Disclaimers

I put up my little eBay tree this weekend, even though I don't feel very festive (layoffs and the knowledge of additional layoffs will do that to you).


But regardless of my holiday sentiment (or lack thereof) I do find the little guy cheerful -- and a testament to the power of 99 cent stores.


Every year he/it comes out of my closet and I do the pipe cleaner thing and twist it into fluffiness and then hang my various ornaments and doodads on it.



On the bright side, I made 3 dozen oatmeal almond cookies (1 WW point each!) which both my engineer, and my coworker Mike pronounced yummy. My knitting buddies also seem to like it. Best of all: they have all left my house. Ha!


Next up: finding a nice, light cake recipe for my sister's birthday next weekend. Unlike my brother-in-law, she prefers light & fluffy (strawberry shortcake) vs. rich & dense (ex: German chocolate cake).


Since I bought 2 well-reviewed baking cookbooks from The Strand last week, I am hopeful: Perfect Light Desserts: Fabulous Cakes, Cookies, Pies, and More Made with Real Butter, Sugar, Flour, and Eggs, All Under 300 Calories Per Generous Serving, which uses natural ingredients and not Splenda, or fat-free anything, and also Light and Easy Baking, which also has non-chemical ingredients.



And finally, a ceramics colleague made this beautiful vase, which I had absolutely nothing to do with -- I just thought it was pretty.

Opa!

I will be sad to say good-bye to what I think of as my "cossack coat" since it always made me think of a Russian princess, complete with Russian fur hat and fur muff. I bought one summer, many years ago, while visiting my friend Jane while she was a veterinary resident up at Cornell (before she became a vet-I-Dr. and was merely a fabulous but not fabulously wealthy "GP" vet).



It was stiflingly hot, and so we escaped to the Carousel Mall in Syracuse for some free air-conditioning. As it was JULY, this coat was 70% off (don't remember the price, just the discount -- living up to my gender stereotype, I suppose) and I fell in love with it.


It is now way, WAY too big for me, despite being taken in along the back seams by a seamstress (no, not my mom -- I actually paid the lady at the dry cleaners downstairs). And since our company is partnering with the annual NY Cares Coat Drive, (yes, we donated big wads of [probably taxpayer] money -- blow me), I am bringing it in tomorrow to drop off in the donation box in our lobby.


And while I am sad to see it go, I am not regretful, if you see what I mean, since I am determined to maintain my lifetime member standing @ WW.


And thankfully, WW has also channelled my stress into baking (low-fat/whole grain treats, like the oatmeal cherry, cranberry cookies this weekend), and not eating, say, [a] all of the cookies, or [b] KFC (mmmm...wings ...oh! *ahem* sorry about that).


It has also encouraged me to find other, non-caloric ways of venting. Like tonight, I was finally able to indulge in some nice, enthusiastic, throwing of plates against the wall. A helpfully solid BRICK wall.


Why would I want to do this, you may ask? Well, my company finally made the first round of layoffs in my department yesterday (Monday) and handled it in a spectacularly POOR, SUCKY, AND CLASSLESS fashion. I mean, they KNEW they'd have to do this for MONTHS, and the best they could come up with was to call in the 42% (yes, FORTY-TWO PERCENT) of the people to be cut, and tell them en masse in a conference room? And THEN not prepare themselves for the inevitable questions such as "when does my healthcare coverage run out?" Frakkin' gutless idiots.


If they pay you the big bucks, part of that involves sucking it up and doing the hard stuff, like telling people they've lost their jobs privately, or -- at a minimum -- doing it in a respectful group setting and sparing THEM (yes, the newly "right-sized" former employees) the task of telling their now-former coworkers that they were just laid off. Classy, eh?


Having unfortunately been through this mass-layoff process before, I can say that there are much, MUCH better ways of doing this. Jerks. Just thinking about it for any length of time still makes me furious. (Actually, maybe I will e-mail my former Managing Director and thank him for the considerate manner in which he handled it 4 years ago. He's a nice guy and I still keep in sporadic touch with him.)


Oh, and no, this does not mean I am safe: there are further rounds to go... with of course, no actual timeframe of any sort.


So tonight, when I discovered the discard pile at the ceramics studio -- bisqueware (pottery which has been fired once but not yet glazed) destined for the dumpster -- well...! The Studio Manager encouraged me to go outside and do my best Zorba the Greek imitation, using the brick facade of the building. Opa!


Since there was someone waiting in a car in front of the building while this was happening, they must have thought it odd when I went out, flung a dish against the wall, smiled and rubbed my hands with glee, went back inside and then returned with a broom and dustpan. (My engineer says that they'll just think I'm angry but tidy.)


