Stuff Korean Moms Like

Hilarious site, and most of it is true! My Korean mom is gangsta about paying the check and rocks the Korean mom perm.

http://stuffkoreanmomslike.blogspot.com/

The Makings of a Bad Day

See pictures. Enough said.

A Moment for Knitting Geekiness

Today, I am so excited to report that I finally purchased The Knitter's Block by cocoknits at Article Pract in Oakland. Here's a picture of it - these interlocking foam pieces come packaged in a handy and cute little tote bag, together with a cloth to help absorb water and some stainless steel T-pins. Book does not come with kit! Just something else I picked up while at Article Pract.

I have never really blocked anything before, but now that I have a couple of baby sweaters under my belt, and a sweater for myself that I hope will be finished sometime this decade, I think this will be a good investment for my knitting future. I have a couple of scarves that could stand to use some light blocking, so will embark on my first blocking adventure with those. The wonderful staff at Article Pract told me to try steam blocking first, if I am wary of complete immersion in water. They told me to use the steam setting on my iron, and when I mentioned that I actually have a garment steamer because I tend to burn things with irons, their eyes widened and they both exclaimed "Oooo, a steamer!" Haha!

Guitar Heroes?

After countless hours wasted playing Guitar Heroes on Playstation, my husband and I decided that it was time to get off our asses and learn to play the real thing. I am, however, reminded of that certain South Park episode where the kids sit around playing Guitar Heroes and when Stan's father tries to teach them real guitar, the kids say "Real guitar is for old people."

It has been about 2 1/2 months since we made that decision, and we are by no means any good (could it be that you actually have to practice to become better?), but we thoroughly enjoy our lessons and learning together. We feel like rock stars, no matter how unwarranted that feeling may be. Today, my guitar teacher exclaimed that he wanted to take a picture of my hand playing the F bar chord as evidence of my progress, since I had stated during one lesson that I would never, ever, ever get my hand to play a bar chord. Today, we also learned how to play the song Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Part 1 by The Flaming Lips, just because I happen to love that song and there aren't too many chords involved, at least on the guitar tab that we dug up on the internet... Here's pictures of my guitar, a Fender Stratocaster, which my guitar teacher has nicknamed "The Counselor" (as if I were good enough to name my guitar, haha).

But, alas, after lessons, I sludged my way back to the office to do corporate peon work on a Saturday afternoon, wasting this pretty day indoors. Ah well, I suppose my corporate peon work will fund my rock star life once that starts going!

The Happiest Place on Earth

We are back from Anaheim, CA where we spent the weekend in order to attend a wedding. Long story short, I didn't realize that the wedding was literally down the street from Disneyland. I have never been there so it would have been nice to take an extra day to go and see it just one time.

I was, however, super excited to learn that a pinkberry was located less than 3 miles from the hotel. We went twice in three days. I lament that we don't have a pinkberry in San Francisco. The closest thing we have, I think, is Tutti Melon, which is delicious, too, but pinkberry just seems to be a touch better in terms of the quality and taste of the actual frozen yogurt. When we first visited a pinkberry in LA, the line was out the door, around the block, and there were articles in the LA Times about the parking tickets people were receiving for double parking to get some of the yummy goodness. We also happened to run into that Asian actor dude from Harold and Kumar movie fame and his entourage when we were last in a pinkberry. I don't know if it was because of the time of day or the location, but this time around, there wasn't any line. The picture is from day two - natural frozen yogurt with whole blackberries and fresh pineapple. YUM!!

The wedding was pretty nice, but on the whole, I feel wedding'ed out. This will be the third wedding we have attended in the last 5 weeks, all of which required travel (Tahoe, Hawaii, and Anaheim). Granted the locations were all pleasant (Hawaii, especially!), and the weddings were sweet, but seriously, at this point, both my husband and I feel that we won't be attending another wedding unless the it's for a blood relative or bosom buddy.

WTF

Things have been a little slow at work lately, seems like the downturn in the economy is really affecting us all. In any case, I am trying not to stress out about the lack of work, and instead enjoy the lull by leaving the office a little early, etc. etc.

Yesterday was particularly dull and I thought that I would leave around 5ish or so. Until, someone walks into my office about a project at 4PM, which really was follow up on some previous work I had done for them. Incidentally, it seems that the earlier project was sent into a black hole because I didn't hear anything about it after I turned it in. Ok, nothing unusual about getting projects towards the end of the day - that's all in the life of a corporate peon, but THEN, they state "Well, I don't have time to go into the details now, so what time were you thinking about leaving tonight?" I figure 5PM isn't a great answer around here, so I stretch and say I would stick around until at least 6PM or so. This obviously wasn't a very acceptable answer given the squinched-up facial expression I got in return. In an exasperated tone, they said "Well, I will TRY to get to you before 6PM then..."

So I sit in my office, really just doing some meaningless stuff, waiting around for this person to return. 6PM rolls around, not a peep. Then I hear this person with their loud voice on the phone talking about said project to the client. As though they had done the original work, and as though I hadn't just been waiting around for their butt to come talk to me about it. After the call ended around 6:30 or so, I figured, surely this person will now come talk to me about the project. Nope. So at 7PM, I gave up, and perhaps incorrectly (but I was angry) left without telling that person I was leaving.

As an aside, this person has done similar things to me in the past, so I don't know why I get so upset. I should just think it par for the course. My favorite was when they told me to wait around for them at the end of the day, and after waiting for literally 2 hours until about 8:30PM or so, I went to peek in their office and they had LEFT, people! As in office was dark and no one there. WTF.

Medium Fat Cheesecake

This weekend was gorgeous and relaxing. I went to Imagiknit where I purchased totally

 unnecessary, but pretty yarn (Koigu Painter's Premium Merino) to make the Lace Ribbon Scarf by Veronik Avery. http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEspring08/PATTlaceribbon.html I actually intended the yarn for a modular scarf pattern from Art Yarns, but as I knitted it up, the yarn just looked muddy and weird. I have tried this Art Yarns pattern with another type of yarn with the same problem (Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend). Perhaps it is a plot by Art Yarns to make sure that you can only use their yarn and nothing else! One day, one day...

We had friends over on Labor Day for a BBQ dinner. Of course, we didn't sit in the yard which is under semi-construction (a story for another day), but we did grill the chicken outside and brought it back upstairs and indoors. I still say this counts as a BBQ. I also made a "low-fat cheesecake" with lemon curd and strawberries which was de-lee-ci-ous.http://www.recipezaar.com/166151 The recipe from Paula Deen calls for sugar substitute, neufchatel cheese (instead of full fat cream cheese), butter substitute and egg substitute. What the hell? Why even bother? And this from the lady whose recipes and cooking shows on tv always call for adding a stick of butter to everything. So, I mixed it up a bit and tried to make it lower fat. My husband called it a "medium fat" cheesecake. We all agreed that the medium fat cheesecake was a success.