Electric Ladyland

A daze here, dumplings there

This weekend was pretty good to me.  Saturday I got up late and ambled over to the local cafe, sat down and stared out the window for a good three hours or maybe more.  I wasn't even keeping track of the time.  Wrote fifteen pages in my journal without even noticing as there was a downpour going on outside, big fat raindrops plunking all over the pavement on Steinway Street.  I was happy, in my element, just so elated to have a long afternoon stretching out before me.  Nowhere I needed to be, nothing I needed to do.

Last night I got together with my friend Dawn for some good buddy time and geek time in Astoria.  We had a great dinner at Mundo (mmm, baby okra!) and a lot of fun talking tech, politics, liberation, all the good things.  While we were at dinner my little (ok, not so little -- they're 20 -- but they'll always be little to me) cousins added me as a friend on FaceBook!  I was tickled.  I guess that fits -- they're right there in the FaceBook demographic.  To think I was hanging out with them at the family ranch in California just about a month ago.  Like Dad said tonight, it already seems like six months ago.

Today was GRE class and I hadn't done all the preview work before I got there.  Whoops!  Math kinda whaled on me a little bit, more of a preparedness thing, but I really enjoyed doing the problems and was actually really excited for someone who was running on four hours of sleep, a cup of coffee and a marginally tasty muffin.  I wished I'd had a teacher like my current GRE prep teacher in high school.  I would have been all over that math stuff.  On the sillier side, she's really hooked on Rock of Love (fellow glam metal fan and 80s child just like me) and so what am I doing but downloading that show, checking it out on her recommendation.

Went out for dim sum with Nina-chan today.  We hit up a Shanghainese place in Chinatown.  It probably wasn't dim sum proper that we were doing but we did get some xiaolongbao and gyoza.  It was dumplings-o-rama, oh so greasy and starchy and heavenly.  I went to work for a couple of hours after that and it's a minor miracle I was actually cogent enough to do any of the research and memo-writing that I did.  Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow, revisit those docs and see that I'm really making recommendations for the installation of a dim sum bar in the 10th floor common area.  Doh...  well, I am good friends with the Operations Manager.  Maybe we could make it happen.  ;-)

Now I'm going to take a bubble bath, read a book and drift off to sleep as befits a quiet Sunday night like this.  On to another work day tomorrow but tonight is all about the relaxing.  More later.

Time off

The weekend was a slice of all right.  Boy did I need that.

Went to the Green Market on Saturday and bought peaches, tomatoes, a ginger snap cookie, a hanging rosemary plant and a smoked duck.  I also had a sweet interlude when I went up to a gruff old farmer to buy some zinnias.  The guy looked a little off-putting but I was drawn to his stand of zinnias -- they were arranged in different color groups spanning the spectrum and if there's a constant about me, it's that I like variety and interesting patterns.  So I found it satisfying to pick ten flowers from the bunch, looking back and forth from one bucket to the next to see which color might go well with the others I'd already selected.  It took a little while but when I presented the final bouquet to him so he could calculate the charge, he had a wide smile on his face.  It's hard not to smile when someone finds wonder in something.  I'll have to go back to Mr. (Supposedly) Gruff Farmer Guy and buy some more over the coming weekend.  The zinnias I bought on Saturday are still radiating happiness on my kitchen table.  And they're flanked by fossil rocks from our ranch beach, which completes the aesthetic.  It reminds me of home and family.

What else... well, Saturday I spent mostly writing and doing errands.  Getting on the ball with "me" things.  Finally emailed that professor who's an expert in Obaku calligraphy to ask for his thoughts on my future plans.  Also posted for a roommate.  Laughed at how all the French people who replied picked up on my foodie references and confessed to me their obsession for food right off the bat.  Some ethnic stereotypes have a basis in reality.  It's all good to me because I'm French and I'm obsessed with food too so we understand each other.

