...THIS all day long. 'Nuff said...

This past weekend I traveled to Northern California to attend my cousin's wedding. I left early on Saturday morning and drove and drove and drove. I drove for 4-1/2 hours until I got to Santa Nella, CA, where I stopped at In-n-Out and had an animal style cheeseburger and fries. I also bought some gasoline and used the facilities. Before I had my car engine rebuilt, I would have had to stop much earlier, but the old car gets really good mileage now. :)

I arrived at my sister's house at around 4:30. They live kind-of out in the woods in Angwin. And, because they only live at this particular home part-time, they had no phone, no internet, and no TV. Also, because they are in the middle of nowhere, they get no cell service. I honestly did not like that much quiet, although some people might find it relaxing.

Monday morning was raining in Vancouver. Luckily, by the time I went outside, it had stopped coming out of the sky, and, though it was cold, it did not rain on me for the rest of the day. I got dressed and walked across to the street to visit Christ Church Cathedral, which is the oldest cathedral in Vancouver. It is a quite beautiful church. It is small but very nice. I took some pictures and left. Matt kept wondering why I was going to church on Monday. LOL

It was finally time to go to the Convention Centre. I snagged a comfortable place on one of the couches and worked on my paper a little bit while I was waiting for Dr. Mitchell. Oh yes, I still had to work on the paper. The discussant from Friday's presentation actually emailed me with some comments and recommendations for the paper (since he'd actually read it). We took some of his suggestions, so I had to make a few changes to the document before getting it ready for publication.

Dr. Mitchell showed up close to the appointed time, and we talked about the paper for a couple of hours. It is kind-of weird. At some point I realized that I am part of it all. I'm not just some student anymore. I'm a real researcher with real things to say. It's a kind-of weird feeling. I've been savoring it for some time now.

Dr. Mitchell went to do some souvenir shopping before going home, so I grabbed a quick lunch and went to another session. This one was on a new commissioned report on Title III. Also, Dr. Kenji Hakuda was the discussant, one of Matt's favorite researchers on bilingual ed. Matt was already at the session when I got there, since I was a few minutes late. The session was interesting but did not really tell me anything new. Also, the researchers did not even acknowledge that Title III has to do with immigrant students and only focused on English language aquisition. So that really just underscored the results of my research, that no one gives a damn about immigrant students and even the research community thinks it's enough just to teach them English. Matt got to shake Dr. Hakuda's hand, so he was all excited about that. I gave my email address to the researchers, so that they could send me the final report and also an older report that discussed distribution of funds. So far, I have not heard from them.

After that session, it was Matt's turn. He was part of a roundtable on charter schools. The room was packed with people and tables, probably 20+ tables in the room. Each table had about 10 people around it, including the presenters. Matt did a good job. I wasn't terribly sold on the other people's research, nor on the moderator, but it was a good discussion. Matt made a good show of it, and was even able to show off his smarts by giving suggestions to the other presenters. Sadly, Dr. Thorson could not be there, due to family issues. So Matt was on his own. But he did just fine.

Afterward, we were feeling triumphant. It was time to celebrate!


We walked back to my hotel to drop off my stuff. While we were there, I remembered that, because of the fire alarm situation from Saturday morning, I had coupons for free drinks from the hotel. Yay for free drinks! :) We decided to check out the hotel restaurant downstairs, which was very fancy and very expensive. But, oh, so good! We ate, talked, drank, and had a very lovely time. At the end of the meal, I surprised Matt by picking up the tab. :)

This week I had two lunches out. Since I rarely eat out once in a week it was an interesting occurence of two very different experiences.

On Monday I went to get my hair cut. I was surprised (happily) to run into Virna and Lisa. Virna was celebrating her completion of her first (and she says last) marathon by having Lisa cut her hair. We chatted, and Virna invited me to join them for lunch across the street at Granville cafe. Febe also joined us, and that was especially lovely because I hadn't seen her in so long. It was a delightful time with great company and delicious food.

Contrast that with today's lunch. I went to church and met with some friends. We hadn't gone out for quite a while and finally decided to go to Souplantation in Pasadena. It was a similar occasion--people I rarely go out with and a friend I hadn't seen for a long time; four of us, just like Monday's lunch. But the atmosphere was completely different. One of our party felt the need to monopolize the conversation and to demonstrate her expertise on pretty much every topic that was brought up. It got tedious, and I had to leave the table more than once to give myself a break. It was nice to hang out with my other two friends, and we had some good conversations when we weren't being interrupted.

One week. Two very different lunches. Such is life.

I haven't finished this book yet, but I have read enough of Jacques Pepin's The Apprentice to know that I love this book! From Pepin's childhood summers spent on country farms to his apprenticeship and work in some of the best hotel kitchens in France to a stint cooking for Charles DeGaulle and then finally his adventures in America, I was completely taken by this story. I found myself amused as I read about Pepin's exploits as a young apprentice and amazed as I read about his experiences cooking for important French and international officials.

