Dim Sum Diaries
Just wanted to post some pics taken by Xiao (fearless leader of the guild, The Order of Elune) while playing World of Warcraft. We were in a party (me, Xiao, Ereye) doing some quests in Stranglethorn Vale/Booty Bay.

Here is one of Xiao. We would spend time knocking back drinks at a tavern, dancing on the rooftops of Booty Bay, standing poised and ready to do battle, monkeying around, or passed out after much drunken revelry! And...more dancing!

Good times, good times. :)
Dear Dad,

I wanted to wish you a wonderful 62nd birthday. I hope you have a great one. I love you very much. I don't know why I'm telling you (and the whole internet(s)) on my blog instead of telling you irl, but it is easier for me to say this in writing then face to face. I don't know why.

As I was growing up, we had a somewhat stormy relationship which was tempered by the advent of your grandchildren. I am very happy with the relationship we have now. Now we can hang out and joke, and I can pretend to boss you around by telling you that it is a BAD IDEA to buy a motorcycle at your age. Since your other daughter bought you a motorized scooter for Christmas (in lieu of aforementioned motorcycle), you can bet your ass (omg did I just say that to my dad) that you'll be getting a helmet as a birthday prez this year.

Love,

Your eldest daughter
How to have D&D themed sex guide. Friggin hilarious (and sfw).

At first, d+d sex must be taken slow. while the male is likely incredibly excited at the thought of donning a warhelmet and engaging in a few "melee rounds," the female, sensitive creatures that they are, will probably be less enthusiastic. that's why there's a trick up your sleeve that will help warm them on to the idea: crappy romance novels.

Here's another cool thing, One Man's Snowy Tribute to Calvin & Hobbes.
Here's a list of things I wanted to blog about today:

Johnny Carson passes away, and is remembered as a great joke writer, a humble and generous person.

Daughters of Freya, a mystery novel delivered in email installments, looks to be pretty interesting. Via boingboing:

"Daughters of Freya" is a gripping, fun mystery novel that takes the form of a series of emails between the players in the story. The book is delivered in daily installments to your inbox, as though you were intercepting the characters' mail. The story revolves around a Canadian investigative journalist who lands a gig doing a cover-story on a Silicon Valley sex-cult. Before long, the action turns to murder and intrigue. I had a ~200-page print-out of the whole thing that I sucked back in about two hours, nonstop. Almost missed a plane so that I could read the ending, which was really tense! It's US$7.49 for the whole thing, which would be a little pricey if it were a novella-length print book, but for the three weeks' worth of entertainment this brings, that seems like a pretty reasonable price.

I've read the first part and it seems pretty interesting so far.

And finally, The Daily Show's take on Bush's 2nd Inauguration.
Well it looks like the official end of days (at least for work) is going to be on March 31. Things are beginning to wind down now, and everyone seems to have shortimers-itis. Nobody cares, nobody wants to be here, and it's a struggle to come into work every day. Since I'll be taking some time off (aka not looking for another job for a bit) I keep fantasizing how perfect my life will be after it's all over.

I can sleep in! I'll finally have time to arrange the house as I really want to. I can play WoW as much as I want. I have much more time to write now. I can spend more time with the kids. Oh wow, I'll be the total SAHM (stay at home mom). Hubby laughs when I tell him this. He thinks I'll be bored in a month. Come to think of it, my mom laughed at me when I told her I'd love to stay at home. Maybe, maybe not. All I know is, 3/31, I can't wait till you come baby.

This weekend the fam drove to my parent's house and stayed there over night. We took him out to Korean bbq and then had a delicious chestnut birthday cake (it's an Asian thing). In attempt to connect to my Chinese heritage (I'm so damn whitebread now), I perused my dad's stack of Chinese newspapers (placed surreptitiously in the bathroom), etc. to see what was going on in the land of Chinese newsprint. One magazine had me raising my eyebrows and running to my parents.

"Did you see? Did you see? What is going on here? Why is this magazine so scandalous?" I said, waving the magazine around wildly.

Dad laughed nervously. Deciding that discussing the magazine contents would be a awkward conversation with him, I cornered my mom in the garage whilst she was doing the laundry. "Mom. Some photog followed around this Asian chick and took pictures of her having this tawdry lesbian love affair on a street corner!!!"

"You actually read that?" she asked in disbelief. "The writing in there is horrible!" (revealing that she too had perused the magazine)

"Well since I'm illiterate in Chinese, I didn't read it so much as look at the pictures. OF LESBIANS!!"

She sighed. "That's scenes from a movie. Apparently some rich girl decided to make a lesbian movie and she won a bunch of awards for it."

"Oh."

She finished putting the wet clothes into the dryer and went back into the foyer. I trailed after her, following her back to where my dad sat in the lounger. I decided not to mention the naked women pics.

"Interesting bathroom reading, eh Dad?"

"Heh heh," was all he would say.

UPDATE: Ironically, pics from this entry are some of the most searched after on DSD. Go figure.
Ugh. Eyebrows have grown to hideous proportions. Must wax and have hair cut (with partial weave) this weekend.
Yes, ham sup.. Behold!! A gift idea for next Christmas: slippers made from maxi pads!!! (via)
Nothing like a visit to the local adult bookstore to brighten up one's week. Since I was safely in the category of I'm here because co-worker needs to buy a bridal shower gift, I could browse with impunity. This store is apparently run by a woman, which you can tell, by the way it's organized. I headed to the video section, ready to laugh at any men who might linger there a little too long. DVDs were categorized very interestingly, by ethnicities. First there was pron from the land of Asia! Followed by afrocentric themed ones and then Spanish ones. Was briefly tempted to buy the harness swing set, but decided against it. I won't even get into the Jake "Hard Man" Jones doll, with kissably realistic lips, gryating tongue and various other bodyparts. I was pretty much laughing the entire time.

