It Started with a Journal

I have watched two more movies: Game Night and Annihilation. I would rate them both about the same (which also bears out on Rotten Tomatoes, as they have similar ratings), but this is actually a surprise for me, because I had very high expectations for Game Night that it didn't quite meet, while I had no expectations at all (or perhaps, even low ones) for Annihilation, so it had a low bar to meet.

( Spoilers on Game Night. )

( Spoilers on Annihilation. )

I'm on season 4 of The Great British Baking Show, and I feel meh about it. I've been intercutting it with episodes of Portlandia. I enjoyed season 1 and season 3, but the even numbered seasons seem to be more boring somehow, or the bakers aren't as good/exciting to watch. (Season 4 in particular seems to be full of people who I'm like, how did you even get selected?!)

I have made one vegetarian meal so far, but it was spread out over like four meals, so I'm cool with that. (Plus I have soooo many leftovers.) I made the spiced chickpea wraps with tahini dressing from Thug Kitchen, but instead of wraps I made it into a salad instead, and it was soooooo good. ( Recipe for spiced chickpea salad. )

February appears to be a lost month on the diet/fitness front. I'm still doing what I think is a decent amount of exercise daily, and food wise I'm making better choices, but I'm still having trouble with portion control. I have not made the progress this month that I wanted to, and that I made in the first month. March is also going to be tough what with my trip to New York (and I have no plans to curb my diet there), but I'll try to get back on track.

This last weekend adelagia and I attempted to go to our favorite seolleongtang (beef bone broth) place in Federal Way for lunch, but it was PACKED, so we were thwarted, which was realllly disappointing. I had been so looking forward to it. (Also, the owner there recognizes us, and we haven't been in awhile, so I wanted to get 'credit' for going!) Instead we had to go to the taqueria next door, which actually turned out to be pretty delicious (our server recommended the carnitas, which is what I got). Still, I have this thing where, if I look forward to eating something, and then I end up having to eat something else, it's just not as good an experience. So that was a bummer.

Then adelagia and I went to 85°C Bakery for a drink and to do our Korean homework. We both wanted to get the matcha latte, but they only have it cold. WTF? So I got the taro milk latte instead with 1/3 sugar, and it was fine but nothing spectacular. (We had been warned off the pastries by my cousin and his wife, because they said the stuff was super greasy. It looked fine in the cases, but an egg tart cost $1.80 and I decided that the cost plus the calories I didn't need made it verboten.) While waiting for our drinks, it seemed like the staff would yell out "Fresh bread!" like every 5 seconds. Sometimes it sounded like my name, and then I would crane my neck to see if my drink was ready, only it never was. Instead someone had ordered like a dozen taro milk smoothies and that's why it was taking so long. Anyway, so we did our Korean homework, and INEVITABLY, whenever we do this in public, whether at Midori or elsewhere, we end up sitting next to Koreans and have to be embarrassed by our rudimentary knowledge/attempt to learn their language. /LE SIGH I mean, at least in Federal Way, we're sort of in Koreatown so it's not that unusual. But the fact that it even happens at Midori is like -- just our luck.

After that we went to noraebang by ourselves for a bit, and we tried out some new BTOB (and for me, Sungjae) songs that we actually ended up being fairly pleased with! So we have some new ones to add to our repertoire, which is nice. I wish I were better at memorizing lyrics, but I'm terrible at it. Meanwhile adelagia has all these long raps memorized, it's crazy.

After that it was time to meet slitherhither and her daughter for dinner! We tried a new place called So Moon Nan Jib, and it was really good! The gamjatang was recommended to us, so that's what I got, and it was such a pleasant surprise. First of all, the portion size was HUGE for the price. Second of all, despite being called "potato soup" in Korean, it was actually mostly pork neck (delicious tender meat). There were maybe two chunks of potato and the rest of it was all pork, lol. It was strongly flavored with perilla leaves. What's funny is that there was a side dish that all the adults loved, and the first waitress I asked insisted that it was spinach, but it was clearly not spinach. I've made a similar error before, at a different Korean restaurant, and theirs was crown daisy, I was told, so I thought maybe that was the case again. But the second waiter I asked looked it up on his phone in Korean, and in English it was rapeseed herb (유채). Which I've never even seen in the market before, but it was super yummy as banchan.

