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Thursday Thirteen #29 - Random Tips
2008-01-17 03:49:00
I'm going from geeky tips to random household (and work) tips this week.If you microwave soup in a bowl, place a potholder under the bowl before putting it in the microwave. That way you don't burn your fingers on the bowl trying to get it out.Use a plastic knife to fish toast out of the toaster. This is especially handy at work where plastic knives abound.I use chopsticks at home for the toaster and toaster oven. Just don't use a metal knife!Use a plastic knife to cut brownies in the pan. Works better than a spatula and doesn't scratch up your pan like a metal knife.If you make brownie bites in a mini-muffin pan, grease the pan generously and run a toothpick around the edges to free them up afterwards.When making a 13"x9" cake, run a spatula around the edges and underneath as much as possible, put a cutting board over the top and flip. I've been baking these forever and on the last rectangular cake I made, I totally forgot and tried to catch the cake with my hands only to ...
More About: Tips , Random , Thirteen , Thursday

Barnes and Noble vs. Amazon
2008-01-16 04:22:00
I have nothing against the brick and mortar Barnes and Noble stores. In fact I have fond childhood memories of going to the Barnes and Noble in NYC and being in complete awe of what I believed was the biggest bookstore in the world. My parents would take me on special trips to the city to buy either books from Barnes and Noble or sheet music from Patelson's (this was way before the internet and SheetMusicPlus). Back then it was the only way to purchase books that weren't carried in the mall bookstores or sheet music beyond your intermediate player. These trips were pursuits of knowledge and art and were always held dear to me.Now that the internet is here, I rarely step into bookstores. If I'm looking for a bestseller, I can often find it at BJ's Wholesale club at a price comparable to Amazon . I will visit Barnes and Noble or Borders occasionally, but only if I have a gift card or coupon (and often it will still cost more than Amazon). Now I could go into Barnes and Noble...

Wordless Wednesday - Happy Hockey Player
2008-01-16 04:12:00
Thanks for reading this feed. Please stop by to comment!
More About: Hockey , Player , Happy , Wednesday

Photo Hunters - Skinny
2008-01-12 02:12:00
Here's (not so skinny) Dova with her impossibly skinny Ariel doll. It's bad enough that the media glamorizes skinny models and celebrities, but bombarding toddlers with these super skinny dolls is disgraceful. Yes, I don't have to buy them, but how can you say no to that face and happy smile? And whose brilliant idea was it to make those tiny shoes for little girls to play with? I've taken the shoes from all her princesses (12 pairs!) and stored them safely away in a separate baggie to satisfy this mom's obsession with not losing pieces. And no, we still haven't found where she stashed the Little Mermaid DVD over a year ago.
More About: Photo , Skinny , Hunters

Pay It Forward - Valentine's Edition
2008-01-11 01:18:00
Karmyn over at Dreaming What Ifs... sent me these wonderful homemade cards for her Pay It Forward exchange. Now she did change the rules and didn't require that people continue the Pay It Forward on their blogs, but I decided to play along. So since September, I've been wracking my brains as to what I could make, as I am not all that crafty and surely no one wants a cute piece of software code. Finally, I decided on these little knit hearts, based on the Mochimochi pattern. No, they are not filled with potpourri, I am NOT that crafty!If you'd like one, leave a comment with your choice of color, red or purple. And to keep Karmyn's tradition, you are not required to Pay It Forward or even have a blog. I will randomly choose four winners on January 24th, so spread the word.
More About: Edition , Valentin

Thursday Thirteen #28 - Geeky Tips
2008-01-10 01:25:00
Since I'm solely a Windows user at home and at work, these tips are heavily Windows-centric. Still, these are ones that I swear by and you may not know of.If you don't have voice notes on your phone, or even if you do, use Jott to have your voice notes transcribed to an email to yourself (or even a blog or twitter post).In Microsoft Word, if you double-click the Format Painter toolbar button, it stays on and you can format paint to your heart's delight.On a windows computer, use the Windows-e key to bring up Windows Explorer. You can also use Windows-r for the Run command, Windows-m to minimize all windows and Windows-M to maximize. There are others, but those are the main ones I use.Use the Back button on the mouse. On a mouse that has more than three buttons (left, right, scroll wheel), it is usually a button near your thumb. My Logitech wireless mouse actually uses push left and right on the scroll wheel as extra buttons, so I program those to be Back and Forward (Alt-Left ...
More About: Tips , Thirteen , Thursday , Geeky