One way or another, I will be revisiting the discard box, oh yes.

Cookie madness

Oatmeal cranberry cherry cookies... I had the urge to bake and my engineer's best buddy's son was suffering from new baby sibling fatigue, so I made a batch (sneaking in some whole wheat flour -- what he doesn't know...) and labelled it "For James Only!"

Oddly, despite being a WW recipe, it (a) did not suggest adding in some whole wheat flour (I subbed 1/4 c. of the 3/4 c. of flour) and (b) advocated a sugar glaze on top of the already sweet flavor (I skipped that altogether).

My engineer pronounced his portion of the batch tasty (yay!) and I kept only 1/3 of the very smallest cookies of the batch at home.

I have the urge to bake more stuff, perhaps because the icky, wet, dreary weather -- perhaps because I have no work to do at the office since everyone seemed to have taken the last week off, maybe to try out some new recipes for the upcoming cookie week(s) at work, and oh yeah, possibly to work off some stress while I'm waiting to get laid off. Feh.

On to more cheerful topics, like the almost finished London Beanie hat I am knitting for my sweetie. He picked the colors (black and grey -- the black is from the leftover part of the pound of yarn I used for the harf) and Spot, a friend's hat, models the result.

I used 2 strands of the black, so there would be no irritating wind gaps once it's worn. However, although it fits in circumference (I increased the number of stitches in the pinhead-sized pattern) it turned out to be too long. DOH!

So I frogged the damn thing down to a few rows above the top grey stripe, have rethreaded the yearn (onto 16" size 8s) and now contemplate more supertight knitting with the Caron black. Ugh. I like the tightness of the results fabric, but it's a pain to knit. Oh well. I will be happy when he wears it all winter. :-)

We also spent Thanksgiving at his parents' friends house: their friends, the friends' 3 adult children, with 2 spouses, and 5 grandchildren. Oh my. All 4 of us -- my engineer, moi, and his parents -- were very excited by the blessed silence at his parents house afterward. The other family was very nice, but 16 people, 5 of whom are young children, in a small house = lots of noise.

Happy news: I managed not to gain any weight (miraculous! thank you, WW strategies!) and hit the exercise room today at my engineer's condo... where I discovered that my PDA had run out of batteries. DOH! 30 minutes on the elliptical with no music = booooooring. And now, my sweetheart is curled up, sick in bed with a bug of some kind, sporadically napping.

Along with a rousing round of Tiger Woods Wii golf last night (where I sucked massively) such has been the exciting tale of my Turkey Day holoday weekend.

Food frenzy

I never understood viscerally why oysters were considered so... sexy... until tonight. Oh my.

My engineer, his best friend, and I had dinner at a super yummy place in Jersey City tonight, Edward's Steakhouse, where the guys ordered from the raw bar. I forget the type of oyster THIS one was, but oh my... putting aside the, um, shape of the contents, the sheer SIZE of the oyster was, well, gargantuan. I mean, look at the fork next to it. Jeez.

Jimmy, my engineer's buddy, was similarly impressed. So much so that he took a photo of it with his iPhone.

I'm still sighing over my "Flat Iron Steak, cocoa and coffee dusted, with wild mushroom mashed potatoes" garnished with julienned (flash?) fried sweet potatoes [like the potatoes in this photo] -- the meat was delicious, and the 'taters had an entire creamery's worth of butter and milk/cream in there, but it was all: Oh. So. Good.

And the other stuff...! Like the homemade potato chips (which my sweetheart mercifully moved down the bar, out of reach) which you can see in the lower left corner of this photo.

I guess the gazillion points I had tonight are just getting me used to the foodfest coming up tomorrow, where I am informed there will be such things as pineapple upside down cake made by my sweetie's mom (yum!!!) and sweet potato casserole w/ marshmallows (umm...ick, and not made by his mom).

Since I don't want to step on anyone's toes by bringing something that is their specialty (it is an extended gathering, with many family friends of my engineer's parents), I settled for 2 dozen roses.

In preparation for tomorrow's festivities (and tonight's decadence), I spent part of this afternoon in the exercise room here at my engineer's condo complex. Since it's frequently deserted, I was also unafraid to sing along with my mp3 player. Heh.

And now, I am going to crawl under the covers (it's freezing in the NYC area tonight) and wait for my fella to return from hanging out with his buddies during an impromptu atop at the Man Cave: since I used his keys to come home, I need to buzz him in.

