khi say cung đàn thẫn thờ
vẫn tiếng hát thiết tha từ môi em nhẹ buông
trong cơn mộng yêu đương
– cõi mộng

200th Post!!!!

Ok I know I’ve been putting off writing on here for awhile now…well technically it’s been just a few days, but in regards to my 365unpaused series, it’s been way too long. Since this is my 200th post, I really wanted to do something big and picture filled, and so I kind of put off doing the 365unpaused series too until I had this big post. But it’s OK! I’m back now. : )

I’m going to have this post and then I’m going to restart 365unpaused this weekend, probably Nov. 1st. Look for it!

I notice that I’ve been camera-whoring quite a bit lately. Herm. Well, S’ok, you all get to see the beauty and perfection that is Nhu-Y. I know it’s a dream come true for some people.

So I was reading something the other day…I forgot what it was mainly…but one of the things was “Make a list of things that would make your life complete and then work towards that goal or thing.”

I’m sure they didn’t actually use “thing,” but, oh well. Here it goes!

My life would be complete if…

– I owned and lived in a nice, beautiful, spacious, home in which I can spend Thanksgiving and Christmas mornings running around my large kitchen with new stainless steel appliances cooking my wonderful European food and in which I can decorate with witches for Halloween, turkeys for Thanksgiving and in which a LARGE, LIGHT filled, present stuffed, tree would sit in the living room for Christmas. I don’t care how grammatically incorrect that sentence may be.
– I could start working towards that goal.

Wow I thought it might’ve been a longer list. Herm. O well!

—————————————————————————————–

So today is Otouto’s birthday!

Happy 16th Otouto!!!

Yesterday I took him out to dinner at Viet Bistro. : )

Yummy Thai Iced Tea.

Fried Squid – The squid was kind of bland. It tasted really well with the dip (which is salt and pepper with a squeeze of lemon. Depicted is the salt and pepper before we squeezed in the lemon). I didn’t love it but didn’t hate it either.

Fried Frog Legs – The frog legs were also bland, but OOOOO so juicy! I loved it! We used the same dip for the frogs that we used with the squid and it was good. I lovedd, and still can’t get over, how juicy each piece of frog leg was. I completely ignored the bland-ness after the first piece. : ) Would def. order again.

Clay Pot – Seafood and Beef? I think. Otouto’s entree. I didn’t ask him how it was but I’ve had their clay pots before and it’s not bad. The rice is usually not too dry, not too moist, the meat is good too. I did try a piece of beef from Otouto’s Clay Pot and I have to say I didn’t like it. It was wayyyy too dry, and too salty. But Otouto likes dry stuff so, Idk. If I ordered a Clay Pot, I’d go for the seafood one. You can’t go wrong with seafood!

Bun Oc/Tom (Noodles in a broth with Escargot and Shrimp). My entree. It was sooooooooooooooooooooooo bland! I didn’t like it at all! They gave me a whole container full (imagine something 2.5times the size of a ketchup thingy at MickyD’s) of Mam Tom, which usually is used to dip. It is also used to help flavor the broth but, NOT a whole freaking…it had to have been…table spoon full! Or more…I didn’t bother putting the Mam Tom into the broth because I was afraid it would be too much. Usually if you do put Mam Tom into your broth it’s just half a teaspoon…at most a whole teaspoon full…but they gave me like a tablespoon and a half of mam tom. If they even thought that I might need that much, that’s not a good sign. Also, Mam Tom itself has its own flavor, adding too much will basically make your broth into Mam Tom soup, which isn’t what I ordered, or anyone would order. Over all the broth was too bland. Adding in all the veggies made it even more bland. I didn’t enjoy. Loved the escargot and shrimp though. But alas, those were also…bland.

I’ve had better meals at Viet Bistro so I wouldn’t say I’m off it or anything, but the stuff I ordered last night wasn’t the best and I have to say so.

O yea, ambience/environment wise…It’s a VIETNAMESE restaurant. I have to say that for an Asian restaurant, it has quite an array of guests, but the most dominant is Asian. Depending on the day and time that you go, you might meet with a nice, somewhat quite restaurant or a rowdy one with tables cheering for their favorite football teams. The restaurant might not be ideal if you want to talk about private things or anything. It’s always loud to some degree. Another thing I dislike at the restaurant. They have 2 large, large, large screen TVs and two or so tiny ones, but no matter the size, it’s always on the sports. I know this is common not only here but also at American bars/restaurants but come on…Why do ALL four of the TVs have to be on the sports?? That’s just my problem though, I’m sure. The place also has outside seating, so that’s a plus for anyone who cares to brave the weather.

