“The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don’t wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules.”

- High Fidelity, Nick Hornby

I am obsessed with mixtapes and I take the art of making one very seriously. You can’t just slump a bunch of songs together and call it a mix– you’ve got to think of who it’s for, think of what songs they might like (specifically by artists they may not be familiar with), or if it has a theme. Everyone has their own rules to making mixes. One of mine is that if you have the same artist on there twice, the songs can’t be from the same album and they can’t be placed back to back. See? I told you I’m serious about this shit.

For Valentine’s Day I made Tim a mix with songs that remind me of him (:barf: I’m sorry, I can’t help it if we’re so cute we make you sick), and I found that making a mixtape that’s strictly all love songs is quite difficult because you’re also using someone elses’ words to convey your thoughts and feelings for someone. So… yeah. I spent hours in front of my computer shuffling songs around to see how they flowed after one another. It took forever for me to come up with the final track list.  Some of the songs I chose also relate to our mutual love of Ryan Gosling as 3 songs on the mix have been in movies he’s been in (“Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” – Remember the Titans, “You and Me” – Blue Valentine, “Under Your Spell” – Drive).

Track list:

1. Ain’t No Mountain High Enough – Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell
2. My Love – The Bird and the Bee
3. Wouldn’t It Be Nice – The Beach Boys
4. Islands – The xx
5. Lovers Rock – Sade
6. You Are My Favourite – Sophie Madeleine
7. Maps – Rogue Wave
8. Home – Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros
9. Hand With Care – Jenny Lewis With the Watson Twins
10. You and Me – Penny & the Quarters
11. Trying My Best to Love You – Jenny Lewis
12. La Valse D’Amelie – Yann Tiersen
13. If I Came Back As A Song – Barnaby Bright
14. One And Only – Adele
15. Make It Wit Chu – Queens of the Stone Age
16. Here In My Room – Incubus
17. Secret Heart – Feist
18. Under Your Spell – Desire
19. I Wanna Be Where You Are – Michael Jackson
20. Hysteric – Yeah Yeah Yeahs

I don’t just stop at perfecting the mix — I’m all about presentation too! I like taking old jewel cases and use scrapbook paper to create the cover. For this particular one, I made little cartoony versions of myself and Tim by using the Hipster Dress-Up Game for girls and boys, then Photoshop’d them to stand by one another and added little details to make the girly one look a bit more like me (darker hair, freckles, olive glasses). For the back of the CD I found a little picture of Mickey playing the piano with Minnie looking at him adoringly that I snipped out of a Disney catalog years ago. It was too perfect as we both love Disney, and Tim plays the piano, and I like watching him play. And for the inside part of the cover sleeve, I found a quote about love by Dr. Seuss which pretty much sums us up.

I’m pretty effing proud of this mix. I always put a lot of thought and effort to every one I make, but this is the one I’m most proud of to date.

My poor little Rory is currently in a world of pain –  he got his junk snipped off yesterday. In order to keep him from trying to lick his phantom sack, he has to wear the Cone of Shame! I feel really bad for my baby, he’s going to be rockin’ this thing for 2 weeks. Ahh! I was told that I could put him in a baby onsie since it’ll keep him from licking it. Anywho, after the surgery, my aunt and I went to Petsmart to buy him new food. She stayed inside the car with Rory, but when I got out he was yelping so loudly that people walking nearby looked to see where the commotion was coming from. Oh, and he totally peed on her too. He’s never peed on anyone before! I’m hoping it was just because he was startled and in pain.

Needless to say, with the condition he’s in, I’m in full-blown mommy mode. *serious face*

Nerd love.

I used to like Valentine’s Day… y’know, in elementary school where we’d take an hour off towards the end of the day and have a party with punch, cookies, and pass out Valentines to all the classmates. When that stopped happening and I realized that Valentine’s Day is really just a holiday for couples to express their love for one another (don’t even try to tell me that it’s not just for romantic love, but all kinds of love, because that is bull), I became quite bitter. None of the boys ever had a crush on me in school, therefore I never received any Valentine grams during 6th period (except for that time my mom sent me one and signed it as Jon Bon Jovi ), and my track record with dating damn near doesn’t exist.