Wordless Wednesday - Knitted Strawberry Hat
2008-01-09 05:06:00
OK, not so wordless this week. I spent two months knitting this hat for Dova which she was apparently excited about, but when it was completed she refused to wear it. I finally begged her to wear it just for a picture and this is the best I got. Adam claims he would wear it, but fortunately(?) it is too small for him. The free pattern is from The Golden Fleece. I used red Lion Chenille and green Red Heart Super Saver with size 7 needles. Cast on 80 stitches and put in five row of seeds. The biggest question was what to do with all the green yarn carried between seeds. I started by weaving it in halfway between seeds, and ended up weaving it in every other stitch (see this photo if you are really interested). If I were to do it again, I would start the seeds at 16 rows instead of 20 and make the stem out of 6 or 8 stitches instead of 10. And make darn sure that the recipient will wear it!!
More About: Strawberry , Wednesday

Blogging vs. Nintendo
2008-01-08 04:59:00
Many eons ago when I was in college (that would be from 1983-1987) there were no ubiquitous laptops in dorm rooms, only mainframes and terminals in public areas. Even so, there were computer games, and talk on Unix (sort of like instant messaging), so things weren't all that different from today. Except that computer games were mostly text-based adventure games. In my senior year, I got totally hooked on larn, a rogue-like game where you could actually walk within text walls which looked like || and == and cast spells by shooting asterisks **. Geez, how much fun can that be? Apparently it was so appealing that I spent at least two all-nighters playing it instead of writing my senior thesis. I actually won the game (thanks to the walk through walls spell) before my boyfriend and was totally ecstatic. The fact that I let my school work slide almost jeopardizing my graduation date, was a bit disconcerting though. After that, I decided to stayed away from computer games because...
More About: Nintendo , Blogging

Photo Hunters - Delicious
2008-01-06 02:35:00
Here is Dova's Princess cake and how the court received her with lit candles. Believe it or not, it was actually quite delicious as well!
More About: Photo , Hunters , Delicious

Happy Birthday to Me!
2008-01-04 15:17:00
Since I'm officially rolling down the hill at 41, there's no need to hide under a rock like last year, right? Here are the fantastic hand drawn cards I received from my kids, thanks to Doug's efforts while I was at work. It was a wonderful surprise and frugal to boot. What can be better? Cards that are 100x better than store-bought and free (*cough* cheapskate)!This one is from Adam. I love the Red Cross, I mean ribbons on the presents.This one is from Dova. She didn't like how it came out and wanted to throw it away. Thankfully Doug saved it, as it is a fantabulous drawing of a Christmas tree!Adam helped Dova with this card, drawing the outlines and letting her color it in. She is really starting to understand how to color inside the lines.Thanks guys, I love you!
More About: Happy , Birthday , Happy Birthday

Thursday Thirteen #27 - No Resolutions!
2008-01-03 03:39:00
I've never committed to making New Year's resolutions and here's why.Better to have your long term and short term goals in the forefront of your mind everyday instead of once a year (I have been properly brainwashed by the Franklin system and Steven Covey).Reflection and re-examination of your goals should happen more than once a year, although once a year is a start. New Years Resolutions rarely work if they aren't already part of your mindset or lifestyle.If you really meant to do something, you wouldn't need a resolution to kick start you.Why wait until January 1st? Every day can be a new start.Change isn't something that magically happens, it requires real commitment, not an arbitrary change in date.Why set yourself up for disappointment when you fail to keep your resolutions?When people fail to keep a resolution they sometimes use it as an excuse not to try again. If it is a true goal in your life, failure rarely stops you (or at least me... tenacity is my middle name)....
More About: Thirteen , Thursday

