I’m sure most of you know from my facebook that I was recently in a huge car accident two weeks ago.I was coming home from Kimmy’s going away party at a karaoke bar; actually I went to have a late dinner with a friend of mine after the party and it was around 1:30 AM when the accident happened. Here’s what happened:

I was driving through the intersection of McFadden and Fairview and at the last second, I spotted a truck through my peripheral vision. A white Toyota Tundra completely t-boned me on the driver side of my car. The car – my beautiful plum-colored 2008 Scion tC -  spun around about four times and finally stopped when I hit a pole on the passenger side. I’m fairly sure I didn’t actually just lose control of the car after the initial impact, but rather my car was forced into a spin by the other car, from the angle in which it hit me. Moments after my car finally stopped moving, someone called out to me and asked if I was okay. I couldn’t answer because I was more focused on the fact that I basically just became the filling in between a metal sandwich, with both sides of the car indented towards me. After a mental check of my physical condition, I answered that my left arm and leg seemed to be hurt, but I was generally unscathed. He informed me that he called 911 and that the police were on their way. Immediately, I grabbed my phone from the cup holder and dialed the last number on my log; which happened to be Dennis, the guy I’d just had dinner with. I told him what happened and he said he’d be there in a few minutes.

After being pulled out of my car from my sunroof, the medics led me to a red ambulance. I kind of wondered why it wasn’t white, like all the rest of the ambulances I’ve ever seen. As I climbed into the back of the ambulance, I spotted Dennis’ car and that’s when he started calling my phone, but I couldn’t find where I’d put it so I couldn’t pick it up.  The paramedics took my pressure and checked my pupils while I dug around in my bag to find my phone. After what I thought was a very cursory inspection of my physical well being, they asked if I’d like to be taken to the hospital. I told them I was no fool, and that I wasn’t about to be ran up $8,000 just for a ride to the hospital. I told them that I’d ask my friend to drive me there, hoping that would appease them. I was vaguely surprised they didn’t take me against my wishes, because when my sister got in an accident much less serious than mine a few years ago, they insisted on putting her in a neckbrace and rushing her to the hospital even though she wasn’t hurt.

Dennis finally found me and we took a look at the damage to my car (which I’d recently named ‘The Emancipation of Mimi’). Mimi no longer held the faintest resemblance to a car. The only thing I could say was “Fuck! Damn it!”

The police questioned me about what exactly happened, to which I explained that I simply didn’t know. The only thing I cold tell them was that I was driving along and the truck hit me. They asked me if I was drunk, and I said the only thing I’d drank all night was Coke (I quickly suffixed that with “-a Cola”). The ironic thing was that everyone at the bar had been trying to get me to do tequila shots all night, and I refused to get drunk in front of my coworkers, knowing I’d have to face them in the morning. Thank god for that.

After looking around at my surroundings, I finally determined that I was actually literally around the corner from my home, so I called my parents and they both came rushing to the scene of the accident. Then, after an awkward introduction between my parents and Dennis, my dad took me to the hospital. Somewhere along the line, I developed a limp and I became increasingly aware that my neck hurt a lot more than my arm, which had been my main concern after the accident happened. They took an xray of my left side and thankfully no bones were broken, but there was – and still is – some nasty bruising.

I got home from the hospital around 5:30 AM and started getting ready for work. It was weird because I’d felt like I’d just come home from work in the first place. I called one of my coworkers, Stela (who wasn’t at the party with us that night) around 7:00 and asked her to pick me up because I’d just totaled my own car. All of the sudden she started yelling “Shit! Shit, Chrissy! Shit!” Apparently she was under the impression that I’d been drunk driving. Wrong! I was completely sober!

So now, two weeks later, I’m still recovering. I was limping around the office for a few days, but I’m better now. I still have a massive bruise on my left thigh, and my neck still feels a little stiff, but at least I’m alive. Those side-impact airbags really saved my ass. My brother is selling me his car for $7,000 – another Scion tC, but a grey (“flint micah”) 2005 that’s kind of a ricer. It’s got blue neon lights in the interior that flick on and off to the beat of the music you’re playing, and an exhaust so loud it rivals only my mom’s thunderous snoring at night.

Honestly though, I’m saving a lot of money this way because I’m not paying $400 a month in car payments, and I don’t have to pay for full coverage insurance. And I just got a raise at work so it’s actually going to be a lot easier on me. Guess I can consider it a win-lose situation.

And Urban Watch & Co, the project I’ve been most proud of has finally launched. There’s still a few problems I need to address on the site though, so for now we’ll call it a soft-launch. This site will be really nice if you are looking for a great Christmas gift for a loved one; it’s located at www.urbanwatchco.com. I really owe a lot to Stela for helping me launch this damned thing… we really work well as a team, I think. I did all the frontend development and graphics, and she did all the backend development. This is the site that I really unloaded my entire arsenal of skills on… I learned a lot of javascript, and I also learned a lot about aspdotnetstorefront and xml packages. This is the second site that I’ve done from start to finish with Golden State… sadly my first site is still waiting to launch. I did manage to launch another website, Kaikea Entertainment, a couple months ago – it was the last site that I started and the first that I launched. Hopefully I can get Cornzapoppin and StockNod out in the next two weeks, and then I can start from a flesh slate. I already have some great clients lined up for 2009, some of which are:

• Johnny Was, a really big fashion design brand.
• Blue Fang Games, a company that makes video games for PC.
• Jamie Fontz, an all-american model.

