eling, aka #2

and back to heavier again... well, food-wise, at least.

2007-09-28T01:04:00.000-04:00

It's been kinda heavy eating-wise this week. Not food obsessed like me? Might want to skip this entry :) Last Friday mr. l took us out for a belated birthday dinner (well, my birthday, not d's). I picked our favorite local Korean place, New Jang Su.

The really awesome thing about this place is that the name is not actually on it in English. (Now that I think about it, since I don't speak Korean I'm really just taking their word that that's really the name.) It does however, say "KOREAN RESTAURANT" and "BBQ" on the sign, which I guess is the most crucial part.

Yummy! That's (left to right, from top): side dishes, tuk bok ki, jab chae, kim chi/tofu jigae, sur lung tang, pottery bibimbab. Yes, spelling for Korean food is different in every restaurant. Click through for more info/details/links to descriptions.

Then, Sunday was the Phantom Gourmet Food Festival here in Boston. It's always on Lansdowne St. over by Fenway. We went last year, remember? Last year we saw the amazing Kobayashi out-eat four people! Poor Kobayashi-san. BTW, he's on myspace (though he hasn't logged in since Dec. 2006, I am particularly fascinated to find that his income as a prof. eater is upowards of $250K) and has a blog (translated version). Anyway.

W & J came back down from Maine again, and it was good. Some new foods, but oy! it got CROWDED earlier than it did last year. I think it cleared out earlier too, probably 'cause it was Sunday and there was a Pats game on.

Again, click through for more details + links to individual pics. And there's a whole set of pictures here. As has become the tradition now, we headed to Beerworks after we couldn't eat or walk anymore. Because obviously, drinking beers helps with being stuffed. Right?

W + J brought down some lovely wine + two of the most obscene (but very funny) cards I have ever read as belated birthday gifts. And speaking of birthdays, d + I went out for my belated birthday dinner on Tuesday. Just two weeks after the actual date! I'd been wanting to go to The Melting Pot, and we did just that...

It was really cute, they have this "Lover's Lane" there (which is a corny way of saying that the tables are pretty secluded and quiet) and they had this little vase with flowers on the table, plus balloons + a card when we got to the table. The pics are dark cause there was only candlelight, due to afore-mentioned romantic atmosphere.

We had the "Big Night Out" meal, which is for two, and includes: choice of cheese fondue, salads, a sampler of entrees, and your choice of chocolate. The two of us had (brace yourselves):

Cheddar Cheese fondue (aged medium-sharp cheddar + Emmenthaler swiss cheeses, lager beer, garlic + spices)
a Spinach Mushroom salad
an Athenian salad
the "Fondue Feast" -- filet mignon, balsamic-marinated sirloin, garlic + herb chicken, citrus pork tenderloin, white shrimp, wild mushroom ravioli, roasted red pepper rigatoni + fresh veggies -- Coq au Vin style (fresh herbs, mushrooms, garlic, spices + burgundy wine). This also came with about a gazillion dipping sauces ranging from cocktail sauce, blue cheese dip, yogurt curry sauce, teriyaki, and more...
"Cookies and Cream Marshmallow Dream" chocolate fondue -- dark chocolate with flambeed (not kidding) marshmallow creme, with crushed oreos mixed in. Dippers: strawberries, bananas, pound cake, brownies, rice krispie treats (!), graham cracker and oreo-coated marshmallows (!!), and an entire slice of cheesecake. Not sure if the cheesecake was just 'cause of my birthday (it had a candle in it), but we dipped it too.
Strawberry Basil Lemonade -- strawberry twist Smirnoff + basil + fresh strawberries + lemonade
other assorted beverages + coffee

It wasn't so bad until about ten minutes after we finished the chocolate, at which point both of us felt the need to lie down. All in all, a pretty decent meal. Not amazing-- my salad was watery, like it hadn't been spun, but everything was pretty tasty. Pretty pricey, so not your average night out, but fun! We were there for about 2 hours and fifteen minutes, so it's sort of like an activity plus dinner. Oh yeah, full set of pics here.

I'll work on posting some not so food-obsessed entries soon, 'kay?

on the lighter side...

2007-09-26T13:28:00.000-04:00

Well, the last post was a little heavy. So, for a change of pace:
I nabbed this from One Good Bumblebee, who got it from Creature Comforts’ blog.

1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car) -
Daisy Jetta

2.YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (fave ice cream flavor, favorite cookie) -
Strawberry Chocolate Chip
(Somehow, this does not fit any definition that I have for the term "gangsta".)

3. YOUR “FLY Guy/Girl” NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of your last name) -
E-Cha or E-Des

4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal) -
Green Rhino

5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born) -
Kan Winchester

6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first) -
Cha-el or Des-el

7. SUPERHERO NAME: (”The” + 2nd favorite color, favorite drink) -
The Orange Bubble Tea
(huh?)

8. NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers) -
Can't do this, don't know my grandfathers' names in English. And I don't think Romanization would help in this case.

9. STRIPPER NAME: ( the name of your favorite perfume/cologne/scent, favorite candy) -
Lemon Sugar Crunky

10.WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother’s & father’s middle names ) -
Also non-existent. Asian people are not much for middle names, I don't think. Correct me if I'm wrong, folks.

11. TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME: (Your 5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter) -
Carlton Chicago

12. SPY NAME/BOND GIRL: (your favorite season/holiday, flower) -
Autumn Hydrangea

13. CARTOON NAME: (favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now + “ie” or “y”) -
Wax Apple Dressie

14. HIPPY NAME: (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree) -
English Muffin Willow

15. YOUR ROCKSTAR TOUR NAME: (”The” + Your fave hobby/craft, fave weather element + “Tour”) -
The Spinning Thunder Tour

Your turn, kids.

chicago 3, eling 0

2007-09-26T04:23:00.001-04:00

Warning: this very long post contains no fun photos. Just a lot of venting, and a one measly picture I took when I was thinking about trying to do something about these things that happened.

And now for the insanity that was Chicago. I couldn't make this stuff up. Though, it really all involves the car. I will preface this by saying that I hemmed + hawed about renting a car. Then ms. h mentioned that there were parking passes for her neighborhood, and when I weighed that against all the shuttling to + from the airport, plus the sheer amount of stuff I had to bring for the show (hard to pack into a cab with three people too), I thought it would be worth it.

It really started Sunday night, when d left the show for the airport. We decided he'd take a cab with his bags rather than struggling with two big bags on the train. ms. p took up his post, and he set off. About twenty minutes later he called to say that he was about to arrive at the airport, and that he had the rental car keys with him. Um. After much swearing and sighing, I sent ms. p off with cash to catch a cab to the airport to get arrive there before he had to go through security and the keys would be lost to us. Of course traffic kicked in and it took her forever to get there but she got there + got the keys. Then decided to maneuver public transportation to get back to the show. She ended up getting back just in time to help me break down for the night. Meanwhile, d's flight was delayed and delayed and delayed, so there would have been plenty of time for him to come back with the keys himself (he ended up not leaving Chicago until after midnight!)

During breakdown, I MAY have nicked the side of the car while backing up because I'm a nice person and wanted to move out of the way several times when cars came through (there were two lanes, but someone else was blocking the other lane completely so everyone kept coming through our way). This hypothetical scratch was very small, but noticeable if you knew where to look... finally got back LATE and trudged up stairs with several heavy bags (our lovely host lives in a 4th floor walk up).

Monday we spend walking all over the city (see previous post). That evening, after dinner, we return to find: a $120 dollar ticket on the car because there was "no/improper parking permit". Oh, HELL NO.That is the proper parking permit, in the proper location. It is, admittedly, upside down, but it was 1 am when we placed it there and we were TIRED. (I forgot to mention in the last post that we spent an hour trying to find food after we finally finished breaking down-- with the very charming Elijah of eli & ra and figs & ginger fame-- see here for some cool shopping to benefit Elijah's kidneys. We missed you, Rhonda!)

I get that that is not 100% proper placement. But $120?! Really? Would it really have been so difficult for Officer Galicia of the Chicago PD to turn his/her head sideways to read the permit? $120?!?!?!?!

I mutter about this ticket for a long while, take photos for proof, then let it go. After all, what can I do? I think it was an easy score for Officer Galicia, because rental car users have little way to protest. Responses to ticket protests are mailed to the address of the OWNER of the vehicle. If I protest, I have no way of knowing what their response to me will be. And if I end up having to pay the ticket but don't know it, the rental car company will charge me a fee + interest + fines + the ticket. Sigh.

Fast-forward to Tuesday, when I am exhausted and take more time than expected to pack. I have boxes to ship before I leave, and about 3 hours before my flight leaves, ms. p helps me stumble downstairs with two HUGE suitcases, plus a large carry-on and FOUR large boxes to take to UPS. On the first trip, I roll down the street, tired but feeling ready to go, down to my lovely rental car that I am now paying an additional $120 for. Or rather, where it was parked the night before. It is no longer there, and for a moment I think that I am going insane.

I roll back to the building, where ms. p comes out the door. And I say, "The car is NOT there. I think it's been towed." Then I begin to freak out. This is followed by frantic calls to d to call the airline, calls to the city hotline to figure out where the car has been towed to, and several discussions with both the city impound lot employees and Dollar's "customer service"/roadside assistance to determine what the hell I should do.