I was especially taken by the author's descriptions of food. Though I wouldn't want to find myself cooking--or even eating--most of the dishes Pepin described, his culinary sketches show such a true love of food that it is hard not to smile and imagine myself at one of his events.



Equally engaging were Pepin's stories of his life in America. As a chef in Howard Johnson's test kitchen, Pepin was instrumental in the success of chain restaurants in the United States. I celebrated with the chef as he fell in love and started a family. And there were always those amazing descriptions of food and feasts with friends and family.

I think the thing I liked most about this book was that throughout the book I got the impression that Jacques Pepin is really a nice man. Pepin became acquainted with some of the most influential people in the food industry--chefs, critics, restauranteurs, publishers--and befriended nearly all of them. He managed to become a celebrity chef before there was such a thing as celebrity chefs with a combination of talent, hard work, luck, tenacity, and a good nature. Overall, this book is engaging, entertaining, mouth-watering, and quite delightful. I recommend this book to anyone who loves food and a good story.

I love potato salad. I don’t know why. I think it’s the starchiness of the potatoes, the creaminess of the dressing, the crunchiness of the pickles and whatever else the chef decides to include in the recipe, the sweet-tart-salty mixture of all of the ingredients. Commercial potato salad will do in a pinch, but there is nothing like homemade potato salad. I don’t make my own, because I don’t have the patience to cook, cube, and chop everything that needs to be attended to. But, oh, how I love potato salad.

Taking insulin for the past 10 weeks has made diabetes very real for me. Instead of just taking pills twice a day, I now have to be constantly aware of my next mealtime, the number of pens in my refrigerator, where my last injection site was. And I hate it. Just as much as I love potato salad, I hate diabetes. Maybe more. No, definitely more.

And you definitely know that you are a diabetic when potato salad makes you cry.

I just read this article about some guy that ate a 15-pound hamburger. Actually, the hamburger part was 15 pounds. With the condiments, the thing weighed over 20 pounds. I know, it's gross. But isn't there some part of you that is intrigued? Come on, you can admit it. I won't judge. :)

So I just read that thinking a lot supposedly makes a person eat more. THAT must be it! I must be thinking REALLY HARD! A LOT!!! :)

Today I attended a birthday party for a one-year-old named Allison. She's the daughter of my cousin Janet and her husband Anthony. She's absolutely adorable, and the party was a lot of fun. It's hard to believe that my little cousin has a baby.

The food at the party was awesome. I haven't eaten like that in a long time. I'm probably going to regret it tomorrow, but for today, it was GREAT!

I got to meet some new people, including Anthony's sister Elaine and her friends. It's nice to meet new nice people. :)

The coolest part of today was getting to hang out with my cousin Liza. She looks so awesome, just for a regular person, never mind the fact that she just had chemo AND radiation. I'm so proud of her, and I know she's just going to keep on getting better every day.

Seriously, it's life at its finest--celebrating a young life, eating good food, making new friends, spending time with family, and celebrating life itself.

I'm always looking for ideas of how to keep myself on track with my health and how to keep myself motivated. So I thought this idea from a blogger on dLife was a really cool idea. The basic concept is that you choose just five things every week to focus on for five days of that week. Every day that you reach a goal, you give yourself a point, for a possible total of 25 points per week. The author rewards herself every time she reaches 20 points per week. She also had the idea to give herself a treat when she reaches 100 points.

I love this idea so much that I decided to try it myself. Today was my first day, and I think I did pretty well. My 5 for this week are:

1) Get up by 9am. I know, I know. It sounds funny. But between the working at night, the late night phone calls, and the insomnia, this is really hard for me to accomplish.

2) Test my blood sugar twice daily. I can usually manage once a day, but twice is hard for me, for some reason.

3) Wear my pedometer and walk at least 2500 steps per day. This is a two-in-one goal. I don't really mind wearing the pedometer; I just tend to forget to put it on in the morning. As for the second part, I guess I underestimated my activity level. I thought that reaching 2500 was hard for me (though the ultimate goal should be 10,000 steps), which is why I set it so low. Now that it's the end of the day, I see that I managed to reach almost twice that today. I'll reconsider my numbers next week.

4) No unauthorized snacks! This has been my nemesis these past few weeks. I have no idea why, but all of a sudden I became ravenous and craved salt. And it lasted for nearly a month. I snacked like crazy. Today that ended, right? :)

5) Walk the dog. I need it; he needs it. 'Nuff said.

