M.I.A

Sorry to have been so M.I.A these last couple of weeks. Ever since the new year has started, things at work have been becoming more intense and things at home have been anything but calm. Work has actually been ok lately but things at home have been escalating. I thought things were getting better this last weekend but it just led to another outburst yesterday. I feel helpless in that I'm doing what I can to contribute to this home but it never seems to be enough. There hasn't been a day when I've come home to my mom not yelling and screaming. It's exhausting to hear.

I finally told my parents about my plan to move out when they pitched the idea of me paying the mortgage on our home. As much as they say that the house will one day be mine, it's not exactly a gift when I'll have to continue paying for it for the next 10-15 years. Plus, my parents are in such a volatile state right now... I feel like any little trigger could force them to get a divorce. le sigh.

All this stuff has made getting away all the more exciting. In less than 1 week I'll be in Hawaii celebrating the union of two very good friends from pharmacy school! So exciting! I literally cannot wait. It's funny how some of us have had to encounter some tough times right before going on vacation (i.e. Sophie and China lol).

If anyone has suggestions of things to do in Hawaii, please leave a comment! I'd love to go parasailing but I'm not sure what's a good and inexpensive company to go with.

Anyways, I may try to do some posts before I leave for Hawaii. I'm working everyday until then so not sure if I have the time and energy.

Thanks friends for all your support and just listening to me for the past couple of weeks!

Love and miss you all.

January: Week 4

Jan. 23 (mon): Work, Chinese New Year
Worked the closing shift today but it wasn't too bad. This pharmacy has its off days but all in all a good day.


Jan. 24 (tues): Off
Didn't do much on my day off besides call myHR. Spent maybe an hour on the phone with them. They are a complete fail.


Jan. 25 (wed): Work and Bottega Louie
Worked the morning shift today and was super excited for a date with the bestie! We decided to try out Bottega Louie since those macarons have been spotted everywhere! I bought a few home myself and I have to say, they are quite delicious with coffee for breakfast! I hope that I'll be able to have macarons for breakfast in bed on those lazy Sundays in the future.

such a beautiful box! I still have it in my car... (signs of a hoarder :/)

macarons!

penne gamber

outfit of the night

bread and butter (that looks like a candle)

Jan. 26-29 (thurs-sun): Work
Seriously had a really good Saturday at work considering I wasn't working at my normal store. There are certain days I love my job and this Saturday was one of them. Customers were just extremely grateful to have us there filling their prescriptions. We had one lady that yelled at us for not transferring her prescriptions over from Walgreens but she was so grateful when we called and got the prescriptions transferred over so quickly.

Sunday was another good day. It got super busy at the end of the shift but all in all, great day. Spent the rest of my night doing laundry.

Thanks for reading loves!

January 2012 Goals Progress

So now that the month of January has come to an end, I wanted to recap on some of the specific goals I wanted to accomplish. Sadly, many of them did not get accomplished which means they are getting moved to February lol. Those closest to me know that January has been a pretty taxing month for me (just some family drama making the home life a little unbearable) so I'm hoping that I'll have more fruitful results next month!




January:

• Completely finish renaming/updating my music library --> moved to February
• Oh goodness... didn't realize how much music I had. I'm only on the BBMak LOL. Goal has now been moved to February lol. I'm thinking of breaking it down to a single letter of the alphabet a day which means I'll need 26 days minus the weekends so I probably won't be done until March. 

• Get my employee benefits... even if I have to call HR every single day this month lol --> on hold
• So, HR department is literally retarded. Reader's digest version is that basically they had no idea that I was supposed to have benefits until I contacted them in December because I was rehired. After a million calls, they finally sent me an enrollment package that stated that I would have to sign up by January 18th. I did not receive the package until the 20th. I call them again to query about the discrepancy only to find out that my case was closed because they came to the conclusion that I missed my enrollment and couldn't enroll until open enrollment which is in June. If I say anymore I'm just going to get super upset. 

• Plan vacation itinerary for Hawaii in March <-- ongoing
• Still in the planning process because I've been trying to track down things that the locals do since both me and Tony have been to many of the tourist spots on Oahu but apparently what all the locals do is eat (according to my sources lol) so all that's on my list of things to do is eat haha. I'll probably post a separate page on all the spots we're planning on hitting up.

• Get ready for tax season by printing/gathering all necessary documents <-- ongoing
• W-2 form has been received and I've printed out all the tax documents for 2011 from all my banks and also from my undergrad loans through SallieMae and Direct Loans. Based on my "estimate" on TurboTax, it should be a pretty big return... but we shall see. To go towards a down-payment on a house or to pay off my loans? Not sure what to do :/

• Annual check-up for my woman parts lol <-- CHECK!
• Well actually, I didn't get a check-up because I wasn't due yet so technically it's not done but I guess it's at least done for now lol. 

