Eavesdropping: Open.Salon.Com

November 12, 2009 at 1:31 am (Eavesdropping, Food and Drink, Other Sites of Interest)
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First of all, today is Veterans Day.  So, to all the soldiers fighting for our freedom all over the world, self salutes and honors you.

Now then:  It was such a beautiful day!

Self worked at the Writing Center, then had late lunch with Zack, Liza, and Jonathan in Tribu again — yum! Yuuumm! Self’s pants are so tight right now, she can hardly breathe!

She had lychee shake! And shared a bibingka with Zack!

And now she is home, giving her tummy a much-needed rest. Naturally, she begins wandering the Internet, ever in search of more news, more information, more laughs, more inspiration, more what-have-you. And she pauses for a while on Open.Salon.com. And peruses the list of posts. And here are a few of her favorites  (Asterisks are for the posts that made self laugh out loud at least once) :

  1. Cartoon: Proust is Boring
  2. Springsteen Robbed of Spot on NPR’s 50 Great Voices List
  3. Involuntary Lactation & Other Lessons Learned in Jamaica*
  4. When Geeks and Nerds Cross-Pollinate
  5. Iraq: Ten Lessons Learned During My Brother’s Deployment*
  6. My Son Says He is White (about Sammy Sosa’s alleged use of skin-whitening products)
  7. Reflections on Two Military Cemeteries in France

P.S. to dear blog readers: Post # 5 and # 7 were written by the same person. Good going, Mr. von Hoffman!

Stay tuned.

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Oh, the Drama!

November 3, 2009 at 3:16 am (Food and Drink, Home)
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Tonight, self is quite wrung out from getting NEA rejection in today’s mail, and also from the realization that she really really is not going to have her teeth fixed in Manila, and will have to endure yet longer the Mother of All Toothaches (Dearest Mum helpfully suggests self consider having all of her teeth pulled, thereby getting rid of all her problems in one fell swoop, and at the tenth of a cost of a bunch of crowns), she decides to order out.

She hasn’t ordered a pizza in ages. She’s almost about to call New York Pizza (whose pizzas she Read the rest of this entry »

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My Dears!

October 26, 2009 at 10:59 pm (Brain Cloud, Food and Drink)
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Self is exhausted. After spending the morning at Writing Center, then wandering over to Long’s to pick up some prescriptions, then to Safeway to pick up bags of Halloween candy (self made sure to buy only the kinds she hates: Hot Tamales), then failing to find any good pumpkins selling for less than $3, and picking up Luis Urrea’s The Hummingbird’s Daughter from the Redwood City Main Library (and, now that she’s seen the cover again, self is 99.76 % sure she’s borrowed it before, but she can’t remember when), self arrives home pretty “low bat” again. What is wrong? Could it be the fact that she’s had nothing to eat all day except a bag of barbecue-flavored potato chips from the vending machine just outside the Writing Center, and a coke float?

Alas, self finds it is quite impossible to go the whole day without eating, as was her plan. Yesterday, there was Crouching Tiger with Jonathan, Liza, and Zack, and afterwards self came home to find the whole house smelling like hot buttered popcorn (hubby was snacking on that on the couch). This morning, self successfully made it to the Writing Center without Read the rest of this entry »

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Redwood City: A Love Story

October 24, 2009 at 3:16 am (Food and Drink, Places, Quotes)
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Self so loves Redwood City that, recently, when someone on Chowhound asked for nominations for “Food Capital” of the USA, self nominated Redwood City, CA! For ethnic food, of course! Here are self’s favorites:

  • Indian restaurant (Little India, Main St.)
  • Turkish restaurant (New Kapadokia)
  • Szechuan restaurant (Crouching Tiger, Broadway)
  • German deli (German House)
  • Burrito place (La Azteca)
  • Burger Pub (City Pub, Broadway)

(All of these places are still alive and kicking, in spite of the recession!  No small feat, that!  In fact, the only Redwood City casualty self can think of is Beard Papa, and that’s not homegrown, it’s a chain)

Self is thinking of all of this again because she’s still weighing the pros and cons of going to Manila in December (She’ll probably go). Redwood City also has the best Fourth of July Parade anywhere in California, a theatre that shows Parokya ni Edgar, a Courthouse Square that shows scary movies (free) in October (Last year they showed “Edward Scissorhands,” among others), a pretty good Farmers Market (Saturday am), and the best Century 20 in the whole San Francisco Bay Area.

Once, when self was entertaining an Assumptionista visitor, the lady said, “But why choose a house in Redwood City? If I went to the States, and all I could afford was a house in Redwood City, I’d rather go home!”