Turns out, Dollar will pick up the car but it may take several DAYS and they will charge me the impound fees, a TOW CHARGE from the impound to the airport because they do not have the staff to pick up a vehicle in person, and OF COURSE the rental fees for additional days. I'm sure they will also charge me $25/gallon because of course, the gas tank is not full. Oh, and they also tried to tell me over the phone that the impound would not release the car to me anyway, so I don't really have a choice about this.

In the meantime, I am sitting on the sidewalk with a tremendous amount of stuff. Luckily the person working at the impound lot is very nice and tells me that the rental car company's claim is ridiculous. If I have a copy of the rental car agreement, I can get the car. And the airline will not charge me any money to take the next flight home if I miss the one I'm on.

So, into a cab we go with all my luggage and the four big boxes. First stop, UPS. Boxes mailed, the nice cab driver takes us to the City of Chicago impound lot where my troublesome Dodge Caliber has been taken. We unload my luggage and ms. p stands outside while I go into the office/double-wide trailer to get my car back. By the way, there are MANY MANY people inside also trying to get their vehicles back, the City of Chicago is clearly making a killing. $160 later, I am allowed to go out to the lot and get my car. Where I promptly find the other ticket for another $50 on the windshield. Street cleaning violation.

City of Chicago $330, Eling 0. (Or should it be -$330?)

Poor ms. p was supposed to be visiting the aquarium this whole time. She calls me at one point while I am inside the trailer not being assisted to make sure I am ok. Apparently she has received several offers from tow truck drivers and others passing by for a ride somewhere. Sorry, ms. p. We load my luggage into the car and then head BACK to the apartment because I have forgotten a poster I bought there. Then I drive her downtown so she can at least do one fun thing she was planning (city river + lake tour) on this day.

Finally, I am off to the airport. I stop to get gas too, and arrive 15 minutes after my original flight has left. I get on the next flight, which is not for 3 more hours. Thankfully, when I drop off the car they do not seem to notice the hypothetical scratch. I get one last meal in Chicago, my first of the day, at Potbelly's. Strange guy stalks me around the terminal briefly but eventually leaves me alone when I ignore him even as he peers directly over my shoulder at my DS (birthday gift). Arrive at airport (still 45 minutes from home, 'cause it was a cheaper flight) around midnight.

Sleep for what seems like forever, then wake up and write checks to the City of Chicago. Sigh. At least I got my deep dish, Wow Bao, and hot dog.

PS. After all this, ms. p called me the next day to tell me that she had decided to pay $50 to change HER inter-island flight home (to get there earlier). However, an overhead compartment in the First Class section would not close, and her flight from LA was delayed. Not by much, but just enough for her to miss the flight. She ended up on the flight she was originally scheduled on, the following day. It's awesome that she paid $50 extra to be on the same flight. Sorry, ms. p.

food, friends + insanity. aka chicago.

2007-09-26T03:16:00.000-04:00

It's now been just over a week since I got back from Chicago, and I am just starting to feel like I've mostly recovered from the insanity. Don't get me wrong. So much awesomeness occurred.

Renegade was amazing. Super-busy with lots of cool people, though the hours were a bit long (noon-10pm! both days). Some new displays + booth set-up were tested, and I was pretty pleased with the results:I got to see my yarns at Renegade Handmade, which was really neat! but I was too shy (and rushed) to take a pic of the shop. The store is adorable, if you're in the area you should definitely stop in.

Mostly, though, I was psyched to get to hang out with some of my favorite people! We stayed with ms. h, who d & I have crashed with our last few trips to Chicago. Poor ms. h is in law school and very nicely puts up with us and the ridiculous quantities of traveling rhinos stuff I have in tow every time we blow in for a show. Thanks, ms. h!!

Adding to the excitement was the arrival of ms. p all the way from the islands. I recruited her when I figured out that the show hours were way past what d would be able to stay and help me for. Mostly it was an excuse to hang out, though, since it seems like visits with friends only occur in conjunction with weddings nowadays. Me & ms. p arrived several days before Renegade in order to get some extra visiting days in. In other words, commence with the eating!That's green papaya salad at now-forgotten-named Thai restaurant, deep dish from Gino's East, and Italian + green tea cola at Potbelly's. I was not as diligent as I usually am with food photos, other food highlights without pics include: Big Bowl, Wow Bao (hot asian buns, tee hee!), Chicago hot dog and Ra, as well as a visit to the Vosges boutique. By the way-- deep dish pizza is one of the most unattractive foods I've ever photographed. YUMMY though.

ms. p and I even managed to get some sightseeing in:
The ubiquitous bean, Komodo dragons at the Shedd Aquarium, Navy Pier from Lake Michigan boat, and dinosaur (Brachiosaurus?) friend at the Field Museum.

Good times. I'll save the not-as-fun-insanity part of the trip for the next post.

countdown to chicago...

2007-09-15T01:04:00.000-04:00

I always seem pressed for time when it comes to big shows, so I'm pinning this ticker to the top of this blog to keep me on my toes until the big day arrives...

rewind, part 3

2007-06-29T22:32:00.001-04:00

Since I've already blabbed about Renegade elsewhere, I will keep my talk here to our friends + the food. I'm never good about eating while at a show, so dinner is always a big deal. Especially when we're in New York. Since we live in a place that has less access to really authentic ethnic food, I always feel like I have to eat GREAT food whenever I can.

Last year when we stayed with mr. + mrs. sv we were all so beat after day 1 that we went back to their place and had takeout Chinese food. We were all so hungry that the food was delicious, but I was so exhausted that I fell asleep AT THE TABLE as soon as I stopped moving (chewing). Has never in my life happened before, and never again.

This year the show was at the McCarren Park Pool (don't the pool parties look fun?) so after we packed up we headed over to My Moon, just a few blocks away. The food is described on free williamsburg as Mediterranean/Turkish and you could tell that it gets lounge/club-y after dark, but the food was INCREDIBLE. Definitely in the top 10 meals this year, no matter what else I eat from now 'til December.

Click through for more about each dish. I'm starting to drool just thinking about it.

They have really nice outdoor seating and we got to RELAX which was nice, since we rarely get to see mr. + mrs. sv and she had just spent all day (and would spend the whole next day) helping us! We didn't do anything else non-work-related, except shop at Renegade :)

Hopefully we'll get back soon. Thanks again, mr. + mrs. sv for all your help and for housing us + all my stuff!!

By the way, I recently sent our nice hosts this, which I MUST share here.
Yes, that is a luxury chocolate bar from Vosges made with BACON. Mo's Bacon Bar. I want to try this ourselves, but since they carry most of the Vosges bars at Whole Foods now, I keep hoping they'll show up at our local store so I won't have to pay hot-weather chocolate-shipping costs for one chocolate bar! If you haven't had these yet, run to your local Whole Foods and grab one!! My favorites are the Goji Bar and the Macha but honestly, they're all good.

rewind, part 2

2007-06-26T21:03:00.000-04:00

Continuing on...

In early June we went to ms. s & mr. l's wedding. mr. l is d's college roommate. We went out friday afternoon with another of d's roomies from school, mr. o. ms. s & mr. l's rehearsal dinner on Friday night was at the Norman Rockwell Museum, and you know I wasn't missing that. The museum & surroundings were gorgeous, and the food was yum.Strawberry mousse-type thing with some kind of cake inside, and biscotti too! Ms. m sampling mr. l's dessert. Really, it's hers too, right? This is mr. o, mr. l (rockin' the seersucker) and d. Still looking good at this point. After the rehearsal dinner (which was open bar) people rode the (chartered yellow school) bus to a local bar. It was a late night. So we slept in (here's a pic of the tub in the master bedroom at the Oak & Spruce Resort) and then went hunting for foodImagine my surprise when we found the BEST VIETNAMESE FOOD I'VE EVER HAD in Lee, Massachusetts. It was at Pho Saigon, on a little side street. Definitely a family-run place. I had this incredible "make your own" fresh rolls meal (sorry, I can't remember what it was called on the menu). Thin rice-wrappers on the left. They're hard, so you dip them in the hot water (yellow bowl) to soften. Then you fill with your choice of meat (I had chicken-very tasty, nicely marinated + grilled), rice vermicelli (underneath the chicken), lettuce, carrot shreds, daikon, basil and cilantro. Then dip in sauce (tangy + and bit spicy)! I guess we could make this at home, but every aspect was so perfect! The only thing I might add in an extremely perfect world was some bean sprouts. d's food was awesome too-- amazing spicy pho. Seriously, I am still thinking about this food almost a month later. Will definitely have to make the 2+ hour drive back out sometime this summer. Back to the wedding. Due to a bit of afternoon rain, the ceremony was on the back porch at the beautiful Cranwell Resort, which may well be the epitome of picturesque non-coastal New England.

And check out what every wedding needs: Yup, it's a candy bar! Lots of attention to detail. Note the little glassine bags at front left corner of table so you can bring the candy to your table with you :) We noticed one of the photographers chowing down on candy and going back to the table over and over again!...

Pretty wedding cakes in several flavors :Anyone who actually knows people in this wedding and want to see more pics can view them here. And finally, us, at the end of the night, looking pretty beat. Early morning next day so d could get back for graduation too.

rewind!

2007-06-25T18:12:00.000-04:00

I've been feeling a little sad recently about my lack of proper blogging because the days go by so fast! and when I look back and wonder "what was I doing in March & April?" I can't remember because, well, I didn't blog about it. And believe me when I say my memory is just not as good as it used to be.