Spent most of my time in the actually decent book section, where they had couples' guides to massage etc etc etc.

"Oh look," I chirped happily to my colleague, "They even have erotic romances here!"

"Leave it to you to think the best part of the store is the book section," she said wryly.
Hmm...blog is quiet. Why, may you ask. Besides work being really busy and me playing World of Warcraft and family, it's been busy. I can see myself burrowing into a hole of sorts, mentally disengaging from the world (at large). I don't track the news and politics like I used to. It seems like after Bush got re-elected, a sort of resignation set in. What's the point, it seems. It's sad but true.

Check out this cool video/movie someone made via WoW, it's called A Hero's Love. It's very sad, sweet and very well done. You can DL it here, and it's totally worth it!
Note to self: When Self is an acknowledged smartass, the smartass gene is sure to be passed to Daughter as well.

Case in point: Yesterday Hubby and I had a minor disagreement at the mall yesterday. We had the kids with us, so when we drove home, I pulled into the driveway and parked and didn't say a word. I only turned and stared at Hubby with a killing, slow, steady glare. The kind of glare that said, you know you're wrong, why don't you just admit it and apologize before I make your life more of a living hell then it already is look (Hubby rightly apologized later).

Daughter took one look at us and intoned dramatically, "Look A (Son)! They're mad at each other but they're not saying anything! They're sending secret messages through their minds because they don't want us to hear! Daddy's head is going to blow up!!"

Okay she didn't say the Hubby's head blowing up part, but her comment cracked us up, so the mad moment was over.

***

It's also very true that the older I get, the bigger and granny-ish my underwear gets (because its so comfortable). As we were folding laundry, Hubby held a parachute sized undie in disbelief.

"What happened to all the sexy ones?" he asked...how like a man.

I, fresh from playing hours of Worlds of Warcraft could only reply, "Well I have two things of silk, I can fashion a silk underwear with +2 to sexiness to it..."
Mir calls her mom on the cell phone as Mir is driving home and they have the following conversation:

Mir: Hey mom, what do you think about N's (younger sister) suggestion about making jung for Chinese New Year?

Mom (in a horrified voice): You can't make jung on CNY! You only make it when people die!

Mir: What???

Mom: You have to throw it in the water so that the big fishes don't eat the body!

Mir (tries to imagine fending off vicious, killer koi with jung): What???

Mom: Really big fishes. Anyways, it's bad luck.

Mir: Well, I guess we could just go out to dinner or something.

Mom: Anyways, it's based on this story about this guy who gave advice to some king, but the king didn't like his advice, so the king drowned him. Then people felt sorry for the guy so they made jung and threw it in the water so the fishes wouldn't eat his body.

Mir: So does that mean we have to wait until someone...

Mom: NO! Just not at New Year's. Maybe in April or May we can make it.

Mir: Okay mom...
This is the time for Mir to stress out seriously (even over things that might not be that stressful). If I smoked, I'd be chain-smoking like a mo-fo. Don't ask me why, I don't know.

Just found a pretty cool site that details how to knit dim sum shaped toys for your cat(s). It would be even cooler is a) I knew how to knit and b) I owned a cat. But that's neither here nor there.

And I am very proud of Hubby. He gets to write an article that will be published in a trade magazine.

Recently discovered this Aussie soap called Sea Change on PBS. It was pretty interesting. Was really excited because I thought one of the characters looked like hunky David Wenham, but alas, it was not. Possibility of a romance between the characters Max and Laura kept me hooked. After perusing various websites on the series though, found out that in the end that Laura decided that they should be friends. Bah!
Just saw this via Boing Boing, these nifty little Japanese automatons are really cool.

From Boing Boing:

These Japanese language website sells some incredible-looking science projects. The only English words on the site are "Sophisticated Science Kit Series for Adults." The Karakuri puppets they sell are scale reproductions of actual historical Japanese automatons, and the videos are stunning.

Here's a cool video of one. You can actually buy one for about $100 USD.
Broken (but fixable) compy + World of Warcraft = No Writing

Critique partner is kicking my butt to get back into gear. Work is hella busy. Oh my god, daughter is going to turn 7 years old in April. I'm going to be laid off on March 31. Too many things going on.

But in the meantime, I, the noble paladin (lvl 32) will go hunting for the ability to turn into a dancing snowman.
Had a restful four day New Year's weekend. Hubby and I got some Christmas money from the 'rents, so we had a bit of extra spending money for ourselves. And so what do two married old farts blow it on? Why, things for the house, of course!!

Hubby bought a new office chair because he claims the seat foam on the old one is flat (which he tries to blame on me even though his hiney has been smushing that chair 90% of the time over the course of the year). I buy these lovely Thai silk pillow cases from Resto to grace our window bench:



Pretty cool huh. Other then that, it was a pretty quiet new year. At the stroke of 12 midnight, I am sitting at the compy playing Worlds of Warcraft. Hubby is sitting on the futon, reading some science fiction book. I turn to him and say, "Happy New Year, dear."

He looks up from his book. "Happy New Year to you too, dear."

Then we go back to our respective pursuits.