For what it's worth...

I didn't tell the dd that I had made the rice pink until I actually served dinner. Oh my was she DELIGHTED. I grabbed her a plate and said "Sweetie I made the rice pink for dinner tonight" and she grabbed her stool and swung it around up to the kitchen island at the speed of light so she could see it in the rice cooker (plate wasn't good enough, she needed to see it 'full glory, in action'). And boy howdy was that kid thrilled with the results. If she wasn't already a rice lover before she sure is now. And Anna no, the hubby was not turned off in the slightest by the odd color of the rice, he was thought it was nifty. A whole new interesting world of opportunity.

Now for those of you who are wondering not everyone uses food coloring in a bottle to dye their onigiri, in fact Anna Maria was going home last night to make orange using carrot. She also makes purple using cabbage. Hell I don't think she even uses a rice cooker. Me, not being a white person, would never even consider using a pot to make rice, oh hell no. As far as I'm concerned, no rice cooker, no rice. Doesn't taste right to me, wrong consistency. And don't try and push that Uncle Ben's crap on me either, gahhh. I once read this review of a chinese food restaurant where the reviewer complained that the white rice was sticky. Errr, what? Hello, IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE STICKY MORON IT'S WHITE RICE. For the love of god where do they get these people. Ever try to eat Uncle Ben's with chop sticks? Try it sometime, and video tape it so a bunch of china men can watch. And laugh their asses off at whitey. An inherent trait of asian rice is it's sticky consistency, could you imagine trying to make sushi with out a sticky white rice? Amusing but not practical. Onigiri? Impossible. Anyway, the dyes, many use natural dyes as in the link I had used in yesterdays post. Me, I have a boat load of bottle dyes and a rice cooker that I was ready to hit the 'cook' button on. Hence the pink rice for dinner. Welcome to the good ol' US of A and the quicky method that pleased the kid immensely. That child's eyes lit up like it was Christmas...all because I made her rice pink.

Colored rice

I was making rice tonight and just happened to have a plethora of food coloring. Figured hey why don't I put a few drops in the water and see if I can't try the lazy version of coloring rice and see if it works. Sure enough, we have pink rice....





Yup, we're going to have all kinds of fun with this.

Bento box bonanza!

Once again my gf (Ponine in the link list to the right) has come through for me. In our hunt for a bento box and all of the accoutrement that go with it we have not been successful in the very least in finding a damn thing in San Antonio. Big surprise there! Ok, not really. So Anna went a hunting for us and found this adorable little box for our spoiled little wonder (on evilbay I think), lady bug themed, with a matching bag and chop sticks, all that fit together in said bag:





How stinkin' cute is that? We're keeping all this in hiding until the kid's birthday at the end if October, it's all hidden on top of the fridge but she spent most of the weekend at her grandmother's so I was able to pull it all down to take an inventory and photograph it all. You now get to have a schooling in Japanese soccer mom competition and what all these nifty little foreign things do. Now as I understand it many of these cool jobbies Anna Marie purchased at a Japanese dollar store that opened in San Diego after we moved away (the nerve!) which is probably a good thing. My dd loves the dollar section at Target and if there was one at an Asian cutsie store we'd be screwed and probably never get out of there.

I've pictured all of the items separated by use and I have a bento example so that you know what the hey howdy hell I'm talking about. Mind you I have not really the patience to make one of these lunches, it's the dh that wants to do this and hey, more power to him right? In Japan the moms go at this as a form of competition. And we wonder why they have the highest rate of suicide over there...I think some of these lunches take hours to prepare.




Lets start with the onigiri, little rice shapes. They are supposed to be savory rice balls but seemed to have mutated into some things more complex over the years. I prefer the sweeter versions but hey, I'm American and have very little Asian heritage and no Japanese in me whatsoever.



You can color the rice, shape it into a variety of shapes, put little things on the insides such as sweet meats or beans, etc. The ones we have are a little bear face and a little boy face. Eventually I think we'll get the little Hello Kitty face (must be ordered special from Japan because it's Sanrio i.e. licensed) and other cute shapes. Traditionally onigiri are triangular in shape and you make the shapes using your hands and saran wrap. Whatever, these things are being made by a dad here people, we're using plastic shapers to try and stave off insanity.



Next would be, hmmm the soy sauce bottles. Above are the little piggy, fishy and round shaped bottles (some of the piggies have wings). Not so sure how much we're going to indulge the child on this one. She's a soy sauce addict. As in, would you like some rice to go with that soy sauce dear? She's not allowed to pour her own soy sauce any more, it's that bad. She has no sense of soy sauce control, she ends up with a bit of rice in a bowl full of soy soup. Good thing she's at least got enough Asian blood in her to make her immune to the salt content. All you whities out there that swell up every time you go out for an Asian meal? Yeah we Asians don't have that problem, even us halvsies and apparently the little quarter that my dd has too. These cute bottles have animal heads on the tops, she's going to love them...





What's next? Ohh ok the separators, tooth picks, and the mayo boxes. They are simple so I'll do them all at once. We could not for the life of us figure out what the hell the mayo boxes were when we first looked at them, they look like little monkey heads (emphasis on little) but if you turn the package over there is a translation on the back that says mayo box. So yeah, it's for condiments. Strange but ok, I never thought of sending that little tiny amount of mayo in a container to school but it's cute! The separators (below) you'll recognize if you've ever eaten sushi, they are like the green fake grass they have on sushi trays but you can use them to separate anything in a lunch so they come in all shapes and colors. The tooth picks are self explanatory right? And reusable, I may have to get on the kid about that but they are cute so I may not. She does hoard cute things as it is.







And one last thing, because one must be neat, an apple with a wash cloth inside....





