facts of life

asian meticulousness 

meets american paranoia 

meets litigation law.

post-thanksgiving 3

J2, who ordinarily eats with more abandon than even i, announces that she will be exercising more restraint henceforth.

if you ask me, youthful impunity meets weighty reality.

post-thanksgiving sales

con:

bodyache

pro:

my new cooking pot

post-thanksgiving 2

pro:

it's over. whew.

con:

it's over. 

very possibly our last american thanksgiving.

post-thanksgiving

pro:

i don't need to cook for a couple of weeks

con:

we'll be eating turkey leftovers for a couple of weeks.

dinner party

i've got it.

the holiday stress is not from the cooking. because after all, the food network has pretty much nailed all the rudiments of the festive meal, down to the last hour of scientific production line cooking. as long as you stick to their instructions it's idiot proof.

the problem lies in the fact that the dishwasher can only hold so many dishes and pans and glasses and stuff, and everything else has to be painfully processed by some poor soul at the kitchen sink.

i hate washing up. but i ♥ HOM.

calamity town - ellery queen (1942)

fortunately the technique improves over two decades. the pace moves enough to make me turn the pages. the plot is satisfyingly devilish. there is some nice human interest. and rather engaging courtroom dialogue.

i'll say this. ellery queen improves with age.

in thanks

for family and friends

for hearth and table

for labor and harvest

and

for richest pleasure.

the roman hat mystery - ellery queen (1929)

in a word. slow.

in a second word. quaint.

in more words. rather satisfying, if you can get past the pace. enlightening too, for a palate mostly used to english eccentricities for detective stories of a certain vintage. and really, if you consider my recent diet of eve dallas set in nyc fifty years hence, this is as paradigm a shift as you can get. and not a single blue word in sight either.

verdict: unexpectedly delightful.

in thanksgiving

not what we trained for

nor where we thought

not what we hoped for

nor where we chose

gifts given

visions seen

hope renewed

prayer answered
often unawares

a time to abide

and to build up 

a time to yield

and then to splinter

a time of purposelessness

and of quiet preparation

a time of conviction

and a time of doing

he makes everything beautiful in its time.

empty seat

J1 turns another year. this is the first birthday we do not mark together. it is the price of growing up.

keep well, my son. keep safe where you are. keep faithful. remember he abides with you. remember we hold you in our hearts and in our prayers. know that we are proud of you. know that we are thankful for you.

may God supply your every need.

bittersweet, again

as always, the tree, around J1's birthday.

HOM puts it up alone this year.

there's been so much to give thanks for

but around this time

we especially feel the empty seat.

call a bird a bird

the blurb says vegan turkey. i ask HOM, was this bird raised by principles of diet? turns out this is what they call a bird substitute, much like mock duck and mock abalone.

what i want to know is, if you don't eat meat, why don't you simply glory in tofu? finicky eater that i am, i don't eat all manner of certain animals and their innards and exotic fruits and miscellaneous foods of unpleasing color. i would not dream of fashioning a soy knock-off to persuade myself i was in fact eating them.

thanksgiving 2011

J1 calls us in the wee hours from his jungle stint at the other end of the world. i'm fine, he says. it's a very nice place. say hi to dad for me. i've got to go; it's my friend's card.

how gloriously He provides, in the unexpected calls and small kindnesses of mundane conversations!

iCloud

i type a document on the ipad.
i retrieve the document on the desk-top.
no cables. no send button. no secret password.

this is as close to science fiction as it gets.
apple gets my vote for classy innovation. yesss.

hah!

my cool new live wallpaper with ciliated unicellular organisms 

wandering all over the place complete with 

bubbles and dust particles under the screen protector.

it's like having my private portable aquarium.

*pant*

J2 gives me a twenty minute tutorial on how to customize my android smartphone. it feels like running a sprint in a sauna mixed metaphors be damned.

they shouldn't let energetic teenaged tech-geeks loose on middle-aged idiots who only want a cute screen and don't know where the home button is.

kindle fire

with two e-readers in the house, we are now very with-it and flexible. we can even share e-books. the only drawback is what they all say about the kindle fire: it's unbelievably slow when it comes to surfing the wider world. 

we want cool looks effective gadgets and unquestionable speed. especially those of us who are looking for a cheap equivalent to the ipad2, skinflints that we are. please.

signs of times

harbingers of the season:

• down jackets
• the smell of cinnamon
• turkeys in the stores
• canned food donation drives
• the salvation army guy at the street corner

i shall always be grateful for the opportunity to live in the here and now and for the memories that it gives me.

comfort food

i purchase our annual frozen turkey two boxes of gravy and a can of cranberry sauce for our fifth american thanksgiving. HOM reminds me to get the herbs cinnamon and salt and maybe a new pail to brine the bird in. he's all excited.

our friends want to invite us over for a chilli crab dinner. oriental south east asian hearts beat in glad glorious anticipation. ain't no thanksgivin' turkey could give a chilli crab a run for its money, honey.

activities

J2's off on an overnight college visit, on one of those spread-the-news charm-your-socks-off goodwill tours that colleges court the public dollar with.

