“Aren’t you tired?”
- the hard-working, 50+ year old Chinese hairstylist after straightening my hair for 6 hours.

Being in Houston means… time with parents… eating a lot… and looking through old pictures and scanning them so I can show them on xanga:

Happy 35th Wedding Anniversary to my parents:
Kim Poong Young (aka Paul) and Yoon Hea Sook (aka Sonia)
who have survived 35 years (and counting) of married life together! 

Pretty amazing!!!!

For some reason, the mailbox at my parents’ house in Houston is always the victim of violent obliteration.
In high school, it was run into several times and smashed a few more times, too.

BEFORE… (This is actually the rebuilt mailbox, I think)

AFTER!

And look what it did to the car that hit it!!!

Arrived in Houston after a slightly scary incident with an aborted take-off.  I was thinking “great, I’ve flown in 25 year old Soviet planes and I’m gonna go down with Jet Blue?”… but all was fine.  We arrived in Houston just an hour and a half late.

It’s SO HUMID here.

Watched the Rockets lose to the Jazz tonight.  Sad.

But had a fun time with ckimchi & her boyfriend at Dave & Buster’s…saw some scary gambling addicts, however… like people who have 11,000 coupons…!

For those of you tracking my every move… I am leaving for Houston in a few hours.

But will be back in NYC in a few weeks.  In between, I’m hoping to make a stop in D.C. and also Philly to see peeps there (get rrrreeeady!)….

Okay, there is 81% HUMIDITY in Houston right now.  YIKERS.

A few pics, lifted off jyoonnyc’s site:

Ridonk. (I just met the guy with his mouth open that night)

Miss Janie Yoon.

Mr. Alex Hong

Ms. Lana done having some fun in NYC.

Hola!  Como estas!  I am officially going to be bunking with my sister up in Washington Heights for the summer! (173rd street)

I also have a job offer and am 99.9% sure I will take it (it’s with my old boss..)…

So seems like things are falling into place for me to be a New Yorker again.  Yipee!

Had the cheapest meal EVER ($3.75) at Big Wong in Chinatown (boiled chicken with garlic and scallions); then pigs in a blanket, fancy style; then oysters; then crepes. 

Going to Houston tomorrow… looking forward to hanging with my parents!

Oh, and had another celebrity sighting — Juliana Margolis! 

My sister lives in Washington Heights where the main language is Spanish. If you speak English, people look at you blankly, as if to say “how dare you speak to me in English?”  I spent the night with her there and was reminded that I need to learn Spanish again (5 years in jr high / high school didn’t do too much, unfortunately)…

This morning, I visited Brighton Beach, “little Russia on the beach”… and was spoken to only in Russian.  I bought a blinchik c myasom u gribami.  And enjoyed it while sitting on a bench looking out at the beach.

Now, I will head down to Chinatown for some cheap cheap cheap Chinese food.  I don’t speak Chinese, so I hope everyone else speaks English.  Ha ha.

Also reading the book Absurdistan, about a Russian guy who moves to “some former Soviet country” to try to pick up the pieces of his life after his father is killed. It’s rather crude at parts but also pretty hilarious, as I can totally picture the narrator.  Also, the way he describes the country he’s living in sounds familiar….