So for all you readers who for some odd reason wanted to know all about Bento, the shortened condensed version, there you go. If you want a little more detail feel free to pop on over to Ponine's blog, she's got more links. I don't bother listing them here, I just use her site cause I'm lazy like that....

iPhone sock

So I wanted something simple to put my iPhone in when I put it in my purse. It already has a hard case on it but with the glass face on it I knew it'd get scratched so the sock seemed like a nice simple alternative, until I saw the rip off price that I saw that they were charging for it. It's like $30 for a 5 pack, all different colors. First of all who needs 5? It's not like my iPhone needs to change clothes every day. Well unless I missed something and it actually came with AI, you never know these days. I figured I'd go onto Etsy or something and find some hand knitted alternative. I hadn't pulled the trigger yet (mostly because I don't have Paypal, ya'll remember that story right?) when I was out on my trip and stopped at Target. I was passing the dollar section, the one my dd so loves, and found these nifty little holiday baby mittens. For, you know, $1 a pair. That's 2, for a dollar. Yeah not 5 for $30. Low and behold the iPhone fit right in those little suckers. So you tell me, 2 for a $1 or 5 for $30? So I went and bought 3 whole pairs so I could, you know, beat the crap out of them at will. And I'm out 3 whole dollars, wow.

Preparing myself, like last time....

Remember last year? When I was actually able to hand make from scratch, all of my Christmas cards and get them all out on time even though I had a stroke on Thanksgiving and was hospitalized and then put in rehab etc? All during the holiday season? How inconvenient was that? Good thing I had already had the design picked out and everything pre cut out huh? So yeah, I got them all done and mailed out on time. Made a bunch of other people look like slackers doing that now didn't I? Yeah you slackers know who you are.

Now this year I didn't think I'd be that motivated. Nah, last year I used up all my motivation for at least the next three decades. Shit I figured I'd payed my dues, ya'll can't one up me on that one. Go ahead, I'd like to see you try. Nope, I wasn't even thinking about bothering this year.

But there was this sale. Yeah you know those sales? I needed to get this stamp...it's the kid's b-day and I need to make invites. I need the inside stamp for the invites. OK cool, it was there it was 50% off, nifty. But there were other stamps there too. And they were 50% off too. A few Christmas ones. One I even liked. Sparked some ideas. A nice simple design idea, one I could mass produce in a simple manner. Yeah, I could do that and hey, 50% off, ok. Ooooh and lookie, paper stacks are 50% off too! Yup, now I have all I need for all my Christmas cards. Well except for my motivation. I haven't scrapped in forever. I want to scrap, I originally started this blog for scrapping shhhh don't tell any of my readers cause I don't think they give a hoot about scrapping. When was the last time ya'll saw me post a scrapping post? Yeah it's been awhile. I still get a monthly package from Unity Stamps and let me tell you this last months was beautiful. I really need to ink those things up. There's this one fairy in it and this one tree, I might even use both in the Christmas card. I dunno, there are all kinds of possibilities for that set, it's gorgeous.

Regardless, I, for whatever reason, am doing it again this year. And it always drives me nuts. I will go crazy to get it all done. I will probably run out of some odd supply at the last minute, because I always do. But it will get done, because like everybody else in my family I am OCD. So if you want one of my lovely card creations this season (I love sending these things out) please email me your snail mail address. I'm serious people (Summer if you are in India this holiday season I don't have an addy for you out there and I don't care if you're practicing judaism or hindu or buddism) send me your addy and I will put you on my list. If you leave comments you've earned yourself a card.

Mortality

So I don't think about death all that often. It comes up on occasion, like last Thanksgiving when my brain decided to blow and I had that lovely aneurysm. Actually I didn't think all that much about my death then either, I was asleep for most of it. My friends and family had the pleasure (if you could call it that) of contemplating my death, I just kinda floated though it. Lucky me. Well maybe not so much. Recovery was not all that. Could have been way worse though so I won't bitch too much about it. Damn hospital beds were hell on the lower back. Anyway death, what I was getting to. Last week the dd came home talking about one of her classmate's mom. Apparently she died. Recently, like in the last 2 weeks. Now mind you these are 6-7 yr olds, all the parents are our age, mid thirties for the most part. You'll see the occasional pushing 40 and the rare late 20 early 30 but for the most part mid 30's. None of use are looking like they'd drop dead at a moments notice and yet...I did, practically at least, and so did this poor woman (no, I don't know the details). If my daughter wasn't there to go get her daddy or daddy wasn't home yeah, I'd have just dropped dead with the kid watching. Could you imagine that? That would have been a very unpleasant experience in my poor child's life.

So today's post is my current flash back on whoa, mid thirties, didn't know that it had such a high mortality rate. The dd has mentioned her classmate a few times, and has asked me a few times about the stroke she helped me through. I made sure she understood just how important a role she played in the event. I'm pretty sure she didn't realize or remember that it was that important a role. Those days were such a whirlwind of events and emotions, so many people and so much stress that the first 10 minutes of her interaction with me and getting daddy were swept right under the rug. She has now been reminded of that and goes over remembering how to dial 911. She can do it on her own I'm sure but I need to remember to go over it with her on occasion just in case. Disasters happen, must be prepared. If we can teach dogs to do it the kid can do it no problem.

Note to all of you out there, just because you are young-ish and healthy it doesn't mean you can't drop dead in an instant.
So on that note the next time you look at that piece of chocolate cake and think, nah I really shouldn't, do it. Screw the diet, you could be dead in the next 10 minutes, why die skinny?

I would be remiss

if I didn't offer a review of the books that I read on my trip. They were not spectacular works of literature to be sure. When I go on trips I like to read fluff, things to distract me from the fact that I tend to get airsick. Bus sick, car sick, motion sick when ever I get on anything that moves. Hell I can't even watch video games over the dh's shoulder when he plays on the computer. So when I travel I read easy books. Mind you the dh and I are readers. Serious readers. I can read 1000 word novel in a night. Paperback books can be read easily in the timespan when your average person watches a sitcom. I can read faster then the dh but he tends to retain more detail than I do, no great surprise there. We mostly read sci fi but I tend to lean more towards fiction than he does and sometimes I bore him into reading the occasional fiction novel. I had him listen to a book on cd once during a long drive we did and he (grudgingly) enjoyed it Lord John and the Private Matter. Funny though, he didn't like any of the other series that the author wrote. Whatever.

