Crafting Triple Crown

Though I did not watch The Preakness this weekend, I have been busily trundling along on my own personal crafting triple crown: ceramics, cooking (and lots of eating), and knitting.

The platter above had some really funky runs which I liked and could not recreate if I tried. I was also supposed to attend a glazing workshop this morning, but switched to next Friday morning's session (the 21st) instead, as I desperately need a mental health day and have yet to take the second of my 2 discretionary days for the year. So Friday, I will spend the whole day at the pottery studio, ending with a dinner visit with my mom.

This weekend also saw my first attempt to create my own baby sweater pattern, and lemme tellya, the pattern math is killing me. However, I think baby Olivia is worth it :-) and I am highly amused by the Easter egg colors I have chosen: green, pink, and yellow. The pattern is a mixture of Little Bubbles and eyelet rows (see what I mean about math?) with banded stripes of color, knitted top down with a round yoke. I am also varying the sizes of the Little Bubbles boxes on Olivia's sweater (more math). The end result could be dizzying, but it'll keep me occupied, and hey, I can always make another sweater for Olivia (girly things are so much fun to knit!) Photos and pattern will be forthcoming once I am further along.

Last night, my friend Jane also organized a goat dinner. Resto's large format feasts serves an animal from nose to tail for groups of 8 or larger, and it was indeed tasty, but I did not take any photos as it just looked like very large platters of meat prepared in different ways. (Maybe my blogging hiatus has made me more picky about my food p*rn.) We pre-selected goat (you have to book ahead and put down a $250 deposit) which is not on their regular a la carte menu, but other options include pig, veal, large fish, etc.

Apparently, 3 courses of goat finished with Belgian waffles were not enough for us (!!!) as Jane, her husband Jim, and I went out afterward for coffee and dessert around the corner at Primehouse.

Jane ordered homemade "make your own" doughnuts which were truly scrumptious. The little squeeze bottles allow you to add your own butterscotch, strawberry jam, or chocolate filling.

I, on the other hand, opted for my first bananas foster, which came with its own almond crunch sugar cookies. Yummm....

Ironically, all of the booze at dinner helped me deal with this morning's noisy walkers streaming past my window: woke up at 6:30 and so was already puttering around when noisy AIDwalk folks streamed screamining past my window for 2-3 hours. Yes, I know it's a good cause, and I've raised thousands for the walk myself, but every charity walk (and there are quite a few during the course of the year) makes me want to just yell out my window on SUNDAY MORNINGS for them to just SHUT THE HELL UP!

Yes, I am always cranky when my sleep is disturbed on weekend mornings, and not just when I am newly single.

Tonight, I made not one but two batches of fruit muffins for my coworker Mike's birthday tomorrow, as I'm a bit ambivalent about how the first batch (carrot) turned out.

Although the low-fat carrot muffins are truly very moist, because they use crushed pineapple (?!) to add moisture, they are actually a little TOO moist (er, perhaps I underbaked them or didn't squeeze out enough moisture from the shredded carrots). I also threw in some chocolate chips and sliced almonds I had lying around.

Therefore, I made peach muffins as a backup. Since I haven't tasted them yet, I'm not sure how good a back up they will be (!) but the reviews online seemed positive, so here's hoping... I used thawed, chopped frozen peaches instead of fresh, and threw on some cinnamon (hence the dark speckles) in case the muffins didn't caramelize sufficiently. The fear of albino muffins was unfounded, but we'll see how the taste factor goes. Wish me luck!

Moms and babies

I have another grand-niece and she's a cutie! Olivia Kate (7 lbs. 14 oz.) arrived yesterday morning and mother and baby are doing well. Normally, I think infants look unnervingly like Yoda, but she actually looks cute! (As I may have mentioned before, my niece and her husband produce remarkably attractive offspring, and no, I am not biased; see: Yoda comment, above.)

When in a funk, babies (that you can return to their parents) and family (that you like) are very comforting, so my mom and I went up to CT for Mother's Day weekend and saw the gang.

It was Mom's first visit to see my brother-in-law in the nursing home and he was doing much better this time (fentanyl is your friend -- the absence of pain works wonders on anyone's state of mind). He occasionally had flashes of lucidity where he would recognize my mom or me. Then seconds later, he would be off in his own world again. (I have to admit that those flashes are more disorienting than when he just stares at us blankly.)

Also confusing -- to me -- is the fact that he looks better, but the doctors are mentioning "hospice" and urging my sister to think about "making arrangements". I understand intellectually why this is (I mean, he has now been taken off solid foods altogether because he may choke) but emotionally I'm in denial, I guess.

As for my non-romantic situation, I'm in the angry portion of the seven stages of grief (and when I get angry I eat apparently -- I have gained several pounds to date). I also distract myself with retail therapy (thankfully, I am cheap, so this involves outlets and eBay, not Bulgari or Armani) and vacation planning.

