Vocabulary Words

I have no idea what this trippy [though delightful] photo is,
 but clearly my iphone6 was awake at the wheel when I wasn't.

So my new favorite word of the year is oophorectomy (which I mentioned recently). Today was my pre-surgical testing day: bloodwork, EKG (ECG? the one where they tape electrodes to your pulse points), chest x-ray, lots and lots of medical questionnaires, etc. The anesthesiology nurse was interested to hear that I am really cheap date: after previous procedures, I'd wake up long after their estimates.

Medical Staff: [Ms. Squirrel] should be awake in about 45 minutes.

[Two hours later. . .] "Um . . . you may now join her in the recovery room."

There's some technical term for this, but of course, I've totally forgotten it, since I have truly sucky recall these days. (chemo brain + menopausal fog + stress = what did you say?) In any case, it's a genetic trait, since Squirrelmom and Squirrelsis are the same way -- the anesthesia, not the forgetfulness.

Say "HI!" to either Patience or Fortitude --
 I never know which NYPL lion is which.
In any case, I really need both of their qualities these days!

The red letter day will be February 14th (hee! loving the irony) since the surgeon only operates on Saturdays and that was the first slot (pun intended) available when I asked in January. I'll be under general anesthesia, but it will be a laparoscopic removal, so no giant incision (yay!) -- just 3 small ones instead.

We'll skip over the giant pre-op checklist they gave me, except to say that I agreed to donate an extra vial of blood towards research, a small enough way to pay it forward. [Squirrelsis and I were also taking care of paperwork at the bank today, so I had lots of practice following the "sign here . . . and here . . . and here" instructions.]

The 7 test tubes of blood also allowed me to rationalize a protein & iron-rich dinner at The Comfort of deviled eggs and fried chicken livers, washed down by 1911 hard cider and lots of water. Yep, gentrification of Grand Street on the Lower East Side is not all bad. (CeCeCat [a\k\a TripleC, a la my friend Sussi] also wins from the arrival of Pet Island II.)

As much as I love the 2 ladies pictured below, I am WILDLY EXCITED to have a few days off after my surgery: my sister is kidnapping Mom for a week, and my co-worker D. is thrilled to be catsitting the Pinball Pussycat again for that same week. (My incisions are going to be small, but they still won't appreciate a 7+ lb. cat trampolining off my belly.)

Another thing I am looking forward to? My chemically induced, super annoying, peri-menopause will be converted into a permanent, biological, post-menopausal state. SO YES!

Snugglebuddies: Squirrelmom, TripleC, and twice-repaired Monkey.

My stalwart friend Marci will be accompanying me to and from the procedure at Sloan-Kettering, and then I will only have to use 4 PTO days after the Presidents' Day holiday to get a whole week off ( or 9 days, if you count the weekends and outpatient operation day itself).

Now I only have to get through 8 more workdays before I have a vacation. (Yes, my life is THAT thrilling, such that recovering from a medical procedure counts as decadent idleness!) So I'd better get to sleep before I snarl and bite someone's head off in the morning conference call.

Note to self: This had better NOT be my Out Loud Voice!

Swedish Squirrel

Hidden courtyard cafe in Malmo, Sweden (July 2012)

So yes, I am still alive, after a wonderful summer vacation in Sweden and Denmark during July 2012, and two trips this year to out west: Colorado in March 2013, and Wyoming in August 2013. (Many more photos at some other date.)

And yes, there is an apparently endless series of various medical tests scheduled for me in the next year. Some are routine (bone density, mammo) and one, not so much (recent liver sonogram, some kind of uterine test if & when my next period ever arrives, and an upcoming MRI for my brain). 

The liver sonogram was because I have elevated levels of certain proteins and enzymes (ex: if the normal range should be 1-31 mg/L, I had 57) after 4 years of tamoxifen.[BONUS ROUND: I realized today that I had miscalculated mt tamoxifen schedule, and I actually have ANOTHER YEAR to go. Bah!] The uterine test can only be done if my damn period ever arrives (I forget the reason now, but it made sense at the time) -- personally I want it to NEVER COME BACK, but who the hell knows?

The upcoming MRI is due to have occasional rounds of dizziness, especially upon the first bite of food. Since my blood sugar levels do not appear to be pre-diabetic, AND I'm having some vision problems, well, 2 neurological symptoms = 100% chance of brain MRI.  There's a slot available this coming Wednesday, October 16th, at 8:00 AM. After the radiologist interprets the results and confers with my oncologist, THEN, I will hear the news.

Since I am not claustrophobic, and am relaxed enough during these scans that I have fallen asleep in the past, it's not the test itself that worries me. Nope, it's the fact that this time, they're scanning my HEAD, the seat of what makes me, ME. And as unlikely as a brain tumor would be, my college friend Ellen discovered that she'd had a golf-ball-sized one in her head! (Luckily, it was operable, and she is fine now.)