Viet Bistro
http://www.vietbistro.com

6799 Wilson Blvd
Falls Church, VA 22044
(703) 538-7575

O! Some sibling pictures!

I like that last one best. : )

Thang nao vay??

——————————————————————————————–

The other day I made Beef Stir Fry. Actually it was supposed to be Thit Bo Luc Lac with Broccoli (sp?) but it ended up being Beef Stir Fry, which is fine with me.

Ach! So good it was!!

——————————————————

I was gonna use this as a 365unpaused picture but, I got lazy.

Look at those clouds! Look at that tree blurring by…and all the other trees!!

If you’ve ever seen that movie…Yes Man…you’ll remember that in it the main character’s girlfriend is in a club where they take pictures while they run, well, that picture up there was a picture taken while driving. Downhill. Not for the faint of heart…or someone driving someone faint of heart. Be stealth if you’re gonna do it.

I think we were on our way to 7/11 that day…Haha…Lookie these thingies!!

Otouto’s…Look at all that nasty cheese…EWWWWW……….

Yes…Perfect and Beautiful and Delicious.

Lookie what else I got! Colored Staples!!!

Green…..

Herm…..

Oop, much better.

——————————————————————-

Last Friday was Mother’s Bday. I made her a scrapbook. I started the book on Thursday night and I thought I would never finish. It got overwhelming because I was making 19 pages! At some point I thought about it and thought that maybe making the scrapbook was pointless, better if I had just left all the pics in the photo albums and just made her a card or something. But after I finished everything, I sat down to look through it and as soon as I opened the first page it was like “BAM!” and I felt great. Great! It was like….I don’t know…something about the groups of pictures laid out on a page with words just…made it into something else. It made me really wanna keep scrapbooking. I mean, when I’m looking through photo albums either in real life or on FB, it’s just like…a whole series of pictures…picture after picture after picture, you kind of lose the significance. But once it’s in a scrapbook it’s like…These pictures are special. They represent significant parts of my life and they make sense.

So needless to say Mother loved it. Or said she did, who knows. I didn’t take pics of all the pages because as I was making them I thought they were too bland, and they were, they were really, really simple. But once you saw them all together, it was a wonderful kind of simple. Otouto snapped some pics:

I really like the picture on the “Protected” page. It’s a pic of Mother and Otouto and I love it, I think it’s adorable. Lolz.

O, of course I cooked that night. Lolz. I’ll post a recipe later though.

Flowers that Otouto and I bought for Mother.

Yea.

——————————————————————————————-

Is this too much…? Lolz. Ok well, I’ll do some more pictures and leave it at that.

———————————

I’ve had a whole bunch of midterms these past few weeks. My midterm grades are as follows:
Arth – A-
Chin – A+
Cult – B
Govt – B
Hist – B

I’m guessing my grade for Govt. We’ve only had one thing to turn in, which I got a B on and a midterm which I also got a B on so, yea. So for Arth we’ve had one quiz, which I did miserably on. But then last week we had our midterm and…well…basically I stayed ’till 3AM the night before…or rather…the morning of…to write down all the definitions and info about the art and brief outlines for all four of the essay questions. Then on my way to school I went over everything…and everything was still fresh on my mind when I took the test. I’m sure there’s a healthier and less stressful way of doing it, but that’s how I did it this time and this is what I got:

That’s just for my essay. I got a 97% on my overall test. : )

Thank the Lord. Then I also got back my Cult midterm…which I skipped two classes to BS…and got an 88. I was so happy. Geezuz Chryst, think what would happen if I actually put real effort into my shizz. : (

—————————————————-

I got to class early on Monday and decided to mess around.

We ran out of time in Chinese so she gave us our quizzes as take homes. I “took” it during Cultural Studies. I didn’t cheat cuz the thing only took me two minutes. And that’s because I was half trying to pay attention in class. Ha. Yay.

—————————————————–
So this post wasn’t all too significant. I guess I could’ve broken it down to make it more coherent but whatever. I’m caught up. I did want to write about something as a “Musing” but I think my “list” up top is enough. YAY for 200th post! Goin strong! Haha. This’ll be it for a bit, I’ll be back on Nov. 1st with a restart of the 365unpaused series.

Ok…are you ready for this? Nhu-Y montage time! God I’m a hore.

I’m on a B&W GIMP phase.

Pout .your. lips.

Chya. Ne!