You can see why babies, Mom (I spend a lot of time at her place, knitting -- she found me the matching buttons for this sweater I finished for Sonya's future baby girl) and my lively family (Sonya is my brother-in-law's niece, by the way) are such welcome distractions, especially since my home (always a manifestation of my enotional health) is completely overrun -- it rather looks like the post-tornado Midwest, or as one friend said recently, "Jeez -- are you moving or what?" Yes, it's THAT messy.

And now, lunch time is OVAH.

Life, Continued

So. As I and many people agree, Mom is both perceptive and hilarious. She wanted to know why the engineer had wasted 4 or 5 years of my life. Since our second anniversary would have been this month, I wondered if this meant that my life speeds up as I get older, kind of life dog years. But no, I informed her, it was only 2 years. (Apparently my mom is as angry at him as I am. Heh. I feel free in saying all this stuff here since he has never read my blog while we were going out [in retrospect, perhaps a hint I should have picked up on] so I don't see why he would start now.)

Today's conversation with Mom continued in this perversely entertaining but erroneous manner for a while until my express bus to MSKCC arrived. Today was my first check up with the oncologist since I stopped treatment.

Everything seems okay (more details on my tamoxifen test in a minute) but I will not feel at ease until Wednesday, since my onco-doc won't get my blood test results until tomorrow. These tests screen for cancer antigens and other happy signs. So if I do NOT hear from her tomorrow, well, no news is good news! If I do hear from her tomorrow, I will be a nervous wreck.

But on to more positive results, like the genetic testing for my tamoxifen metabolization rate. I got to swab my mouth just like the "perps" on CSI, and send in the swabs for analysis. Apparently I am an "intermediate" metabolizer, so while my body doesn't chow down on it like Oreo cupcakes (see above -- YUM!), neither does it spit it out like beets or mint jelly (flavors I personally loathe, okay?)

This is a relief since there are apparently few alternatives for younger women like me that aren't toxic. Ick. So I am perfectly happy with being (as always) a "B" student.

Yes, I had so gotten out of the habit of blogging that I completely scarfed down the Oreo cupcake I ordered on Sunday afternoon at Society Coffee, a mellow cafe near me with deliciously frosty air-conditioning (it was around 90 on Sunday AND humid -- ugh) and free wifi after 4pm on weekends. Hence, the photo above is taken of one of the survivors under the cake dome. The frosting tastes like pureed Oreo filling... Mmmm...

While I was hiding in the air-conditioning, I was pondering my vacation options for the rest of the year since I have 16 days left (!) and intend to spend them all travelling to cities starting with the letter "S".

In chronological order, they will be Seattle (hi Margaret!) where I can indulge in my fascination with her adorable son, San Francisco (hi, Bim! hi Shelley!) which was postponed from last month due to viral gastroenteritis, and Shanghai(woo!) which I never got to see properly since I was working like I fiend when I was there in 2006, although I did find time to snap a photo of that bizarre statue above (and no, I have absolutely NO idea what it is, besides a possibly demented looking fish).

My cousin Peyen is living there now for work, and I have enough FF miles to go there in business class (yippee!) -- a critical consideration since a direct flight from Newark is almost 15 hours! Also, I was pondering squeezing in a side trip to HK or Beijing (hey, Brian -- are you around in late November?) while I was there...

I also have been knitting away at a sweater for my almost-cousin Sonya's future daughter. Gotta admit that the Little Bubbles design from KnitPicks is simultaneously addictive (endless color combo possibilities!) and monotonous (endless rows of stockinette...)

So all in all, I seem to be doing better post-breakup than pre, surely a sign that I done right. Not that I still don't get into funks now and then (and I have apparently quite a reservoir of resentment bottled up) but on the whole, I have been doing a lot more Stuff generally.

Looking for Mr. Hershey Bar

So okay, you may have noticed that I've been kind of quiet here recently. That's because I've been rather miserable.

As of today, I am officially single again, and I feel much better. Coincidence? I think NOT.

So here's how my dinner with Mom went tonight (timing is everything)...

Mom: What? Your boyfriend is too busy to come to dinner?

Me: He's not my boyfriend any more.

Mom: I knew it! He went on that vacation with another woman, didn't he? [Mom's 2 husbands did not give her a high opinion of male fidelity. Yes, I know my dad was one of those two men.]
Me: No, Mom. That's not it. Remember how I said I was waiting for him to decide on getting married or not? [Note: I am distilling long conversations about our different relationship issues into concrete terms she can relate to. See also: vacations without ME, above]
Me: Well, he said he doesn't want to get married [which is essentially what it boils down to in the end, even if I'm not even sure that I myself want to get married] so I broke up with him. Now I don't want to talk about it anymore.