Okay, enough for now. Time for bed, since one of my resolutions lately (more on those some other time) is to get ENOUGH rest, especially since stress has caused me to wake up in the pre-dawn hours, along with eating more heathily.

Farmers market in Stockholm, Sweden (July 2012)

When it rains...

So have I mentioned that I have cashed in vast amounts of frequent flyer miles to travel business class to Hong Kong and Shanghai for a two week vacation?

Well, the time IS now getting closer (12 days!) and I'm simultaneously excited and pulling out my hair, since I'm also in the middle of refinancing my mortgage (AGH!) and that entails a visit from the appraiser (Tues AM, so I'm frantically cleaning out my apt this weekend: the word TERROR does spring to mind) as well as the financial ravaging involved with all of the closing costs, etc. Ugh.

Also, I have done exactly ZERO about arranging my trips around within China, such as to Guilin and Ningbo, but I'm hoping to either sort of wing it, since there are so many airlines within China, or else to just explore HK and Shanghai at my own pace.

The latter option is definitely appealing too, since I like to just wander around back streets and poke around museums and things, taking photos of odd signage which amuses me :) Plus, this year has been so stressful so far that I'm leaning towards the more mellow option, instead of "if it's Tuesday, this must be Guilin..." And of course, I want to meet up with all of my friends without having to rush around like a maniac.

I mean, the whole point of a vacation is TO RELAX, correct? And booking myself up for my personal edition of THE AMAZING RACE just does not sound very relaxing. (But Guilin is supposed to be just gorgeous...) And to that point, I have cut out Japan from the itinerary, since that would NOT be relaxing, what with my health scare this spring.

And the food porn is courtesy of Mom, who made this late last month for Dad for a belated Tomb-Sweeping Day observance.

Squee!

Work has been hellacious lately (lather, rinse, repeat) and whenever that happens, I start thinking about (a) updating my resume, and/or (b) planning my next vacation. In this case, I did both, but I'm going to talk about only the fun part here.

You know how I've been diligently accumulating all of my frequent flyer miles over the years for a return trip to Asia in business class? Well I'm finally about to pull the trigger as they say!

I had had a reservation on American for NYC - Shanghai || HK - NYC, but due to a glass of wine at dinner last night (yes, I am such a lightweight) I completely forgot that it expired at midnight last night, and NOT today, as my tiny pea brain thought. Oops.

Well hey, I've been trying to be more mellow about things lately (and sometimes it even works). In this case, I looked upon it as an opportunity to see if I could wangle a different itinerary (since you NEVER EVER get non-stop flights from A to B when using miles, from my experience). Since I wanted to build a multi-leg trip (instead of a straight round trip), and American therefore insisted routing me thru various connections, I thought I'd turn that to my advantage. (Note: the human touch worked so much better than the website in this case --> worth the phone time waiting for them to tweak SABRE.)

Et voila! I will now also be exploring Tokyo and Kyoto on my upcoming trip! All 4 legs of my trip are in business class (YES!) and I will be travelling thusly (bold legs are FF tickets):

1. NYC - Toronto - Hong Kong (short layover in Toronto, Cathay Pacific to HKG)
2. Hong Kong - Guilin (Chinese airlines are quite reasonable)
3. Guilin - Shanghai
4. Shanghai - Tokyo Narita (Japan Airlines)
5. Tokyo - Kyoto - Tokyo on the bullet train (have a friend in Kyoto, and Tokyo's a little overwhelming on my own, so probably more time in Kyoto, which is prettier from what I hear [less bombing from WWII])
6. Tokyo Haneda - JFK (non-stop on American)

All told, I will be gone for 2 weeks, but with Memorial Day and a few business meetings sandwiched in, I should NOT blow 75% of my annual vacation days, maybe only 50% instead. Bonus!

So I've e-mailed all of my buddies in HK and Shanghai, and my friend Brian and his wife (hi Brian!) are not only going to help me reconnect with the people I met a few years ago, but also meet new contacts, what with the endless restructuring gyrations that have been going on within the company.

Hence, a photo of Chinese food to start this post with (heh) courtesy of Kam Man Foods here on Canal Street. (There are several other branches, if you want to explore their website.)

Today I've spent mostly on the phone with American, instead of prepping my taxes (ah well, there's always next weekend -- oh wait: I'm meeting my sister for a girl's weekend then, where I will also go to her hairdresser and finally ditch my grey hair). Ooops, better get cracking with that tax stuff soon!

Tomorrow morning, I'm going to try to get up early (stop laughing so hard! I can hear you from here!) and go to Sloan for blood tests before work. Then the results will be ready for my oncologist when I go see her on Thursday for my quarterly check up. If all goes well on Thursday, then I get upgraded to a semi-annual visit.

