We're indeed related, Mike... took you two years to figure that out!

Called Steph on her cell earlier than usual this morning since the house line wasn't ringing for some reason, and made her do a Halls run to 7-11. She brought me some Neo-Citran when the family got to my place; at first, I thought it was coffee which I'd already had, but then we figured it'd make me fall asleep in service. I didn't, but it was pretty much a willpower / prayer thing with that. (I felt sleepy right until some cold blast of air woke me up as I was walking to my apartment building's front door this afternoon!) Steph said that Mom gave me a bunch of stuff including Brussels chocolate / Dragon Boat Mix / a solid chocolate Santa Claus figure, none of which was expired... I'm only worried about her Neo-Citran being expired! Just because Auntie Brenda and Uncle Eric say it's okay in their professional opinion as pharmacists doesn't mean that the chemicals won't break down over time or something. These ARE the people who once gave us an expired tin of cookies as a Christmas gift, after all... and they do have this reputation as being rather, um, FRUGAL. Oh well...

When we got to church, the morning service was running late as usual. Alan asked Jon where the "thingies" were... he meant the bulletins, but we bugged him about that for a bit. I told Mike K. and Stanley that it sounded like how my mom talks sometimes: "Oh, get me that thing." "... what thing?" "The thing that's on top of the other thing! You know!" As Mike said: "... no, we don't... otherwise, we wouldn't have to ask!" She's even gotten mad at me for not having ESP about that, but I didn't say this. Mike said that kinda reminded him of his sister Margaret. He'll say: "Hey Margaret, what are you eating?" and she'll hold up the food in question and just SHOW him instead of telling him! Cordia's opinion is that she got it from HIM, haha. Steph showed up and handed me a bag: "Here are your drugs!" (echinacea and Vitamin C / lemon Halls... I should have told her to get Neo-Citran, but I can get that at the pharmacy next door before 4 tomorrow if I really need it) Cordia found that amusing, then went inside on someone's suggestion... good idea, before we block even more people traffic and such!

Randal decided to say hi when I'd sat down, so I talked briefly to him. Probably it was to let me know where he was (a row behind me) in case I had the magic TV show tapes... excellent idea, since he ALWAYS goes off somewhere real quick after service (as Eric does from time to time) and I have NO idea where he's gone! And of course I never see him after Sunday School, either! Darn people who disappear on you, especially if you need them... *joking grumble* Asked Christon if he had the tape, which he gave me... then I asked Steph which tape Vanessa needed: she still has to check. I was going to shove the tape in my bag and give it to the R-Man later (like on Friday), but then remembered that (DUH) he was sitting right behind me! I swear, this illness is doing a number on my memory... Steph said the same to Mom later when we saw her after she worked. (she asked me about the chocolate, and I was like "Uh, WHAT chocolate?!" haha.. ) Steph told Danielle that the pre-service prayer cluster looked like the classic Sunrise Service from last year: well, when you gotta go, you gotta go! (even if you have to announce it to everyone there!) She's definitely going this year, and I might too. Good times, heh.

Jeremy sat down beside me, and we basically spent all of service trying to keep our respective colds to ourselves, heh. You know it's bad when we take personal space boundaries to new levels! His Bible on my coat's sleeve is fine for any service (no cold virus particles there!), but us having less than seven inches of space between us in general would NOT have been fine today! Luckily, there were like ten inches of space between me and Sheena because of all her stuff: no chance of the three Soon sisters catching THIS cold, man! Finally saw Megan, who's back for a week! I could see Steph, Danielle, and Cindy cringing on her behalf when the news of Phil's engagement was brought up as a sermon illustration about how hard it is to hold good news in. Yeah, I feel bad for her too... but nothing can be done now! In the row ahead of me, Danielle asked Jon where Nathan was halfway through service: he was sitting behind me. He couldn't hear what she whispered to him, so I had to interpret: she'd thought he couldn't wake up again this morning, heh.

A collective groan went up when Rich announced that Daylight Savings Time would start earlier than normal: NEXT WEEK?! NOOOOOOOOOOOO! SAY IT AIN'T SO, BROTHER! Jeremy turned to me and said that this meant he'd wake up at 4:30 in the morning for work (body clock) - that REALLY sucks, as if 5:30 AM weren't bad enough! Then we were reminded about the Privacy Act and filling out our church directory info / ticking the consent box... Jeremy to me: "Darn the government and their privacy acts!" (haha) When the $10 Sod-Turning Ceremony DVDs from New Year's Day were advertised AGAIN, it was my turn to tell Jeremy something! "Haha, I love how these things are still advertised like three months later. Quick! Uncle Alan REALLY wants to get rid of all these extra DVDs in his office!" That got a laugh, like I was hoping it would. Then Pastor Edward put a flower in a little vase on the pulpit to signify Phil and Grace getting engaged, and made a point to tell us: "Okay, this doesn't mean a baby!" (usually, we do this to recognize new births) Jeremy turned to me, and added: "We hope not." My turn to laugh, along with Nathan. Yeah... let's REALLY hope not, otherwise they'll have some explaining to do nine months down the road!