Mom: Oh.

Mom: Well good. No sense in twisting in the wind any longer than you have to. Best to break it off sooner rather than later in that case. [Mom is very pragmatic.]
Mom: Now that you've broken up, I can tell you I always thought he was very unappreciative. [Why do people never say these things until afterward?! It is true, however, that he did not apparently appreciate ME enough.] I didn't tell you before because you'd just get upset and defensive [true] but NOW, I can tell you how I really feel!
Me: Okay Mom, I don't want to talk about this anymore, remember? [Don't worry, she got to enumerate all his faults after dinner while on the phone to my sister... none of which I could really disagree with. Heh.]

Yes, I am more than a little angry (it's easier to be angry than disappointed and upset) but that's all I'm going to say about the subject (for now).

Tomorrow, I think it will be a fine time to go pummel some clay in the studio. Benchtime awaits.

In the meantime, enjoy the funky "teardrop" drip of glaze in the bowl I just collected from the studio this week. More photos another day.

And now, on to some more angry eating... for some reason, I've been craving Hershey bars lately, even though I normally avoid them.

Beige Food

Why am I watching golf?! I don't even PLAY golf! (Well, except occasionally on my sweetie's best friend's Nintendo Wii.)  And yet this afternoon, I found myself vaguely watching The Masters (and actively rooting against Tiger) for more than an hour.

It must be something about the invalid/convalescent mindset -- golf is so soothing, with those vast swaths of greens, and soft-spoken (almost hushed)  commentators. Plus, I find the collective "ooohs!" and "aaaaahs!" of the gallery to be entertaining.  And I like Phil Mickelson, although I find it odd to realize he is actually 2 years younger than me, when until today, I had always thought he was older than me! Maybe it's because he's such a big guy (6'3"!) so that makes him look older.

Unlike that idiot-jerk who cheated on his wife with anyone with a pulse, for the past year poor Mr. Mickelson has been sandwiched between both a wife AND a mother who are undergoing breast cancer treatment. Fortunately, both women are said to be doing well, treatment-wise (I'm sure they're not exactly having fun, but as these things go, they're doing well) but one of the questions the commentator asked today in an effort to be insightful struck me as inane/ downright dumb (yes, I know -- they have to fill up airtime somehow).

He asked something like "how much would it mean to Amy [his wife] if you brought home the trophy this weekend?" Now, I have no idea what their marriage is like, but I can definitely tell you that if my sweetie had brought home say, the Nobel equivalent for engineering (whatever -- you get the idea) it would not really have made me go, "Oh, honey -- this makes chemo so much easier!" Moron. Yes, the reporter was a guy.

Since I'm not a stay at home wife and mom, I dunno, maybe my reaction would be different if I were...? (But I doubt it.) I mean, I'd be happy for my sweetie, but it wouldn't have made the world a rosier place for ME. (Watching a steady diet of daytime TV this week has only reinforced my opinion that most TV journalists are twits.)

Speaking of being sick, I have moved on to more solid food today -- woohoo! With the exception of the carrots in my chicken barley soup (which I dug out from the freezer), I have stuck to the whole beige food rule: saltines, graham crackers, apple juice, an English muffin with some honey.  I think if I hadn't had the soup (which had some actual dead animal in it), my eyes would have crossed with culinary boredom.

Mentally, after a week of hospital food, I'm starting to crave some variety (and dead animal -- like a burger... mmmm...) but realistically, I don't think I could handle it without, er, violent repercussions, shall we say.
It's a weird, slightly schizophrenic feeling. Hmmmm...

On to more pleasant topics, like the photos of Koh Samui, Thailand from my engineer. Having left the chaos of the redshirt-filled capital behind him, he is off to dive some WWII wrecks. The photo up top was shot during his approach to the cove, while the shot below is the view from his US$10/night hotel room. (You will note he chose to show the view and not the room, heh.)

Both my own postponed trip and these photos have made me newly ambitious: I will be kidnapping my engineer for a trip somewhere this summer. My last trip was to Seattle in August (hi Margaret!) and I'm getting a hankering to pack my bag (yes, singular) and go somewhere pretty with my sweetie. Suggestions anyone?

Noodles

Ramen yesterday night. Udon and capellini today. Tomorrow, maybe some rice vermicelli. I'm slowly working my way up the solid food chain after an unpleasant and extended interlude with viral gastroenteritis this week, when I subsisted on an exciting diet of room temperature apple juice and chicken bouillon.

At one point, I had a fever of 101.9 and dropped 7 pounds from dehydration, leading my GP to mutter the words "Emergency Room" and "intravenous drip" if the anti-nausea medication didn't allow me to keep down any fluids.  (Ironically, it was one of the same drugs as I had during chemo, since I blame chemo-backwash for my seemingly unending series of infections this year.) Come to think of it, I was curled up in a ball of misery for a few days, similar to the position of this ceramic, gold-leaf gargoyle made by one of my studio-mates. (Pretty cool sculpture, huh?)