Sunday I went to my first GRE prep class and took a diagnostic test.  Killed the verbal.  Finished in 15 minutes even though they allotted us 30.  I was really surprised at how easy it was.  I was also surprised at how I was able to work out the math problems fairly well despite not having done a problem in 13 years or so.  But I am feeling really good... if that's the sort of verbal section I'm dealing with then I'm gonna be more than all right.  One of our homework assignments was to separate Kaplan vocabulary flash cards into two piles:  Words I Know and Everything Else.  I did that last night and it was pretty funny seeing this huge Words I Know pile stacked up next to the itty bitty Everything Else pile.  I wonder how many English words I know.  It occurred to me that I'm already going to have a quote-unquote edge on this test because it's in my native language.  I'm a lot more fluent in English than in Japanese, obviously, but I didn't have a quantitative sense of that until now.

Today was good... took a much needed comp day.  Slept late and woke up to a call from a college friend.  Said he'd been expecting it to go to voice mail since he assumed I was at work, but I said "Nope, comp day."  Turned out he was in the neighborhood on business so we went to a local Italian cafe for lunch and had panini sandwiches.  I had bresaola with arugula and parmesan with a lemon aioli dressing.  We both had cupcakes after that.  Good times.

After that I did a couple of errands and then Dad showed up.  We hung around and gossiped in the kitchen, then eventually made our way out to dinner.  Hit up Cavo and sat in the backyard garden.  With tonight's beautiful summer weather it was a meal to remember.  Highlights included salmon and tuna tartare, lamb and filet mignon.  There was a muscat dessert wine that impressed me too. 

Now I'm looking ahead to a busy week.  Got work tomorrow, then I'm up with the roosters to board an early train to D.C. for business.  That'll be hectic but I love D.C. and I get to meet up with my friend Mike for dinner at an Ethiopian place afterward so that should be fun!  Then Thursday's roommate interviews and Friday holds the promise of corned beef and hash for breakfast with Fred, then some work, then dinner with Valeta followed by Superbad, a movie I've wanting to see, like, super bad.

I have a feeling this week is going to go super fast...

Communications protocols

Anybody remember this?  I remember this!

It's been a while since I've dealt with it, though.  I've been a Mac user since System 7 so OS9.2 isn't exactly unfamiliar territory, but I gotta say it's been a while.  I switched to OSX years ago.  Seeing as we run a Windows shop where I work you'd think I wouldn't run into any Mac tech support issues but today I actually ended up helping someone who was running OS9 and needed to set up DHCP on the Mac laptop she bought in 2002.  OSX was already out in 2002.  But anyway, I had to dig into the memory banks to help this young lady amidst plenty of other things going on simultaneously (lawyers calling for contract negotiations, office renovations and relocations).  I was actually pretty tickled that I remembered how to set her up.  The only thing was that once that was done, her IE was woefully out of date.  I don't blame Microsoft for not supporting it for OS9 anymore.  I set her up with iCab and it wasn't great but it worked better than IE.  Oy.

So no sooner did I opine on social networking than I got a request from a friend to join yet another social networking site -- Facebook.  Am I done now?  Yeesh.

It occurs to me that there are now a gajillion ways in which people can get in touch with me.  Let's see if I can list most of them.  Phone, email, text message, IM, postal mail, in person, social networking sites... and many of these are in duplicate.  I've got three phones -- two work, one personal.  Text messaging on both cell phones.  IM for both work and home.  Fax at work.  Postal mail for both work and home.  The list goes on.  It doesn't usually matter so much except for those comical moments when I have someone in my office, the phone is ringing, IM is flashing and an email just came in.  Oh, and someone's knocking on the door.  How does one process all this input anyway? 

Even with the tech-enabled networking you can't replace good old fashioned connections made between people.  Yesterday I discovered quite by accident that a consultant I'm working with grew up in the town next door to where I grew up.  Just over the river.  Who knew?  That was a real surprise.  We are going to have to go get lunch and make all the connections.  It's a small town area out there in Western Mass and everybody knows everybody.  And as I'm browsing through Facebook right now I see someone I went to high school with.  Haven't thought about him for a million years.  I see all the French names too (big secret nobody seems to know about:  Massachusetts has a reputation for being Irish but there are tons of Francos where I grew up).  Yep.

