The past two days have been up and down. On Saturday, I felt extremely ill--headache, nausea, dizzy, shaky/jittery, etc. Carlo's birthday dinner was supposed to be at 5:30pm at Beppo's in Palo Alto, but by the time I got there it was already past 6pm. Luckily, Carlo, Kathy, and Matt weren't waiting outside the restaurant just because of me. They had been told there would be a 45 min wait to get seats. Strangely, no one else had showed up either (other than the three of them). I had called 3 different places in Palo Alto, because on Yahoo!, if you look up Palo Alto on maps and click on the link for restaurants, there is no place called Beppo's exactly. So I called similar sounding places and none had anyone named Kathy or Carlo on their reservation list. I left messages to let Kathy or Carlo know I will be late. It turned out however, that the message got lost and never reached them when they arrived at Beppo's. I drove Dad's car there. It died on me three times on the way :(

The food, I'm sure, must have been great. I didn't have much of an appetite at the time, unfortunately. We went to a nickel arcade on Saratoga Ave after that. I played the crocodile whacking game, one of my favorites, and got hooked on one of those machines where you just drop in coins on to the pile below to knock as many as you can off the ledge. For each coin that dropped off the edge, you got a certain number of tickets. I found the game so relaxing because there's a metal piece that moves rhythmically back and forth to push the coins and it calmed me down. I somehow ended up with 911 tickets. Carlo picked a cybercat-pet keychain, a smilie face keychain, and other trinkets in exchange for the tickets. It was past 10pm when we left to get dessert at the Elephant Bar. Kathy and Carlo split an ice cream mudpie and Matt and I split a mango-strawberry drink.

I didn't feel so nauseated by the time we were done at the Elephant Bar :)

What did I do yesterday? Not much. I did wake up at 8:45am for no reason. Still don't know why. I went to bed at 5am, so I shouldn't have woken up at that time. Worked on sorting my papers for tax purposes. I went to Long's Drugs with Brian to drop off a couple of rolls of film--lots of flower rabbit pics. We also went to Calabazas Park to watch the BMXers do jumps. Brain was way more impresed than I. I think I was more interested in the creek, trees, and birds (especially the pileated woodpecker up in the oak tree). The funny thing about being there was, I was like the only Asian there. It's been a while since I've seen so many white people in one spot.

After getting home, I worked on my taxes a little, then went with Mom to Sunnyvale where Dad was. He wanted to have tea-time and needed help constructing the patio and walls at the Maude house. That didn't turn out as bad as I though it could. I actually enjoyed helping him put up the posts and beams for the patio. Mom and I also pulled up some weeds in the backyard. Dad also constructed new walls to separate the tennants' yard area from his own, and the walls looked like such perfect places to paint murals! As soon as I mentioned that idea though, Dad said, "great, now you can paint the rest of the fences too."
Hmm. We'll see. If I don't feel too tired or ill, I might not mind :)If I do the initial paint job, I can prep the surface right, so it'd be easier to do paintings on them later.

I've been feeling ill again for the past few hours.

I couldn’t get out of bed until 3:30pm today :( I still have a headache and the general feeling of feeling not well. Four o’clock was when I was supposed to be at the Wadas to tutor Yuki and Soyoka, and I wouldn’t be able to make it there on time. Mom called Mrs.Wada (her good friend) and asked her if it was okay if I went at 5pm instead. Mrs. Wada, being the nice person she is, didn’t mind at all and even asked if I was okay and suggested I not to go if I didn’t feel well enough. I wanted to go though because being with the kids always makes me feel better. Yuki “hid” behind the front door when he opened it for me, and we played “knock, knock, who’s there?” Too bad I couldn’t think of a good knock, knock joke at the time. I am very pleased with the progress Yuki has made in the time I’ve known him. He almost always can communicate with me in English now and seems much more eager to do his homework now that he can understand the problems better on his own. It’s nice to see him beam when he can figure out the answers on his own. Soyoka made it on the Honor Roll :)! We worked a little more on her science project (the invention of the parachute) and read the first chapter of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. I remember reading that book when I was about Soyoka’s age too. I hope she enjoys it as much as I did.