{Monday Morning Therapy with Dongsaeng}

Welcome to Monday Morning Therapy with Dongsaeng...the place where we can help start our week off right with a little K therapy.

I have had about a million thousand hundred dozen 4 ideas on what to write about today.  I even started a post last week.  For some reason it didn't get saved (or else I was sabotaged by Unnie who didn't like what I wrote and mischievously deleted it...hmmmm).  I'm still kind of unsure even as I begin this what my topic will be, but seeing as how I have less than 2 hours before it is technically Monday morning for me (and a lot of you are already well into Monday by now) I should probably get writing.  We'll just see where this takes us, shall we?   

Oooh!  An adventure!

I thought about sharing a little bit about myself, since we're all still getting to know one another and all.  Unnie has been really great about chatting with a few of you and I love her to death for that.  See, as you will quickly come to realize, she's the extrovert and I, the hopeless introvert.  She's bubbly and fun and chatty.  I am quiet and shy and reclusive.  I'm one that finds chatting up anyone, be it family, friend or stranger, to be a bit daunting and terrifying.  As we go forward, I think this might be good for you to know so that hopefully you don't mistake my hiding in the shadows for being anti-social, unfriendly or uninvolved.  She and I chat about everything having to do with this little venture of ours.  I stay informed, I just kind of let her do most of the talking, at least as far as the social networking goes.  She's the official unofficial spokesperson.  She's just now finding this out right along with you as she reads this by the way ;)  She will probably argue, but, short of sabotaging my post, she's just going to have to accept it and move on.  It's a good thing we're such good friends or else I'd be in a lot of trouble, right Unnie?  :-P  Anyway, so that had been one of my 4 ideas - sharing a bit about myself - but that sounds really dull and boring, so I think I'll skip that.

Spring has come to this part of the world.  Of course, spring in my part of the world is probably closer to summer in most of yours.  We've already hit triple digits and are consistently in the mid-90s (about 35-40 degrees Celsius for those more metrically inclined).  It makes the Husband grouchy, but I have found that I mind it less and less each year.  One of the things I have been enjoying this spring are all of the flowering desert trees.

<<< This is one from my front yard.  It's a palo brea and I despise it and its sister tree which also resides in the yard.  These yellow flowers are its one saving grace, and the only reason, short of laziness and stubborn husband, that it remains in my yard all these years later.  You can't tell by the picture, but the trunk and branches are green in color.  It helps set off the vibrant yellow flowers and is quite beautiful right now.  My favorite part about it, and the reason I am sharing it here, is that it reminds me of cherry blossom trees, which as you have probably noticed, get a lot of air time in our lovely dramas.  I love the scenes where the white cherry blossoms fall like snow.  These blossoms from my palo brea also fall like snow, albeit yellow snow.  When a breeze blows they go flying, covering anything that is around, like the inside of my car if I have a door or window open as I back out of the driveway.  It's really pretty and trees like this are all over my neighborhood right now, so I am daily treated to yellow "snowfall" wherever I go.  It's simply delightful.

One more shot. This is a palo verde tree from the store parking lot I was at earlier today. The palo verde is the better looking cousin of my evil palo brea.  The flower are brighter and more pretty. The entire parking lot was filled with these trees and the blossoms were floating everywhere - it was purty so I stopped to take a pic to share.

Kia Tigers vs Nexen Heroes

Besides flowering trees, with spring also comes baseball's spring training season.  I live in a town that annually hosts the boys of summer every March.  This year was an extra special treat.  This year we had the opportunity to host baseball teams from Korea!!!  Chincha!!!  I was able to go to three games and it was absolutely incredible!  The stands were practically empty so we could sit wherever we wanted.  Thanks to my shyness and lack of cajones, I opted to stay a little further back.  I wish now in hindsight that I had been bolder so that I could have gotten better snapshots and heard more of the chatter from the field and dugouts.  As it was, I still got to get pretty close to the players and heard a lot of Korean.  It was awesome when I was able to understand some of what they were saying.  There was a whole lot of "hwaiting!"s out on the field.  My second game I attended all by my lonesome and felt really out of place and awkward, but I had a fun moment.  As I was passing a team that was sitting in the stands eating some lunch, I swear I heard a whole lot of "Noona!"s as I passed by.  I'm sure they were actually saying something different, but I like to live in my land of fantasy and no one can take that away from me.  Well, unless they were there and heard it and spoke Korean and told me what they had really been saying.  But until that happens, I'm going to pretend that a Korean baseball team called me Noona.