But alas, this year was not the same! I actually got to do disgustingly cute things because I haz a man now! Tim and I agree that it’s still a silly holiday, but since this year was our first one together we decided to go ahead and celebrate. Before we left for San Francisco, we exchanged presents. I made Tim a mixtape, which I will blog about this weekend because I forgot to take pictures of it and it’s too rad to not blog about (I’m super proud of it, okay?), a picture frame, and an Ellie badge from Up. Tim got me a couple of boxes of Godiva chocolates and some super awesome Minnie Mouse headphones!!! He also wrote me a sweet letter that made me cry because I’m weird like that.

My Valentine's Day swag.

I was super excited when I saw that Tim was wearing a purple tie -- it totally matched the Ellie badge I got for him!

We kicked off our festivities at Dynamo Donuts (I’ve blogged about them before here). Their customer service is always awesome, but yesterday was outstanding! The guy who helped us complimented our snazzy outfits and let us sample some beer flavored ice cream that a nearby ice cream shop made (it was from the last batch and a customer from earlier that day brought them a scoop). And he was super helpful in telling us about certain donuts they had available for the day, and even suggested I don’t get the powdered gluten free one since it would mess up my outfit. Dynamo Donuts never ceases to amaze me. Seriously. I can’t get over them. Dude with the bowtie, you’re awesome!

Heart Beet donut.

Matchy-matchy. This was pure coincidence.

After we ate our delicious donuts, we went downtown because I wanted to look at the Disney Store. The upper floor has a little kids table in front of a screen that plays musical scenes from different Disney movies, and we saw that there were crayons and coloring pages ready to be colored. We sat there for a good 30 minutes. One of the cast members even came by and told us we were doing a good job. Haha!

After I finished coloring my princess page, I helped Tim finish coloring his Winnie the Pooh page.

After coloring and oogling at the adorable huggable stuffed Disney characters, I suggested that we go to the Ferry Building since Tim told me he’s never been there. When we got there, we saw a gaggle of pillow clad people. I kind of forgot that SF has this annual pillow fight every Valentine’s Day. It looked kind of boring to me, to be honest. I was talking to my boss about it after my shift (yes, I work now!) and she said that maybe the point of the pillow fight is to let out aggression. And then I said maybe it’s for single people who really hate Valentine’s Day. o,0

The annual Valentine's Day pillow fight in SF looked kind of uneventful.

We were going to try and find a place to eat dinner around Embarcadero, but the place I wanted to eat at was closed! Tim suggested we eat at Sanraku, a Japanese restaurant that my family and I really like, but it was a 23 minute walk away. Since it was in the area where we parked our car, the trek there was worth it. By this time, it was effin’ cold and windy and I cursed at myself for wearing a skirt, but I knew that sweet sesame chicken and miso soup were in my near-future. I often craved Sanraku’s sesame chicken when I was in high school. I had eaten there a few times with my aunts from the area. To this day, I still think it’s the greatest sesame chicken I’ve ever eaten. Dammit, I’m making myself hungry!

After dinner, we made quick little shopping trips to Rasputin and Nordstrom.  And for dessert we got strawberry cream puffs from Beard Papa (which is their GREATEST FLAVOR EVER) and orange cream soda.b

Needless to say, my first Valentine’s Day was A M A Z I N G!!!!!

Today is my Inay’s birthday! Inay means “mom” in Tagalog BTW.

So I just wanted to post a little something in honor of her big day!

This is what Inay looked like on her 26th birthday, which happened to be 26 years ago (I'm the little baby in the picture, and I just turned 26 a few weeks ago)!!!

Me and Inay circa 2009

Happy Birthday, Inay!!! I love you!

I got some really fantastical things for my birthday, and even a couple of the items that I put on my wish list!