So I've been home all week, as I was both contagious and chained to my bathroom, and put off my vacation to San Francisco (I was supposed to leave yesterday -- not a good idea). Instead, I will go back to work on Monday, and save my vacation for when I am FINALLY FEELING BETTER! (Can you tell that I am sick of being sick... again?)

Wednesday night, my sweetie left for his annual 3-week diving trip to Thailand, so I will not see him until after he returns on the 24th. Right now he is somewhere en-route to Bangkok via Taipei.

And that is all the energy I have for today.

The Kitchen Sink

How is it that after getting it completely empty yesterday, and topping it off with a baking soda scrub no less, my sick is now once again full of dirty dishes? And this, despite ordering in for dinner last night with my sweetie. Like laundry, some fun chores just seem neverending. Sigh.

I guess I'm just cranky with myself because I've done a whole lotta NOTHING this weekend -- despite it being absolutely gorgeous (sunny and 70ish) weather -- and have been diligently avoiding organizing my tax papers so that my accountant can deal with the whole mess before I go on vacation on April 8th. In other words, my aggravation is basically all self-inflicted. Genius.

So yeah, my sink awaits me. Again. But part of the reason it's full is that I made beef fried rice (top photo, in one of my newest bowls back from the kiln) out of an assortment of multi-cuisine leftovers: rice from Thai delivery last night, smoked beef brisket from Southern BBQ doggy bag the other night, along with its accompanying collard greens and pork/ham seasoning, two "new" eggs, and of course, the remainder of my (rather wilted) scallions and some freshly minced ginger, two seasonings I always think of as Chinese even though many countries use them.

I have to say, the end result tastes pretty good (or it could be that I have a weird palate -- either way, as they point out in Alone In The Kitchen With An Eggplant, only *I* have to eat it, so there) even though it is perversely amusing that I had to find instructions for this quintessentially Chinese recipe from The Joy of Cooking!

The second photo in this post is part of my dinner last night from Wondee Siam V. (I don't have any photos of my sweetie's dinner because I didn't think about it till he'd already decimated his meal. Heh.) My yam ped yang salad ( crispy boneless duck with pineapple, green apple, red onion, scallion, cilantro, peanuts, cashew nut, lime juice & chili ) was excellent, and I still have lots left over: a 3-meal dish!

And then we both / each ordered tom sum, otherwise known as green papaya salad, which is the photo with the crushed grape tomato. (Between the peanuts and cashews, SE Asia is a dangerous place for those with nut allergies.)

My engineer also ordered catfish pad pett ( fish sauteed with thai eggplant, lime leaf, basil, bell pepper and red curry paste ) which was tasty and gone baby, gone. I thought I'd give the gui chai a whirl ( crispy chive pancakes wrapped in rice noodle/mochi ) but though tasty, they were not memorialized. Whoops.

We wound up our spicy dinner with some spicy viewing. Now hold on -- I just mean that my engineer found a commercial-free showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show on TV last night, only a few minutes after it had started. So we settled in and watched the whole film (again), with occasional consultation of IMDB to see where various folks were these days. (Yes, we lead a very exciting life here in the big city!) Throughout the film, I kept trying to imagine explaining the plot to my 80-year old mom who was raised in rural, pre-Communist China and... nope. No dice. Couldn't visualize that conversation, nosirree.

Neither can I visualize what I an going to do about any future cookbook acquisitions, since my "foodie" bookcase has now been filled to the gills. (You knew that had to happen sooner or later, right?)

While most recent items have made their way into my home via PaperBackSwap, I bought The World Encyclopedia of Cooking Ingredients on Friday, which coincidentally has Thai eggplants on the cover, which were in the catfish dish.  I thought a visual encyclopedia would be handy the next time I ran into some baffling cooking ingredient (and less than a day later, I did), plus it was in the bargain books section at my local Borders, AND with this week's 30% off coupon, the grand total (WITH tax) was $3.80! A reference book on food on SALE -- how could I resist?

Blink is indeed via the swap club, and kept me company on the subway on Friday (just started it). Picturing Hong Kong: Photography, 1855-1910 came out of the dumpster at work: our office is moving in a few months, so we have been vigorously purging (if only I could apply that discipline AT HOME!) and both my engineer and I thought this book was interesting, especially since we've both been there (separately).

Coincidentally, my book club is currently reading The Piano Teacher, set in midcentury Hong Kong, but since I have developed a dislike of said teacher, I am having a hard time progressing with it. (British colonialist attitudes, while historically accurate, tick me off to no end.) One can only hope she will become less annoying as the book goes on, otherwise I will not have a lot to say at the next book club meeting (i.e., it will remain unfinished).

