On Thursday morning, I woke up and thought for a split second, “Where am I?” Then I felt the cheap sheets of the bed and overly stuffed pillow beneath my head and remembered. Oh yeah, I’m in LA. Buena Park, to be exact, one block from Knotts Berry Farm and Medieval Times (hooray!).

Because we sat through a few hours of a high-pressured timeshare presentation earlier this year in Seattle, we received a free flight to Anaheim and two nights’ lodging. But because we were too cheap to upgrade our “free” package, we ended up with one of the crappiest itineraries ever. We arrived in LA at 11 p.m. Wednesday night, spent all day Thursday there, and flew out at 7 a.m. on Friday (we woke up at 3:30 to return our rental car. *groan*). Since Heather and Eugene were visiting Seattle and wanted to go to Vancouver, we drove up to Canada later that day.

Going back for a day was worth it, though. The pure shock on our parents’ faces was priceless. Sarah had arranged for everyone to be home for dinner that night, telling her parents that she and her bf wanted to take them out for dinner. What a way to put your parents into misery, wondering why their teenage daughter and her bf would want to take them out for dinner. As we pulled up to Matt’s parents’ home, Matt called mom so that when we appeared in the backyard (where she was sitting), she still had the phone up to her ear. Her jaw just fell and she was speechless for a few seconds. She knew we were supposed to be in Seattle, so how could we be standing before her? It was great. Jon and dad were equally surprised. I love it when surprises actually work. (Thanks, Sarah!)

We even got to squeeze in lunch at The Hat (one of Matt’s top restaurants unique to the LA area), left a note on Trish and Rob’s door, met the Manguys’ new baby, caught up with Brenda and Kevin (the newlyweds whose wedding we attended last month), and had about 10 minutes with Dave (after he crawled out his bedroom window).

Our time in Vancouver with the Lees was actually just time in Richmond, the Monterey Park of Vancouver. The Lees–especially Eugene–are crazy about cheap Chinese food, so one meal was followed by another meal until there were no more hours in the day. You think I’m crazy about boba? Heather had TWO in one day. I’ve NEVER done that before. The only time we spent in Vancouver was at the hotel to sleep, and the Lees didn’t even care to see the city. They had good, cheap Chinese food on the brain, so that’s what they got. It was fun hanging out with them and catching up, since I can’t even remember the last time we hung out or even saw them.

Until Christmastime, this is our last bit of traveling and our last visitors…as far as we know.

Happy Halloween!

Sadly, I write to you wearing black dress pants and a cream-colored sweater, but tonight, I plan to put on my Ninja Turtle costume. Hopefully we’ll get some kids at our door because we have a big bag of candy to give away, and I simply just want to celebrate Halloween.

In honor of the holiday, I’m posting some photos from Halloweens past…enjoy! (Beware of bad quality photos–they’re photos taken of actual photos.)

1. Queencie and me in 2000 before going out to the Castro district, the largest Halloween celebration in SF. I parked my car in the Castro that morning before work and left it there until after the Halloween festivities. We literally smushed ourselves into a bus (where I got hit with a half-empty beer can) to get out to the Castro. About midnight, when it was time to go home, we walked to my car. That morning, I had put my car Club on the steering wheel, but in my efforts to pack light with my costume, I took only my car keys–and not the Club key. So we had to hop on a bus to go home, and didn’t get back until nearly 2 a.m. Boy, did I feel horrible about that.

2. Hogwarts students at our church’s “International Fun Factory” (IFF) Halloween celebration for the neighborhood. This was taken in 2003, my first Halloween in LA. Our costumes were all handmade!

3. Carving pumpkins with the Canon girls and Jer. Erin, Courtney, and I all started working at Canon around the same time, so we got to know each other pretty well.

4. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at IFF in 2005, again with our handmade costumes. Our Raphael didn’t show up at the last minute. :P But we still had Turtle Power.

I’m normally not a big birthday celebrator, but I’ve been thinking that I should do something for my 30^th birthday, coming up next year. I don’t like big parties in general, but especially not for me. But last night, I thought of something that I clearly wanted to do for the big day. I went home and told Matt to guess what I wanted to do.His first guess was accurate. Skydiving. As much as it pleases me that he knows me so well, I had hoped that I could stump him. It wasn’t too hard for him to guess, since he knew this has been something I’ve been wanting to do for a long, long time, and I’m tired of saying, “I’ve always wanted to do that…” and never have gone. He wasn’t as psyched about the idea.