I guess the only way to prevent this nostalgia over lost days/months is to blog about stuff more regularly. I can go back and look through my flickr pics to jog my memory some, but who brings their camera everywhere? Pas moi.

Most of early March + late April seems unrecorded. Lost to time. At the end of March I went to Taipei for 10 days to visit my grandmother. She's still mostly the same. FYI, it rained for 7 of the 10 days I was there. Uncharacteristic for Taipei at this time of year, icky all-day-downpour rain. Sigh.

The one really hot, sunny day was the one we were outside all day for tombsweeping. One week ahead of the actual Qingming festival, supposedly to avoid the really bad traffic. I kept asking all my relatives if it was ok to take pictures, and they all said, "Not if you're not superstitious about it." Which I guess I'm not, and none of them seemed to be either...
LOTS more pictures from Taiwan, many--okay, most--are of food: here.

In May, we went North to our first wedding of the season. On the way there, we stopped in Portland to visit our friends W & J. Old friends but new roommates, they moved into a condo upstairs from one of our favorite jewelry + glass artists -- Stephanie! Quel coincidence!

This is Gus, J's dog. We like him. He is jumpy but small, and cannot knock you over.Ask me about what happened to W when he was alone one night watching Gus and his own dog, Lola. Warning: this story is not for the faint-hearted.

The wedding was lovely! Very quirky but perfectly suited to the bride & groom, who are a unique pair. The dinner was very over the top: salmon AND filet mignon. We cut our filets with BUTTER knives. I kid you not. It was DELICIOUS but we didn't actually get to eat it until after 9:30 pm.There was lots of pink (bride's favorite color) and ocean-themed decor (it is coastal Maine). The cake was gorgeous but there was a lot of fighting over all the different flavors inside. The servers couldn't even get the plates out to the dessert table, guests were mobbing them as soon as they exited the kitchen. Scary! Since we'd arrived in Boothbay Harbor a bit behind schedule (typical, I know) so only had a few moments to look around our room at the Topside Inn. It was very cute.
Look at the size of the shower!! D is 5'9". He is not slouching. To be fair, they warn you about this in the room description. (Scroll down, it's room #5.) And when we got a better look at everything in the morning, we were definitely kicking ourselves for not staying in town longer!That's the view from the front porch, and that's supposed to be the ship from Pirates & some other movie too. And check out breakfast:Fresh fruit, homemade granola, and lemon blueberry pancakes with sausage made to order. We're going back! Next post: more wedding, more food, and BK.

My Quarterly Post

2007-02-16T02:34:00.000-05:00

So... if I post here every three to four months, it probably doesn't really count as a blog, huh? Sigh. It's kind of like writing emails-- the longer it takes you to reply to someone, the greater the pressure to write something worthwhile, so the long wait seems somehow more worth it. Perhaps I should have lots of pictures to make this long post more tolerable?

dachshund-lobster hybrid from the divas unleashed parade in october

Mostly I've been quiet because I've been feeling a lot like Daisy looks in that picture over to the right. A little beaten and bedraggled. The fall wasn't so bad-- I was getting all ready for winter, the holiday shopping season, Christmas gifts, etc., ahead of the game even-- and then things just started to happen. Without going into too much detail, mr. d's dad got really, really sick; risky operation sick, and it was a rough Thanksgiving in the family. Christmas was very emotional too. Um, and New Year's. Needless to say, a lot of things fell to the wayside and we spent a lot of time driving north and back. Thankfully, though, things turned out amazingly well, and though mr.d-in-law had to endure quite a bit of bedrest (not easy for him!), it was practically a miracle how things turned out in the end.

mr. d @ man's world in north adams, mass. thanks again for the trip, mr. & mrs. s-v!

On top of mr. d's family stuff, in November my grandmother took a turn for the worse healthwise. Again, without too much detail, a visit that I expected would be me sitting around helping with pills and other 24 hour care stuff actually turned into a week of sleeping in the hospital overnight (my mom and I stayed 10pm to 10am and my aunt & uncle had the opposite). She finally got moved out of the ICU on the last day I was in California and plans were to move her from there directly to an assisted living center. The highlights of this trip were that I got a lot of knitting done at ridiculous hours of the night, and the fact that this was my rental car:

If you love the PT Cruiser, you may want to skip this paragraph. Basically, this car sucked. It didn't accelerate quickly enough and felt clunky. LA traffic sucks as it is!! This car didn't help. Plus mr. d & I (well, mr. d especially) have in the past spent a lot of time mocking this particular vehicle and the frustrating people that often drive it. Sorry if you are normal & decent driver but we seem to have run across a lot of morons who can't drive and choose to own this vehicle. I will say that it is nice and shiny & they made the dashboard very retro-like and cute. However, I never found an interior light in the car, and that is VERY inconvenient when you are looking for things in the dark in a car. PS, I reserved an ECONOMY car and this is what they gave me. sweet people-dressed-up-as-abraham-lincoln piece at MassMOCA!

Ok, where was I? Right. Late November, Thanksgiving in Maine. December we did Renegade Holiday Show in Chicago so we got to visit with ms. h again! Hi ms. h, hope you're not studying too hard! I don't think I took a single picture on that trip. Wait, let me check. Nope, I only took them on my cell phone and I can't deal with that right now.

ms. daisy on one of our many (crowded car) drives.

Christmas in The County, Maine, and here at home. New Year's in Maine, and then a week in & out of the hospital visiting mr. d-in-law. Right after he got released from the hospital, we headed back out to LA to visit the care center my grandma is in. I was bracing myself for the worst but I wanted to make sure I felt ok with where she was staying, and miracle of all miracles, she looked WAY better than she had in November. Her memory is not so good but I felt a little better knowing she was in a clean facility and that she seems fairly content. I still want to get back out there to spend more time with her. Here we are in her room:

If I look like hell in this photo, it's because I did. Exhausted and flying late at night and being worried about my grandmother did not improve my normal not-particularly-photogenic-ness. Basically, I have been feeling behind and like a not-efficient businessperson since November, so that is always in the back of my mind, and seeing pictures of myself made me realize that I LOOK like it most of the time. Awesome.

Here is another shot of me looking equally crappy with the still-considered-a-newlywed mrs. c. No mr. s though, he had to stay home in Hawaii and work on their new house (!)

Visting with mrs. c was really the only social thing we did while in LA this trip. Mostly we went to the care center and then to pick stuff up for my grandma's room. They advise you not to leave really nice things there, so (sadly) we couldn't give her anything really expensive or nice. Instead I'm going to make her a blanket (yes, I'm going to sew!) that has photos of us and other family members on it because no one would "misplace" a blanket that has pictures of another person's family on it, right?

Oh, I DID get to finally take mr. d to in-n-out, and it was a FANCY one! It was packed with scary teenagers so we went through the drive through. Speaking of driving, here is some solid proof on karma for you. When I went in November, I flew into Ontario instead of LAX. That's where I got the PT Cruiser. This time, we flew into Ontario again, and lo and behold, after all the mocking that mr. d did of the car when I got home and gave him the details about the rental in November, guess which car we got this time?

This photo is from the November trip, but I honestly think that it was the EXACT same vehicle. Our punishment for making fun of it the first time around. Instant Karma's gonna get you...

Ok, was that enough of an update for now? Are we sort of caught up? I'll work on being back more often. #1 has been & will be visiting again, so I'll actually have something non-work/website related to talk about!

ugh.

2006-10-04T01:00:00.000-04:00

I don't really have anything to say today. Not sure why I'm feeling all blah, but I've been moving slowly and feeling generally cranky all day. I think I may have the beginnings of a cold, and I am mid-major-renovation on my workroom. Hard to get anything done when everything you would use is all over the place. I'd post a picture but I think it would scare people, even those who know just how much stuff I have.

Instead, I'm going to post a picture of two of my friends who live furthest away from me. I miss college, and having lots of friends all living within mere meters from you. Who might provide support when you are knee-deep in fiber, fabric and beads. Sigh. Hi numbers 3 & 1! #3, I hope you are getting lots of rest at home. Sorry I am too slow and lame to get to you while you're on our side of the planet. I will try to make it up to you by sending the email I owe you that is about four months overdue.

Bedtime.

In which I am, once again, very impressed by the great ability of small Japanese people.

2006-09-29T23:27:00.000-04:00

Since I have a hard time remembering what I do with my time, I am going to write about a more recent event in what I've been up to, hoping that this will jog my memory a bit. Watch out, this is a picture-heavy post.

Last weekend was the Phantom Gourmet Food Festival on Lansdowne St., over by Fenway. It was insane. Our friends w and j came down from Portland, 'cause they're foodies like us. Here they are on the T:

We got there just after 11, when it was supposed to start. Just before the entrance, there was this guy handing out flyers. In a manner unusual to me, I took it. Guess who was on it? Takeru Kobayashi! Did you see his segment on MTV's true life? Compelling stuff. I wanted to see him in person. Here's another article, 'cause he's fascinating.

