it's beginning to look a lot like christmas; a misstep

it's less than a week until christmas now. if i had an advent calendar it would be almost all opened up. in fact, back in school i had an advent calendar one year that was filled with chocolates for each day. stupid me--i had it up on my room door and noticed that someone had started stealing the chocolate out of my calendar. i never figured out who it was but noticed that someone had opened up those little doors, taken out the chocolate and then shut them again only for me to find out about the lack of chocolate as i counted down to christmas. is that impish or what?

well tomorrow i'm headed up to the dc area for some christmas shopping and to get away for several days. yes i hope that i can acquire more shoes and some other stuff too. will try to update again after that but not sure if i'll have more entries before the end of the year. . . depends on how much time and privacy i get. i'll be at my parents house. looking forward to some r & r. i also hope to stop by this asian store called lotte up in the dc area. they have my favorite gum, not to mention a bunch of other asian things like candy and other traditional groceries. i love lotte gum and had seen it before but never had it until buying some at another awesome store, uwajimaya, back in july. if you haven't tried lotte gum, then try the green gum or the cool blue penguin gum. they also have it at this totally japanese shopping village/japanese ethnic grocery north of chicago (north of o'hare airport off of interstate 94), called yaohans. (sp?). what i know i won't be getting at the asian store is the garden durian wafers. i tried them after buying them at uwajimaya and they were DISGUSTING! NEVER EVER eat anything durian flavored! i was stupid enough to think they might taste like mangoes or something like that. the mango flavored wafers are quite good though.

OMG: i have made a misstep! i think i've unwittingly stumbled across the diary of someone i know of. i don't really *know* them but i just realized i recognized her name. YIKES! i can't go into details about it but now i'm feeling extremely awkward, like i've totally invaded someone's private space. how could i have done that? i didn't put 2 + 2 together when it should have been so obvious. their username is apparently also their real name and isn't an especially common name. somehow i failed to see it and was already on their diary and it was too late. i randomly started reading the diary buddy links of one of my favorites and lo and behold there i was on this individual's website. i have to admit it's an awesome and cute diary though and the setup is great and it's a good read, at least from browsing several entries plus the profile. i like the diary enough to want to stay and read it. but i don't know. i guess i feel awkward because i never, ever expected to come across the diary of anyone from real life--at least anyone whose writing i could potentially match a name or face with. because i haven't told a soul in real life (neither family nor friends) about my weblog, and because this is where i vent the thoughts that i don't freely share with others, i'd certainly feel awkard and vulnerable if someone--anyone-- happened to figure out my own real life identity. oh dear. my stomach is in knots. i'm going to end up making myself sick over this if i don't block it out of my mind. well i should just stop thinking about it. maybe it's no big deal after all. it's only someone i know OF, and don't actually know. and i'm reasonably sure they don't know me, though there's a chance they may know OF my name. what's done is done. honestly, i'm terribly panicked. how could this have happened? well i'll try to check in again. otherwise, g2g.