vinny left for an internship in malaysia yesterday, and she’s been a bit distraught about it, prompting to be even ruder than usual. today I came home to the terrible announcement that our minivan, Lanny, has been sold and is leaving our family in a few days.

me: NOOOOO! this is worse than vinny leaving, saying goodbye to Lanny. I’d rather sell vinny…
mom: I’d rather sell you. actually, I’d just give you away.
me: but why do you have to sell lanny?
mom: he’s old. he’s going to break soon, might as well let someone else use him.
me: just because he’s old doesn’t mean he’s going to break!
mom: ha. you should prepare yourself for your blankie to go next.

ripping apart my childhood, one piece at a time. thanks, mom!

as the years go by, how I spend my time  online has changed. when we first got a computer at home, I spent hours on AIM and filling out email tags to forward to everyone – as if anyone really needed to know what color socks I was wearing at the moment. thankfully, the email tag phase eventually ended, but the AIM phase lasted through many different screen names and even into college, when I discovered iChat on my mac and used it to talk to mariah all day at the daily cougar for the times when I was too lazy to walk from my desk to production. now it’s grown to include gchat and twitter, and I can hardly remember a world before texts.

with every new phase though, I’ve discovered a new set of things people do online that annoy me. over time they’ve grown to match the various forms of online/digital communication into a list of things I refer to as my digital pet peeves – different from my normal ones, like not putting your shopping cart back. so in chronological order, here goes:

AIM: I wasn’t a huge fan of the standard color scheme – black text on white background – but what I hated the most was the pairing of that with blue and red for the screen names of the people in the chat. and the default use of times new roman. and mostly, when people left it that way, since I was one of those who spent hours coordinating background and text colors and trying out various fonts and changing it immediately if anyone had the same combination as me. I know – what a diva. tell that to cantongurl1711 (note the purposeful misspelling and locker number, haha!) or starbabee121 (again with the misspelling) or littlezo5 (the letter “o” not the number, because someone else took that before I could get to it).

Facebook: back in the day, status updates appeared right next to your name, so it looked like one continuous sentence. therefore, it annoyed me when people didn’t start their sentences with a verb and would post things like “jane who has tickets to the BSB concert tomorrow?” I always made sure to structure mine correctly, as in “jane needs to know who has tickets to the BSB concert tomorrow.” it reads so much better and makes so much more sense. now, since the status updates moved to underneath your name, this doesn’t bother me so much. instead, now I get mad when people don’t have a profile picture, because I caved and got a smart phone (I still really miss T9 and physical keyboards) and synced everyone’s facebook pic to their number instead of having to take 100 individual pics like I did back in the day. but if you don’t have a pic, it just stays blank and it forces me to use some stock photo of a flower or some rocks instead of your pretty face showing up when you call. see? so sad. get a picture.

Twitter: I can cover this in one word – hashtags. why do you hashtag things that no one else will? why do you hashtag things that aren’t funny? why do you hashtag complete paragraphs, as #ifputtingfourteenwordstogetherwithoutspacesmakesmewanttoreadyourtweet? and also, instagram. I know I may be in the minority here, but I feel like instagram makes it harder for me to actually see what is in the picture, since it is all sepia-toned and soft-focused and whatnot.

I realize this rambly post is dating me even more, like I’m sitting in a rocking chair on my front porch watching the sunset and telling all the kids how things were back in the day. today is nice, though, so I actually may go outside in a while. if the sky is nice maybe I’ll even twitpic (not instagram) it for you later. ;)

I completely forgot that it was chinese/lunar new year today until I walked into church and saw people wearing their traditional chinese clothes. have I ever mentioned that I love making lists? well I do, and here’s one of the reasons why I describe myself as a “bad asian” to people I meet:

• I can’t do math. calculating tax on something is my biggest daily struggle, and I can’t handle decimals/fractions at all without writing it down or pulling out my phone. my worst grades in school were by FAR in my math classes (ask me about the 36 I got on my geometry test! but hey, I was able to use it in one of my talks at winter getaway, so at least it came in handy). the only calculating I like to do is of points and yards on the football field, so other than that, count – oh yes, I meant to do that – me out!
• I don’t like white rice. I didn’t have a rice cooker when I lived on my own, and I honestly never once missed it. I will consent that there are certain things that need rice – like masaman curry! – but I use it more as a vehicle for eating the other things than as a food itself. if I had to choose, I’d go for noodles over rice any day.
• I was never in band/orchestra in school. I was in choir instead, which involved lots of things generally frowned upon by the stereotypical asian parents, like wearing makeup and dancing with boys.

but there are some parts of me that are completely asian – I use chopsticks to cook everything, I never wear shoes in the house, I’m really short and my hair is jet black. I also really, really love hello kitty! so in that spirit, happy new year (again) everyone!

