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| Goodbye glasses!Quick little update for the month since I'm too lazy to write anything long and tedious:
8/14 - Begin taking eye medication
8/21 - LASIK
8/22 - Day after checkup to see if my eyes are doing well
8/27 - Estimated date my T61 ships from Lenovo
8/29 - Week after checkup to see if my eyes are doing well
8/30 - TOKYO
Life is really good right now, although I feel like I'm spending way too much money. I should probably be saving more, but somehow, spending a lot of cash (LASIK is not a cheap procedure) is actually quite liberating. I probably won't think that after all the charges hit my bank account, but for the time being, it's quite fun.
It's crazy that Lauren and I have only been going out for 4 months now. It feels like much longer (in a good way), and I'm really just happy that we're together. I'll stop before you vomit, but I do love my girlfriend :D.
Oh, and for those of you who like pictures of fuzzy animals...
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| Unhappy in the pants...For those of you who questioned the veracity of my last xanga entry, rest assured that it was indeed I who wrote it and not my girlfriend armed dangerously with my xanga password. After all, I am rarely ever sarcastic and try my very hardest to write sincere and heartfelt journal entries. Additionally, I always use an exorbitant amount of smiley faces in an effort to better convey how I feel at any given moment in a paragraph. In fact, as part of the Official Alex Duan Diary Style Guide, it clearly states I need at the very least 4 smilies and 1 heart face to effectively connect to my many readers. Obviously.
Anyway, now that we've gotten that out of the way I'd like to introduce a new segment I like to call "Things That Make Me Unhappy In the Pants." This morning I had a decidedly unhappy-in-the-pants moment when I woke up in my Tampa Bay corporate apartment, showered, dressed, made breakfast, went back into my room to pick up my laptop...and found a giant, 2 inch COCKROACH in the corner of my room next to my bed. I'm sure all of you know just how much I LOVE insects, especially ones that are as long as my finger and have wings that can carry them directly to my face. So I did the only natural thing I could in this situation - I smashed it with a chair.
I think the worst thing about this unhappy-in-the-pants scenario is that I couldn't just smash it once with the chair as cockroaches have more lives than the two cats Lauren has combined. I crunched that sucker 20 times and each time it would pick itself up, broken back and all, and try to crawl away from me. So I smashed it again. And again. And again. And after the 20th time, I figured if it still was alive, it deserved to live. It didn't though. I hope.
Otherwise, things have been going well in my life. Really well, actually, as I haven't been this happy since...well...ever! Events that are coming up:
- Cali this weekend
- Finish up my project and cut back on the traveling in a week or two
- Cali the first weekend of July with Lauren
- Japan from August 30-September 9 with De and Lauren - anyone else want to go?
Anyhoo, my project has finally finished building so back to work. Oh, and I  Lauren! :P
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| Alex + Lauren Chicago 2007Went to Chicago this weekend with Lauren (she's the most awesome gf ever  ). First time for me visiting Chicago, its actually a pretty nice city. Highlights of the weekend.... - Lauren sick and passed out in bed all weekend
 - Lauren making me walk to Walgreens to pick her up cough syrup, cough drops, tylenol, water, and ginger ale.
- Lauren making me walk 6 blocks with her so she could have a cookie. Did I mention it was freezing cold, windy and I was wearing short sleeves with no jacket!!
- Did I mention Lauren sick and passed out in bed all weekend.... in a 5 star Hilton
All in all I have to say my gf is the bestest ever, she's definitely a keeper!!  Haha... I'm jk, we actually had a lot of fun despite the fact that she was sick, well other then her being passed out in bed all weekend  . So anyways, highlights of this weekend.... - Hotel we stayed at was bad ass
- Joy Yee's yummy pan-asian food
- Signature Lounge on top of Hancock Building, great view, extremely overpriced drinks.
- Heaven on Seven, awesome Louisiana cuisine....mmmmmm gumbo.
- Ghiradelli's, Shopping on Michigan Avenue. Nordstrom conveniently connected to our hotel much to the excitement of Lauren.
- Clubbing, Clarke's for breakfast.
- Architecture boat tour, got to see some of the buildings along Lake Michigan, it made me want to invest in some Chicago real estate..... move to Chicago baby??
- Spider-Man 3.... sucked ass!!
Not a bad weekend overall, hopefully I don't get sick after having my air space contaminated. I my gf! | | |
| Pittsburgh...Been awhile since I last updated, but I might as well update while I have some downtime back at CMU for five year. So what has been happening in my life? Well, for one, work has been really busy. I left my old job because of the insane working hours, and landed right into another job with just as crazy hours! Oh well, at least I'm learning a lot...and developing repetitive stress syndrome...awesome!
Went to NYC last weekend and met up with some old friends and bros. Crazy how you can just randomly meet people on the subway that you haven't seen in years...I stayed at the Millennium Hilton, right across the street from the WTC - my room looked straight down on the construction crews!
Anyway, things to look forward to in the upcoming weeks and months:
- Going back to DC
- May 3-7th: Lauren and I are going here 
- Hawaii or NYC sometime in June?
- August 30th - September 9th: JAPAN!
- Maybe a winter Taiwan trip?
As you can probably tell, things have been going well, and I'm just trying to enjoy 2007. Without injuring myself at work. Ugh. :P
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| Ratio KillazLately, it's become more and more apparent that our group of friends is made up of far too many dudes. Our demographics consist of about 8 or 9 gents and my roommate Erika, meaning whenever Erika decides she's too tired to go out or has other plans, we immediately lose 100% of our female entourage.
Friday night we went to some shady Korean drinking joint called Cafe Ta-too, and as we entered the establishment, every head turned to see who the newcomers were. Admittedly, the place wasn't exactly overflowing with female genitalia as it was, but the sight of 8 more guys walking in was enough to register looks of disappointment and even hostility from the already-settled clientèle. In NYC, we most likely would have never made it inside. Francis has dubbed our group the "Ratio Killaz." Wherever we go, the female to male ratio is immediately decimated.
This phenomenon can be attributed to a number of different reasons. One is that the majority of our group is from Carnegie Mellon, which isn't exactly the best source for hot, succulent women (my roommate being the obvious exception :P). Mellon transplants in NOVA primarily fill technical positions, further diluting our available estrogen pool.
Normally, as long as we have one good female friend, this shouldn't be a problem. Girls, for whatever reason, always seem to need a support group for every occasion, and usually travel in flocks. When Erika first moved to the east coast, I thought we'd be set. Finally, a gateway girl that will lead us to the promised land of gender balance!
Sadly, this was not the case, as Erika seems more turned off by girly girls than even we were. Her female friends were first our female friends, and in the end, we were no better off than when we started - well, except for the addition of our one and only female.
Each year our group has grown larger as more people decide that DC is the place to be. And each year, we see once again that the majority of our female college friends are busy pursuing non-technical jobs in the Big Apple up north (visiting a few weeks ago was almost eerie considering the number of CMU people that live in NYC).
Which leads us to where we are now: a group of guys, all very successful, well-adjusted, and slightly alcoholic, and Erika - the Ratio Killaz.
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