down

All the helava.com blogs (mine, seppo’s, the food one) will prob go out at some point in the next day or two for a while, depending on how long it takes me to migrate all our data over and when the nameservers switch over and do their thing. Just a warning.

Sold!

My sister IMed me with the wonderful, great, fantastic, long-awaited news that her house has finally sold! The new tenants will be ready to move in on February 15th. Now, all we have to wait for is for the factory to sell. Yay! I can’t wait until they move to the US. I will be able to visit [almost] everyone at the same time. I will get to see my nieces often enough that they know who I am. 🙂

Speaking of financial transactions and *cough* awkward segues, Seppo bought me a coat as a part of my Christmas presents (the other gift was flannel sheets which, with an electric blanket, equals sleep heaven). It’s the best fitting, most flattering coat I’ve every owned in my life. The size is perfect and I can’t wait to wear it. The only problem is that it’s black and Mobi is still white and fond of shedding.

Speaking of Mobi and *cold deadly stare* yet another awkward segue, Mobi may meet a new friend soon. Friday, we went to Alex & Tracy’s housewarming/holidy party in their new digs in Walnut Creek. They had just adopted a dog and picked her up from the vet that day! Her name is Audrey Maddie and she is quite the friendly frisky little thing. She weighs about the same as Mobi so I hope they can play well together.

I am getting on my own nerves

When I am excited about something, I can’t shut up about it. I keep catching myself telling the same four (or so) people about my ongoing, very-slow-but-steady weight loss by watching my portion sizes. And it’s getting to the point that I’m getting on my own nerves. It must drive others insane.

So here is my update, then I’ll shut up until next year. 😀 Since 10/18, I’ve lost 5.5 lbs! And that’s with the T-day weekend, lots of friends suddenly visiting (which inevitably means eating out at delicious restaurants), and eating desserts and seconds — just in slightly smaller quantities from before. This just means that instead of two or three slices of deep dish pizza for dinner, I’ll just have one and a half. Or I’ll eat a truffle, but not three. Or I’ll get seconds, but my second plate is slightly smaller than usual. And I never leave a meal feeling less than pleasantly full, as opposed to more than disgustingly full as I used to.

The best thing is that I’m becoming more interested in what I taste now, with an emphasis on flavor and variety rather than quantity. Out at dinner the other day, instead of just an entree, I got a soup, a salad, and an appetizer-sized plate of pasta, plus had some dessert (I think). I’m really enjoying the idea of small plates and/or tapas. If only all restaurants were tapas or dimsum style… That would be so awesome.

I must really be an engineer

I suppose there are only a certain number of years you can do something without it feeling like a part of you.

I was looking at myself in the bathroom mirror at work today, when I thought to myself, “Hmm, I don’t think I like this particular implementation of this design concept,” in reference to my PANTS.

Ok, so I must REALLY be an engineer now.

My friend Holly and I have had numerous talks on how we feel like we gonna get “caught” one day as software engineering frauds for various reasons:

• Neither of us were programming majors and didn’t plan on landing where we have
• We both wonder if we should be doing something else at times, something more related to things we value socially and societally
• We feel like we are great with “systems” design and solving “big picture” problems, but are not super-duper experts of specific syntaxes of specific languages
• Some other stuff too complicated to cover here 😀

But given how much my everyday engineering pervades my consciousness and thought processes, I must, to some degree, really BE an engineer. Hmm. It’s an interesting paradigm shift for me. If I start seeing myself as an engineer, then this might shift my long-term goals in a different direction. For instance, I have to contemplate things like:

• Do I want to become a project leader?
• Do I want to move on to management?
• Do I want to become a director?
• Do I want to stay in a senior engineering role?
• Even if I change eventually to a different industry, do I want to carry over my “engineer-ness” to whatever I do? For instance, I have for a long time considered shifting eventually to a teaching or counseling role — perhaps not now, not even 10 years from now, but later in my life. But perhaps I could become a programming instructor in a community college instead? Perhaps I could work for the school district in some capacity, such as implementing/maintaining/upgrading computer networks throughout the schools or supervising computer-related education?

See?! I do everything in bullet points, even that last one that really shouldn’t be a bullet point. This is what mean.

I don’t know. I do feel like I can be sort of role model to offer to kids at the critical juncture between success in failure, which I think happens late in junior high or early high school. I came from a poor background with a violent home situation, overcoming language issues and racial and gender discrimination enough to get me to a well-paying white collar environment where people respect me and rarely question my judgment.