“I don’t want you do die,” he said.

“I won’t die! You didn’t die, my dad didn’t die,” I said. “Besides, it’s better to do it now before we have kids, so that if I died, it’s not like I’m leaving any kids without a mom.”

“But you just said you wouldn’t die,” he responded.

Hm. Good point, but I still want to go.

We are actually quite familiar with church #3, although we have only attended the main branch/campus of this church. Today, we checked out a newer, smaller branch of this church in West Seattle. It’s a quite popular, well-known church, known for great preaching, fast growth, and loud music, so for you Seattleites reading this, it will probably be obvious which church I’m talking about.

As much as I enjoy the preaching at this church, I’m always a little wary when I attend this church. When we first moved here, we attended the main campus for several months. We took Melanie there and told her we liked it for the diversity. For some reason, when I looked around at first, I saw people of many ages and thought I saw people of different cultures and walks of life. But when Melanie attended, she said, “You guys said it was diverse, but I only saw young, white, trendy yuppies.” Hhmm…ever since then, that’s all I’ve been able to see, too.

Today was no exception. I walked into the church, hoping for more diversity since I know West Seattle has a fairly large (I think) Hispanic population. But when we sat down, I whispered to Matt, “There’s not much diversity going on here.” He looked around and responded, “There’s one guy two rows up, and one woman behind us.” “Two?” I said. “That doesn’t make the congregation diverse.”

And, again, without exception, my critical antenna was fully extended when the pastor began speaking. He made an announcement about how two new campuses were being planned–one in downtown Seattle and another on the Eastside. I wonder why they’re building one in downtown, when Ballard and West Seattle aren’t *that* far from downtown…and wouldn’t real estate be more expensive there than, say, south Seattle? Plus, you have more residents in the south Seattle area–Rainier Valley, Rainier Beach, Renton, Kent, Tukwila. That’s where all the diversity is…but I realized that’s where all the money ISN’T. I told Matt my theory and he dismissed it, saying that downtown is more central. But still.

The pastor also mentioned how Jesus was born in an unpopular city of that time, Bethlehem, which was like White Center (an area of Seattle considered to be very dangerous). I thought, well, if church #3 keeps announcing that its purpose is to reach the people of Seattle, why not go to the heart of the area that needs it most? Why are new campuses being built in such well-off areas? (OK, Jesus loves rich people, too…)

I mentioned to Matt that as much as I like the preaching of the pastor, I don’t want to raise our kids with all these middle- to upper-class people who (and this is me being wrongfully critical and stereotypical) care so much about materialistic needs. I want to raise my kids among people of all cultures, of all income levels, so that they don’t end up thinking they should live like the upper-class population in the church. Now, I know rich people love Jesus and are generous with their time and money, but, it’s my personal preference to surround my family with the “common people,” for lack of better words. I want my church family to reflect what our neighborhood looks like–meaning culturally diverse and a mixture of different income levels and lifestyles.

In LA and here, we’ve lived in areas that were known for its low-income population, not necessarily because we did that intentionally, but also because we wanted to stay within our financial means. But I’d rather be there anyday than in a gated community in Porter Ranch or the safe neighborhoods of Seattle’s Eastside. (Not that I’m faulting people who DO live in those neighborhoods. Just understand I can be a bit of a reverse snob at times, meaning I look down on those more wealthy or try to live among those who are…and I’m not saying that’s a healthy attitude, but that’s just how I am.)

But again, what’s the priority? This church has many people our age (including some of our co-workers) and great teaching, but not the social environment that we’d really like. So what do we do?

A week ago, we tried church #2, which was actually a church plant of church #1. The church, still in its early stages, is held in an elementary school about 10 minutes south of our house. We got there a few minutes before the service and walked into the school cafeteria/auditorium and sat on some benches. The worship team was still practicing, and there were little kids running around. Some older people were sitting on the benches, and looked at us when we walked in, but no one approached us. We sat down on a bench in the back.
Finally, an older lady came up to us, hugged us, and said welcome. As she started to walk away, I asked what her name was. She told me her name and said, “I’m Pastor ____’s mom.”

