J e n L o k

Winter Break 2011

2011-12-03T07:56:00.002-05:00

Internet access, at last! I will have to post pictures and detailed blogs later with the usual gratuitous detail, but in the meantime I'll just say that this year's girls trip has lived up to expectations. Istanbul is a fascinating city and despite initial reservations has proven to be a fun and safe destination. We hit all the major sites, gorged on kebabs, yogurt, and baklava, and got just enough spices from the bazaar to make a couple dozen interesting meals. Tonight's our last night in the city, but we'll be going out with some of Beney's friends from the consulate, so we'll see how much trouble we can get into. Off to Paris before the crack of dawn, but so far this trip has been a blast!

Is This a Sign?

2011-08-15T11:28:00.002-04:00

I had a discussion with my dad yesterday in which he said that life will tell you when you need to slow down and reassess. In other words, when a series of bad things happen, it's the universe/God/some other cosmic force telling you that something is seriously wrong and you need to change things. With that in mind, I can't help but wonder if I have just been given the caution light after the following happened:

Got picked for AQR.

A/C broke twice within one month leading to 85+ degree heat inside my house.

Locked out of my house after taking the wrong set of keys and realizing it literally a second after the door closed behind me. Proceeded to pay a lot to get back in my house and then was lectured by the locksmith (mom-style) on why I shouldn't lock myself out of the house.

Just got rear ended by another car on my way to work.

Granted, none of these things are calamaties, but I don't usually see this high concentration of annoyances/b.s. in such a short time span. Maybe this is a sign that I need to take a break before December and go on vacation to clear my head and figure out if I need to make a major change. Maybe then all the negativity will go away.

Marathon Training - Day 3

2011-07-27T00:59:00.003-04:00

Day 3 of training was technically this past Monday. I drove up to Philly on Sunday night to get ready for a long week at work. You know how anxious I must have been because I actually got up at 5:30 AM on Monday and went to the gym to get in some weights and a 2 mile run. I was at the office around 7:30 and made it through the day with only 1 cup of coffee. I made it through Tuesday with just 1 soda, as well. Maybe the stars were aligned, but that level of physical energy and ability to function without much caffeine is really rare for me, so maybe more exercise is helping.

Then again, maybe that extra burst of productivity is from the Capogiro's gelato that I've had for dessert three nights in a row now. How I love coming back to the City of Brotherly Love!

Time for a Change

2011-07-27T00:46:00.002-04:00

I have to admit that I have a tracker on my blog so I can get some general idea of who's been reading my posts. Over the years, I received a fair number of visits from presumably unsure and terrified accounting staff and interns who had absolutely no idea what a certain accounting term meant and turned to the almighty power of Google for salvation rather than asking their seniors. Apparently my blog was the first thing that popped up if they Googled a particular term (hereafter referred to Blog Title That Shall Not be Named). Sadly, they were taken to my blog, where they instead got to read the randomness of a 30-something who was/is alternately jaded and elated with life in public accounting. I don't mind helping out the accounting newbies, but lately I've been getting more visits from people Googling the words "tied Asian girl." So, here's hoping that changing the title will ensure that my blog isn't the first destination for pervs with a fetish for accountants...

... and given that I've just used a ton of keywords that I wanted to avoid, I wonder what kind of visits I get after this post.

Marathon Training - Day 2

2011-07-23T00:07:00.002-04:00

I'll be the first to admit that a 3 day gap between workouts #1 and #2 is not a good start to a marathon training regimen. In my defense, however, I probably did burn a bunch of calories during that time just by surviving in a house that lacked air conditioning during a massive heat wave. My bedroom at one point was 91 degrees, which is just awful. I slept on the couch for a couple of nights with a fan running full blast. Needless to say, I was pretty grumpy until the repairman arrived a couple days later. A refill of freon and some fiddling with the a/c unit set things right again. It's times like that when I am really glad that I have a home warranty...apparently that repair would have cost $1K+, so that would have just sent me into an ungodly rage.

