I've been meaning to write a post for awhile, but with work and real life commitments expanding furiously (like bread dough??), I don't get a lot of time just to sit down and blog for the pure pleasure of it anymore.

So, what's been going on? Passed an amiable Chinese New Years with my parents' and sister in Los Angeles. Took them out to a New Year's dinner in which I demanded early on that I pay the bill. Good food, but then brother-in-law took a suspicious bathroom break near the end (the sneaking and grabbing and paying the bill on the way to take a wee gambit).

"BIMPOLINA!!" (my nickname for him...don't ask) I said, fixing him with a killing look. "You better not be doing what I think your doing!!!!!!!!"

Needless to say, BIMPY let me pay the bill. :p

I think have inherited a bit of my parents' habits when it comes to CNY as well. Though I live in an area where there are only pockets of Asians here and there, I found myself tipping the Vietnamese lady who defeated the beast that is my eyebrows quite generously, wishing her a Happy New Year.

So during this CNY dinner, my parents continued on this theme and gave a packet of red envelope money (lai see) to our waiter. Then they gave the head guy who seated us one as well.

"It ensures that they remember us and then they give us great service all year long," Mom & Dad explained (they frequent this restaurant bloody a lot).

Apparently though the news of our red envelope generosity spread through the restaurant like wildfire because suddenly every waiter/waitress, busboy and even a cook???? rushed to our table to serve us dishes, napkins, forks, water or whatever excuse they could think of.

When yet another smiling waiter popped up, "Have we even seen this guy before?" Dad hissed to Mom while she frantically stuffed another $5 in a lai see envelope she pilfered from me.

"No, but we have to give him one now," she whispered back.

"What happened to our policy of only giving lai see to the guys we know???" Dad wanted to know.

"Dad said that, but he's a big softy," Mom muttered to me as she passed me the newly recycled lai see envelope to pass to my Dad.

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Working has done a lot for me on a personal level, I must say. Its great to be contributing something and to get paid for it (did I mention that before?)! Mo money also means paying off bills (yay) and finally able to plan some family events that we weren't able to afford before. Kids will get a bigger birthday party this year, we can take a couple of mini-vacations this summer, etc etc etc, so its pretty nice. I seem to have switched to "super-charged" mode. My hair had grown ridiculously long during my two year unemployment period. I went to my hair stylist and had it chopped boyishly short (much to the chagrin of Hubby). Also had kids' hair cut short and bought a vacuum cleaner (Dyson) with the help of lai-see.

Do we see a CNY trend of cleaning here? The vacuum, mass hair cuts and eyebrow waxing....

Hmm and to mention a little more about work...the thing I've been doing lately is writing marketing text to make computers and computer bits sound more appealing (sexy?). So for example, if my company wanted to sell a mouse, have to make it sound state of the art, cutting edge, awesome, yet a sound business decision etc etc. So have turned to various high end car websites (Porshe, Aston-Martin, Mercedes etc) to study how they advertise, present their products. Apparently must make this mouse sound really sexy to get people to buy it...

Introducing the GizmoMouse 2007, with its large, throbbing, pulsating, sleekly designed mouse...body and...buttons you can push which will take you effortlessly to your next porn site in under a second.....manuverable with your right hand, so your left hand is free to...

Something like that...

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The book that I've been reading lately is Frank Luntz's latest Words that Work, in which he talks about how words are used to influence and motivate and such. Crappy cover, but interesting stuff. For example, don't say drilling for oil, use exploring for energy. It sounds less evil somehow (even though it isn't).

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And finally, I'd like to pose this question to my dear readers. What book do you find yourself reading again and again, year after year, so that the pages become dogeared? What book do you love that much?

My pick?

Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons. Its a lightly, brilliantly written comedy that I can reread and laugh every time. I find solace in its pages...I don't know why...

Oh god, I better log and go to bed before I get even more maudlin then I already am...