Last Friday, I decided to play hooky from work so I could spend the day with Hongyun. She had just come off of a grueling study schedule that culminated in a midterm last Thursday. We had a great night out on Thursday for the first time in a long long time. We headed to San Francisco on a whim and boom...found ourselves at Ghiradelli Square having some wtf-did- they-put-in-this- thing-it's-way-too- sweet mint-chocolate fudge sundae creation. Then we headed over to Scott's house just to catch up and shoot the shiz. On the way home in the middle of the night (like midnight), there was an epic traffic jam that we sat through...you had to be there. The approach to the Bay Bridge was closed off and all of the traffic was diverted on to city streets. It took us about 30 minutes to go about 1/2 a mile. Spectacular. At least we saw a flipped over car on the bridge...fun.

Friday, we thought perhaps we'd go out somewhere and that it would be a day full of awesome, but it was not. Friday turned out to be a morning where Hongyun fought with her mom (who is staying with us) and it was anti-awesome. I don't really remember what the fight was all about, but it was not fun. The afternoon wasn't bad since we went for a little bit of driving to get out of the house. We drove around the hills of Ber-ke-lie where the rich folk hang out. It's a nice place filled with gigantic houses that I would feel spooked out to live in.

So, we rebooted and figured Saturday would be our first full day of awesome. Ok, here we go…awesome will rain down on us. Saturday, we went to buy a $1 pumpkin at the village pumpkin sale. So far so good. Then we headed to a digital video lab where Hongyun learned the finer points of Maya while I caught up on the plight of rural Haitians and the AIDS epidemic in the face of the structural violence in place there--I really get into these sort of socio-economic issues, but I'm really more interested in the way technology is changing how people interact and communicate. Then we went costume hunting which was really fun. That night, when we got home, Hongyun's mom told us that her dad had not returned home from school yet. He was supposed to be back around noon, but it was already 6pm or so. Uh-oh. We decided to go check out the school…nope, buttoned up tight and not a soul in sight. Hmmm…we called the hospital to make sure a random old Asian John Doe did not check in and they assured us no one by that description had checked in. Hmmm…we decided to grab a photo of him and walk over to the Albany PD to see if they can send out the hounds and figure out his whereabouts. As we approached the PD, we saw him walking down the street. Turns out he was "watching a movie." For six hours. Without calling or anything. That night, another fight ensued. I asked him directly where he went for the six hours and he just started rambling about his English class and some stuff about local versus national language. Something was definitely wrong in my mind. Anyway, I didn’t appreciate being lied to (not his first time either). Hongyun and I have been going back and forth about the whole green card issue for them and I think this episode solidified our decision to not offer her parents green cards. We just collectively realized that having her folks here is more of a liability on our sanity than anything else. Everything they thought they would be able to do hasn't really materialized. I think they thought they'd be able to come here, make some money on the side and help us save for a down payment on the house, among other things. So far, that hasn't really worked out. About the only thing that has worked out is the garden, for which I'm grateful for her mother's help on. Anyway, we realized they really have never functioned well as a unit and adding us to the mix really brings a great deal of stress to Hongyun and really saps her energy fast. Of course, this sucked the awesomeness right out of our day and everything was just bad for the night. Hongyun's mom was distraught, but realized that it really wasn’t right of them to bring this sort of non-awesomeness to us. She and her husband have some deep, long-standing cruft they need to work through and they realized they needed to do it at home.

On Sunday morning, we woke up to find that both of her parents were not home. My first thought was "oh no, not again." When they got home, her dad said that he had to go tell some buddies at the school that he wasn’t going out to the "island" with them. He said they were going to take him for free to an "island." At first, Hongyun's mom corroborated the story, but eventually, when her husband wasn't around, she said that her husband had met up with two women and that one of them was all over him. She thought that the woman who was on his arm was a spy from Taiwan trying to get information about the Cultural Revolution from him. WTF? I think that is just some sort of story he fed to her and that she was trying to feed to us to make it seem like things are ok and that her husband is just an innocent pawn in a masterful spy game, but c'mon...seriously. I mean, my rabbit can come up with a better story than that.

So Sunday, Hongyun's mom invites us to have dinner out to show us there is no bad blood about the whole green card thing. I thought to myself... this is going to absolutely suck. And you know what? The food (Asian Pearl in the 99 ranch plaza in Richmond) was actually very good. The rest of the atmosphere, however, was like a vat of anti-awesome poured all over us. Her parents just sat there quietly. Her dad didn't know that we had any clue of what happened. Her mom was noticeably distraught but trying not to cause a scene. Hongyun and I were just talking about the whole thing and thinking that it's basically a dead end to try and actually do anything about it (especially during the school year with Hongyun’s study schedule).

Ok, so our three day play-hooky-from-work extravaganza of sheer awesomeness turned into a 3-for-3 day crapfest of epic proportions except for the Thursday's nice time in the city, Friday's lifestyles of the rich and not-so-famous tour of the Berkeley hills, and our Saturday of costume shopping. The rest of the time was just a stressful, bad-blood-brooding calamity.

Man, I’m glad I’m back at work…wait…what?