Now that I have returned to climate controlled luxury, I can start hitting the gym again. Today was a little better, finishing 2.65 miles, lifting for 30 minutes, and cooling down on the rowing machine for 10 minutes. Although my pace is still abysmal, I've got to start somewhere. Now. if I just tack on .5 miles per day, I'll be up to marathon distances in a couple of months!

Marathon Training - Day 1 (again)

2011-07-18T20:21:00.005-04:00

It's been a while since I've posted and also a while since I've seriously kept to a marathon training schedule. I have started marathon training multiple times, each time ending with me bailing and dropping down to a 10K. If insanity is defined as repeating an action over and over and expecting a different result, this would be pretty strong evidence of my level of crazy. Well, no more, not this year!

With that in mind, I'm taking to my blog to track my progress. For total humiliation, I would post my stats on Facebook, but that would probably lead to more binge eating than running, so this seems to be a healthier forum.

So far, I have done the following in my pre-race training:

1. Registered for the race on Oct. 30.
2. Downloaded a bunch of music to add to my Workout playlist.
3. Carb'd up for 2.5 months.

Tonight, I decided to start using up that fuel. Had to wait 20 minutes for a cardio machine to open up (seriously, there was quite the crowd, even at 9PM). Decided to lift weights until a treadmill became available and managed to not embarass/damage myself by dropping any weights on my foot. Completed 2.17 miles jogging at an 11-12 minute pace, plus another .5 miles walking for a cool down. Didn't have time to run more since there was actually a line of people waiting for the cardio machines even though it was 9PM. Generally felt good, and I'm thinking that an article that I read, which insisted that you should lift weights first and then do cardio, might actually be right.

So, I've established that I can crank out about 2 miles comfortably. Now, just need to repeat that another 12 times in a row and I'll be all set.

Wondering if this was a hate crime...

2011-04-08T23:35:00.003-04:00

Last night, someone threw a brick through the window of my parents' house, keyed their cars, slashed the tires on their cars, slashed a screen door, and threw a bucket of paint all over the patio to cover their tracks. Mom and dad were home when this happened but were unhurt. The police apparently took a statement from them but did not bother to talk to any of the neighbors. Is it just me or does that seem like a fairly basic and common sense procedure to talk to those living RIGHT NEXT DOOR who might have seen or heard something? Can't help but wonder why my family was targeted - perhaps because we're Asian? Wouldn't surprise me, nor does the fact that the police don't seem to give a shit. My parents did absolutely nothing to deserve this. I don't even care about the property damage, but this has just shaken their peace of mind and sense of safety in a community that was otherwise quiet. Teenaged pranksters typically don't do this kind of damage, especially when there is clearly someone home. The fact that the tires were slashed also reeks of attempting to stop my parents' ability to get away. They have lived in that house for 30 years and now I want them to sell and get the hell out. This was an attack on my family, and anger does not even come close to what I am feeling right now. Whoever did this, I hope you die in fucking agony.

Happy New Year (again!)

2011-02-03T21:34:00.004-05:00

Today is the Lunar New Year, the first day of the Year of the Rabbit. Lunar New Year is celebrated all over China as a major holiday, which means spending time with the family and eating LOTS of dumplings. Since I am an ABC (American-born Chinese) who happens to be in public accounting, Lunar New Year to me means spending 10+ hours at work with my work family and eating delicious Rigatoni D from Maggiano's. I wouldn't mind having the day off, but this isn't a bad way to spend it either! This is probably the first time in 10 busy seasons that I've felt this under control. We'll see if this calm streak continues, but I'm finding that the little things that people say or do that would normally eat away at me are not quite so hard to let go after all. Hopefully the nicer, gentler Me can repair some of the staff's psychological scarring that came with the stressed out, overcaffeinated Me from years past. Perhaps this attitude adjustment is the result of 1) not caring so much about what others think and 2) taking 3 weeks of vacation for the first time in 10 years. Both are probably helpful to reducing my blood pressure, and I think I'm going to continue to take 2-3 weeks off at a time near the end of the year to relax and recharge.