Tonight, I leave you with this clip of some haunting piano music from a recent episode of CRIMINAL MINDS (insert fangirl squealing: here) which has been on loop in my home, that and another song I discovered recently called Inner Smile (Scottish band named after a US state that hit the UK charts, recommended by a woman in Cyprus, where the official video showing the female lead singer REALLY resembling Elvis: dizzy yet?).

Here's a link to the official Inner Smile video, filmed in 2000 wherein the very attractive female lead singer resembles Elvis to a startling degree. The whole theme of the video (which is really very clever) is a '60s style tribute to Elvis and reminds me why k.d. lang used to be so appealing. Check out the official video for Constant Craving if you need a refresher/reminder.

The video BELOW is of an autistic character, and the music has obsessed the show's fans ever since the episode aired. What do you think, folks? Catchy tune, eh?

Warm and fuzzy

It's been an unusually harsh winter this year (in fact, we're due for another several inches of snow tomorrow night) so I've really been bonding with my Green Monstah and my new black marshmallow (which is the knee length version of this parka). Ironically, of course, I get killer hot flashes every night while I sleep (and on especially lucky days, during the mornings and afternoons as well), but hey, what can ya do? At least I'm still around to have them!

This frosty weather has been highly conducive to thoughts of Kittichai's Thai hot pot for my annual birthday dinner (no German food this year -- SHOCKING, I know) where endless plates of shrimp, (sushi grade) salmon, squid, mussels, beef, pork, and veggies arrive at your table, to be dipped into deliciously seasoned broth. Some of you may remember we attacked, er, enjoyed this repast in October, and evidently we rhapsodized over it so much that other folks were keen to join in this time. Heh.

Nothing else much is going on here (ah, the midwinter doldrums) except that I appear to have gained a grand total of 10-14 lbs over the winter (whoops), cleaned my place a little bit, since a friend's daughter stayed over here for the weekend (hi Pirate!) so there are actual patches of floor visible, and tonight, I tackled some emergency laundry (socks anyone?)

Am still deep in celebrity crush mode, so I ordered a boxed DVD set of Criminal Minds, seasons 1-5, on eBay as the syndicated versions on TV get chopped to bits to make room for extra commercials. Sigh. And although my fondness for cop/FBI shows has consistently manifested itself since grad school (hello? X-Files anyone?) the only problem is that some of the characters irritate the crap out of me (is it so wrong of me to feel gleeful when she got shot?)

So next week, I am taking off from work (9 office-free days for the price of 4 vacation days = a BARGAIN!) when I will have many many things to do (financial, domestic, correspondence & packages -- I owe you a great big old thank you, LQ!) and hopefully I can do them all to the accompaniment of a Thomas Gibson soundtrack in the background. *swoon* Heheheh. Yeah, I'm sick, but y'all knew that, right?

The Green Monster

No, that's not jealousy -- that's my beloved giant sage green couch, which seems to have a black hole secretly embedded in its cushions: once I sit / sprawl / lounge in it, that's it for the afternoon / day / evening. I'm not going anywhere or doing anything after that.

So today I pre-emptively did some tidying up BEFORE getting sucked into the green monster's gravity well. So although there are still mounds of Stuff piled hither and yon, one can actually see a reasonable amount of floor space in the living area. Shocking. (Remember: baby steps, a/k/a, the journey of a thousand garbage bags begins with a single pile of trash....)

Another sign that I am feeling somewhat better these days is that I actually have a celebrity crush. (I've noticed that I tend to have severe celebrity crushes mostly when I am not in a relationship, but for the last few months, I didn't even care about age-appropriate yummy looking actors.) Currently, it's Thomas Gibson from Criminal Minds.

He kind of reminds me of my ex-ex-bf, The Consultant, but only in that general police description kind of way: black hair, fair skin, preppy-looking, soft-spoken, and oh yeah, HOT. (Well, to me anyway -- such is personal taste, but at least I'm consistent.)

Okay, on to less dorky subjects, such as my round of vicarious travels via mystery novels on my Kobo e-reader:

• Broken English - Amish mystery set in Ohio; 2nd in the series
• Girl Who Played With Fire - book 2 of the Stieg Larsson series, set in Sweden (Noomi Rapace, the actress in the Swedish film adaptation, is excellent, by the way; she's also exactly 12 years younger than me* -- yikes! feeling old...)
• Man From Beijing - also set in Sweden (mostly) but eh, won't be reading more of his novels
• Hangman - a Faye Kellerman novel, the 21st in the Rina Lazarus/Peter Decker series, set in the Orthodox Jewish community in Los Angeles
• Storm Prey - the 20th John Sandford book in the Prey series; set in Minnesota during the winter (brrr... very appropriate)
• Am now in the middle of The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest - book 3 of the Stieg Larsson Millennium Trilogy

* Speaking of birthdays, that is indeed my birthday cake above, made by my sister, and decorated jointly by her (the chocolate shavings) and both of my grandnephews (the M&Ms), and demolished by the family at her house on the day itself. Babies galore this holiday season, with visits to 9 younger relatives ranging in age from 7 years to 7 weeks. Wheeee!