“I don’t know who Pastor ____ is–it’s our first time here.”

“Your first time! Great!” She turned to a man next to her. “Come meet these people. It’s their first time here.” As she said that, the woman in front of us turned around, smiled at us, and then turned back around. She heard that it was our first time there–and seemed really welcoming to other regulars there throughout the service, but did not introduce herself. Anyway, the man introduced himself to us, and as soon as our attention was turned to him, the first woman walked away without even finding out what our names were. We exchanged names with the man, told him how we found out about the church, and then he walked away. Okaaayy. Right before the service started, the pastor came over, shook our hands and said welcome, and then walked away without asking us our names or anything else.

So that was all before church. Here are my observations about the rest of the service:

PROS: Great ministry goals to help the homeless and prostitute population in the area; Very laidback, casual service, probably because the congregation numbers about 30-40 people

CONS: Preaching was so-so; The congregation was not as diverse as we had hoped for, especially in that community (the congregation was about 50% black and 50% white); Of the people in attendance, we only saw one other couple who were possibly in our age range

We both agreed that we would be OK with not going back, mostly because we would like a more established church and one with more people in our age range. And from this visit, Matt later told me that he realized that he would like to attend a church where there are some Asians. Definitely not a predominantly Asian church, but one where there are at least some. I also feel like there are some churches where there are Asians, but there are so few of them that people set you apart as an Asian (for example, if we’re talking to someone, they might tell us about another couple that is Chinese). It’ll be hard to find something like our old church where the ethnicities just seemed to blur together, mostly because there were so many cultures and so many mixed marriages.

But what happens if we can’t find one that has that–and everything else we’re looking for? What is our priority?

Happy birthday, Matt!

Matt got an amazing birthday sunrise this morning. For some reason, we were awake oddly early (even after sleeping at 12:45 a.m. because we were watching “The Heart of the Game,” a great documentary about a girls’ basketball team in Seattle). When I got out of bed at 6:45, I was really confused why it was so dark out. I walked through the rest of the house, which was still pitch black, and checked the clocks a couple of times. Was someone playing a cruel joke on me, to which I would gladly accept if it meant being able to crawl back into bed.

Anyway, we ended up leaving the house at 7:30, which is normally when I would be leaving the bedroom and walking out to the kitchen. So on the freeway, we had an amazing view of the sun rising and casting a bright golden-orange sheen against the bottom of a thick blanket of clouds. The color was then reflected off of the half-exposed Mount Rainier, creating a pinkish glow around the snow-covered peak.

I tried to take some pictures, but the photos do not do the real thing any justice. God sure gave Matt a beautiful birthday gift. Sure beats the green onion pancakes and banana shake I got him last night, but how can I ever compare to God, right?

A few weeks ago, Matt and I decided to leave the church where we had been attending since December. Between then and now, we joined a small group (the two other couples left the church and no one officially told us–though it was implied–that our group was disbanded), and also began serving in youth ministry. Let’s just say it was more difficult to say goodbye to the youth than our small group members.

I won’t go into detail about why we left the church (since that would make for a looong post), but one main reason why was that we didn’t feel that we had a sense of community there. There was one other couple our age at church who we had gotten to know–and really liked, too–but we wanted more of a community, especially since neither of us have family up here.

So what we are hoping to find in our new church are: solid, interesting teaching; community outreach ministries; strong fellowship with people our age. Is that asking for too much?

As we begin Church Hunt: Part Two, I will document our visits and my insights as to the churches. I debated disclosing the names of the churches, but thought against it. I am wary of exposing too much, settling into a church community, and then having people read my blog and responding, “You said THIS about our church?!”

So Church 1…

PROS: About 10 minutes from our house; somewhat diverse, but I got the feeling it was divided diversity (if that makes sense) rather than intermixed diversity that we had at our old church; active community outreach; I heard there are a lot of people our age; We ran into a friend of a friend that we had met a few months ago, so it was nice to see a familiar face and have a point of connection into the church, if needed.

