oh my

so painfully pretty.

nytimes magazine

full calendar, full life

i just double checked my calendar and a sense of dread hit my stomach -- not a single night free for myself? really??

and then i took a closer look. "dinner with mary." oh fun! and, "jenny's prenatal appt." i seriously can't wait for that. "breakfast with kierra." be still my heart, can we please do that right now?

and on and on. and that's when i realized, "full calendar, full life." and now i'm excited for the next 8 days!

video of joshua tree

i thought i'd share this short video of the drive through joshua tree with you -- this is just a raw video file, no music or anything, so I recommend watching it without sound (it has a blaring wind track because i filmed it with the windows open) and watching it in HD.

my goal is to take some of my footage from driving in all sorts of places (new york, wadi rum desert in jordan, flying overhead the colorado rockies, joshua tree) and putting it together in a fun video for you all. that's the goal, anyway!

for now, please enjoy :)


Driving Through Joshua Tree National Park from Jeannie Choi on Vimeo.

making dreams happen

sometimes i think about an event in the horizon and start to feel really tired. it's enough to make me want to give up, and a lot of times I do! I already have one big regret going into this year and it happened on new year's eve. Chris and I were coming home from dinner and he said, let's get in a cab, go down to the mall, and take a walk on new year's eve! But it made me tired thinking about it, so I said, naaah, let's just go to your apartment, watch internet tv, and eat snacks.

I REGRET THAT DECISION SO MUCH! I mean, we basically do that every regular old night of the week. But how fun would a walk on the mall have been? What a memory we could've made!

Instead, after watching some tv, I fell asleep on Chris's couch, and he had to wrestle me awake so we could watch the ball drop. LAME!

lesson learned, my friends. It's so important to put in some effort to make those memorable events happen -- to take that trip over the weekend; to change out of your jammies and go downtown when your friends call you out; to take a flight home to see your parents on a random weekend. in short, life is for the living!

one experience i will truly treasure is our family trip to Joshua Tree over the Christmas holiday. It's been a dream of mine to go to Joshua Tree national park, ever since I saw a photo of a Joshua Tree on U2's album cover. we made an attempt to go last year but it was raining so hard that we ended up in palm springs instead. i'm so glad we made the effort to try again. so so glad.

my sister is the words-with-friends king!

mama and sister looking fly

are they not the most stunning trees?

miss this girl every day

desert calm

uno the photog

mom on a rock overlooking the san andreas fault

me and dad down below

daddy surveying the fault line

aren't we cute? :)

thankful that my parents are so in love
after 30 years of marriage! what a blessing!

lesson learned: make the effort to make beautiful things happen.

dear jeannie, wtf?

dear jeannie,
what is up with the radio silence?
sincerely,
the concerned reader of your imagination

dear CROYI,
i have no idea! i think i lost my blogging mojo. but i'll do my best to start up again.
with regret (and hope),
jeannie