In other news, I'm still in indecent love with my iPhone.  Oh, and calligraphy starts up again tomorrow.  I have a big Tanabata assignment to turn in before the end of the month.  Can't wait to get started.  Speaking of Japanese art, last night I went to pick up my Ehon poster at the framing shop and on the way back, I did a little recon on two relatively new additions to the neighborhood.  One was Gyro Mania, a Greek joint just off 30th Avenue.   The people were unbelievably sweet and the sheftalia gyro I got was delish.  The second was Esparks Coffee, where they had a cute sign up saying the following:

Socrates drank hemlock!
Romeo drank poison!
You drink coffee!
You're smart!

Word... I may be smart and still ticking but my decision to have a coffee last night probably had a lot to do with my getting to sleep after 2am... *Cough*

Lovely weekend

Here's a shot from my new rowwrr-sexy iPhone.  Not bad.  I took it yesterday while biking the Central Park loop.   

Just like yesterday was multivaried and satisfying on a bunch of different levels -- adequate time spent roaming New York in the sunshine, fun time spent laughing my butt off watching a hilarious movie with a friend, also some time spent catching up on work -- today was the same.

 

I ambled out of the house kinda late but still made it on time to meet my friends for an afternoon showing of Transformers.  It was a fun flick and I saw it with the right people.  We were snickering and cracking jokes throughout the movie.  There were geek shout-outs referencing everything from Star Trek to Gremlins and then some.  Lots of product placement for Cisco, HP, even Taco Bell ("You get that Taco Bell chihuahua outta here!").  Pretty obvious.  I thought it was cute how Shia LeBeouf's character thought the AutoBots were Japanese the first time he saw them.  Um, not quite.  Oh, and that cube looked an awful lot like a Borg cube.  What was up with that?

Gotta give props to ol' Shia.  He turned out a great performance in A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, a recent flick about old Astoria (my hood) and he held his own pretty well in this movie too despite not being old enough to really remember Transformers the first time around as far as I can tell.  I'll be interested to see what he does next.

After the movie my friends and I grabbed some dinner nearby and talked tech for a while.  My coworker's 25-year-old friend was wondering whether or not he should go for his certifications (CCNA, MCSE, etc) and got a resounding "Yes, thou shalt go for thy certs" from my friend the 40-something network engineer.  They had an interesting back-and-forth about the pros and cons of certs and how to go about planning a career path in IT.

After dinner I parted ways with my friends, picked up a large iced coffee and ambled over to the office.  I've been feeling a need to put in a little extra time lately because there's so much to do and I don't like feeling like I'm behind.  Yesterday I was there pretty briefly to take care of some bill paying (people gotta get paid) since that wasn't getting done during regular work hours;  today was for actual work-work.  I noticed I got a lot more productive thinking done because I had longer spells of unbroken concentration than I'm used to having at the office.  Realized a few things about projects I'm managing that I might not otherwise have realized had I not had the flex time to really think things over from a fresh viewpoint without the general hoo-hah that overtakes my office during the work week.

Now that I'm home I'm going to take it easy and enjoy this peaceful, sultry summer evening before getting back on the merry-go-round tomorrow. 

Languid living

Today I did something good for my mental health and -- gasp! -- scooted out of work at 5.  It was such a gorgeous day, I couldn't help myself.

Rolled home on the R train and then did a couple of errands.  Picked up my latest Japanese art buy at the post office.  It's a lovely, understated painting of a boat docked under a weeping willow.  I'm trying to assemble a modest collection of scrolls to rotate according to the season and so my collection just grew by one more scroll.  It'll be a while before I have anything approaching a standing collection but I've got a couple of pieces I really like and that's good enough for me. 

So after picking up this scroll I ambled over to a new local coffee shop I'd heard positively mentioned on astorians.com.  Nice place!  Organic fair trade coffee, really friendly owners and a mellow, welcoming environment.  I sat there and shot the breeze for an hour and a half, just chatting with people from my neighborhood.  Now that we have an alternative to Starbucks in my part of Astoria I'll go there instead.