When I got to the back parking lot after service, I saw Helen with her baby Nicholas, who headbutted me in the chest area when his mom told him to kiss me hello. She apologized, but I guess he's being a typical boy already! He gave me five a few times, but wouldn't give me ten: we should get together sometime, but she's back to work and such now. It was nice seeing them, though! (he waved bye to me a few times, too!) I had to tell her to move since a car was trying to park in one of the handicapped spaces, so Jeremy joked that we should block off those two spaces with a sign that read "LOITERING AREA" one of these days. Yeah, I'm sure my dad will get RIGHT on that... NOT! Nice in theory, but not so in practice with legalities and such! Nathan, Jon, Jeremy, and I talked to Jen for a while about dinner plans, her mom being in Egypt, the Eco-Density Fair this afternoon, documentaries, adopted Koreans with schizophrenia who committed suicide, her getting a real driver's license (no more Class 5!), cars, depreciation, parking, gas, maintenance, etc. (I saw some Camels in the flap of her purse, but at least it was pretty discreet!) Told Steph that Jen only worked part-time now, which is good for her - AND she only works 24 hours! (she put it as "I work a day in a week!" which confused us for a bit) So I told her that Jen worked the magic number of hours in a week - Jen doesn't watch the show, hah.

Talked to Emily and Mike T. for a while, and Jon somehow came up in the conversation. Mike to me: "Wait... Jon's your BROTHER?!" Yes... just look at your birthday and baptism cards! He happened to be passing by at the time (probably on his way to chest chop one of the guys), so I had to tell him about this! Definitely found it amusing, and Mike had no idea why Jon and Steph signed his cards till now! When we told Steph later, she said that new people didn't know these things. We realize that, but we thought he'd figure it out (or Emily / Chrystal / Melia would tell him) in the two years and change that he's been coming here! Talked to Megan for a bit: she's here for a week with appointments and an interview at Pacific Grace / dental stuff because she hasn't had them since August. She's near Dragon Ball ("that place you guys like"), hehe! Told Jon that I'd see him at lunch since I had to go help with the toddlers, which sounded good to him. (Jeremy was TRYING to get tickets to the lunch, but it was sold out - last year, they were GIVING them away!)

At the toddler Sunday School class, there was this new kid named Cheryl. (one of Zoe's mom's friends' kids) Only her parents spell it with an "I" instead of a "Y." Creative spellings are NOT good, people! :P Sean was coughing and looked pretty miserable, so I checked my Halls package and quickly concluded that I was NOT drugging him up with those! (they're recommended for kids age 5-6 and up) I learned later from his dad that he really likes the computer, but his time on there is limited because his parents don't want him to get addicted. Good idea! I should do that to myself... ha ha ha. After that, it was lunchtime! Steph and I made sure our grandma had a seat before sitting down ourselves with Pastor Edward, Auntie Ruby, Audrey, little Nathan, Natalie, Hannah, Priscilla, and Gladys. Then she moved to the other end of the room to be with Karen Lew: eh, I was staying where I was! The kids dumped their leftovers on one plate, so I joked that Hannah looked like a real pig! They laughed when I picked out the stuff I liked from an extra plate just like Pastor Edward had done, haha.

When Jon came around with stuff because he was one of the food servers, I noted to him that this was the worst location ever in the basement to watch the upcoming anniversary video. It was near the doors, a real fire hazard, and there's a pole in the way! But as he commented, it was pretty crowded anywhere as it usually is at these lunches... later, I told him not to buy a $20 church anniversary DVD since Steph had been pretty much coerced into buying one a couple of weeks ago! I moved up front when the video came on, since I didn't want to block Priscilla's view OR Jonathan Chan's view a little further up. Definitely a cool video, although nobody wanted to know how Chris seemed to just ooze out from the ground / a log! Later, I saw Steph and Citrus with huge Slurpees - they had those instead of cake, heh. Jeremy showed up from lunch with Daniel and Christon at the Szechuan place, probably Green Village. He was pretty full and so were we, even though (as Julie and Elaine noted) our food wasn't that good / appetizing. Too much meat, like Nathan's dad's protein meals: two plates of meat, one of veggies, and an assorted plate. They were giving away leftovers, which I declined: Jeremy took three containers home after Jon assured him that there were LOTS as per the usual. He said that he'd slept in yesterday, took a nap in the afternoon, then went to bed early: 12 hours of sleep should do it for his cold, heh. Told Julie and Elaine to say hi to their mom for me - I should call her, but what to say? "Hi, Auntie Cynthia... I heard your cancer's come back! Uh... er..." wouldn't sound very good, haha. Gave Natalie and Nathan some candy: to be safe, she should give the chocolate ones to her brother Ivan, since Auntie Ronne reminded me that she has a peanut allergy!

On the way home, Steph and I learned that Jon's "itchy butt" (Chinese is a grossly descriptive language :P) got him in trouble with the elementary school once! Mr. Blinkhorn (principal) had to call our parents to tell them that the teacher thought Jon was moving around too much while sitting on the floor, and she thought he was doing something which normally should be done in private! Oh, dear... not the case, but they had to go pick him up and explain things to the poor teacher! I'm still giggling over this story, heh. I also learned that Grandma gets mad and denies she was sleeping when they hear her snore: what's the big deal with that? It's not a BAD thing if she dozes off or gets tired... this morning, she told me and Jon that she wasn't tired even after only getting four hours of sleep and said that it's something she thanked God for. Go to sleep early, get up and go to the bathroom, take forever to get back to sleep, and repeat at least twice a night... THEN deny it makes you tired? Yeah right! I took Steph's advice and stayed in the car when she went to drive Mom home from work: I was NOT in the mood for stopping off at a few different places after a long day! I might go over tomorrow for the TV show, but maybe not. (lunar regularities be damned!) Citrus is also mad since people asked HIM to do the anniversary DVD - it takes more than one person to sort through a zillion pictures, select representative ones, choose music / text, and do all that DVD production! No wonder Steph was frustrated when Auntie Rebecca did that to her a while back!

This update is probably longer than it strictly needs to be (as is the case with most of my "life blogging"), but it's how I do things! Now I need to eat and take a shower...