In another post once upon a time I mentioned that we had had a Lunar New Year celebration.  This is an annual event that my sister and sister-in-law put on for their friends.  Being a brand new raging Asia fangirl, I begged and pleaded with them to let me come this year.  They took pity on this ahjumma and let me tag along and crash their party.  It was so much fun!  My sister-in-law (the one in the blue cheongsam at the bottom of the stairs) has actually lived in China and Taiwan and speaks fluent Mandarin and can cook Chinese food like nobody's business.  I'm there, at the bottom of the stairs between my two sisters-in-law, wearing the pink and red hanbok and posing like the total dork that I am.  I bought that hanbok at Goodwill back in November for a whopping $18!  Can you believe it?!  What a deal, right?  What are the odds of finding a hanbok at a second-hand thrift store in a little suburban desert town?  It was fate, my hanbok and I.  We were just meant to be.  It was because I had the hanbok that I especially wanted to go to the party because when else was I going to get a chance to wear it?    It was a fabulous evening.  I won't bore you with details, I just wanted to share with you a picture of me wearing hanbok.  Oh, by the way, the infamous Ms Luckypants McGee is at the top of the stairs wearing red.  ;)

One other topic I had thought to write about was about how impressed I am with these K-performers, from the musicians to the actors.  These people work so incredibly hard at their craft.  Their work ethic is just amazing and inspiring to me.  Though I must say that it worries me when guys like Yoochun get in car accidents because the driver fell asleep because they are all only getting 2 hours of sleep a night while filming Rooftop Prince.  It makes me appreciate them all the more, knowing just how much effort they put into their job, but at the same time I worry about them.  As much as I love my dramas, it's certainly not worth risking the health of those involved in the project.  The thing that originally inspired my idea to talk about this topic was watching Big Bang on Inkigayo.  They would always sing the same two songs week after week.  And you know in between that they were doing plenty of other practices and performances as well.  One would expect it to grow stale after a while or for them to show signs of fatigue at the very least, but no, not these guys.  Every week was just as fun to watch as the very first week.  The performances were always changing, always fresh and always entertaining.  I know that this is not unique to Big Bang, they're just the ones that I watched religiously, week after week.  These performers all are just so impressive to me.

I enjoyed Big Bang's Inkigayo "farewell stage" on the 29th of April.  I LOVE and so much prefer the live version of these songs to the music video.  The version of 'boomshakalas' that they sing for example I think are just that much cooler than the music video and album track.  This particular performance was so fun too, like when Daesung and Seungri picked up GDragon and carried him and also the conga line at the end.

So, for our Monday Morning Therapy, I am prescribing a dose of Fantastic Baby.  Take as needed for any Monday Morning symptoms.

Now, I realize as your addicKtion therapist that some Monday mornings are harder to overcome than others.  Some have morphed and become 'superbugs' and one prescription might not be enough.  If you find yourself in this situation where a dose of Fantastic Baby just isn't enough to get you through the day, I can add on a supplement prescription for you.  Be warned though, this one, even though small in size, packs a powerful punch, so please take responsibly.  You may experience dizziness, faintness or an increased heart rate.  You may want to avoid driving or operating heavy machinery as well until the effects wear off.



Well, here we are, 3 minutes now from Monday and I still haven't nailed down a topic.  Guess I will just have to let it be for this week.  I hope you all have a Fantastic Monday!  Thank you for taking the time to join us here.  I know I speak for both Unnie and myself when I tell you just how much fun it is for us when you stop by.  We love knowing that we're not alone.  So to each of you, thank you!