Brilliant

Which is what the trees in Central Park are at the moment, particularly these golden-colored trees in the fall.


Being an utter city girl, I have NO IDEA what kind of trees they actually are. I only know that they are beautiful and I spend each fall trying to capture the precise shade of golden-orange-yellow the leaves turn, right before they fall.

Brilliant. Not what you might call my boss. She's a perfectly nice woman, but I don't really think it's a bright move to have a staff meeting to tell people that management doesn't have any news and has no idea when they might.



Or my newest favorite move: to call me at home yesterday morning on my day off (oddly enough, I seem to want to take all of my remaining vacation days for the year ASAP) to tell me that they will start announcing cuts on Monday, but they have NO IDEA who, or how many, or how long the process will take. WTF?!



Now I ask you: do you think I might have been HAPPIER not knowing this?!?!


Going to go use my engineer's exercise room now to go work off some stress.



And then tonight, he and I and his best friend as going to have an exciting night of ordering in & playing Tiger Woods Golf on his buddy's Wii. I am addicted to that game, although I have never actually played golf in real life (heh), probably because I am guaranteed to hit the ball (unlike in real life). My Mii (Wii avatar) looks like an ethnic Lara Croft (*snicker*).

Do Over

Today's post is in honor of the timeless principle of "do overs".

One of the things I like best about pottery is that nothing is irreversible ... until it gets fired (think: Mesopotamian shards found by archeologists) ... and sometimes even then: shards can become mosaic tabletops or picture frames, a la craft shows.

Witness the "oopsie" demonstrated above. My engineer was quite bummed when he accidentally shattered my little jar by knocking it over on my nighttable ... my folding iron bookcase used as a nighttable, that is.

But a little craft glue (sometimes it's quite handy being a crafty girl) and voila! Good as new, since stoneware is quite forgiving. (Porcelain would have been more likely to shatter into a Humpty Dumpty number of pieces.)

Witness also the unfired coffee mugs I made this month. I was pleased with the one on the left, but one of the ceramics gurus at the studio pointed out that the handle on the other mug was perhaps a wee bit thin.

Aside from the aesthetic considerations (his work is just beautiful*) consider what might happen once monster mug is filled with liquid. As any of you who have hauled around gallon jugs of milk or water knows, it's damn heavy.

(* Side note: the link above is to the holiday sale on Dec. 12-14 at the studio where I take my classes. The works are really reasonably priced, and Mr. Neil [see blue plate in center photo] also teaches the glazing class.)

So after painstakingly joining the handle to the body of the mug (you have NO IDEA how long that can take, even aside from drying time) I proceeded to rip it off and start all over.

Starting alll over includes making a whole new set of 6 handles (drat -- I thought I had taken photos of thos, but apparently not) from which I eventually selected one which I slowly attached to the mug body ... again. (see the one on the left in the lower photo) The water bottle is shown for scale since I like my cups BIG.

Although I'm now quite satisfied with the width of the handle, I'm still not sure that I like the curve, now that I see it in the photo.

Luckily, it is still wrapped and awaiting bisque firing, so I can probably (not definitely, only possibly) alter the curvature. The one on the right has gone off to meet the kiln, after which it will be staring-at-the-sample-tiles-wall, decision time re: glazing. (There is a final firing after the glaze is applied.)

The tea set on the right was made by someone else at the pottery studio. Just THINK about the number of steps it took to get to the final result. Her stuff is fabulous and I have promptly forgotten the mixture of glazes she used to get this lovely finish. I will have to ask her again. (Hi Diana!)

It worked!

There were three of these Zipcars parked @ the corner of Broadway and Wall Street tonight, covered in LEDs, and attracting many photos, including my cellphone. And CNN just called the election! Yippee!

Inactive

That was my voter status since I have been shamefully slack. I mean, normally, there is no chance Manhattan would ever go Republican, but I cannot stand That Other Guy so much that I made it a point to go vote early.

But apparently not early enough.

This was the line @ 7:50am, and it was despite the fact that our polling station was prepared and had set up another room in a second building as well, to handle the turnout. (My engineer voted in Jersey City at 6:30am...and was already #61 in line.)

Luckily, the electoral workers were all very well organized and came out to get people from the different districts who needed to go on different lines, etc. Unfortunately, that still didn't make my wait shrink to less than 90 minutes, so I was quite late for work. Oops. Oh well. (Since everyone in my department votes, and since I sent them THIS photo @ 8am, they were blase.)

In any case, I had checked on my voter registration status online yesterday & came prepared with the various proofs of ID needed, and voted the old fashioned way: by paper ballot. Hooray! I am now officially "active"...and likely to get summoned for jury duty. Heh.