Since it is the new year, it's also time to check the old horoscope. Supposedly, this year is supposed to be good for Sheep people, like me. One of the forecasts that I read said, "Those compatible with the Rabbit — the Sheep, Dog and Pig in particular — will also find 2011's circumstances inspiring them to greater personal happiness and professional success." Not sure just how great that success is going to be, but that's a pretty good sign.

And that being said, just how accurate are these horoscopes? Generally speaking, I don't believe in things I can't see or prove. With that in mind, I did some googling (yes, it's a verb) and pulled a description of "my" personality traits as a Sheep to see how accurate it was. Based on the summary below, it appears that most of the little detailed predictions do not really fit me, but the general traits seem to hold some truth.

**********

Sheep personality traits
The most creative sign in the Chinese zodiac, those born in the Year of the Sheep (also known as the Year of the Ram or Goat) are often artistic, sensitive, sweet and charming.
Artistic - no, I'm an accountant. Sensitive - eh, maybe...depends on the context. Sweet - maybe when I was 2. Charming - LORD, NO...look up "awkward" in the dictionary, and my picture will be there.

Shy by nature, Sheep are not the most practical of people. As they say on Top Chef, This is spot on.

Outwardly dreamy and starry-eyed (nope, don't think I generally look spaced out), Sheep are inwardly anxious, insecure (right on), and usually find day-to-day living difficult and puzzling (certainly felt that way a few months ago...not so much now, except for trying to understand why the hell it takes over an hour to drive to Bethesda every day). As such, they often take refuge in religion, astrology or the occult. (this one's a bit of a throw away since I took the time to google a website on Chinese horoscopes)

Sheep are not overly ambitious (true), but once they find work that makes use of their considerable talents, they are passionate about what they do (10 years in public and counting). Typically surrounded by beautiful things (my one still-living houseplant), Sheep have an ardent love of creature comforts (ah, seat warmers in my new CR-V w/ GPS!) and are almost always elegantly dressed (that would be the #20 Ravens jersey!), but can become overly reliant on appearances (bogus prediction...clearly never seen me lounging around at home in sweats).

In business Sheep tend to be highly disorganized (don't think so...this Sheep was raised by the Supreme Tiger Mother, so disorganized = beating), but they usually enjoy great success as artists, actors, designers, and in many other creative endeavors (also not true..."creative" is not usually a good thing to associate with accounting).
Sheep are most compatible with : Rabbit, Pig, Horse

Christmas 2010

2010-12-31T17:34:00.008-05:00

Christmas was a much more relaxed gathering than Thanksgiving. That's mainly because our merry band of 17 wasn't joined by an entire dance company. We had a good time, eating, playing mah jongg, and watching movies. The day after Christmas was spent at the mall with my aunt, uncle, and cousin. The traditional after-Christmas shopping proved to be pretty rewarding, as I got two full bags of clothes from AT and BR. Someday, I may attempt to purchase clothes from other stores or purchase other brands, but for now, I'll stick to the ones that I know will fit me and not make me look totally age inappropriate.

This Looks Like a Good Omen

2010-12-30T19:34:00.002-05:00

Not that I really believe in this stuff, but just for kicks, I checked out my horoscope for 2011, and it looks rather promising, at least on the job front. Thanks, Yahoo and astrology.com for giving me hope that the universe will bless me with some good news in the new year!

******

Career Outlook
Any lingering clouds obscuring your professional vision will pass as Neptune leaves your career sector in 2011 in April. This is a momentous shift considering Neptune has worked to glamorize, spiritualize and at other times blur your professional aims since 1998. Neptune will retrograde back to unleash one last floodgate in August but the clarity gained over the spring and summer will support you through the imminent changes over the course of the year in preparation for more and more of your bigger dreams coming true between now and 2012. Your confidence in your talents and ability to make money is tip-top. Saturn remains in your work sector for another year continuing to deliver the teachings on what it means to value yourself and take yourself and your talents more seriously. No more settling for short shrift, Taurus.

