Having Fun With Quizzes

29 March, 2006

Getting relaxed for a while after long cooking and doing housework, I had fun with the quizzes from here. Hubby gave me the link quite long ago that he said I might like it to put into my blog. Now I've found out the quiz is something fun to play with. Well, the result might not be true but mine is close to my personality.

New Look, New Color

21 March, 2006

Winter is officially over today but Spring is not here yet. I can smell a cold weather is still in the air with current temperature low 30s. I was wrong in having a thought that Summer might have come earlier than ever when we had three-days-blast of warm winter (temperature ranged 65s-75s) last week. Anyhow, I feel excited today to present a new dress of my blog. I know it's easy to figure out what theme I do set this time. From the colors and particular flowers all over the blog skin, you would tell exactly Spring is the theme. Welcome to Spring, anyone!


Ps. All flowers in the top head picture are mine. I took the pictures last Spring in 2005.

Is She a Right Character?

17 March, 2006

The 1980's television series "Dallas." will be rerun in 20s century version. That's what I heard lately from entertainment news. We will see John Travolta as Texas oil tycoon J.R. Ewing and Jennifer Lopez as Sue Ellen. As you might remember Larry Hagman and Linda Gray played on the role of J.R. Ewing and Sue Ellen in original Dallas movie. I like this long-running tv series, although I didn't keep up all the series. I think this one is the best of any other serial movies in the past or even nowadays. I doubt JLo would play the right character of Sue Ellen. Why? Those who watch this serial movie must know exactly what characters Sue Ellen does have. The alcoholic and adulterous wife of JR Ewing is sweet, gently spoken, soft, and weak (delicate is the right word I guess). We all know JLo as a Puerto Rican descent has a strong character and never plays a weak character in any movie she has been involved. She doesn't speak soft or gently, and she doesn't even have a good English accent. You can tell she has Spanish accent from the way she speaks. My question is: Is she able to play Sue Ellen without disappointing the Dallas fans? Let's see..

First Time Happened

Friday of the past week: It was first time of the year I wore a short pant to get comfortable from the hottest-weather-ever (temp 70s) we have during the winter season. I heard this high temperature breaks the record of the winter season since 20 years ago. Amazing huh?


Monday of this week: It was first time ever I had a car accident in this country. Well, I'm not going to say it was not my fault. The old lady who was going to turn right didn't give me a break when I was on my straight direction. According to the road sign rules, she obviously made a mistake that she didn't pull a break right on the stop sign. Can you tell me now whose fault it is? I pulled over my car a little bit to stay away the lady's car, but I couldn't make it too far because I might have hit the car from opposite direction if I did it for good. I couldn't help from the accident happened when I heard bumping sound from behind. I step down the car and the old lady did the same thing to look at the wreck we've just had unexpectedly. I looked calm on my face not to worry much of bad happened but in fact I was bit nervous inside. The lady was nice and apologized that she didn't pull a break to give me a chance I supposed to go head first. We exchanged address and phone number, so our husbands would take care the trouble later on. Since there is no big damage at my back car's bumper, hubby decided not to give them a contact for repairing cost that the lady said will be taken care by her insurance. I'm sure she got crashed badly in front part of her sedan. How could somebody in sedan expect having no damage while bumping such a truck of mine? No way...

I've never been in car accident way years ago. Back then I remember I had accident last time when somebody in motorcycle who was driving crazy bumped the front body of my car. The rider tried to rip me off by asking some money to fix his broken motorcycle. Realized it's not my fault, I asked him going to police station to report the accident. Cowardly he didn't accept to do that way. My case then was taken over by HRD of my office because it involved the law issue. I was fortunate that the case ended up with no penny I needed to pay because obviously it was not my fault.


Second week of March: It was first time of the year my Spring flowers are blooming. Some tulips, daffodils, pink hyacinth flowers and forsythia look all gorgeous. Don't they?

Better Earlier Than Last Minute Rush

04 March, 2006

Looking up the sky this morning, I saw what a pretty clear blue color up there. Does it mean the Spring is around the corner? I hope so! Unfortunately the current weather doesn't support the coming season. The temperature keeps cool in 30s and it wouldn't even make any difference in the next couple of days according to weather forecast.


In contrast with the unpredictable time limit of season change, the tax-filling deadline will be due exactly on April 15. The date falls on Saturday this year, so the tax deadline has two more days to extend untill April 17. Although the due is only 6 weeks away, we have done it yet and found no error so far. We use TaxCut software to get the tax work done easily. A new version has both federal and state tax module to make the task way easier than we had last year. Why do we want to get our taxes completed earlier? Certainly to avoid long lines at the post office.


My home-country has the same system to file individual income tax starting 4 years ago. It's called self-assessment. Too bad, it doesn't work as what expected. I would say the system does work well in my home-country only if the people are all honest to report their real income no matter they have one or two more jobs. Wait!.. not only the people who make the system work but the government plays an important role at this point. How could you encourage yourself being honest if you are allowed to pay the government people in case you report a mistake or a wrong statement and later on you get no penalty charged? No surprise to see many of them just put their income as lower as possible to avoid the tax payment. Before this new system was adopted, each employee had no obligation to file their income tax because the company (H&R dept.) did the tax work for each employee. The new system was still in progress to utilize when I was about leaving my country. Nobody was familiar with the system, no informative details about the regulation, no software to support. We were totally blind about it! A good thing is the people under H&R took over the task and just needed a sign from each of us. I don't know the progress nowadays. It could be better, it could be worse. I guess the system keeps not working because of the reason I've mentioned earlier. I hope I was wrong but who cares? I don't!

A Time Apart to Life-Giving Habits

01 March, 2006

The Lenten journey begins today with the celebration of the Eucharist and the Imposition of Ash. Traditionally, the priests put a light cross sign of ashes on everyone's forehead. The meaning of this ritual is to remind us that we are of the Earth come from ashes and die in form of ashes, too. Within the Lenten, we are also reminded of the three basic things we should get through life: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.


To me, fasting is the hard part. Why? Cause I have to give up something I like very much or some habits I am supposed not to do. For instance, I have to resist myself from too much television or too much entertainments; give up grudges (less grumble, grumpy, whining, etc, etc, etc..); fast from favorite meals (meat, muffin, snacks, grapes, etc, etc, etc); abstain from complaining; stay away from talking gossips... *Come on, no woman in the world who doesn't love gossips!*; and do other many ways to keep Lent working (such as be humble, patient in hardship, hopeful in disappointment, be hopeful yourself, mean it to say "thanks", read the Bible, tender a compliment, apologize if you are wrong, count your blessings, keep a promise, see your problem as challenges and your challenges as blessings, and so on)


Every Fridays of Lent, on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, we are obliged to abstain from eating meat. I was surprised to read a letter from Bishop of the Diocese of Arlington, VA, that we are dispensed from the abstinence on March 17, 2006, in observance of Saint Patrick's Day. However, we have to choose any other day during the week of March 13-18 to replace it. Well, I can understand why the church has to get flexible at this point because most of the congregations who we know are originally from Ireland or part of the countries in Europe celebrate the Saint Patrick's day as big as any other holiday like Christmas and Easter. No surprise to find meat would be served as a main dishes when you have such big feast..


Like anyone else, I do have some spiritual goals. What I set to be a spiritual goal during this Lent is to understand better the mystery of Christ's death and rising.