Wow, be prepared to be amazed at the awesomeness of the people in my life.

At our weekly poker game, I was surprised with:

That is right. That is a Guitar Hero birthday cake. Made from SCRATCH. Bow down to the awesomeness that is Damien, Guerric, and Jessica.

Here is me feeling SUPER awkward while everybody actually sang happy birthday:

Notice the poker chips, cards, money, beers, and the cake. This is an incredibly context-rich photograph.

A better shot to show how accurate the cake is:

That is really friggin' impressive.

I'm pretty stunned at all this... I totally didn't expect anything at all! Thanks so much for the cake, guys!

There are some photos I got from Damien on the making of the cake. I'll post them shortly ... it's pretty amazing how they did it.

My darling little sister, a soon-to-be awesome reporter, also gave me the sweetest birthday gift ever: (click the image to read the text - it's hilarious)

One thing I'd like to note: I'm not 5'8". I'm 5'10"! But I am as awesome as that article says. The quotes from Aaron are friggin' hilarious too. And for any of you jerks (*COUGH OLIVER COUGH*) my sister is not attractive at all. So stay away.

the insomnia is back in full force. awesome.

goodness gracious, i love meatloaf. i should really learn how to make it one of these days. i'd be in blissful heaven ALL THE TIME.

taken from my window tonight: (this was no accident)

Ok, so first off, I want to thank everybody for the birthday wishes. I'm one of those strange people who like to try to hide my birthdate, but some of you still manage to wish me happy birthday. I actually think I got the most wishes this year (thanks in part to my workplace - I tried once to remove my birthdate from the company calendar, but failed). Thank you much!

I can now rent a car without paying jacked up prices! Yay! The next age milestone I have to look forward to is 59 1/2, when I can start putting pulling (what an embarassing typo) out what remains of my Roth IRA without paying taxes (ooooh). Yay, life.

Now, onto a more serious topic. One of my friends (*COUGH JENNIFER COUGH*) recently went to England for Thanksgiving break. While at Stonehenge, guess who she ran into?

RACHEL MCADAMS. RACHEL. FRIGGIN. MCADAMS.

And you know what infuriates me?! She didn't even TRY to hook me up with her!

How hard would it have been to be like, "Oh, Rachel, I love your work! Can I get a picture with you? Great, thanks! By the way, I know this AWESOME guy - you'd make the cutest couple! Can I pass him your contact information? You should totally marry him."

HOW HARD?! HOW HARD, DO I ASK?????

P.S. I thought Jennifer was pulling my leg until she provided picture proof - dag it!

Life sure is funny huh?

It never turns out quite the way you expect it to. 

And when you step back and observe as the events in your life unfold according to some master plan, you're usually pleasantly surprised how things actually turned out. As if God knew better than us humans! :)

I always marvel at who I've become good friends with -- and ironically, it's usually with the people I've initially sworn off because they're too snobby, girly or simply weird.

Take my friend Vi for example. I met her the very first day of our Teach For America induction program when she plopped down next to me. The moment she said her first sentence, I said to myself in a very soft, but audible voice, "I am never going to be this girl's friend. She's soooo weird." Yet somehow, we ended up living together, we became friends..and the rest is history!

I'm tickled by seeing who's dated who and who's married to who. In the end, I think most of us end up with a person whom we never imagined ourselves with. And by God's grace we find that person who compliments us or who balances us out.

I never thought I'd seriously date a Chinese guy! Or a computer engineer.  I always pictured myself married to a tall white guy with a much cooler job! :P

And the biggest surprise to me is how I wound up in teaching. And discovered that I liked it. (for the most part). Or that I ended up in LA, or that I did this or that...you get the idea :) All I can say is God is GOOD and He knows what we need MUCH more than we know for ourselves!

*Jeremiah 29:11

Just got back from Big Sur - the final drive down was a whopping 12 hours (forgot everybody was driving back this weekend) - I hit traffic in every conceivable place... trying to leave Big Sur, all alone the 101, then all around LA, then around SD as well.

Anyways, I think I'll be largely disappointed with the photos I took once I load them all on my computer - I was mostly active midday (which means the sun was way too bright and washed out any good photos). (I may also break my own rule of doing some post-production work in Photoshop with these photos)

Anyways, this one is from the drive up Friday night:

More to come as I get a chance to sift through them.

Update: I ended up pruning the whole collection down to 24 tonight and I've posted them up at http://roykim.net/photos/big-sur/

They turned out pretty decent, actually!

I succeeded in helping to cook a Thanksgiving dinner! It wasn't as hard as I imagined - just really time consuming. I now feel confident I can fly solo next year and do the whole meal myself ;)

Some pictures from tonight: (full album)

The turkey came out really well - was not overcooked, and had great flavor!

I helped make this cheesecake last night - which turned out really great. I'm gonna get a copy of that recipe for myself!

Enjoying the company in the kitchen while cooking

Coworker Guerric (on left), who owns the awesome cheesecake recipe, and did a ton of cooking (I just helped out)

Dinner is served!

Mmm, deserts.

Chairs were in great demand; we ended up with quite an assortment.

This is the solution we came up with when trying to make more space.

Post-meal happiness

. . .

Now I'm getting ready for my 3-day road trip up to Carmel-By-The-Sea and Big Sur tomorrow. I've figured out the most important thing: the soundtrack. I'm leaning heavily towards Red Hot Chili Peppers (very chill, cruising music).

I'll see you guys on Sunday night, and I hope all of you had a fantastic Thanksgiving!

And on a more serious note, my heart goes out to the families of those affected by the Mumbai attacks ... such senseless violence...