Ok so this isn’t the first time that I’ve been away for a long stretch of time and come back to defend my indefensible ass with a slew of excuses, but this time, I really mean it when I say I’ll be blogging more regularly now and taking panda love to even danker corners of the web than ever before.

Ah, forget it, even I’m getting tired of this schtick. To be honest, a lot has been going on for pretty much the entire month of September, and while I simultaneously rub the 9 day Chinese National Holiday from my eyes and set my sights back on normality, it makes sense that this blog had to take a bit of a backseat. After all, I had to spend time getting my new apartment ready to be inhabitable, to then buy the necessary accoutrements to inhabit it myself, and then to bask in the new pad during most of the break. Most of this activity entailed actually leaving my computer and physically doing stuff, which is new to me, and has taken me a while to adjust.
Thank God vacation is now over and I’m back at my desk at work, mindlessly surfing away like I was created to do! And to my bosses who are reading this and deciding whether or not to keep me on the payroll…I kid, I kid.

So here are some highlights from the past few weeks when I neglected this site that, in hindsight, I would have blogged about had I the gumption or the initiative (or hell, someone to move my lazy-ass fingers over the keyboard):

- Went to my third Chinese wedding, and I think I’m really getting the hang of these things. First off, it is necessary at any one of these ceremonies to play as much Celine Dion in the background as possible. This includes when the guests are sitting down, when the couple is reading off their vows, and even when they are exchanging rings. Also, parents are of utmost
importance and have to be thanked for making everything in life possible for the young couple. Tokens of gratitude this time included back-massagers for the respective sets of parents. This wedding had both a bubble machine and a dry ice machine, so there was a lot to look at top to bottom. A lovely evening for a lovely couple, and suffice it to say that I will be fine sitting out my next handful of wedding invites unless they can top this past one in visual stimulation.

- My annoying habit of celebrating a noticeable weight loss by giving myself carte blanche to gorge on beer and fructose and beef fat has gotten the best of me again. And now, corporate services has just emailed out a notice saying that in addition to the two kinds of cookies we already get for free in the pantry, they’re adding two more varieties. So that’s four cookie flavors now that I can snatch up and cram into my mouth with abandon, and no one will stop me. My desk is now literally a crummy place to be.

- The furniture guys called up last week to tell me they were set on delivering the bedroom set the next day, “would someone be home? Oh, and by the way, one of the nightstands hasn’t been delivered yet, do you mind if you just deliver one tomorrow and its companion a few days later? Thanks for your patience.” So the delivery guys come, and I’m excited because I can actually move into my apartment since I have something to sleep on. Hold the phone, the mattress has been delayed as well. Someone forgot to mention it to me. I end up calling the furniture company again, and what do you know? I’ll have to wait four more days at the earliest before they can deliver the mattress. Which, of course, is perfectly fine since everyone knows that as long as you have the bed frame, the mattress doesn’t matter at all! Getting a little worried, I call the sofa people.

“Oh yes, we forgot to mention. You wanted a sofa with the recess on the right hand side, but we only have one on the left hand side. We’re sorry for the delay.” So I clenched my teeth and retorted, “So you’re telling me that the sofa that I ordered two weeks ago that you promised to deliver tomorrow…you won’t deliver?” To which she replied, “yes, we’re very sorry, but we can deliver the sofa that you didn’t want tomorrow if you really need it tomorrow.” Tomorrow being the day they committed to deliver it to begin with. “Oh, and to show you how sorry we feel we’ll throw in complimentary foot stool.” Did I get the foot stool if I agreed to take the sofa I didn’t want? “Yes, we will send that to you either way.” So the next day, dirty spots on it, and it’s also a vomit-inducing shade of peach whereas the sofa it’s supposed to be paired with is white. This causes the innocent lockmith who is standing next to me when the sofa is delivered to say out loud to me: “the colors don’t match, why on Earth would you buy such ugly shit?”

- I’ve finally gotten off my schneid and started buying DVD sets of TV shows. I burned through the first two seasons of “Lost” in about a week and a half, and I’m relieved the second season is wacky enough that I won’t obssess about keeping up with Season 3. And now, I’m in the midst of drowning in two shows that couldn’t be more antithetical to each other: HBO’s “The Wire” and Bravo’s “Project Runway.” I know I’m late to the game, since I’m on season 1 of both shows and Joe used to rave about “The Wire” back in ‘03. The show is unbelievable, though I have to admit to being swayed by all the critical love that the online guys that I read so much are lathering on it. I like “Project Runway” because it turns out I love watching grown men sew. It’s that simple.

- My Dodgers are out of the playoffs, my Detroit Lions are now 0-187, and all I have on TV are 60 Chinese channels, 30 of which show the same news program at 7 pm every night. But I’m happy because I stare at all of this stuff on a 42 inch LCD screen sitting on the floor of my living room. I also spent about 400 RMB too much on a DVD player because I thought it looked cute in white. No wonder I’m so into “Project Runway.”

- My new refrigerator freezes everything I put into it, including broccoli and milk and a huge pot of stew. This, even though I have it now turned as low as possible. Wait…maybe it should be as high as possible.

It’s 4:30 pm on my first day back from vacation, and things are finally beginning to make sense.