Let there be light

... or in the case of orchids, not so much. According to the care instructions of the orchids I bought for my mom's birthday last February, they prefer indirect sunlight. So all year Mom (who has an amazingly grren thumb) has been conscientiously moving the pot back and forth, to strategic spots in her SW-facing living room.

Voila! She was rewarded for her diligence with 9 beautiful blooms this year. So a year later, she has decreed that it was a good gift. Heh. (The plant I bought her for Mother's Day did not behave so respectfully, and so it has been relegated to the status of Bad Plant, Bad!)

Let there be light ... or in the case of Greenwich, only if you're lucky. My sister and older niece's homes are in the 60% of town residents who had no power after the Nor'easter that pounded the NYC area last weekend (75 mph winds slammed against my apartment windows and made me think that I would NEVER, EVER want to move to hurricane territory). They still do not have power back yet (!) and Connecticut Light & Power estimates THURSDAY NIGHT (!!!) for full restoration of power to the unlucky 27,000 CT residents.

My sister is staying in a guest (i.e., hotel) room at her club, and my older, 7-months pregnant niece (!) and her entire family (2 toddlers, hubby, and Ruby, their sweet-natured Rhodesian Ridgeback who is the size of a small pony) are staying at a hotel in White Plains. Oy. Terry (the aforementioned hubby) cancelled a business trip to help my niece wrangle the herd. Gold star for Terry!

About the only two bright spots in all of this for my sister (who of course had gone grocery shopping on Friday -- oops) are (a) she can order a cooked meal at the club after she gets back after an hour-long drive from the Bridgeport Hospital every night, where she visits my brother-in-law, and (b) we had a slumber party at Mom's on Sunday night!

I had gone up to visit my sister & brother-in-law on Sunday, and when she still had no power Sunday night, she wisely decided it was a good time to visit Mom for some TLC, dinner, heat, light -- you know, the LITTLE things in life. (D'oh!) So we went back to NYC together, albeit much later than Mom expected since my sis stayed to feed my brother-in-law his dinner (yes, literally -- I think it's safe to say he is in Stage 7).

So Mom had both her chickadees under the same roof for one night. It was neat, since we both got to fuss over my sister, who deserves lots of spoiling.

It is hard to see my normally tough sister cry when she sees her husband, but I am glad that she is at least not bottling it up. At least I can hug her and tell her how much I love her. (My younger niece is also very sweet and calls her every morning before she goes to work in San Francisco at the crack of dawn.) I told Sis that I would be happy to go with her to the hospital every Sunday if she wants company.

Mom, Sis, both nieces -- the women of my family all ROCK!

Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity

In between bouts of dining at BBQ joints with my friend Sam, and my week-long craving for a slice of GOOD white pizza, I try to eat healthily. Mostly. Really!

So, I always have an apple a day (preferably my favorite Pinovas, as I have previously rhapsodized about), chopped for easy munching at my desk. And the perennial hunt for GOOD clementines (dried out ones are unfortunately more easily found). And probiotic dairy, LOTS of that (but more on those later).

This shot of the Westside Market location near Columbia was fun since the row of fruit seems to stretch out forever. I took it months ago, during one of those rare 60 degree days in midwinter which made everyone pop out of the woodwork, and my friend Ellen and I joined them on that day, with a walk to midtown along Riverside Park.

Remember how I mentioned death by dairy? I have been on a Greek yogurt (nonfat) and cottage cheese (lowfat) kick this winter. (I now have enough empty cottage cheese containers to start my own supply closet.) Part of the fun is mixing in a spoonful of flavor du jour of Bonne Maman preserves (only 1 WW pt!) to sweeten the yogurt / cottage cheese.

If it's cottage cheese, then it MUST be cottage cheese with fiber and healthy bacteria, such as the Friendship 2% lowfat cottage cheese with probiotics "for digestive health" (I became very conscious of the importance of your friendly neighborhood intestinal bacteria after my party with the giant antibiotic horse pills earlier this winter. Plus, as an added bonus, all that fiber lowers the points value of the cottage cheese to ONE per serving. Woohoo! Okay, 2 with the jam swirled in.)

On the other side of the spectrum, there is BEEF (although it's kind of related actually -- think about where dairy comes from, eh?) which is stored in its own cold room at the uptown Fairway. No dinky freezer cases here -- just a whole wing of the building. My friend Ellen says it is a delightful place to visit during the summer. Heh.

