fungineering

becca sent me this and it's the kind of thing you feel like sending to everyone you know. it's part of a project vw did where they asked people to find ways to make everyday activities more fun..they call it the fun theory. happy monday!


while we're sharing, mighty girl posted a list of ways you can 'volunteer from your couch'. i bookmarked one, make a child smile, where you send cards or little presents to sick or chronically ill kids, their siblings or parents. there's another, project linus, and you make a blanket to be given to kids (or volunteer in the office, or cut fabric, or all sorts of things). the austin chapter meets every 3rd saturday.

threes

they say bad things come in 3's. today's 3 weren't really "bad," but certainly odd.
1. stacy and i went to williams sonoma for a free cooking class. they're every sunday at 11. exceeeppt this sunday, apparently. we walked in to an empty store and a bunch of salespeople with puzzled looks on their faces as we eyed them questioningly.
salespeople: can we help you with something?
me: we're here for the cooking class..?
sp: there isn't one today. they're every sunday in february at 11 though
me: oh. ..did you have them in january too?
sp: yep, on sunday at 11
me: isn't today sunday at 11?
sp: yep, but there isn't one today.

so we decided to make dinner one night this week instead, and went to sprouts to buy the 2 things we needed: shallots and white wine

2. of course, we get to the cashier with our wine and one little teeny shallot, and the guy says ohhh no sorry you can't buy this yet, it's only 11:46 and we can't sell alcohol until noon. we didn't want to wait, so we bought one shallot for 22 cents. the cashier said that was the most pathetic thing anyone had ever purchased. stacy was impressed he knew what a shallot was.

3. tonight i go to supper club way down south. there were supposed to be 2 shifts, a 7pm and a 9pm. so i show up at 9.. and all of the 7 people are still there, but no one from 9 is. so i sit down and they hand me a bowl of soup. i introduce myself, we chat. people slowly start to filter out.. but no one else came at 9pm. only me! was just a weird coincidence, especially in light of the way the rest of the day had gone.

aside from that though, it was a beautiful perfect day. 78 degrees! and bright and breezy. i finished up the girl who kicked the hornet's nest in a chair on the porch. it was lovely.

one hundred miles

..i wrote a paragraph about yoga, but realized the details are boring and unimportant. the gist is that i had been going to the really easy classes because i hadn't done yoga in a long time, and today i went to what i was considering the hard class, and it wasn't too bad. i've never been able to touch my toes, so yoga is a challenge.

(did you know your heels are ideally supposed to touch the floor during downward dog? the instructor said that the other day and i looked around the room and lots of people's heels were actually touching! mine have no hope. they're a good 6 inches off the ground. today i got down to 3 or 4 which i considered a win)

the best part was that i wore mom's leggings from the '80s to class today with a light pink tank top. (sent her this picture when i was sitting at a stop light in my car realizing how bright they were in the daylight). definitely stood out when everyone else was in various shades of black, gray, blue and burgundy. felt a little odd afterward in line at taco deli too.

and it was beauuutiful in austin today so i took a little walk around the neighborhood, still in the leggings. got a few strange looks, but it felt good to get some exercise. i was just looking at pedometers, but i think i'm getting ahead of myself. maybe i'll see how long i can keep this up. my guess is until wednesday when the cold weather hits. we're going from a high of 76 to 38 in 3 days.

two aunts, one recipe

think i feel a little bit of a cold coming on, so i'm headed to bed early this evening, but i wanted to leave you with the bok choy salad recipe aunt carol andd aunt margy sent me. 

it was very yummy and super easy, but i will say that you might only want to dress half of it at a time unless you're going to sit down and eat it all immediately. jeff and i halved the recipe and used one head of bok choy and it was enough for us for lunch, but the noodles do get soggy pretty quickly. i didn't add the whole 1/4c of sugar either, just a couple teaspoons.

she hid around corners

random topics today.. this afternoon gram and spanky suggested i hang around outside banks and scope out men carrying large envelopes in the hunt for a husband. we were all cracking up. surely there must be an easier way!

lots of fun things coming up in the next few days and weeks. craft project with old friends tomorrow. we're making something on this website.. but i can't tell yet because some are being mailed to blog readin' friends. and i get to see the little kids and the big kids at mandarin school which will be fun.

picked up the help from the library, which i've heard good things about from lots of people. i needed a different before bed book than the girl who kicked the hornet's nest because it occasionally freaks me out.

if anyone has a delicious bok choy recipe, that'd be most welcome. maj bought some and i'm not sure what to do with it other than a stir fry of some kind.

the sky above is clear again

maj thinks she might be gluten intolerant.. so today i made quinoa tabouli. she loves regular tabouli with bulgher wheat, so she wanted to try the gluten free version. not good, friends. the first problem was not ever having tasted or seen quinoa cooked (or uncooked, for that matter) i had no idea what consistency i was going for as the rice cooker bubbled away. this resulted in an emergency gchat session with my friend katherine, who sent me a picture of it cooked.

that part was easy enough once i knew what i was going for.

but the smell of it cooking (it may be more fair to say 'burning' in the bottom of the rice cooker) reminded me of high school when becca and i were doing a science fair project (which we won third place at the state level in the teams division for, might i add) testing the bacteria levels in different kinds of bottled, tap and lake/stream/etc water. we had to dip a loop into the water, rub it on an agar plate, and burn the loop to sanitize it before dipping it again. but you'd always get a little bit of agar stuck on it, and the smell of burnt agar is permanently imprinted on my mind. so needless to say, that started us on the wrong foot.

the second problem was the consistency. bulgher wheat is ricey, kind of toothsome (my favorite top chef vocab). but the quinoa was mushy and had an outer shell that would remind you of the shell of a pea that slides around when you bite into it. but quinoa is the size of cous cous, so the whole experience is a little more larva-y.

anyway i didn't mean to go on such a rant, but it was gross. :)

did you hear me cheering during the president's state of the union speech tonight?

ya chi

today i had the sealant redone on 3 of my teeth and i have never been so happy to go to the dentist. the last time i had health insurance was in 2008 in taiwan. when i went to the dentist i told him a spot was bugging me when i drank hot or cold things.. and he couldn't find it, so he handed me the pokey-tool and asked me to show him. thennn he told me i had no problem, it was just the 'natural morphological differences' in my teeth.

so it had been bothering me for quite a while. and now it's a thing of the past! writing them a thank you note tomorrow. and president obama. love that healthcare bill. are you excited about the state of the union tonight? i'll be cheering when he mentions the 30 million newly insured americans because one of them is me!