called Jazz Cats in Monterey Park, and yes, they actually had a wall with tons of framed photos of cats...odd. But we got these pics out of it:





Can you tell which ones were the twins?? :)

Basically it was a delightful evening and it was great re-connecting with friends and having a fun night out! Quite refreshing I'd say

Saturday: That night I went to campus and had dinner with Jane and then she, Lauren and I watched 3 hours of Olympics, and I could have watched more. I really wanted to see Apolo Anton Ohno skate and because he's a big name of course the finals for his event weren't until about 10pm, but I got to see both his qualifying races and in the finals he got silver when he almost didn't even medal! On the last lap he was in 4th place, then the 2 guys in front of him collided and Jane and I were jumping up and down going crazy and it was all sorts of fun. Then we ended the night by watching 2 episodes of "Gilmore Girls" because I lent Lauren the first season (she had never seen it before!) and then it was bedtime.



Sunday: Had a Valentine's Party at my apt that night for some of the girls, and I hung up pink and red streamers, hearts and littered the floor with pink rose petals - had to admit, it looked pretty good :) The line-up for the night was simply making three kinds of desserts, yes, THREE. Sugar cookies first, so they could then be decorated, then made rocky road brownies and apple cobbler and oh man they were delicious!! We also watched While You Were Sleeping (quite possibly my favorite movie of all time) and we ate ourselves into a sugar coma.

Below are Amanda, Jane and Carrie-Rose, all of whom live on the same floor!


Here are Amanda and I cleaning up because of course, whenever you bake a lot of things, there is a lot of cleaning to do! Although I was definitely impressed that Amanda offered to help and made me stop cleaning the dishes!


Finally this is moi with 3 plates of some of the brownies to give away to some of the guys in Challenge. Thy were jealous at all we were making and since we had some leftover, thought it might be nice to give them some of it, plus, if it all stayed at my apt I'd gobble it all up and that would not be good for my arteries :)