When I left the polling station to go to work (at 9:30...) my cellphone company text messaged me, warning that I was exceeding my usage on my monthly calling plan. I got to the office and called customer service (one of the proofs of ID was a utility bill, and now I KNOW why there's that commercial about insanely confusing wireless billing statements) since I could not imagine adding my mother to my plan would change the usage that much.

Since October 15th, my mother has used 893 minutes! That's 14.8 hours! I feel like I have a teenager on my family plan. She and I had A Little Talk at lunchtime and I also changed my calling plan to 1,400 minutes/month. Ouch.

I'm going to actually go try to do some work now (while I still HAVE a job...so I can pay for the phone bill!) since I have eaten and calmed down from my calling plan calamity. Sheesh.

The Harf - Pt. 2

The harf! It lives! And just in time for Halloween too.

And Al loves it. In fact, it is currently his Facebook profile photo. (heh) I'm glad to see I did a reasonably good job estimating its length to his height (6'5" or 6'6").

Decorations in my engineer's neighborhood are taken seriously (although content is not -- hee!)

And some serious pumpkin-carving skills are in evidence around the 'hood as well.

This family did not stop at one jack o'lantern either.

Let's see...what else? I'm currently still employed (that is subject to change without notice, of course) although my motivation is somewhat in ebb these days -- what do you expect when you're waiting for a pink slip?

Oh yeah, my mom waited a whole month before asking if I was going to marry my engineer. A month. She's definitely mellowing with age.

And as much as she might drive me CRAZY, I am glad that she's still sharp as a tack, since my brother-in-law has just been diagnosed with moderate Alzheimer's Disease (he's well past mild, unfortunately) which mostly affect his language ability and his recent memory.

He occasionally doesn't recognize my sister (they've been married 34 years) or my older niece. As you can imagine, this is extremely upsetting for them, but he is just puzzled as to why these 2 women occasionally show up at his home. He does not seem to have a problem recognizing my nephew or younger niece however.

On good days, he's just the same as always. And sometimes his comprehension changes at different points of the day (e.g., he'll recognize my sister in the evening but not in the morning, or vice versa). The hard part for my family is never knowing which person they'll "meet".

At least his personality has not changed -- he is still generally a sweet and friendly person, just sometimes confused -- and the neurologist (?) has started him on a course of medication which at least is helping his ability to concentrate.

My nephew is taking him to see anopther specialist, however, so the second doctor is thinking of switching to a different med which specifically targets semantically-related AD.

And if anyone spams me with unsolicited advice about meds and treatments, I am going to freaking flame them (you would be surprised at who trolls random blogs) and then delete their posts

Okay, on to a more calming note to end this post: a pretty shot of the block my engineer lives on, taken during today's unseasonably warm afternoon.

Recycling for H-ween

Trying to explain the use of golf club covers to my mom was an entertaining exercise: she thought it was a glove...for your hand, or that you used it to cover the handle before gripping, a la potholders...heh!

My sister asked for some for her 1, 3, 4, and 5 clubs (whatever they do) and since Xmas is coming... On the bright side, it took me only a day to whip this up (i.e., subway time + after dinner) using some of the purple wool yarn I bought in Shanghai 2 years ago, with some of the lavender Valuruguai eBay yarn for contract (the stripes indicate the # of the club inside).

I am trying to decide if I should (a) also sew on the number outside sing the Valuruguai and (b) add a pom-pom, a la the pattern I found on Wirghts.

Four words: bridesmaid dress from 1990. Now all I need are a tiara and a magic wand and I am all set for Halloween! (The good news about this monstrosity: I am now the same size I was 18 years ago!) At least (a) my cousin [the bride] is still happily married, and (b) I no longer have the perm I had in 1990. Yikes!

Yay! Stuff finally came back from the kiln last night! Lots of stuff as you can see, and my teacher's hip/apron area is shown for scalle. (Actually, it wasn't intentional, but that's how it worked out.)

The haul: a jar (for my engineer), a gigantic mug (for me), 2 large tumblers (maybe an Xmas gift for his dad?), 2 coasters (one large enough for a wine bottle), a bowl/mug (which my mom has already snagged: it fit one of her plastic lids - heh), and a slightly warped but superthin bowl.

And now, off to book club to discuss The Tipping Point, which my friend Margaret was kind enough to give me years ago! Ha!

