Celebration: Playful Kiss - The Smashing New Korean Drama

If you're looking for the perfect romance fix and you've watched your copies of Pride and Prejudice (both the Colin Firth and Keira Knightly versions) and Sleepless in Seattle more times than you can add up without a calculator, you HAVE to watch this new Korean tv show called Playful Kiss. It has the perfect balance of all the things a girl could want in a dose of romantic comedy:

Adorable leading lady
Handsome and hard to read male lead (the hard to read aspect adds to the romantic tension)
Hilarious circumstances and dialogue
Endearing side characters
Positive underlying messages
And a magical feeling story world

So, if you don't mind reading English subtitles, you should check Playful Kiss out on Hulu: Click HERE

Then, if you like it, I want you to tell me all the little details you liked so much because I like to share. My sister and I have already had some great, girlishly gushing discussions about our favorite parts.

Fighting! (You'll understand once you start watching it.)

Unfortunately, Hulu is the only place that I could find that is showing the show in the United States, so if you don't have fast enough internet to watch it, I apologize now for getting your hopes up.

Celebration: Settling In

When we moved to D.C. I didn’t have work or school, and I with all that glorious though not well enough appreciated time on my hands I unpacked pretty quickly. It took a little longer to get the apartment feeling like our own space, but I don’t remember boxes lying around with our belongings spreading across the floor, waiting for furniture on/in which to place them.

Moving to Las Vegas, not only did it take us a while to find a place to live, but though we’ve been living here nearly four weeks now, we still can’t unpack completely because we simply don’t have the appropriate furnishings. The first few days in the apartment all we had was a computer desk and two dining chairs. Our dinner nook reminded me of a modern art installment piece:

I complain a lot about being in limbo; most the time I don’t like it. But one of those first nights when we sat on the floor in our living room, gorging ourselves on pizza and watching TV on the internet, I couldn’t help loving the camping-out feeling. That is, until my back started aching from the lack of support a couch might have provided.

After a few weeks of accumulating this and that it’s starting to feel like a real home here. As of today our furniture capital consists of the following:

One extremely comfortable and handsomely chocolatey brown couch

One shiny (sometimes) glass-topped table

Two office chairs - one comfortable, one not

Two dining chairs that will wiggle and creak a bit if you move around too much while sitting in them

Two patio chairs sometimes used at the dinner table

One slightly beat up computer desk

Two well-used medium-sized cabinets

Three stalwart bookcases

One matching, brand new cabinet that looks much better than it’s differently colored cabinetry cousins mentioned above.

One refurbished-by-Jordan bed side table (see pictures on the Jordan and Rose blog soon)

We still have yet to get a bed frame or a dresser among other things, and we need to put our art up on the walls so it feels like our space, but we’re getting there and it makes me happy. And feeling more settled means I can come out of my hermity phase and say hello to the outside world again. Hello, outside world. Please read my blog. I promise to read yours.

Celebration: Cleaning Rather than Taking the Bar

I have been cleaning for the last three days. I want to leave the place as clean as I can for the next people because I know how disheartening it is to move into a new place when it feels dirty. Since we packed all our fans and the window-unit air conditioning doesn't cool down the place as well on very hot days, I've been burning up. I've had to clean most of the apartment wearing just my unmentionables (is that too much to share on a public forum?) I have to admit that it's extremely freeing not to be wearing so many layers all the time.

Today, every time I think I'm close to being finished and I start to get that sense of satisfaction over a job well done, I remember there is something else I need to do. The thing I'm really not looking forward to? Cleaning the microwave. Not sure why, but when I contemplate cleaning it I feel a subtle loathing.

Jordan has spent the last three days traveling to and taking the Virginia bar exam. He gets back sometime tonight. Yesterday the test went from 8:30am to 5:30pm. HORROR! Today it could go til anywhere between 3 and 5:30pm. When I look at the microwave, I try to think of Jordan and how glad I am that I'm not him right now. (Or ever, I guess, since one of the major bonuses to being me is that I get to spend most of my time with him.) Because despite the fact that I have been laboring physically for three days, I have the freedom to take short breaks and read bits of the Amelia Peabody mystery series by Elizabeth Peters (thanks friend Stephanie, for lending the books to me) and I get to sleep over at my sister's apartment. And today, once I finish cleaning and doing an errand or two, I get to go get gelato with a friend and then spend the evening with my sister for the last time before the move. With those two prospects in mind, cleaning seems like a cinch. 


On a related note, I'm really glad Jordan is taking the bar and preparing for our future and etc, but seriously, I'm getting kind of bored with him being gone. It got really old yesterday and now it's just getting worse. Jordan, when the test is over, please teleport yourself and the car back to our street instead of driving the four hours back. Thank you.


WE DRIVE OUT OF D.C. TOMORROW! Wish us luck!