But once we got in, there was a lot of food. There were a lot of people, but you basically got your food at one booth, then ate it while in line for the next booth. I'd show you pictures of us eating, but we were too busy eating. We ate our way down the street, working through chowder, pulled pork sandwiches, burgers, taffy, rasta pasta, fudge, subs, ice cream cupcakes! and started to get full just as we got to this:
Mmm, soda, being drafted out of the side of a van. Cool. We decided that Eli's must be affiliated with Shipyard, 'cause all the taps said Shipyard on them. It was still cool, and the soda was pretty good too. At this point it was probably almost noon, and we were getting full. So, we headed in to see Kobayashi! First we had to watch five sad folks try to break the world record for grilled cheese eating, which was 47 sandwiches in 10 minutes. The winner would've gotten $100,000 if they'd broken the record. Except, that wasn't going to happen. One guy stopped eating after about a sandwich and a half, and I think the winner ate 11. They gave him $500. They dragged it out a bit setting up, and then... Kobayashi time!

Note how small and adorable he is. They had him there to set the world record in competitive eating for the most lobster rolls in 10 minutes. They had Jasper White make 'em and everything, and they were big lobster rolls. If anyone doesn't know what a lobster roll is, it's basically lobster salad with big chunks of real lobster and mayo in a large, soft roll. They make little finger roll ones too, but these were the big ones. They had a team of four amateur eaters against Kobayashi, and if they beat him combined, they would split the cash prize, which was $10,000. I don't think anyone thought those four poor souls stood a chance, but it was cool watching the whole thing. Here's Kobayashi-san setting up, placing his water properly on his stand (he tested the temperature too).

Here he is eating with great speed and concentration. He totally did the Kobayashi shake too!

Kobayashi-san remained focused despite the distractions of the crowd and an annoying dancing lobster:

And, of course, was in the end victorious. Here he is showing his distended stomach off for just a second. Some shmuck got in the way of my shot but you can sort of see it:

So do you want to know how many lobster rolls he ate in 10 minutes? FORTY-ONE. Ugh. I actually like lobster rolls, despite generally disliking mayonnaise, but right now the thought of lobster rolls is kind of unbearable. He looked totally unfazed at the end too, smiling for pictures and signing autographs. (Want more pics? there are a ridiculous number of pictures of the whole event here.) And yes, I so got his autograph, even though I've NEVER asked anyone for their autograph before, EVER. Not in 28 years.

Anyway, when we got outside, well, it was REALLY crowded. Uncomfortably crowded. So we got the rest of what we had missed on the way in, and headed out. We weren't ready for much walking yet, so we went across the street to Beerworks. Obviously what we needed after several hours of eating unhealthy food was beer, and...

fried pickles and sweet potato fries. I had a salad too, that contained something that looked suspiciously like spinach, but I'm pretty sure by now that I don't have E.coli. PS...

hello? is anybody out there?

2006-09-28T14:55:00.000-04:00

Um, so I guess I took a blogging hiatus, for about, oh, five months. Yikes.

I realized recently that I never was much of a diary-writing kind of girl. I always thought the journals were too nice to ruin with my inconsistent handwriting, and I guess I am generally too wrapped up in whatever I am doing on any given day to stop and write about it. Which is sort of a shame, because when I do stop, even just to jot down a few notes like "dinner with mr. x" or "return from maine" I appreciate being able to recall what I was doing when I look back on things. So, I am making a more concerted effort to get here regularly.

'Cause honestly, when I do, I enjoy it. Just means that I have to spend fewer minutes reading other peoples' blogs. Hmm...

And finally, a little gratuituous Daisy, 'cause you haven't seen her in months, right?

i heart traveling and rhinos

2006-04-15T22:40:00.000-04:00

Wow, there is much blog catching-up to be done. I think it'll have to be done in several parts. Obviously, I'm back. And boy was it a whirlwind.

Let's see... I left March 27th and found myself in San Francisco, visiting ms. mnt. She was soooo nice and fed me (yum, Mel's diner) and stocked her fridge with carbs and let me play office in her apartment while she was doing important lawyer work. I was quite enamored with ms. mnt's place, so nice and sunny when it wasn't raining. Here's the view out the back:
Next, I hopped a plane to Hawaii. First stop, Honolulu. I stayed with ms. f, ever-fab Taiwan roommate, and her super-fun super-cute married friends j & k and their cutey son a. j's sister j-also came and got me at the airport, bearing an yummy edible candy lei, and then drove me around and fed me. Mmm, teriyaki crepes at Mocha Java... thanks, j-also! Unfortunately, it POURED for much of my stay in Honolulu. As in, the continuation of record rain for Oahu. Crazy. Flooding, etc. Yuck. However, it did stop raining long enough for me to get to the Honolulu Academy (one of the nicest museums I've been to in a while, by the way), where ms. f. works, and to go on the AMAZING tour of Shangri-La.

Shangri-La is one of those unbelieveable places that you just have to go and see to believe. Pictures don't do even do it justice (and you can't take photos inside, so go check the link above!) but here are a few:

And yes, that is Diamond Head in the background. That building is her "play house". Can you say WOW? I'm not sure that if I was the richest woman in the world, I would have built a house and filled it floor-to-ceiling with Islamic Art, but I'd probably get a house in Hawaii. As a side note, the rain was so bad that Diamond Head was inaccessible due to landslides while I was there. Not that I wanted to go hiking in the rain anyway.

I must've been pretty jet-lagged, 'cause I really just did not take many pictures while I was in Honolulu. I didn't even get a shot of me and ms. f!! I will have to make up for it by borrowing some shots from other sites so you don't get too bored. I have to mention, though I enjoyed the Life in the Pacific show and the Asian galleries (esp. ms. f's show, holla), I LOVED David Kuraoka's ceramics & bronzes. Link to the show. Organic and beautiful. A couple of shots, not taken by me:

Quick Honolulu food round up:

The Pavilion Cafe at the Academy. I had the Nicoise salad with seared ahi, yum. I would've gone for the mahi-mahi soba noodle salad, but ms. f got it and I thought after two years of ordering the same dish while we were abroad together it might be nice to branch out a bit.

Big City Diner. Um, kimchee fried rice, salad, and garlic fries. And holy crap, those garlic fries. As in awesome fries drizzled all over with garlic oil and chopped roasted garlic. Garlic fries... Here's a shot, courtesy of my new fave food blog, 'Ono Kine Grindz... I have a feeling I may be borrowing a couple more shots from this blog... and reading it compulsively...

Goma Tei Ramen Restaurant, at the Ward Centre. Gyoza and spicy cold noodles. Yum. And of course, the brilliant 'onokinegrindz has got me covered here too:
Kaka'ako Kitchen, the previously-mentioned Mocha Java Cafe, and the best meal of all, at the u house (parents of j and j-also, grandparents of a)... I'm so going back just to eat there again. With the rain and whatnot, we did a bit of shopping and a lot of hanging out. I haven't taken pictures of my shopping loot yet, but I'll get to that later. Mostly I was psyched to meet ms. f's surrogate hawai'i family, and to visit. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU again to everyone that put me up and fed me!

The last food stop I was "required" to make was to Leonard's- on the way to the airport, no less. Not real fancy-like, that Leonard's, but holy malasadas. I couldn't even take my own pictures, I was too hypnotized by the warm fried-dough-like pastries... one last thanks to 'onokinegrindz for these pictures, and a description and recipe too!:

I'm going to close out this entry with a shot of the gross gross brown water that we didn't go in once the rain finally stopped on my last day on Oahu. Ew, run-off. AND an adorable shot of k sleeping (sorry, k) while a and j play in the sand. a wouldn't walk on the sand but he looked awfully cute in his little surf shorts and he did get into scooping the sand up and dumping it over his shoulder (right onto sleeping daddy, of course)...

Next stop, the Big Island, turtles, and even fattier food. Yummy yummy yummy...

A shameless plug before getting down to business...

2006-03-22T02:03:00.000-05:00

This is my "auction of the week" at ebay, and it has no bids. Sad. Want to go bid on it? Please?

Oy, if at all possible, the days have been going by even faster than the last time I posted, which was ALMOST TWO WEEKS AGO. Thank you again for all the kind words about my grandmother. They are now considering moving her out of the ICU, but she is still unable to recognize anyone. My folks will arrive back stateside in a few days. The last month has honestly been a total BLUR. I'm hoping that lots of R & R, sunshine, and low-stress visiting with friends will help.

In the meantime, I've been trying to get caught up/ahead as frantically as possible. It's kind of neat that I can at least go into my flickr account and sort of see by the pictures what I've been doing. Now if only I could write more regularly... Anyway, I see from my pictures that I've been getting set for shows, and subsequently trying out some new types of stuff to offer... Voila, one of the recycled sweater cuff prototypes:
Some sort-of organic pod-like necklaces:And of course, there is always the never-ending spinning thing...
Also, though I've made minis of these up in the past as samples, I never got around to making them "full-sized" until recently... they're called "yarn melanges" ('cause I'm all fancy, you know) and they're basically these great mixes of all these yarns that I've been stashing that I want to see all blended together. I'm working on knitting something up with some different ones, but here're some little pictures... (these are available at the rhino etsy shop, by the way- wink, wink): In more personal news, we have not been cooking anything particularly new or exciting, nor have we been doing much eating out, for that matter. We DID get yummy Japanese food at our perennial favorite Ittyo (Porter Sq. Exchange) after a nice paper browsing trip at Paper Source, where of course I did not control myself and came home with (duh) paper, including this yummy sheet (amongst others):

We also did manage to get out to brunch with mr. aw & ms. kk at the noisy but soooo good B-Side Lounge. Check out the brunch menu. And yes, I had the breakfast fajitas AND bacon. And I seriously considered having the sweet potato biscuits too. I couldn't convince mr. d to stop at Petsi Pies on the way home for chicken pot pie, but it ended up being okay 'cause they were closed anyway.