My path was such a straight line. I think about this constantly. For so many people, they don’t get to follow the straight line. Despite my few (but common) disadvantages, I still had and have a LOT of advantages going for me. I feel as though if I can somehow use what I’ve learned and achieved to get someone else to the same point, I’ll have accomplished something truly great and worthwhile.

Man, I know I do this same type of introspection over and over again and it’s boring to read about. But I feel like now, if I can accept that I am an engineer and this is the concrete thing I have to offer to society, I can start planning around using my assets to achieve my longterm goals, rather than floating from job to job, from day to day.

And to think, all this from pants.

Happy pre-grade school summer memory

I hereby declare a common blog topic — I guess people call them “memes” (boo!) — for today. This was actually an idea that I think kerowack mentioned a long time ago, then Seppo brought up again recently, so I won’t claim credit for it.

For today, blog about a happy summer memory you have from before grade school.

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When I was a wee little girl, perhaps a *cough* Wee-Nyung, I used to live in Seoul. It was a crowded, busy place, not without its charms. But every summer and winter break, my family used to go to the countryside, where my grandmas lived within a mile or two down the road from each other.

During those summers, my other cousins would also all be visiting at the same time. We used to roam around, all 5-10 of us, depending on who was there at the time, going to the stream to swim around or trekking to the quarry or helping my grandma’s duck-and-gooseherder herd around the snowy white ducks and geese. I was a favorite of the herding girl, so she used to take me on my own sometimes. The summers were as perfectly Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn as you could have on a completely different continent and in a completely different time.

I can’t quite remember any specific memories. There are vague memories of bursting into tears when my older boy cousin showed me a large, stunning spider web spanning across an wooded path, a rainbow of light sparking through the dew, then threw a rock through it. I remember when I went swimming without my mom’s permission and got in trouble because she was worried I was too small and would get hurt, but I couldn’t find it in myself to regret the experience. 🙂 I think I remember watching my grandma care for her bean sprouts, pouring water over them in their darkened & lidded clay jar. I think I remember my older brother or someone laying down another large rock between the others ones for me to cross over the low part of the stream because I was shorter than most of the other kids, who could hop between the further set stones. My memories are all very fragmented. I wish I could remember more. I just know I was as happy as any kid could be.

Oh, I also remember going “fishing” in the stream. We’d get a large towel or sheet and lay it across the streem, one person on each side, holding it vertically into the water so that the stream would filter through the material on its way downstream. The stream was so full of fish that we’d catch a couple of little things every time. I think once we brought them back to eat, but most of the times, we just let them go.

The other thing we used to do is go collect the special kind of snails that my grandma would cook up. We’d run out to the thorn bush outside her house and break off a large thorn for each person, so that we could use them to pick out the snails from their spiral shells (or whatever they are called). Ah, good times.

Stuff I was gonna blog about but didn’t

• “Love” as an action verb that describes a complete set of emotions AND behaviors that bear out and back up those emotions, rather than simply a word that describes a transient feeling coupled by action that does not reflect those supposed feelings.
• “Pastwatch” by Orson Scott Card as a template for examining my current habits and behaviors based on my younger experiences.
• Visit by a friend I haven’t seen in 12 years, since the summer I turned 17.
• Finalization of travel plans between London and Paris.
• End of year reflections.
• Life, family, friends, and how to value them and let them know they are valued.

sick

It looks like it’s the season of getting sick. First, it was Seppo. Then it was Roopa. Then, it was Seppo again. Then it was Uyen. And now, it is me.

I think I have the stomach flu. I thought it was food poisoning, but I think I’m wrong. Monday at work was a sheer disaster. I had a non-stop barf fest yesterday. I barfed after I drove up to Seppo’s work. Then I barfed in the bathroom of the restaurant we met Seppo’s parents in. I had to leave the restaurant and lie down in the car, it was so bad. Then I barfed when I got home. Then I slept for like 3 hours, then got up and barfed again, spending about an hour with Roopa before going to sleep.

I’m pretty sure barfing again this morning would help things feel better, but I honestly don’t think there is anything left in there. I haven’t felt this awful in years.

t-day week(end)

I have no idea what I did on Tuesday, but here is the rest of my week.

• Wednesday:
• Go grocery shopping
• Go to doctor’s appointment
• Go grocery shopping again to pick up pie crusts I forgot the first time
• Drive to Bart station to go to SF to visit with Holly and help unpack some things then have dinner
• Rush home then to the airport to pick up Roopa
• Bake two pecan pies while chatting and fall asleep.

