Ho! Ho! Ho! Hope you all had a wonderful, joyful, and cheerful Christmas!! Ah... The season is full of love. :)

On Christmas eve I had dinner with cubbie, her mom and her bro at Kotobuki. Very fine sushi and sashimi dish! :) Then on Christmas day Kev hyung called me up and I went over to his friend's place to just chill and talk over dinner and some rolling rock. It was good to see him again. Buddie JP just called and he's thinking of coming down to the burgh before taking off to Corea for good so I'll be hanging with him over the weekend. We'll probably hit the slopes together or something. I'm kinda low on cash right now, but I ain't the type of person who can say 'no' to a good friend whom I might not be able to see for another year. :)

Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Get this... I cleaned out the rat cage... :) I'm such a good boy... kee hee. Santa??? Ya heard?? :)

Erika has left me with her lil pet rat for the winter break.. yup, a rat... not a hamster.. a rat... at least it's a white one... Maybe I should have asked Erika if she's part of the rat fanclub... I really had no clue that people actualy bred rats as pets... -.-;; So it's remotely cute... but, not terribly interesting to me... I'm not much of a pet person, tho... When I hesitated to take the dude in Erika was like "You know you can look at his balls! They're huge!" That begs me to rethink the vibe I may be giving other people about myself... hmm.... So, here's a shot of the dude sleeping... You can see what I mean by it being kinda cute. :) Erika tells me the guy is like 90 years old in human years... Yet it still plays with this lil plastic ball... Chewy was hoping that it would have been as wise as master Splinter, but alas.... no sign of any intelligence whatsoever..... :)

Well 'nuf about rats... On with my life... What did I do today? Man, it was one rainiy gloomy day and so Cubbie and I went to watch the long awaited sequel to The Fellowship of the Rings: The Two Towers. I must say the movie rocked! The battle of Helm's Deep was just off the hook!!! One thing I don't understand is why there isn't enough magic usage in the film... Maybe I'm a bit spoiled by the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest generation... I need to see some magic action!! :)

When we got out of the theater it had stopped raining. Uhm... What we need here is snow... NOT rain! It's kinda sad that I haven't seen any more snow since my last trip to the slopes. I wonder if Steve is having fun snowboarding in Coread... If you are... then SCREW YOU!. :P ha ha! Whatever... me is bitter right now... Yeah, that's Steve and I to the right. ;) Steve, I hope you're thinking about chreography!

So I actually managed to hit the slopes twice as planned previously... yipppeee! The season is off to a great start I must say. Seven Springs was decent, but what was really cool was Wisp... John had met a guy living in his apartment building and he happened to know about this 47th anniversay deal at Wisp mountain. Get this guys... It was $7 for a whole-day lift pass... 47 cent hot dogs.. and apparently people got deals for $70 per night at a 5 people condo... That's good shit... To top all that off it was packed powder up there, man (yup the shot to the left was taken on our way to wisp)... Very nice... The slopes were decent, I mean it's no Killington, but the snow was good. :) 2 hour drive was well worth it! Can't wait for more snow!!!! It better hit us hard sooooon!!! :)

"Processing job from Tray 4" alerted Cyh-8100. "This one's gotta be mine" I said to myself. I quickly grabbed the first page that popped out and sure enough, it was my final research paper for managerial econ. Once I had snatched the last page of the printout my legs were already running out the cluster and down the stairs towards my dear Bora. Boy, was she out cold. I slowly woke her up and she let out a lil grunt. Man... she definitely sounded disturbed. About a minute had passed before she finally seemed content with my company. "Alright, let's go" I blurted out with a bit of enthusiasm as I engaged her in 1st gear and started to venture downtown to hand my paper in.

Even with all those lights, downtown was no warmer than Oakland... It actually seemed colder. Was it the cold weather? The empty streets? Or was it the extravagantly lit trees of downtown that had lured my mind into an aimless state? I'm not sure... but with each movement of my eyes my mind was slowly numbing out. I wasn't long before my mind had made a leap in time and I was back in Highschool: back in Beijing. Impulsive trips to 55 middle school, random visits to the Capital Mansion, snow fights in San Li Tun, drinking like there's no tomorrow in Wu Dao Kou, singing our lungs out in that crappy lil Karaoke Box behind East Lake, sleepovers at Paul's place whenever we had the chance, sneaking into the music room to practice, and of course parties at Worker's Stadium, and Ta Yuan. All those memories flashed by me superimposed over the deserted scene of the Pittsburgh downtown. It no longer mattered whether or not I was going snowboarding on Thursday... Even the fact that I was almost done with the semester couldn't help bring my good mood back. Yes, it was that feeling again. Missing you guys... very much.

Leading a busy life filled with hobbies, intellectual satisfactions, and a job I love is great... but there's a big void in my life that longs for my good friends whom I have been parted from... Why am I the only one living in the states??? My dear Beijing posses... I Love you all! I wish you guys the best and hope you guys are having a warmer and cozier winter than mine.

Man... just found white hair inside my nostrill.. Maybe this means I am finally able to attain utmost wisdom ?

Was that random? nah... just me suffering from bombing my managerial econ exam. Don't you just hate it when the exam covers just the things you thought weren't gonna be covered... grrrrrrr

Before I write anything I must announce the arrival of my cousin's newborn!!! Sean Park, December 1st 5:59 PM 2.92Kg !!!! Alright, I got that out to the masses. :)

So yesterday I visited the Shadyside Family Health Center and they told me it would have been better if I were to have visited them sooner. Oh well, isn't that always true... -.-; Anyway, so they squeezed out some puss and now I have to take antibiotics 4 times a day for 10 days. grrrr... just during my finals... lovely. Before I went to pick up my prescription I decided to try the touchless car wash on baum and morewood. I didn't want any commercial hot wax on my windows so I opted to just get it washed and dried... The quality is pretty shitty, but at least I didn't get any scratches. I just had to clean out all that salt from my 4 hours of highway driving through the blizzard cuz I wasn't sure how good a rust coating my car had with all that salt on it... Just trying to be on the safe side. The window looks shitty as hell after I got through the wash so I'm gonna have to wash the windows by myself. Alright, back to some more reading and some more suffering...

Alright I'm back from Turkey break and the left hand side of my face is like... demented... my left cheek has blown up and it looks gross. -.-;. so is my upper left lip... I dunno what happened... I'm guessing I might have gotten infected from my shaver or something... grrrr.... It feels reeeeally uncomfortable... I'm gonna try and get a doctor's appointment tomorrow morning... urgh..

Man, I had to drive through a blizzard for about 2 hours on my way back... At first I thought my tires were slipping cuz my car was wobbling from side to side when going 70 mph.... then when I stepped out to put gas I realized how strong the wind was.... crrrrrraaaaaazy.... oh ma gawd it was strong... Guess my car isn't particulary aerodynamic. At any rate, the car is all covered with salt crap and it looks shitty like Sijia's Celica (mua ha ha ha ha!) and I had hand washed it a few hours before I left, too... I just might have to try one of those touchless car washes...

On a brighter note Turkey day was pretty fun. Apart from putting up with the usual nagging of my cousin, the food was great, and the Corean videos I got to watch were funny as hell. I also saw "The Eye" which wasn't scary at all... but, a pretty decent movie nonetheless... It really confused me towards the end when they were speaking in Mandarin, Cantonese and, I think, Thai to each other... Is that... uhmm... normal??? -.-;; I brought back lots of good food, so I should be packing up some good stuff into my system for the next couple weeks. Yay! :) Oh! My cousin is currently in the hospital and she's expecting tonight! Best wishes sis!!