This little piggy

Yesterday was Chinese New Year. Happy Year of the Pig! To celebrate, I made jiao-tse (dumplings). I remember making these with my mom and a-mah (grandmother) at our kitchen table in Ulm, and I enjoy making them on my own. I've always aspired to being as quick and skilled as they were at folding them, but I'm just not. Ah well...at least they still taste good!

The first time I invited Chris to do something was for Chinese New Year. I was staffed at Microsoft and I was staying at the Oakwood corporate apartments in Bellevue during the week (this is when I still lived in SF). I usually make jiao-tse with a group of friends for Chinese New Year, so I decided to do it at the Oakwood. I invited a few friends over and we made (and ate) a ton of dumplings.

That was when I still thought Chris was a "cool kid" who'd never want to hang out with someone like me. I used Chinese New Year as an excuse to ask him to do something, and I was surprised when he accepted. But that night he brought over a CD he'd just bought and was so excited to hear. It was "The Best of Huey Lewis and the News". That's when his illusion of coolness was forever shattered...and the rest, they say, is history.

I've added a few pictures of this year's jiao-tse and of the Oakwood jiao-tse night to Flickr. You can see four thumbnails under "Recent Pics" and you can view the rest by clicking on one of the thumbnails. You'll be taken to my photostream on the Flickr site, where you can see all of the pictures that I've posted recently.

My favorite Valentine

Valentine's Day was really nice this year. In addition to the beautiful jasmine that Chris brought to my office (yes, he actually brought them himself...but dropped them off at the receptionist instead of calling me to tell me he was there), he also cooked me a wonderful dinner. He asked his colleague Loren for a recipe (Loren is an amazing chef) and picked up all of the ingredients at Pike Place Market. He made a delicious dinner of butternut squash and spicy prawns over whole grain pasta. Yum!

I learned one interesting thing while watching Chris prepare dinner. I often complain that he doesn't listen to me, and not just the standard "I'm talking and he's not paying attention" scenario. He'll ask me a specific question and then stop listening before I've finished answering. And then he'll ask again. And again. But while watching him follow the recipe, I discovered something.

He was reading the recipe out loud and repeating it to himself while he followed it. I watched him read, very clearly, "Now add the shallots to the saucepan...add the shallots to the sauce pan...shallots, saucepan..." He then picked up the prawns and, very purposefully, added them to the saucepan. "Shallots...saucepan..."

...

"OH CRAP!"

And that's when I realized that it's not just me he doesn't listen to. He doesn't even listen to himself. I laughed for a long time over that.

He's my (ADHD) sweetheart.

He's legal

Whoops, Cowboy is actually 21 in dog years. Apparently, the story that 1 year = 7 dog years is wrong since dogs mature quickly in their first two years. 1 year = 10.5 dog years for the first two years, and then it's 1:4 after that. No wonder Cowboy went on a pub crawl last night to celebrate. I thought that was a bit much for a teenager but it makes more sense now.

I think it's about time for him to get a job.

14 in dog years

h a p p y b i r t h d a y
c o w b o y

Mmmmmmmmm bop

I'm still at work and I just received the most beautiful jasmine flowers from my wonderful husband. When I got to reception to pick them up, I saw masses of red and pink roses, tulips and carnations covering the back table. In the midst of it all stood a very large green and white wreath-like plant. I thought immediately, "I bet that's mine." And I was right!

It's amazing. Most of the flowers haven't bloomed yet, but there are a few that have and their scent is strong enough to fill my entire cube. I can't stop smelling them. Mmmmmmmmm.

And to top it off, it's a potted plant so I can keep it here and enjoy the lovely scent of jasmine for years to come! OK, years might be pushing it. But at least I'll have them for more than a week! Mmmmmmm.

Thank you Chris. You make me happy.

Mmmmmmmm...

Some days you're the pigeon

I was in a meeting yesterday with a woman who was not completely fluent in English. The content of the meeting was rather complicated, but it was clear that she was understanding the vast majority of what was discussed. Every once in awhile, however, she'd ask the meeting facilitator to clarify something. The facilitator would repeat herself very slowly, very loudly, and in pidgin English. I'd think, "Huh?" How exactly does broken language help with comprehension? Wouldn't that make it even more confusing?