HOM and i are off to the outlet malls.

11.11.11

nice !!.!!.!!

yumm-o 2

kitchen toys to seduce the non-cooking technophobe:

• cuisinart food processor
• tiger thermal magic pot

as HOM quite evidently knows. ♥ ♥ ♥ 

daylight savings 2

getting an additional hour to the twenty four turns out to be a total non-event. largely because i go to sleep with a delicious feeling fully intending to wake up at the appointed hour, which will turn out to be an hour earlier, but having the ipod clock auto-update itself and wake me up at the new correct hour.

what this means is that all those people who wish for an additional hour or two to their days would be sorely disappointed if their wish was granted. just look at daylight savings. millions of people affected twice a year, and only the cable programmers scramble.

daylight savings

time was when we went around the house changing the clocks. remember the alarm clocks!

these days with the computer clock and the phone clocks and the alarms set up in the smartphones and ipods everything is pretty much on auto-pilot. anything that requires manual adjustment is clearly ornamental.

in any case, this marks the beginning of the end of the year!

in gratitude

and can it be that i should gain/ an interest in the Savior's blood/ died he for me who caused his pain/ for me, who him to death pursued?

no condemnation now i dread/ Jesus, and all in him, is mine/ alive in him, my living head/ and clothed in righteousness divine.

amazing love! how can it be that thou my God shouldst die for me?

- charles wesley

poorly made in china - paul midler (2009)

the author is an american representing american companies working with chinese factories in south china. how much can an outsider write that is to the mark, i wonder?

pretty much, it turns out. even after allowing for cultural obtuseness (!) he makes unpleasant points that are painfully consistent with our observation of and experience with china, chinese, and china made goods.

there are two china's today. the exotic inscrutable middle kingdom built upon centuries of proud refinement sits in our fond imaginations and wars with the brash brazen reality in aggressive survival mode.

all i say is, disagreeable but not unexpected. also, as i've said for years, better not buy made-in-china, if you have a choice, which is not often. and finally, i say, it's sad, and i don't see how it will improve in the short to medium term, and i'm chinese.

signs of times

on the eve of the SAT language with listening test J2 receives an urgent request to borrow our trusty portable CD player.

it appears that portable CD players have become extinct on store shelves. iTunes has taken over the world.

splinter skills

what some people do on facebook that defy the concept of networking:
they only:

1. make new friends, or
2. play games, or
3. wish people "happy birthday".

put up your own status update, puh-leeze!

calendar countdown

why this is my favorite time:
1. thanksgiving
2. christmas
3. baking (other people's, i mean)
4. the colors
5. the weather (for a bit anyway)
6. HOM going on leave
7. food network (see #1,2,3,6)

one for the books

lovely windy fall day today.

the best way to enjoy these

 is to stay indoors

next to a sunny window and

next to the portable heater.

morbidity

the 'phone rings. the caller id says hospital emergency. my heart goes pitter-pat. the voice asks for dr so-and-so. my heart stops skittering.

i love wrong numbers. 

malodor

the house smells of kimchi, on account of J2's breakfast of kimchi and gingerbread cake. 

we are nothing if not unorthodoxly odoriferous.

two books

i'm working my way through these:
poorly made in china - paul midler (2008)
the cost of discipleship - d bonhoeffer (1948)

an american in china and an anti-hitler german in the second world war, both in their thirties. i begin to think it is unfair to toggle M with B simply because it shows him up in such a supremely unflattering light. B writes elegant strong prose with minimal superfluity. M is jejune by comparison and brash to boot. B's thinking is clear organized and logical. M has some logic i am still trying to decipher. also, B is clean. i expend energy anticipating M being off color.

having my expectations of american writers shaped by robin wright paul yergin and thomas friedman is unkind to paul midler i suppose. investigative journalists are not busy businessmen. but then neither are they a wartime theologian, and that one holds up well enough. i guess what i'm saying is, if you don't write well, and you write commercially, get help.

just call me Princess

the fellow at the counter at the pizza store/ deli/ cellphone repair shop/ helpline wants my first name to put me into the line waiting for service. 

all i say is, why? 

i get that we are all equal and do not lord it over one another. are we therefore intimate?

the agony & the ecstasy

reading this week:

indulgence in death - j d robb
poorly made in china - paul midler
insights on romans - c swindoll
the cost of discipleship - d bonhoeffer

11.1.11

just for the fun of it.