Finally, lest you think I forgot about St. Patrick's Day, I did not. There was no green beer or parading, but I didn't let the chance to dress ms. daisy up pass me by. Here she is, finally tolerating something on her head. Awww.

spin spin spin spin spin...

2006-03-08T00:13:00.000-05:00

that's pretty much all I've been doing... well, that and being sick for most of the latter part of last week. so besides the spinning, I updated traveling rhinos with the yarn that was spun. very exciting (and self-promoting), no? you have to admit, it is kinda pretty...
and I honestly have nothing else to say right now. mom & dad rhino leave for asia in about four hours, so I'm going to go nap for a bit. go buy some yarn, why don't you?

Hang in there, folks, it's going to be a long one...

2006-02-28T13:37:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the long silence... a lot has been going on so I hope you'll bear with me... I'll try to include lots of pictures so you don't get too bored :)

It's been over two weeks, so where were we...V-Day was nice. mr. d & I went to yummy yummy Fugakyu (we hit up the Sudbury one) and ate crazy maki rolls 'til we were stuffed. Then we had ice cream. And fell asleep.

Here's a yarn I spun from wool dyed by the lovely Heather. Nothing to do with V-Day but I spun it between then and now. Looks super 80s to me :), we will see if I can let go of it or not...

It was also vacation for mr. d last week so we went up to Maine for a few days to visit with zay and mom d. While in The County, we hid this:

One of two received from the uber-talented Josh Simpson's Infinity Project. Go submit a proposal!!! Besides being a really cool idea, you get a second one of these AMAZING planets to keep for yourself! 'Cause chances are his bigger stuff is not in your price range. If it is, please pick one up for me while you're shopping, 'cause you can afford to :)

Here's the one I kept for me:

You can't tell from the pics, but this one is actually quite a bit smaller than the first one. Here's a shot of me freezing my behind off during the "hiding"...

And actually, now that I think about it, if you know where this is, there's a pretty good chance you could go and get that planet for yourself because I don't imagine anyone else is dumb enough to go out there until it gets warmer.

Speaking of warmer, I am planning on a super-fun (and long-awaited) trip to SF & Hawaii to visit ms. c, ms soon to be mrs. c, ms. f and #1! I'll get to mooch off my friends and eat yummy food, and be WARM! Finally, a use for my thirty-five bathing suits. This news accompanied by a photo of the cool lights in the trees at LLBean.

Finally: if you've read this far, thanks. I have to explain to those who care enough to read this much that I tend to disappear from email (and blogging) when I get overwhelmed. Personal hiding reaction to stress. In this case, when mr. d and I got back from Maine, we found out that my grandmother had fallen into a coma. She is now conscious but recovering very slowly. She can't speak or walk yet, nor is recovery certain, and my parents are getting ready to fly to Taiwan to see her. Depending on what happens during their visit, I will probably go myself sooner or later. It's hard not to feel helpless and stressed, especially when you're over 9,000 miles away. Day to day on this, but I am working on not withdrawing so much when things get crazy. Thanks for bearing with me. xoxo, #2

FOOD! BBM4 posting, finally...

2006-02-28T13:22:00.000-05:00

YUMMY! And not at all ruined by the fact that I took an extra three weeks to post about it...
From lovely Dani, in lovely upstate NY... good thing I know myself well enough to make sure I took photos as soon as I opened the box... brownie bites, sugar cookies, sesame bar, nutty chocolate, dark & milk chocolate bars, wafer cookies, raspberry linzer cookie, potato chips, plus cute vintage Frosted Flakes notebook & notepad, and a cookbook too! Thanks Dani, everything was wonderful! Arrived just in time for Valentine's Day, too! Here are a few closer shots: I was even nice enough to share with others... well, some of it anyway... I just had a thought (again, only took me three weeks)... was there a CD in here? Because I didn't see one when I unpacked? Did it somehow go missing? Hmm, a mystery...

Foiled, again...

2006-02-08T00:20:00.000-05:00

...by my server, of course. Traitor. Well, I got about half of the necessary updates finished, including most of these, and will finish the rest on Thursday, probably:

Tomorrow I will give myself a bit of a break so I don't break my computer out of frustration, and reorganize. Loads of handspun. If you see something you like that doesn't have an add to cart button, just send an email or leave a comment. Thanks. I'll be back when I'm not annoyed with my computer anymore. Smooches.

Time warps and site updates.

2006-02-07T13:47:00.000-05:00

Seriously, I feel like days disappear at a time. Where did the weekend go? Well, there was YUMMY Korean BBQ at the very on the down low, you only know if it if you're really down with Asian food in the 'burbs New Jang Su, then awesome milk & bittersweet chocolate ice cream at Ranc's... Sunday = sleeping in & Superbowl. Yesterday, a lot of aimless driving trying to get places and looking for shelving solutions with mrs. s once arriving at those places. Definitely no working on wavy... Very solidly stuck at 1/10th finished right now. Note my cute Clover kacha-kacha at row 44 and the only 7s I own, annoying Susan Bates metal needles. I haven't used metal needles in months, and I remembered why about two rows in. Since I also dislike small needles to a certain extent and plan on not using them for many months after this is done, I could not justify buying new bamboo 7s.

I DID manage to get a bit of spinning done...
and I FINALLY watched the Netflix DVDs that I'd had sitting around for ages. I like Season 5. Lots of drama for Rory & Lorelai. And I'm almost caught up enough to feel like I can watch the new episodes. I am trying to hold out, though, because we all know how much I need a new TV show to watch.

That's it. Exciting, no? Biggest news: I have chained myself to the computer today getting updates to the site ready. No, really. I've made some decisions about updating and whatnot so that I won't go crazy and won't avoid site updates until I feel guilty and resentful. That's the plan, anyway. So if you haven't heard from me in a while or are expecting communication, today's the day. 'Cause I'm here, glued to the computer and I'll need to procrastinate on the site by replying to old emails.

My giant head.

2006-02-01T23:58:00.000-05:00

Before I get to rambling, here're a few items that I sent to ebay (still experimenting with keeping some stuff there)... click on the pictures to go to the listings if you're interested (such shameless self-promotion, I know)... :

"south beach" and "fairy tale" (and don't get me started, I know "fairy tale" is not a place or food and thus does not fit into my general naming scheme, but I couldn't think of a place and I am saving the few candy names I haven't used for a bigger piece)

So, I just finished knitting a neckwarmer for mr. d. As I was finishing up, I realized, hmm, I never measure these things. I just continually hold them up to my head and neck as I get to the part where I think I'm getting "close". And this realization of how I "measure" got me to thinking about the subject of this entry.

Some of my friends know this, but I thought this would be interesting for those who don't know as much random crap about me: I have a disproportionately large head. Now, everyone I discuss this with SAYS that my head doesn't SEEM unnaturally large, but there is proof. mr. d, who is about 5' 8" and sort of stockily-built, not big but pretty broad-shouldered, well, his head is smaller than mine. This was a point of contention for awhile until finally one day we got a tape measure and measured. Yup, my head is bigger. For those of you who don't know, I am not quite 5' 2" and though I seem to keep gaining weight, I am your average small-boned female Asian build. MY HEAD IS ABOUT ONE INCH LARGER THAN MY MUCH LARGER THAN ME HUSBAND'S HEAD. And no, his head is not freakishly small.

To further emphasize my point, mr. l was over when we measured, and he is taller and bigger than mr. d. I would say that the average person meeting mr. l on the street would probably hesitate to mess with him (correct me if I'm wrong here, people who know). And I think mr. l himself would say that his head is not small. ms. f says so too, and she knows. AND MY HEAD IS A MERE ONE-HALF OF AN INCH SMALLER THAN MR. L'S HEAD. See? Disproportionately large. I'm going to start drawing myself as a lollipop.

Don't worry, I don't have a complex. Yet. Though I know my roommates senior year in college will tell some story about how I came home freaking out one day after we had our heads measured for our caps and spent the next 12 hours feverishly questioning all the other seniors I came across in my attempts to find someone with a noggin as big as mine. No, I don't have a complex. I do have a problem finding knit hats that are flattering, though. Any suggestions? 'Cause I think winter is going to be a while longer here.

Cure for an upset stomach.

2006-01-31T22:37:00.000-05:00

Yup, that's right. I am tired and my stomach hurts, so clearly this was the logical choice. Yum. Anyway, I am supposed to be updating the site right now, but I DON'T FEEL LIKE IT. I don't care if I HAVEN'T FELT LIKE IT FOR WEEKS, I'm putting it off for one more day. At least. Okay, fine, I'll do SOMETHING tomorrow.

Now, instead of updating silly websites, I am going to work on wavy. Mine's in green (the lime heather, #9461 to be exact), of course. And yes, I bought a row counter. Despite my dislike for patterns (and, counting, now that I think about it), Clover's little row counter (kacha-kacha!!!) won me over almost immediately, 'cause, well, it's CUTE.

I would have pictures of things that weren't chocolate if I weren't tired and lazy. And if the sun would come out more than once a week for half an hour. Crap, I may not have photos for months... Oh well. Here's a scan of one of the ATCs I made for Amy's Valentine ATC Swap instead.