When we went shopping there a few months ago (has it been that long already?!) I bought some packages of oxtail for mom, since (as my sweetie puts it) now that the yuppies have discovered oxtail, the prices have skyrocketed, and Mom won't buy it for herself. So I will. :-) (I brought her some tasty clementines recently for the same reason -- too pricey for her thrifty soul. ;-P)

Speaking of meat, I could not have made this supertasty BLT sandwich (with Arnold's Sandwich Thins, another new favorite) a while ago without some decadent bacon from Nueske's, courtesy of my friend Margaret. Since I had mentioned that Chez Squirrel is literally bursting at the seams with all sorts of clutter that I really need to chuck out, her solution to the Xmas dilemma was to send me something comestible and what could ever be wrong with BACON!?

Horse trading

One of the things I find most amusing / fascinating about my ceramics buddies is how everyone has completely different tastes and styles. Now while that may sound obvious, it can be demonstrated more viscerally in several different ways.

For example, a sample of different potters' works at one studio I frequent gives a small idea of what I mean. (I will have to scan in some other samples to give you an even broader range so you REALLY see what I mean.)

Unsurprisingly, this occasionally leads to some spontaneous horse trading, when one person finds their finished, glazed work just viscerally revolting, while another one is "oooh-ing" and "aaah-ing" with admiration over the very same piece(s).

This happened twice to me, albeit on opposite ends of the transaction, once a few years ago and then again last month.

One bowl (I think -- or maybe it was a vase -- this was quite a while ago) came out of its second firing (the glaze firing occurs after the wet clay is first fired into bisqueware, similar to terracotta) and I immediately disliked it. A LOT. I can't even remember what combination of glazes it was, but I knew I'd never want to use it, or even want to give it as a formal present. Meanwhile, one pal (whose work is for sale here) thought it was great. I promptly gifted it to her.

Last month, the reverse occured to another pal, who found a particular shade of grey-blue revolting, whereas I admired the glaze mix tremndously. Guess who wound up with a pair of FABULOUS mugs? :-D (Noriko, one of the associate artists, was very jealous. Heh.) Plus, these are my favorite size: very large, holding 16 ounces of liquid each!

It's all a matter of perspective, kind of like these electric pottery wheels, turned on their sides. I thought they were turbines or something at first (!) but then I realized that no, they were simply moved aside, prior to the December holiday sow and sale.

And it's funny, because frequently, the hated objects are not intrinsically ugly (as these mugs certainly demonstrate) but rather, just not what was intended by the creator.

I joked with Diana, the mugs' maker, that it was like an adoption, where I immediately gave the mugs a loving home, even though they were rejected at birth. She promptly replied that it was not going to be an open adoption, so I was not to fear that she would come seeking them out years later, and in fact never wanted to see them again. Heh.

My pottery buddies crack me up sometimes. ;)

Babies 'R Us

Here is a picture of my friend's adorable baby boy (you know who you are, missy!) wearing the Little Bubbles sweater I made for him during my prenatal visit to Seattle last year. It's a bemusing reminder that I really did used to knit. Like, complete projects even!

Happily, it is still a little too big for him, so they'll get a few more months of use out of it before it becomes too small.

I'm also pleased that I got to use some of these buttons I bought on eBay, which I think are lots of fun on baby boy clothes. It even fortuitously matched the blue on this sweater. (If you click on the photo, you can see a larger shot of the puppy dog on the button.)

Speaking of creatures which require midday naps, I stayed home from worked today, as my cough was just unrelenting and I thought it would be nice not to cough all over my coworkers. Again.

I suppose I am getting somewhat better since today's naps amounted to 3 hours instead of yesterday's 5-1/2 hours, and I am going slightly stir crazy.

And on the bright side, I found out about this goofy panda video that was captured by CCTV where a wild giant panda calmly wanders into a farmer's pig pen and starts gnawing on discarded meat bones. (Pandas being the rock stars they are, you can also see the farmer bring him an extra meat bone.) The panda then wanders calmly out after finishing its meal.

You will not be surprised to hear that this piece of video made the news in Australia, the UK, (of course mainland China), Taiwan, and the US.



It's a good thing I seem to be gradually improving on my own since my GP is out of town and the guy who is covering him has an appointment desk that doesn't return calls (I left 2 messages and will be having a talk with my doc when he's back). Yes, that sucks (I particularly like the part on the new guy's website where it says my call is important to him -- my sweetie's response: yeah, but returning calls is NOT) so as you can see, I am trying to keep myself amused.

For example, I dug out these dinner photos from Les Halles Downtown, coincidentally taken from the weekend before I got spectacularly laid out with my respiratory trifecta. My friend Walter (who has since become the proud papa of twins Isabella and Alexander, and will thus be unlikely to have time in the future for such leisurely evening meals out)

I persuaded Walter to throw caution and Lipitor to the wind by starting with a shared portion of Les Halles' pork rillettes du Boucher, a "shredded pork confit" I once likened to French ham salad and so rich that I couldn't survive a portion larger than an appetizer since "confit" is the code word for "ADD more fat and cook IN IT"

He then proceeded to have a delicious portion of steak au poivre...