Anyway I read 2 books on the trip, the one I finished on the way there and I managed to finish on the first flight before the connecting flight and was mightily irritated because that was the shorter flight so I was bored senseless for the second, longer flight before arriving at SFO. The book was Sweet Life by Mia King, a story of a busy New York couple with a young daughter that have a chance to move to Hawaii and become an at home wife with a working husband and basically live the country life (they do have that in Hawaii). I know, many people don't know that Hawaii is not all city and beaches but there are cows and ranches and country there and not every one can deal with that kind of life. It is isolated in a way that country life on the main land is not. Isolated on an island, yeah that hella isolated. Especially for some high society busy business woman from New York City. What I love about it is that it showed a couple that was exactly what you would be horrified to be as parents, they had a kid, bought a nanny, and then passed the kid off and paid for every one else to take care of her while they lived their lives around her. How horrifying is that? OK I won't give up any more than that, it's a good book. It even has the heroine fall in love with a cute cowboy. There, a very well rounded book, no?

So the other one, now this author seems to be very prolific and popular and so I went with that since I had very little time to choose and was feeling lazy and didn't want to spend a bunch of time picking out a book. My bad. It was a good book, don't get me wrong, it was just a little too...deep? No, sad. It was sad. If you are a mom, or really an emotional parent, for the love of God don't read this book. It questions your parental choices. Well written but not a light read. Thoughtful, yes, what you want to think about, probably not. The book, My sisters Keeper by Jodi Picoult. Not a for the weak. I would like to read another of the author's books, one not so thought provoking maybe, one not so heavily weighted so that I may get a better idea of her writing style with out all the stressful undertones. Does that make sense?

So if you would like an opinion I would say read the first, if you feel the morbid need and can handle the little synopsis that the link sends you to, read the second. They are both great books. I won't let the hubby read the second, he'd get all upset. FWIW, I won't give away the ending of the second by telling ya'll this, the second book has a very sad sad ending that is a surprise ending. I didn't expect it but I saw it coming when it did come. She tried to make it subtle but when it said BMW I thought oh yeah I see what she's doing, nice twist. She's going to be all sick and ironic. Nice twisted woman.

If you're a parent stick with the first book, shine the second.

And on that note...

Yesterdays that is. Jamie posted her favorite Brad Paisley song on her blog, Just Another Day in Paradise (see link on the side bar) and I had to go look at it. Now of course I don't listen to country music so I'm not familiar with any of his other stuff so I didn't realize that his style was so, dare I say it, cute? Yeah I'd have to say cute. I suppose it makes him very popular with the ladies. I like it. It's still country but endearing. I may even venture to guess that some day I might make the leap and get a song or two of his on iTunes. It might give the dh the hives but he loves me, he'll get over it. Heh.

I don't watch MTV or music videos

and I don't listen to country music. It's just a fact of my life. MTV just started out when I was young, the videos were maybe interesting back then. In my preteens. Nowadays and maybe for the past 15 years they've all been just stupid so I've long since stopped watching them. Loong since.

And country music? Nope, I grew up in So Cal, we don't do country there. I mean if you drive like 45 minutes inland there's some cows and ranches and stuff but no one where I lived ever admitted it. Nope, we were all sun worshipers that lived and died by the ocean. The closest we ever got to large farm animals existed at the Del Mar race track and that was only because the race tack was, quite literally, on the ocean.

So why am I rambling on about this? As I sit here at home (because I flew in at 1 am and did not go into work today oh hell no) and lounge about on the couch and watch drool daytime tv I flipped past CMT. Oh they have some funny stuff on (I know I have mentioned this before). Anyway they have the top 20 music count down and for country it's not all that country (except Rehab, they're funny). Does that make sense? It just doesn't seem all that yee haw to me, maybe more cross over to me? More like pop country, country lite? I dunno, just not what I think when I think country, what the hell do I know. It's not like I'm a real Texan I don't even like iceberg lettuce salads. So here I sit between any shows of interest (because I can only handle so many episodes of A Baby Story) listening to country lite wondering how many hicks just can not stand CMT. Really they must hate this stuff. Meanwhile I've come to find that I think this one video/song is just adorable. Yeah I just used the word adorable to describe a country lite song. It's ok though, my readership is almost exclusively female and I happen to know the 3-4 male readership closely resemble metrosexuales and will get over it. The video? That would be Brad Paisely's Waitin on a Woman. It's cute, I like it. My dh think's I've been in Texas too long. He's probably right but that's ok. Like I said, I went back to Cali and it's too late, I'm not a city girl anymore, I'm not going back to that city life. I'll move to a city like Austin but I'm not going back to California. Nope, not gonna happen. I'm not saying I'm going to program a country radio station onto my cars radio either (cause I've heard the local ones and they give me nose bleeds) but I can handle the CMT country lite stuff, it's cute.

Home again home again jiggity jig

It is nice to be home. I have learned a few new things since I've been gone:

1. I am no longer a city girl which leads to
2. I no longer want to be a city girl. It was insanely evident to me after this trip. You could not pay me enough to move back into a city. That was just nasty, dirty, nasty, loud, unpleasant. I don't care how close the shops are. I'd rather drive 20-30 miles to get to something. It's totally worth the drive. As long as I stay out of the snow belt I'm golden.
3. San Francisco has a lot of Asian people in it. A LOT. And damn I can understand their English but really, just barely and only because my mom is not a native English speaker so I'm used to the jacked accent. 50+ years in America and she still hides behind her accent. Get her drunk though and her accent goes away. Go figure. She's a con artist of rare high talent.
4. California knows how to cook food. Their vegetables are cooked al dente, not boiled to disintegration and then slathered in buttered or oiled so much that you can no longer taste the flavor of the original vegetable. The grilled chicken is actually grilled and not dripping in oil and grease. Salad, salad is a bed of greens and those restaurants in California know that. Salad is not 1/4 of a head of iceberg lettuce, served whole, covered in a cup of ranch dressing and a pile of baco bits and cheese. Oh hell no that's not a salad but lets not say that in Texas right?