CONS: Wasn’t too impressed with the sermon, although we want to give it a few more weeks; I was mostly distracted by the pastor taking on and off his glasses while speaking (at least 20 times within 20 minutes)

If we were to seriously consider this church, we’d need to check out a small group, too. I think one of my fears is attending a small group of 20- and 30-somethings who are all middle- to upper-class yuppies, but I don’t think that will really be an issue with this church and its demographics.

This is what our world looks like right now:

We have huge spiderwebs everywhere…on this tree alone, there are five webs. We also have a couple of webs strung in between our garbage bins.

We had a rare sunny and warm weekend last week, so Matt and his friend went mountain biking at St. Edwards State Park. I tagged along but, instead of biking, did a short hike (where I saw the mushroom) that brought me down to a beautiful, quiet reading spot right along the water.

What’s an autumn season without pumpkin carving? We had two high schoolers over last night and carved a couple of small pumpkins (and burned their seeds). For the first time in a couple of years, I did not carve a cat; I attempted to replicate a tree pattern from a recent issue of Sunset( bottom, center), and Matt did a great job with his Transformers logo (top, left). Ken and Shay did some cool pumpkin faces, as well as a couple of Casper-type ghosts (top, right).

 (I’ve been meaning to write more since I want to document our church-hunting process, so look out for that in the near future…)

Giving blood at work has turned into a healthy competition. I’m all for giving blood, because it benefits so many people and you always hear of blood shortage, but it doesn’t hurt to make it a little fun. A couple of people from Matt’s department give blood every time the blood back comes to our office, and they’ve begun competing to see who could fill up the blood baggie the fastest. The last time I did it, it took me an embarrassing 14 minutes because I wasn’t drinking enough water. I sat there and just waited for the blood to drip out of me, while Matt and some of his co-workers sped on through.

Since then, I changed my drinking habits to go from downing one Nalgene bottle full of water (32 oz.) to two–and, man, has it made a difference. It seems ridiculous that I would change this SIMPLY to make my blood seep out of me faster, but I can’t help but want to be competitive. I gave blood a few days ago and only took four minutes. The nurse even remembered that last time, it took me 14 minutes, and said I was catching up to everyone else. Whoo-hoo! Here’s a picture of my arm wrapped in gauze. I thought it felt really funny to have my elbow skin sticking out of the gauze and attempted to take a picture. It’s kind of hard taking it yourself and knowing where to aim, so it doesn’t quite look as interesting as it did in real life. 

In other news, we took a “fall foliage” tour aboard an old public bus last weekend. The ad said that there would be “stops for photos and lunch.” Great, we thought, this will be a good chance to get photos of the changing leaves. Well, the ad was wrong. There was ONE stop for lunch, and it wasn’t even a great photo op because all the trees around there were green. The trees look way more interesting and colorful right in our neighborhood. What a disappointment. We also were definitely the youngest people on the tour, not counting the little kids.

The only redeeming factor was that we stopped for lunch at the Black Diamond Bakery and Restaurant and loaded up on pastries. Yumsilicious! A donut, lemon bar, cinnamon roll, giant chocolate chip cookie, large loaf of  bread, and chocolates.

Has anyone been watching the new TV show “Chuck”? We’ve watched it the last few weeks only because it comes on before “Heroes.” It’s entertaining, but definitely not a show that I’d carve out time for. But last week, I noticed that the mall in which Chuck, the main character works, looked strangely familiar, despite the new store names on each building. Buy More, the store where Chuck works, looked just like the Mervyn’s of Fallbrook Mall, the mall a few minutes from my apartment in Canoga Park. Next to Mervyn’s is Party City, although in the show, there’s another store name on it. Then Wienerlicious, the store where another character works, is really Stargazer, the not-so-tasty Asian buffet.

To confirm my guess, I looked this up online and I was right! The show is, indeed, filmed at the Fallbrook Mall. In tonight’s episode, Sarah (the secret agent who works at Wienerlicious) was fighting a killer on the roof of her restaurant, and you could see Mervyn’s across the parking lot–and it was Mervyn’s, not Buy More.

Anyway, no real point. I just think it’s cool to see it on TV because I’ve been there so many times, just like how I get excited to see SF on TV or in movies…although it’s also because I LOVE SF. :P

Ooh, Heroes is on now. Signing off!