Oh, the tact of Filipinas! They are so wonderfully eccentric! Just ask self! Just ask son, who swears he’ll never date a Filipina (“They’re all crazy.”)

Today was a pretty good day. Self took her fat li’l crits on a longer-than-usual walk, and neither of them pooped, what bliss! Today, also, self got to visit Marguerite King, whose husband died a year ago. The Kings were the first American hosts self ever stayed with, when she was just beginning at Stanford. They were blonde and blue-eyed, and so were their six children. They had a gorgeous daughter named Mary, who was at Gunn High School, who was a dancer. Now Mrs. King is frail but very lucid. She said to self, as self hugged her good-bye: “I never thought I could last a day without Dick, and now here I am.” Self looked down at her and said, “We women, we endure.” Which is the absolute truth.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

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Oh, the Excitement!

October 18, 2009 at 2:41 am (Brain Cloud, Calls, Conversations, Food and Drink, Relatives, Surprises, Writers and Others)
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Dear Bro called from LA around 10:30 this morning. Self said, no problem, she could pick him up. Did he want to come with her to Filipino authors reading in the City, in the Bayanihan Community Center, at 2 p.m.? Dear Bro said yes, with alacrity.

Then, the following things happened:

Somewhere around Millbrae, on the 101, self’s engine overheated. Car slowed to 20 miles an hour. She barely had time to nudge it onto an exit. Luckily, a few feet from the exit was a Doubletree Hotel. Self glided into the parking lot.  So gracefully that she actually landed in a space directly across from the hotel’s main entrance, and exactly between the two white lines of the parking stall, which is a very rare occurrence.

Then, she called Dear Bro. Ah, could he possibly get a cab and meet her at the Doubletree? He said he could, and he did.

Next, self asked Dear Bro’s taxi if he could take the two of us to the nearest car rental place (as self was determined, simply determined, to take him to the reading with Read the rest of this entry »

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Whole Foods, RWC: No Halloween Pumpkins

October 14, 2009 at 1:23 am (Books, Food and Drink, Surprises)
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Self waited until the rain and wind abated somewhat, around 4 p.m., and then she ventured to the library (which had  –  OMG  –  10 copies of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, not even Gone with the Wind has that many copies, though perhaps that is not an apt comparison:  perhaps self should have checked The Da Vinci Code)

After that, self ventured to Whole Foods, feeling a strange urge to buy pumpkins.  And there were no pumpkins that self could see (except a few strewn here and there for decoration).  But, perhaps it was stupid of self to search in Whole Foods for pumpkins; perhaps she should have stuck with good ol’ Safeway, across the street.  But aside from the pumpkins, self wanted to buy some really impressive breakfast pastries and croissants (with which to impress Dear Bro, of course), and for that she was willing to splurge a little.  Hence, the decision to shop at Whole Foods rather than Safeway.

But, really:  no pumpkins?  Only a few cupcakes with orange icing?  A display of Boo chips?  Some small plastic tubs of orange and black “all natural” candy?  A few pumpkin pies?  That’s it?  What kind of store is this?

Self ended up buying a quart of Odwallah lemonade ($4.99) and some herbal cough drops to mail to son (who’s had a wicked cold, the past week), and a couple of croissants.  Bill came out to $25.02.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

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Today, Monday, Columbus Day 2009

October 12, 2009 at 10:33 pm (Brain Cloud, Conversations, Food and Drink, Insomnia, Relatives, Surprises)
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There is no mail delivery today.  Self just realized this when, after she got home from lunch and a walk around downtown Redwood City with Dear Bro, she stuck her hand in the mailbox and was surprised to find it empty.  Then she realized it was Columbus Day, a holiday.  Ergo, the library will be closed as well.  Self has to wait until tomorrow to return James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds (which she read until 3 a.m. this morning) and borrow Kazuo Ishiguro’s Booker-nominated novel of a couple of years back, Never Let Me Go.

Self did have to work at the Writing Center, however; she is starting to see a core group, students who present week after week, who self has formed a tutoring relationship with, and also a student she taught in African American Lit, last semester.  And that student was a very good writer!

But, in general, self found herself rather “low bat.”  (Could it be the overcast weather?  Could it be all the nights staying up reading?)

Self arrived home to find the house empty.  But she wasn’t undisturbed for more than five minutes, for then the phone rang and it was Dear Bro telling her that he was on the way home: would she like to have lunch somewhere?  Self said sure, and suggested he might like to see Whole Foods, “because they have this great buffet, and everything is weighed by the pound, and we can take the food home to eat it here.”  But she sensed some reluctance on the part of Dear Bro, so she asked, “Or did you want to eat at a real restaurant?”