Still and all, not enough to get me to move back to California. There are jobs available for me there. But the housing, oh my God no I would never go back there. No for all the money in the world no. The traffic, gah, the traffic! All that I remember and more. No thanks, I'm good. I've got a beautiful home in a lovely quiet suburbia 10 miles from a great job and I don't have to get on a freeway to get there. I am 5 minutes from 3 malls, all new malls and hey, the price of housing out here is not astronomical. Yeah, there is not one part of me that has any desire whatsoever to go back to Cali. I'm not even sure if I really need to vacation there ever. Too much family back there....

I may be ungrateful but

Let me re-iterate what was mentioned in passing 2 posts ago, I loathe traveling. I know others, like Jas, who thrive off of it, and venture forth from there homes as often as they get the chance. I, on the other hand, am like fine linen. I just do not travel well. And my oh my, I now remember why I only take direct flights. After leaving San Antonio at 2:10 and arriving in San Francisco at 6:30 pacific time I was just not in the mood for sitting in the bus kiosk for the shuttle to make it's way back through rush hour traffic to the airport and truck me back down to south San Francisco to the hotel. In more rush hour traffic. And GAH! I had also forgotten that everyone here is from Asia and has a horrid accent and is almost completely incomprehensible. Nor can they drive....although sadly they still drive better than Texans, how sad is that?

So as I try and fall asleep to the sound of traffic, lord I forgot about that, oh how I missed that. Not. I didn't realize I had become a non city girl, wow, when did that happen!?!? You will, no doubt, see a few pros and cons pop up though out the blog in the next few days. I see a few things already that I love and hate about city living that I had forgotten. The dinner I had was over priced but way better than I have had in San Antonio. And hey, it's 7:50pm and gardener just started the weedwhacker outside? WTF? Yeah, ok, I remember this. Sheesh, it's time to take a shower and turn on the tv to drown out the noise. Would you believe the room came with a complimentary sleep cd to drown out noise? Yeah....city living so easily forgotten...

Apple makes some damn durable stuff...

So I lost the earphones for my iPhone last week. Couldn't find them for the life of me. A long long time ago, 1st gen, I bought a shuffle. It came with earphones and I found those and I have just been using them for the past week. BTW that old Shuffle melted itself when it was like 13 months old. Literally melted, the plastic warped and melted, not so durable. Strange. Anyway today I found that pair of lost earphones. They were very clean. Clean and dry, since by the time I found them it was when I opened the dryer door. They must have been in the pockets of one of my sets of scrubs. I never put anything in my pockets so consequently I never check them. Never say never right? So I left them sit for a day and tried them today, worked perfectly. Dang, either they are bomb proof or that German made front load washer and dryer really are that gentle yeah? So they are perfectly clean and functional now and for those of you out there that for some reason need to super clean you apple in ear head phones send them on over, my washer and dryer seem to do the trick just fine? Whoda thunk.

With a high of 69 degrees....

I will be leaving Monday for a work trip to Foster City. For those of you not familiar with all the small towns tucked into the insanely large sate of California that's basically part of South San Francisco. It's going to be hella cold compared to where I'm at right now. Basically low 60's in the day, low 50's at night. I lived in Marin County for several years in the early nineties so I'm quite familiar with the area and the weather. There's nothing quite like the the cold there, it's a real biting cold. I lived on the east coast and in the snow and even that cold isn't as cold as the Pacific Northwest. That ocean cold hurts!

As for why I have to go well it's training for the instrument I work with. Do I really need to go? No, but they want me to so I'm going. Unlike most people I know I absolutely hate traveling. I'm a homebody. I don't mind day trips but I prefer my own bed and my own shower and lounging on my own couch. I won't even have a rental car to cruise around The City in so there's not even that to look forward to. The class runs most of the day and once it's over I hop right on the plane and straight home so whatever. No, not much of a fun trip. I suppose if I was going somewhere fun that I'd never been it'd be different but it's Foster City. Eh. Central SF maybe that'd be better. San Francisco is a walkable city but Foster City is too far out so not so fun. Well lets hope I learn something in class and it's a productive trip in that aspect at least. I so hate traveling, it's such a pain.

How prepared are you? Estimated time of departure...

This coming of Ike got me to thinking, just how fast could we cut and run? We kinda have a motto, you're only paranoid of they aren't out to get you. And as far as the hubby is concerned they are. Who are they? Who knows, doesn't really matter I'm sure. But in terms of preparedness you'd be surprised, we're pretty damned prepared. In fact I don't think the dh even knows just how prepared we are. When we lived in San Diego we had the fires so it's not like we aren't familiar with natural disasters. You never know where they are going to come from.

So let's start with the cast of characters (things living in household): 2 adults, 1 kid, 3 dogs (2 large 1 small), 1 chinchilla (for those that don't know they are small too), 1 corn snake (small too, she's not full grown). I mention size for the sake of fitting all these boogars in 1 vehicle, it's a squeeze but it was done before and it can be done again.

I'm going on the assumption that the event is not so catastrophic that we'd take the animals, not like Red Dawn (I loved that movie back in the day) where we'd just grab the guns and get the hell out shooting. That's a whole different scenario that the dh can post on his blog. He knows where he's stashed all his piles of ammo, I haven't a clue where all that crap is at. Plus I can't lift those stupid metal cases of the big stuff, too damn heavy. Don't ask me why we have that shit either, go to his blog and ask him. Like I said, he still works on the "You're only paraniod if they're not out to get you." idea. Hence the big ass green metal boxes of ammo in the floor of my friggin pantry. Why? I dunno. Go ahead, tell me what strange inappropriate crap you have on the floor of your pantry.