Okay, I'm off to cozy up with my Cascade 220, pattern & row counter. No promises that I won't fall asleep a few rows in, though...

Fried pickles, Greek salad & a side of UGH, please.

2006-01-27T01:01:00.000-05:00

So, in my ongoing attempt to eat healthier, I convinced my companions, mr. d and the lovely mrs. w, to order baskets of fried pickles AND jalapeno poppers at Beerworks tonight. Then mrs. w added on lobster quesadillas, we all added fries with our entrees, and it was all over. I guess the half of the Greek salad that I had might've added a little bit of fiber. Too bad all the grease and fried batter blocked any of the healthy stuff from being absorbed into my system.

All that food is making me sleepy. BIG shop update planned for tomorrow and Saturday, plus dinner party and swap to work on. mr. d is swamped too, tomorrow is the end of the quarter and of course that means grades need to be turned in next week... (yawn)

Here's a little preview of what I'll be updating with in the shop(s)... etsy too!...

Huh? Where am I? Who are you?

2006-01-17T15:11:00.000-05:00

Color me in complete shock. Where did the first half of January go? Where did the rest of December go, for that matter? I have to say, I've definitely been feeling the aftershock of the holidays. There was a lot of driving and quite a bit of drama this year. No dirty laundry here, though. Suffice it to say that I think I was exhausted long after mr. d's short vacation had already ended. And I am still avoiding.

If you have called or emailed me in the last three weeks and I still haven't replied, I'm sorry! I have probably written you an email back in my head or avoided listening to voicemail altogether because I am struggling with the following:

1. Updating store and uploading store stock. Lots of both to do, and my brand-new laptop developed a still-growing vertical line on the screen over the holidays. Besides being annoying, they have to take it back to fix it.

2. Subsequently, I am frantically uploading as much as possible to online servers and backing up everything else. I am contemplating typepad so I can organize and salvage links & bookmarks... I like to make things extra complicated, you know :)

3. Filing taxes for the first time as a business. Aah. As might be expected of me, I am simultaneously avoiding and freaking out about this. (Sigh.)

4. Other things I can't talk about here yet. Soon enough.

Anyway, 1 through 3 are practically enough to knock me out on their own. Especially 3. Any advice?

On the bright side, once the laptop is gone (between 1 and 5 pm tomorrow) I will be limited in what I can do so I will have lots of time to create and reply to emails and make phone calls. Expect to be called upon to play, people. I have to avoid taxes, and actually getting out of this town might be a good idea too... maybe we can find some time to decorate cakes?

I am ready to play nicely now.

2005-12-09T01:03:00.000-05:00

Well, I am less cranky now. Thanks for not taking it personally. Here are some pictures of the lovely white tree that I made mr. d run around all over with me looking for. Now there's an awkward sentence. The tree, plus a peek at the wrapped presents from the weekend (there are about twenty five more from today's cranky wrapping session-- might YOUR gift be in this pile?):
So, this is not something I ever imagined wanting, but I saw heidi's post of one of her gazillion trees and was inspired... of course I wanted mine heavier on the green and orange, 'cause that's the way I am... and it's actually not done yet, 'cause I have a whole 'nother box of ornaments that are waiting for me to make hangers for them... it makes me happy anyway.

I have been avoiding the site because it makes me cranky, but I will get back to it tomorrow. Maybe even for a bit before I go back to bed. Weather forecast says 6" to 10" of snow tomorrow! If there's a snow day and mr. d doesn't have to go to school, we're going to put up the big tree AND the OTHER little one... off to make a Christmas CD, eling

Grr.

2005-12-08T13:05:00.000-05:00

I am cranky and tired and cold. (Growl.) Solution: going to hide in bedroom with powerful area heater and many, many Christmas gifts. I will wrap lovely & cute gifts with pretty paper until I am not growly any more.

December?

2005-12-06T03:05:00.000-05:00

When did it freaking become December? Ugh. It was a quiet weekend, full of, well, not much excitement. We did watch Kung Fu Hustle, though, which I'd been wanting to see for ages.

I have decided that Stephen Chow is up there in the category of "strangely attractive despite generally odd appearance". Joining him there is Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters). Anyone else have any other additions? Okay, actually, Stephen Chow doesn't look bad in this particular photo but if you've seen the movie, or Shaolin Soccer (also AWESOME), for that matter, then you get it.

I digress. I forgot, we also decorated my happy white Christmas tree (pictures soon) and I wrapped about a gazillion presents (okay, it was only about 30 something). This post is way too random. I think it may be a result of generally sleeping from 6 or 7 am to 11 am. I'm working on it, I swear. Actually, maybe I should go finish some other stuff so I can be in bed sleeping by 4. ttfn, ek

PS. I totally have NOT started working on my beautiful yarn below yet (:()

I'm free! So I can start on this!!!

2005-11-30T01:42:00.000-05:00

Fine, I might not get to work on it 'til this weekend. But isn't it PRETTY?

Well, okay, and maybe I'm not completely free, but the site has launched!!! There is still a ton of stuff to tweak and lots more things to add to the shop, but it's there! And it's all I've been doing for what seems like forever, so I'm not going to talk about it any more here. If you want to hear more about that, check the tr blog. Actually, there's not really that much there either. But it IS a bit more colorful.

It's been almost two weeks since last I went on and on about myself, so where should I begin? Well, part of why things have been so insane and I've spent every waking hour staring at the computer and some hours that I should have been sleeping too is that I didn't plan November very well. Actually, I didn't plan on waiting 'til November to launch, but that is another story. So, after our trip to Baltimore, I headed to NY to stay with the newly-wed mrs. s. and go to see U2.

U2! I have been dying to see them in concert forever, and it was AWESOME. I have never been to a show before where you pay an obscene amount of money, Madison Square Garden is PACKED, everyone knows the words to EVERY song, and at the end all you want to do is spend even MORE money next time to get the best possible seats you can get. Awesome.

*I almost forgot to write about the MOMA! I had to come back. There is too much to say, but I especially liked the SAFE: Design Takes On Risk exhibit. Full of crazy science and quirky designs, plus your necessary social commentary. :) Check out the cool concept of the patches here... not for nicotine, but for junk food! While in NY, I also pulled my normal stunt, which is to force everyone to eat too much food with me because I am panicked that I will not get such a good selection of food again in the near future. But no food pics 'cause I always forget in my rush to stuff everything in my face.

The other thing I do is to force everyone I want to see to eat together regardless of whether they know each other or not, because I am on a tight schedule. In this case, it was mrs. s, plus friends mr. c and mr. r-k, and we went to Pylos, which is right in mrs. s and mr. c's neighborhood. YUM. And, disturbingly, booked solid at 6:30 on Monday night. Wow. We only got a table because someone else's party was not as big as they said it would be. Anyway, there was too much food to deal with, and I couldn't pronounce ANYTHING on the menu, either. SO GOOD. Here's us outside after, minus the mrs. I am so full I am cross-eyed. Tuesday it was rainy so we stayed in until father of mrs. s arrived to meet us all for lunch. We went to Veselka, which really was as good as everyone kept saying it would be. I had borscht for the first time, which was much lighter than I thought it would be, and not to overuse the word, but GOOD. Plus, Chloe Sevigny came in and was sitting at the table next to us. Very random. Did I say YUM yet?

Anyway, I headed back north after that-- it was already getting insane with people leaving the city for the holiday. Which totally crept up on me, by the way. Thanksgiving has long been my favorite holiday, because I love pretty much all the foods associated with it, and really, what is better than eating a ridiculous amount of food and doing nothing else? Except maybe taking a nap and then getting up to eat MORE food. We had a nice at-home deal.

Since then, I've just been trucking away at the site. I owe the CD swap people an email, sorry. I have not been the slave-driver I'm supposed to be about that. But now that I'm free, it should be forthcoming, very soon. I think I might be ready for bed now. Sleep...yay!

I'm ready to hibernate now!

2005-11-18T01:52:00.000-05:00

Am I the only one who wants to hide under the covers when it gets COLD? It dropped below 35 sometime this afternoon... brrrr. Stupid winter. Stupid no daylight. At least there is the miracle of this...

hot caramel apple cider-- basically it was the hot apple cider COVERED in whipped cream and drizzled with caramel. Very buttery cookie on the side. In case you missed me, here's what I've been doing: eating. Okay, I've been doing rhino work too... anyway, gotta give a shout-out to the V family for taking us to Vaccaro's while we were in Baltimore last weekend. All hail Vaccaro's:

Guess who was the insane person who got the oreo sundae? Or oreo ice cream cake with two scoops of vanilla gelato plus whipped cream, hot fudge and more oreo cookies? If you guessed me, you don't know me that well. Yup, it was my chocolate-loving spouse. I got the coconut napoleon thing... and even that was too much. We were in the middle of little italy and it was so much sugar that I was actually tempted to have dinner again after we were done. Don't think that B to the altimore was all sugar and cream puffs, though... we also saw Larry Flynt's stake in the city...

The best part was that the Hustler Club was on a WHOLE STREET full of awesome seedy strip joints. Luckily someone planned ahead and the police station was right on the middle of the block too. Sweet.

On the way back from Maryland we stopped in on River Road in Edgewater, NJ to go to the Mitsuwa Marketplace, supercool Japanese supermarket, food court and bookstore! Probably by far the largest concentration of Japanese people on the East Coast. CROWDED.

