Useless Filler For Sunday

You Are a Henna Gaijin!

You're not Japanese, but you wish you were! You can use chopsticks with your eyes closed, and you've memorized hundreds of Kanji. You even answer your phone "moshi moshi." While the number of anime videos you've seen is way higher than the number of dates you've been on, there's hope. Play the sexy, mysterous gaijin, and you'll have plenty of Japanese meat.

What's Your Japanese Subculture?

NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

My fingers cannot bear to type these words. Devastation! My heart aches just thinking about it.

Today it was announced that Floyd Landis failed a drug test after stage 17 of the Tour de France.

It's a mistake! I don't believe it! Floyd is innocent! There must be something wrong with the testing.

Floyd's B-sample will be tested, and if it comes back negative, he will be cleared. If it returns positive, Floyd will be stripped of his victory, fired from team Phonak, and most likely be banned from racing for 2yrs.

Floyd says he is innocent. I believe him.

Some already think I'm naive and stupid for believing him. Maybe I am. I don't care. I refuse to become jaded and cynical. I still believe there is good in this world and in people, and in cyclists and cycling. People are so ready to believe that cyclists are dopers. Why can't we entertain the possibility that the tests/testing methods might be faulty?

Unless Floyd confesses to wrong doing, I refuse to believe it.

Yvette Z.
Collecting Support, for Floyd

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Quote of the Day

It's been a while since I posted a quote. I thought today would be a good day to start up again.

"We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same"

-- Carlos Castaneda

Yvette Z.
The Quote Collector

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What's Grosser than Gross?

I had an EGD yesterday. All went well, I even have pictures. Would it be too gross to post them? Maybe I should post them to flickr and do a link so I won't scare the faint of heart. I'm such an internet freak (^ ^)

P.S. For those who are unfamiliar with medical terminology, techinically I had an upper GI endoscopy not the lower GI kind. EGD- esophagogastroduodenoscopy. Scope of esophagus and stomach.

Yvette Z.
The Gross Picture Collector

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Sunday Was No Better...

It was even hotter on Sunday! The high was 113! Did I move to Death Valley and forget? Wait, never mind it was probably hotter over there... checking.... checking.... yeah, it was hotter. In Fresno it was 110 degrees today. In Death Valley, 120 degrees. I'll stop complaining now.

The Monsignor at my church says it best: It's better to burn here, than hereafter (^ ^)

On the brighter side of Sunday, Floyd Landis won the Tour de France. GO FLOYD!!!!

Yvette Z.
The Temperature Collector

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I'm MELTING!!!!!

It's currently 112 degrees outside.

Calgon, take me away.....


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Friday Luck

Nothing serious, just something cute to share. Yesterday, when I left work for lunch, there was a praying mantis on the roof of my car. I wish I had my camera with me, I would have taken a picture of it. They're good luck, so I've heard. I didn't want to shoo it off my car or drive off with it still on my car, so I went back inside and Gerri gave me a piece of paper to scoop it up with. As I was trying to scoop it up, Charlotte (aka Princess Loud, er, Lowd) returned from lunch and helped me. The mantis wouldn't go on the paper, so it flew away. Bye-bye little mantis.

Yvette Z.
The Luck Collector

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All of Them Butchers

This morning I stopped at Starbucks for some coffee. I really hate the part where they ask my name to write on the cup.

I usually say my name and then spell it for them. Yvette. Y-v-e-t-t-e.

IS THAT SO FLIPPING HARD?????? (in my best Napoleon Dynamite accent) GOSH!!!!!!

Apparently, it is.

Today it was spelled Y-v-e-t-t. The barista who handed me my cup took it another step further, he pronounced it "you-et". I guess he thought the v was a u.

*sigh*

I'm a bit sensitive about my name, its spelling, and its pronounciation. I don't think it's hard, but a lot of people have trouble with it. It's pronounced with a long e. EEEE-vet. Not Yeh-vet, or Ih-vet (short i like the i in is), or Yah-vet. I'm truly amazed how many people can correctly say Yvonne, but not Yvette. What's the difference????

In the past, I've made up easy names to spare myself from the pain. I'll tell them Eve or I'll give them my porn star name Sandy Ashcroft (your first pet's name and the street you grew up on). I've even tried my nickname that most of my friends and family call me, Vet, but that gets just as confusing for those poor cashiers.

AND DON'T EVEN SUGGEST THAT I GO BY MY MIDDLE NAME EITHER!!!!! That, my friends, is even more unpronounceable. I don't even tell people what my middle name is anymore. My friends from high school may remember it, but none of them can pronounce it. Outside of my immediate family, there was only one person who could pronounce it right. And when he did...it would send chills down my spine.

So, as of Monday, I'm changing my name to Ann Smith. Hmmm, maybe I should just crank it up to 11 and change my name to Sakura Utsunomiya or Itxaro Etxabeguren.

The Nameless Collector

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Curse Broken!!!

Yesterday at work, I pulled out my phalaenopsis-printed list pad and made a list of things to do. Why, Yvette, why?!??!!??!? I know you are asking yourself. Yes, I know, I know. Setting myself up for failure, right?

WRONG!!!

Believe it or not, yesterday, Thursday July 13, 2006, I managed to accomplish EVERYTHING that was on my list. And let me tell you, I took great decadent pleasure in crossing off each item on that list. I did it slowly and deliberately, with a burgundy-colored pen. A Pilot G-2 07 pen to be exact.