• Get annual free credit report/score <-- moved to February
• This literally only takes 2 seconds but I've been so lazy lol. I'm thinking it's not really going to change that much in the next couple of months right? lol. 

• Do something nice for my coworkers. <-- CHECK!

Other:

• For the months of December and January, I was able to get holiday pay and also some overtime so my paychecks were a decent amount. Like I said previously, I was able to take over other people's vacations so I was working 5 days instead of my usual 3 days per week. I was able to make an extra loan payment on my grad school loans (which has the highest interest rates). I'm not sure how the whole shebang works but I'm hoping it'll cut down on my interest accrual so that I won't have to spend the next 10 years paying off my grad school loans. 

I hope everyone is on track with their goals for the year! I know I haven't accomplished much so far but knowing that I haven't done much motivates me to do more. Happy Friday and I hope you all have a great weekend!! I'm heading down to SD for the weekend so it shall be fun! Thanks for reading!

december jewelmint purchases

These were my Jewelmint purchases for the month of December (although I did purchase some of this stuff in November, they bunched up my order and sent a bunch of stuff together so some of the stuff didn't get to me until December). 

Pomander Pendant

The Pomander Pendant is actually one of my favorite Jewelmint pieces. This is a very safe piece in that it doesn't feel like you're leaving your comfort zone. It matches most of my outfits and it's something I throw on when I don't want to spend a lot of time thinking about what I'm going to wear (somedays, work is already enough thinking as it is). When I first got it, I thought the charm was gynormous! But after wearing it a couple of times, it doesn't feel that large anymore. I always wear the Tiffany's key necklace which is silver and I layer this necklace with that one and it meshes just fine which I love.

There's actually a story behind this piece and I wouldn't have bought it if HollyAnnAeree didn't explain it in her video. I really liked how unique it was so that's why I purchased it. I seriously went on Jewelmint right after I saw her video and bought it lol. 

Vanguard Necklace

Holy moly I am so glad I picked up this piece before it was sold out. When I first saw this piece online, I seriously thought it looked hideous. I kept thinking who would ever wear that?! And then I went to see how it looked on the model and I thought it looked really nice on her but it still didn't convince me to purchase it (I always think if it doesn't look nice on the model, then there really isn't any hope for me lol). Anyways, I was talking to my friend Samantha about Jewelmint and she was debating whether or not to get this piece and there was all this craze on Facebook and YouTube and it was almost sold out so I took the plunge and bought it. This is one of those pieces that seriously makes the outfit. I haven't worn it very often but every time I do, I feel like it takes my outfit to the next level. The magnetic closure does get a little annoy because my hair has gotten caught in it a couple of times but other than that, I'd highly recommend this piece if they ever bring it back.

Humanity Bracelet

I would have to say this is one of my most worn pieces from Jewelmint. I love jewelry that has writing on it so that's why I ended up purchasing this one. My one complaint about this piece is that it does feel kind of cheapy or something I could buy from Forever 21. This piece came back for maybe 24 hours and was then sold out so I'm glad I picked it up but at the same time, I feel like I could have paid $5.80 and gotten something similar from Forever 21. 

Lucky Charms Necklace

So when I first saw this necklace, I thought it was the coolest thing on Earth! It was one of those things I just had to have. In the midst of trying to look for a coupon code, the Lucky Charms Necklace was sold out! I was so sad. I waited until Holly's video came out but there was nothing else that I wanted and her coupon code was only good for a couple of days so I decided to skip out on the month... that was until I checked back on the 23rd. They had the necklace in stock again!! I purchased it right away. Unfortunately, they already started charging tax on the site so not only did I pay full price on this one (this was the only thing I've purchased not using a coupon or got something for free), but I also had to pay taxes :(. I'm thinking that I may have to subscribe again so that I could get the credits and not have to pay tax. My reasoning behind this is that I also subscribe to StyleMint (which I've regretted every single day I have... the quality of the shirts suck and the sizing is ridiculous... like when Tony saw it, he was like "Did you buy the right size 'cause that looks like it could fit 3 of you?" And I was like, "Yeah *embarrassed look* I bought size "1" which is the smallest size available".) ANYWAYS lol, I digress. So they kept charging me on StyleMint even though I decided to "Skip" the month and I was too lazy to tell them to refund me so they were having a promotion where you get a gift with a purchase of 2 shirts and I had 2 credits ($29.99 each) so I bought 2 shirts and got the leggings as my gift. I didn't have to pay taxes or anything! So what I'm thinking is that since the purchase was technically "Free" then you don't get charged taxes! 

