When under stress or feeling overwhelmed, people do strange things.  I went to get a hair cut.  I let hair grow for 3 years without a trim, didn’t think much about the lack of style or what impression people have of me.  IT is a very conservative place; I do not see a lot of women dressed up or have fashion accessories.  Actually, there just aren’t a lot of women around.

I got a fobby cut, with bang, and got a highlight as well.  Gee, I haven’t had a highlight for years.  While sitting there with foil still in my hair I wondered how the color would turn out, if it would be too obvious and, too out of the place for work.  The whole time “toasting” my hair I kept my teeth shut and prayed…

Turned out not too bad I thought.  It looked like the haircut I got a number of years ago.  But, it sort of made me look a few years younger, too.  I have a training to present in a few weeks.  I wonder if people would take me seriously with non-traditional haircut.

Thinking too much about the haircut?  Of course.  It’s like haven’t danced ballet for years and now I gotta perform.  *sigh. Dreaded.

Another random thing I did under influence of lack of sleep, was to post 25 random things about me on Facebook.  I thought it was a silly idea when I read some of the other people’s.  but turned out, I got comments about them.  People actually read these kind of stuff?  Really?  Unexpected…

It’s Friday nearly 6pm.  60% to 70% of the folks already left work to enjoy early start of the weekend. I am still in office, battling with tool limitations and various manual steps of compiling/deploying/testing.  It’s a life of a developer who’s starting to get behind schedule.  Yup.  That’s me.

I was washing cups in the break room when a family of 3 walked in.  A dad, mom, and a little boy who’s probably 3 or 4 years old.  Dad said, “Wait, I am getting a water bottle”.  Mom repeated, “Daddy is getting you a water bottle.”

We have the vending machine type of soda dispenser, with brightly lit and larger than palm size buttons to push for selection.  People use it daily, pushing with their palms, a couple fingers, elbows, robotic like.  When the water bottle drops down, it makes a bit of rumbling noise, like a drunk person walking down the stairs I imagined, then the bottle gets to the bottom opening.

Suddenly I heard this chuckle turning to laughter.   The boy probably thought it was a magic, or a big toy.  It was loud and clear and heart-felt.   The mom looked at me with a smile, a little embarrassed I assumed.  While they were walking out, I thought of how happy that boy was, with the magic of the big vending machine 10 times of his size.

His happiness is so simple, laughter so true.  Oh, how I envy him.

That’s the part I don’t get growing older, why we just lose it.   It becomes inappropriate to be simply happy of little things around us.  When we say we are happy about something, it usually is something big, like getting married, buying a new car, new job, promotion, vacation, etc.  Why can’t we just say just because the flower bloomed, the sky is beautiful today, the trees putting on new colors, the peacefulness of a night?  Nobody talks about those any more.  And fewer and fewer people are noticing them.

To me, everyday, surrounded by people demanding and disagreeing, machines fighting against, stress from deadlines, tired.  But when I share food and goodies with friends, I sometimes find a little simple happiness in me.  Smoothness and richness of the dark chocolate, the smell of expresso, the after taste of green tea, the wonderful texture of mochi.  Oh, they are enough to make me smile for a while, until I am surrounded again by the busy schedule, broken AC, strange errors…

I finally had all my wisdom teeth pulled last Friday. Yak!

I had been postponing it for years for fear of the pain. Then this year I started to feel a nagging pain around my jaws. The stupid wisdom teeth somehow decided to grow up so fast as if they were trying to break the soil and see the sun. So I finally made up my mind about having all of them taken out. Once decided, I didn’t let my mom persuade me away with her scary tactic: “That’s pulling bones out of your mouth. You are going to lose a lot of blood. And not to mention the pain afterwards! I wouldn’t do it in a hundred years if I were you.” Yup, she still has all hers till this day; her mom’s scary tactic worked on her.

It was a point of no return for me. So I just went in, had the surgery done with general anesthesia (I so don’t want to know what happened during the surgery, especially hearing the drilling or sawing noise). I think I actually did wake up very briefly to hear some machine/motor turning on; it sounded like the doctor was going to saw… But it might as well been my silly dream. I was woken up an hour later. The doctor asked me if I would like to keep my teeth. Oh hell no I said. (My mom expressed a slight sadness that I didn’t keep them, ‘cuz they are part of my body after all, she said. That sounded almost like those ancient Chinese who kept their entire life’s clipped finger nails and toe nails in a red envelope. Creepy.)

So, it’s done. I didn’t feel too much pain afterwards luckily. I didn’t even need to take the prescribed pain killer. I just couldn’t chew very well with the back teeth. I am still eating soft food the 4th day after the surgery, which is driving me nuts at home, especially being surrounded with beef jerky, yummy unopened Valentine’s day chocolate, dried Lychee, nuts, chocolate cookies, and greasy Chinese food. Ahhh! It’s killing me!

It’s been damn hot around here the past two weeks; everyday over 90 degrees out there, and I have to walk at least 5-7 minutes one way to get to my car at a surface parking lot for work. I don’t usually sweat much. In fact, 80 degree is my perfect temperature. Yet now I am alway sweating from walking and walking and walking.. Damn the weather.

Company parking lot is huge. Not as big as Disneyland or Magic Mountain parking lot, but pretty big as a surface parking lot. It’s as big as some shopping malls, except longer aisles, with no trees and no shades, and constant construction going on right next to it. The noice and, dust clearly does not add any pleasure in parking there.

As if that is not enough, the parking lot is always 90% full by 9am every work day. That can explain part of the reasons why I need to walk so far. But with such a huge lot, you would expect big spaces? NO! Most of them are compact spots that a mini van or truck can easily step on both sides of the lines. My solara has huge doors unfortunately, which makes parking at tight spots even more painful… If it’s difficult for me to get out, you know the space is tight…

I think I will just blame the weather…

Work has been wonderful. I am getting things done consistently, feeling productive and useful. But at the same time, I am getting behind in terms of class work.

It doesn’t have anything to do with work work, I guess. I was already slacking off even when work wasn’t so busy a month ago… Now everything has accumulated itself to be something that I can’t handle any more. I dropped a class last week, and now with the pressure of another midterm tonight, I am wondering if I should drop this class as well.

I am not doing terribly bad. After all, the homework will be only 20%. Yet today’s midterm will weight 40%, which I have no confidence in doing well. It’s a useful class. However, I am simply overwhelmed by all the information and processes in class. I feel sick sometimes, when I think about the class and homework.

Should I drop it? I still have 2 hours to consider.