just like heaven

it was frigid today in the nation's capital. i'm not sure if it really was any colder than any other day recently, but the gusts of wind certainly made me want to go home and snuggle up in bed. genuis that i am, i drove the 70 miles daily to work for the past 5 months during pretty mild weather. right when the spring-like winter came to an end, i also decided to start taking the metro and give my new car a break. i bought it in september and i have already put on 6100 miles on it.

anyway...

i'm a responsible adult of sorts now so i couldn't just play hookey and go to my nice, warm home. as i was walking into my building i decided to treat myself for my newfound maturity by buying myself hot cocoa. there's a little canteen in the concourse level on my work campus, so i popped in to buy a packet of swiss miss. to my dismay, they only sold hot chocolate through the kind of dispenser that spews out mediocre cappuccino. i'm a lazy bum though so instead of just walking ot the cafeteria, i asked someone if the cocoa was good. after hearing it was, i decided to give it a shot.

oh my sweet heaven.

it was the BEST hot cocoa i've ever tasted in my life and better than my homemade hot cocoa. it tasted like liquid chocolate. i'm not a diehard chocolate fan, but there are certain chocolate items that, if made well, will forever have my loyalty. this cocoa has joined the list.

it has surpasssed the frozen hot chocolate from serendipity. it's that good.

now i must know -- are there other hot chocolate (or frozen varieties) that i've been missing out on because i'm a beverage snob?

i'm so over it

over the past few months, i've come to realize that i expect too much from people. i guess it's too much to ask of your "friends" to come to you if they have a problem with you instead of talking behind your back to whomever will listen. it's apparently also presumptuous of me to think that if you apologize for something, a real friend would be willing to try to forgive you.

so far in 2007, my mantra has been: "i'm over it." i've had to deal with the near death of a parent, the continuing decline in health of another parent and the brush with death of one of my favorite uncles in the world. in the midst of all this, i'm trying to plan a future with pork chop, and the more i think about how i want our future to be, the more i realize that i don't want to be afflicted by all the drama i'm currently trying to ignore. is it too much to ask of people to just get on with their lives? i'm not sure why some people thrive on melodrama, because life is too short to be caught up in these stupid things. i'm over all the drama, all the back-stabbing, two-faced insincerity. i know what's important and these ""friends" aren't it.

i wish there was a clean cut off people who have long since been phoning in the friendship.

why the move?

a few reasons (please ignore the overuse of ellipses, run-on and incomplete sentences or parentheses):

1. creating a handle is hard! when i first created the previous blog and its identifying handle, i put these expectations on myself to write regularly and get back into my story-telling mode.. how else would i become an accomplished writer if i didn't practice? right...well that didn't turn out so well, did it? so here's to a fresh start...but i won't limit myself to what i'll allow myself to write about. with the hours i've been working and with the negative free time i have, i need a space to vent before i go insane!
2. i might start talking about work in vague terms, but i don't want to take the chance at getting dooced.
3. with my impending nuptials, my former nickname won't really apply. i haven't decided if i'll officially change my last name, but i will definitely allow everyone to call me by pork chop's last name. and so my current nickname, jt, by which many of my friends refer to me, will become inaccurate.
4. speaking of impending nuptials and work, i feel like i've entered an alternate universe...one that i never imagined becoming comfortable living in..it's called adulthood. i've become so much more grounded over the years (imagine how flighty i was before!) and i almost don't recognize the person i've become. at the risk of sounding incredibly cheesy, i'm trying to embrace this new person.
5. given all of the above, trying to think of a new handle was difficult. given that i've had all sorts of idiotic and juvenile aol screen names, email handles and instant messenger screen names that have haunted me to this day, i didn't want to be afflicted by anything silly. but how to stay true to my silly nature? then it came to me. and here's the story of how happy roy come into this world (literally)...

those who know me in the real or cyberworld likely realize that my first name is very common for malayalee (the sub-ethnic indian group from which my parents hail) Christian girls. as a child, i always struggled with my inability to "fit in" and yet my desire to be "different." the one area where i didn't experience this ambivalence was with regards to my given name...i hated that i knew so many girls with my name. i didn't feel like i "owned" it. (yes i was a lame child who took little things way too seriously...it comes with the territory of a child who was more comfortable with books and adults than she was with her peers). anyway...so one day, i was bemoaning the fact that i had such a common name to my parents. i inquired as to why they would name me as they did when they knew that there were so many girls older than me with the same name. well their response floored me and shut me up (which you'll come to realize is very difficult to do):

my mother patiently explained that i was named for my great-grandmother. my mother had a very difficult childhood and always experienced a sense of alienation from the rest of her family as a result. my great-grandmother is one of the few relatives she had for whom she felt unadulterated affection and loyalty. ok this answer calmed me a bit. it was when she continued with her explanation that i realized how grateful i should always be to my mother...

when i was born, my dad was so excited at the prospect of having a little girl to spoil silly. he had grand hopes for the type of personality i'd exhibit as an individual and he wanted to imbue that hope in the most obvious way possible -- my name. also, my family did not follow this tradition, but many malayalee children take the "first" name of their fathers as their surnames. so what would my name have been? HAPPY ROY. i kid you not. the irony of this is that despite my social awkwardness as a child, the one thing anyone who came across me would remark on was my effervescent and joyful personality...so while the name would have been rather appropriate, i doubt i would have relished introducing myself and enduring the puzzled reactions i'd see or hear in response.

anyway, happy roy has become my alter ego over the years. and so it only makes sense as i embark on this journey of self-realization (or some such crap...let's be serious, i'll probably talk about nonsense most of the time in this forum), that i embrace the person i would be today (if not for the fact that my mother refused to give me such a silly name, would be).

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this should be obvious given that i'm trying to establish some semblance of anonymity, but if you do know my real name, please don't use it here. if you are aware of my other nicknames that wouldn't divulge my real identity to the powers that be, feel free to use it. yes, i know i'm paranoid. but i'm a lawyer..we're taught to be that way.