But anyways, on to the actual necklace lol. I really thought the necklace would have felt better... like weighty would be a better description. It's not a very heavy necklace so it feels kind of cheap. The part with the charms is really nice but I feel like the chain portion feels extremely cheap. I feel like I went to Home Depot and just got a bunch of links to make the chain. It's also a REALLY awkward length. Like I was super confused as to how to wear it because it's not short enough to be a choker but it's got so much going on with the charms that it just didn't feel like it should be so long because then all the charms just tend to clump together instead of being displayed in all their glory. I remember Holly said something very similar in her video. I haven't worn this yet but I'm hoping that the length won't deter me from wearing it in the future. I've been working so much and haven't really been going out much and usually necklaces get stuck on stuff so I try not to be too dangly in the pharmacy (although I did wear this to the pharmacy the other day just to try it out and it got stuck to one of the baskets O_O). This is the same reason I avoid wearing earrings (especially dangly ones). Even studs hurt my ears because I'm constantly on the phone.



That's all for my Jewelmint purchases for December! Finally catching up on all these posts! Hopefully I'll have my January Jewelmint purchases up in a few days since I just got all of them in the mail!
Thanks for reading!

january: week 3

Jan. 16 (mon): MLK & Work
Because of the horrible weekend I had, I decided to treat my coworkers at my regular store to lunch. I appreciate so much their hard work in making the pharmacy run smoothly. I'm one of those people that believes in teamwork and I've told them this many times but this store is a well-oiled machine.


Jan. 17 (tues): Errands
After receiving my Naked palettes in the mail, I didn't have the time to send it to Lauren yet so I was able to make my way to the post office today. I actually was able to post about today in a separate post (here) so you can check that out if you haven't already. I was starting to wonder why I sounded so redundant lol... then I realized that I had already blogged about that day lol.


Jan. 18-20 (wed-fri): Work
Yay for another Friday working the morning shift! Tony came up for the weekend and we had dinner at Ichima Sushi in Pasadena. Their sushi is pretty affordable and the place was pretty popping on a Friday night. It seems to be a great place to celebrate a birthday or for large parties.


Jan. 21 (sat): Adventure Date!
So before we left my house, Tony gave me my early V-day present :).

It's actually for us to use for water sports (lol... not those kinds, nasty!) that we may do in Hawaii when we go at the end of this month. All the pictures taken at the Griffith Observatory were taken using this camera.

Anywhos....

1. turkey omelette? lol I forgot. 2. hickory maple waffle
3. chai latte 4. cornbread melt 

Tony and I seriously have the hardest time picking places to eat but just the sound of Peach Cafe had us salivating. Ever since Judy introduced me to this place, I've been coming back time and time again and I don't think I've ever been disappointed... oh wait... just the time I ordered their Chicken and Waffles... that was a fail... But other than that lol, every time I've been there, their food has been absolutely delish. And it's weird because every time I go, I'm actually not afraid to order something different. I'm usually one of those people that look through the entire menu and end up ordering the same thing but not here.

After lunch, we were pretty stuffed so we decided to walk off the food. We walked around the shops in Monrovia and also checked out the Monrovia Public Library. It's a pretty nice library. Wish I would have known about it when I had stuff to study although it probably would have been too far anyways.

It had been raining the entire night but the sun had started coming out so the skies were super clear. I've been wanting to go to the Griffith Observatory since they remodeled it but I hadn't had the chance to go  so we decided to take our chances with the rain and go check it out. I had no idea how close to the Greek Theatre it was! We had to park super far and pretty much hiked up the entire mountain lol and yes I admit, I was completely out of breath :(. I'm so out of shape!

Here are some pictures from the Griffith Observatory:

from where we parked

its going to be a long walk lol. and this is zoomed in a lot too lol.

Here are some panoramic shots using that function on the camera. It's kind of like the stitch function on the old Canon cameras except you just sweep across what you want to take a picture of. It's pretty cool.

and of course no trip is complete without a jumpy picture lol

Jan. 22 (sun): Chinese New Year's Eve
Started off the day by going to eat dim sum with my parents at Top Island. Their dim sum has actually gotten really good. Their tripe was so fresh and their dishes were piping hot and stayed that way so you know it's not microwaved (I think I've been watching WAY too much Kitchen Nightmares because that's what Gordon Ramsey always say, "Has this been microwaved?!" lol). We were super stuffed afterwards so we just rested at home and watched the two football games. We got pretty hungry in the middle of the 2nd football game so we tried this new fast food/fried chicken chinese place in El Monte called "Louisiana Fried Chicken". We only tried it out since it has 2 of my favorite foods: fried chicken and chinese food lol. Their fried chicken is actually pretty good. It's in the Home Depot plaza incase you guys were wondering. The fried chicken is really different from most of the fried chicken I've tasted. The batter is crunchy but not oil ridden like some of the other chain fried chicken places. Their portions were GYNORMOUS! The lady kept giving us more and more. We spent maybe $15 (plus I got a boba drink) and had enough food for 2 meals. We'll probably be going back there when we're craving both fried chicken and chinese food... that is if they stay open. They are actually right next to a Popeye's so there's some massive competition.


And that concludes week 3 of January!