My face wasn't quite as swollen as I expected when time came to Skype with Chowon. Now getting ready for church. Mom and dad swear by this church, so I'm quite interested to see if the pastor is really all that.

Finished downloading Ghost in the Shell and Space Ghost C2C (box set 2??) and most of Inuyasha. After those are finished I'm gonna get all 9000 seasons of Dragon Ball Z (just the normal series, none of this GT whatever). While that's going, next on my list is: Perfect Blue, Ninja Scroll, Totoro, Karas: The Prophecy, and Sword of the Stranger.

I figure that'll give me plenty to do next semester in between classes. I might get Lost, too, now that I think about it....

Oh well, time to get going.

Probably won't be able to blog tonight. Just wasting time now before I go to the dentist.

Last night I talked to Chowon and she said she wanted to Skype tomorrow evening (usa time). I told her I wasn't so sure because my face would be super swollen. This morning, though I thought some more about it and the question came to me: can I overcome my pride to see her? Isn't that the root of the issue after all? Pride. We haven't seen each other in so long... a few moments seeing her will be well worth the embarrassment, and it isn't like my mom and dad won't be making fun of me the whole time my face is swollen anyway. They've started already.

I had a dream that Chowon's flight back to Korea was canceled due to another plane crashing nearby. When she came back through Security I could tell she was a bit scared so I ran over to give her a hug, but she had become very tall. I had to stand on a chair to hug her, but I did and after a moment she came back down to normal size./*haha seems like all my dreams about her have just been excuses to give her a hug*/

She's almost all I've been thinking about lately. I mean, of course I do all my daily stuff, and I've been studying the Bible better lately, but every time I have a moment my thoughts turn to her. I wonder... Its something many of us want, but it's hard to attain: that we would be that way about God. The thing is, though, even with people this infatuation won't last forever. Did I ever have it for God? Maybe with some self-examination I can reproduce the feeling.. I think it has to do with how there's a lot that I want to know about Chowon and about the way things will be. With God, there's lots I want to know too, but I've come to terms with the fact that he'll let me know when he feels like it and not a moment sooner. With Chowon, for example, I will know how our first meeting will play out as soon as we have it, and it looks like that will be in January. So until then I just have to be anxious. Is it normal to think about her that often?

"You don't know how many times I wanted to call you"

Tomorrow I get my wisdom teeth out, and this dentist wants to swap out a few of my fillings for some of a different material or something. Insurance pretty much covers it, so we're going for it. It's going to be an unpleasant experience.

Went to a couple parties with my mom's work friends today. They all seem like really nice people, and I think I did ok responding to them. Usually in positions like that I blank out because of all the people, but this time they just weren't talking about anything I cared about.

Jess and Dan and Steph and Gwen and Lainey are coming soon. I think that this apartment is big enough for all of us.

Using Ubuntu pretty exclusively lately. I'm thinking about removing windows from my Laptop altogether. Windows has a way of getting slower as time goes on, whether you install new software or not. My laptop just isn't cutting it. I think I'll try Skyping with Chowon in Linux once just to make sure it works, and then I'll begin the process of backing up my crap and removing Windows. The only thing I really used Windows exclusively for on this was Games, and since Windows is so slow now, That's been reduced just to pre-2004 games -- most of which I can use Dosbox or Wine for. Especially the ones that don't need a mouse, (like not Starcraft,) because playing mouse games on a netbook with no mouse sucks anyway. But now I have IDE's for both Java and C++ as well as 2D (supporting quadratic) and 3D graphing software on Ubuntu so I can even bring this to class and it will be useful. Next step: find something to deal with Matrices for me for Linear next semester. Maybe I can write something in Excel to do that....

Sometimes I wonder if I contact Chowon too much. I text her something like... 7/10 days... Idk, though. She's got a lot on her plate, and she's doing a lot of work just to come and see me. I want to make sure she doesn't forget that I appreciate it and that I'm thankful for her. Sometimes she makes it sound like she studies 14+ hours per day solid for days or weeks at a time. I know it's hard for her, and It makes me really really want to be there for her. I don't know what I'd do if I were there... Maybe just make her some tea and then get out of her way while she did work, or maybe make sure she took a break now and then so she didn't go crazy, or give her a shoulder massage to keep her relaxed, or go over flash cards, or maybe check some of her English work. I doubt I could grasp all of what she knows enough to be useful to her.

Hmm....It's about time for me to get to bed.

"Loves raisin cakes"

Day two back at home. Accidentally removed panels and all window manipulation from ubuntu on my laptop. Spent an exaggerated portion of the day fixing that. Finished fixing my parents computers -- should be faster than ever now.