Tim got me Doctor Who series 6, a radically epic Doctor Who & Scott Pilgrim mashup shirt (but it’s too small for me ), and the carousel necklace from Disney Couture. AAAHHH!!!

My sister got me these really cute Tiffany blue-ish ribbon earrings which I have been wearing since Thursday.

Annnnd, Jen got me a bag of this Japanese candy I really like and a little Winnie the Pooh phone charm. When we went shopping out of town, Tim got me the Sleeping Beauty pullover I really wanted from Forever 21, and my mom surprised me with a Missoni knitted cap that I really wanted from their Target collection!!

I don’t I’ve ever gotten so many birthday gifts in my adult life

This post is my big THANK YOU letter for all my wonderful gifts. I love each and every one of the things I was given, and love the people who got them for me even more. <3

Trying to think of fun things to do in Stockton is a bit of challenge, but for my birthday yesterday I figured bowling would be an exciting thing to do. I dominate in Wii bowling (no, really. Ask Tim. I’ve kicked his ass plenty of times <3), but I SUCK at real bowling. I used to be on a league in 3rd and 4th grade — I had my own bowling shoes, ball, and other random bowling accessories to boot, but y’know… that was a really, really, really, long time ago. x___x

Shanice, her boyfriend Nick, Marcos, Jennifer, Tim, and I played a couple of games. And apparently this was Jen’s first time bowling! I bowled a really sad 71 in the first game, but made up for it by getting 96 during the second round (and a strike!). But both scores are fairly miserable as I just found one of my old bowling trophies that awarded me with “Highest Score” of 128. Oi.

Oh well. I had fun anyway.

So here are a few pictures from my bowling excursion…

Next up: my birthday swag loot. I actually got a couple of things off my list!!!

One thing that sucks about having a birthday a few weeks after Christmas is that everyone is broke from all the present shopping and after-Christmas sales. *sigh*

I decided to compile a list of things I wish I could unwrap from fancy wrapping paper (or take out of pretty gift bags hidden with tissue paper) on my birthday, but most likely will not since I’m sure no one will get any of the following for me…

• Doctor Who DVDs

Specifically the complete series 6 DVD set and the David Tennant collection. I saw the latter at Best Buy for $130, which is actually a REALLY REALLY good deal because each series (or season as us yanks call them) are over $60. But I just checked Best Buy’s website and now it’s $180. WTF? Did I misread the one at the store? *confuzzled*

The 6th series was the sole thing I asked for last Christmas, but I was told that it was too expensive. :/

• Hamm piggy bank (from Toy Story)

Why not? And it’s on sale for $12.99 at the Disney Store!

• Disney Couture Dumbo carousel necklace

I’ve been wanting this necklace for ages. And I absolutely adore carousels. The first piece of writing I ever had published was an essay called “Hop on the Horse” in which I compared life to riding a carousel. Also, the necklace is Disney… Disney + carousel = big effing deal to me!

• Mulling Spice Dress from ModCloth

I’m actually debating on buying this with some money I got for Christmas. Tim and I are planning on going to Dapper Day at Disneyland next month and this dress would be PERFECT. I’ve also been searching for a burgundy pussy bow top since October and though, this is a dress, I think I prefer it better than any ‘ol shirt.

• Looking for Alaska by John Green

I want this or any other book by John Green. I haven’t read any of his works yet, but I’ve read quotes by him on Tumblr and seen videos of him on YouTube. From what little exposure I’ve had of John Green, I have come to the conclusion that he needs to be my male bestie. FOR SERIOUS. This dude is hilarious and intelligent. Check out this video of him listing the 5 worst typos:

• Joan Holloway v-neck shirt

Look at how sick this shirt is! I want to wear this with my black vest and silver pen necklace like the one Joan wears in Mad Men. This tee can be found on RebBubble.

• Star Wars headphones

I am in dire need of new headphones, and I disdain earbuds. They hurt my ears. I need something nice and cushiony, and why not nerdy too? These Star Wars headphones are perfect for me! I saw the Boba Fett ones when I went to Sacramento last week and they were on sale for a really decent price. I’m kicking myself for not buying them!

