I Should Have Mentioned This Last Month…

…but better late than never, right?

My friend Tori of Crabbily Ever After asked a few fellow bloggers to fill in for her whilst she was on her super awesome Alaskan cruise honeymoon last month. I happily obliged, welcoming the opportunity to discuss a subject I’d previously had little reason to discuss, let alone write about on my own blog: weddings!

Like seriously, weddings? They’re good to get drunk at but that’s pretty much all I thought about them until recently.

Anyway, to read my thoughts on the matter, visit Crabbily Ever After. Be sure to poke around for those honeymoon pics (ALASKA IS GORGEOUS!) and for pretty much the only newlywed stuff that doesn’t make me want die–Tori and Dan are very cute together, and sweet and not annoying at all. Donno how you do it, but bravo, kids!

hockey season is back!

hockey is finally back in san jose! yesterday was the home opener at the shark tank, and you bet your ass i was there, drinkin’ molson and eating hot dogs.

walking in felt like the first day of school to me: i was so nervous but glad to find old favourites and friends. the food choices at the arena have vastly improved (or at least, become more like the mall food court), the beer prices went up 25¢ to a whopping $8.50 per molson, and there are new electronic signs in the walkways around the arena so you can keep an eye on what’s going on. bit laggy, but still a great addition.

boyfran: check. molson canadian: check. new burns shirt: CHECK.

i had to stop counting how many times i said “i miss seto…”, during the game but it really was hard to look at the ice and not see him out there on his old line. he scored a goal for his new team in minny last night, though. i liked how quick brent burns was on the ice; he completely distracted me from pickles, in whom i have zero faith whatsoever. and my new favourite, andrew desjardins, certainly made his charming little mark on everyone. first star and two goals!

and it was good to finally get to go to a hockey game with ryan. he’s never been to home opener before, and we’ve never been to a game together. we have excellent in-person game juju though: the sharks beat the [laughably terrible] coyotes 6-1. so glad we get to play them five more times this season!

why i’ll miss steve jobs: he smiled back

this morning i was awoken by my iPhone alarm. i drove to work listening to my iPod in my car, and when i got to work, i alternated between using a Mac Mini, a G4 PowerMac, and an iMac. i watched a clip of a movie on my coworker’s iPad on my lunch break. before i even heard the news of his death, i had already used five devices that would never have existed without the brilliance and determination of steve jobs.

i cried the whole way home. i avoided driving past infinite loop, even though it is on my way home. i listened to talk radio, to voices of people who worked with steve and were touched by him. looking in my rearview mirror, i saw a huge rainbow stretching across the west valley behind me, right over cupertino. so sappy and hilarious.

i did not officially meet steve jobs–he never knew my name, but i did occasionally get emails from him (along with the 20,000+ other apple employees around the world) and he inspired me long before–and after–i was an apple employee. i have been using apple computers since i was five years old: my elementary school was one of those in the south bay that had received apple computers as a gift from the company. we used them to play math blaster and oregon trail.

and i saw him one day at apple headquarters. i was there for training with a group of coworkers, and i saw steve and jonny ive in caffe macs. as i was walking out of the building, he and jonny were walking in. i looked at steve and smiled (something i do not do–i am not one who smiles in general). steve looked right back at me, and without an ounce of hesitation, grinned back at me widely.

he was a billionaire, the CEO of a company that is worth more than the country where it was founded, but he was still a guy that smiled back when you smiled at him. and he was a gentleman: he held the door for my friend maryam on her first day of work at apple.

he formed the company that makes the machines that all your favourite movies and music are made with. his standards pushed designers and engineers away from what was easy, and to do what was right. and that company that he helped form? they employ the most amazing people i have ever met. i made lifelong friends, had amazing experiences, and had the time of my life at apple.

thank you, steve. you were one of the crazy ones.

new kindle!

when borders announced that they were going out of business, i visited the one near my work on a lunch break and bought a four books: a french-english dictionary, two french workbooks (that i have yet to crack), and a book about one of my biggest obsessions, north korea. this was in either late february or early march. i started taking the book to work in an attempt to read on my breaks (fail) and i carried it in my purse so i’d have something to read when meeting someone on a date so that he’d think i was smart, or at least the type of girl who keeps books around.

last month i complained that i couldn’t find the book i was reading, and the boy i was trying to impress with my ability to read six months prior recalled “wasn’t that the book you were reading when we met?“. busted. i told him i wanted a kindle cos it’s so much easier for me to read on a screen (it is! they keep you up!) and how i kept taking the book out of my purse cos it was so bulky or forgetting in my car before getting on caltrain.