Celebration: Financial Security

We are moving. There. I said it. I thought it best to get it out on the table right away and rip the band-aid off for those of you who will still be living in D.C. after we leave. We’re certainly going to miss you guys. And almost everything else about D.C. We hadn’t been planning on leaving anytime soon. Just a week and a half ago our bishop said he’d heard rumors we were moving and asked if it was true. We assured him with certainty that we were going to be here for another couple years at least. I guess that means we accidentally lied to our religious leader.

Right now you are going, “Wait? What? Where are they going? Why are they going?” Well, I’ll tell you. Jordan got a job. After trembling and panicking over when/if Jordan would find a job, we felt incredibly grateful (and a little floored) when Jordan received a completely unexpected phone call from a federal judge whose clerk for this next year was no longer able to take the position and who offered Jordan the position. The judge is in Jordan’s parents’ ward and has taken us out to eat several times while on business here in D.C. He said, “I wondered whose life I could disrupt suddenly and I thought of you.” Thank you, your honor, for disrupting our lives.

The only problem is that this better-than-we-could-have-imagined job is in Las Vegas. It means we will be closer to many of our family and friends, but further from others. It’s going to be sad saying goodbye. But we’re excited to see what the future holds too.

We are still waiting for some details, but we will either be saying goodbye or saying hello to some of you sometime in August.

Wish us luck!

Celebration: Living my Private Life

Some of my friends like to blog a lot, like maybe every day. Or twice a day. Or more. I love reading these friends' blogs and reading the minuter details of their minds' workings. I've realized I'm not one of those people that can be on my blog that often, typing away. I tend to fade in and out of blogging activity. The thing is, I sometimes get really focused on my not-blogging life. It's not particularly interesting--not anything to write home about, you know--but I enjoy it (except for those times when I'm unbearably tired and I throw tantrums worse than a two year old's and then immediately feel mortified about it).

I've got a lot of nice things going for me in my life. Maybe they're not amazing things, but they're really pleasant. I'm married to someone really great. I've got an awesome family. I have cool in-laws that I like more and more as time goes on. I have uber fantastisch friends. Uber. I've got a job that isn't too stressful most of the time and my supervisors like me and I've got a lot of friends who work there. I've got an active mind. I'm pretty clever with my hands. I've got lots of wonderful books to read and reread. The sun is out almost ever day. Thanks to our wonderful landlords we have fresh strawberries right outside our door. We are never in need of anything vital. I could go on and on about things that may be considered normal or everyday that make my life a really nice life to live.

So I will probably continue to write on my blog frantically (or sometimes not so frantically) for a few days and then disappear for several more. But just remember at the times when I'm not writing it's not because I don't have anything to celebrate; I'm just busy enjoying all those things.

Have a happy, beautiful, comfortable, sunny week! I'm spending most of this week in Williamsburg with my in-laws. Then my mom comes to visit for the weekend. Then my nephew shows up on a school trip on Sunday. I mean, could this week get any better? If you don't hear from me, I'm having a TON of fun.

Celebration: A Suspicion and a Secret and a Goal

Suspicion: Part of being "mature" is not flipping out when Someone Who Has No Business Telling You What To Do insists on doing it. A lot.

Secret: I have not acquired this level of maturity.

Goal: I hope one day to be enough in control of my behavior that I can handle Someone Who Has No Business Telling You (ME) What To Do in a way that makes them stop without their knowing I'm controlling them...ha ha. Or I hope that I can at least handle it better in a way that can help everyone feel good about themselves instead of silently fuming and feeling annoyed for an hour afterward.

It's nice that goals exist, and that they can make us feel like better people before we actually ARE better people.

Celebration: Taking Steps and Good Employers

Three weeks ago Jordan graduated from law school and became, though unlicensed for the time being, a lawyer. Unfortunately for him all this meant was a day-long respite from studying law before he became fully immersed, almost every day, in summer-long studies for the bar. Unfortunately for us, he does not, as people graduating from law school used to be able to expect, have a job lined up when the fall comes. However, though we still exist uncomfortably in the limbo land of a completely unforeseeable future, mostly what I have been feeling for the last three weeks is relief. We may still be in limbo, but we've taken a step toward that unseen future and the limbo doesn't seem even half as unbearable as it did before. I think that Jordan is still daunted sometimes as he studies for the bar, but I have noticed a lighter mood on his part too.  So thank goodness for being able to feel finally that we are actually moving toward something. YEAH-YAH!

 

Another relief: I have been given a raise. My employers are so nice, and they gave me a significant enough raise that, with the money we have now, Jordan and I should be okay for at least another year before we end up in debtor's prison (I've been reading Charles Dickens for school, and debtor's prison was a reality, okay?) even though what I will be making doesn't quite cover our monthly expenses. Let's celebrate wonderful employers. And also, how about a little side note celebration for federal graduate loans, because we certainly would not have made it through the last couple years without that (soon to be costly) assistance.