1. post more. I really like having this record of the past year for myself since I moved to Lohdown, and I want to keep going, because I’m expecting great things out of 2012. :) realistically, I should be able to get 3-4 up a month, which will make for a nice snapshot of my year by next december.

2. I’m letting myself buy two nail polishes. I’m probably a little too excited about this, because I’ve been eyeing different ones I want since, oh…august. and I’m leaving the possibility of a new purse open – but who knows, I may end up trading this for nail polish later in the year.

3. never be late for work, including sunday mornings. I used to have to drive 20+ miles and face freeway traffic, but now…well, a couple days ago I hit all green lights on the way to work and it took me (feel free to be jealous) 6 minutes from the time I turned on my car to the time I parked. so if I go to sleep on time and don’t let myself hit snooze on cold mornings, I have every reason to be on time, every time. sam and jer, keep me on track. if you get there before me ;)

also, here’s a mini-resolution related to work – remember to turn off my wireless keyboard before I leave. alex hooked me up with a sweet monitor/keyboard setup so I didn’t have to work off my laptop, except that 90% of the time I forget to turn my keyboard off so I end up having to use my laptop anyway, and it’s just silly. if you are chatting with me during the day, please remind me!

4. use less water bottles. I am lazy and don’t bring my reuseable water bottles with me to work, and then end up having to use styrofoam ones, which is bad for both the earth and the budget. I got a pink tumbler recently that’s pretty cute, so it’s about time that it comes off the shelf and makes the trip to work with me every morning.

5. read more! I might be setting myself up for failure, seeing as I just started school again and have definitely reverted to some college-procrastination ways. but some really cool people got me a kindle not too long ago, and it just seems like a shame to not read more. think I can handle a new book every couple months? leave me some suggestions to get started and we’ll see how this goes.

looking back at everything that’s happened in the last 12 months, I pray I never, ever forget how good and gracious my God is. I pray I always, always remember to praise Him not because of things He’s done or given me, but because of who He is. and I pray you’re able to meet Him in the same way too, this year and every year after.

2011, you’ve been so good to me, and imma let ya finish…but 2012, I’m hoping you’re even better! happy new year everyone :)

The only picture I have of us - unfortunately, it's before his girlfriend made him get a haircut.

4. I call him Case and he calls me Z, which is a nickname that a lot of my friends use for me. anytime he introduced me to one of the players I hadn’t met yet, he’d say “just call her Z,” so soon enough it felt like I had a whole team of friends. it still makes me smile.

5. Case has taught me worship songs that I’ve used when I led at Genesis and Focus, so if you’ve ever had me as a worship leader, chances are you’ve indirectly been led worship by Case too!

6. I know what kinda car Case has because he used to drive me home/make sure one of the guys on the team would take me home after practice or when we got back to Houston late from road games. and if he was the one taking me, he always waited until I was through the gate to drive off, cause he’s just that kinda guy.

7. Case holds the NCAA records for career passing yards, touchdown passes, and total offense. you can say what you want about a “system quarterback” or the conference he played in, but the fact is if those records were so easy to break, they’d be broken every year, and they aren’t. and through everything – through the injury that ended what should have been his senior year, through the long recovery, through the 12-0 run the Coogs went on this season – he’s remained the same humble player I met when he was a freshman still battling for the starting job on the team. I bet he still drives that white truck today and I bet he’d still make sure I got home safe, and that’s what makes me so proud to call him a Cougar.

in a couple days I will make the trip to dallas (ew) to cheer him on as he plays his last game in Cougar red. when I watched him throw his very first college pass six years ago, I didn’t realize then what a big deal he would be, because he never made a big deal out of himself. 18,685 yards and 152 touchdowns later, the whole world knows. good luck in your final college game, Case! make it a good one. and as always – let’s go coogs!