Weekly Haul (113)

I bought a couple of books this month, and my Kickstarter finally came in!

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson

Season One by Mouse Book Club

Love Poems by Pablo Neruda

The Blue Hotel by Stephen Crane

Service Series by Mouse Book Club

Cover Lover 52

It's been a long while since I've done one of these lol. I haven't been on Tumblr as often either, so I haven't uploaded a Tumblr Pics post in so long lol. I haven't stepped into a bookstore in a while as well, but I already haven't recognized most of the new book covers. -__-"

(Every day I stray further and further from book fandom...)

New coworkers, Sleepovers, Presentations, Dinners, & Valentine's Week

February has always been a short month, but I feel like it flew by really fast this year! I didn't do much this month, but it still passed by really quickly lol.

February first was Ebony's, our new intern on our team, first day at work. Since I was assigned as her start buddy, I basically spent the whole day with her teaching her about our intern program and how to navigate our intranet. We had three new contractors starting the next week, so Anita and I were in charge of onboarding them as well, so it was a long couple of days where we didn't get much work done and did a lot of talking. As a result, I was super introverted that weekend lol.

The next Wednesday, we received notice that most of the interns were going to give a short presentation to some super important people in our company: the senior VP of our division and our GEO president. The presentations were split up with some of us presenting to Thys, our senior VP, in the morning and some presenting to Diana, our GEO president, after lunch. My friends, the interns on our floor, were all presenting to Thys in the morning, but because we were all busy with different projects, we didn't start working on our presentations until near the end of Friday.

We actually worked on the presentation until after five when Shelle came over to pick us up since Dom and Archana were coming over for a sleepover. We made these plans a few weeks before when Sonali was still in India, so we kind of didn't invite her to come over when she came back that week. Partially because we kind of forgot about it and partially because we didn't want her to come... Shelle's coworker, Melanie, also came over to hangout for a bit before going home.

We gave everyone a tour of the house before going to Mod Pizza for dinner. When we came back, we just hung around the kitchen table talking for hours instead of watching Venom and playing Overcooked like we originally planned lol. We didn't actually play Overcooked until midnight, and then we only played for 30 minutes lol. The next morning, we made pancakes and loafed around for a bit until we left to drop Dom and Archana off. All in all, a fun weekend! :)

Then we got to work on Monday, and Dom and Sonali were freaking out about their presentations since they weren't done, and we had to turn them in the next day. I basically finished mine, but I had one or two slides that I needed to finish up, so I wasn't worried. I ended up helping them with their presentations the next day since the deadline got extended to end of day.

That Monday night, we had dinner with Joan, who we haven't seen in a while. She was hilarious as usual and telling us about working the remote life now that her company has gone to 90% of its employees working remotely.

Then Thursday, Valentine's Day, we had our presentations. I was super nervous about it, so I only got a few hours of sleep that night since I always develop insomnia the night before presentations. -__-" As a result, I was kind of in a daze the whole morning until after I gave my presentation lol. CJ, Thys' personal assistant that we're on good terms with (we play HQ with her in the office all of the time lol), found out that we were all nervous and put in a good word for us, telling Thys that we were nervous and to ask us good questions lol. She's so sweet. We ended up giving her a box of chocolates (that we were planning on giving to Dom as part of Valentine's Week. Will explain soon.) as our thanks.

I honestly don't remember much of my presentation. I only had an hour to practice it since I was too lazy to do it the night before. I just remember ending my presentation thanking Thys and HR for giving us this opportunity to intern with the company for a year and making it the most nerve-wrecking Valentine's day I've ever had lol. I also remember acting more casual than formal during the presentation since I've met both Thys and Tijen (who I wasn't expecting to be there; she's my manager's boss!) and almost everyone in the audience before.

I noticed that Dom was absent during my presentation, which was worrying since she was supposed to present after me. I later found out that she was outside the room freaking out about her presentation lol. Then she came in and was freaking amazing during her presentation. Most people speed up when they're nervous. Dom was the exact opposite. She was calm, composed, and talked normally at an even pitch and tone. It was awesome.

Archana's presentation was after Dom's, and she was great at it too. She was professional and to the point, and it showed that she wasn't very nervous either. This is probably because she had already given a presentation earlier that morning on a similar topic lol.

Then we had lunch with the other interns and I got to meet Diana towards the end. I had originally planned on staying to watch the other interns' presentations, but I was just mentally and emotionally exhausted lol. We met back up on our floor to talk about how our presentations went and be relieved that it was finally over when Tijen and Anita stopped by to tell us that we all did great. Tijen said that she and Thys just had lunch together, and they were both impressed and surprised by all of the big projects we worked on. :D

I also found out from Archana that there was a thing called Valentine's Week a few weeks ago. Apparently, it's super popular in India, which is why most people I know in the US had never heard of it before. It's basically a whole week of Valentine's Day where you give your significant other a gift every day.

