Dim Sum Diaries
It was the straw that broke the camel's back. From the moment we walked into the market, I had to endure that endless litany of shameless flirting. First there was the stare of naked desire upon his face. Then the quick caress when he thought I wasn't looking. He lingered in that same section for long moments---the same section his supposed "object of desire" was at. The object of desire that wasn't me...

How could Hubby do this to me in public was not to be bourne. I was getting increasingly agitated by his actions. Something had to be done. Taking a deep breath, I marched up to Hubby, stuck my face close to his and said those immortal words:

"Stop fondling that German chocolate cake and let's pay for our groceries!"

Hubby only rolled his eyes as we walked towards the checkout counter...
I'm playing around with the idea of creating a new website. Its purpose would be to highlight the aspiring author aspect of my life now, something similar to Lydia Joyce, but less Victorian-esque. I'm shopping around for a web designer since Halfwaygully is on hiatus and I suck at graphics. :(

I was thinking about having it professionally done at a really swanky place like Waxcreative, but maybe I'll wait until I acquire Danielle Steele status before I take that step. Also, its a lot cheaper. :)

I'll keep y'all posted.
I absolutely adore British humor, but sometimes its hard to tell whether they're really joking or not. As soon as I'm done with my falling over laughing, maybe someone from the UK can tell me whether this via Ernie is for real or not...


This looks like a good recipe for dinner. Mayhap I will try it.
I got home a little early from work today. Its pretty cool because it gives me time to chill out, do the chores that need to get done and cook a more elaborate meal then the usual dinner from the box.

Today's dinner is cornish game hens simmering in my Le Creuset pot along with some wine, chopped up onions, some fresh herbs (including rosemary from my own garden woo hoo!) and the juice and peel from one of my lemons (from my lemon tree!!!). Its cooking as we speak. In a bit I'll pop on the ubiquitous rice cooker.

Hubby's plaintive wailing: Do we have to eat rice with everything?

My response: Yes, dear we do. Because I'm Chinese. So suck it up! ;)

In other news, I'll be holding my breath until Sept. because I think that's when I'll hear a response from that writing contest. Sub-conscious is firmly blocked out any further attempts at writing, which is quite frustrating. I'm in a holding pattern...waiting to find out something. :p

Also, in another sad sign that I'm getting older and not as w/ the times as I'd like, I discovered the joys of text messaging today. I mean, this has been around for awhile, right? Sent Hubby some and to my surprise, he texted me back. Is texted even a word? :p
What do you do if you are a hot, hip 32 year old girl whose got it going on on a Friday night? That also happens to be married and have 2 kids? Why, you surf the internet of course! Or in my case, you narcisstically (is that even a word?) read your old blog entries. Actually, its pretty interesting because it gives you an idea of what you were doing or going through last year or whenever.

One thing I have noticed though is that the older this blog gets, the more the quality of the writing goes down. I used to put so much energy into thinking of creative things to write. Now its pretty much the odd jokey link or "Hey this is yet another I'm on partial hiatus post!!!" :p

I sent off my contest entry today, so that's pretty significant news (to me anyways). Hopefully it won't take too long before I get a response back. It is the first chapter of my manuscript, in which Dan & Kate meet. The story is turning out to be significantly different then the blog serial story of Dan & Kate. A small part of me arrogantly declares that of course I'm going to place, how could I not?. That's probably just wishful thinking though. :p Writing and revising seems rather to be like giving birth...its a painful process (for me). Oh look the baby is out...but its not right...stuff the baby back in and re-birth all over again! Countless times...

Today at work, a baby crow (more like teenager crow who is almost adult but can't fly yet) fell out of its nest. The momma crow was sitting in the tree nearby while the baby crow hopped around futilely. It couldn't get back into the nest. One of my co-workers decided to try to catch it to take it home and nurse it. She's apparently very good with birds. She took a large box, poked holes in the sides and went outside to catch the baby crow. All at once 15 pissed off adult crows swooped in and started CAH-CAWING really loudly in protest. They were swooping in, one flew in really low as if to attack my co-worker for messing with one of their own. My co-worker finally caught it and fed it some crackers. The baby crow immediately ate the entire cracker. It must have been hungry from hopping around all day. It was just an interesting sight to see all of those crows flying around. I didn't know crows were so socially connected.

