I'll take some fries with that

Jaguar marigolds run amok!

So as you can see, my marigolds are doing well. Wheee! And they don't even smell too bad either. (I wasn't aware of that particular bonus benefit until after they'd started blooming.) There are also a riot of buds queueing up for their chance to bloom.

If you look closely (or click on the picture) you can see the reddish spots that give the flower its name. I've noticed that the burgundy spots lighten up to a caramel color as each bloom progresses. Interesting.

And you can't necessarily tell from these photos, but the stems are just dangling wildly everywhere, so I have discovered that the freebie chopsticks you get from Chinese food deliveries are the perfect height for stakes. It's not so much the aesthetics I'm concerned with here as the sunlight: if the stems droop below the windowsill, they won't get as much light.

You will notice there are no photos of any nasturtiums since they decline to do anything much besides sprout some leaves from one stem. (The other stems all died.)

And along that vein (pun alert!) most of the results of my annual physical came back this past week with a big thumbs up from my GP: my overall cholesterol was the lowest it's ever been (hooray!) although some of the other numbers have migrated wildly/weirdly, so I'm not quite sure exactly what to make of that.

However, since I gained 20 lbs. over the past year and exercised NOT AT ALL, this is all much better than I had a right to expect:

Culprit	6/2010	4/2009	Recommended
Cholesterol	168	181	under 200
HDL (the good one)	52	65	over 39
LDL (the bad one)	76	89	under 130
Triglycerides (not your friend)	199	98	under 200

So what did I do to celebrate? Went out for a cheeseburger with sauteed onions and pickles, aoli, and a large order of seasoned fries at RUB BBQ in Chelsea with my friend Sam. SO GOOD. (On Monday nights, Sam found out that they have an off-the-menu special of grilled burgers, so when I went home, I smelled like charcoal instead of BBQ.) For those friends who suggested adding a milkshake: sorry, I forgot. Plus the WW points would've been astronomical. As it was, I closed my eyes and merely entered the meal in my daily food diary without calculating the points. Heh.

Since I seem to have officially entered middle age with a vengeance (sciatica is not something you hear people in their 20s suffering from) I figure I'd better not push my luck too far. Hence, I'm starting to try to pack my lunches again, as with this tuna veggie thingie:

• solid white tuna in water, drained
• minced celery, "deveined"
• thawed frozen minced veggies
  (in this case a soup mix of: peas, carrots, lima beans, and corn)
• minced cilantro (known to some as the evil weed, but I love it)
• minced flat leaf parsley
• whole grain dijon mustard
• seasoned rice vinegar
• lemon juice
• dash of kosher salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• eaten on a serving of (wasabi) rice crackers

Tasted pretty good and gave me two healthy lunches. Once again, I guesstimated points (notice a trend?) but hey, the individual components were all low in points so I figured it couldn't be TOO bad for me.

Kind of like Salt, the new Angelina movie -- I knew what I was in for when I went last night with my friend Ellen, and I wasn't disappointed: lots of property destruction, improbably crazy stunts, gratuitous use of ammo, and Ms. Jolie kicking lots of a**. Perfect after a pressure-filled week at work. (I really like what I do, but as one friend put it on Facebook, it felt like someone cranked up the tennis-ball-serving machine to HIGH and left it there. Plus, my first session of tutoring at the domestic violence shelter I mentioned previously made me realize how sucky my Mandarin has become ... exhausting for both tutor and student!)

So tonight, I will switch gears and go see Ken Russell's 1971 film on Tchaikovsky, The Music Lovers starring a young Richard Chamberlain. How could you resist the director's pitch for a film about “the story of a love affair between a homosexual and a nymphomaniac”?! And thanks to my membership, it's a whole $7. Yippee!

And now, as I prepare to trundle off to the pottery studio for the rest of the afternoon, I leave you all with a photo of my newest great-niece (grand-niece?) Olivia, who just makes me want to grin right back at her. So cute!

The geekfest continues

So I may be 42 but it feels like I'm going on 22... every other weekend, I bring my dirty laundry to my sister's house and do laundry there. Heh. The key attraction is that her laundry room is COOL, while my building's laundry room, though capacious, is broilingly hot in the summer.

So as a thank you, I told her she was my date last night and took her to see Inception, which was completely absorbing and very complex (but hey, what do you expect from the director of Memento? BTE, nice URL for Memento, eh? Heheheh) And like his previous matryoshka doll of a movie, it would not only be difficult to explain the plot of Inception, it would be So Wrong to spoil it. Even most of the trailers were for a more interesting breed of film. RED, for instance, is an acronym for "Retired Extremely Dangerous" and looks extremely entertaining, that is, if you find the idea of Helen Mirren as an assassin lots of fun (which I do -- hee hee hee).

(Belated note to self: so far, of the 6 movies of his that I've seen, all were engrossing, so I'd better keep an eye out for Christopher Nolan's work in the future)

On the "home" front, I've finished Stones Into Schools on my Kobo, and have now started Game Change which I'm finding to be like the literary equivalent of an episode of West Wing: fascinating yet hair-raising.