Went to a live showing of Scrooge last night. It was really fun^^ Mom says one of the actors might be coming over for Christmas. After the show I got a call from Chowon^^ As always, it was good. She did well on the exam that she was worried about^^ I'm real proud of her.

I had a dream last night that she came to my school, and that for some reason Hyewon showed up while she was there. Hyewon was confused and angry with me over something, and despite my best efforts I couldn't reconcile with her. I guess I can't be on good terms with everyone at once. Half-way through the dream I realized that while I was trying to resolve the situation with Hyewon I was not with Chowon, and our precious time was ticking away. Chowon, perceiving my distractedness as disinterest, asked me what I thought about breaking up. In my dream, I hugged her tightly and apologized genuinely, and we didn't break up. The rest of the dream was a pleasant conversation between the two of us about nothing. I guess it's my nervousness manifesting itself to me. I'm happy for the reassurance at the end of the dream. Although I am nervous, I am confident in Chowon's ability to work with me at reaching mutual understandings.

Damien said he wants to room with me this semester. He's hinted at it many times before, but I have purposefully ignored the hints. I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with rooming with him, but I really like my current roommate, and as long as things are working out I'm a little afraid to change it.

"I am not a study machine."

Back at my parents' house. I seemed to have forgotten how cold they keep it here. They've installed all manner of sneaky software on their computers, and I'm cleaning it up as I write this.

Here's the issue they're having with the desktop I'm working on now: "It runs very well, and then the fan speeds up and makes a loud noise, and then it runs slowly until we restart it."
My instincts tell me that it's overheating and then running at half ("capacity??" half speed) or something like that as a self-defense thing. I reproduced the issue while keeping the performance monitor open. As it turns out, the processor usage was jumping to 100% about every 3 seconds. I switched to processes and found the thing that was causing it. Then I turned off the computer for a while, turned it back on, and killed the process that was using all the cpu. It was called "toolbar updater" or something like that. The issue has not occurred since, and I'm still waiting. If it doesn't happen, I'll figure out whatever that program is and get rid of it.

I'm all proud of myself. X) This was a pretty easy fix.

I sat next to this girl on the plane to here. She had a really winning smile and made fascinating conversation. In a nice way it really made me glad that I have Chowon, because I didn't have to wonder if I could ever be in a relationship with someone beautiful and fascinating.

LeTU spams my inbox with end-of-course evaluations, and if that isn't enough they spam me with confirmations when I finally finish the surveys.

"Welcome back!"

Finals are finished... Packing is basically finished...

Chowon says she won't be able to talk to me for a week due to finals which she has every day. She seemed pretty distracted by it when we talked. I wonder what thoughts are going through her head when she makes that look.... Maybe I will learn it, too.

I have a box of chocolates which my roommate has charged me with finishing. I don't think I can do it. I've eaten too much already and it's gonna make me break out.

....I don't want to leave this place right now. While tomorrow hasn't come, I have still seen Chowon recently... Going home means changing my schedule. I was only just getting into the full swing of my studies. I was only just recapturing this semester... Going home means the next stage in waiting to see Chowon.. I'm so nervous about it, and I don't want to wait any longer. Why do I have to change focus so often?

Next semester... I honestly don't see myself spending much time at the fraternity. What little free time I have, I have preferred to spend it as alone as possible these days. I'm ok spending time alone with my roommate and my girlfriend, but although I am close with many people I feel like talking to everyone else is work. I haven't decided where to draw the line with Damien yet. I like him, but in a pavlovian sense being around him makes me want to be alone.. and the way he interacts with Chowon makes me uncomfortable. Not uncomfortable enough to confront him yet, but close. I have sensed potential for severe cultural misunderstandings in some of his expressed plans for conversation with her -- and given that he doesn't know her at all, I don't think I like that he's planning conversations with her or that he feels the need to pop in every time I talk to her... hmmm... if he approaches the border between friendly and weird again I may have to ask him to be more "hands-off".

"Doesn't it sound sad?"

Finals week!!!!
Lots to do, lots to think about. I found a place for Chowon to stay. She'll be on campus for 5 days (10$ tot.) and then she'll be at a friend's house for 5 days (free).

Thinking about skipping the final for Circuits. I already missed the Monday one, but the other one is tomorrow. Other than that, I only have one final left, and it's for Data Structures. When finals are over, I hope to have my project in Data Structures done. Idk, though. It might still be buggy at that time.

I'll continue working on it now.

"If we're alone, then we're very alone."