Danny ChaiEgad, I even missed a baby. Congrats Josephine, also born (no drugs!) 7/5/07.
For no particular reason, a long, boring SoCal trip recap. In parts.
We spent the past 10 days in SoCal, making an extended trip out of Dave and Jean’s wedding. Drove down last Friday. Partly because of Jieun’s business venture inventory, partly because of baby gear, partly because of the length of the trip (which also necessitated having a car), we had a ton of stuff to bring down, so we adjusted our original plans to fly down and drove instead. We picked up Abby from day care and proceeded directly from there. Sadly, she was slightly sick, which I think contributed to her crying for the first hour and a half of the drive. She finally settled down when I started singing an assortment of nursery songs. I really need to learn more of them. My repertoire is about 8 songs, and for most of them I have to make up some of the lyrics.
Once she fell asleep, we decided to get there as fast as possible, so we did not make a single stop, for food, restrooms, or otherwise, until we reached out destination in The O.C.
Next day we had lunch at Gilmok (Corner Place) in Cerritos with Adrian and Jenny. The first time we had seen them since their wedding. SN: it’s insane how many Korean restaurants are in that general area near Buena Park through Cerritos. Insane. Even the non-Korean restaurants of the Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai variety are Korean-owned and operated. Anyway, Jieun got annoyed at our inside jokes, as she always does.
I believe that night we went to see Live Free Or Die Hard. The one thing I miss most about being child-free is the ability to go out at night whenever you want, no advance notice or planning required. We commonly tell couples who are having their first child to go out every single night until the child is born. Go out to dinner, go out to a movie. Just go out. Because it becomes a lot harder afterwards.
Anyway, Jieun’s mom held the fort after Abby went down so we were able to go out with Jieun’s brothers to The Block in Orange. I felt young again, going out like that on a summer night.
As far as the movie goes, I absolutely loved it. 4 stars. Best movie I’ve seen in a while. I appreciate the comic book action movie trend of trying to be about something, a message, a parable, or whatever, but sometimes, a good action movie shouldn’t be about anything. It should just be entertaining and not over-complicate things. And that’s what this movie was. Good guy tries to stop bad guy, bad guy tries to kill good guy. Much entertaining action in the process. A couple scenes were over the top, but on the whole, thoroughly entertaining. Jieun really liked it also.
Next day we went to church at the Newsong in Fullerton. Unlike, say, Adrian, I love church. I love the fact that I can go into churches in different cultures around the world and feel immediately at home. I’ve been to Asian-American churches, African-American churches, Spanish-speaking churches, a French-speaking church in Quebec, and a Portuguese church, and in every place, I feel comfortable, like I belong there and am truly a part of their fellowship. So I love visiting churches, and Newsong was no exception.
Their nursery was exceptionally well run. When you drop off your child you get a number, and if any urgent issues come up during the service, they flash the number on the main screen. Just one of the nifty things they had. The only quibble: the name of the children’s program is Noah’s Kids, something like that. The story of Noah concerns the death of nearly every living thing on earth. I dunno, that’s not the most kid-friendly of themes to me.
Service was also good. Again, but one quibble: the introductory song by the worship team was “How Deep Is Your Love” by the Bee Gees. I dunno, when I think about preparing to meet God, I don’t typically think of the Bee Gees, even if HDIYL is my favorite Bee Gees song. In general, I’m against using random secular songs in church. Like at Christmas, the worship team did “Better Days” by the Goo Goo Dolls. I’ve ranted about this before, but I’m fairly certain that there’s a lyric in that song that’s heretical (“And the one poor child who saved this world / There’s 10 million more who probably could / If we all just stopped and said a prayer for them” – heresy). I dunno, for songs we’re actually singing at church, I’d think it’s fairly important that the songs be clearly Christian. Maybe that’s just me. I get annoyed in general when people speculate as to whether songs on the radio are “Christian” also. Like people wondered that a lot when Vertical Horizon’s “Everything You Want” was big. I dunno, that to me says more about the vapidness of “Christian” music than anything else, if we’re wondering whether songs as vague as these are legitimately “Christian”.
We also ran into Sinc’s fiancee there. Turns out her sister is married to Jieun’s brother’s friend. Small world.
Sunday night I played poker with Arthur and other assorted folks, mostly Cal grads, among them Walter. I had given up poker for a long time, but I started playing again, mostly for the hanging out, and recently the initiators / participants have been holy people, so I feel OK about it. At this game, Joe (known as “Joesus”) and Albert were both there.
And that was my first weekend.