Been doing a lot of calligraphy research online lately.  Getting promoted again spurred me to dive even further into my studies.  Right now I'm reading up on rinsho (臨書 ), a thin bladelike script similar to kaisho that you find in very old texts.  Not many web pages mentioning it in English but oh, there's a treasure trove out there if you google it in Japanese.  So exciting to find other people writing and thinking about it as well!

On the inexhaustible topic of calligraphy, since I ended up writing so much about it here I decided to spin that whole section off into its own blog, Shining Flower.  Feel free to have a look.

Other than that, work continues to be busy but exciting.  Still prepping for the trip to Ghana and I find it hard to believe that a month from now I will actually be there with some of my all-time favorite people.  What a trip that's going to be.  I guess it makes all the shots I'm getting worth it.  Last Friday I had to get shots for Hepatitis A and B.  The shots themselves were no big deal but I developed a low grade fever a couple of hours later as my body reacted to the vaccine.  I'd had all sorts of ideas about what to do with my Friday night but I ended up passing out early to let my immune system take over and do its job.   Now I'm back to normal but more shots are on the way so my shoulder's just going to be sore for the forseeable future as far as I can tell. 

That's about the news.  On to another day.

local talent

half the fun in life is trying out new stuff.  last weekend i decided it was time to branch off from the beers that i know and tried something new:  smuttynose's IPA.  i chose them out of new england loyalty.  the IPA was pretty good but, over a weeklong testing period, didn't really stand out.

i have something that does, though:  ithaca beer company's double IPA.  i was looking for something with a little more oomph, nuttiness and all-around flavor to it and this fit the bill.  they proudly proclaim it's made from new york hops.  lady liberty is featured on the packaging hoisting a pint.  god bless america.

there's a lot of new york-specific yumminess to be found if you look for it -- or even if you don't.  i looked over my local c-town's ice cream selection to see if i could find ben & jerry's new flavor, stephen colbert's americone dream.  no dice but i did notice something unknown to me peeking out from a corner.  it was a pint of 5 boroughs ice cream in amaretto amore.  said it was an astoria-based startup (woo!) focusing on making ice cream just for the five boroughs.  i had to try it.  had a spoonful while still putting away the groceries after i got home and had to slap my own hand to keep myself from just inhaling the whole thing.  put down... the ice cream...  they have other flavors such as rich white vanilla (UES) and landfill (staten island).  i'm kind of surprised that they didn't yet offer the bakla-wha? flavor in my astoria supermarket -- it'd be an instant hit! 

speaking of local food, i've noticed that my c-town is bringing in more organic and eco-friendly products bit by bit.  they've expanded their seventh generation stock and today i noticed for the first time that goya is marketing organic canned beans.  must be pretty new cause you can't even find them on their web site.  anyway, whole paycheck whole foods is great for peace of mind where that's concerned but it's also valuable to shop your local grocery stores, ask for organic products and then buy them to show there's a market for them.  i remember when my former roommate, a public health nutritionist, waltzed into a just-opened food market around the corner from us and requested organic beef only to be met with a puzzled look as the man behind the counter mouthed the word "or-ga-nic?"  things have improved since then, thankfully, but it's good to keep seeking this stuff out.

chocolate indiscretions

if i kept a pillow book including lists of favorite things cadbury creme eggs would surely make an appearance.  i spotted my first creme eggs of the season at the local rite aid on my way home tonight and promptly bought two.  now normally i would be all miffed about how it's not the season yet -- we just rang in the new year and haven't even passed valentine's day let alone saint patrick's day -- but in this case i will make an exception. 

i have a strong abiding fondness for these odd confections even though they are mass-produced, offer dubious flavor satisfaction compared to actual chocolate, and are abominable for my health.  i remember once while living in japan i flew to the UK for a friend's wedding in the springtime.  while waiting for a train to cambridge i happened across a cadbury vending machine selling creme eggs and was so thrilled to see them -- you can't get them in japan -- that i loaded up right then and there.  mrrrpffhhhl.  oh the indiscretion.  now that i'm back stateside i have unlimited access to creme eggs, which means that i fall off the wagon at approximately oh, this time every year.  guess i'll be going to the gym this weekend.