...while I opted for a HALF portion of mussels mariniere (I've never figured out who could put away an entire FULL portion, since while utterly delicious, the very generous portions of mussels at Les Halles intimidate me), filching the occasional fry from Walter's plate to help round out the baguettes in the bread basket for the mariniere sauce: white wine, shallots, and garlic. YUM!

Somehow, we managed to find room for profiteroles (Walter)...

...and sorbet (me) -- green apple and cantalope (the green apple was more interesting, I thought)

Eyeing Walter's steak au poivre made me decide to defrost a steak from the freezer and use a recipe from the March 2010 issue of Cooking Light (thank you MyRecipes.com) for maple and soy-glazed steak, my only substitution for the marinade being Chinese hot chili paste instead of sriracha (which I don't have). So yummy that I, um, ate the whole steak (!) and forgot to take any pictures before the devouring. Oops.

Does this mean I am getting better?

36.9

That was the total number of inches of snow in NYC this February... as of Friday night. That's an average of more than an inch per day!

Yes, I know that February is a short month, but it would still average more than an inch per day if it were December.

Speaking of December, these photos are actually from a snowstorm in the second half of December, but I think they are perfectly appropriate to use for this blizzard, don't you?

The only difference between then and now was that there was LESS snow in December.

Since the total snowfall in Central Park for THIS storm was 20.9 inches (no, that's not a typo) and it was 4th biggest in city history, hey, I just wanted to give all of you far away folks a sense of the fun fun fun.

The preceding (and following) snowstorm factoids are all brought to you courtesy of my fascination with NY1, by the way. (I am sticking to snow as my natural hazard of choice, and avoiding entirely all of the earthquakes and tsunamis that have been occurring worldwide this weekend,)

Can you believe it snowed for 31 hours?! It started 6:30 AM on Thursday and lasted until 1:30 PM on Friday afternoon. For only the 4th time in 10 years (and the 2nd time in a month!) NYC public schoolchildren got the day off. (I keep thinking of my sweetie's comment about the simultaneous reactions in households across the city: shrieks of "YES!" by the kids and "NO! Not again!" by the parents.)

Not surprisingly, considering the public schools closed, (1) my office officially closed at 1:00 PM on Friday, and (2) I have picked up an annoying cough -- an annoying and productive cough, as they say. Yuck.

Since I slept a full night last night, and then napped for 4 hours, and then AGAIN for 90 minutes today, I think that counts as officially sick. Bah!

So I stayed home today and did not join my sweetie when he visited his parents, whom I am also really fond of. However, since his dad is still undergoing chemo, we both thought that it would be best for me to keep my coughing self here.

Come to think of it, I was planning on visiting my mom this week, but I think I should put that off too. Sigh.

Although I know that weather doesn't really = sickness, you can't tell me that this miserable (seemingly neverending) series of snow and slush and rain helps people remain healthy, can you?

And did I mention there is snow forecasted for the middle of the week (which at least is March)? Even the perpetually perky blond weatherman on Channel 2 looked a bit like, "Er, I don't want to even think about this right now, especially while it's still snowing!" when he was on TV Friday night.

I can't even remember what snow-free streets looked like anymore! Let's have a reminder from December 17th, shall we?

On to more cheery topics, like this meatloaf I made for my friend Sam on Friday (the early office closing gave me plenty of time - heh).  This is pre-oven time.

It was based on a Cooking Light recipe for Barbecue Meat Loaf (hence the vast lakes of fat that puddled around the finished product) and I broke open a bottle of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que Sauce I had previously ordered from FreshDirect.

It's an all beef meat loaf, using egg whites (since I used 2 lbs of ground beef instead of 1.5 as per the recipe, I used a little more of all of the spices, and 4 egg whites instead of just 2, on the theory that it needed more binder). Using red onions instead of yellow was fine taste-wise, but I had forgotten that the red onions sometimes turn sort of black when cooked. Oops. (We'll just cover that in sauce, shall we?)

Sam agreed that it still tasted yummy, and was moist, but unfortunately, since it was rather a large slab of 'loaf, it was taking forever to cook (over an hour). So I sliced it in half after an hour and thus, the kind of odd shape.

I've been having meatloaf sandwiches this weekend (yum) and yesterday, my sweetie made himself an Alton Brown avocado and sardine sandwich that I am now dying to try...

Okay, past time for bed, and then, back to work manana (unless my coworkers kick me out again -- we'll see: I don't want to make 'em sick, but I don't want to be a slacker either, especially with our asinine new performance review system, a topic for an ENTIRE other post).

P.S. I forgot to say...

