6 Heartbeat Radio

Last night, I went to a long-awaited concert with my cool friend Janina! I met her last quarter at Cal Poly. Unfortunately, she also graduated that quarter, so I'm glad to have spent some more time with her.

So I got picked up at around 5:30 PM and we headed out to the great city of San Francisco! We hit some traffic but still got to the city at a good time. We had Thai food for dinner at Thai House Express (wow, their website is cool...). I was about to order the usual Pad Thai until my friend told me to be adventurous and that I should try something new every time I go somewhere. So I ended up ordering "#41 Rad Na Yen Ta Fo." (I had to look that up.) It was pretty good! Good mix of seafood.

After dinner, we headed on over to the Great American Music Hall to watch Sondre Lerche. Wow. The venue was amazing. I really liked it. It's one of the smaller venues that I've been to for a show. It just means it's very intimate haha. I hope you get to go there! The show started at around 8:00 PM and we first saw Sylvie Lewis. I hadn't been able to listen to her before the show, but I was pleasantly surprised. She reminded me of Julie Delpy, when she sang in Before Sunset (another recommended movie, btw). Sylvie is very mellow and has really cute lyrics. Give her a listen also!

Sondre Lerche was then up next. His set was so awesome. It was just him and a guitar, just very pure. He debuted a couple of new songs, which hopefully he'll record in a full-length or a better quality EP. They sold a very rare and limited edition of an EP. appropriately named "Polaroid Pool Party EP" at the show. It came with a polaroid that they took during the day of the concert. The poster behind him is for a movie called Mister Lonely. Midway through his set, Sylvie Lewis came out and played a trio of duets, very lovely. =) I don't know what else to say. He is very charming. I wish I had gotten to meet him after the show! Really. I won't know when he'll come back to the States again, you know.. haha. But alas, my friend Janina had to drive all the way back to San Jose, and I was already out of the way for her. So I decided not to push it. But if I had, I would have a story behind this polaroid picture and a signature to go along with it!! haha.
To end the night, Janina took me to Bob's Donuts on Polk Street. She lived in San Francisco during her internship and this was one of the places they went to for late night donut runs. So good!! It's open 24 hours haha and it was really fun watching Bob make the donuts. They had quite an assortment! I should've taken pictures of it. I had a twisty chocolate-covered donut. It was SO light. It was amazing. haha. I wish I could just walk down there whenever. It'd be nice.

Here we are at Bob's Donuts, taking a picture because we hadn't taken one of us throughout the night. -_-

All in all, I had a very pleasant Tuesday evening experiencing the city in another different way. The concert was also something unlike any of the other shows that I've been to, from the crowd to the set to the venue. It's always fun to hang out with Janina! She always takes me to cool places to do different things. Who knew you could have fun during the middle of the week in between school/workdays?

5 Greetings from: South Lake Tahoe

Hi, everyone! It's been a while since I wrote, so I decided that I should update. I've been meaning to over the past week, but I've had much trouble trying to get out what I wanted to say without it being too personal. Let's just say I had quite a rollercoaster weekend. Everything is fine though.

A much needed vacation...
So my family and I are here in South Lake Tahoe at Heavenly. Wow, our room is sooo nice! It's a two-room condo-suite with a kitchen, a dining area, and a living room. I'll make sure to post up pictures later! It's so nice. I think my parents are thinking of coming back here for our Christmas vacation.

Well, we haven't done much yet. We only arrived yesterday night. I don't know how, but it took us forever to find the place. My parents insisted on following the faulty GPS system rather than simple directions, but that's alright. Today, we're planning on going to the Markleeville Hot Springs. I'm quite excited! I'm sure it'll be nice. I'm not sure what else is going on today.. Maybe bike riding? Maybe I'll learn how to ride a bike today! More to come later!

4 Donating blood

Today, I donated blood to the American Red Cross at work. This is the second time that I've donated and I don't know why I keep doing it. The first time was last year when they had a blood drive at my high school. This time around, my experience was better, but still about the same.

Going into the blood drive, I felt confident. I had eaten breakfast beforehand, but unfortunately failed to drink tons of water. Went downstairs with my coworker who asked me to donate with her. She was so nervous! but of course, I knew she was going to be fine. Everything was standard procedure... You're given some reading materials, asked a bunch of questions and then wait to get your blood drawn.

