"You're both weird."

There are so many random things I could blog about, since I haven't posted for the last week. Here's basically what's been going on, though, in a nutshell:

• I've been hacking and coughing pretty badly for the last few days and have had trouble sleeping because of it, but things have been good at home and work despite this. I sound somewhat like a dude when I talk, and I'm totally sick of my honey lemon cough drops.
• I went to Pilates Sculpt on Friday and Pilates tonight, and was able to keep up with both and got good workouts. K-Dawg mentioned to me after today's class that, "We didn't do that much plank work tonight; I decided to change things up," and I feel grateful for that yet slightly guilty since I think she changed tonight's routine especially because I was there, and Mango mentioned that today's workout was easier than last week's. (I wasn't there last week.) However, I'm feeling a whole lot less meh about the Monday Pilates class, so I guess I was just feeling overly hormonal a couple of weeks ago.
• My bosses approved my original vacation request (yay!) and have confirmed that I will be returning to both of my sites next school year. We haven't booked our airline tickets down under yet, though, since the deal we wanted to book expired on April 30th, and my bosses approved my request on May 1st. Shweetie is holding off until another deal (hopefully) arises.
• We celebrated Mother's Day with Paw-Paw and my aunts on Saturday, and I got my first not-so-subtle hint from Paw-Paw that she's ready for me to start procreating ASAP. "Happy Mother's Day, Paw-Paw!" "Next year, maybe YOU!" "I don't think so."
• I celebrated the 5th annual National Ho Fon Day last Wednesday.

So, most of the past week's happenings should be pretty self-explanatory. However, the last item might warrant some explanation. Those of you who know me personally probably know that I'm weird. Hawk always says that Naan and I "are both weird," but Naan insists that I'm the weird one and she's just guilty by association. I'll let you be the judge of that. I'm not trying to say that I don't agree that I'm weird; I'm just saying that I think Naan is weird in her own right.

I don't even remember when exactly I became "Ho Fon," but I do admit that it was mostly my own fault. I was talking to Naan one night online, and I must have been punchy because I was making even more weird comments than normal. Naan kept responding with, "You freak of nature," and eventually shortened it to the acronym "You FON," which reminded me of the phonetic spelling of the Chinese word for "rice." When we were growing up, Hawk often cooked dinners with tasty sauces and gravies, and we would use it to flavor our rice. Hawk always referred to putting sauce over rice as "ho fon." So when Naan kept calling me "FON," I said, "Like ho fon? Sauce over rice?" This spawned a nickname that stuck, and I've been known as Ho Fon ever since.

We'll fast forward to a few months later. I was working at the District at the time, and I sat at the front desk, so I was in charge of receiving and distributing packages that arrived. It was Friday, April 30, 2004, and I was really busy when the UPS guy came in with a delivery. I let the packages sit there for a couple of hours and didn't even realize that one of them was a box of flowers. Mango came out to the front desk, pretending to be working, and noticed that the box of flowers was addressed to me. Eh? Who would be delivering me flowers and for what? I opened the box, and inside was a bouquet of beautiful tulips, along with a card from Naan that read, "Happy National Ho Fon Day!" Bear later told me that Naan had been eagerly anticipating this holiday for nearly a month, ever since she'd come up with the idea. It's been celebrated annually ever since and is commemorated on Naan's blog with posts like these: "Happy National Ho Fon Day! If you haven't done so already, please be sure to tell all the Ho Fons in your life how much they mean to you. And by all the Ho Fons, I mean the only Ho Fon."

So you tell me, is Naan really only weird by association? I seriously beg to differ.