McMom

So Wednesday of next week is my sweetheart's mom's birthday. This post is titled McMom because their surname begins with "Mc" and when I called her Mrs. Mc-------, she asked me to call her by her first name. Being raised old school by my parents, THAT was never going to happen. (Or as my friend Kieran's mom said, "Did you tell her you still call me Mrs. W-------- after 20 years?") So we compromised with Mrs. Mac, or Mom Mac, etc. (And yes, I have called his dad "Mac Daddy" -- hee!)

In any case, I just got back a bowl from the kiln which I really like which will become her birthday present :-)

My engineer's reaction: "That's really pretty. She'll love it. Until she breaks it. There's a reason we have an extremely well-stocked first aid kit in the laundry room"

My mom's reaction: "You're giving her a bowl? Is it an ugly one? You should give her a nice one you know." (Um, yeah, mom -- I know.) When informed that (a) my engineer thought it was pretty, she was mollified, and (b) that his mom will probably break it at some point, "Well you know, us old people aren't as coordinated and have less hand strength."

My classmates' reaction in the pottery studio, regarding the probable fate of the bowl: "Well it's good that people break things. Then we can give them more stuff. Otherwise they'd never need any additional/new pieces."

My reaction: "Well hey, it's made to be used. As long as it has a happy and useful life before its eventual demise, then I'm satisfied."

Hey, it's all in how you look at the world....glass half empty / glass half full / opportunity to sell water / hey, I can make another mug! ...etc.

The Stockinette

So last weekend I went to The Stockinette, the new LYS near my engineer in Jersey City. which I have posted about previously. The selection was small, but the staff and cafe were very pleasant, and I succumbed to this pattern book by Sublime (whose official site, appropriately enough, like The Stockinette, is lame, but where other sites are much more informative).

The pattern book uses Sublime cashmere merino silk dk which is imported by Knitting Fever. The Little Sailor Coat and the Little Swing Coat are both adorable and the reasons why I bought the book. However, I forgot that reading British knitting directions can be FREAKING ANNOYING, a la Debbie Bliss.

I have already knitted (and frogged and reknitted) a sleeve for the Little Sailor Coat, but find myself yearning for something with better stitch definition than the Valuruguai Mimosa Superwash (doubled -- as it is fingering weight: what the hell was I thinking?!) which I have in lavender from a previous eBay moment of insanity. (The photo here is in macro mode, and the sleeve itself is, of course, a whole 6 or so inches long.)

So okay, the stitch definition isn't bad, really, upon review, but I guess I have developed an odd fondness for knitting in cotton, which I know many people hate working with -- go figure.

For example, I have recently finished this kimono for my threading lady, who is due to have a girl next month. It uses Bernat Cottontots, which I inherited from a coworker who decided she didn't like any of a giant sack of yarn that she bought (i.e., windfall for me & my stash!).

And then I preserved what's left of my sanity by finishing the seaming for this baby sweater during the last so-called debate between that cranky, incoherent old fart, and the suave young guy. (My engineer did it by reading a scifi book, and we both imbibed in some tasty merlot he brought over. Between the seaming, drinking, and laundry folding I plowed through, I managed not to scream -- too often -- at the TV, but I digress.)

For some reason, I had the odd urge to knit eyelet a while ago, using Plymouth Encore Colorspun, which is actually lovely. So I finished this up for our sorely missed tech services person who returned from maternity this week. We are having a baby post-shower for her tomorrow, since she preferred no baby gifts prior to her little girl's arrival, even though they are Trinidadean and not Asian. ;-)

The Mogul's scarf that I made for my nephew (who now also has a baby girl! yikes!) a few years ago is also proving possibly inspirational, as my engineer has expressed a desire for a hat (I explained that he was not getting a sweater until I got a rock) and to me, a hat needs a companion scarf. :-)

Jeez, I had better get cracking on my Xmas knitting!

Spiced Pot Roast

My first pot roast. I used a WW recipe last week with beef bottom round (trimmed, of course) and it turned out great!

Even better, I had 2+ hours of freedom while it cooked in my engineer's gigantic dutch oven, in his snazzy oven. (All of his appliances are stainless, expensive, and heavily used, as he is a fabbo cook -- yum!)

Now might be a good time to explain the charms on my WW key ring:

• the key ring itself indicates that I reached my original 10% weight loss target)


• the star indicates I reached my goal weight (I think -- I forget)


• the clapping ha nds with the 16 on them are to show that I attended 16 weeks of sessions


• and the key indicates that I am now a WW Lifetime Member -- woohoo!

The Harf

It is finally done.

The pompom alone was a challenge.

(It is shown on my laptop for scale.)



But I finally created my very own muppet / sea anemone.

Now I just have to ship it to the poor man before playoffs!