in other news, i met with someone to compare notes on effective personal financial planning at freeze peach tonight.  i forgot how wonderful that cafe is.  would that we had an indie coffee shop like that in the steinway area of astoria!  down in these parts it's the burnt blends of starbucks or the thump-thump-thump of techno in a dark euro cafe.  freeze peach is like your neighbor's living room and it is a real community space where everyone knows everyone else.  much like the small town where i grew up.  i've come to miss that sense of connectedness a bit since relocating to the metropolis and it's a sweet surprise when i find traces of it here.

back to the financial planning, though -- that went quite well and along with the other strategic planning i've been doing i got confirmation that my thinking is solid and i'm on the right track.  i've got renewed enthusiasm to tackle this part of the equation as well.  although i hate budgeting (insert some blather here about what a free spirit i am and can't be restricted) i recognize the necessity of putting an action plan into place where this is concerned.  it's purely a matter of stating my goals and then making a few moderate changes to achieve them.  i'm strong on planning in almost every other way so i just have to put my skills to use in this arena.  it's really no different.

i didn't get a lot of sleep last night because i was so energized upon coming home.  the calligraphy did it to me.  i stayed up late watching battlestar galactica and then somehow ended up in a wikipedia loop where i was just looking up random things of interest (i am the information hoover after all).  a search for lazy sunday led me to an interesting entry:  nerdcore hip hop, aka geeksta rap.   you heard it here first:  there is such a genre.   i had to grin when i read there was a band named commodore 64.  tee hee.  i'll have to check some of these acts out. 

would you like to play a game?

last night i went to the museum of the moving image, right here in my home neighborhood of astoria, with a friend.  admission is free on fridays.  i didn't know that along with a tutorial on the history of film and television i would also have a chance to play the arcade versions of tron, asteroid, space invaders and mortal kombat as much as i wanted to!  no need to insert a quarter, all you had to do was press the "player 1" button.  there was a game of pong showing on an old television display somewhere too although we didn't get to play it. 

it was seriously nostalgic to be playing these games.  mortal kombat wasn't even that long ago!  i remember playing that in the student center at oberlin.  my boyfriend at the time got a real kick out of saying "finish him."  i did well last night at the museum and busted quite a few people up... until raiden showed up and kicked the ever-living @#^%! out of me.  decaptitated me.  doh...

oh, but it was fun!  i felt like a kid again and you know, no matter how much the technology advances those old games still have their appeal.  they definitely have their own mystique and an added cachet now that you can't find them anymore. 

my friend and i followed up our museum outing with a dinner at mundo, which was tasty as always.  friendly people there, great food too.  a real addition to the neighborhood.  i'd say that was a nice evening out in astoria!

home improvement jamboree

the improvements just keep coming here chez electric ladyland.  today my second order of compact flash bulbs came from the energy federation and, with them, two very nice additions. 

first, i got two of these new night lights to replace the one i have in the hallway.  they automatically turn on at night and shut off in the morning.  they also cast a wider halo of light than my old traditional night light did.  now i've got these two going and (hopefully) will never stumble into the door on my way to the bathroom again.  well, maybe i will but i won't have the darkness for an excuse anymore.

secondly, i got this vornado space heater to step in where our patchy old-school radiators sometimes falter.  it looks just like the air circulators i got this summer (and they are great, let me tell you).  i got this in part specifically for my dad's christmas visit this weekend.  he gets cold more easily than i do and it could be a little tough for him if he gets up to practice the guitar early in the morning, so now there will be something he can do to remedy the situation.  for my own uses, the space heater will keep me cozy while watching star trek at night or on the rare weekday afternoon if i happen to be home from work.