Minor update

Flora Grubb is Curt's happy place ;)

No giganto suitcase of laundry to CT today, only a tote bag, as Mom has decreed that I will be staying over at her place tomorrow night, whereupon I will depart for work in the AM, going straight to a show Monday evening with my friend Marci: Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (or as their ad says, "history just got all sexypants"). Thus, no large suitcase will be trundling along behind me for the next 72 hours.

I leave you all with more food porn (I could just taste to luscious amounts of butter in Piccino's ginger scone, a weakness of both Curt's and mine), and one of the plant sculptures (for lack of a better term) at Flora Grubb, which Curt not so jokingly calls his happy place -- and I can see why!

There were so many visually arresting tableaus that I wound up taking at least half a dozen shots (that I do not have time to post right now, since there's a Metro North train calling my name: major BBQ tonight with both the German and Chinese sides of the family, at the "big house" which my sister has returned to after the departure of her summer tenants).

Ciao!

Piccino's ginger scone rocks my world

Back home

Chez Squirrel may be messy (ummm... why do various friends keep asking if I'm going to guest star on an episode of Hoarders?) and lack any discernible / unified design aesthetic (staying in my friend Curt's truly fabulous loft in San Francisco has made me acutely aware of this -- one of his patio plants was so visually pleasing that I'm using it as my new cellphone wallpaper) but damn it is good to be home.

Cluttered and unchic though it is (one day, the cluttered part will be more under control -- I swear! really!) I love my home because -- if you'll excuse the somewhat circular logic -- it's mine (well, excluding the large chunk owned by the mortgage company). I mean, I also love all of the friends I visited in SF, whom I've known for 15 - 25 years each (holy... !!! when our young waiter heard that Curt and I had known each other for 25 years, he was flummoxed... probably because that's most of his lifespan!) but as I get older, no matter how much I enjoy zooming around to other parts of the world, I'm always happy to come home to my little lair.

This is especially true when United helpfully delays my flight home from SF for 2 hours, so my original arrival time of 12:45 AM became 2:45 AM Friday morning. Simply delightful. (On the bright side, the Orbitz cellphone alert really did work and notified me of that fun fact before I left for SFO.) So by the time I got home from JFK, it was 3:30 AM, making me grateful that I'd taken today off as a vacation day as well, since somehow the sleep you get from 4 - 11 AM is never as restful or restorative as the sleep you get from 12 - 7 AM.

Oh by the way, I made another pleasant discovery in the middle of the night at JFK: there is a taxi dispatcher on patrol 24/7 so he called up a fleet of cabs from the parking lot when a flock of bleary-eyed travelers trundled out to the taxi stand at three in the morning.

Since I am a firm believer in packing light (and I despise paying checked luggage fees) I walked briskly off the plane with my carry-on bag and was 4th in line for taxis. Yes, this was indeed all I packed for 7 days/6 nights in SF, with a pit stop on the way out to CA to quickly change in the ladies room from work attire to lounging-on-the-plane-for-6-hours attire.

Today (Friday) was an entirely unproductive day, where I did not step foot outside my door except to go downstairs, retrieve a week's worth of mail, and get waylaid by a highly talkative neighbor.

Eventually I escaped and hid at home again, watching my TiVo'd backlog of Hawaii 5-0 which I found to be disappointing. (By the way, this supersnarky recap of the pilot episode is howlingly funny, more entertaining than the actual show, and would do TWOP proud.) There are some intriguing hints of reverse discrimination (Hawaiians/Samoans vs. haoles) and occasionally Boomer/Kona does show up, but on the whole, eh. In short, I sense a slot opening up on my TiVo Season Pass Manager soon.

I suppose vegging out on The Green Monster is a fitting sendoff for the end of a mellow vacation week, but the laundry monster awaits me this weekend. Ergo, a large suitcase will be coming with me to CT on Saturday, since my sister kidnapped my mom Thursday night (it's the only way to get her out of the house) and my younger niece is back home from San Francisco on a business trip (yes, such irony, I know).

So since Sis kidnapped Mom by car, my mission is to escort her back to NYC on Sunday via Metro-North Railroad.