(He is hoping "it will bring the Bungles some luck."
While I don't know about THAT, it may blind some opposing players if he wears it to the stadium!)

Hmmmm...come to think of it, it'd be a great Halloween accessory too. ;-)

Bluefin Tuna Special

Yes, once again, I succumbed to the chopped tuna special at Ise, where I was for lunch with my buddy Ryohei (who, incidentally, is wisely moving up his son's eye surgery to utilize health insurance while it's still definitely available). Having witnessed the gigantic portion my friend Christine had last time, I persuaded Ryo to SPLIT the $18 special with me, which I personally think should be renamed The Tuna Tsunami. Dessert was 2 pieces of tamago sushi. Yum.

Note the size of the mound of bluefin tuna tartar. Note the tea cup and ramen bowl sizes for scale. Note that this was a huge bargain. Note that I [heart] Ise Restaurant and want to check out their other branches, even though Ryo says THEY don't have the killer lunch specials.

Continuing on in the food lust vein, tomorrow night, we are going to have dinner at Cho Dang Gol in midtown, which is -- shockingly -- NOT located on 32nd Street. Selecting instead the slightly rebellious 35th Street nearby, their food is a little more unique than the standard Korean bbq, etc. I've been meaning to go back there for years, ever since a meal there with my friends Dale, Julie, and Margaret. Their menu looks mouthwatering.

This continues a yum-yummity outing for Korean food on Saturday to Mandoo Bar with my friends Marci and Jackie (and Marci's highly entertaining parents) for Marci's belated birthday luau, where I had (way, way too much) mandoo ramen soup.

I have also been struck by a hankering to cook lately (please, pick yourselves up off the floor after fainting from shock) which I suspect is due to a confluence of factors: cooler weather, the desire to eat better (and stay within my WW goal range), and someone to share dinner with on a regular basis. Yippee!

My cravings lately are to try making pot roast (which I need a weekend afternoon for -- I have all of the ingredients ready [ !!! ]), a WW recipe for brussel sprouts with almonds (my engineer bought a basketful last weekend) or a blog recipe for roasted brussel sprouts with cranberries & balsamic butter (a/k/a how to add calories to something healthy), and the recipe from Eating Well Magazine for sweet & savory beef stew for two. I also really like that this magazine has recipes for TWO PEOPLE, not 8 or 6 or some other impractical number.

And in other cheery (semi-food-related) news, my sweetheart told me about a new LYS in Jersey City near him, Stockinette Knitting Cafe (official site which is currently empty-ish, so this person's blog is actually MUCH more informative, along with some pre-opening forum discussions and JC forum postings) since well, he has seen my insanely large stash and yet, he did not flee into the night. We're both looking forward to hanging out in the newly opened (Sept. 12th) knitting cafe at some point, for differing reasons : cafe & back garden (him), and yarn fondling (moi).

So lately, I guess the Two-Out-Of-Three Rule has been proven true: good job, good home, good boyfriend -- you can usually have 2 out of the 3, but you will rarely have all 3 simultaneously. I'm quite satisfied with the 2 stable jewels that I do have, and am philosophical about the precarious state of the third.

She likes him!

In fact, I think eventually she'll like my engineer more than she likes me (heh) but that's a problem I can live with most happily.

It helped that he paid for our lunch ;-P as stinginess is a cardinal sin in Chinese society. Heh. But then, my sister and both of his Chinese work colleagues reminded him that picking up the check was KEY. Heheheh.

My mom even behaved herself (mostly) and waited a whole 20 minutes before prompting me to get a move on with having kids. (My sister's comment that I didn't want kids fell on deaf ears, but hey, I can only ask for so many miracles.)

More importantly, my engineer likes her, since her opinion wouldn't have changed mine, but his opinion does make things easier for me. As with his parents, all is smoother if you like your loved one's relatives.

Actually, it was not so much as whether she'd like him (as the Magic 8 Ball would say, "All signs point to yes" since he is after all, a swell fella) but whether or not she'd make MY head explode.

So after we had a pleasant lunch, my sister took off (with undisguised relief that all had gone well... and by the way, the flower above is from her garden) and the three of us wandered around Chinatown shopping for shaoxing cooking wine (for him), fresh -- not canned -- water chestnuts (for his mom), and checking out a new Chinese grocery store on Mulberry St (for my mom). He asked her opinion as to which brand of shaoxing rice wine my mom preferred (the answer: Pagoda Brand, which you actually have to buy in a liquor store).