So we have the cast now what we'd need to get out. All the bodys in the car. The 2 little ones need to be in boxes. Yeah need. to. be. in. boxes. Do you know how fast a chin can move? Do not find out the hard way. They go somewhere between the speed of sound and the speed of light. I have a cat carrying cage in the garage that snaps together. Not the stupid kind that uses screws that takes like 20 minutes to find the screws and 40 minutes to crew together. I hate those. So that's quick and easy. The chin takes 2 seconds to catch and deposit in the box. The snake has a plastic shoe box below it's cage that we use to feed it in that we can use to travel in. Check. We'd also probably drag it's light and cage along too since that's easily portable and takes very little room. Also next to the chin carrying cage in the garage is a freezer box to put ice in so we can bring frozen mice with us to feed the snake. She only eats once a week though so if we forget it's no biggie. The chin and dog food are all in 2 bags in the pantry, easily grabbed and thrown in the car. Plus their food bowls. Done.

That's it for the pets so I give them about 10 minutes. As for us I'd grab a bag, some clothes (a gf gave me a good suggestion, all the clothes you like are probably in your dirty clothes basket anyway, just grab that). The kid might have to suck it up at this pint but she'd get over it once she's told she'd get a huge shopping trip at grandmothers. We'd grab the 1 computer with the pictures hd, the laptop, the cell phones and the chargers. Probably he dh's asthma meds because he likes to breathe. My purse and then we'd be out.

30 minutes. I could get our asses out of here in 30 minutes or less if I screamed loud enough and the threat was bad enough. The dogs would be frazzled but they'd survive and I'd tell them to suck it up or I'd leave them there.

So what's you're estimated time of departure?

Beacuse Hurricanes are boring when they aren't hitting you

Yeah I know, you see the pity party flowing forth from me don't you? Really now though, I am the height of practicality. I got bored last night and bought an app for my iPhone. Did you know Spore is available for the iPhone? It's a nifty little thing, nothing exciting but I'm not all that into games anyway and I didn't want anything my kid or the hubby would get too into. They aren't to mess with the phone or I know them, they'll jack it all up and then I won't be able to answer any of my phone calls. You laugh but it's true, we are well known for killing phones, we go through the damn things like candy!

Sooo, this Spore thing, amoeba that grows by eating other smaller things and moving up the evolutionary scale. Very cute and works really well with the iPhone and moving it around. I like it. Plus it doesn't require any talent whatsoever and for a person like me who doesn't do video games at all that's kinda nice. Yeah, I'm a loser, I don't do video games, computer games, roller coaster rides, motorcycles, jet skis, skiing, snow boarding, bicycles, horseback riding, the list goes on. Tried it all too so don't get on my case about well you can't knock it until you've tried it because I have. I think I just have a fear of speed and a seriously bad case of vertigo, most of it makes me want to vomit. The dh and dd love all of it. Well the dd hasn't gotten old enough to try half of it but when she does I know she'll love it, she's a speed junkie just like her daddy. I hated it all by the time I was her age so I have faith that she'll love it all. I remember when she was 3 and she watched her daddy get on a roller coaster ride and she was all kinds of bent, cried like there was no tomorrow. She wasn't upset that he was on the ride, she was upset that he was on the ride and she wasn't. Yeah she does not have the same problems I have. Nope, she does not have my issues in that department.

I think I won't show her the game on the phone, I know she'll want to play with it and the phone is glass. I don't want anything dropped and I haven't got any screen protectors on it yet. The dh downloaded the app onto the iPhone so he's going to play it anyway, no keeping that from him. Plus he reads the blog....

The sky is falling!

Well actually it isn't. It's a beautiful bright and sunny day out but dang, I just love how everybody is having a panic attack over the coming of Hurricane Ike. Terribly amusing really. Let me give you an example, I work at a Diabetes Clinic and they are rescheduling all the afternoon appointments tomorrow and we are closing at 3pm. This is San Antonio, go look it up on a map. We are South Central Texas. All evacuees from the Texas East Coast are coming to here not evacuating out of here. Yeah sure we may get some rain and low laying areas may flood but come on people, close up shop? How lame is that? It's not like 6 feet of snow or something? OK so I'm from So Cal and I am not from some place that has 'weather'. At all. But I did spend 6 years on the east coast, I have lived in 'weather' before and I'm just not seeing it. Last year out here was the 100 year flood summer and it did not stop raining for 3 months. Very cool, lotsa water, lotsa flooding. It wasn't a hurricane but it was hella wet horizontal rain that you did not want to drive in that's for damn sure.

Now the coming of the end of the world that Ike is supposed to be? I dunno, I'm hoping that I am going to be proven right and that they are just blowing smoke out their collective asses. That is what Texans do on a regular basis, trust me on this one. They are a whole lot of talk and little to no action. Friggin huge hat enormous belt buckle retardo boot wearin never touched a bovine or equine in their entire live drug store wanna be cowboys. Yeah, ok so I'm critical but if you want smiley faces and lies and sugar coated happiness people ya'll know you've come to the wrong blog right? OK if you haven't figured that one out by now you're in for a fun one. Well then if they get it right and this hurricane is catastrophic in San Antonio I'm going to be extremely surprised. So what do you all think? Is Ike going to do anything other than cause a bit of rain to San Antonio? Not the coast of Texas I mean San Antonio. It's going to kick the coast's ass, lay some serious waste to it, no doubt in my mind. I had friends in San Diego that were supposed to fly into Houston this weekend and I thought that was just a real bad idea. Fortunately he canceled his plans today. Yeah flying into a city with a hurricane coming in oh so not a good idea.

So what do you eat for breakfast?

A discussion with my friend yesterday led to this thought process. Some of us don't have breakfast at all, I know, it's supposed to be the most important meal of the day, whatever. I remember a time I couldn't even think of food at that hour. I do eat breakfast, actually can't survive without it. The dh must have coffee, the rest is just fluff for him I think. I get stuck in ruts with what I eat, I'll have the same thing for weeks on end, right now it's my version of the Starbucks Vivanno. I was buying them on occasion but they are a rip off, what like $3.75? My God what a crime. Anyway my version probably has a calorie count that will bite me in the ass (or grow me a new one) and I don't really want to know but for those of you who want to know what the ingredients are:
Splash of milk
chocolate syrup
1 banana
1 scoop vanilla ice cream
1 tablespoon of peanut butter (I added this, Starbucks doesn't)
blend this in the blender
Add 5 or 6 ice cubes and blend

And if you can figure out the caloric content of this more power to ya. Now can you belive what Starbucks charges for this? I swear, the sharks...