A Spoonful of Sugar Makes the Medicine Go Down - Sometimes
2008-01-03 02:55:00
(Dova and Adam after our gingerbread house collapsed while decorating it. Adam is doing his Home Alone impression.)My little angel Dova fell ill on her 4th birthday last Wednesday and I'm afraid she got the dreaded illness I had earlier in December (more like all of December). Since I kept refusing to take a chest x-ray because I wasn't coughing up any junk and the doctor said my lungs sounded clear, I never got a diagnosis other that "respiratory infection" for the thousands of forms for my work (FMLA, short-term disability, etc.). We had taken her to the doctor on Sunday, but they didn't want to prescribe antibiotics until they got her test results back (bloodwork and a chest x-ray). Since she would've had to go to the hospital for the tests, we opted to wait until Monday. She seemed better on Monday so we didn't go, but then she got worse again on Tuesday, where the office was closed for New Year's Day. Finally, she got her tests today. Diagnosis? Pneumonia.Adam ha...
More About: Medicine , Sugar , Spoonful

Wordless Wednesday - Jumping in the Snow
2008-01-02 13:56:00
We've had more snow in December than in all of last season, to the delight of the kids. Happy New Year!
More About: Snow , Wednesday , Jumping

How to Use Your Blogger URL as an OpenID
2007-12-29 06:22:00
Blogger did away with the URL stamp in comments, but it did quickly implement OpenID on December 13th as I found out from CyberCelt. Here are the usual ways to get an OpenID: AOL openid.aol.com/screenname LiveDoor profile.livedoor.com/username LiveJournal username.livejournal.com Orange (France Telecom) http://openid.orange.fr/ SmugMug username.smugmug.com Technorati technorati.com/people/technorati/username Vox member.vox.com WordPress.com username.wordpress.comBut that doesn't do any good for folks on Blogger who'd like to use their blog URL. If you already have a LiveJournal, Vox, VeriSign or MyOpenID account, check out Simon Willison's directions. If not, here's a method that will work:Get a Yahoo account if you don't already have one.Sign up for an account on idproxy.net using your Yahoo account.Once you have logged in, the bottom of your idproxy.net dashboard should say:You can also use your own site as an OpenID.The directions will say to insert two lines code ...
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Photo Hunters - Messy
2007-12-29 04:44:00
With two young kids, today's theme of messy was quite easy.Here's Adam on his 2nd birthday deciding that markers are more fun on his hands than on paper.Of course, Dova felt the same way. This was taken when she was 2 1/2. Thankfully, they are both past this stage now. Happy New Year everyone!!
More About: Photo , Hunters , Mess

Thursday Thirteen #26 - Things our family received for Christmas
2007-12-26 21:49:00
Thirteen things that our family received for Christmas :Visit from Grandma. The kids had fun snuggling with Grandma in the mornings instead of bothering their poor parents.Chinese Hot Pot dinner with meatballs, tofu meatballs, squid balls (actually quite tasty), fish, shrimp, pork, dumplings, soybeans, spinach, zucchini, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, and noodles. Everyone was well fed.White Christmas. With all the snow in the past few weeks, we had tons left for a white Christmas. Grandma had fun making snowmen with the kids.Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii. Adam played this for 5 hours straight on Christmas day and got up to level 3. It made me dizzy just looking at it.A makeup kit for Dova. This was the one thing that she asked from Santa and spent the day putting on lip glitter over lip gloss and 4 shades of eye shadow on. With mom's help of course.Nintendo DS Lite Gold with Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for me. Only so that I can play Mario Kart with Adam . Not ...
More About: Family , Thirteen , Things , Thursday

Photo Hunters - Light
2007-12-22 06:07:00
The great thing about Flickr is that you can simply search for a term and see all your photos having titles, descriptions or tags with it. There were so many choices that came up for "light" that I'll offer a smörgåsbord (wow, thank you Firefox for adding all those accents) this week to make up for my lack of photo hunts in the last couple weeks.Impressive lighting array from the Richard Rodgers Theater in New York where we saw Tarzan.Beautiful lighted tulip vase from Tucker's Bistro in Newport, RI.Nothing says lights like Las Vegas. This was taken from my hotel room in Treasure Island.Recessed light taken by Dova. She takes pictures of the darnedest things!
More About: Photo , Light , Hunters