A little bravado goes a long way in January and February with Mars firing up your career sector. Don't be afraid to push for what you really want. The squeaky Bull gets the promotion, so declare your intentions loudly and clearly while the opportunities are peaking. You have no problem working yourself to the bone to help others realize their vision, but now it's time to put that same effort into making your own dreams come true. Saying no to others is the first step towards finally saying yes to yourself. Your best moneymaking opportunities arrive just in time for your birthday. Working hard in June and July garners major pay-offs for a decadent vacation in August

Asian Invasion 2010 - Days 16 & 17

2010-12-30T18:19:00.011-05:00

Coming back from vacation meant that I was playing catch up (on work and sleep) all last week, so blogging the events of the last 2 days in HK got lost in the shuffle.

Day 16 (Thursday) was mainly spent reading, spending quality time with grandma, and then going out for a long walk with my aunt and my dad's cousin. They took me to the Kowloon Walled City Park, which is quite nice but has a pretty sordid history. The Walled City was a huge slum that sprang up over the course of a few decades and then was torn down in the early 80's. The Walled City had no public works to speak of (no running water, no sewers) and was basically a honeycomb of homes, shops, and sometimes both in the same space. It was fairly lawless, and drug use and dealing were rampant. The park used to be a place that most respectable people wouldn't go to. In fact, one of the placards describing the history of the park said that you could find people lying on mattresses, smoking on opium pipes. Any inner city project in the US would probably have been a step up from this place. It's no wonder they tore it down and put a proper park in its place. The next stop was the Chi Lin Buddhist Nunnery, which was built based on donations from the super wealthy in mainland China and HK. Each of those donors has their name written on the tiles that cover the roof of the main temple. The lowly people like myself can still enjoy the convent grounds, though, which are extensive and include a huge koi pond. After some shopping for gifts, we went back to grandma's place for dinner and an early night to rest up for the big hike in the morning.

Friday morning, I went with my cousin, his cousin-in-law, and the cousin-in-law's 7 year-old son to go hike up to the top of Lion Rock Mountain. Lion Rock is called that because the top of one of the mountain peaks in Kowloon happens to look like a big stone lion. We started out around 10:30 and made it to the top and back in about 3 hours. The views were gorgeous (lucky for us that the weather was cool but very sunny). I took pictures throughout the ascent, and it was pretty amazing to see the skyline go from above my head to well below. From the top of the mountain, we could see clear out to Victoria Harbor and beyond, where there were dozens of huge cargo ships navigating their way to or from HK. The path also had some interesting sights, including a pill box leftover from WWII. The Chinese and British had built it there as a defensive position against the Japanese that were moving through the mountains. While I suppose it makes sense from a strategic perspective (better to hold the high ground), I can't imagine trying to walk through those mountains in the dark, under fire, or at a sprint. I managed to keep up for most of the way but given the 2 week binge eating and general lack of fitness, I had to take a few breaks. It's a bit demoralizing when a 7 year-old can walk faster than you, but then again, little kids have boundless amounts of energy and no fear. That comes in handy when you get to the top and have to climb back down, trying not to slip on the well-worn rocks and staring down at the jagged treeline and boulders that would potentially break your fall if you happen to take a wrong step. Fortunately, there were no injuries, and we completed our adventure with lunch at Islam Foods in Kowloon City. I hadn't been to this restaurant before, but it is known as the best place in town for beef buns and curry. The food definitely lived up to the hype, and I'm going to have to keep that in my playbook for next year. After a nice long shower, I took a nap and packed since I had to leave on Saturday morning. My aunt and uncle took me out for one more big meal on Friday night. We went to a restaurant that specialized in Chao Zhou regional cooking, which was very light and kind of refreshing. There were lots of seafood and I got my fix of shark fin soup. As an extra treat, my uncle had brought a bottle of 2002 Dom Perignon, so I got my first taste of The Good Stuff. I felt like I should have been in a James Bond movie or maybe an episode of Cribs.

