This is how to ruin a panoramic photograph of your beautiful Hawaiian surroundings: insert yourself as many times as possible so you look like a creepy ghost girl from a J-horror film…but with sunglasses. Click here for a bigger (worse) look.

Dreams really do come true, and not the nightmarish kind. Also, sometimes geeking out to the point of stalker-dom helps. Remember when I totally freaked out because an episode of Henry’s Kitchen was being filmed next door?

Well, instead of my neighbor issuing a restraining order against me, the opposite happened. A friend recognized a guy in the video who turned out to live next door, told him about me being obsessed with the series, then told me that she told him and that he told her that I could come on a shoot, and then he left me a note on my door about the shoot, and then I called him (before accidentally texting a complete stranger beforehand, which was totes embarrassing) and then he told me about the shoot and then I went to visit and got to be in the background of the very final episode of Henry’s Kitchen.

And that is how I finally met my neighbor. Yes, it took a mutual friend, a stalkerish blog post, a viral video series, one note, a wrong text message and a phone call. All the while, I could have just knocked on his front door but then I would have nothing to blog about.

OMG so how stupid do I look? B didn’t even notice my giant moon face when he first watched the episode, which is good because I would hate to think I ruined the shot, but I couldn’t stop grinning because the whole set was hilarious. I think everyone was either good friends, improv actors or both so the whole atmosphere was full of jokes and laughing and fake beer.

And I finally got to meet Henry! I’m sad that the web series is over but if there’s anything we learned from The Office or LOST, sometimes it’s good to end a show on a high note (and not drag things out forever and ever).

The end.

PS. The more I look at that screencap, the more embarrassed I get about my whole life.

A couple weeks ago, I got to crash an X-Play shoot to play around with Double Fine’s new Kinect game, Happy Action Theater. And holy crap, it was awesome. I mean, it’s not really a game–but in a good way. It’s more like a great way to have fun with motion control while pretending to be a little kid again. I’m nowhere near my Xbox right now but I plan to download this game as soon as I get home.

Anyway, you can see me in the b-roll in this X-Play segment. I’m like, totally famous. Like, not.

Later after all the important talent and producers left, my friends and I reenacted some famous movie scenes with all the different settings. Check it out!

I am supposed to be doing homework right now but instead I am looking for whales in our ocean view and wondering if I have to go pee. So here is a time-lapse video that B shot of the sun setting a couple nights ago. The island you see in the distance is Molokai and that bright thing on the left is called a “sun.”

Also, yesterday we drove down the famous Hana highway where we saw two mongooses (mongeese?), pretty scenery, lots of banana bread stands and an incredible number of ridiculously annoying drivers who decided that the speed limit was 10 MPH (not on the hairpin turns) and that slowing down to look at EVERY SINGLE waterfall was a must-do on their bucket list. I hate them.

I’m home! And I already forgot almost everything I learned and I am already behind on my homework. But this semester is going to be GREAT. I am going to do GREAT work and LOTS of it and MAKE PROGRESS and BE SMARTER with my time and STOP PROCRASTINATING and probably CRY A LOT in the meantime.

The most upsetting thing about leaving the world-as-I-know-it for 10 days is missing out on some really big things. Like, really big things. Like, things I wished the rest of the world-as-I-know-it would wait until I got home to enjoy it. So I made myself a list to feel better.

1. The birth of Blue Ivy Carter

2. The Golden Globes

3. Getting a free copy of Steve Jobs at work.

4. My new welly socks! (These are not the ones I got. Mine are pink and fleece. My calves are also a little too chunky to wear them with pants so I guess I’ll be wandering around puddles while bare-legged.)

5. The dramatic capture of the O.C. serial killer who was targeting homeless dudes. (Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that dramatic but I’m just glad they have a suspect in custody. Also, what kind of serial killer actually stabs their victim while other people are around? Come on now.)

6. CES 2012: Now I will never know what kind of cool and impractical technology will never be available to real consumers.

7. More “Shit ____ Says” (Actually, I’m kind of okay with missing out on this.)

8. Chipotle: Even though their food always makes my tummy hurt, I missed their chips, guacamole and bowls of cilantro rice.

