I didn't know that our local HEB grocery store was so ... ahead of the times.

I wasn't gonna celebrate my birthday this year - I was totally hating being a girl that day - but I ended up having a week-long celebration of sorts.

So, for my bday, in addition to calls / e-mails (aww, thanks guys!), I got:

Dinner with friends,

Chocolate-covered strawberries (hand-dipped by Carol!),

Godiva chocolates,

Belgian chocolates brought over from Belgium (I'm seeing a pattern here),

Exquisite caramel cookies, also brought over from Belgium (there WERE 10 in there),

More dinner with more friends,

A Calvin and Hobbes treasury, with notes by Bill Watterson,

And a surprise non-alcoholic champagne toast. And a perm.

Starting January 2007, I will no longer shop at Best Buy.

Well, I think I have a $50 gift card still hanging around somewhere. I suppose I'll spend that, but that's it.

1) Set dial to the 6-minute mark, because you want crunchy toast, and according to the picture, that is the crunchiest toast setting.

2) Forget to set dial to "Toast", leaving it on the settings from that cheese stick late-night snack the other night.

3) Stupidity © me.

An approximation of my thought process while the toast was on fire:

omg it's on fire but the lack of oxygen should probably make it stop by itself hmm should take a pic before it goes out ok unplug the thing dousing with water in there would probably be bad oh crap the fire alarm is going off damn it's hella loud shut up how do i get it to stop i can't pull the cover off yargh ahh hey it's still burning my theory was not correct i should try to take it out of there but i only have wooden chopsticks won't those get set on fire too if i go in there with them oh well i'll be really fast ok here goes omg omg shut up fire alarm boosh ok now i'm safe. whew.

... has come to me recently by way of Thi, Shilpi, and Amit. Thank you guys. Where there was an intangible, unexplainable void is now a ray of hope that is shining in and filling me, which sounds cliché but ... it truly is hard to put into words what I feel right now.

It's gonna take me a few weeks to get used to writing "2007" or "07" at the end of dates now.

Hope the coming year is good for you all, in stepping closer to realizing your goals and dreams, and in keeping safe and healthy.

I'm spending the day at my parents' house in front of the TV, setting up a Logitech Harmony 659 universal remote (my gift to them, fulfilling the geeky curiosity in me). It's supposed to be really easy to setup. I am always scared whenever something is advertised as "really stupidly simple for dummies" to set up, cuz if I can't figure it out, that means *I* am stupid and dumb. It NEVER goes smoothly for me ... been at it now for 2 hours and counting. This is gonna be so worth it, though - my parents have a bucket of 5 remotes that I will hopefully be replacing. (I think I'm the only one who is proficient at the use of all the remotes in a somewhat harmonious manner.)

Big juicy thanks to Dean (aka the L337 case-modding-revolution leader EnVaDoR aka the BillSplit mastermind) for upgrading my dasBlog! And continuing to graciously host my insanity that is iHaTePiNk year after year! I would kiss his feet, but he ain't within feet-kissing distance (fortunately for him probably, haha)! :)

In a fit of frustration over hating opening a billion chat clients to chat with friends, and with a bad experience with the free version of Trillian crashing my comp, I was on the prowl for another all-in-one chat program. I happened upon Meebo, and setup was seriously so easy I HAD to try it out.

And my first impression: oh, how I heart thee, Meebo! Nothing to install! A clean, cute interface! Sign in once and get signed in to my accounts on ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, AIM, and GoogleTalk all at once!

A few details that I have yet to iron out, ie. making my display icon uniform across chat clients, making sure Chinese fonts are supported, and figuring out how the chat histories are saved. Nothing major though. I am mucho grateful for the convenience of the service.

They don't seem to support Skype, but methinks I'll be keeping that on for my internet telephony needs anyhoo.

Not yet on my buddy list? If you know me, you can e-mail me with your screen name, and we can waste time / stay up way past our bedtimes together! :P

Some sobering news, which is not often found on a site with as whimsical a name as ihatepink.com ...

I'd just finished hanging out with my "twin sister" April, and then we parted ways, and this is an e-mail I got from her later on:

"I have some bad news to tell you though.  You know, on the 26th, after we left you [...] and we as a huge family went out to get dinner at Ocean Palace.  Well, when we were done, Mom went to go get the car because grandparents were cold and she didn't want them to walk to the car and she got robbed at gunpoint.  Thank God, she is okay.  Just a few very minor scrapes that should heal just fine.  He did however, steal her entire purse.  So David and I spent all of today driving mom to the DMV, banks, everything, to put passcodes and cancel accounts.  Man, it was so scary.  Apparently when he told Mom to give him her purse she actually said NO.  At gunpoint.  i have to just fall to my knees and pray and bless God for protecting her.

"Anyway, so I'm telling my girlfriends to be careful. Carry some mace dude."

For those of you who know April's mom, you will be able to envision her standing up to the robber and saying no. Despite how horrifying it must have been and how much trouble she has to go through now, I can't help but smile; undoubtedly, she's got spunk.