• Kurt Halsey poster

It’s a bit ridiculous how long I’ve been wanting this poster (4 years!). It’s been on sale at Art Star Gallery for a really long time too.

Soo, yeah. That’s all the stuff I can think of at the top of my head that I’d like for me birthday. I’m pretty sure that I’ll think of other things that could’ve been on this list, but oh well!

Having a jolly good time at the park in my faux glasses. I don't recall what was so funny.

When I was in 3rd grade, I tried my best to make it seem like I couldn’t see very well when I went to my first optometrist appointment.

“Can you read this line?” the doctor asked.

I don’t recall what letters and numbers were up on the wall, but I could see them clearly and was really peeved by my super amazing vision. So I just pretended it was all too problematic for me.

“Um… A… L…. H, K… uh… I think that’s a U…” and so on and so forth.

I should have probably said, “I can’t tell what that one is” or just say another letter in its place. But at the end of my appointment, the doctor said I had 20/20 vision and didn’t need glasses. I was crushed. I wanted to wear glasses sooooo badly! I know it sounds sort of odd, like what kid wants to wear glasses? What an effin’ weirdo! But I’ve always thought glasses were cool — my mom has always worn glasses, therefore I thought they were cool. The fact that I didn’t need to wear glasses didn’t necessarily mean I couldn’t wear glasses, so I got a fake pair from Claire’s. And in high school I wore some fake Calvin Klein ones my mom bought at the flea market. They made me feel so chic.

I got my first pair of prescription glasses when I was 18. And my eyes were SUPER effed up thanks to staring at the computer screen for long periods of time — one eye was farsighted while the other was nearsighted. How does that even happen? But within a year my vision improved, and since then I’ve only had a light reading prescription. I’ve had friends try on my glasses and ask if they’re fake, but I swear they’re not!

Anywho, I picked out a pair of new ones a few weeks ago and I’m all excited! My last pair of glasses have been MIA since February and I’ve had them for 3 years, but my eyeballs have been doing alright. I tend to wear a faux pair of horn rimmed glasses (the kind I originally wanted 3 years ago, but the woman helping me out with glasses said they were too big for my face, and a year later every woman and their mother were wearing them. Thanks, hipsters! /sarcasm) that have made many appearances on my blog. When I was still at SFSU, I heard this one girl ask why people wear fake glasses when they don’t even need a prescription. I was slightly offended as I was wearing my fake glasses as she was saying that, and also I like having something on my face. I feel weird without glasses, even though I don’t need them as much as others might.

I’m rambling. What was the point of this post? Oh yeah, new glasses! So, I picked out tortoise shell colored frames by Brooks Brothers which look pretty similar to my faux ones. I was all excited, but then I got a message from my doctor’s office asking what color I wanted them in. WHAT DO YOU MEAN, WHAT COLOR? I thought it just comes in tortoise. But no. It also comes in olive and black. I took black out of the equation (I hope that doesn’t sound racist) and found myself being torn between olive and tortoise.

WHICH ONE DO I WANT?

Tortoise...

... or olive?

They both don’t look too different from one another, so making a decision became even more difficult! I called the optometrist earlier this morning, but the woman who helped me was with a patient at the time so I thought, “Awesome, more time to think!!!” I settled on tortoise, but when she called me back I said olive. I don’t know what happened.

Either pair should be fine, plus the olive pair look sort of forest-y and have a golden hue, which looks pretty nice… I think. o,0

Jan. 12, 2011: Lightsaber battle on my 25th birthday.