Oh, and my bathroom scale also decided to start working again and informed me that I have gained... er, maybe 4 lbs (yikes!) which is not surprising considering the majority of my activities in SF consisted of eating, napping, and getting driven around in Curt's cute little chocolate brown Mini as we shopped for furniture for his loft.

Walking his sweet Black Lab Simon, and the pugs Samson (black) and Sadie (fawn) was in no way sufficient exercise. And scratching their ears for aeons didn't burn up the calories either. ;) Hey, did I mention that he lives in the appropriately named neighborhood of Dogpatch?

Speaking of eating, my last evening was at Walzwerk where I shared my gargantuan portion of schnitzel and spatzle and green beans with Curt and one of his friends. Curt had the Jaeger schnitzel, which was tempting, but I was fixated on some regular schnitzel.

Oh, and we started the evening off with some potato pancakes. Of course.

And then on Thursday, we had lunch in Noe Valley at La Boulange where I succumbed to more goat cheese in an open-faced sandwich with portobello mushroom, roasted red peppers, and pesto, all accompanied by lemonade.

Come to think of it, it's a wonder I only gained 4 lbs!

And as you can see, the late night flight and the time change are really wrecking my body clock. Sigh.

Eating my way across SF

In true vacation fashion, I am eating my way across the city of San Francisco. YUM! Since my bathroom scale broke right before I left for my trip (and after I got back from eating my way across DC at a conference for work) the past few weeks should yield some interesting results when next I appear at my WW weigh in. Oh my.

Given the variety of victuals, I'm going to stick with merely enumerating them, instead of rhapsodizing over all of the treats. Actually, I don't even have photos of everything, but not a one was disappointing (except possibly the fries at In-N-Out Burger).

So here we go, in chronological order:

In-N-Out Burger - which I had never tried but always heard many good things about. Got the cheeseburger (with [raw] onions).

Serpentine

BLTA Sandwich (not memorialized visually) - nueske's bacon - heirloom tomato - avocado - little gems - black pepper aioli - torpedo roll - greens

Savory Bread Pudding (WANT! must go back, as this was my friend Curt's lunch) - gruyere cheese - delicata squash - fennel - sage - apple - onions - with mixed green salad

Koh Samui and The Monkey

Tom Kha Gai Soup - which my friend Matt had

Salmon Chardonnay Salad - "grilled crushed salmon tossed with lime juice, chili flakes, chardonnay, parched rice and mint"

Crispy Soft Shell Crab topped with (deep fried!) garlic and pepper - I was soooo happy, even the plate design looked like a happy face. See?

Coconut Panna Cotta (with mango coulis)

Rosamunde Sausage Grill

chicken cherry ~ smoked chicken sausage with cherries (mine, so good)

weisswurst ~ veal, onion and leek sausage (Curt's, but then we also split a 2nd one 50-50)

Dosa on Valencia

I zeroed in on the Chettinad Spinach-Cauliflower Dosa - "Tamilian-style cauliflower filling with sautéed spinach, onions, tomatoes, spices"

My friend Kristen had the Masala I think - "the classic dosa filled with creamy spiced potatoes, onions, and cashew nuts" Note the size of each entree compared to the dinner forks!

Dessert was at Bi-Rite Creamery.

Kristen (I think) had the chocolate coconut flavor, as it's vegan and she's lactose intolerant.

Mine was Ginger, with chunks of fresh ginger throughout. (Want. More. Now.)

Piccino - Today's lunch, where Curt and I both had exactly the same meal:

Homemade lemonade

Contorno: bianco beans and snow peas with bread crumbs and butter

Apple, fig jam, and goat cheese sandwich

For tonight's dinner, there is schnitzel in my future! Woohoo!

.

Dinner date with a magical animal

Nothing says "I want you to visit NOW" like when your mom oh-so-casually mentions that she just 'happened' to make some pork zongzi, a dish that requires 8 hours of stovetop cooking.

So I got back from my conference in DC laaaaate last night and tonight I promptly wolfed down 2 of the dense delights (pork, fresh peanuts, and salted egg yolks [made separately ahead of time], all surrounded by sticky rice, each wrapped in a banana leaf, boiled for 5 hrs, steeped overnight, and then boiled for another 3 hrs) at Mom's.

Yes, I know that 2 of those babies probably equal my entire WW points budget for the whole day (if not more) but sometimes, you just gotta break the bank.

Mom, meanwhile, was giggling delightedly as she watched my willpower implode in a massive fireball of gluttony, and admitting, "Gee I guess that's not going to help with your weight loss, is it?"

No, Mom. It's really not ;) but I know food = luuuv, so hey :)

Points if you can pick out Mom's building in the distance.