Archana said that Dom was really hung up about Valentine's Day because she's never celebrated it with anyone before. None of her relationships lasted long enough to get to Valentine's Day. So Archana suggested that we surprise Dom with Valentine's Week, but changed up some of the days' meanings lol. Instead of proposing to her, we'd give her a love letter. Instead of promising her, we'd give her pictures of all three of us. Instead of kissing her, we'd give her Hershey kisses lol. Then we split up the tasks and surprised her every day. She loved it lol.

For her love letter, I found a cute card on Amazon that Archana and I wrote in. The pictures took a bit of work. When they came over for the sleepover, we used Shelle's Polaroid to take a lot of pics. Shelle took three pics of us to give us all individual copies, but I pretended to act greedy and saved the rest of the pics for myself lol. I had taken some pics on my phone as well, so I used my Sprocket to print out some pics of us as well and gave Dom and Archana the pics in a cute Sanrio envelop that Shelle had held onto for the past decade from our cousin lol. It came with cute stationary, so I wrote a love letter to Archana and thank you note to Dom since I had already written a love letter to her earlier that week lol.

I had written so many love letters that week that I completely forgot to write one for David when he came up to visit that weekend. -__-" I was kind of pissed at him anyway, so it kind of worked out well? Lol. I got over it not long afterwards. He only stayed for a night since he had a morning shift the next morning.

That weekend, Shelle, Kyle, and I went home to help our parents itemize their taxes, which we do every year. David was working the whole time, so we didn't see him at all that weekend.

The rest of the month passed by pretty uneventfully. I was mainly busy with work since my manager asked me to help fix up this deck she was working on with Christian for an upcoming event that is actually happening today.

Books I Want to Read This Month

Even though I didn't read two books off of this list like I hoped to last month, I at least read one book, so I'm happy!

1. Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls In a Dungeon? vol. 10 by Fujino Omori & Suzuhito Yasuda
2. Dengeki Daisy vol. 1 by Kyousuke Motomi
3. Kenka Bancho Otome vol. 1 by Chie Shimada
4. Yona of the Dawn vol. 1 by Mizuho Kusanagi
5. The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
6. In Real Life by Cory Doctorow & Jen Wang
7. 101 Corporate Haiku by William Warriner 
8. Unfollowing You by Komal Kapoor
9. I Am Her Tribe by Danielle Doby
10. Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari
11. On Love by Alain de Botton
12. The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
13. The Foxhole Court by Nora Sakavic
14. The Consumption of Magic by T.J. Klune
15. Anatomy of a Scandal by Sarah Vaughan

February in Retrospect

I finally finished The Sun and Her Flowers! I've also spent the past week staying up way to late reading this Chinese light novel series called The Legendary Master's Wife. I can't find out how many volumes it is since everyone only keeps track of the chapters. I just know that I'm close to chapter 300 already lol.

I watched a lot of great stuff this month too!

I read:

• The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur
• The Legendary Master's Wife vol. 1 by Yin Ya
• The Legendary Master's Wife vol. 2 by Yin Ya

I watched:

• Love O2O (2016)
• Sirius the Jaeger (2018)
• Ken Jeong: You Complete Me, Ho (2019)
• The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (2018)

EDIT: Finally found out how many volumes are in the series and which chapters belong to which volume! Just had to make an account to see lol.

Shows I'm Currently Watching: The Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Men on a Mission, & Guardian

CURRENTLY WATCHING:

The Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime

It's almost over! There's only four episodes left! D: I've really enjoyed this series because it's not an overly complicated plot, which is nice when you're watching it weekly lol. Most problems are solved within a few episodes, so I'm not dying every week waiting to see what happens next. Regardless, it's a fun series that I like seeing what problems the characters will overcome every episode.

Men on a Mission

I started watching this a few months ago before forgetting about it until recently. I'm watching the first season available on Netflix, which shows the best of episodes from 2015-2016. I'm kind of sad that they don't show all of the episodes from each year because they reference past guests episodes that aren't available, and it makes me want to watch them, too lol. However, every episode is hilarious. I love how Heechul is always the crazy one who can get close to the younger female guests and everyone else has given up on that lol.

Guardian

I've been seeing gifs of this series on Tumblr for a while, so I thought I'd wait until it was finished to start watching it only to find out that it was done last summer! -__-" The hilarious gifs really sold it for me, especially after I read the summary. The show is based off of a BL Chinese light novel series, but due to China's censorship, it became a bromance instead of a romance. Regardless, you can totally tell that the main characters are into each other because of all of the little details, and I live for it. Also, Shen Wei is too pretty for this world lol. I have five episodes left, and I'm prolonging watching it because the comments already kind of spoiled the ending for me, and I'm not ready for the sadness! D:

FINISHED:

Love O2O

I was in the mood to watch something, but I didn't want to start something new, so I decided to rewatch this show since I liked it so much. I was intending to just play it in the background and do some other things in between, but guess what. I was completely immersed in the show again lol. I realized that I really do have a one-tracked mind; I can't have shows playing in the background because I end up focusing on them in the end lol. Overall, it was just as good as the first time I watched it although I did end up skipping the best friend's romance part because her voice still annoyed me lol. Also, I found out that the best friend's love interest is one of the main characters in Guardian! He definitely looks better in Guardian compared to Love O2O though lol.