Getting my blood drawn was faster than I thought it was. Mine took 10 minutes and 11 seconds. I'm not sure how long it took me last time but this time felt faster. They had me squeezing a stress ball, which started to take a little bit more energy for me to do towards the end. My left hand was starting to feel cold haha. I got so anxious towards the end. One of the Red Cross guys, his name's Jim!, kept telling me I was almost done. I just wanted to get it over with. It was bad though, because I started focusing on the needle and it started to hurt. I didn't see the needle or my blood this time around, though, which is good. Afterwards, I got all dizzy again and needed to have cold towels on me. They felt so good! But it kind of took me a while to recover.

The nurses and staff were all so nice though! They were all kind of rotating around, so I got to meet a bunch of them... or at least know all of their names. It was so cool. I'm so proud of myself! I took myself a little bit out of my shell and started talking to Jim while I was sitting up. It was kind of awkward to just be sitting there all quiet while he was just standing, waiting for me to feel better. Haha. Of course, that was the only time I could really talk. I felt sick to my stomach the other times. I just started asking questions and got to know a little bit about him. I'm just excited! I never really talk to people, especially if I know I probably won't see them again, but it was a nice blip in time.

My battle wounds...

3 Once Again

He kind of reminds me of Hugh Laurie, minus the piercings. A few parts are not safe for children!! but very few.

2 Procrastination

The miracle isn't that I finished. . .
The miracle is that I had the courage to start.
-source unknown

Procrastination is most definitely something that I should work on this week... I admit I've been coming into work late for a few weeks now. Good thing I'm just an intern and no one really looks for me in the mornings.. I truly meant to wake up early (like I do everyday) and come into work early/on time. I knew I had a lot of work for me but it just didn't happen. *sigh* I wonder if I'll ever get back to waking up at 6:30 AM and be fine with it..

My crazy weekend...
I didn't get a chance to recap my weekend last night, but here we go.
Friday:

• had someone come out to me over the phone. Wow, it was crazy, but honestly, not surprising.. He explained to me this morning that he thinks he's actually bi, after spending the weekend with his girl crush/best friend. What's weird is he tries to get me to do something "romantic" with him again (he asked me to go to the movies earlier in the summer). Wow, he is really needy.. especially to ask me of all people.
• Hot Pot City with friends from Cal Poly! Ahh, I miss them. I was so happy to see them all again. =]
  

Saturday:

• Kuya Nick's birthday party! I came two hours late, but only after taking the car from my dad. Got there, got my food, and had to leave again to come home. Had to take my parents to pick up the other car. Went home, got picked up, and it was 8 PM by the time I got back to the party. Woo! It was fun though, just chilling. So many cute decorations and so much food! I definitely ate too much this weekend.
• Work party afterwards. Wow, I feel so bad for bringing my friends along... Everyone was pretty much gone and puking. My friend was nice enough to help out carrying this one guy out to his car though. Ugh. Don't want to do that again.. but I was glad to be out late at night. I wish I could do that more...

That's it for now.. Here's a funny comic that I found online, in celebration of the Olympics!

1 Hello, World!

Well, here's to the start of a new blog!

A brief introduction...
My name is Karina. Nice to meet you! Let's not waste time on small talk. You'll probably get to know me in time.
So I've started a new blog after seeing that my best friends <3 (Tiffo & Teresa) have started up one for themselves. I had a few blogs prior to this one but all have been discontinued for various reasons. Hopefully, I'll be able to update this one periodically. It'll be a nice way for others to see how I'm doing and also something that I'm doing for myself. As I've mentioned, I had a few blogs before and after taking a year-long break from writing anything, I realize that I really missed it and was going insane keeping everything inside my mind. I've also let a year of college go by, so I thought it was time to keep track so I could have something to look back on.
As you might've gathered, this blog will mostly be a personal one, recounting experiences and releasing thoughts. Of course, you'll occasionally have some fun reads about books, movies, etc. :)

About the name...
"No Kid Can Roar" is an anagram of my name. I'm horrible at making up names/titles/screen names. I didn't want to use my usual screen name. I also didn't want to use my real name. I thought it would be best to save that for professional purposes rather than personal ones. In case future employers or random stalkers decide to look me up on Google, they won't find anything that I wouldn't want them know about me. So I decided to look up anagrams of my name and this one sounded the coolest and at least makes some sense compared to the others.

That's it for now.. Check back later! I've had a pretty crazy weekend that I'm excited to recount.