The Photo Card Curse
2007-12-21 16:33:00
Do you see this picture perfect photo card that was taken during Thanksgiving weekend and ordered in the beginning of December? It has not arrived yet and I had to have the order resent. It is December 21st already and I HATE TO BE LATE!!!! And this is not the first time this has happened to us...Two years ago, I ordered photo cards through Club Photo (now Winkflash) in the beginning of December. For whatever reason, they were totally backlogged for the holiday season and they didn't process the order for three weeks. Needless to say, I mailed the cards out after Christmas and swore never to use Club Photo again. Did I mention that I hate to be late?Last year, I ordered photo cards through Snapfish and they were promptly processed and mailed the next day. However, two days later, I got an email special from them for 20% off photo cards. I emailed them and they graciously credited my account for that amount. The cards arrived within five days and we were back to being on ti...
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Wordless Wednesday - Fun in the Snow
2007-12-19 01:40:00
Taken from the warmth of my home with my new 70-300 mm IS USM lens! Thanks Mom!
More About: Snow , Wednesday

Letting go of anger
2007-12-14 01:16:00
Note: This long diatribe has been sitting on my chest for years, so please skip it if you're only up for my usual chipper self...It has been two years since my father passed. Our relationship as adults was friendly and cordial, but not necessarily close. We saw each other about twice a year and he enjoyed seeing his grandchildren, calling them "golden boy" and "jade girl". He divorced my mother about 8 years prior to be with his girlfriend, eventually moving in with her in his last year. He was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer which in the last few months left him confused, angry and frightened. It was certainly not the man I had known my whole life. When I first heard that his condition was worsening, I paid him a visit to make sure he had his affairs in order, including power of attorney, etc. I had already known that he had appointed his girlfriend's daughter as the executor of his will because as he said "It would be more convenient because she lives in New York....
More About: Anger , Letting

Thursday Thirteen #25 - Things I did while sick
2007-12-13 00:35:00
What another sick post? Well, last one hopefully. Today was the first time in 12 days that I have seen a normal temperature. Woo hoo!! Three doctor visits and some free samples of Levaquin and Advair later, I am finally on the mend. Here are some things I did to pass the time in the last couple weeks (besides sleeping and coughing).I discovered Jeff Buckley. I had not heard of him before and suddenly 10 years after his death I'm mourning him anew. He and Kurt Cobain were born within 2 months of me but I never related to Kurt's music. Jeff is more of a kindred spirit. This video of Hallelujah (written by Leonard Cohen) brought tears to my eyes and I listened to the song on repeat on my iPod for hours in my fevered state. Check out Grace as well.I uploaded pictures from the kids camera (notice last post). I had to delete about 95% of the pictures of fingers, knees, the ceiling, the cracks in the wall, me in my underwear, etc.I organized in Flickr like crazy. I created si...
More About: Thirteen , Things , Thursday , Sick

Wordless Wednesday - Sperm Mousepad
2007-12-12 00:55:00
In my illness, Dova (age 3) has stepped in as photographer this week as offers up our sperm mousepad (see them swimming in the upper left corner?).
More About: Sperm , Wednesday

Happy 500 posts
2007-12-09 16:46:00
In my sickness, I totally blew by my 500th post with Thanks for the Well Wishes. Believe it or not, I'm still sick, not as severely, but still running a fever for the 9th day now. My head and neck are also hurting because I can only sleep without coughing on one side, so now my imagination and Googling are running wild with thoughts of meningitis. Anyway, I will lay low in blog land for a while so that I can concentrate on getting better. I don't even want to think about what I still need to buy for the holidays, let alone Dova's Birthday invitations which need to go out right away if we want to have a chance of having a party. Not good to be a sick mom for the holidays! Thankfully, Doug is doing a fantastic job holding down the fort and not killing the kids.
More About: Happy , Posts