Saturday morning, I said goodbye to my grandma before my uncle took me to the airport. The flight was long and made longer by the screaming babies in the seat in front of me (2 toddlers who took turns pissing off everyone in the economy section). On the plus side, staying awake for the entire 16 hour flight allowed me to watch 5 movies and a couple episodes of Bones. Aside from HP7, I think I'm all caught up on the latest movies now!

So, now I'm back state-side, getting back up to speed at work and in life. The trip was great fun, and I do feel more relaxed and recharged. I still don't have a clear view on what my next move will be, but I feel a little more confident that no matter what I decide to do (whether it's to stay where I am or find a new job), I'll be ok and will have a solid group of friends and family to support me. Here's to a great trip, and hopefully another one like it next year!

Asian Invasion 2010 - Day 15 (and some other ruminations)

2010-12-20T09:46:00.001-05:00

My uncle’s stepson dropped Beney off at the Kowloon airport express station, so we said our goodbyes there. I spent the afternoon at the Space Museum with my uncle’s stepson and his cousins, which was cool since I hadn’t met them before and I hadn’t been to that museum yet. Again, it was small, but they had actual rides and buttons to push, so I was trying not to be a jerk and push the kids out of the way so I could play…but I really wanted to. I did some window shopping at Ocean Centre again but didn’t buy anything (have a sneaking suspicion that I can find the same stuff in the US for cheaper). It was getting late so I headed back to grandma’s for some more chicken soup and home cooking.

Beney’s leaving this morning marked the start of the “family part” of the trip and the end of the “party.” It was fun hanging out with Laura (comforting to know that I’ve got another friend in DC when I get home!), and it was nice meeting Kim (seems like someone I’d like to hang out with more if there’s an opportunity), but Beney’s been my friend the longest, so it was probably the most fun hanging out with her again. I don’t think it really occurred to me that we actually hadn’t physically seen each other in months. With Facebook, blogs, email, and Skype, we’re able to keep in touch pretty frequently, so it’s almost like we still know what’s going on in each other’s lives. I can see how that kind of reliance on technology can be a problem…if I can maintain a friendship without ever having to leave the house, then why leave? This leads me to the philosophical part of this post…those of you interested in the travelogue, you are free to roam the internet now.

As I mentioned yesterday, I bought a copy of Eat, Pray, Love, even though I really don’t like buying books just because it got made into a movie. However, the author wrote this book to talk about how she kind of “found herself” after going through a really rough patch in her life. There’s a part in the book where she says, “When you’re lost in the woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you’ve just wandered a few feet off the path, that you’ll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it’s time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don’t even know from which direction the sun rises anymore.” I rarely dog-ear my books, but that passage was a keeper – a very succinct way of describing how I’ve been feeling over the past year or so.

Something isn’t quite right with me (haha, I know that’s true most of the time, but there’s something even more out of whack than normal). I used to have a very clear direction – good grades in high school leads to good college leads to hard work for more good grades leads to good entry level job leads to good middle management job leads to partnership/executive position that pays gross amounts of money leads to nice house and nice car leads to nice guy and nice family leads to retirement and riding off into the sunset. I’m in that middle management spot and realizing that I haven’t a flipping clue whether the next step is one that I really want to take. I have been given LOTS of opportunities to succeed at work. I used to have the motivation to rise to every one of those opportunities and make them work (or find the courage to occasionally say no). These days, I am having a hard time juggling my small handful of clients, and I can’t put my finger on what the issue is. Lashing out at myself (and it really is just me, never anyone else on my teams) is scaring the staff and causing my bosses to think I may in fact be mental. This is not good for my professional career or my already fragile self esteem, so clearly something needs to change.