So why is it that we went up to Austin again?

There was a real reason you know and it was not really hooping. No really there was. Our friend Danae (from way back int the day). Ok maybe not way back. Alright so lets so how that family tree works out, let me explain it with out drawing the family wreath and see if ya'll can keep up. If you can maybe I'll give away a pwnie, maybe not. So where doe Nae fit into the family wreath? In the beginning (ie jr high days, that would be in the 80's) there was the 4 boys, Jason, Dan, Vaughn, and Brennan, ooo I'm handing out names here people keep up cause I don't do it often. Now they didn't all meet at once but for the sake of you don't really give a hoot and neither do I there you go. They all basically ended up going to high school together (kinda) until Jas got his bicycle stolen (this is the same high school Georgina (see previous post) went to for those of you keeping track (kinda shady downtown high school). Mind you these boys went everywhere on their bikes, I was the only one with a car. Anyway, the family wreath. Jas decided he'd had it and transferred high schools, right into mine which is how I met the boys. And eventually ended up in the here and now married and with a kid but we'll get to that later. So then lets see at that point he was dating Cristine but after hs he broke up with her, joined the military and dated Brenda (not in that order?) who he then married, then divorced, in Florida where he was then stationed. He met Danae out there brought her back to San Diego, they got married and stayed in San Diego for many years after.

I came back to SD in 2000 after a 10 year absence. Jason came and got me when I called from Maryland after no one hearing from me for 10 years, I'm bad. I moved in with he and Nae and found a job and as fun as that was once I got on my feet what, 10 months later I did move out and whoops got pregnant within like 3 months. Ya'll keeping up here? This is like the quick life story here so keep up. First people I told were Jas and Nae. At 7am on a work morning. It was a rough morning. I didn't tell Brennan until later that day because I knew he wouldn't take it well. I'm not blogging that one because he'd have a fit so don't even bother asking. So let's see...Jas and Nae were still married at this point and on through my pregnancy where I refused to get married because I don't get married just because of pregnancies, marriage should be based on other things. They were our best man and matron of honor at our wedding when our daughter was 8 months old. Jas and Nae were divorced...maybe a year after that? I can't remember but it was not that long after.

Nae went back home after their divorce because she remarried a man that is from Florida and both their respective families are still in Florida. Now they are back with family and have 2 kids of their own, their newest was born 6 months ago and we just got to meet her last Sunday and that was the reason for the trip up to Austin. Well that and we wanted to see her, her son and her husband too. They come out once a year in September for her husband to do some computer-y on site work of some sort and stay with some friends of theirs that live in Austin. If you notice on the right side bar of links, that one that says Danae's mommy forum (it's a long story) that's the long story. See now aren't you glad you didn't ask? There was this other fertility forum she was a part of that was a pain in the rear that kicked people off and was mean and nasty so she made her own. That's why if you go to it you can't actually get into anything you have to register and get permission to get in. They don't have anything strange going on there, they just have to deal with the fact that they have post traumatic stress combined with pregnant or post partum women that are trying to escape from a nasty forum that kicked people off. It was, apparently , a very odd forum. Her forum, very normal.

But I digress, we were able to hang out with our dear friend this past weekend and see her new beautiful baby Lala. Oh and Brennan got to see cloth diapers in action (it's this new thing, yeah, this is the same woman who turned us all on to the mama pads. They kinda go hand in hand with the cloth diaper fad). He was impressed, or rather, less intimidated by the process.

Success!

We managed to do everything we planned to get done this weekend and find everything in Austin that we needed to find. This will spread out over a few posts since the dh was nice enough to take some photos. We didn't get any of the kid hooping (we suck) but we will be going back up to hoop again. The hooping was way fun, we managed to find the hooping group quite easily now that we got the right 5th St (south not east, totally different street). We met some of the coolest people ever, the group organizer, Georgina, happens to be a native San Diegan also and graduated from the same HS the dh did and grew up in one of the hood we lived in (AbNormal Heights). Cool hood. It's had sketchier days but is pretty well known now for it's artsy feel. You don't even want to know how much houses in that hood go for right now, it's criminal.

Back to the Austin trip and hooping (the first stop on the trip) though. After hooping we did lunch with the women we met. They had a multitude of suggestions, Austin does not suffer from the same lack of quality food places that San Antonio does, but we ended up joining them at Freddy's Place. What an awesome suggestion on Georgina's part. Oh my yes Awesome suggestion. It had a full size outdoor playground and even better a stage. One that eventually hosted this performer who had a juggling routine, 2 performing dogs, a performing macaw, ballon shapes, and if that wasn't enough, an accordion that he played Star Wars music on, check out the kid once the food came, lounging that rivals her grandfather in front of Monday night football:

OK he fixed it, the iPhone now has my music on it

And bonus for me he also showed me how to play an entire song list without having to hit the shuffle button. Oh yeah this poor phone is such a waste of technology on me. I'm like Steve Jobs' worst nightmare. If it wasn't for the fact that my actual phone number was tied to it I'm sure the dh would have stolen it from me a looong time ago. Yeah so there's this little list button in the upper right hand corner of the screen that I never noticed before...yeah well it's little! The shuffle button is waaay bigger and it the middle and at the very top, totally obvious. I'm old and archaic, Gen X, not Gen Y, I need big, centered, and obvious damn it. 'k? 'k. Now on to bigger and better things. Relatively speaking of course, weekend plans. Here are the plans, we'll see how far we actually get.

Numero uno on the list, the kid's 7th birthday is in October and we are not doing what we did last year, OMG no. That was insane, over 68 kids at the house with their parents and a jumpy wow that was nuts. Plus the day before we took her and 2 friends to Libby Lu for a Hannah Montana dress up/make up plus song and dance afternoon. Nope, way too much. So this year we're going to take her and like 2 friends to Build a Bear and then out to dinner. Way more low key. So tomorrow I'm taking her to Build a Bear and booking the day. Right after my 9:15 hair appt, gotta do something for mom too on occasion right? I'm sure the only way I'll get her to sit still through that will be to bribe her with the Build a Bear thing anyway. Ah parenthood, good thing we got pregnant on accident, I don't think we'd have a kid on purpose if we really knew what was involved. It amazes me that the human race continues to survive, I mean really if we knew what we were in for.