Also from the library, the eBook of Anne Perry's latest William Monk novel, Execution Dock, awaits me.

Life is good.

And the photo above is from the entry area of Kittichai, where I went for a Summer Restaurant Week dinner this past Wednesday night with my friends Jackie and Marci. Food p*rn to follow in another post, but their decor is tres chic, no?

Not MY idea!

Just a quick note to let y'all know that my employer's IT department has apparently decided that Blogger is a FORBIDDEN site. Duh. So, no more lunchtime updates.

In the meantime, he is the first bloom from my marigold plant. Hurrah! That are several other buds forming, and a few other blooms opening, since of course, I took this photo a week ago. Heh.

Okay, gotta run off to said job. Ciao!

Geeking out

So okay, first things first -- if you've noticed that my blog has been going through more design permutations than the blowout estimates for the BP oil spill (BLEH!!!) then you're right, but finally I think I have finally settled on a design (for a while anyway). Blogger has been locking down their old and new template designs, allowing only limited tweaking to each, and I kept discovering something that really irked me about each one, but I think I am going to stick with this one. Really. I mean, what better design for a librarian than one with lots and lots of books, right?

And speaking of books, I decided to finally join the e-reader throng and get a Kobo from Borders. (It was actually released in Canada much earlier via one of their massive book chains, I forget which 'cos I'm a insular Yank. ;-P) For me, the 2 most important criteria were weight [according to my eBay/postage/diet scale, it weighs a mere 5.2 oz! by far lighter than the Kindle (10+ oz) or Nook (11 or 12 oz, depending on the version)] and file formats (this reads ePUB files from the library, but the Kindle does not).

Plus, it comes preloaded with 100 classics, so while I am pondering where to spend my free $20 Borders card (essentially reducing the price to US$129 + NYC tax) I have something to read and experiment on (e.g., adjusting font sizes etc.) While the Barnes & Noble Nook (which my friend Marci bought) and Kindle (which my friends Ellen and Jackie have) may also do so, 5.2 oz trumps all. (Note: a regular mass market paperback weighs 6.8 oz. according to my shipping experiences with PaperBackSwap.) Believe me, I have been obsessing about this purchase for months, as you can see by the comparison spreadsheet I created.

You can also see that I finally upgraded my cellphone to a LG enV Touch. It comes with a full QWERTY keyboard when you open it AND has a 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera (!) so I can generally leave my regular digital camera at home now, unless it's for a big occasion, such as the triple baptism of last weekend (but more on that another time).

And now that I have installed multiple updates (I finally succumbed to Windows XP service Pack 3, in order to run the Kobo eReader software, and needed Adobe Digital Editions, in order to read the NYPL eBooks) and figured out how to "check out" the eBooks and sync them with my Kobo, I am off to meet my friend Sam for dinner and a show: I'll Be Damned, which is a musical comedy version of the Faust tale, except featuring a comic book geek. (No ceramics this afternoon because the MTA would have required me to take 2 subways and THEN take a shuttle bus to get to the pottery studio! Nuh-uh. Not on a heat advisory warning kind of day.)

On my way there, I will be reading my first eBook from the library, Stones Into Schools, by the man who wrote Three Cups of Tea. It's about building schools (most of them for girls -- yay!) in Afghanistan and Pakistan. (Think about trying to do THAT the next time you are fighting your own battles with government bureaucracy!)

Back in the saddle (again)

It had babies! Dunno if you remember my previous post about the quirky porcupine cake at one of the gourmet delis near my office, but apparently mitosis occurred, with almond sliver quills sprouting on the babies just like the "parent". Hee! And this photo has absolutely nothing to do with anything except the fact that it amused me.

At this rate, if I see the babies again, I may have to just break down and buy one out of curiosity. However, the thought of having to figure out the correct number of points is distinctly offputting...

Yes, I finally rejoined WW this month. I am back in the saddle again, since the last year's events have wound up back in MY saddle again! So far, I have lost 3 pounds, which I visualize as half a sack of sugar (or flour). One sign of progress: going up the concrete steps in the subway station near the office no longer hurts my knees -- hooray!

So when I visit my sister on the weekends, I look forward to her lightly dressed, super tasty salads with fun ingredients, like this one, see? Last Friday, I also (even) managed to steer myself away from the black holes of WW points in the Grand Central Station food court, and instead got a really fabulous Greek salad with: stuffed grape leaves, kalamata olives, red onion, feta, mixed greens, cucumbers, grape tomatoes, and spicy chicken kebab chunks. It was quite flavorful, so I will have to keep this place in mind for future commutes to CT.

If I've been quiet on here lately, it's not so much from any BAD reason but just the fact that I am busybusybusy these days. Last weekend, for instance, I attended a triple baptism in CT: my newest grandniece, and her two newest girl cousins. (Three cakes! Yum!) I also visit and stay over at my mom's every week. (Come to think of it, it's a wonder I managed to lose any weight this past week!)