Greetings and salutations to whoever happens to be reading this. I hope you had a swell holiday season and avoided having to put on “present face” due to lame gifts. Luckily that didn’t happen to me this year! And if you don’t celebrate any holidays, then I hope you had a swell month… or something like that. Yeah. Okay then… *awkward glance to the floor*

And if you happen to be in a part of the world that has already rung in the new year, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Every year I write some sort of year in review on one of my many blog forums with a bullet point list of things that have happened, or things I accomplished throughout the year. So I shall post the happenings of 2011 here:

• I was able to officially say that I am having a quarter life crisis (turned 25 in January)
• I went ice skating for the first time since I was a kid
• Got re-acquainted with my pal Marcos, and met my [America] internet BFF Audrey for the first time!
• Started volunteering at SPD Books in Berkeley
• Had a lightsaber battle with Tim in the park (with a lightsaber he bought me for my birthday, see picture above)
• Got a job (twas temporary)
• Saw Neil Gaiman at WonderCon for the Doctor Who panel!
• Read One Day by David Nicholls and cried my eyes out
• Finally watched a show at the Warfield AND finally saw Broken Social Scene live. Also went to a legit Sara Bareilles show!
• Started this blog!
• Let go of someone I cared about for a really long time because I finally acknowledged the fact that they didn’t care that much about me
• Lost some important friendships over misunderstandings
• Did the whole graduation ceremony thing at SFSU
• Finally went to Disneyland and the Walt Disney Family Museum with Tim!
• Dressed up as a Hogwarts schoolgirl for the last Harry Potter movie
• Started driving!
• Vacationed with Jen, Shanice, and Thomas in Monterey
• Got my very first puppy, Rory. <3
• Opened my own Etsy store and sold handmade jewelry
• Tim and I effed up our friendship by falling for each other (in other words, I GOTS ME A MAN!) <3

My fluffy baby, Rory.

Graduation day!

The best 2 hours of my life. These dudes (and lady) know how to put on a good show.

Shanice and I in Monterey.

Me and the BF when he was still just my BFF with our homie Eeyore.

Oh, One Day. You killed me and also made me want to start writing again.

2011 has been a whirlwind of emotions (mostly sad ones), but I’m glad that it’s ending on a happy note.

The holiday season has really gotten to me — and by that I mean my waistline. Fuuuuuu… Curse you delicious stupid cookies and cakes that magically appear out of nowhere during this time of year! CURSE YOU. You know I can’t resist you!

I started going back to the gym over the weekend and also started taking Rory out on walks. As a result, I am SO. RIDICULOUSLY. SORE. Oh, and I’m totally drinking some hot chocolate with whipped cream as I write this. Heh…

I remember being really excited of the prospect of having my own puppy to cuddle and take out on walks before I brought Rory home in September. I even contemplated on cancelling my gym membership since I figured walking Rory would be my form of cardio. Um, I was so wrong. When Rory finally came home, I was crushed when I learned that I had to wait until he got his rabies shot to take him anywhere. 4 months — that’s how long I had to wait! In the meantime I tried attaching a leash (one of those retractable ones) on him a couple of times so he could get used to the feel of it, but he ended up chewing it which was all kinds of frustrating. He’s a puppy, so I should’ve seen that coming. *sigh*

Recently, my dad and aunt have been nagging me about taking him out on walks, so I bought regular leash and took him on a short walk to the mail box last week. I expected him to just sit there as I tried to drag him along, but to my pleasant surprise he actually walked with me and by my side (dogs are always supposed to walk by you, not behind or in front of you).

The following day I took Rory out around the neighborhood and he did fairly well. He did bark at a couple of Rottweilers though. x__x

And a few days after that, Tim took us to a trail where him and his sister used to ride their bikes.It was pretty nice, and we found another dog park along the way.

Here are some pictures from that walk:

Another thing that surprised me was when Rory let me put clothes on him and didn’t fight me about it or try to chew them off! I was so crestfallen the first 5 times I tried putting on his grey jacket and other various articles of clothing I had gotten for him and he would just not have it. I was like, “Dammit, I’m going to have one of those dogs that hate clothes!” But alas. He doesn’t!

—

outfit details:

me:

• hat: H&M
• shirt: Gap
• jacket: Xhiliration
• pants: Old Navy
• shoes: Madden Girl
• purse: Kate Spade

Rory:

• Martha Stewart for PetSmart

Tim:

• shirt/sweater/blazer: H&M
• shoes: Aldo
• pants: ???