For Sunday we have tentatively scheduled, get this (you'd think we'd have given up on this city by now right?), Austin. Yeah I know, we've done this city, what twice in the last 3 weekends? Not counting that one time the MIL went up by herself? But this time we have a good excuse. Our very good friend has flown out with her 2 kids (one we have not met yet, she was born 5 months ago) and hubby from Florida. They come out for a convention once a year and so it's time. So we shall see, if they are free on Sunday we will trek on up and meet them. It's been a year and I can't wait, I hope they can make the time in their schedule!

As an extension of yesterday's post...Today is Morbid Friday a la B

My husband's taste in music, not quite the same as mine. Similar, not quite the same though. He's more...melancholy. I'm more, angry? Yeah, let's go with angry. He was raised by his Peace Corps mom I was raised by my Navy dad so that may explain something to do with it, we do take on different roles in the relationship. Read into that how ever you will. Those who know us well probably won't even bother putting comments into the comment section.

Anywho, the extension on yesterdays post and music preferences yeah the point, I had one. The dh, he put Ozymandias II on my iPhone last night and managed to somehow (and again, don't ask me how since what I know about music management is jack diddly) take all of my music play lists off and put all of his on. Gahhh! Now all I have is this melancholy crap and none of my anger stuff. So today is now officially Morbid Friday a la B. Thank you Honey B, for trying and you did get the one song on. And all the rest off. And if it's all the same to you would you please take it all off tonight and put my angry shit back on? I'd rather have all my anger back and the one freak song later if it's a choice between all or one. Thanks for playing the wheel of iWhatever game.

Damn modern technology will kill me in the end. I will lose this game, I'm not so sure these advancements are such a cool thing anymore! Did you guys see the article yesterday on CNN where they are talking about how Steve Jobs needed to step up his game on iPods since they aren't selling as well? I mean why buy an iPod if you can just get an iPhone? Well um because some people don't want to be disturbed by a damn phone call when listening to their music? Purists! And dang does every one have to own an iPhone? Let me tell you if it wasn't for the fact that I got it for free (thanks Jas you need to have the latest and greatest guy!) I don't think I would ever come up with a good enough excuse to put out the money for this thing. Really neat toy but damn, way too much stuff for me to justify buying it. I know the dh wants one but wow, what the hell is he going to do with it, launch a space shuttle? Have you guys played with one? And yes, played is the correct word here, it is a really intricate toy for grown ups to be sure. I have purposely not put any games on it so the kid has no interest in playing with it, she is not, under any circumstances, allowed to touch the thing. I can not afford to replace it. No way, no how, no can do. Hell, I can't even put music on the damn thing...

Music and the iPod/iPhone intricacies...

I still don't get them. It still is beyond my computer knowledge. I can build a computer but I can't get music from a computer onto my iPhone. I wanted a song to go from my email to my iPhone. The dh dutifully puchased said song and sent it to my email. I turned my email on the iPhone (it's not always on, I review applications for a dog rescue and I can get up to 200 individual applications for any 1 dog so I get emails numbering in the thousands in this one account alone, hell no I want to get my email on my phone). But if I want to access one email I can just turn it on and access the one and down load the song, which I did. Or so I thought. But apparently not. Because it took awhile, looked like it downloaded, it played but when I turned the email off it was gone. Oh well, I'll just take the phone to the computer at home and have the dh just download the damn thing. Why so complicated? I swear everything is so patent protected they make it such a pain in the ass to get a damn song on the friggin iWhatever.

But the song, yeah the song, an interesting one for an interesting reason, yet another circuitous Michelle thought route. I started a belly dancing class last night (that I had to drag the poor dear child to and now she's asking all kinds of funny funny questions, get to that later too). The class, Gothic Belly Dancing. Ever heard of it? Yeah I thought not. Nobody else has either so don't feel left out. I linked it, go to the very very bottom of the page and there's a My Space link and on the My Space page there's a video of her doing a dance. Texas, the last place on earth where you'd expect to find it that's for sure. Nice woman, felt that need to spend like the first half hour of class trying to explain what Gothic Belly Dancing was, which , by definition, is kinda inexplicable. It's dancing, dancing is an art, you can't really put a definition on art. It's not a science, give it up. Only in Texas would anyone even bother trying to justify it with an explanation. There were only 3 of us in the class, get up and teach us some dance moves babe, I mean really.

So the song, it's the song that's she's using to teach us the dance to. It's a pretty song, not one I'd normally go out and buy but if you haven't noticed by my music list on the right side there my tastes run towards what I call "angry white male" music, Powerman 5000, Linkin Park, and my current fav Nikelback, so good I forgive them their Canadian-ness. No, not your average belly dancing music so I felt the need to spend the $1 and get the one song that we were using, Ozymandias II by Qntal. Yeah, the only reason I even knew the spelling is because I knew she was pronouncing the word Ozymandias wrong. The fact that I knew the word Ozymandias, correct pronunciation and spelling at all just goes to show I married a total English major snob. Do I know how in the world that word came up between the dh and I over the years? No, but in the world of gaming geeks all these things do like Antedeluvian. Who uses words like Antedeluvian any more? Gaming geeks do, that's who. Why? Because it's long and it sounds cool. And that's why these words still exists. Well and because belly dancers listen to strange music made by bands with names like Qntal. Tell me how drunk did that band have to get before they came up with that one? Or how long were they in the hooka lounge. BTW, does anyone else find it strange that Qntal is a german band? I always found germans to be a much more...in the box kinda crowd.