It turned out Dear Bro would rather eat at a restaurant.  And he surprised self by saying he wanted Indian food.  And self knew just the place to go:  Read the rest of this entry »

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One of Those Days

October 1, 2009 at 3:06 pm (Food and Drink, Movies)
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Today self is having one of those days that Dearest Mum would call “low bat” days.  The weather is significantly cooler.  In the deepest, hottest days of summer, how self longed for, prayed for, the cooler weather, so she could finally resume planting.  But now that fall is finally here, self’s energy seems to have flagged.

Is it possible there are really no new fall movies self wants to see?  Well, there’s “New Moon,” but self is not too enthused with the new director (Studio fired the one who directed “Twilight,” self knows not why)  The upcoming comedies leave self quite unmoved.  In multiplexes, oh God:  “Surrogate” (featuring Bruce Willis in strange blond bowl haircut), lots of kiddie movies (upcoming “Toy Story”).  Oh, how self longs for the years when she could always look forward to a new installment of “Lord of the Rings.”  Or a new John Hughes movie (“Home Alone” or “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles”).

Oh, wait!  There is a Robert Downy movie!  Robert Downey playing a buff Sherlock Holmes!  Perhaps all is not lost!  That one’s not out until December, though  –  aaargh!

The last few days, self has been cooking dinner with bacon.  Tuesday she made a bacon, cheese, and potato casserole.   Then, yesterday, she made spaghetti carbonara.  In order to break the bacon rut, self has resolved to go back in time, back to those days of yore, when self worked in the basement of the Littlefield Center at Stanford.  (This was where self happened to be when the California earthquake of 1989 struck:  she clearly remembers the lone man in her office standing square under a door frame, arms and legs braced.  After staring at him with mouths agape, the three other people in the office, self and two women, ran to him and draped ourselves around him and screamed, screamed, screamed.  Once again, self digresses)

The point of all of the above is to explain how self came to be in the possession of  Fu Pei Mei’s Chinese Cooking, one of her oldest cookbooks (bought from Stanford Bookstore, walking distance from self’s office –  those were the days, sigh)

The recipe self has decided to try for tonight’s dinner is “Fried Chicken Legs.”  It involves green onions, fresh ginger, and soy sauce.  Also, sesame oil.  Also, sugar.  Also, fresh tomato (strictly for decorative purposes), and 5 cups of oil for deep frying (Self reaches for the Lipitor)

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

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Quite a Successful Day

September 24, 2009 at 2:29 am (Brain Cloud, Food and Drink, Surprises, Writing)
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Self is preparing to send out a manuscript for another contest (Yes, hope does spring eternal, and so forth and so on). She was dithering about whether or not it was worth coughing up the contest entry fee, but she was looking through some old letters and there was something from someone praising that very manuscript self had been planning to send! Self then took it as a sign from God and decided that she would mail out her piece (yes, nothwithstanding $25 contest entry fee– GAAAH!) forthwith!

In addition, self got a new rice cooker. It is an eight-cup capacity, bright red and chrome thing (from Read the rest of this entry »

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Watching Kate Beckinsale

September 14, 2009 at 12:30 am (Food and Drink, Movies)
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Boy, the weekend went fast, didn’t it?

Seemed like it was just Friday, and self was rushing around getting together the San Miguel and Red Horse beer and rice and pancit molo ingredients for the Saturday dinner in Half Moon Bay with her gourmet group, and now it is Sunday evening.

It is raining.  Oh, how lovely are Sunday evenings when it rains!  No need to water, though self quite misses the chance to plant something.  No matter, perhaps tomorrow.

Came home so uncommonly late from Half Moon Bay. The group, which meets several times a year to try out dishes based on a particular theme, was trying Filipino dishes for the first time, and self was all in a frazzle the last two days, trying to decide what to make. After the dinner, self realized that Filipino food is really hard for people who are not Filipino to make. In fact, some people just gave up and made sate babi or something else (But the desserts and the mung bean stew were really, really good.  Cassava cake, made by someone who had never even seen one before, was five stars!)

Self also discovered (too late!) that cuchinta and those little white cakes of puto are better when heated up a little. People picked one or two, but self still went home with two dozen, and when self tried one of the white puto, cold, it was bleeeaah! Hard! No wonder only one was eaten.

Today, self and hubby decided to see a movie. It was a choice between “Gamer” and “Whiteout.” We decided on “Whiteout.” Though self wouldn’t describe it as “A-list,”, Read the rest of this entry »

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