She's home!

My sister's home from Ireland, woo hoo!

Of course, now she's got me doing sisterly things, like attending a Darren Hayes concert with her tomorrow. (For those of you who are NOT diehard D.H. fans, he was the former lead singer of Savage Garden.) Personally, I'm not a HUGE fan myself, but Darren and I go way back.

Back in the summer of 2000, my sister dragged my ass out of bed at the unholy hour of 3 am to see Savage Garden perform on the Today show's summer concert series. The area around the stage usually fills up quickly with out of towners and various tourists, so my sister knew to arrive super early.

We arrive around 4:30 am to see a stage set for Lara Fabian, not Savage Garden. My sister, in complete denial, thinks that they haven't finished setting up the stage yet, so we wait. And wait. And wait. Eventually at around 8:45 am, Lara Fabian gets up on the stage and starts singing, "I Will Love Again," a catchy one-hit wonder tune. At around 9:30am, my sister admits that perhaps we arrived on the wrong day.

The next day, my sister rips me from my peaceful slumber at around 3 am to see the CORRECT Savage Garden show. Again, we arrive at around 4:30 am, but this time we see the correct stage. We snag prime front row center stage standing positions and wait. And wait. Quickly, the area fills up with other diehard Savage Garden fans, toting posters and various "I love you, Savage Garden," "I want you to have my baby, Darren Hayes," and "You can bathe me in the sea, Darren Hayes" signs.

I'm not drawn in by all this mania, but something transforms within me when the concert begins. It was like an out of body experience. I started singing along (apparently, deep down inside, I knew the lyrics by heart) and then I started to move. I believe some may call this dancing, but I'm not quite sure. If I had to describe the movements, it was something like the hand flailing and gyration of a born again Christian, or maybe a cowgirl with a lasso. I don't know exactly, suffice it to say that HB's family was watching the performance in Massachusetts, the camera recorded my maniacal gesticulation, and his entire family was rolling with laughter. This very Today show performance is probably still being transmitted far out in outer space where an alien civilization is watching and mimicking my pathetic asian girl dance moves and wondering what kind of people we are.

My sister--the diehard fan that she is--taped this show for posterity. If she has a heart, she'll keep it buried in her collection forever.

For payback, maybe my sister might snag us two tickets to see Romeo & Juliet in Shakespeare in the Park this week. I've got a major girl crush on Lauren Ambrose. Though, I think this is already public knowledge.

Queens: Home of Pork Candy

Where did this weekend go? I didn't really accomplish all that much, but had a great time with Nikki and Moonrat eating these delicious Filipino dishes at Perlas ng Silangan. (Are you happy now, Moonie? I've posted my "nerdy asian photos.")

I'll direct you to Moonrat's blog, if you'd like the rundown of food we consumed, since she's much better at the food descriptions. Though, I'm surprised she didn't refer to the tocino as pork candy, since it's the funniest and most accurate description of the food that I've ever heard.

Defending My Honor

A couple of days ago, my better half, HB, received an email from an old childhood friend. This friend--let's call him D.--felt slighted that HB hadn't made a better effort to be a part of D's life today and that their friendship was slowly dissolving. One of the reasons D. thought HB intentionally stayed away was because of me:

"If you're mad at me because you think I hate your fiance, you shouldn't be. You are my friend and that is what I care about. Who you want to marry is your choice and as long as you're happy, I'm happy."

WTF!? First of all, HB NEVER thought that D. hated me. So, the only reason D. feels the need to negate the fact that he hates me in his email is because there's a nugget of truth to it. Second of all, despite my self-loathing tendencies, I still think of myself as a kind of a catch. If someone did a profile on me, you'd be hard pressed to figure out if I was just a boy in a girl's body.

My boss once described me to a Wired writer over lunch to describe how I was the perfect audience for his writing and the magazine: tech and gadget junkie, gamer, obsessive blog reader, TV addict, closet convention attending Star Trek fan, etc. After profiling me, this Wired writer asks my boss, "And your assistant's a girl? You do realize that unless she has a unibrow, she'd be swimming in phone numbers in this industry."

Seriously though, I think I'm a good person and worthy of HB. I come from a good family, I was a good student my whole life, got a great education, and have a blossoming career in book publishing. What's wrong with me?

Nothing, I say.

Resurfacing

So, it's been a while, eh? I stayed away about as long as I could stand before I realized that NOT blogging was not improving my lack of happiness.

I'm going to skip the sob story about how this last month has been an introspective one, how getting my last asthma attack made me feel more vulnerable than I've felt in a while, and how I'm so g-d damn tired of LOSING acquisitions because my company can't pay more for good books (or effing promotions, for that matter).

I talked to one of my fantastic cousins tonight who is literally halfway around the world (the Philippines) and she told me that she read my entire blog. Seriously. Like from the first post to the last. That was the most flattering thing I've heard anyone say to me in a while and it made me want to come back and start writing regularly again. Thank you, M.

So, here I am. We have a lot of catching up to do. Since it's 1 am, I'm going to pack it in soon, but I do have new pictures to share from my business trip to San Francisco last week.

Dear reader, missed you I have. I hope you missed me back.