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Institutional ecosystems

You know how I have the acronym RTBT for Reasons To Be Thankful? (And there are always many RTBT.) Well it occurs to me that every now and then (or lately, more often than that) I have gotten supremely cranky, and who better to be the archetype of crankiness than my beloved Marvin The Martian? (BTW, all crankfest posting will henceforth be tagged with MTM.)

I was so fond of his antisocial tendencies that one of my exes once bought me a MTM pillow which I still have. And considering my mom, I come by my crankiness the old-fashioned way: both nature AND nurture!

The current upheaval at work is just stoking the crank-o-meter with premium unleaded: we are moving offices to a building a few blocks away on Friday and boy oh boy has the process been fun (you know, like a root canal). Welcome to our entry area this morning, once they started dissambling the bookshelves (and check out the toolboxfilled with noisy power tools, heh):

We are moving to a place where we do not know how many cabinets or drawers each person will have (we have been wheedling the nice guy from the moving company to tell us how big each filing cabinet drawer is, since he's seen it but we haven't, not even our boss), and to a floor where the library (our vastly reduced reference collection) will be located on the other side of the floor from the librarians (oh yeah, that would be US).

If you picture the entire floor as a square clock, we are at 5:00 and the stacks are at 12:00. So we will be traipsing through another department's cubicles each and every time we need to get a book. (Yes, I know -- time to break out my pedometer and see how many WW activity points I can rack up every day.)

If this all doesn't sounds like much to be all MTM about, consider that there are many things I am NOT posting here out of discretion (what little I apparently still possess), but here's on factor for ya: on a floor of almost 90 people, there are 4 ladies room stalls. Yep, a whole whopping FOUR.

According to the American Restroom Association (yes, there really is such an organization; no, I'm not making this up), there are designated ratios based on occupancy for such facilities (we're not even going to get into gender disparities here, people) and they are remarkably chintzy.

So on this particular topic, I leave you all with this thought: I drink 8 - 10 glasses of water / beverages a day.

But also, all of the moving will have an unfortunate ripple effect on our support staff: the security guards, cleaning staff, newsstand operator in the lobby, etc. None of them know if they will be transferred over, and some of them already know they will be unemployed at the end of the year, when the current building is completely emptied. When you see people every day for 6 years, saying hello/goodnight with a smile, you do wind up worrying about them, especially since they are all uniformly pleasant and friendly.

So RTBT: they are keeping us and we will remain employed (with good health coverage -- YOWSA!)

And on unrelated but droolworthy note, I leave you with French pastry p*rn (hazelnut and coconut macaroons, French butter cookies, and chocolate-covered almonds, oh my!) each of which is bigger than my palm. They're from the Financier Patisserie mini-chain scattered throughout downtown.

Also, I have been requested by my relatives to no longer post photos of their superadorable offspring here. So while I may rave about their fabulous cuteness, I will no longer be able to put my memory card where my mouth is.

Yabba Dabba Doo!

When will I learn that no matter how much I am infatuated with my new cellphone (well, new to ME, as of July) that for truly mouthwatering food porn -- or heck, even food photos that are correctly exposed -- I need to rely on my trusty 4 year old Canon digital camera?

Witness tonight's cholesterolfest with my friend Sam, whose culinary company will surely cause me to need Lipitor soon, as I cannot for the life of me persuade him to meet for a meal that doesn't make my arteries feel all funny. (We're going to have to Have A Talk about that soon as his restaurant preferences are the antithesis of WW suggestions for healthy eating and I am really trying hard to at least go to restaurants where not every single thing on the menu is deep fried.)

For Pete's sake, even Dallas BBQ has a spinach salad option, but it required some really creative negotiations with the (cute friendly) waiter to order a plain baked potato (which I had been craving all afternoon) as one of my side dishes at RUB BBQ, since oddly enough they offer a stuffed baked potato as an appetizer but no plain baked potato as a side.

So hey, since it was RUB or nothin' tonight (I seem to be held hostage to other people's dining preferences lately -- this is going to have to change) I opted for one of their specials this evening, "the gigantic beef ribs" (yes, that's what it said on the daily menu). Considering the fact that the BONE is as long as my entire forearm, from my inner elbow to my wrist (!!!) this was not mere braggadocio. (Actually, I really felt like Fred Flintstone when I held the bone up and started gnawing on it, since it was considerably wider than my head!)

The photo up top doesn't really give a sense of scale, even though the whole potato looks a bit teeny next to the rib. (But the shot does show all the glistening, fatty goodness of the well-marbled beef.) The photo on the bottom of the post shows how puny the steak knife and fork look next to the meat. (But does not give a good idea of how tasty it actually looked.)

So yes, I came home with probably two more meals of beef in my future (I still have 8 oz. in the fridge!) along with the vinegar-based cole slaw and am trying to figure out if I (or my mom) can use the rib bone for beef stock or something. heh.