I also made a list of reward for myself when I reach 20 points per week (scrapbook supplies that have nothing to do with birthday guild), 100 points (electronics of some sort--I have a list), and 1000 points (vacation of some sort--I have a list of destinations). We'll see how long it lasts.

So far I'm doing well, but as the day went on, I thought of 4 more future goals that I could very well have had for this week. It's just a reminder of how many things I need to keep track of with this diabetes thing. *sigh* Yeah, it's not a piece of cake--or even just avoiding cake.

I'll keep you updated. If this inspires you to join me, let me know. :)

If you know me, you know that I'm addicted to Bravo's Top Chef. Hey, it's food. It's people sniping at each other. It's arrogant, self-important foodies showing off their knowledge. What's not to love? So I was not surprised to learn that Top Chef has it's own drinking game. I was surprised, however, that I didn't know the rules. So when Chef Lee Anne Wong (from Season 1) blogged about it, I was eager to learn the game. Unfortunately, Lee Anne didn't tell us the rules, so I had to Google to find them. I managed to find them on another blog, where the blogger apparently did what I did. Tee hee. So here they are--the rules:

The Game

Break the group up into 2 teams--Judges vs. Contestants (or Cheftestants).

For the Judges, take one drink . . .

. . . whenever Padme says anything that she is totally unqualified to talk about. This usually ends up being anything that comes out of her mouth so be careful here. You might want to leave this one out of the game or you could end up passing out before the first commercial break.

. . . whenever Tom Colicchio makes a remark along the lines of “This is Top Chef not Top (whatever)”.

. . . whenever the guest judge happens to be a chef who’s probably not very well known outside of his cooking region. Take two drinks if he thinks he’s famous now that he’s a guest judge on Top Chef and feels the need to act like a jerk.

. . . whenever Gale Simmons mentions Food and Wine magazine, her real employer.

. . . whenever the guest judge is Anthony Bourdain. Take one additional drink for every pithy comment he says that the other judges are merely thinking.

. . . whenever head judge Tom Colicchio remarks about how he only cares about the food and not about whatever drama happens to be ensuing.

. . . whenever any judge asks a contestant what their inspiration was for the dish they’ve prepared.

For the Cheftestants, take one drink . . .

. . .whenever a cheftestant says something along the lines of “I don’t care if others don’t like me because I’m here to compete, not make friends”.

. . . whenever a cheftestant says they should have no problem with a particular challenge because it’s in their area of expertise. Two drinks if they fail the challenge.

. . . whenever a cheftestant attributes their poor performance to being so far away from family and friends. Two drinks when the show is filmed in Chicago and they happen to live in Chicago.

. . . whenever a cheftestant expresses concern that they’ve never had experience with an ingredient or appliance that anyone who’s worked in a restaurant should know how to use.

. . . whenever a cheftestant makes a “trio” of something. Two drinks if it’s a “duo” or “quartet”.

. . . whenever a cheftestant gets excessive with the adjectives in describing their dish. Two drinks if the adjectives sound like they came from a mid 1950’s copy of RedBook, such as “succulent”.

. . . whenever a cheftestant accuses another of stealing their ideas, style, ingredient, etc.

. . . whenever a cheftestant completely misses the entire point of the challenge. This includes, but is not limited to, the following: Serving poached lobster as your dish in a grilling challenge, creating an amuse for an entree challenge or using the featured ingredient as a garnish at best.

. . . whenever any plate garnish is purely decorative and inedible.

For both Cheftestants and Judges take one drink . . .

. . . whenever the product placement reaches obscene levels. Just like including Padme in the judges, this might be dangerous. Apply at your own risk.

. . . whenever all cheftestants express complete shock at finding out what a particular challenge will be. Two drinks if it’s completely unwarranted. “This challenge is cooking shrimp?! No!! I’ve never done that before!”

Since I don't really drink (for more than one reason), I don't know how soon I'll be playing this game. But it does sound like a lot of fun. I'll have to have a Top Chef party pretty soon. (If anyone is still reading my blog, remind me to post about my TC party idea.)

I don't think I've ever been able to communicate effectively how frustrating it is to be diabetic. I need to stick myself in the fingers, take too many pills, and watch what I eat. It's this "watching" that can be the most frustrating. (Well, that and the fact that the media like to say things like "eating too much fat can cause you to contract diabetes." CONTRACT??? Are you freaking KIDDING me???) For one thing, most people think that diabetics can't have dessert and that we are horribly deprived because of that. For the record, a cup of rice is worse for my diabetes than a small piece of cake, and this is not the case for every diabetic.

The frustration with my inability to express what it is like to be diabetic is often helped by talking with other diabetics (my favorite message board is here) and by reading articles about diabetes. I found one great one recently. You can read it here.

To compensate for my inarticulateness (is that a word?), read the article and, if you wish, tell me your thoughts.