Also, my finale for this post is the crazy dream that I had last night. ( Jade: 'You have the best crazy dreams.' )

If anyone is on Dreamwidth, my name there is sarea. I actually always use DW to post and just crosspost to LJ because LJ is still where most people congregate. But I'm going to start including a DW footer with my posts, as perhaps eventually I'll just migrate there. Frankly I like a lot of things about DW more than LJ, not the least of which is that their entry length limit is a lot higher than LJ's. I don't really give a hoot about any of the recent changes LJ's made, but a lot of other people seem to, so whatever, I'm flexible. I probably should have just gotten sarea_okelani there too, to avoid confusion, but I've always wanted just plain sarea. LJ's "sarea" has made a total of two posts since they created the journal in 2001, and hasn't even made a single entry since July 8 of that year. -.-

This is one of the most heartbreaking things I have heard about recently. I can't help but follow all the reports about it, because it makes me so, so sad and angry. RIP, Danny Chen. You seemed like one of the best sort of people the world should have.

Jade and I want to see this movie "Haywire" that's coming out in another week or so. It's like Alias meets Salt meets Mr. & Mrs. Smith (well, the trailer's opening scene) meets City Hunter! Many A-list male celebrities... though the female lead not as much.

I've watched 2 more episodes of American Horror Story. Unfortunately, as corianderstem warned, it's already gotten away from being freaky and is on to being kind of hokey. I watched the "Halloween" two-parter, and it felt more like Buffy meets the X-Files than anything truly scary (perhaps appropriate since one of the writers was James Wong). Very different from the first 3 episodes, which freaked me the hell out.

The bad news is, apparently there's 12 cases of drug-resistant TB in India and this is how mankind will perish. The good news is, while I'm still alive and able to play Pandemic, I now know what to name one of the diseases.

I had the BEST dream last night. I dreamed that I was Ga Eul. And you know what that means, right? I got to be with Yi Jeong. It was AWESOME. You envy my brain.

I'm trying out a new lipstick. I've never been into pink, it usually makes me look sallow (whereas on SMG as Buffy it's so cute), but this one actually looks decent. It's called "Candy" from Estee Lauder.

Speaking of cosmetics and frivolity, I had the craziest/funnest/shallowest dream ever last night. I finished PD10, which I enjoyed a lot, so I know why it was on my brain. Anyway, I dreamed that I was with Lana Weinberger (from PD) and Blair Waldorf (from Gossip Girl), and after doing a bunch of shopping they took me to their hair stylist and she was going to give me a proper cut that would flatter my face. (I've always wanted to do that -- get some super talented hair stylist to show me what style I should have, then maintain it with a more affordable stylist.) I was sad because she had just started working on my hair when I woke up.

So I went to the doctor yesterday( ... )

I recently switched from Liberty Mutual to Allstate for my car insurance and so far I'm pretty happy. Not only do I have a lower premium, but I also get cash back every 6 months if I am accident-free in that time period. It's pretty cool.

I have some Facebook questions, for those of you who have answers:

1. Is there a way to have different security groups, like LJ?
2. It's not really an online journal, right, so there's really nowhere to post 'thoughts' or anything like that? You just kind of use the status message as the basis for conversations? Or posting pictures or whatever? And you just write on that person's 'wall' and they write on yours?
3. When someone finds you in the public system, is there a way for them to know how active you are (like they can see the last time you posted something, etc.)? I'm wondering if I can just refuse to friend certain people (like coworkers), but just let them believe that I'm not an active Facebooker (which right now, I'm not).
4. Once you've friended someone, there's no way to defriend them without them knowing and being insulted right, unless it's a mutual thing? I guess this is where the security groups question comes in also, because sometimes I don't want certain people knowing certain things, but it seems that once they're my friend, it can't be helped.

Right now I feel very limited by Facebook since it's with my real name and have real life people who know it. I like, can't post anything.