As a minor attempt to feel like I had not swallowed an anvil for dinner (it was delicious but not exactly light fare) I hopped out of the subway at Columbus Circle and walked for 25 minutes (carrying my beef bone and slab of rib meat). It was in no way going to work off the dinner, but it salved my conscience just a teensy bit.

And now, it is once again, way, WAY too late. I need to go to bed. Ciao!

Purely P*rn

There was a reason I bought this tiny print many years ago: it does indeed express my acute... fondness for doing laundry.

So while I have made VAST improvements on the state of Chez Squirrel (my knitting lady friends can now be allowed back into my home as there is somehwere for them to SIT) one of my 2 laundry hampers [brights vs. darks] is stilll staring reproachfully at me. Oops.

But I put my shredder through its paces today, oh yes indeed. And I'd made a mix CD for my morning exercises which turned out to work equally well in terms of getting my a** moving a la housecleaning.

Lady GaGa may have eaten my brain, but she and many others (Tom Jones, Rihanna, Nelly Furtado, KC & The Sunshine Band, The Shanghai Restoration Project, and Lisa Stansfield circa 1990) powered me through several hours of cleaning on Sunday.

The cleaning was wedged in between two evenings of multi-course feasts at opposite ends of the budget spectrum.

Saturday night I went out with my friend Jane and the other 2 bridesmaids for dinner at A Voce in the Time Warner Center, which should've been a tipoff that it was a good thing I'd just gotten paid this week.

Does not the facade intimidate, er, I mean, indicate that you'd better be prepared to be swarmed over by hordes of black-garbed waitstaff? (Um, do I sound bitter? But actually, the staff was very pleasant and unobtrusive, and the evening was entertaining. And as A helpfully reminded me, it did indeed generate some luscious food porn.)

When I looked at the menu at the office on Friday afternoon (to scope out food options for my WW points), my hair turned a little whiter than it already is (from the prices).

But I sucked it up and resigned myself to the $$$$ since I had had weeks beforehand to poke around and raise an objection. Next time I know, that as Anthony Bourdain says so succinctly in his new book, Medium Raw (which is hilarious, by the way -- thank you Kobo and New York Public Library!) Chapter 3: The Rich Eat Differently Than You and Me. (I plan to read that chapter on the subway in the morning, so no, I dunno how differently, according to Mr. Pottymouth.)

My appetizer, though delicious ("Insalata di scarola - escarole, warm pancetta vinaigrette, soft boiled farm egg, pecorino romano") I did not capture for posterity as it was, well, a salad. And my wine ("Vernaccia di San Gimignano, Rocca delle Macie, Tuscany") though delightful, was also not memorialized.

My entree I tried to capture without a flash (BIG mistake) but I present here nonetheless the yummity Cappelacci del brigante ("hand crafted pasta, marinated mussels, garlic, marjoram") which I demolished happily.

For dessert, Jane ordered the semifreddo ("semi-frozen chocolate chip mousse, bitter orange, cocoa pizzelle").

Meanwhile, I was torn between this option below, the torta (chocolate walnut tart, cinnamon gelato, caramel) and what I eventually ordered.

When I appealed to our server (who remained elegantly nameless, thankfully) for help she grinned and laughed. (uh oh...) One was the house specialty and the other (the torta) caused the pastry chef to be hired/stolen from her previous employer. Heh. Decisions, decisions...

Since the other two bridesmaids helpfully ordered the torta, I was free to head straight for the house specialty, the Tuscan doughnuts ("Bomboloni alla Toscana - tuscan doughnuts, bittersweet chocolate"). That innocent description did not do justice to the superfluffy dough, dusted with crystal sugar and filled with warm custard.

Oh. My. Goodness.

Since they were huge and plentiful, everyone got to try some, and also the chocolate dipping sauce. There was no graceful way to eat them (that I could figure out anyway) and so by the end of dessert, my fingers were a sticky mess and I was a happy camper.

Since it is now very, very late (or early, depending on how you look at it) I will have to hold off on describing Sunday night's feast with two neighborhood friends.

Dojo & mojo (redux)

So today's weekly WW weigh in was finally positive news (-1.6 = hurrah! such a relief).

My friend the tapeworm (well I'm not pregnant, so I often joke that my post-lunch yen for food must be from a run in with one of those critters a la the X-Files) insisted that I buy a bagel at 2:30ish. My counteroffer was to buy a 9-grain bagel (see? trying to at least do the best I can, though I wonder if it's akin to negotiating with terrorists or just being pragmatic).

Ergo tonight's dinner on the run was not the usual sneak attack at Two Boots Pizza, much as I love their kitschily named pies (though I doubt Mrs. Peel would've looked the way she did in her catsuit [yowsa!] if she snacked on the Mrs. Peel pie regularly).