Wait, Chipotle isn’t something that happened, though. It’s just a chain restaurant that I missed eating at 4 days a week. Nevermind. This list sucks.

I may be somewhere along the Oregon coast in chilly, damp weather but there’s wireless Internet everywhere which means that in the middle of intellectual things like talking about writing….stuff….I can still enjoy YouTube.

Meet my new heroine, Alana, who I foresee will have a great career as she grows up with appearances on Jersey Shore, Real Housewives of Beauty Pageants and eventually, Intervention.

PS. I think her special “juice” is actually just Mountain Dew. Right?

And here’s the obligatory “happy new year” blog post. Yay for 2012! Actually, whatever 2012. Am I the only one not really that excited about this coming year? I’m excited about certain things that are planned to happen in the coming months but with all the other annual stuff, the thought of facing another 365 days is a little tiring. 2011 was good. 2010 was good, too. So was 2009. So I expected 2012 will be equally good.

(As my luck has it, my house will explode and/or all my limbs will fall off as soon as this post goes up.)

I’m also catching up from the previous year by finally uploading my photos from our trip to Mammoth Lakes this past summer. Yes, summer. I’m so lazy. Here we are at the top of Mammoth mountain, over 11,000 feet above sea level! This was a couple days after I got altitude sickness and puked in a flower patch after a not-so-rigorous hike. Check out what happened on top of the mountain below!

Finding the perfect spot to pose.

Say cheese!

Say “TAKE THAT, YOU JERK!”

Say WINNER!

And that was why 2011 was good.

Okay, so I saw a picture of my butt recently and it made me really sad. I mean, I think I look fine sideways but when it comes to a full frontal (or full butt view), my heart fills with despair knowing how much food I’ve consumed over the past holiday (starting with right after Thanksgiving because on the actual Thanksgiving day, I was hanging out in the ER while NOT eating food). Things I’ve eaten in the past week for Christmas include: pasta, pumpkin bread, cinnamon buns, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, chocolate, licorice, cookies, cookies, cookies, pickles, hamburgers and way too many burritos.

So here’s my first New Year’s Resolution: climb the Prospect Walk stairs (or whatever they’re called) in our neighborhood at least once a week. There are at least 3 sets of them up and down Franklin Hills, which means the neighborhood has given me my very own (free) gym.

They remind me of those super steep and narrow stairs they have in almost every temple in Japan. Maybe that’s how monks stay in shape. Are there monks in temples? I don’t know.

I’ve been noticing a strange thing happening this past year: the tenuous relationship between memory and friendship.

I like to think I have a relatively good memory, both short term and long term. I can recall birthdays, conversations, stories and people. I always forget where I left my keys but I can tell you which rides we rode and in what order on our last trip to Disneyland. I remember who said what, not in the sense of being anal and tracking down everything that happened in my life so far, but just a distinct understanding of what happened when. It’s not that hard. I thought most people, including friends, were like this. But there’s been a recent occurrence–or perhaps I’ve only recently come across it–where what I thought (and knew) what happened is not what other people remember. And it drives me insane.

For me, it happens in two different ways: a friend’s lack of memory over something that I know happened between us. I’ve seen this happen so many times, where someone will repeat a story, a comment, an offer, and even an entire conversation, all of which had happened before, whether it was a week ago, two months ago or even a year ago. Most of the times, especially in a group setting, I can live with this. People’s memories work in different cycles and if they feel the need to rehash an old argument or recollection, that’s fine. I’ll just smile along. But what do you do when it’s between two people and you can swear on your life that you’ve already discussed this before? Does the other person honestly not remember? Is the deja-vu feeling (“Hey, this all sounds really, really familiar…and I wonder why?”) never triggered? On my part, I wonder if something that happened between us before was not relevant enough for to be remembered. I don’t take offense from this; I’m just flabbergasted that things can be repeated without complaint.

I’m not talking about expectations of friends to remember details (like names and occupations because honestly, who has time to remember little things like that?) but entire conversations spoken as if new. I know how to handle them politely but the end result is always the same: I’m baffled that this continues to happen.