I'm going to try and get some more writing done this weekend.
I guess I'm not really on hiatus. I finally admitted that to myself...like a minute ago. I guess Paul kind of nailed it on the head when he stated that it was not so much being on hiatus, but maybe the weblog is not the main focus anymore.

The manuscript is!!! I keep harping on and on about it and the writing contest...basically I need to send in the first scene in which the hero and heroine meet. Up to 15 pages. I think its almost done and its almost ready to send it. That is if a certain Canadian who shall remain nameless (Rand the Dorky Worky) would ever email me back.

So like even if I don't win...the judges are supposed to give back constructive comments, to indicate if I am going in the right direction or not. So I'm crossing my fingers.

I bought the second season of the West Wing. And I was like, I am so going to watch all 22 episodes tonight!! Because I love it that much! I managed to get through the first 5 episodes...it was 10:15 pm...I had to get up at 4 am...that means I would only get like 5 some odd hours of sleep...so me being the old fart that I am...I went to bed.

K Street is coming out in a few months too! I can't wait!

Berklee blogs about all the games he is going to buy, I blog about mah DVDs. ;)
Just a quick entry (even though I am on partial hiatus). Took the fam to my sister's house to celebrate her birthday. It was kind of a last minute thing. It was 3 pm. I had just put in the vegetables to simmer for the beef stew I was making for dinner. My dad calls.

"Hey, it's your sister's birthday on Tuesday. We need to celebrate it before. If its after...that's bad," said Dad. Our family firmly believes that if you celebrate one's birthday after the date has passed...bad bad luck. "Why don't you call her?"

"Why didn't she call you?" I ask my dad.

"You know how she is," he replies. "And she's been acting weird lately."

"How so?" I ask.

"She's been caressing Bim's (my nickname for her hubby) hair non-stop every time we see her. And fawning over him. Its unnatural!"

I laugh. "Uh, Dad. I think you have issues."

"You never did that!" Dad replies haughtily.

"Don't you remember when I first got married and I couldn't go half an hour w/o calling my hub when I was away from him?"

"Hmph."

So I called my sister and I brought my beef stew along as a potluck item. We also had roast duck, rice and a nice fruit cake for dessert.

Since she seemed into the whole domestic thing, I bought her the Stich 'N Bitch book as a gift. Heartily recommended by cool bloggers who knit, I thought it would be a good present.

"What's this?" Sis asked me when she unwrapped it.

"Its a knitting book. I thought you were into that kind of stuff. You did that cross-stitch thingy for mom a couple of years ago."

"Sadly, she's only into it verbally," my Mom chimes in.

Sis did like several projects in the book. When we left her house, she was trying to persuade my mom to make them for her.

So what's the whole point of this entry? I have no idea, except I felt the need to write it down. When you grow up, your relationship with your family and how you perceive your family isn't always how you think it is.

This Friday is the deadline for me to finish up my entry for the writer's contest. I've gotten some good feedback from people who have read it so far (you know who you are!), so its just a matter of re-polishing it. I'm hyperventilating as we speak.
I told Firefly that I would steal this from her site cuz its so funny, and I have kept my word!

How You Know You Are Asian:

Note: My Comments Are Italicized

1. Your mother has short hair, curly perm or dyed
Short and dyed...and sadly, so is mine.

2. Your dad is some sort of engineer.
Yup.

3. Your parents still tried to get you into places half-price saying you were 12 when you were really 14.

4. You ask your parents help on one math problem and 2 hours later they’re still lecturing.

5. You have a 40 lb. bag of rice in your pantry.
Yup.

6. You shop 99 ranch.
Its where I get my supply of oyster sauce, soy sauce and Pocky.

7. Everyone thinks you’re “Chinese” no matter what part of Asia your ancestors were from.

8. You’ve had a bowl haircut at one point in your life.
Yup.

9. Your parents enjoy comparing you to their friends’ kids.
Yup.

10. You’ve had to sit through karaoke videos with scantily clad, ugly Asian women attempting to dance and walk around a temple, forest, or library.