The book talks about the spiritual journey the author takes, partly through finding pure pleasure in food and language (got at least part of that on this trip), and partly through a spiritual journey to find “oneness” with “God.” She kind of loses me there, because I’m not a big believer in things I can’t see. However, she talks a lot about finding balance, forgiveness of oneself, and accepting yourself for who you are, warts and all. That makes a lot of sense to me – the people who seem to be the most even keeled are the ones who seem to take their hits in stride and not catalog them, obsessing over them, holding the occasional movie marathons in their head where they can replay their greatest catastrophes in order since their very earliest memories. The author seemed to find this inner peace through a communion with God and found some things that helped her to work things out, like writing to herself. Some of that sounded pretty weird to me, but it’s not so much about the specific technique she used than it is about finding what helps an individual to work through things to get to that “happy place.” For me, it appears that spilling my guts in a public forum is comforting, almost cathartic. I know that the only people who read this blog are friends, probably some folks from work (don’t worry – I don’t know exactly who since everyone’s IP address just shows up as some general server in NY), and clearly a bunch of newbie accountants who are googling the term ticked and tied. Really, people, ask your seniors.

I think this trip has made me realize that I need to make a decision fairly soon about my future at this firm. I have a few options – 1) rediscover my drive and fix those things that have been a concern for my bosses, staff, and peers (and especially me) for years; 2) talk to someone about the possibility of taking a sabbatical where I can take a few months or even a year off to recharge; or 3) leave and find something else that challenges me and makes me happy. I realize that this is also the order in which I will probably need to approach this problem. However, that first option is going to require some extra homework.

I have to really think about what drives me these days. I know I like being challenged intellectually. I can’t stand people who have absolutely no idea about current affairs but know all the latest celebrity gossip. I want to get into a good solid debate about North Korea, not about whether Eva should get back together with Tony (that one’s simple – No, once a cheater, always a cheater). My friendship with Beney has often been based on the fact that we were total opposites. Time has mellowed us out a bit, and I think she’s come a little to the right, while I know I’ve shifted quite a bit to the left. Still, our conversations are usually debates, but we are usually able to agree to disagree while perhaps walking away with something new to think about. So I know that a good amount of intellectual debate or problem solving is something that I need, something that makes me interested and might even make me happy.

Freedom. I have to say that working in public accounting affords me more freedom than I thought possible. I set my own hours, deal with clients and staff as I think best, and generally have a good measure of control over my own fate. I have been fortunate that I have not had to deal with a lot of micromanagers, so perhaps freedom to do things the way that I think they should be done, freedom to make mistakes, and to make my own decisions, is something else that I need. Frankly, it stresses me out when I get multiple rapid fire emails from the same person. I think on this trip Beney and Laura have actually seen me hurl this computer across the room at least once when I have gotten those 4-5 emails back to back to back. I know that some people think it is helpful to have that kind of stream of consciousness communication, but to me, it creates a very visceral, violent reaction (STOP STRESSING ME OUT, DAMN IT!) and tells me that a person doesn’t have the ability to put a full thought together and communicate it at once. It’s one of those deals where you think you’re done, but as soon as you hit Enter, another task, question, accusation, pops up that you have to deal with. It just seems like it will never end, and that’s the last thing you want when you’re on vacation. By full admission, I did bring this on myself to some extent. I told certain people that I would have access while on vacation, so I would be responding to emails periodically. However, the fact that I respond to an email tended to generate 2-3 immediate follow up emails, so my first few nights overseas were spent staying up until dawn working. That just flat out sucks, and the next time I go on vacation (whether it’s as an employee at this firm or somewhere else), the computer and the phone stay at home. And yes, I was told to do that on multiple occasions, but no I did not listen, so consider this one of those mistakes that I’m going to have to forgive myself for eventually and tell those people “you were right.” Ultimately, I suppose that freedom to fall flat on my face is something that I need to have in order to be happy. I don’t think I’m a complete moron, and I occasionally have some good ideas and even correct answers (though those feel few and far between, lately). I would like to be given the chance to voice those ideas and make those decisions with the blessing of those who oversee my work.

Money. It just had to be said. I feel like I’ve worked long enough to get paid a certain amount of money. I think that if I were to leave, this could be the most limiting factor since we got raises this year, and I will not want to take a significant pay hit. I do have options, like downsizing my house and being more diligent about saving my money, but ultimately, I need to get compensated well for whatever it is that I end up doing. I really like to travel, but to do so takes a lot of personal resources.