my new neighbor from calligraphy class came by before i took her out on an orientation stroll through astoria and she had nice things to say about how spacious the apartment is.  that's only because i've been working so hard to make it that way -- if she had seen it three weeks ago it would have been a different story.  but i was glad to get confirmation from an outside source that things are going well.  we're thinking of doing a pot luck in my big kitchen before i get another roommate.  that would be fun.  we had dinner at taverna zenon, where the food is always delicious and the people are always warm.  got enough leftovers for lunch tomorrow too!   this is a nice way to begin my winter vacation.

whoa now there...

i have had to really slow down.  this past week got off to a great start but when i went out to celebrate some success at work on tuesday night things took a wrong turn and i haven't quite recovered.  the shift in mood can be summed up by the change of music i've been listening to:  tuesday it was the vines rocking out with abandon, now it's aimee mann being melancholy and philosophical. 

back to our story.  so yes, i was in the mood to celebrate on tuesday night and i met up with my friend for dinner at the brick cafe, one of my favorite restaurants in new york.  lucky for me they're right here in astoria.  i've been going there basically since i moved to the neighborhood and have had some downright transcendent meals that i still remember.  brick is where i first discovered both sancerre and armagnac.  tuna tartare was never on my radar before i luxuriated in it at brick.  i like all of the staff and have been bringing friends to this place for years, getting them hooked on the food and ambiance too.  dad and i have had many special family dinners there.  so you could say i'm a devoted customer! 

however, something went horribly wrong on tuesday night and i don't know exactly what it was.  i chose their gnocchi special and i wasn't feeling it.  neither was my friend when she tried it.  i thought "oh, well, no big deal.  everybody has an off day."  dessert came a little later -- a little chocolate-espresso mousse special -- and that tasted lovely but i started feeling ill as soon as i began to eat it.  my head was already hurting by the time i got home.  it developed into a nasty case of food poisoning that kept me up the next two nights and would have sent me home from work on wednesday had i not absolutely had to be there for something.  i was gingerly touching my stomach from time to time the rest of the week hoping i wasn't going to hurl.  my appetite vanished too.

friday we had a half day for rosh hashanah and i was hoping to go out and enjoy it.  the weather was even lovely...  but no dice.  i felt so awful that i could only go home and curl up, try to get some sleep.  the sleep wasn't coming either.  i plopped in a netflix DVD -- fist of legend.  that considerably lightened my spirits.  it's always inspiring to witness what someone can achieve at peak form, no matter what their art or profession of choice.  it was good prep for yesterday's trip to see fearless, which also stars jet li but this time as huo yuanjia, the founder of the chin woo school also central to fist of legend's plot. 

my condition turned into a cold yesterday morning.  woke up with a sore throat and a runny nose.  as i left the house i slowed down to about 10% of my usual pace.  it was like walking through a tub of glue.  a movie was about all i could handle.  although my friend from work had said fearless wasn't that great i still wanted to see it on the big screen since it's jet li's last martial arts film and i don't regret going.  i actually liked it quite a bit.  i liked following huo's personal journey from self-interested arrogance to a broader, more compassionate worldview.  i was surprised to see nakamura shidou playing the japanese martial artist tanaka.  i'd only seen him in ai ni yukimasu, a totally different film (ghostly love story, definitely a chick flick).  now the internet tells me he's from that nakamura family and is a well-established kabuki actor. that guy gets around.

after the movie got out i went to pick up some bottled green tea at m2m in the east village, thinking i should try to flush out my bug since it had morphed into something more usual that could be attacked with lots of fluids.  so i went.  green tea, mint tea, water, more green tea, more water... and i think it helped.  stopped by a japanese friend's house in the neighborhood and showed her how to set up her own blog.  it was a lot of fun!  she's using it to promote her writing and kodansha is publishing her book in just a few weeks so the timing could not be better.  i think we came up with something pretty good on the first shot and now she's off and running.   that was really neat.

now i'm munching on slices of ginger and back to the heavy liquid regimen here.  water to start with, then we'll move on to some other beverages during the day.  i think last night's sleep helped me make a little progress with the bug.  we'll see.  whatever the case i should just take it easy again today.  it really sucks when something stops you in your tracks but when your body speaks, you have to listen.