Basically I've been hiding out trying to get stuff ready for the Sampler and prepping for ANOTHER trip, this one to NY to see Bono & the Edge at MSG, and to go museum-hopping and window-shopping (with money I don't have) with the newly MRS. s.

Wow, that was a lot of non-pictureness. I will try to update the other blog tomorrow with updates on the Sampler goodies and yarn! and jewelry :) I think I might go to bed! And not even 2 a.m. yet. Okay, I might finish some other emails first... I will leave you with the nice Ethel M chocolates that mr. l brought back from Las Vegas after his rendezvous with the lovely ms. f... trust me, the box looks nothing like this anymore...

daytime updating? what is this "daytime updating"?

2005-11-07T13:50:00.000-05:00

Next thing you know, I'll be up at dawn, we'll be eating early bird dinner specials at 4pm and mr. d and I will be in our (separate) beds by 8 sharp. And I'll be dressing in all purple and red. Hopefully I'll be one of the more stylish ones, like the lady at right with the sparkly cap and structured handbag.
I have to admit though, that I HAVE been feeling quite homebody-ish lately. This may also have to do with daylight savings (seriously, doesn't it feel like 10pm at 4:30 in the afternoon?! what is that about!?), and the chilly rain we've been having. Don't forget the RIDICULOUS snow of a week and a half ago, either!:

Luckily, things turned around and here I am at the playground not two days later. How cool is this thing? Another sign of my getting older: I was kinda scared up there.

It was a pretty tame weekend. Saturday someone got her first bath in over 6 weeks. No, it wasn't me. I am trying for 8 weeks. And we did errands, and I did (gasp!) Christmas shopping. Hey, they were having a big DVD sale... yesterday we were up at mr. d-senior's house for his birthday. In other words, we drove up 2 1/2 hours and visited, then ate too much food and got tired, and drove back 2 1/2 hours. Always a good time :).

Finally, at least for now, this weekend I ...(drum roll)... spun my own yarn! Pictures to come. Very excited about this, though if this does reduce my handspun yarn consumption it will drastically increase $ spent on fiber (sigh). Oh well, it was FUN!!! !!!!!! !!!!!! Yup, I liked it a lot. Hmm. I don't think I'm very witty before 1 a.m. I'll write again later and we can compare. xoxo, eling

CD swappers, you cannot escape me.

2005-11-01T02:53:00.000-05:00

Crappy title. Sorry. I will be gunning for you, swappers, but it probably won't be for a few days. New topic: a very belated Happy Halloween!

SOMEBODY chewed right through the wrappers to eat both a Kit Kat and a pack of Whoppers while others were eating dinner. Thank goodness for Halloween snack size candy. So if Daisy looks needy, maybe it's because she is trying to con you into leaving the room so she can steal and eat more Halloween candy out of the bowl while you're not looking.

I think I had more to say earlier but it's getting late and the bad TV watching habit that rears its ugly head when there is a lot to do has sucked any thoughts I had left out of me. Busy weekend leading to busy week. At least if I'm not too hard on myself I can admit that I have been moderately productive.

At least there was dimsum on Sunday, and all the goodness that comes with dimsum...

Bedtime... and new mattress topper... yay! Goodnight!

I may officially be nocturnal now.

2005-10-28T05:02:00.000-04:00

Except that I'm awake for most of the day, too. What does that make me, Omniurnal? Sounds too much like urinal.

Anyway. Not too much going on. Trucking away at the website work. More on that at the tr blog later if you're interested.

We DID go to Salem earlier this evening to meet up with wayne p. and friends, who were down from the hinterlands of Maine to check out the spooky Halloween haunted houses there. We ate here. Food pictures to follow. Yum. We didn't have time to stay for the scary stuff though, unfortunately. Maybe next year, as I refuse to fight the crowds over the weekend.

Actually, the weekend looks kinda hectic anyway, as ms. f is due in from Hawaiian paradise for a brief family and mr. l visit, so we will try to have a whirlwind brunch with her Sunday, as well as grab pseudo-belated-birthday lunch with ms. p. Saturday. Plus Magpie sale Sat. AM, and Halloween party at mr. w & roommates' house Sat. PM. Ooh, I forgot dinner with mr. & mrs. w., also down from coastal Maine Sat. before Halloween bash. And I want desperately to find ms. day-z a costume for said party.

Basically, I better get a lot of work done tomorrow. And there should be a tremendous number of fun pictures to post at the end of the weekend.

Side note: if you are one of the people who actually spends time with me in person and appear here as an abbreviated name like mr. q or something, I'd love it if you let me know somehow how you feel about being mentioned by first name or other nickname or whatever. Comment or email me or whatever. I am still figuring out how much to put out there in the blogging world.

That's it for now. 5:15 AM, time for bed. Oh, and that weird dog-thing in the picture was in a window at Lord & Taylor in Philadelphia. I dunno.

PS. Shout-out to #1 for the comments... thanks for making me feel like I'm not talking to myself :) ... I could of course refer to you as ms. PPP instead...

back with a vengeance.

2005-10-20T03:49:00.000-04:00

So... it's been quite awhile... there has been a lot going on, so this might be rather lengthy. I'll try to portion in out through the next few entries. Some stuff I still have no words for. But we also went away for awhile, so that kept me busy. Plus, my procrastinating side was taking pictures but didn't take the time to edit and upload them...

I've been slowly trucking away at traveling rhinos' things... more on that at the traveling rhinos blog if you're interested. We've also been taking pictures of our favorite ms. daisy, of course. Here she is looking tired of having her picture taken:
The big time-drainer was our trip to Philadelphia for the lovely wedding of our happy friends ms. s and mr. v.... now mr. & mrs. v! except she's not changing her name... BUT this was not an all-fun trip; I did the reception centerpieces as well as the boutonnieres, corsages and bouquets. It was fun but sorta stressful too... here are a couple shots of the final products, which I'm pretty happy about:

On the left we've got the blushing bride's bouquet, and on the right the strapping groomsmens' boutonnieres...

But the wedding was WONDERFUL... so much joy and their families were so FUN! Lots of gettin' down by people you might not normally imagine getting down. While in Philly we did also manage to get some cheesesteaks at King's the "original" cheesesteak place, and we did drag ourselves out Saturday after the wedding for some historical siteseeing at Independence Hall. Here's me looking like HELL in front of morimoto, Philadelphia restaurant of IRON CHEF MASAHARU MORIMOTO.

We REALLY wanted to eat here, but with the craziness leading up to the wedding Friday, we didn't get on top of making reservations... and then when dinner rolled around we were too exhausted to deal with getting back to morimoto... so we ended up having dinner at Roy's, which was very yummy... I was nice enough to let mr. d have the seared ahi (tuna) for once, and we definitely had the HOT CHOCOLATE SOUFFLE too... I may have had my own dessert as well... :)

Since getting to Philly was such a trial (a LONG story for another time), we were relieved that we got back without any issues on Sunday at lunchtime. We got to pick up a very-missed mz. day-z at the kennel, where we were presented with a new Halloween jack-o-lantern covered bandanna for her. More pictures on that later this week.

And OF COURSE, mr. d came back with a cold, which he promptly spent the last three days trying to give to me. I have managed to fight it off, mostly by sleeping a lot. Ugh. Getting back into a normal routine is rougher than I thought it would be...

At least I'm surrounded by cuteness while I work...

Does anyone actually read this?

2005-09-28T02:56:00.000-04:00

If so, maybe I should find some friends who actually comment on things they read... although now that I think about it, I don't know what I've written that one would actually comment on. Hmm. Fine. Maybe you could just write, "Hi, I read this, how are you?"
(or "I hate you so much! PS. Page me later." hi kk!)
Just a thought. (Someone's found a new place to curl up. Not so convenient for all involved, however. This is directly below my desk. The big-ass printer/scanner/copier is now where the half a tissue box is. Day-Z is monopolizing where my feet and chair normally go.)

Today was Day 1 on the new Eling Scheduling Plan. So far, so good. If it continues to work, I may market it to others. Pictures of cool stuff I got done today and more updates at tr and mini-store tomorrow. Tomorrow there will also be a routine reorganization of the jewelry-making workspace. You'll understand when you see the pictures. Right now, I'm digging on: Hello Yarn, calendars, barley tea, warm slippers, and little watercolor paintings of yummy food.

I did this one yesterday, it's less than an old-school 3 x 5" photograph... haven't decided if I'm going to ink it or not. Any opinions?

Currently hating on: Netflix (so slow... you said by today! and this after you sent me the wrong DVD on FRIDAY! so you wouldn't have to process anything until yesterday), canned food, not getting enough sleep, cold nights, and drafty window. Goodnight!

More attempts at dealing with myself...

2005-09-27T02:21:00.000-04:00

Maybe Blogger will be nicer to me tonight?... In an attempt to organize my self-employed self a bit better, I just spent I dunno how long creating personalized weekly, multi-month and yearly calendars. Yup, I'm a freak. But look at the pretty picture I took last week, before the sun went away.

Shows I am finding myself disturbingly addicted to and make a serious effort to watch right now:

America's Next Top Model (that's actually not disturbing or a surprise)

Laguna Beach (I know, what's wrong with me?)

My Super Sweet Sixteen (where do they find these people?)

