Segregating Friends.

Yubo is such an amazing and likable guy that it's easy to see how all my friends get along so well with him and like hanging out with him.

I wish I was like that.

Yubo mentioned to me that his best friend Joe and his wife Kellie weren't too keen on not being invited to Yubo's birthday party.

Don't get me wrong. It's not that I don't like them or anything. I just tend to prejudge in certain situations. I do this with my customers (only notifying some about a sale or something), and even with my own friends (who to tell that I'm coming home or what not, middle school friends, choir friends, etc). In that way, I suppose you could say it was a deliberate exclusion.....

With Yubo's birthday, all I was thinking was that I wanted to give him a chance to game at home with friends. Thus, I invited friends that didn't necessarily have kids to deal with and would be able and willing to stay out late.

I also tend to separate Yubo's life into what has to do with me and what doesn't necessarily. Not to sound rude, but I tend to feel that Joe and his family don't have a whole lot to do with me. This also applies to the life and friends that Yubo had before he met me. I kind of keep myself as an outsider when it comes to that part of Yubo's life. I'm not as sociable as Yubo is, so I can't integrate myself into his circle of friends like he can do with mine. With Joe specifically, I am convinced that he maintains a negative opinion of me, so in my head I'm making things easier by limiting interactions.

Please note, Joe has been the bigger person and has tried including me with his invitations to Yubo for hanging out at their house and bbq's and what not. Unfortunately, I usually can't bring myself to try to be there and get over the discomfort I have around him. I wanna say that living together has really gotten in the way of any really positive relationship we could have. Or, you know, this really could all be one-sided (on my side) and there really isn't a problem.

Now, had I just planned a simple dinner out like we've done before, I probably would have opted to just have dinner with Joe, Kellie, their kids, along with possibly Eric, Cara, and their little Brooklyn -- then I probably wouldn't have invited who I did for the gaming. So I invite by situation, and I'm realizing that isn't really fair at all.

I'm concerned that I really offended them, even though I really didn't mean to. Yubo told me that it wasn't as huge a deal as I thought it was -- he said they wouldn't really have been able to come over anyway, especially because Gavin (their son) is deathly allergic to cats. But that doesn't change the fact that I did neglect that his best friend (and family) might have wanted to be a part of his birthday celebration. :/

Name Change.

I've really been putting off legally changing my last name. Well, with Yubo's birthday came the expiration of his license. So we went off to the DMV yesterday to renew his license and get all the changes done to mine.

So I have officially begun the process of changing my name.

I have to order another copy or two of the official certificate or whatever because I have to mail in for a new SS card and my passport. I don't want to wait for them to mail it back to me, if they actually would mail it back.

Tomorrow I will see if I can order new bank cards, and contact whatever other companies I need to that might not require an official document to be mailed to them.

Ugh! What a hassle! Makes me wish I was ok with just keeping my name......

Yubo's Birthday.

Yikes. It's been a while since my last post. But nothing very eventful happened in that time.

Yubo turned 29 two days ago. Whenever I asked him what he wanted or what he wanted to do, he wouldn't give me any good answer. So I took it upon myself to do something fun for his last year in his 20's.

I really wanted to bake a cake for him -- more specifically, my chocolate kahlua cake. But I knew a cake would be too much for just the two of us, so I figured it'd be good to have friends over. A good excuse to have friends over for Yubo is..... GAMING. So I invited friends that I thought would be able to come and knew would want to play.

But first, the cake. I was so excited that I wanted to make it in time for him to have a slice right when it became his birthday. That didn't work out too well, and we ended up staying awake waaaay too long. But I did complete the cake:


We were so tired that we ended up missing church. So instead, we went out to a nice breakfast at a place in Seattle called Kona Kitchen.


When we got home, I finally framed our marriage certificate and put it on the wall. It didn't last very long up because I didn't use the supporting strips, but now hopefully it's up more securely.


Then I got to more baking. I got a box of Tastefully Simple Pumpkin Bread for Yubo, so I thought this would be a good occasion to finally make it and not have leftover bread, since I don't eat pumpkin anything.



It's good that Yubo gets along so well with the friends I've made up here. Albert and Musashi, who worked with me at Fry's, and Albert's gf came. Also, Andrew, who was in Yubo's small group from church retreat, was able to make it.

Albert brought his TV, XBox360, and some games. Setting things up was a little fussy. But it got done and gaming on two large televisions in our living room commenced.


People were still a little hungry, and although Yubo bought three large bags of Chex Mix, we opted for Tastefully Simple Cinnamon Muffin Melts. So yummy! Must get another box (or two, or five).


We ended up going out to buy another XBox controller (because we only have one since I never cared to play any XBox games) and Call of Duty: Black Ops. This enabled all four guys to play together.


Finally, it was getting late, so we ended the night with cake.


Yubo seemed to have a really good night, and I was so happy that he finally was able to game with guys that love gaming as much as he does. I also liked that he was playing with friends, and not strange people over the internet.

Overall, a successful 29th birthday.