He likes her zongzi (more brownie points, but then her zongzi are fabulous... mmmm....) and cooks, and likes fish cheeks (we had fried whole red snapper). Plus, he has a graduate degree and is devoted to his parents, all adding up to a gazillion brownie points in her book.

Life is good.

My head hurts

I have an Excedrin-sized headache despite sucking down 2 extra strength tabs already, and 20 oz. of water.

So my sister is helping pave the way for mom to meet my engineer at lunch on Saturday (me, him, Sis, brother-in-law [for the non-Chinese speaking ghetto], and mom). Sis has been trying to impress upon mom the need NOT TO PESTER THE HELL OUT OF ME.

Therefore, please witness the following conversation they had, as related by my sister:

Sis:
We're going to meet her boyfriend. Now you can't go asking them about a wedding date, since Americans are more casual and meeting the family does not imply impending marriage. And don't bug her about when she's going to start having kids eother.

Mom:
Oh. Okay.

Mom:
So do you think they'll want an American or Chinese style wedding?

Sis:
What did I just say?

Mom:
Oh. Okay.

Mom:
She's not getting any younger you know. She had better get started if she's going to have kids.

Sis:
WHAT DID I JUST SAY?!

(Me:
Just kill me now. Please.)

Mom:
You know, I suspected she had a boyfriend, since I saw a photo of them together in her closet.

Sis:
Huh?

(Me:
Note - my mother has not been to my apartment since I closed on it 4 years ago.)

I need a drink. By comparison, my company imploding is a cakewalk.

My engineer is entirely sanguine, since, as he pointed out, he does not speak Chinese and will therefore be spared the worst of the interrogation. He will be asking my brother-in-law for tips about dealing with my migraine-inducing mom though.

We're in good hands

...with our new CEO. He actually knows what we do (not like the other guy) and he's honest (no B.S.) and managed to make everyone feel like there could be a light at the end of the tunnel that's NOT an oncoming train. So I took today's entry from the tagline for his old company, which he also rescued from the brink of ruin, I understand.

Not a whole lot of other new developments on either business or home fronts, but thought I'd share the good impression with y'all, since many of you have been kind enough to inquire as to how it's going at the current epicenter of the economic apocalypse [a phrase I steal shamelessly from "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!" on NPR].

Which also reminds me of something I ran across today: "How to avoid a major meltdown at work"

And just for fuzzy fun and cheer, here is a link to fun fun fun panda cub mayhem

And finally, a cool photo my engineer took when we were at the US Open last month:

Welcome to the implosion

I'm exhausted. Dunno how my engineer does it: work in NY, hospital in NJ, home, rinse, lather, repeat. Spent the last 4 days in the hospital with him & his parents as his dad underwent 2 cardiac implants (stents), and this was just 4 days. His poor dad has been in the hospital since mid-July for multiple surgeries, and has lost 30 lbs. Yikes.

So between that and my employer's impending implosion (well okay, it looks like it might be salvaged, but who knows?) a little hilarity was in order, I thought. (Besides using up more of my vacation days promptly seemed like a prudent idea, if you see what I mean.)
So the infamous harf (hat + scarf = harf) came out to play, since 4 days in the hospital does give one a lot of knitting time. I finally finished it (still need to do the giant pompom[s] though) at a whopping 8+ feet long. [Bonus: it made my guy's dad smile when we tried it on for him in his hospital room.]

The photo on the left was from my previous efforts last football season. The photo on the right, with my amused co-worker Julia modeling, is the almost-final result. So now Al, who is 6'5" and therefore requiring of an extremely long harf, can blind his fellow Cincinnati Bengals fans. Hee!

Between the hospital, possible unemployment, and not being home for several days, I discovered when I got home just how frazzled I was: while I had HIS keys in my purse, I had left MY keys at my honey's apartment this morning. Duh. That idiot mistake cost me $35 (lockout fee). Oh well.

What else? Oh, apparently after this weekend's travails, my engineer informed me tonight that his mom told him I am "marriage material" ( ! ! ! ) and he didn't seem averse to the idea ( ! ! ! ! ! )

And on THAT note, I am taking to my bed.

Irony

Is that what you call it when you wonder about cancelling a vacation for one reason, but wind up doing it for another? Or when you take a vacation day for one reason, but wind up using it for another? Or when your boyfriend sends you beautiful flowers because you're feeling like roadkill, but you wind up comforting him about a distressing event instead?

My engineer was thinking about cancelling his upcoming 2 week vacation to Thailand (he goes diving near Turtle Island -- whose Thai name I forget -- in the Gulf of Thailand) because well, there's been rioting in Bangkok. If so, his trip insurance would not have covered cancellation for civil unrest (insurers, as I well know consider that to fall in the category of acts of G*d). Instead, he's just cancelled it because his 78 year old dad is about to have exploratory heart surgery. Surprise!