Ultimately, my whole life, it’s been about living to work. Now that I’ve been doing that for 31 years, I find that I’m really not that satisfied at work, I’m not disgustingly wealthy like some of my fellow graduates from the class of 2001, and I’m turning into a really bitter and hateful person. That last part is rather disappointing, since I like to think that while I’ve always been critical of myself, I’ve at least shown some respect and caring for others. I find that these days, I don’t really give a crap what anyone thinks, performance reviews and social norms be damned – I just turned into the world’s youngest curmudgeon. I really don’t want to be that. Hanging out with the girls over the weekend was kind of like looking into 3 mirrors…here are 3 other women in their 30’s who have their own careers going but also seem to have a social life and friends and a LIFE. There was just no denying that there is something missing when I look at myself in comparison (and no, I’m not saying all this touchy-feely crap because I want to be fun and popular like the other girls). These girls seem to be happy with what they do at work, but that’s not what defines them or what makes them happy. They’re more like work-to-live people, and maybe that’s what I need to try to figure out how to do. At this point, all I know for sure is that if E. Gilbert’s book is the answer, I’ve got the Eat part down pat.

Asian Invasion 2010 - Day 14

2010-12-20T09:45:00.000-05:00

Waking up on Tuesday morning was rough. Beney and I were still talking about the massive dinner from the previous night, and it was literally causing me a headache. I had certainly eaten a lot before, but this was actually causing physical symptoms like headache and nausea. We decided that we should head down to Tsim Sha Tsui for some coffee. We had a super cheap breakfast at Café de Coral, where we each got the congee and fried turnip cake combo. It looked like a lot of the people who go there opt for the typical Western breakfast consisting of bacon, eggs, and sausage. That might have been ok on another day, but congee to me is food that you eat when you’re getting over a nasty stomach bug or your own idiocy in not knowing when to stop binge eating. In any event, it worked, because I felt a lot better after that meal. I had to try to get some stuff done for work, and I hadn’t been able to connect to our network, for some reason (TSS – you’re on notice – please figure out a way that connections through option 2 don’t time out…isn’t the whole point that you’re not in the office and on someone else’s slow-ass connection?). In the end, I spent a few hours trying to connect again but to no avail, so I emailed the staff and hopefully it’ll get taken care of. By that time, we had to head over to Ye Shanghai to meet my aunt and uncle for lunch.

The food fest this time around was much more refined. Ye Shanghai is in the Marco Polo Hotel, and it has a pretty refined atmosphere. The wait staff is very professional looking, speaks in a soft, respectful tone (different from the tone at local places, where the scream at you because they can), and has a delicious classic Shanghai menu. My uncle did the ordering, which included smoked eggs, soup dumplings, soup dumplings with crab, Peking duck served 2 ways, rock shrimp, and braised soft tofu with bok choy. This sounds like a lot for lunch, and it is, but the portions were mercifully normal HK-sized. We ended lunch with chestnut soup and black sesame rice ball soup with osmathum flowers. So much for never wanting to eat again!
We said goodbye to my aunt and uncle and headed to the Art Museum, where we spent a few hours exploring the jewelry and calligraphy collections. The gift shop also had some cute handmade ornaments of zodiac animals; Beney bought one for herself, parents, and brother, and I bought one for Mel.