Will definitely be making an effort to watch Project Runway when it reappears too. Shows I don't search out but definitely don't turn off, either: The Closer, Without A Trace, Todd Oldham's new show on HGTV, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, any The Fabulous Life of: episode. Okay, there are a lot of things I will watch if the TV's already on, hence my rule of no TV during the day. Am desperately trying not to get sucked into any of the new "must-see" cliffhanger shows like Lost, Desperate Housewives, etc. etc...

Now that I've blabbed about TV for so long, here's the picture I was trying to get up last night:

More KAWAII collectibles for me!

Finally, I noticed that lots of pictures of our lovely wedding are now being featured on our wedding photographer's website, studioatticus. Apparently, one bride-to-be liked our groomsmens' get-up so much that she asked Connie to get the info from me. Yup, we're cool.

Netflix, why hast thou forsaken me?

2005-09-26T03:21:00.000-04:00

Hmm... it's 3:22 AM on Sunday night/Monday morning and I am still awake. And we wonder why I have issues getting an early start at the beginning of the week. Though, for the record, I did go to sleep before 3 AM both last night and Friday night, and I got to sleep LATE all weekend too. Yay!

Okay, I won't bore you with what I did all weekend, 'cause it was really work (and it was so cloudy all weekend I got no good pictures) and lame stuff like grocery shopping. Me = Cool. Right. Anyway, I was going to leave you with a picture of yet another random cute thing that I find myself buying, but apparently blogger hates me as much as netflix does and there will be no picture uploading.

This must be a sign that I should go to bed. (It's now 3:35. That was 3 minutes of typing and 11 futile minutes of trying to upload my stupid picture.)

i heart alton brown...

2005-09-22T02:00:00.000-04:00

...so I made him my current wallpaper. Really, I'm just here for the food.
hmm, tired. Slow progress today. Made less productive by sloooooooooow dinner at Evil Cheesecake Factory and super sloooooooow EXTRA EVIL Verizon Wireless Customer Service people who were COMPLETELY UNHELPFUL about my evil broken phone. Bastards. Anyway.

Wednesday is supposed to = gym day, but obviously that didn't happen. Tomorrow (or rather 7.5 hours from now) = Maine! with mr. dhl. I swear, I'm going to try to be awake for the ride! Woo hoo, we're going to Freeport! which = outlet shopping and beads! and Brunswick! which = carrot cake and cookies!

In other news, Ms. Daisy has become quite unruly as we've become less able to spend as much time with her :( bad doggy parents!
See? She hates us. I think the weekend will have to be dedicated to Daisy and WORK instead of fun Open Studios... so sad. Damnit, watching Good Eats makes me HUNGRY. Eat or sleep? Hmmm....

So much for earlier bedtimes...

2005-09-21T03:45:00.000-04:00

I feel like I talk about trying to get to bed earlier in every other entry. Maybe I should just give up. Last night I couldn't keep my eyes open past 11pm, but tonight I just felt like there was so much to DO. I am excited, 'cause I finally put some things in the etsy shop... somewhere to get things out while the site is still in progress... Here is what I've been entertaining myself with when taking breaks from work...

This is my beloved Sir White Static Cling from the lovely Sarah of the small object, posing on some gorgeous GREEN yarn from Tamara of Houndscroft Farm.

This is the yummy yarn I got from the very sweet Linda of stoneleafmoon and crochetlab (which I didn't know she was responsible for!) while at the Brookline 300 this weekend.

Finally, while we're on the subject of the Brookline 300 again, here is the ADORABLE koh-bee that both k.k. and I wanted to marry! (someone had to remind me that I am now ineligible to marry this charmer...damn. kidding, mr. d) koh-bee was selling his Femonz, seen here, and was quite the little salesman for his creatures. Note: he is sitting at one of those tiny plastic tables. All these monsters had NAMES! Mine is named Creshtan, you can just make out the arrow pointing him out. When I asked if HIS (koh-bee's) name was on his Femonz information cards, he said no, he didn't really have a phone number :), but he wrote his name on the card when I bought my monster!

koh-bee was skillfully giving advice about which would be suitable gifts for girls to the adults, while simultaneously chatting up the kids that were crowded around his table. He packaged each sale up carefully in a white chinese food takeout container, and deftly made change for his customers. He was doing better sales than his mom was! And when we happened to pass by the booth a bit later, koh-bee was running to the back of the tent to grab another tiny plastic chair so the younger boy who was looking at his monsters would be more comfortable. SOOOO cute!!!! ugh, 4:08 am now... c u soon!

Presenting Her Royal Highness...

2005-09-19T14:07:00.000-04:00

Queen Daisy says, "Sorry mommy is so crappy about her updates. She is clearly behind on everything 'cause she's neglecting me too."

Seriously, not sure what happened this week! There was soooo much going on... desperately trying to get work done before meeting up with ms. s (soon to be married to mr. v) on Thursday to talk about the flowers for her Philly wedding next month... and I was so distracted by this new friend the entire time:

Twiggy was very snuffly. And licky. The Queen (see above) is not licky (or snuffly for that matter), so this was new for me.

and then there was ms. s' shower Saturday, and the AMAZING PIES... newest obsession = Petsi Pies!

Sunday I wandered the Brookline 300 and PRFM with the lovely ms. k.k.... there was definitely frozen lemonade, pizza, yarn and cute stuff involved. Dinner: MORE cambridge 1 pizza (yes! thanks mr. l for conceding). After dinner: sleep-inducing benefit concert (sorry, mom). Whew! More on street festival purchases and happenings once I get out into the light to take some pictures of the goodies...

Finally, totally in love with these paintings from Bren Bataclan, who is doing the COOLEST project with these happy guys... anyone doing any Christmas shopping for me... hint, hint...

See you later on tonight... :)

Happy Birthday to me!

2005-09-12T01:40:00.000-04:00

Even though it's technically over now... what a nice birthday weekend! Thank you, mr. d and friends!

Here's what went down... There was the ekcd BCPpI (Birthday Celebrity Putt-putt Invitational), here. A shot of the course... And guess what? I won first place! To EVERYONE's surprise, I think... it wasn't rigged, though. We still have the scorecards, if you want to check. mr. d had some nice prizes for us... I got a GC for Newbury Comics, 2nd place mr. w got Netflix for a month, and 3rd place mr. n got big-ass ice cream.

Amazingly, he opted for something smaller than this:

I think to save room for this at dinner, after:

Mmm... sushi and noodles. Is there anything better? I think I like the Fugakyu in Sudbury better than Brookline... cozier... and still soooo much food... and then there was this:

"Temptation Apple". Talk about food comas... and bad MSG headache before bed... but, it was worth it.

Yay! Then today, I slept late and woke up to pizzelles, presents, and my two favorite beings in the world, mr. d and daisy. (More on presents and nice friends tomorrow.) After much lounging about, we went to Cambridge 1 for yummy fresh salad (bibb lettuce, grape tomatoes & gorgonzola!) and wood-grilled pizza. Then mr. d patiently let me browse vintage beads and cute things. It was my birthday, after all!

Later we went out to eat AGAIN. Here. "World-famous" clam chowder, rolls, and cajun-grilled bluefish with mashed potatoes and broccoli (I think it may have been an entire head of broccoli).

Oh, and did I mention that there was cake after we got home? Goodnight, fat me. :)

flickr, why do you hate me?

2005-09-09T03:56:00.000-04:00

Argh, I guess blogger hates me too. It is now 4:01 and while flickr will not upload my photos, blogger will not recover my post. I should give up now, but I will most likely be stubborn instead and then get 3 hours of sleep and be tired and cranky tomorrow. Since flickr refuses to cooperate, instead of amusing story about my earlier stupidity and coordinating picture, you get this instead:
Sombrero-wearing cactus and frog solar hidamari perpetually moving toys. Zapo Sabo here moves kinda side to side, while Kaeru tilts his head from left to right (and shops, apparently). However, they no longer get to hang out together, as mr. d took Kaeru to his cubicle at school today. Maybe I should make myself a t-shirt with my head on it...

I avoided learning Dreamweaver all day today and instead took photos (that will not upload! grr), drew pictures, made shrinky-dink charms and pins, made pincushion prototypes, and also watched Laguna Beach and Inuyasha.

Does anyone know for sure if Laguna Beach is real or fake people?!

Seriously, flickr, why do you hate me? What did I do to you?!

Busy busy bee...

2005-09-08T01:29:00.000-04:00

Wow, the entire day disappeared, and even though I only slept for about 4 hours, from 7-11 am no less, somehow I managed to keep my pajamas on until dinner time. How embarrassing. I imagine that life will only get more crazy as I try to build a REAL site with my REAL program (yay, and thanks, Dane, for my Christmas gift from last year that I just installed tonight) AND continue to MAKE the things that are to go on the site, on top of managing the other stuff from other people that I want to be attached, too... Whew! I am tired just thinking of it. Luckily, I am off to BED! and amazingly before 2 am. Just have to brush my teeth and crawl under the covers... a virtual miracle :)

I'm outta here!

(sigh) moving again

2005-09-07T17:57:00.000-04:00

(More sighing....) Where did July and August go, anyway?

I think this moving thing may be something that most people are stuck with until they're at least 30. :P Anyway, this is going to be my new personal home for awhile. Where I get to complain about all sorts of stuff and talk about non (okay, more personal)-crafty, non-business things. Like shoes, and reality TV (ugh, by the way). Yes! Okay, off to tweak some more little details before I move on to the next task.