11. Your parents say, “Don’t forget your heritage.”
Yup.

12. Your family drives mostly Japanese cars.
Japanese or German.

13. You’ve learned to keep bargaining even if the prices are rock bottom.
YES! YES! YES!

14. You’ve had to eat parts of animals they don’t even put in hot dogs.
Yup.

15. At least once, you’ve started a joke with “Confucius say….”

16. You know what bok choy is.
Its the Chinese brocoli...or something like that...

17. You’ve gotten little red envelopes around February.
Hellz iz-yea! Ly-see baby. Good for New Years and birthdays.

18. Piles of shoes tend to make it hard to open the front, back, and closet doors.
It still does. I have a strict rule about this in my own household which even my Caucasian in-laws obey. If they forget, my daughter reminds them very loudly :)

19. You hear (your name + eee (optional) + yah!) every time someone calls you

20. You have no eyelashes.
No, I don't.

21. Idiot people try to impress you with pathetic imitation Asian languages, like the ever-so-popular: ching chong woo bok chi, etc…
Death to the barbarians! (just kidding)

22. Your parents say leaving rice in your bowl is a sin.
The number of grains you leave in your bowl is the number of pimple/pockmarks your future spouse will have.

23. The Bio lectures on marine life (seaweed, sea cucumbers, octopii) was last night’s dinner.
Hellz yeah!

24. Your ancestors 1000 generations back invented the back scratcher.
Actually, I'm pretty sure I descended from royalty.

26. Your parents hover over your tired, caffeine-drugged body at 12 midnight to say, “In Korea (or other native country), we studied even more.”

27. Your parents expect you’ll be best friends with any one off the street in any given area as long as they are Asian.

28. An Asian woman comes on campus and people ask: “Is that your mother?” Well then, “Is it your sister?”

29. Your relatives’ houses smell like incense, mothballs or both.
And old cooking oil.

30. Your parents say, “Calculus? I took Calculus in 8th grade!”
I took it in the 7th grade cuz I'm hella smart. Ok I really didn't.

31. Everyone thinks you’re good at math.
But I am! See #30.

32. Your parents’ vocabulary is filled with “ai-yahs, and Wahs”
That's my grandma!

33. You like $1.75 movies.

34. You like $1.50 movies even more.

35. Your aunts and uncles bring you back adorable clothing from Asia with fuzzy bunnies, vinyl ducks, and English words that make no sense, in great colors like yellow, pink, magenta, orange, and the ever popular lime green.

36. Your parents insist you marry within your race.
Not true, I married a white bread.

37. You never order chop suey, sweet and sour pork, or any other imitation of oriental food.
Actually, I do.

38. You either really, really want to go to UCI or really, really want to stay away from it.
omg, when I was living in Los Angeles, all my “asian” friends went or were going to this school.

39. Your parents have never kissed you.
Only after I had kids ha ha ha.

40. Your parents have never kissed each other.

41. You learned about the birds and the bees from someone other than your parents.

42. “You want a stereo?! When I was your age, I didn’t even have shoes!!”

43. People see a bunch of scribbles on a chopstick and ask you to translate.

44. You have to call just about all your parent’s friends “Auntie and Uncle.”
Yup.

45. You have 12+ aunts and uncles.
Yup.

46. At expensive restaurants, you order a delicious glass of water for your beverage and NEVER order dessert.
Possibly true when growing up, now we just order whatever the hell we want. Giving your parents their grandkids makes all the difference. :)

47. Your parents simply cut the green/black part off the bread and say “Eat anyway. It’s still good.”

48. The vast majority of the people related to you wear glasses.
Except me, I have perfect vision.

49. You will most likely be taller than your parents.
Yep.

50. Your parents have either made you play the piano, the violin, or both.
Piano.

51. You get nothing if you do well in school, but crapped on if you don’t.
Yup.

52. When going to other people’s houses, you always have to bring a gift.

53. Your dad still pulls his socks up to his knees, you know, the ones with the blue and pink stripes at the top.

54. Your family owns a tennis racquet, golf clubs, or both.

55. Your family always cheers for the Asian athlete on TV (i.e. Michael Chan.)

56. The furniture in your house never matches the wallpaper, the carpet, the decorations, or any of the rest of the furniture.
None of our dishes match either.

57. You have rocks, sticks, leaves, and strange-smelling, unknown substances in your pantry for use as medicine.
Still do!

