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I am bored to tears.
I’m almost done with the first season of Dexter, which aside from giving me a nightmare last night is pretty good. I need a break from reading and coding, and I’ve already gone to the groceries and made next week’s meals. There is nothing to do.
Looking at my calendar, it looks like I have the next 3 weekend booked. After that I’ll really have to start feeling in the void.

It turned out that I stayed home Friday evening pigged out on pizza and beer, watched Dexter (the show doesn’t go well with pizza), and fudged around gatherEC (you can’t tell the difference since I couldn’t get chcounter to work).

It’s a beautiful day outside but I thought about spending the whole day indoor again… I’m going to buy something that I’ve always wanted - wooden hangers. My budget had gone out the window since I moved. Bechtel keeps messing up my pay check due to the relocation reimbursements. I don’t remember having so much trouble when I started at AEP. Sometimes I have about $500 Federal tax withhold, other times it’s $1500. This makes simple things such as predicting how much money I’ll have in the bank really difficult. I called to complain, but the finance office just told me that I’m getting taxed more because I’m getting paid more… which is BS. Whenever they dump more money into my paycheck, I always have to dig into my savings to pay bills.

This is the first weekend where I’m not going anywhere and nobody is coming over since I moved to Maryland. I’ve thought about this situation for a while and I still haven’t figure out what I will be doing.

This is absolutely exciting! I registered for a new site!
Yes, it did just cost me $100 but hopefully it’s wroth it. It’s called GatherEC.com and it’s for my EC collection. I’m sick of not being able to tell my co-workers about my hobby (since I write about them in my blog), so this is the perfect solution. Well, it’d be more perfect if it was free…
Now I just need to figure out a way to transfer my entire EC database over… That’s going to take a while… Oh, also need to inform all collectors that there’s a new website now…

I’ve been entertaining a scary thought: What if MJ were right?
What if quitting (temporarily) is not only a good idea but somehow a better idea than staying put? Just throwing up your hands and saying “forget this 9 to 5 (temporarily) and let’s party”. It’s appealing.
Of course, I stand by what I said before. Quitting for a year now means working for 5 extra years before retirement. And, yes, there will be a retirement. A lot of people believe that they’ll just work through their lives, maybe part time or turn a hobby into profits… well that becomes hard when you go senile, and the last I checked they haven’t find a cure for that yet.
On the other hand, there are things that I want to do and need to do soon. For example, spending time with Grandma. Even before my grandpa passed away, I get choked up thinking that Grandma will leave one day too. I remember how she promised me, when I was around 10, that she won’t die till she sees me married, and how she decided to give me my wedding present the last time I saw her.

Still, there must be rules when it comes to making these decisions. Rules that you make ahead of time, otherwise they turn into excuses to leave a job. What sort of things deserve to be done “right now” and what can wait a few more years?

I did my walkdown at Farley today, and it was taxing. Something about walking up and down stairs numerous times with full PPE under 100F ambient plant temperature… it’s not what the human body was designed for.
In the morning, I met with Carl who showed me around the whole day. He also bought me lunch, which was the most embarrassing part, since we went to a cash only restaurant. I like Farley’s people and its control room, which is spacous and “pretty”. I hate the humidity though… Farley has cooling tower stacks. The water loss turns into constant rain at the plant grounds.

When I came back to the Hampton Inn, I found that my bed wasn’t made. This is a complete mystery to me… The rest of the room seems to be in good order, but the bed was exactly how I left it in the morning. This made me stiff all the towels on the rack, afraid that the maid may have just shook off the used ones I threw on the floor the night before. If I didn’t have a raging headache, or if the Hampton Inn was in any way associated with AT&T, I would have phoned the front desk and ask them to send someone to finish the job. But I’m way too tired for that, plus there’s always that other queen size bed in the room.

It’s amazing where situations take you. If you had asked me what the chances of me being in Dothan Alabama 3 months ago, I would have said about the same as the chances of landing in Oslo. Where, here I am!
Jennifer asked me, when I was visiting NYC last weekend, what is there in Alabama. I made a point of finding that out… It turns out that Dothan is famous for peanuts. I’m mailing her a post card, hopefully she doesn’t see this post for a few days :p

While boarding at Baltimore, I was musing how the girl in front of me had the exact same suitcase as mine. It’s an off brand and I’ve never met anyone with the same one before. That girl was stopped by the flight attendent saying that she needed to check in her luggage. As the owner of the same luggage, I can testify that is totally unreasonable. The flight to Atlanta was not small and that suitcase fits well in the overhead. Also, when I purchased it, I made sure that it’s a 22″ and meet domestic airline requirements.
So, while the girl was arguing with the flight attendent, I handed my boarding pass and said that I have the exact same bag. The attendent was so into the conversation that she didn’t notice a thing, and I left while the two women were still clawing it out.

A while ago, when I was switching jobs, I started grinding my teeth.
Clearly it was due to stress and I went to the dentist to see if there’s anything she can do. When I got there, she told me to move my lower jaw sideways, just as a test. I did so and felt a pop on the left side. My dentist told me that happens sometimes, but it’s not really a concern with the teeth grinding issue. From then on, I can’t stop popping my jaws…
This is so bad~! It’s like the time in high school (or was it college) when Matt showed me how to pop my knees, I haven’t stop popping them since. Now I’m going to be popping my jaws for the rest of my life.

We’ve been shopping for 10 hours… I’M SO TIRED~~~~~
I came over to get Jennifer her birthday present. So far, we haven’t find anything yet, so there’ll be another shopping trip tomorrow.
Found a way to get to NYC for just $1 from Baltimore. Also discussed my inadequate clothing budget with Jennifer. So the trip was pretty worthwhile.

No, it’s not the kind where I turn into a total bitch (otherwise I wouldn’t be writing about it).
I feel this huge wave of nostalgia… It’s a recurring feeling where I just want to go back to Taiwan and live a very quiet and unaccomplished life. I almost have it all figured out: I’d live at home, like so many Taiwanese my age. I would have some half-ass job, maybe as a cashier 3 days a week, that makes me feel my minimum contribution to the society with a bit of pocket money. And I would spend a lot of time with my grandma, helping her with the cooking and the shopping and *gasp* going to church even… And I would live an extremely good life off of my dad. I’ll take care of Jason with his homework, and in return we’ll go to fancy restaurants every weekend, just like we used to when I was a kid.

I miss Taiwan. Most of all, I miss what I could be in Taiwan. At the States, I’m an engineer. A super duper one, btw. I never feel ashamed to tell people my age (which is 27) because I can account for every single year I’ve lived. I can whip out my resume and expect praises for work I’ve done so far. But it’s not the same… In Taiwan, I’m the daughter of two doctors. My parents have influence and I will want for nothing if I go home.

Sometimes, when I’m feeling especially ambitious, I want to beat my parents. I want to earn more money, get more honors, obtain higher positions. I keep a copy of my mom’s CV just to make sure that I’m on track (I’m a bit behind… she had published two papers at my age, but I’m working on that). At other times, I feel that I’d throw it all away just to have the feeling of security again.