it was a very good book and i highly recommend it. click the image to view the accompanying website

so yeah, i caved and bought a kindle. it’s a uni-tasker: it only does one thing, but it does it so well. and that’s why i like it. you can turn the page with your left hand–this is a huge deal for me, it’s why i hated reading on my iPad. i love reading on it and i love that my purchase coincided perfectly with the start of libraries lending kindle books (most likely through OverDrive; check your library’s website to see if they offer eBooks through that provider, or in the bay area, visit the Northern California Digital Library). 

oh, and i hacked it cos it was so damn easy. i can now install custom fonts (maybe i DO want to read everything in myriad!) and screensavers. which is good, cos there are some creepy-ass default screensavers on the kindle. not that my custom ones aren’t creepy…

top row: london tube map, an ampersand, the habs logo. bottom: BART map, another ampersand, and the creepiest thing i have done...this week.

now that i can read books all the damn time (and on caltrain! finally, something to do besides tweet about weirdos!), i’m going to start writing book reviews again.

and no, i probably won’t buy the new one. i like this one juuuuust fine.

Love for Lokomotiv

good news! hockey wives are the best: a few of them have teamed up to form LoveForLokomotiv.com. proceeds from the sale of bracelets will go to the families of the lokomotiv hockey players.

for now it’s just the website, though tonight you will be able to buy the bracelets/make donations at the phoenix coyotes games. there are plans to have bracelet nights at all the NHL arenas. even if you don’t want a bracelet, i encourage you to drop by these booths when they are in your arena and donate whatever you can. these men left behind children, girlfriends, wives, and parents. money isn’t going to bring them back or heal broken hearts, but support from around the world will (hopefully) show them how much we care.

current obsession

yaroslavl lokomotiv: скорбим и помним

i love hockey and i love russia. russia and canada are the two national teams i follow in worlds and the olympics. i started watching Kontinental Hockey League games online last season when my beloved nabby (and alexei semenov!) played for CKA. i love russian hockey players; i have been very vocal in my support of ilya kovalchuk‘s face, nabby, and of course i am fascinated by ovi. i was overjoyed when the sharks drafted a russian in this year’s NHL draft. i put a picture of him on facebook that weekend and proclaimed that i was ready for danushenka sobchenko to come to san jose!

danushenka basically means "danny" in russian. russian nicknames are longer than real names.

on tuesday night, my lovely boyfriend showed me an article about my dear sobchenko. i mused that i wish i had seen him play when he was here in san jose and called our GM a “russian-hating whoreface” cos he’s never before drafted a russian player. now i’m glad i didn’t see him play, that i didn’t have a greater connection to him. because four hours after i read that article, sobchenko and 35 of his teammates were dead.

i awoke to a text from my friend derrick that a plane carrying a KHL team had crashed, but he only said that pavol demitra was on the plane. i immediately read twitter feeds and.found it was yaroslavl lokomotiv. the team from the article the night prior, the team daniil sobchenko was on. and he was on the plane.

all day, i was stuck in an infinite loop of reading the twitter feeds of @dchesnokov and @slavamalamud (both of whom went above and beyond in this situation, providing so much information despite both having personal and professional connections to the team), checking at english-language russian news sources, then russian sources, crying, and hitting refresh on twitter. over and over, all day. i finished my wednesday night with the most emotional blog post from a stranger i have ever read about a family of one of the deceased (it has since been removed, and it should have been because it was broadcasting personal information acquired in confidence–however, i didn’t even think about that when i read it). in short, wednesday felt like 24-hour marathon of oprah-level emotions. my whole day felt like an oprah special about mutilated dead babies in africa. it was tough.

thursday was better; i listened to sad russian folk music and only cried a few times. on friday i remarked that i hadn’t cried about the crash all day, and my boyfriend and i talked a little bit about it. i then realised it was time to get over the initial shock and sadness and grieve more appropriately. i have heard rumblings of a fund being established for the families that were left behind, and would love any credible information on that if anyone has some.

this tragedy has taught me a few things. one, about the NHL emergency rehabilitation plan, similar to what the KHL has (the team president has decided the lokomotiv team will not play this year). the fact that russian air travel blows was reiterated. i hope that the people who have heard about this event will come to know that russians are a tough people, the toughest you can imagine. they are from a country that has seen incredible changes over the last hundred years, endured more war and struggle than anywhere else in the west, and yet they never complain. i have the utmost respect for them.

during the writing of this post, RT.com has posted that alexander galimov, the only player to survive the crash, has passed away in hospital. rest in peace brother galimov, and all of the lokomotiv players and staff. скорбим и помним.