Instead I took a stroll and ate at Dojo's on West 4th near Bway. Although my roommate and I would go often when we lived there 20 years ago (eeek! yeah, I feel old) I haven't been there in ages. I got yakisoba with veggies and chicken + homemade ginger ale. Tasty!

Addendum on Thursday:


So I have replaced the yakisoba photo with a slightly less blue-tinted shot, and while it may LOOK odd and vaguely slimy (sorry), it WAS actually quite good. And the homemade ginger ale was so milky looking because it had a giant pile of shredded ginger at the bottom, with some lemon zest thrown in for good measure. Delicious!

Rorschach Test

I looked around my living room this weekend (before I took off for CT with a giant load of laundry in my 3-weeks-in-China suitcase) and realized that I literally had no room in my life for anyone else at the moment. Hell, I have no room on my couch for anyone else!

Those of you who've seen the giant sofa I fondly call The Green Monster know what a scary concept that last statement is. (In fact, this Craigslist posting from Long Island [most likely soon to expire] gives you an idea of the size of my beloved six year old coccoon of sage green coziness.)

So yes, even my knitting buddies have been banned from my home for months now (sorry ladies) as I stubbornly resist dealing with the cluttered interior that is my brain and emotional cupboard. No room for anyone except me and my baggage (which I am working on getting down to carry-on size: right now, it's more like an entire car of a freight train). Once the emotional crap is cleared out, the physical mess always follows.

By the way, when I told my sister about last weeke's dream re: Engineer, she snorted that it was wishful thinking (very true) but the fact that I had it at all is kind of a timely reminder about that river in Egypt: just because I refuse to consciously think of the wreckage strewn in his wake, doesn't mean that my brain isn't chewing on it at some level (and yes, there's some level of anger I'm just not facing yet).

Ironically, the last time I mentioned a Rorschach test here on the blog, the world was a much different place: the Engineer and I were still on our "honeymoon" phase, and my brother-in-law was still (mostly) the man our family knew and loved. It's hard to believe that it's just been two years since he was diagnosed...

On a determinedly different note, I leave this lunchtime posting with a fabulously porkerific photo of dinner at Blue Smoke on Friday night with A. My favorite was actually the gi-normous beef rib with dry rub, and yes, this was the rib sampler for two!

Don't worry fellow WW fans, we rounded it out with chopped salad, collard greens (with bacon, natch), and cornbread, so I tried to minimize the damage points-wise, but oh was it tasty! (And rounded out by a nice glass of Malbec -- yum!)

Privacy settings

So you may have figured out that I have been going through a bit of turmoil lately, and thus, there are some things that I’ve been mentally chewing over which I probably won’t ever post here. In fact I have started keeping a diary for my eyes only.

In the meantime, I will leave you all with a brief update about massage #2 in weeks – positively decadent! I barely ever get 2 massages in 2 years normally, but when the back of my neck starts hurting, that’s always a sign to either take care of it or get ready for migraines.

Besides (and you knew my inner cheapskate had to make an appearance sooner or later, right?) SpringThyme had a fabulous weekend special throughout August: 50 minutes or aromatherapy massage (eucalyptus in my case) for $60 (plus tax and tip, of course).

I think I will take my massage therapist Kayan’s advice and come back for periodic shorter sessions to focus on specific problems areas (e.g., calves/shins/feet, neck/shoulders – or the neckal region as BM puts it [heh]) if the various monthly weekend specials don’t catch my eye. Sometimes their weekend specials are really good, with August, so there’s always hope.

Yeah, all those comments lead to the conclusion that tiny little Kayan (she’s Asian American too, and might be 98 pounds soaking wet, but has hands of steel when needed) was a great hit, and I will be a steady client. Plus she was trained (I forgot to ask which institute) on how to deal with lymphatic drainage issues after breast cancer surgery involving lymph node removal. (Yes, just like injections, blood tests, blood pressure readings, carrying luggage, and many other fun things, massage is something that needs to be adjusted on my left arm and torso forever after.)

So the giant photo at the top of this post was taken by my (possessed) cellphone at the Institute for Advanced Study near Princeton today, when I visited my friend Kieran’s parents and we all went for a walk and nearly passed out from the heat. (I say my phone was possessed because while we were walking, I found out later that it had: erased some settings while at the same time sending e-mail, dialing Chase MC, and leaving voice messages!) I missed his parents and had not seen them since last August, what with the insanity of the past year. The plan is to next visit them in October during foliage season.

The egg custard tarts shown below were purchased at the newly renamed Natalie Bakery, whose former name I much prefer King Custard Café, or as my old photo seems to show, Egg Custard King Cafe.

The flavors involved today were: Portuguese style egg custard tart, banana custard, almond, regular, and egg white. Name that tart!