Sirius the Jaeger

I started watching this as a distraction whenever I was on the treadmill, and the plot definitely hooked me. I liked that it started off in the middle of the action, so you're slowly learning about the world and how things work instead of long, boring explanations in the beginning. Also loved that the main character was from (probably) Russia and kept some of his culture's clothes even as he grew up. The art and characters were good; Yuliy was so cute as a kid! I can't wait for the second season to come out!

The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation

While I was procrastinating on finishing Guardian, I found that a lot of people recommended this Chinese anime because it was slightly similar since there's a lot of action and a hint of BL romance (apparently it focuses on that later in the series). The anime was a little confusing at first since the first two episodes were in the present, but the rest of the season was one long flash back, but the characters all basically looked the same, so it was hard to tell the difference.

Other than that and remembering everyone's three names, it was really good. You get all of the little nuggets of info in the first two episodes, and then you're trying to figure out what happened in the past that leads to the present. Not to mention watching the buildup of how the main character becomes the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, a forbidden technique, is fucking epic. I definitely recommend this anime. There's only one season out, but apparently the second season is coming out in October, and there will be three seasons total and a live action adaptation! Lots to look forward to!

Weekly Haul (112)

Bought some more poetry books this month! I also got Pachinko because I've always heard great reviews and because it was on sale lol. Now to find the time to read them all...

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Unfollowing You by Komal Kapoor

Love Looks Pretty on You by Lang Leav

I Am Her Tribe by Danielle Doby

Working Out, Hanging Out, & Eating Out

January was a pretty chill month. I mainly hungout with a lot of people and worked out lol.

Shelle and Kyle quit Wing Chun a couple months ago because they didn't have time for it as much anymore since it's an hour away and Shelle had been working later at night. They were planning on doing kickboxing since it's a lot closer to home, but Shelle's been so busy with work and Kyle didn't want to do it without her. Instead, they decided to get a treadmill so they have no excuse not to workout at home.

We're also going to South Korea for vacation in a few months, so we wanted to make sure we could walk for miles while exploring and not get tired lol. But yeah, I've been working out on the treadmill for most of the month. Getting the motivation to workout is still hard sometimes. Sometimes I'm just speed walking because I don't want to run lol.

We had dinner with Mell one Friday night after work. She was expecting to pop by the next week, so we got to feel Mac moving inside of her belly lol. I think Mac is a little more than a month old now, but she's so cute! Mell keeps on posting pics and videos of her on Snapchat, and she is adorable.

The next night, we had dinner with Tawanda. I can't really remember where we went, but I'm sure it was tasty lol.

It was MLK weekend the next week, so I went down to visit the parents since it was Dad's birthday that week. Instead, I saw him for lunch on my last day there since we were all busy lol.

I hungout with Jessica Friday night. Her house got robbed earlier that week, so I treated her out to dinner. It was my first time eating at Ocmulgee Brewpub, and it didn't let me down. I had called up Alec since we were originally going to eat at Piedmont Brewery, which was one of favorite places to eat at and since he lives really close by. He ended up meeting us at the place after he had dinner with his parents lol.

Then we walked around and saw Jerry and Harrison at the comic book store. Instead of barging in and bothering them, I took a pic of them and sent it to Jerry to bother him lol. I didn't realize until later that he hates it when people do that to him since it messes with his paranoia... Whoops! We went to Reboot, this retro arcade bar nearby, since I've never been there before and to wait to hear his response lol. It was really fun! We hungout until closing at midnight which was around the time Jerry called us because he saw the pic lol. All in all, it was a good night.

The next night was the grand opening of a new Wild Wing Cafe that's literally a minute away from my house. Alec and Lizzy's friend was in the band performing that night, so we went out to support them. We made plans to meet up at 6:30, but it was so packed that we'd have to wait two hours for our a table. We decided to go bother David at work and get appetizers lol. We eventually went to Wild Wing Cafe and some more of our friends met up with us there. We stayed there talking for so long that we left at midnight lol.

The next night, David and I went to one of his coworker's, Brenden, birthday dinner. They originally talked about going to Parish first but then changed their mind to Bonefish Grill. Either was fine with me. I've only been to Bonefish once in college lol. We ended up making friends with our waiter who caught us playing Pokemon Go (the restaurant was a Pokestop lol), so we added each other as friends by the end of the night and he taught us the new trick with trading older Pokemon.

I spent the night at David's place before going home for lunch with Dad. Then I went home and spent the rest of the week working out and doing chores over the weekend.

All in all, a pretty chill month lol. This is probably my shortest update so far!