58. You own a rice cooker or two.
I have two!

59. You buy soy sauce by the gallon.
And oyster sauce. And Worchester sauce.

60. Your family owns butcher knives bigger than your head.
Yeah and my grandma can chop up a roast pig like no other...

61. Your parents tell you about how long it took for them to get to school, how horrible the weather was in their native country, and how much they still appreciated going.

62. Your parents buy you clothes and shoes many sizes too big so you can “grow into it” and wear it for years to come.
I do this to my own kids.

63. your parents believes in feng shui

64. your parents are very conservative and think that tank tops/halters/spaghetti straps shows too much skin.

65. every time your parents lecture you, they always make up excuses that relate to everything you’ve done in the past.

66. you like JIN

67. when you were little, your parents beat you with sticks and stuff.
Just found out via the Avon Authors BBS that one of the regulars, Lydia Joyce got two offers for one of her manuscripts! That's wonderful news! She's been writing for awhile, even has her own website. This is what she wrote on the bbs:

TWO houses want to make me an offer. That's right. TWO. I made an idiot of myself when Carrie Feron called--I got about 3 hours of sleep last night and so I babbled like a moron because I REALLY wasn't expecting anything this late in the day :-)--but she didn't want to drop me for it, amazingly. *g*

Anyhow, I'm so overwhelmed. I have worked on this book so long and so hard, and I've believed in it and all my other work and myself so fiercely that I can't quite handle the fact that other people believe in, too. I've been wound up for so long with forcing myself to be certain, bone-deep, that I would make it despite everything because no one else would be certain for me. And now that I don't HAVE to believe anymore, it's like it was the only thing that was holding me together.

I'm going to be gloriously happy in an hour or so, as soon as I manage to put myself together again. Until then, I'd better hide from my poor son, who will think that I've lost it. *g*


Now she thinks I'm a total stalker...lol. But her good news just gives me hope. And the belief that you have to be confident in yourself...which is necessary in order to sustain the entire writing process.

Congratulations, Lydia!
Just a little daily inspiration...if your name is Kyren and you are not at work, click here! Hee hee.
The following is an actual exam question given on a University of
Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was
so "profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.

Bonus Question:

Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs
heat)?


Most of the students wrote proofs of their belief using Boyle's Law
(Gas cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed.) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

"First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So
we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate that they are leaving."

"I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it
will not leave. Therefore no souls are leaving."

"As for how many souls are entering Hell, lets look at the different
religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions
state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that most souls go to Hell."

"With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially."

"Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because
Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, then Hell must expand proportionately as souls are added."

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls
enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the rate at which souls
enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year, "That it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you," and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having that event take place, then #2 cannot be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and will not freeze.


This student received the only 'A' in the class.

I am posting this because I got it in an email and have nothing better to do.
Here's something cool, Pantone's Birthday Color site.

Per this site, the Mir-ster has a great sense of style and people find me interesting and direct. I don't like to beat around the bush. I am usually finiancially protected. Being emotionally available is not always easy and I am sometimes innocent and youthful in relationships.

Man, how did they know!! LOL.
There's this Chinese guy in Canada who also has a blog called Dim Sum Diaries. He is a writer and has a series/play called DSD as well. So that's pretty cool.

Writing is coming along well. My parents came down over the weekend and we cooked won tons and sticky chicken wings. Yummy.

I have a hankering to cook lamb (gigue d'agneau) tonight. Cut-up lamb shanks, shallots, garlic, bacon, carrots, celery and kidney beans. Gently cooked in my Le Creuset pot for three hours in a sauce made up of red wine, honey, fresh rosemary and thyme, salt & pepa. Doesn't that sound good?

I'm making myself hungry now.

One frustration I am experiencing is finding a good critique partner. I attend these monthly writer's meetings...meet some people who swear up and down they will email me and that we will be a critique group. Of course it never happens...the aforementioned triangular eyebrow chickie's excuse was: Oh, I dropped my PDA and was thus unable to retrieve your contact information. Keep in mind we have a member directory w/ everyone's name and phone #'s. I'm bitter. -_- I need to find someone who is good w/ grammar and literary structure...maybe at my next monthly meeting I'll finally strike critique partner gold.