• Thursday:
• Wake up to call from younger cousin who is driving up
• Go back to sleep and wake up late
• Take Roopa to Bart
• Drop by Seppo’s parents’ to pick up cranberry-orange relish and sweet potatoes and grab a bite of sushi as well as bring some home to a sick Seppo
• Let Andrew in when he arrives,
• Go to Bart to pick up Holly
• Go shopping with Holly to pick up some greens, sald fixings, and a crudite platter
• Start gravy as Seppo works on butterflied turkey, realizing too late that it’s a really long gravy recipe
• Receive guests (Uyen, Charles, Long, Charlotte)
• Get food out a full hour later than estimated — heh
• Eat and eat and chat for hours

• Friday
• Sleep in
• Eat leftovers
• Hike around Lake Temescal with Seppo, cousin, and dog
• Dinner with Holly and Andre (tgf meet-n-greet? hahah) in the city, followed by hanging out at her house

• Saturday
• Lunch with Eugene and Andrew (older and younger cousins from different branches of the family) at Sahn Maru — Thanks, Eugene!
• Bring back take-out for sick-again Seppo
• Watch first episode of Freaks and Geeks, one of my NaNoWriMo rewards
• Work on NaNoWriMo for the first time in days

• Sunday
• Eat breakfast Seppo made
• Take Mobi to dog walk with Seppo
• Drive into city to meet with Leila and Roopa, then pick up Holly
• Enjoy tea for hours at Lovejoy Tea Room
• Hang out at Holly’s house with the girls
• Come home and finish NaNoWriMo
• Rewrite my self-review and finish a co-worker’s peer review

I think that was the gist of it.

Vacation: Day Three

I’m taking off the three days before the Thanksgiving day break. Counting the weekends, that’s a total of nine days off! Woo hoo! I don’t know when I last had so much time off to myself when I wasn’t going off to visit various people.

Sometimes, I need to just decompress. And I’ll have that chance! Yay!

So, today is Monday, day three of the nine day break. So far today, I slept in late, finished reading a book while still lying in bed, took my dog out for a stroll around the neighborhood and then to the dog park, came home and put in a load of laundry, and posted some comments on some blogs. The next thing for me is to start cooking dinner at some point, maybe around 3? It’s going to be the oven braised version of the short rib dish I made some time ago. I’m hoping I learned something from last time: use only a little bit of liquid, cook at a lower temperature for far longer, and use more seasoning.

I’m hoping I’ll get a little nap and some cleaning done too. Hee hee. I am giddy just thinking about the afternoon nap.

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I’ve been messing with WordPress and have migrated a snapshot of my blog to this test set-up. The thing I like about it is that all the entries are stored in a mysql database, and switching layout and themes is simply a matter of switching the css file, rather than having to “publish” all the content again to html files, as with blogger. I appreciate that the content is in fact quite independent of the layout. It makes a former UI engineer’s heart sing.

At the same time, I feel wary of moving it over, as I don’t know if frequent visitors will dislike the commenting system, or if I’ll get spammed by the blogspambots (whatever they are called). I also like that blogger has an external (to my server) backup of all my data, if something should go wrong with my setup.

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We booked a place to stay in London for our honeymoon! It will be half a block away from Oxford Street, right by the northeast corner of Hyde Park, a wimpy child’s stone’s throw to an Underground station. And what a deal it was. I highly recommend looking into Bidding for Travel, quite an aesthetically displeasing website that nonetheless has an amazing amount of information. It’s a website where people provide (free) expert help on bidding strategies on Priceline and Expedia. For instance, for hotels, here is a 13-part form you have to answer about where you want to go stay, what kind of accomodations you want, and what the lowest advertised fares you found were. Then they give you back a complete and detailed bidding strategy on how to get what you want at the lowest price. These people are scary, but really really competant.

I was able to take advantage of a bunch of discussions people were having about recently accepted bids in London, so I didn’t have to fill out the form. Now, we are trying to figure out which exact place to stay in Paris. We are going with our friend’s recommendation and will arrange for accomodations with Kudeta Home. They have several places where we want to stay, so we have to figure out which we like.

Seppo and I are quite excited about the prospect of eating our way through London and Paris. It’s so terrible! Yet so awesome. 😀

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Our invitations are coming along nicely. We’ve been playing with paper and fonts and think we are pretty much settled on what we want. Yay!

Solicitation for travel information

What specific places do you think we should see in London and Paris? What specific eateries and lodgings do you recommend? What tourist traps are ok to pass up? Lay it all on me, people. I know you have information.