Summer's Ending :(

Summer's almost over and in a way, I guess I'm glad that the weather will be a little cooler for a few months at least until the most hated freezing months of Winter but that won't be until Jan and Feb. The one thing I will miss is the long days of Summer where it can be bright up until almost 9pm. The days are starting to get shorter which is still ok for now but it gets quite bad during Winter where it's still dark when I leave for work at around 7:45am and the sun would have set by the time I leave at around 5pm. I guess that's why suicidal rates go way up during the Winter months.

 

So switching to a separate subject, I've always wondered why when a Westerner works in Asia/Africa/Middle East, he/she is often referred to as an "expatriate" but when a non-Westerner works in a Western country, they are often viewed as legal or illegal migrants or worst still aliens! Just food for thought...

 

Anyway moving on, this last weekend was spent mainly on the road. I made a road trip up to Quincy, IL to look at a car I had found on Autotrader. The drive was uneventful but the city of Quincy (pop. 50,000) was a pretty little city with a cute downtown and Victorian style homes along Maine St. I met John, owner of Castle Stove, test drove the car for over an hour and decided to get it. I'm really excited. I'll be posting pictures once I get it. After Quincy I drove down to St Louis and spent the weekend with my friend Dwan. It was fun, we went to dinner at Little Saigon at CWE and later watched Kung Fu Hustle. The next day we went for some yummy Dim Sum. Unfortunately I missed Justin (8/17) and Chadd's (8/20) birthday celebrations.

 

 

Bruxism a.k.a. teeth grinding

So apart from getting a souvenir $350-summon from my vacation in the North West, I also discovered that I have a pretty severe case of Bruxism. I've always known about my teeth grinding problem but never thought much about it simply because the dentists (notice the plural) have all said that it wasn't a big deal and it wasn't wearing my teeth down too bad. But apparently the noise it makes is loud enough for Justin and Dave to tell me about it during our week of room/bed sharing. Dave was in a crabby mood one morning and decided to bitch, bitch, bitch. So I've decided to do something about it.

I did some research and decided to purchase a product by Splintek which is based out of Kansas City. I've owned a guard before and the darn thing was big and bulky and would never stay in my mouth (that's the first time something big would not stay in my mouth, I promise;). I'd wake up the next morning only to find myself going on a "treasure hunt" to locate the damn thing. I've read some pretty good reviews and since this is quite small and low profile, I'm hoping it'll work. My other alternative would be to have a dentist mold a custom fitted one for my mouth but that would cost me hundreds of dollars. So I'm hoping this will work. I just did a quick search on Yahoo and went directly to the website and was about to order one for $78 including S&H when I noticed other results popping up for the same product but through 3rd party vendors. I finally settled on purchasing it from drugstore.com and it ended up costing me $39 with no tax and free S&H. It's weird how there is such a huge difference in price between the original manufacturer and a 3rd party vendor. Something must not be right somewhere.

Anyway I'll keep my fingers crossed and hopefully I didn't get scammed by drugstore.com or Splintek for either not sending me the product or receiving something that doesn't work. I certainly hope this will stop the noise, but then again there really isn't anyone to tell me if I'm still making the noise!

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Small Talk : Today is Mom's birthday. She would have been 60 years young (as she'd put it) if she had not passed away back in 2001 from Chronic Myleoid Leukemia. I miss her greatly, still! I woke up this morning and said a little prayer for her. I still find myself talking to her occasionally. I wish she was around to see how well she's raised her children and to see her grandchildren but I'm sure she's looking over my shoulder making sure I'm alright. I hope she's proud of what I've decided to do with my life choices. Happy Birhtday, Mummy!! I love you...

Portland/Seattle

The trip is over and waking up for work this morning was a bitch!

Other than that, my trip went well. Flew in to Portland (PDX) from Kansas City (7/29) and then flew from Seattle back to St Louis (8/5). It's a weird route but that was the cheapest. We drove to Seattle on Thursday and on the way made stops at Canon Beach and Astoria.

Met Justin's friends John, Bryan and Kevin while in Portland and in Seattle met up with John E and UA's alums Bobby, his bf Sam and Brandon.

Here're the chonological list of dramatic events ;)
- Tiff with a roomate (pretrip)
- Almost missed KC-Portland flight
- Left Dave's cell and dinner in car
- Received info about uninvited guest in my house (i'll have an article about living w/ other ppl)
- Got a speeding ticket in Oregon (f#$%ing $350!!!!!)
- Huge fight with Dave
- Huge talk the next morning ;)
- Dave's car got towed

I think that's about it. Both Oregon and Seattle are such beautiful cities. Weather was amazing as it was in the 70s in the day and 60s at night. A light jacket during the day and windows open and cuddle under a blanket at night. It was just perfect. We went out to the clubs just about every night, that was interesting. I bought my first pair of Diesel jeans and visited my first West Elm store. Noticed a lot of crazies/homeless in Portland. We also ate at the New Seasons market just about every morning before our daily adventures. New Seasons is a really cool all natural/organic store that reminded me alot of James and Alex. On the way to Seattle, we visited Canon Beach along the coastline of Oregon. It was so pretty out there. We just strolled along the beach and took in the beautiful scenery. We didn't do much in Seattle as we only had two days there. Visited Pike's place, saw the space needle from afar and visited the first Starbucks. We also hung around Capitol Hill quite a bit. It is amazing how open and liberal these two cities are. It made me happy =)

Pictures will be coming...