Recovered; Still Engaged; Moved; Aunty C

English:

It's been so long since I've written! First, I'm completely recuperated from my surgery. I'm very, very happy that my stupid, broken gallbladder is no longer attacking me. :) I can eat whatever I want now and I don't have to be afraid of it hurting.

On the topic of weddings, we are still engaged and we still don't have a more concrete date than "some time in 2011." We continue not-planning. ;)

We moved from our rented house to an apartment in the Fremont neighborhood. Packing our boxes and bags and everything was an epic disaster that lasted for 2 or 3 weeks. And now in the apartment, we still have the majority of our things in boxes. At least the boxes are only in one room of the apartment and we can use the rest. There are photos on Flickr.

Other news... Forrest has a full-time job at Jambool as an engineer! Yes, you read that right, he's working with me at the same company.

And in other, sadder, news, I attended the memorial service for my Aunty C, who died this past winter. She was 96 years old, was always feeling bad, and it was simply her time to go. Her family meet on Mount Diablo to scatter her ashes.

Spanish:

¡Tanto tiempo que no he escrito aquí! Primero, estoy completamente recuperada de mi cirugía. Estoy muy, muy contenta que ya no me ataque mi estúpida vesícula biliar rota. :) Puedo comer lo que quiero ahora y no tengo miedo de que me duela.

De la tema de bodas, todavía estamos prometidos y todavía no tenemos una fecha más concreto como "algún tiempo en 2011." Sigamos no-planeando. ;)

Nos mudamos desde nuestra casa alquilada hacia un apartamento en el barrio de Fremont. El hacer de las maletas y cajas y bolsas y todo era un desastre "épico" que prolongó atrás 2 o 3 semanas. Y ahora en el apartamento, todavía tenemos la mayoría de nuestras cosas en cajas. Al menos las cajas están en sólo un cuarto del apartamento y podemos usar los demás. Hay fotos en Flickr.

Otras noticias... ¡Forrest tiene un trabajo a jornada completa en Jambool como ingeniero! Sí, lo lees correcto, él trabaja conmigo en la misma empresa.

Y hablando en otras cosas, cosas más tristes, asistí a las honras fúnebres para mi Tía Cita, quien murío el invierno pasado. Ella tenía 96 años, siempre sentía mal, y simplemente le llegó la hora. La familia de mi tía reunimos en el Monte Diablo para esparcir sus cenizas.

Cuban Dinner

English:

I had a good time tonight! My dad's cousin recently married and his new wife is Cuban. I didn't meet them during Christmas, because I had to visit my boyfriend's family. So when I was in California this weekend, we made plans to meet.

We went to a restaurant in the delta, because it is halfway between my parents' house and theirs. The wife's name is Ellie, and I think we got along well. At least I liked her. :) We talked for two hours, almost entirely in Spanish. Their children (who are younger than 12, but I don't know exactly how old) are learning English, and the child of my dad's cousin (from a previous marriage) is learning Spanish. It was a really cool dinner.

She told me that my accent sounds Spanish (as in, from Spain), not Mexican or from elsewhere. Although I don't use the "Spanish lisp" or the form "vosotros." Maybe I should cultivate an Andalusian accent, which is most similar to what I speak now...

We're going to share our email addresses and Skype usernames to talk more. :)

Spanish:

¡Lo pasé muy bien esta noche! El primo de mi padre se casó recientemente, y su nueva esposa es cubana. No les conocí durante Navidad, por que tuve que visitar a la familia de mi novio. Así que cuando estuve en California este fin de semana, hicimos planes para reunirnos.

Fuimos a un restaurante en la delta, porque está en la media entre la casa de mis padres y la suya. La esposa se llama Ellie, y creo que nos caímos bien. Al menos, ella me cayó bien a mi. :) Hablamos por dos horas, casi totalmente en español. Sus niños (que tienen menos de 12 años, pero no sé exactamente cuántos) están aprendiendo inglés, y el niño del primo de mi padre (de un matrimonio previo) está aprendiendo español. Fue una cena muy genial.

Ella me dijo que mi acento suena español (quiere decir, de España), no mexicano ni de otro lugar. Aunque no uso el ceceo ni la forma de "vosotros." Quizás debo fomentar un acento andaluz, que es lo más similar de lo que ya hablo yo...