And they say that So Cal has a buncha freakin hippies in it

They just don't know where to look. Texas has them too, they just like to hide them a wee bit. Take a look behind their uber Chirstian skirts and oooo look there they are! It just goes to show that if you Google it, there it will be. First I was hunting for cloth diaper stores in San Antonio (no, not for me, I was looking to see if cloth mama pads could be found locally) and lookie there, sure enough they can be, Eden's Baby. Right here, downtown. And here I thought I'd have to go all the way to Austin or some such.

Well then I was perusing the newspaper online, because I have nothing else to do, I am, after all, at work, and ran across another little interesting tid bit. A local farm. A local ranch/school ministry Christian whatever they call these things that are essentially Christian co ops yeah right they're modern day cleaner versions of those things from the seventies, you know what I'm talking about right? Communes people communes. Sugar coat it all you want they're just Christian communes with way less sex. Dude, then why bother?

Anyway this article was in the food section and goes about describing this place that has it's own little organic farm, the sell raw milk ($8 a gallon), hand milked by the students at their little store that has other things they make like butter and certified organic produce that they grow. Oh and grass fed beef. The only dairy in Texas with hand milked cows. Ever hand milked a cow before? Yeah, it isn't easy. I can't remember why I know this, maybe one of those school excursions to the Del Mar Fair we got to try it or something. All I remember is that we had to try it once and it was not fun. I would, however, like to go up and visit that farm sometime. I may have to not mention the uber Christianism to the dh. That shit freaks him out. Something I find terribly funny. My crazy doesn't freak him out but other people's religion does. And he hangs around a max security prison all day long. Think about that for a minute and you try to make sense of it. Really, go to his blog and read the little quippets that he drops about what he gets to see every day. Their idea of normal stuff just ain't right and he gets freaked out by the super Christians. Yeah ok, we'll just leave it at that.

WOOT!! SHOUT OUT!

Yuppers!! This one goes to my woman Anna Marie, she who gifted me with a plug to my laptop at home (mine broke, second one I've killed). Yes that's right. The one I refused to buy from Dell because they way over price their stuff. You can buy them on evil bay for much less than half the price but I don't have Paypal. Why? Because Paypal is Satan. Big Brother reborn as Satan. At some point Paypal decided I was my friend Brenda, they told me I was her, that my email account was her email account and that I owed them the $500 she owed them and they then locked my account until I payed them the $500 she owed them. Yeah, I tell you what my email account is my last name (swiss) and her email account is some Irish goddess name that to this day I still cannot for the life of me spell. I told them to just close my account. They said no. I told them to piss off. And so my account has been locked for 2 + years now and I have no Paypal. Fuck that. It's not like I need Paypal. I've lived with out Paypal for most of my life. It's convenient to have sometimes. Like when you need a replacement powercord for your ripoff of a Dell laptop computer damn it. So one day Anna Marie mentioned that I had not been posting nearly as much as normal. Yeah well I'm lazy. I post from the couch, downstairs. What you think I go all the way upstairs to the computer room and turn on that old desktop, no I don't think so. Why do you think I rarely have pictures? That's the only computer I can download the pictures onto. This laptop doesn't like the connectors to the camera, the laptop is too old. Yeah, someday I'll up grade but again, I'm lazy so for right now, power cord it is.

The power cord arrived today so once again the babbling will continue! You can all thank Anna for the ramblin on (She's Ponine, the bento box lady in the links list), for asking me one day why my blathering had suddenly halted or rather slowed way the hell down. You all do know what I do all day right? Nothing. You do know that? Do I post at work? Not reeaally. It's just not all that inspriring there, I don't know why, I like posting at night on the couch, when I'm in super lounge mode.

Anyway, my work has put the cart before the horse. They got everything ass backwards so I have essentially nothing at all to do during the day. I show up to work and hold a chair down and read blogs. All day long. I also chat on Gmail. All day long. No, really I do. Just ask Anna. That's what I do for work. Until they get some building permits (yeah, it could be months) to rebuild my room, and then move my instrument (more months) then have it re-calibrated (again more months) I do nothing but this. All day long. And they pay me for it. All day long. So if you're bored (and have nothing to do either) email me and I'll add you to my list of g-chat buddies and we can chat. It's what I do. All day long. And they pay me for it. Also if you are on a hunt for something on the internet and want to find the best deal let me know. My friends and I have, quite literally, taken this kind of task to a new level of higher art form, no lie! I have had so many co-workers come to me with requests for some of the oddest things they just cannot for the life of them find or find a good price for and lo and behold we can and will find it. If it's out there we will get it. I love Google, it's the best thing ever invented. Unlike Paypal, Paypal gives Satan a bad name.....

One week back at school

And the kid already has a cold. Kids are such a disease ridden bunch aren't they? She does love being back at school though. And her friend's mom who has 5 kids now has volunteered to take her Wednesday afternoons for playtime which they all just love, I think the mom is nuts but I love her for it just the same. Plus what's one more when you've already got 5 right? 3 of them are under the age of 2 so the 2 older ones are occupied with my daughter, it's like they take care of themselves at that point. Just another playmate. Her kids come home, do their home work, have a snack, go play, have diner, bathe, and go to bed by 7:30. By the time I'm there to pick up my kid they are already going through their bath rounds. Heck I'm a slakin' mom compared to them so my kid just stands there looking like there's a tornado of action buzzing around her and she's standing still. It's kind of funny to watch actually. I may not even send her there this week if she's still got a runny nose but I'll leave it up to their mom. The youngest in their home was born in May (you guys remember the diaper cake I made for her right?) and was a premie so I don't want to send a cold into their household.

So I just called her, we're skipping this week and going with next week. No sick kids with baby in house hold. People would do that with my kid all the time when she was a baby, drove me nuts! They'd come over to visit and their kids would be sick with fevers and my kid was like weeks old, what the hell is with some parents? I mean if your kid is like 6-10 years old yeah, ok fine but weeks old? No, try not to drag over your school age kids with fevers to visit with infants, that's just rude and dangerous. Yet they did it all the time. I got to the point where there were certain people I'd go out of my way to avoid just because I knew they did not have the common decency to keep their infected children away from my infant.