And now for some non-work related stuff:

I watched Twilight tonight… I’m curious to see if the books are any better, so I bought the first two volumes. Quite honestly, I didn’t really enjoy the movie that much although the story had lots of potential. The dialogue was almost unbearable to sit through… they completely overdid the awkwardness and stuttering between words, in my opinion. I understand that both the main characters are awkward, especially with each other, and that each conversation is supposed to be really intense, but I wish they could get through one sentence without sounding like they forgot that there’s an entire range of emotions that don’t include angst and discomfort. For heaven’s sake, they didn’t even sound as if they really liked each other. So I’m going to start reading the books and see If I like it any better than the movie.

Which brings me to my next topic… I’ve been trying to make more time for my own hobbies lately, especially after my recent break up with Rick. I’m in need of some serious “me” time; I mean, I haven’t been single in almost three years. This means more reading, more anime, and more designing at my own leisure. Let’s see how long this lasts.

In any case, I’m back on the horse now. I didn’t expect to be, but I hung out with a friend/ex-coworker of mine last night… we had some drinks and well, one thing led to another. We went to see Role Models, which is a really funny movie, and then to a bar. We wound up at a Courtyard Marriott around 2:30 AM, and then got breakfast at IHOP around 6:30 AM. I got home around 8:00 this morning. I don’t know where we go from here, but I’m going to see him again later today.

On the work front, I have been really busy lately. I’m always busy, but things are really starting to get down to the wire. Last Thursday I stayed at work until 11:30 because some lady came that night and wanted a bunch of work done by the next morning. It was freaking brutal. And all my other projects seem to be launching at the same time, so it’s a lot of work. I’m gonna be glad once I push those sites out though; then I can start from a clean slate. I’m starting to get into javascript these days. I always knew it, but I just never used it a lot because my focus was really just graphics and html/css. But lately, I’ve just been tired of waiting for the developers to do things for me when I can do it faster with javascript… or to be more accurate: jQuery.

Anyway, I need to get up and run some errands – one being that I have to go pick up my belongings from Rick’s place today. Fun. Then I think I’ll go get a manicure.

I have been working at Golden State Communications for a couple weeks now, as a Designer and Project Manager and my impression of this Orange County web firm has been pretty great so far. The atmosphere is wicked laid back and the people are really nice, and they all have great senses of humor. We have some interesting clients, and I keep pretty busy during the week. We have this ping-pong table in the office and most of us spend a lot of time playing against each other. I personally suck at this game – but I get better as the days go by. One day I’ll finally destroy everyone at ping-pong!

Edit:// See photos from the Cornzapoppin Photoshoot!

My sister, Quynh, is back from Albania. She was in the Peace Corps and was there for two years, but now she’s back with my brother’s family in Texas. Apparently my other sister Marlene is there too, visiting. I wasn’t invited because I’m awesome. Actually, I’m going there in July for a huge family reunion, and then again for a much longer time to meet Brandon’s family, so my siblings know I can’t spare anymore vacation time for an impromptu visit to welcome Quynh back to civilization. She will be staying with me in June, anyway. She says she wants to visit me at work to make sure I’m actually working and not just goofin’ off. Heh.

As for the dailies – Honestly I’ve just been working all week. Since I’m making a steady income again, of course I’ve been shopping a lot during the weekend. I bought a really cute wallet from DSW, and some shirts from ANGL. And I got off my parent’s phone plan since they refuse to activate the internet. I need to receive emails on my phone for work and stuff, so I switched to Helio, and I got the Mysto phone, which is really slick. It should be arriving tomorrow. I’m keeping my old number so everyone should still be able to reach me. I’ve also seen a bunch of movies lately – Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Iron Man, What Happens in Vegas, and Chronicles of Narnia II. All of them were great flicks – this seems to be the season for the silver screen, because there have been some really cool movies out the past few weeks.

Well I live in a gated community, so you need a clicker to get in. For some reason, my father failed to tell me that he took my clicker out of my car. Why he felt the need to take it is beyond me. So I waited for about ten minutes to see if anyone else would be driving up to the gate soon and would open it themselves. It was too late. No one else was coming in or out. So I had to park the car down the street and run to my house and find my clicker, then run all the way back to my car and drive in. Pain in the ass!

Then i come home to find that the $97 I spent at the gas station two nights ago for a full tank of gas, my boyfriend’s beer and cigarettes (which the cashier failed to card me for AGAIN), and $50 cash back, was charged three times to my paypal account. I’d used my paypal debit card and the first attempt was declined. But then the second attempt went through. Yet it shows up on my statement three times so now I’m down to about $80 in my account. What the hell?! I hate using my card at the gas station because they always screw me over!

I’ve just sent both Joemar and Kathleen facebook messages explaining to them that I expect my $200 within the next week or else they would be hearing from either a court process server with a subpoena or my boyfriend. If I were them, I would hope for the process server because chances are that person won’t want to kick Joemar’s ass. And then I sent them a paypal invoice. Yes, despite the poll results, I opted not to rely on violence in order to get my money back. I also asked them why they’ve been avoiding Agiri when she’s done nothing to them.

Christmas is around the corner and I’ve set up my wishlist. It’s mostly clothes.