My dog (my mom’s dog, really), sweet as he is, doesn’t really have a lot of smarts or agility going for him. He can bark on command, sit up, stand on his hind legs, sit down and lie down when told (okay, not always when told, but most of the time). He’s in good company, though, since it would seem most dogs would fall to some degree or another into that category. But then there are others that do amazing things. Like the dog said to have dialed 911 when his owner had a stroke (or was it a heart attack?). And the dogs that can find people who are buried in avalanches. Or, this dog, Charlie, who can apparently drive (sort of). Okay, so Charlie can’t fairly be put into a category with those other dogs who save lives and do other amazing things. But hey, the dog’s got some talent, and surely he deserves some kind of credit for it.

Sometimes you come across cool things by complete happenstance.  Like a post on another blog that really gets you to thinking.  Like this one.  Fascinating.  Beyond the political, economic, and social implications (which I think should be pretty obvious), I find the following interesting: Washington is Turkey (Istanbul is also on my list of favorite cities), DC is another semi-autonomous-but-not-really city, Korea is still a big peninsula (though it’s unclear whether the author means the DPRK or the ROK, but I imagine the latter).  Hmmmm…

Today things were a little crazy in the petition-based visas section of the embassy. We had a rough morning, and then when the afternoon crowd came in, we realized it was going to be a rough day all around. You see, we don’t always know in advance who will be coming in for interviews, so sometimes we get surprised.

Like today, when the biggest star in all of Korea (and, say many Koreans, in all of Asia) came in for a visa interview. The name: Rain (I have to say, the guy’s got good taste in stage names, even if it is pronounced somewhere between “bee” and “pee” in the original Korean). He’s a big deal in Korea. A very, very big deal. And he’s beginning to be a big deal in the U.S. as well, even warranting extended mention on the Colbert Report.

One thing you learn pretty quickly when you’re in a rather homogeneous society like this one is that when something (or someone) is hot, they’re hot. Imagine, if you will, that it’s sometime around 1986, and pre-scandal Michael Jackson comes into a crowded room full of the general public and has to spend about an hour there. But imagine at the same time that the Michael Jackson in question not only has the superstar power, but is also the male version of Halle Berry (Brad Pitt?) - thought by everyone regardless of personal preference to be in the top 0.01 percent of the most completely gorgeous individuals ever to exist. Now imagine on top of all that that everyone agrees that he’s fabulous, and even the old folks love him because they think he’s a sweet boy. Got that image in your head? Got a firm idea of the noise and the din and the nervous energy and the twittering of excited young women?

With all that going on - on both sides of the interview windows - we’re trying to interview seventy-some people, plus all of Rain’s entourage (more than 40 of them). It was absolute madness. At one point, the din and twittering had gotten so bad that I literally had to leave the window in the middle of an interview and ask people to calm down. And if it was maddening to me, I can’t imagine what it must have been like for the star himself.

The moral of the story? If you really want a cushy and fun life, go for the “rich and not famous” angle instead of the “rich and famous” route that is usually so lauded. Because living in a constant state such as what I witnessed today couldn’t possibly be all that much fun.

I’m suffering from a serious bout of jet lag. This week I went from Seoul to DC (via San Francisco and Chicago) to Seattle and back to Seoul. I left on a Wednesday morning and came back on a Tuesday evening, but I only spent four and a half actual days anywhere I wanted to be. It was so worth it, though. The recap:

I escorted a 7-month-old baby girl to meet her new parents, allowing me to cut down significantly on the price of tickets (since I’m not independently wealthy, am not making extra money through hardship or danger pay differential, and am not generally allowed to work or claim any overtime, I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it back to the U.S. before the wedding without some kind of help). By now, she’s a resident of Kentucky (Kentuckian?). So there was me, on planes, with a 7-month-old baby girl who met her new parents in Chicago (the photo was taken at the end of the flight to Chicago, when both of us were totally exhausted, so she may look a little worse for wear, but she was fine, I promise).

When I got to DC, KG was there waiting for me (heartwarmingly, running down an up escalator), and I basically just fell exhausted into his arms, so happy and grateful and excited to see him, but unable to put a coherent thought together. I was semi-conscious for the cab ride home, talked to his mom and mine, and then I was completely out the moment my head hit the pillow. I don’t recommend staying awake for a 25-hour trip, most of which you’re responsible for another human being, after just a few hours of sleep the night before, but it got me to where I needed to go, so it was worth it.

During the two days in DC, I (we) managed to:

• find myself some shoes for the wedding (probably, at least - they didn’t have my size in stock so I’ve not actually purchased them yet),
• get together for a few quick hours with one of my very best friends and her husband and meet their beautiful baby girl (who, by the way, I’m completely head-over-heels in love with - photo below),
• pick out and order wedding invitations after meeting up with KG when he got off work the first day,
• go around together to a whole lot of jewelry stores, finally narrowing down our preferences enough that we think we’ve selected our wedding bands (though of course we’ve not bought them yet),
• put a (very) few ideas together for KG’s wedding attire,
• have a couple of very lovely and yummy meals out,
• spend some wonderful, comforting, all-too-brief quality time together with KG, just enjoying one another’s presence, savoring it really, both knowing we didn’t have much time together and trying to make the most of it.

Then I headed home to Seattle. You know when you’re a kid and you’ve been trying to put on a brave face but it’s been a stressful day and maybe the other kids have been picking on you, and you do alright until you see your mom and then you just dissolve into tears because you know that, whatever happens, everything will be okay now and you don’t have to stand alone? Yeah, like that. Minus the actual tears, ’cause that’s not really acceptable as an adult. It was so nice to see my mom and get to spend some time with her, but we were both feeling kind of short-changed because we didn’t get a lot of time together (this was definitely the overarching theme of the trip, unfortunately).

In the day and a half I had at home in Seattle, we (my mom and I):

• got my hair cut (finally - it needed it so badly)
• met with two bakeries about wedding cakes, picked one and the decorations and the flavors of the cake
• met with the florist and talked about flowers (ooh, pretty) and other related decorative items for the wedding
• met the wedding officiant (a quick 20-minute thing)
• went to a fabric shop and looked (unsuccessfully) for components of what my mom will be making for me for the wedding
• stopped by the jewelry store where we bought my engagement ring from and asked them some questions about wedding bands and got my ring cleaned
• met with the jewelry designer who will be making hair accessories for me
• thoroughly enjoyed what amounted to a 2-hour-long private concert in our living room by the wonderful friend of my mom’s who will be playing the music for the ceremony
• visited the little park where the wedding will be held if it doesn’t rain
• did a quick registry shopping trip

So for all those who have been anxiously awaiting an update on the wedding plans and all the rest, there you have it. Things are starting to come together.

For those who have been annoyed (or grateful?) about my lack of blog posts recently, I will say this: we’re short-staffed at work, and as you can now see I’ve also been working on a lot of other stuff. It’s no excuse, I know, but perhaps it’s a little bit of an explanation.

On that note, I should probably be getting to bed. I’m hoping to have my internal clock back to Korea time by Monday (fingers crossed!).