... that part of the revelation for my lack of joy in ceramics was that I missed Sara, and all of my other pottery friends, all of whom are now gone from the class (career change, in Ireland for grad school, stationed in Malawi with Doctors Without Borders, just plain busy, etc.)

The people in the class now are perfectly nice, but they're just not my buds.

So after I finish my current semester at Brickhouse Ceramics (in Long Island City) in late March, I will start taking classes at Earthworks (in the Upper East Side).  For those of you not from NYC, neither of them are remotely near my home / neighborhood (heh) which does have a nearby studio, Mugi Pottery.

All of which goes to show that in pottery, as in life, it's not the STUFF (facilities, equipment, etc.) which is really important. Nope.

PEOPLE are what count, and I am blessed in my friends and family (but not in my time management skills... bye!)

Blue is the new grey

So lately, I've just been feeling kind of BLEH, you know -- the lovely midwinter blahs, especially with the delightful weather we've been having this season, where below freezing and wet were the norm. Speaking of which, we are due for -- yes, you guessed it -- another winter storm this week. (The above photo is from our LAST storm. I couldn't take any photos this morning because my screens had frozen solid against my window frame. Whoops. So I could open the windows, but not remove the mesh, and shooting through a fine grid is really not conducive to a sharp photo, eh?)

I don't know if the whole lack of coordination, concentration, and motivation is just the usual winter woes, or I am just learning to readjust to my post-chemo, post-amoxycillin, tamoxifen-for-5-years world.

My attention span these days has definitely suffered, since I barely read anything longer than a magazine article, blog post, or the free newspaper. Apparently, this is not so unusual, according to one of my books, Your Brain after Chemo: A Practical Guide to Lifting the Fog and Getting Back Your Focus, which was co-written by an oncologist and a health science writer who, ironically, became a breast cancer survivor.

(Speaking of which, I discovered Monday that a former coworker has passed away this weekend. She had been a breast cancer survivor for several years. After a life-threatening battle with advanced beast cancer before I knew her, she and her husband had drastically changed their priorities and appreciated the truly important things in life (e.g., seizing any travel opportunity they could, not letting the turkeys get them down, etc.). Her attitude at work was always helpful in reminding me how to balance dedication with perspective. I had not know her cancer had recurred, andnow I'm sorry that I can never tell her how valuable her sense of perspective was to me when I worked with her. I will just have to tell her husband instead, via a card -- all that I can do now...)

So yeah, I know that I have many things to be grateful for, and I regularly remind myself that if losing my last 10 pounds of chemo/treatment weight is my worst problem, life ain't bad.

Having said all that, I will now return to my whining. ;-P

For example, although getting out of my nice cozy bed is usually a half hour process every morning (at least), this morning I woke up at 4:55 AM (that is just SO wrong) and realized I had turned on one of my bedside lights in a bizarre autopilot mode.  While pondering that oddity, I had an excruciating cramp in my left calf.  So much for rolling over and going back to sleep. (Ironically, I had made the decision to NOT stay up late watching ladies figure skating on the Olympics... so I wouldn't be tired!)

On the bright side, that means I had time to make myself some McCann's oatmeal (with currants and honey) from scratch this morning, not usually a feasible task on a workday, considering it takes over 30 minutes. (Yes, even when mopey, I can be perky -- are you getting mental whiplash yet? [heh]) Oh, and to watch BBC World News while ensconced on the Green Monster in my robe, while eating said oatmeal, which gives me a pleasantly nostalgic feeling for my trips to Asia (the watching, NOT the oatmeal!) now that it's been a few years.

In any case, not even my beloved ceramics classes were giving me joy.

I thought that meant that I was just being droopy, as with everything else, but then I took a slip decoration workshop at my friend and former teacher Sara's new studio on the Upper East Side, Earthworks. (The studio and shop has been there for many years, but she is now the [new] owner.)

What a revelation!

As you can see, I really dug learning about different slip decoration techniques (just a bit) which gave me a whole new appreciation for the multifaceted uses of infant nasal aspirators! (That would be baby snot remover bulbs to us childfree folks. Ladies -- you too can recycle 'em for craft projects! Hee!)

My favorite technique was the feathering / feather combing, as evidenced by the predominance of my attempts. (That link was to the definition, while THIS link shows a truly crisp example.) The designs remind me of Florentine marbled paper, but there are so many other feathering / marbling techniques to try too!

Just remember when looking at these photos of the unfired tiles that the grey blobs will actually turn blue after partying with the kiln fire.  Then, after its bisque firing, it's time for choosing the flaze colors, which will have a significant impact on the tints of the final results. These disk-shaped sample tiles below, for example, are all exactly the same slip colors, but underneath different glaze colors.

Okay, time to get dressed and trudge off to work through the multiple inches of snow.