the world is your acorn

vodka latke party this evening at our place. super fun, just getting to bed. more about it later.
just want to reiterate, super fun.
that’s all.

So, The Little Red Haired Girl and I have survived our first Christmas here in Nashville. Considering how many hits I’ve gotten on this site (the friedAppleBlurbs version of the blog, not lj) from the search term “restaurants open on christmas nashville” it seems like many people were in the same boat as us this year. Unfortunately I couldn’t help anyone in their search. My fam ended up doing a makeshift korean bbq dinner here at home. Pretty successful too, if you ask me. We did two versions of beef, one where I marinated thin slices of beef in soy sauce, honey, garlic, scallions, and sesame oil, and one where I used sauce from a jar. We also made some little side dishes with tofu, mackerel, cucumber salad, bean sprouts, and edamame.

We took mom and dad around some of the sights today before going to the movies and then picking up my brother from the airport. Then we had Chinese hot pot here at home for dinner. Now I’m just sitting, watching the Hannukah candles finish burning before going to bed. The Little Red Haired girl went to bed after lighting them, since she has to work in the morning. Mom and dad are back at the hotel, and my bro is watching tv. It’s quite a production having the family in town, but nice that they made the effort to come visit us in our new home.

Interesting note: mom has gotten so used to having The Little Red Haired Girl in the family that she now slips back and forth between English and Chinese when speaking to us. The Little Red Haired Girl can’t tell what is going on half the time, but can guess according to context and the random English words that mom throws in. It’s kind of amusing. I think it’s a good sign, in a way, that mom doesn’t use her “guest” filter. Also, the word “velcro” seems to be a difficult one for mom. We had a little lesson on how to pronounce it while waiting in line for movie tickets this afternoon. heehee.

Well, after a full morning of cleaning the house, The Little Red Haired Girl finally let me open one of my presents. We always get each other a bunch of stuff for the holidays; her family sort of celebrates Hannukah and mine pretends to celebrate Christmas occasionally, so we just go through the motions that we like. For example, exchanging presents. We don’t necessarily exchange presents with other folk (her family is all about it, but my fam only if we’re going to see them), just with each other. Today I opened the package that I knew (hoped) was going to be We Love Katamari. She opened her new slippers. We spent the rest of the afternoon rolling up giant balls of crap on the tv screen. If you don’t know about this game, you have to check it out. It is hilarious, low stress, totally silly, and does not take very much coordination. But completely addicting at the same time. I am now resentful that my parents are coming to visit not because of typical family ish, but because they are taking away from my Katamari time.

I dreamt that there are green bugs that hatch from cocoons, and if the cocoons were stuck to the underside of a leaf, then the bug would live its life walking upside down on the underside of surfaces. Nothing actually happened in the dream. At least there weren’t cave crickets involved.

Oh, did I mention that we now call our cave cricket “Martha”? So whenever we have to go into a cabinet where Martha has been spotted before, we knock and bang around a little, calling out “Martha, I’m coming in!” to give her a chance to hop away on her giant man-cricket legs.

This one is actually the theme song. BRings back memories, for sure:

Name That Theme!

So I decided to do holiday cards this year. I don’t really know why, except everyone else is doing it. Is that a good reason? At the very least it’s a good way to get my snail mail addresses organized and whatnot. And it’s something to do while I sit on the couch in front of college basketball games and disney channel cartoons.

The Little Red-Haired Girl and I bought a cheap (kinda ugly) little bedside table today from someone who had advertised on craigslist. When we brought it home, it had a Best Buy gift card stuck inside. We checked online to see if there was any money left on it, and there was. $30. Of course we promptly called the couple who sold it to us to let her know that we had found it. She asked her husband, who said that it was old and couldn’t be used anymore. She gave us permission to try and use it if we could. So now I have a free $30 for Best Buy! I mean, assuming the gift card works, and I can’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work if we could check its balance on the internet still. If it’s on the internet, it’s true, right?

So, The Little Red-Haired Girl said that I could use it to buy a game or something. I don’t really know what to do with it. I could start replacing some of the cd’s that were stolen out of my car. I could do something nice like buy someone else a present. I could be totally selfish and get a Playstation or computer game. I guess I ought to wait until after the holidays after gift exchanges have been made. Even though I have no patience at all, I think I might be able to wait this time. I have lots to play with in the meantime, including two books to read, a jigsaw puzzle, my research assistantship work, and lots of organization projects. Anyway, if anyone has any thoughts on how I might spend my $30, I’m open to suggestions.

Lifehacker points to TripStalker, a Windows downloadable that monitors the internet for deals on airfare, cars, and hotels. Seems like a great idea - I haven’t tried it yet, so if anyone knows anything about it definitely let me know!

… mine.

So, I haven’t been reading or writing much in terms of blogs for about a week now. I’m also getting behind in things like bill-paying, chore-doing, and other forms of friend-communication. In a good way though. I mean, exam period (which was just paper-writing, really), was pretty hectic, but I’ve been done for almost a week now, but still incredibly busy. I’ve been trying to be good about holiday activities, like buying gifts for my fam (who is coming to visit for three days next week, eek!), and sending holiday cards (which has not happened yet). I’ve been trying to clean up the mess that the plumbers and carpenters left, and it has gone slow slow slowly. There have been a lot of holiday social activities, which have been fun, but time consuming.

The Little Red-Haired Girl and I have also been doing a lot of fixing up around the house. It’s actually quite exciting. We bought a futon so my brother, Lady E. and Peaches (and other friends in the future) have somewhere to sleep when they come visit. We also moved the tv out of the living room so that it is no longer the focus of the space anymore. The Little Red-Haired Girl is sharing her office as a den, which is nice. At the suggestion of Everything Guy, we also moved the dining room table out into the middle of the dining room, so it looks more like a dining room rather than a room with a table in it. I think that, in the next week or so, we are really going to try and make this place feel more like a home. We’re both excited about it.

Tonight I am making seared tuna salad for dinner. I’d better hop to it. Sorry for the boring post. I feel like a lot of things have happened lately, but interesting only to me.

So, this morning I was running a little late because I couldn’t find my scarf anywhere in the house, and I had to get to a 9am meeting here at school. Anyway, I was walking at a brisk pace with my headphones on, when I passed a guy on the sidewalk. As we do here in the south, I looked up and smiled, and he smiled back. Then he stopped. Shit. He asked if I could help him. Damn! Damn smiling and trying to be friendly! I pulled one of my earbuds out, and listened to him with a sort of impatient look on my face, trying to figure out if he just wanted to know the time or if he was going to ask for money. He must have seen a funny look on my face and interpreted it as some sort of lack of understanding. Because then he suddenly started talking in broken English, as if I don’t speak the language, and would understand better if he spoke ungrammatically correct sentences. It went something like this:

Would you help me, please? See, my car ran out of gas, and my phone doesn’t work… Phone no work. See, no work (here he starts pushing buttons on his phone to show me). Me, live far. Far far away… Phone no work… Do you have… just one dollar?

At this point I just said, “Sorry, I got nothin’”, and walked away. I mean, come on! Even if I weren’t a native English speaker, which I am, there is a good chance that I can understand proper English better than whatever your interpretation of my English as a second language. Sheesh.