Do all cultures do this? I thought of times when I've had trouble understanding something in another language. Not once do I remember having the phrase repeated back to me using broken language. More slowly or loudly, perhaps. But in pidgin? Das glaube ich nicht. (For you non-German speakers: ICH! GLAUBEN! ES! NEIN!)

A couple pics for this week

• Cowboy annoys us
• Friends & food
  
• We annoy Cowboy
• I'm a copy-coat
• Megastars think outside the bun

Stickr with Flickr

Even though the picture captions aren't displayed in the slideshow, Flickr has the best options and functionality of all the slideshow and photo-sharing sites I tried. I've added an area in my blog sidebar which displays the 4 most recent pictures I've loaded on Flickr, and I will continue to post slideshows regularly.

If you click on one of the pictures in the sidebar, you will be taken to the Flickr site. Once there, you will be able to see all of my public photos.

If you're wondering why there are so many pictures of hats -- no, I don't have a hat fetish. I just got a little over-excited about finally knitting hats that fit. So I knitted a lot of them.

I'm an "It" girl

Richard tagged me.

The Game: 7 Weird Things About You
The Rules: If you get tagged, you need to write a blog of 7 weird things about yourself as well as state this rule clearly. Then you choose 7 people to be tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave a comment that says ‘you are tagged’ in their comments and tell them to read your blog.

My 7 things:

1. I can't burp. The only time I remember getting a decent one out was when I was in the crowded study room on the 5th floor of the Student Center during finals week and I stood up to get Shilpa's attention. I meant to whisper her name, but instead I let out a huge belch. I was so proud.
   
2. I say the word "accent" with a southern accent. Ack-sayent.
   
3. I used to think that the man in the moon could only be seen from Florence, Italy. When I was a child on a family trip, we got out of the tour bus to wait to be checked into the hotel. While we were waiting, someone showed me the man in the moon. I thought that we'd gotten out of the bus specifically to see him from some magical L'Uomo Nella Luna viewpoint. It wasn't until I was in college and I corrected someone who mentioned it ("What? You can't see him here...he's in Florence!") that I realized how silly this was.
4. I sometimes color my hair so that it won't look colored. I have natural red in my hair that becomes pretty vivid when I spend a lot of time in the sun. My hair stylists always tell me that my natural highlights are what people pay hundreds of dollars for...and I don't like looking like I pay hundreds of dollars for highlights. So I sometimes dye my hair darker in order to cover up my natural highlights.
5. I'm allergic to the sticky side of Scotch tape, pencil lead, and soft stick deodorant.
6. I just realized that the word "deodorant" is de-odor-ant. I always thought it was deo-dor-ant. It makes a lot more sense to me now, and I won't misspell it anymore.
   
7. I usually sneeze in pairs. I only single-sneeze when I eat an Altoid.

Now I have to tag 7 people. Normally I dislike this sort of thing (it's a little too much like a chain letter) but I like to find out weird things about my friends. So I'll subject 7 of them to the game, even though I feel kind of bad about doing it. I'll tag the following: Margaret, Tarik, Erin, Jeff, Rohit, Darin, Mike. Sorry guys, but I wanna know your quirks.

To Flickr or not to Flickr

I'm tired of manually editing the HTML to display my pictures, so I'm trying out the slideshow plug-in from Flickr. There are some limitations to it (captions are not displayed in the slideshow, the screen size cannot be altered...) but overall it seems like Flickr has the cleanest interface and most useful functionality. Instead of posting a new slideshow every time I have new pictures, I'll probably just upload a whole set of pictures every week or so. You can click on the individual pictures to find out the details of who/what/when/where/why. I'll also label the slideshow posts so that you can find all of the pictures easily.

What do you think? Is the lack of captions in the slideshow a deal-breaker? I'm looking at Photobucket too, so that might be another option.

To control the slideshow, mouse over the top of the screen. You'll see icons to pause, resume, fast-forward, reverse or change the speed (I'm too impatient for the 5 second delay, but I can't figure out how to change the default). Mouse over the bottom of the screen to view the entire set of pictures, where you can click on a thumbnail image to skip to that picture. If you want to see the title and description of a picture, click on it while it is displayed in the main screen.