The other thing that has happened to me way too many times is another person’s re-appropriation of my actions, my stories, and my thoughts. This is the thing that makes me feel like I’m going crazy. I’ll have conversations with someone that will flow in a certain direction where I say and do certain things…and then maybe a week later, that someone will tell me something along the same lines, but turn things around. They say and did certain things that I know I actually said and did to/with them. How does a brain even work like that? Is it just bad memory skills (“Oh, this happened but how? It must have been me.”) or a complete disregard or self-involvement (“Oh, this happened but it was me.”). Example: a man tells a girl that he needs new dry-cleaners so the girl looks up services for him, finds a local place called XX and sends him the information. Man thanks her. Later, man tells girl that he found a new dry cleaning service, they’re great and the place is called XX. What?

I don’t know if anyone else has gone through it, but it’s really the oddest experience of sitting with someone and hearing things come out of their mouths, all of which you know you actually did.

Then there’s the weird experience of a friend recalling a memory that never happened. You sit with someone and they reminisce a shared event but mention details and actions that you know, because you really remember it, that never, ever, ever took place. It’s less annoying; rather, it gives me hope that aliens are among us and yes, parallel universes do exist and occasionally overlap. But it still drives me crazy.

Wouldn’t it drive you crazy? If something you distinctly remember (and can retrace your steps–except when it comes to finding out where I last left my car keys–or words or dialogue) is not something that someone else says happened? It’s like the hard, cold reality that you know is not the same hard, cold reality that another human lives in. Undeniable facts are (in fact) deniable.

It makes me want to write everything down, action by action. Of course, recalling action and the written word is always subjective. How I perceive things to happen is not exactly how someone else would perceive happened. A man speaks to a girl, who becomes insulted by what he’s saying. The man remembers saying something fine and the girl remembers the man saying something rude. Whose memory is correct?

There’s really no way to tell but I need some justification out there in the universe that I’m not crazy and that at least 85% of what I remember is correct. That when a man drives a woman to her apartment after a date but the woman remembers walking home that night, that the woman is batshit crazy. Right?

Then again, writing everything down sounds like a big waste of time. Just like blogging.

PS. I wrote this all down so I can remember I had this whole thought process before so when it happens to me again, I know I’m not crazy about this one thing.

I think most of you know, but B and I were on an episode of Secrets from a Stylist on HGTV earlier this year where we totally lucked out and had our guest room made over by the one and only Emily Henderson. I was too lazy and busy (lasy? buzy?) to write about it but since the year is wrapping up, I decided to get it all down.

B was hesitant at first to appear on camera but everything fell into place and you’d have to be insane to turn down a free offer to change over what used to be an eyesore room in the house. All we had to do was have shoot for two days and hand over our house key while we went out our daily lives. It was a little nerve-wracking to leave our house behind but the whole crew was awesome and nice that it was like having a bunch of friends hang out there while we…weren’t allowed to come home. Or something like that?

Our guest room, which was styled as “graphic novel antique geek chic” by Emily, turned out absolutely amazing. Seriously. We were a little worried that the whole look was going to go into the comic book/video game feel with bright colors and everything, but Emily had the magical touch of making things look vintage, classy and artistic. The wallpaper totally matches Brandon’s art and I finally had the lawyer bookcase that I’ve been drooling over since, well, forever.

The rest of the house now looks totally crappy, messy and disorganized now. It’s also nice to have a room that I can sleep in the next time I get really mad at B for playing too much Skyrim. (Just kidding. It’s the room he’s going to sleep in when I start snoring too loudly.) Amazing photos of the room are on Emily’s blog.

The room still looks like this now, except for one small change: we moved the drum set out and my antique desk back in the corner so I could have a little “study” to do my schoolwork. I now have a wallpaper audience watching over my shoulder to make sure some writing gets done.

The full episode is now online! I tried to embed it a long time ago but it wouldn’t work–and now it seems to be all swell! Enjoy. Ignore my pancake face.

PS. Now all I have to do is  be a disgruntled hair model in Tabatha’s Salon Takeover and my life will be complete.