It was delicious. (^ ^)

Yvette Z.
The List Master

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LIVESTRONG Revisited

Back on May 17, 2006, I blogged about cancer read here. I let the Lance Armstrong foundation know about it as they requested. To my very pleasant surprise, they linked my blog to their website see here.

This is very cool. My face is absolutely beamming, and I have a grin from ear to ear. I don't think I've been this estatic about something since Darren Ray Nelson knocked on my door back in 1989! (^ ^)

I just wanted to let you all know. You know how I feel about Lance.

Mark suggested that this could count as being published see my 43 Things. I don't think so. In my mind I wanted to be published for writing something work-related and somewhat technical. Yes, finding a cure for cancer is my work, but the Lance Armstrong Foundation is a cause I'm passionate about.

On unrelated topics, go back abit and read my entry on pennies. I wrote it and accidentally left it in draft mode and didn't catch it until today. Also, keep and eye out for a new and improved 43 things. Some items are going to be shifted to a new list, and a new item (but not new idea) is going to be added to the list. Stay tuned!

Yvette Z.
The Passionate Collector

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Obon 2006

This past Saturday I went to the Obon festival at the Fresno Buddhist Temple. I'll write about it when I have more time, but I wanted to share my pictures with you now. (^ ^)

Vet's Flickr Pics

Yvette Z.
The Culture Collector

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Something I Feel Like Saying

I like Bossa nova.

Bossa nova is a style of Brazilian music first introduced in the 1950's. It's a fusion of jazz and samba. It's very relaxed, and goes great with wine and cheese (but only when you're grown up). The lyrics are in Portuguese, meaning I don't understand a single word they are saying, but sound very nice none the less.

Some artists I really like are Nicola Conte, Milton Nascimento, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and everyone whose last name is Gilberto: Joao, Astrud, Bebel. I like Stan Getz too, but technically he's not Brazilian.

I'd like to learn Portuguese so I can sing along, but it's not really worth it when I don't have anyone to conversate with on a regular basis. Just ask me to speak to you in French or Mandarin. If you don't use it, you lose it. Oh, and just for the record, I'm interested in learning Brazilian Portuguese instead of European Portuguese.

So, if any of the 4 of you who read my blog know anyone who speaks Brazilian Portuguese, hook me up!!

Yvette Z.
The Language Collector

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Pennies From Heaven

Okay, not really from heaven, more like the back of my closet.

I had a big jar of pennies. Why? I don't know. What was I going to do with them? I don't know.

So what did I do with them? I put my pennies in two gallon-sized Zip-loc bags and took them to the store. I took them to that green contraption and turned it into a Starbucks card. There's a special going on right now that if you turn your cash into a gift card, they won't charge their fee, which is 8.x %. I had hoped for a Pier 1 card, but this machine didn't offer Pier 1, so I settled for Starbucks.

How much was my card in the end? $23.54

Wow, that's a lot of pennies.

www.coinstar.com

Yvette Z.
The Penny Collector

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Selling Off My Soul

Piece by piece, bit by bit. One quarter here, one quarter there....

Yesterday I had my yard sale.

Emotionally, it was harder than I thought. As I lay out all my items for sale, I relived all my memories attached to them. T-shirts from concerts, dancewear I was still holding on to, shoes, old sports gear, knicknacks, souvenirs, and other stuff. I had so much clothes to sell, I could have dressed an entire other person! Some stuff was easier to say goodbye to, others were hard. I'll admit there were even some items I changed my mind about and had to take back.

Yes, the Star Trek uniform. I guess I'm just a total geek/nerd at heart. Maybe I'm just a Bajoran at heart. (^ ^) I also kept all my lead crystal and my Swarovski.

To make things more agonizing, I had to miss the prologue to the Tour de France. I'm not going to comment on it because there is so much drama surrounding it this year. There's a big doping scandal going on and some of the top contenders are suspended pending investigation. It's really sad.

Back to the yard sale. Some of my agony is the fact that I'm selling my stuff at less than their value. I'm not trying to make big bucks here, which is good, because I'm not. Yard sale shoppers are trying to make deals of the century so it's pretty much a buyers market. Here's a good example. Yesterday I sold my tennis racket. I bought it back somewhere between '94-'95. I paid $75 for it including carrying case, which was a really good deal. I think it was on clearance or something. I'm not a tennis player, so I had a (then) friend agree to teach me. She was a most unforgiving instructor. No patience whatsoever. We made it out to the court three times tops! After that, she refused to play tennis with me. I never touched my racket again.

I've held on to this racket all this time because I knew it was a good racket. Part of me thought that maybe I'd try again, under better and more encouraging circumstances. That time never came, so I allowed myself to let go of the racket. It was practically pristine. The purple strings were still in immaculate shape, as well as the pink tape that wrapped the handle.

I sold it for $2.00

The story I got from the buyer, was that he was a retired PE teacher teaching tennis at a local community youth center. He was short one racket. Because I need to, I believe him. The fact that he was on a bike, wearing bike shorts and a helmet made his story stonger. One of my helpers needed to remind me "Tia, at least it's being used!" Good point. What was I going to do with it? Put it back in the closet? At least someone will get to use it.

Man, I sound like I need Pack Rats Anonymous! Hi, my name is Yvette Z. and I'm a pack rat.

I didn't sell as much stuff as I had hoped, so my helpers and I came up with a plan to give it another shot next weekend at the new house. A different clientel, maybe a better outcome. We'll see.

Yvette Z.
The Collector

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