the world is your acorn

Thank god we’re not the only ones who noticed. The first time The Little Redhaired Girl and I came to Nashville together we were very confused by the “Four-Forty Pkwy” signs, and now at least we know that others think it’s strange too:

I Wanna Know [Nashville is Talking]

Yesterday Mischief Man showed a couple us The Racial Slur Database, and we talked briefly about the twinkie/banana thing (white on the inside, yellow on the outside). That got me thinking about how, growing up, I wanted so desperately to be the same as everyone else; everything that was different about my family I attributed to being Chinese. Some of the things were clear, like not wearing shoes in the house, eating rice with every meal, the color and texture of my hair, Chinese School on Sunday mornings. Some things were probably indirectly related, like the violin and piano lessons, the academic pressures, never being allowed to sleep in. There were other things though, which I don’t think I can blame on our heritage or my parents’ immigrant status, like mom’s conviction that pretty much anything would cause cancer, including eating ham and hot dogs, or standing in front of the microwave. Or the fact that both of my parents worked full time.

I didn’t fit in with the Chinese School kids either, because they all lived in different towns, their families socialized with each other, and they went to public school where there were tons of other Asian students. So it was strange for me growing up, with no one to sit me down and explain why your family is different. Or that it’s ok. Now that I’m grown I just do my best to participate in both cultures in my own way. There are still little bits of me that yearn wistfully for the basic american things, like mashed potatoes and gravy. At the same time, when the Taiwanese students walk by at school speaking Chinese to each other, I always get a pang of nostalgia or indentification, but it’s not actually a culture I ever belonged to.

I don’t know how I started on that. The point of this post was really just to say that I made macaroni and cheese for the first time last night. Not the kind from Kraft, but with real cheddar and milk and breadcrumbs and stuff. It was ok, but I wasn’t in love with it. I just used the basic Joy of Cooking recipe. Maybe someone will give me some tips for next time.

I have to say, I had quite a nice weekend. After a disappointingly unproductive homework day on Saturday, I attended a fun party at a school friend’s house down the street. It was fun enough that I didn’t get home until 4 in the morning, and was feeling a little rough the next day.

I didn’t get out of bed until almost noon on Sunday, after which The Little Red-Haired Girl gave me a haircut (quite successfully, this time), then Everything Guy came over to discuss a paper that we presented in class today. We steamed some fish for dinner, which was ok, then it was back to the homework. I guess having the party to break up two days of school work was needed.

I want to spend more time blogging today, but I feel I ought to buckle down this week so I can enjoy going home to visit more. yay!

So, it shouldn’t come as too big a surprise that I am, again, sitting at home waiting on Comcast. Late last week we discovered that the “extended” part of our cable no longer works. It’s unclear why. Our Tivo attempted to record “Celebrity Poker Showdown”, “The Daily Show”, and other such cable gems, but got only fuzz. Of course, being Tivo owners who watch everything a couple of days behind the rest of the world, we didn’t discover this until about 10 hours of daily fuzz had been recorded.

Why, Comcast, why?!?! What did we ever do to deserve this treatment? We’ve been so patient: kept you in our move from Boston, waited a month for you to install our internet, played your reindeer games, and still you are going to treat us like this?

update: The guy finally came, 45 minutes late, and fixed the problem in 10 minutes. Apparently some other guy came and put the filter on for the wrong house earlier in the week. Then the guy, noticing that I have Tivo, tries to sell me a subscription to Comcast’s dvr service with HDTV. I was tempted to ask if adding another service might result in my having to call Comcast’s support line twice instead of just once a month.

It’s Saturday, The Little Red-Haired Girl is at work, so I will try to make it a productive day. I’m just starting to really realize how much there is to do before I leave for Boston on Thursday. There will probably be a lot of downtime while I’m away, but I have to be honest with myself and anticipate that a minimum of work will actually get done.

In other news, the new karaoke game for PS2, Karaoke Revolution Party, came out this past week. A lot of games seem to come out around this time of the year, in response to which I’ve instituted a “Thanksgiving Gift” giving policy in our house. This year I’m getting, you guessed it, Karaoke Revolution Party. In anticipation, I made The Little Red-Haired Girl play the old K-Rev games with me last night. I’m really a terrible singer, but for some reason these games are just wicked fun anyway. It sure did make me miss White Debs though, who used to tear that shit up back in Somerville.

Etsy is a site for people to sell and buy handmade items. They say, “If human hands put some love into the object, odds are you can sell it on Etsy.” You can find art, bags, jewelry, books, and lots of other stuff. I think it’s a neat idea, and a cool place to find unique gift items. If I made stuff I’d maybe try to sell it there too. But I don’t.

I’ve been playing around a little with two sites that feature people tagging. The first is Tagalag, where you can build a profile which includes relevant rss feeds, then “Manage your identity”. You can give yourself tags or tag others (I think only if you know their email addy, and you can search for aothers according to tag. There’s also a mapping function that shows you the location of other users. Pretty cool - it seems pretty new, so it will be interesting how it develops.

The other site is a member of the 43 Things family, which I’ve mentioned before. It has much the same layout, and uses your 43 Things profile (if you already have one). You can tag others on this site, leave comments, tell stories, and strive to meet other people (famous or not). It’s difficult to explain, but I think it would be a pretty fun site if more people got on.

Speaking of 43 Things and 43 People, check out 43 Places and All Consuming while you’re at it.

So I just went to get in the shower*, only to discover the soap was a little unusable sliver. I was about to get back out, and found that The Little Red-Haired Girl (or the soap elves) had left a fresh bar by the edge of the tub! AND, even though she made dinner, she did the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen last night, because I had a test to study for.
She’s so good to me.
Don’t tell her though, we wouldn’t want it to get to her head.

*I brought my hot new little Creative TravelSound speakers that I just got. Music in the shower is the best. Actually, it was kind of hard to make myself get out.

Yup, I’m having fried chicken for breakfast. Nothing like some good old fried fatty meat to sustain you through a stats exam. Yesterday before rushing off to school in the morning I cut up a chicken, and when I came home last night, The Little Red-Haired Girl had perfectly fried chicken and baked sweet potatoes waiting for me. Yum!

So I think I am ready for this stats exam. I’m going to do some cruising over the material before class, but this is about as good as studying gets for me. I’ve been reviewing and rereading for days, and Everything Guy came over last night for a few hours for a study session. It helped to have him here to talk through stuff to make sure we understood stuff. Of course this will be, again, the exam that never ends with an in-class section as well as a take-home part for the weekend.

I have all these web goodies that I want to talk about too, but I think it’ll have to wait until this afternoon

via Boing Boing:
Back in July, Kyle started with one red paperclip. He traded it for a fish pen. Which he traded for a doorknob. Which he traded for a portable grill. Which he traded for a generator. He hopes to continue trading up until he has a house. Or an island. It’s pretty interesting.
On Red Paperclip