So although he sent me those lovely, fragrant flowers yesterday because work and my psycho mom have been getting me down, enough so that I am taking tomorrow off as a mental health day, I spent last evening soothing him. And I will spend tomorrow in the hospital with his 80 year old mom (he took today off) so that he can clear the decks at work, instead of us both playing hooky.

Oh well. I consider a vacation day spent easing his mind -- and hers: she's a doll -- a vacation day well spent. (Besides, if I get laid off after September 25th, I'm certainly not giving my unused vacation days BACK!)

Yes, we just found out yesterday that their local hospital is transferring his dad to the cardiac specialists at St. Barnabas bright and early this morning at 8am, which is why I have been awake for 2 hours already: he got up before dawn so that he could go down to his family's house and drive his mom up to the hospital here. I foresee lots of iced coffee in my day.

On the bright side, this means I can go into work early and clear off my desk before I disappear tomorrow. Bonus: My early appearance will also shock my coworkers senseless. ;-P

And did I mention that I plan to introduce him to said psycho mom? Yeah, it's kinda serious. Although we haven't talked about Anything Permanent, I obviously feel a lot more secure in his feelings for me (or in the words of my PoW, I have "formed a secure attachment" -- hee! shrinkspeak is so funny sometimes). That, and verbal reinforcement from my sister (as in: "Mom, DON'T BUG HER about Things"), means I am feeling sanguine about this formerly terrifying prospect.

Oh, I completely forgot (funny, that): I qualified for WW Lifetime Status yesterday! This means that as long I stay no more than 2 lbs. above my goal weight (grand total of 43 lbs. lost) then all meetings are free. Forever. If I go above 2 lbs. (I can go below) then I pay a meeting attendance fee. And I think I have to weigh in officially (i.e., at a meeting) at least once a month, which is a good form of accountability.

Okay, off to face this hideous hordes of commuters and see if I can avoid the even more hideous WTC ceremonies this morning. Ugh.

Easy call

So tonight is kickoff for the new season, as I discovered during my walk home from the south end of Central Park, when the NFL had taken over Columbus Circle. I even got free tickets (just from walking by) for the concert @ 1:30 today. Alas, I cannot attend, as well, I have to, say, WORK.

The Giants' season opener will be telecast on NBC tonight. Or I could spend the evening curled up with my engineer. Hmmm...NO CONTEST. Football can wait. :-D

Oh, and his mom called me last night (!!!) as she wanted to chat with me about plans for this weekend. He told me later that she really wanted to make me feel welcome. Thank g*d we are too old for the "if my parents like them, I must break up with them immediately" reaction.

So I have bought them almond cookies and Jacques Torres chocolate as my hostess gifts. I think I will skip the moon cakes for now though, until I figure out the gout implications (his dad has it) besides which I went up 2 lbs. @ yesterday's WW weigh-in and I am not happy about it. Any more weight and I will have to start my lifetime membership requalification from scratch!

Hence, last night's walk home. I think I will drag my engineer out for some outdoor activities (ahem) this weekend as well. Will have to save up points for her meatloaf...yum....

The F-Word

Very tired, so tonight's post will have less-than-suave transitions between topics.

The bowl to the left shows less than HALF of the tuna tartar that was part of today's mysterious, Japanese-menu-only, special. What do you think? Would it have been, say, a pound of tuna?!

My friend's hand, and the soy sauce bottle, are shown for scale. Think about it.

Yes, tomorrow is WW weigh-in day, and after 4 days away (in distant Jersey City, heh) I am rather afraid of what the results will be tomorrow. The sashimi lunch was our attempt to be good. Of course, my udon special was not exactly light, since (a) noodles = points, and (b) it turned out to come with shrimp tempura. (Ah, the flip side of ordering from the Japanese menu when you don't read Japanese: the occasional surprise!)

And the sweater is being blocked, as I try to decide what fastening to shape (ties? buttons? hmmm...)

And the f-word refers to "fiancee" which is what my engineer's dad referred to me as. Granted, he was merely using it to put off a visit from the physical therapist, as in, "No we can't make an appt for this weekend, because my son's fiancee is visiting." (As you can imagine, this generated an immediate phone call from my engineer's mom.)

Now while his dad was merely using the word as an excuse, and not because it was actually TRUE, I find it interesting that neither my sweetheart or myself ran screaming into the night at the very concept.