Doctor Rant
2007-12-07 03:07:00
Image from Made in ENGLAND by GentlemenI love my primary care physician, she is an MIT graduate in Course 2 (Mechanical Engineering) which means she has perfect credentials (i.e. exactly the same as me). Wait, that doesn't qualify me to be a doctor... Oh yeah, she went medical school as well, details. Anyway, I had been running a high fever since Friday night with some minor coughing. On Monday, I couldn't schedule my usual doctor for urgent care so I ended seeing another doctor in the group and I was not impressed. Today, I had to go back again because I am STILL SICK and got another doctor and what a difference! So much so, I became infuriated thinking about my first experience. The first doctor was a young Indian woman (I have nothing against them in general, just this one). She looked me over extremely quickly, glancing in my ears and throat, listening to my lungs for a millisecond in each spot over my shirt, taking all of 15 seconds to do the entire exam. This is ho...
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Welcome back ClustrMaps
2007-12-07 01:59:00
I always respond to quick feedback (see comments on the last post), so ClustrMaps is here to stay. Welcome back!
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ClustrMaps banished from blogs everywhere
2007-12-06 17:42:00
I think ClustrMaps is one of the oldest widgets around and is the last widget to be removed from my blog (along with Flickr). As Skelliewag puts it in 50 Tips to Unclutter Your Blog:21. Remove widgets showing which countries your visitors are coming from. The internet is quite old now. It?s no longer amazing to us that people can visit a blog from overseas.Sniff! Sad but true. I'll visit you in this post. Thanks for all the overseas visits!
More About: Blogs , Nish , Banished

Thursday Thirteen #24 - Good things about being sick
2007-12-05 22:52:00
As I sit here suffering from what I'll dub the "Canadian" flu, it's always good to look at the bright side of things. Today I hit a high temperature of 103.6°F! Woohoo! (Trust me, I was not saying that at the time...) So here's a list of good things about being sick.I get out of work. Yippee!I don't have to tend to the darn kids, hard to do while bedridden. Although that doesn't prevent them from having tantrums on the floor next to my bed.I don't have to cook.I can use a laptop in bed.I can still blog (deliriously) if my temp is under 102°F.I can eat in bed.I don't have to shovel snow.I don't have to do any household chores like cleaning and laundry.I'll hopefully lose some weight as my appetite is not very good.I actually get to read the woefully neglected books on my nightstand.I get to sleep as long as I want (granted, waking up every hour with fits of coughing or the sweats).I can sleep with a kitty at my feet (always on my side, hmph!).I will eventually get better!
More About: Thirteen , Things , Thursday , Good , Sick

Wordless Wednesday - Michael loves to fly
2007-12-04 21:55:00
Here's Adam's cousin Michael jumping off our slide three years ago.And recently after completing a soccer head shot.
More About: Wednesday

Assimilated into the Disney Princess cult
2007-12-04 15:19:00
I blame myself for buying The Little Mermaid for Dova last year (yes, the original DVD is still MIA) and coupled with our trip to Disney World, she has gone completely Disney Princess mad. But me? Surely, I am impervious to such folly. However, not only did I ace Facebook's Name that Disney Princess quiz, I thoroughly enjoyed the new movie Enchanted. It was hilarious, sweet, and made all sorts of funny references to past princess movies. I kept catching myself with a huge grin on my face during the movie. Even Adam, the ultimate princess skeptic, said he enjoyed it. Apparently with an 8.1 rating on IMDB, we're not the only one who succumbed to this movie's charm. We actually went on opening night, where I went 1.5 hours before the family to secure tickets. Talk about dedication! Apparently resistance is futile.
More About: Cult

The Killing Fields
2007-12-03 22:00:00
I had the opportunity to watch The Killing Fields when it first came out in 1984 at MIT, with a Q&A session with Sydney Schanberg, but at the time was not up for a movie about genocide. I finally watched it on the plane last month. Unfortunately, I only had my new V-Moda Vibe Duo headphones and although they are "noise-isolating" they are not "noise-reducing" so I couldn't hear most of the dialog even with the laptop set at full volume (stupid Lenovo). I watched most of it without much dialog and could get the gist of the movie, but then I watched it again off the plane. Even without the dialog, it was extremely moving and the range of emotions was apparent, from fear to shock to hatred. Watching with the dialog definitely added another layer to the movie as there were many voiceovers that I had been unaware of. The interesting thing in the special features was a bio on the actor Dr. Haing S. Ngor. The DVD said:Born in Samrong Young, Cambodia, Ngor was a doctor (OB/GYN) engaged...