I've also rejoined the ceramics studio in LIC, and decided to mix it up by taking a handbuilding class instead of my regular wheelthrowing endeavors. My first project was this gigantic planter. (Keep in mind that everything shrinks about 10 pct after firing.) However, once they told me that it was going to cost $51 to fire (!!!) I decided that the experience of constructing it was sufficient (i.e., I didn't love it $50 worth) and cut off to cylinder, smoothing the base into a nice platter instead. Heh.

When hearing my laughing about this experience, one of my classmates commented that it was good that I had a sense of humor about it (some students would have been freaking out in distress) but hey, I try not to take most things too seriously these days. Refinancing my mortgage? Serious (and avaoidable while my rate is 3.0 pct -- score!) Throwing out an unfired piece? Not serious.

Perhaps that is why I found this new subgenre entertaining: monster mashups of classics. Since Jane Eyre is my favorite novel of all time (I've even re-read it more than once, unusual for me) I couldn't resist this when I had a hefty Borders coupon. I mean who HASN'T wanted to put a stake through Blanche Ingram or the Reed family? Heheh. Now I may go and reread the original again. Next up: either Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or The Girl Who Played With Fire, probably the latter, as I want to see the Swedish films of the trilogy with my knitting buddies.

Also, I started volunteering for English language tutoring at Sanctuary For Families, a domestic violence shelter/counseling organization. I know how hard it is for my my to access services without English, and it's little enough for me to do (since I'm not doing any of the heavy duty stuff). Right now we're in the organizational stage where they're screening me (they asked for references!) and setting up the tutoring schedule.

The photo shows a donation event for SFFNY organized by the Princeton Women's Network of NYC since many of the women and their children arrive at the shelter with nothing but the clothes on their back.

Men with long hair

...and topknots -- don't forget the topknots! (is that what you call them?) -- can be quite dreamy. Witness Tony LEUNG Chiu-Wai in RED CLIFF UNCUT. (Although Tony LEUNG Kar-Fai is really worth mooning over as well.  Remember Marguerite Duras' The Lover?) Even Sammo Hung got into the act with a long 'do in Kung Fu Chefs and it looked pretty good on him too. (For a plot summary, think: Iron Chef meets the Shaw Brothers)

Yes, it's time once again for the 9th (!) Annual NY Asian Film Festival, run by the every excitable and cheery Grady Hendrix -- he of the powder blue ruffled tux, for those of you whom I've dragged along to see movies about demonic cell phones, hopping vampires, cursed eyeballs, and other fun craziness. Sadly, I missed the year they had the 5-1/2 hour two-parter with Thai war elephants, but I made up for it this year with Red Cliff Uncut (288 minutes + intermission). Besides the screenings at the Walter Reade Theater (pictured below), the NYAFF also had events at the Japan Society and IFC this year.

In fact, since I decided to go see 4 movies at the festival, I thought it made sense to sign up for a Level 2 membership at the Film Society of Lincoln Center this year which not only enabled me to buy discounted tickets for $7 each (when was the last time you paid THAT in Manhattan?) but also entitled me to a subscription to Film Comment. (Yes, I know -- just what I need: MORE paper in my hoarders-like home.)

So I started off my weekend film fiesta with a noon showing on Saturday of a GOOD Jackie Chan movie, Little Big Soldier, which proves that he is indeed a good actor and still in fine physical form -- he just needs to stay the hell away from Hollywood scripts: this project was developed entirely in Asia over the course of 20 years. According to IMDB, when the project was originally conceived, he was to play the younger character. The older character is much more interesting, actually, but that could also be the result of the startling combination of a GOOD script with nuanced acting. Shocking. (As one friend pointed out no Wilson brother other American comedian made an appearance.)

We then segue to Sunday, and John Woo's RED CLIFF UNCUT, which was mangled into a US release of exactly half its actual running time. Now try to imagine watching the first 2 parts of The Lord of the Rings trilogy as a single movie half as long as the combined films. Um... yeah, pass.

The interesting question that comes to mind is: what was cut out of the US version? The love story? Or shortening the endless battle scenes? Sword dancing? Or character development? Or...? I mean, which movie were they trying to market here? The action movie or the epic drama? In any case, the John Woo archetypes are all there. Bromance? Check. Doves? Check. Ballistic arrow-cam? Yup. And since I read space opera and Horatio Hornblower novels, you will not be surprised to hear that I found the military tactics fascinating. (By the way, did I mention that the Chinese government lent the production 1,500 soldiers as extras? See: epic, above.)

Happily for me, the NYAFF coincided with a SCORCHING heat wave here (triple digits) that's still chugging along: what better way to spend a broiling holiday weekend than in a comfy, air-conditioned theater with great sightlines for over 8 hours in total?

Coming up on Thursday night: Blades of Blood -- more swordplay, set this time in 16th century Korea. I foresee lots of red corn syrup splashing across the screen, and more men in long robes and topknots. Heeee-YAH!