Compartirémos nuestras direcciones electrónicos y nombres de usuario de Skype para hablar más. :)

Visiting My Family for Christmas

Forrest finished up his finals and we drove from SLO up to the Bay Area on the 19th to spend Christmas with my family. My parents did most of the cooking for the 15-plus–person event; here you can see my mom's tasty chocolate crinkle cookies. Not all of the dough made it into baked cookie form. :) She also cooked several other desserts: Russian tea cakes, snickerdoodles, pies...

I started working on Lisa's present, a stuffed purple moose, but I didn't finish it before Christmas-present-opening time. However, she didn't finish my gift socks either, so it's fair.

We had an unusually large Christmas turnout this year. In addition to the usual suspects that we also go camping with every summer, my mom's cousin showed up this year along with her husband, son, daughter-in-law, and grandson. I hadn't seen the son and daughter-in-law since they got married, so it was nice to see them again. The traditional corn-in-wine sneakiness and pea-flinging fun went on, as did the yacking chatting late into the evening.

During the down times, Forrest entertained himself by doing things such as this battery experiment, or seeing how many 9-volt batteries connected in series it takes to kill a Christmas light. My dad got out his tools and helped Forrest. I think my father and my boyfriend are bad influences on each other. :P

This post is backdated; it was actually written on January 23, 2008.

Visiting Family & Obopay

I'm stopping by my apartment to pick up some last-minute almost-forgotten items, then I'm driving down to the SeaTac airport. I'm visiting my family this weekend (the Squirts will both be back from college for the weekend), then doing a big meet-n-greet with the Obopay folks down in Redwood City.

So that's what I'm up to for the next couple days. :)

A Remembering for Grandma

My sister called me earlier tonight to tell me that our grandmother had died in the hospital, just two days after we all found out she had cancer. So far as I have heard, the rest of the family is taking it pretty well, given the circumstances.

Cresaean culture holds that a person isn't really lost until they're forgotten, and so stories are continued to be told about the deceased as if they weren't dead. I'd like to do something like that for Grandma, but I'll need help from my family in gathering and retelling her stories. I do remember...

• ...her telling me about how she worked in an office where she was (one of?) the only women. It reminded me of how I like being the only female in a group, and I was surprised to find that I shared this trait with Grandma.
• ...visiting her at RBC, back when the family still ran it. She had an office in the back (or was it the front and my dad's office was in the back?), past a office-hallway thing that never seemed to have anyone in it. I liked to write with her pens from her desk — they were wide at the base and tapered to a thin point at the far end, and felt like ballpoint plumes. She also let me play with her whiteout in my writings. I wonder if she knew how much fun I had with such a simple thing like that? I was too young to think to express my feelings about it then, and I've only just remembered it now.
• ...talking to her in her living room, with her sitting on her plush couch and surrounded by all the teddy bears we had given her over many Christmases. Grandparents are notoriously hard to buy gifts for, but Grandma liked her bears.
• ...listening to her play the piano. Grandma couldn't read sheet music, but she was an incredible pianist who played by ear instead. I felt jealous in an awed sort of way by how well she played. She also played the organ in the back of the living room once or twice, I think, but I don't remember that as well.
• ...looking at all her photographs on top of her piano and along the various end tables. She would tell us who some of the less frequently visited relatives were and how they were all related to each other.
• ...trying (and mostly failing miserably) to help her with little things in the kitchen when she still prepared Thanksgiving meals herself. (My dad eventually took over most of the food preparation as she got older.) She made an awesome shrimp salad that I've never found reproduced quite as tasty anywhere else. We often had pies, too — pumpkin comes to mind — but I'm not positive whether she actually baked those herself. And she always had a pot of hot coffee and nice cups and saucers ready whenever we were there.
• ...her wearing a lot of crocheted clothing (vests, mostly) that she had made herself. She liked dark greens, and dark brown (or maybe white?) moccasin-like shoes.
• ...playing with my cousins at her house when my dad's side of the family got together for Thanksgiving or Christmas Day. She let us use her old typewriter up in that little office in the far back end of the third floor, and let us play with all the old stuff up in her two-level attic. We picked lemons, rode in an old metal wagon, passed "mail" through the mail slot in the little dining room, and explored beneath the deck and behind the tool sheds of her back yard. She didn't directly participate in our games, but they are part of my memories associated with Grandma.

I wish I had talked more with her when she visited our house during holidays and birthdays. It's just so easy to let the grandparent-generation people talk amongst themselves while we kids escape to play video games or watch movies during family gatherings. But now we can't form any new memories of Grandma, aside from sharing with one another things we each remember about her.