After our cultural fix, we headed over to a Chinese crafts store, where we were hoping to find a nice shirt with simple embroidery for Beney. Unfortunately, a lot of what you find in those stores is either really gaudy or cheaply made, so no shirts were bought that day. Instead, we headed back to Ocean Centre where there’s a Page One and we browsed the book stacks for a few hours. Beney bought some behemoth magazine that has bookmarks and which only the intelligentsia read. I bought a HK guidebook (since I realized I didn’t have one and needed to figure out where the hell I was going) and a copy of Eat, Pray, Love. Something about the premise of a 30-something woman deciding to solve her existential crisis by eating her way through a foreign country and finding inner peace spoke to me. We bought our reading material and then headed to Din Tai Fung, the Taiwanese dumpling chain that will soon be the next Chipotle, just mark my words. On a side note, how delicious would it be to have some kind of dumpling/burrito lovechild? Maybe a carnitas and guacamole-filled dumpling? It’ll be like a savory Twix (two things that everybody loves, stuffed into one convenient bite). Just in case this idea takes off, I want it known that I blogged about it first, therefore I am entitled to royalties.Back to Din Tai Fung. I think it should be recorded that dinner consisted only of dumplings with pork and crab filling, sticky rice with pork filling, jellyfish, dumplings in soy and chili sauce, and a plate of water spinach with garlic. Dessert was a bowl of almond jello that Beney and I shared. Let it be known that the portions here were also rather normal-ish and that the dinner consisted of a dish made entirely of a vegetable (a fiber-packed, leafy green one, at that). Clearly, the end of this trip is in sight, and I need to start detoxing. We finished up dinner and headed home so that Beney could pack and get some rest before another early wake up call.

Asian Invasion 2010 - Day 13

2010-12-20T09:26:00.008-05:00

On Monday morning, Beney and I got up early (that’s what happens when grandma gives you grief and makes you go to your room at 10). We had a breakfast of toast and egg tarts (yum!) before heading to Star Ferry, where we took the trip across to Central. Star Ferry is one of the icons of Hong Kong, and although it’s supposedly changed, it’s still a convenient scenic ride across the water. We took a cab to the botanical gardens and zoo that are near the US Consulate, which is also near the Peak Tram. Since it was so cloudy, and a Monday morning, there was absolutely no line for the tram, unlike what we experienced on Saturday afternoon. The botanical gardens were quite lovely and tranquil, with lots of plants I hadn’t seen before, and with a greenhouse that featured carnivorous plants (sadly, it wasn’t the height of the summer when the amount of mosquitoes, flies, and other insects would have made that place a virtual Fogo de Chao for a venus fly trap) and orchids. The latter are my favorite, and I think my grandmother’s, too, so I took a decent number of pictures of each one. After a leisurely stroll through the gardens, we headed around the bend to the zoo, which is connected. It should be noted that just getting to this place is quite hilly, so there’s no sense in trying to race through the garden and the zoo at warp speed…it’s too small for that anyway. Really, when the aviary consists of maybe 3 dozen types of birds, the primate section consists of 3 orangutans, and the reptile house has exactly 4 reptiles, there’s not that much to see. Then again, when you’ve only got that much space, building a high-rise zoo would be pretty detrimental to the animals. Since we were near LKF and the Wan Chai district, we strolled through the alleyways there, many of which are crowded with food stalls, especially during lunch. We wandered around for a long while, trying to find a place that didn’t look too seedy and which didn’t look like we’d have to wait too long to get served. We ended up at The Dumpling Garden (my literal English translation), where it turns out that the soup dumplings (pork and chive) are actually pretty good. The cold sesame noodles were also pretty tasty and a nice respite from the heat (it was only in the 70’s but HK is HUMID).

After finishing lunch, we made our way over to the Central Escalators, which is apparently the world’s longest set of people-movers. It is a rather interesting way to see the Mid-Levels section of Central, which can be extremely tricky to navigate. You can literally see a sign for a shop that you want to go to and then wander around for hours, passing by that same sign at different angles just trying to find a way to get in. It’s rather like Northern Virginia in that sense. When the escalator ride was done, we headed over to the Sun Yat Sen Museum, which is rather different from the other museums that we had seen. The others had the very traditional facts-only version of events and did not really take on a pro-China or pro-Britain tilt, as easy as that might have been. The SYS Museum, though, was solely about the founder of modern China (he overthrew the last Emperor, Pu-Yi). The term comrade was used throughout the museum and the distinctly Communist bent was not unexpected but still a little odd. Keep in mind that a kid growing up in the 80’s in America is pretty much hard-wired to think that Communism = bad. The history lesson out of the way, we headed back to grandma’s to change and get ready for dinner with my uncle.

My uncle is my dad’s younger brother, and they do look quite alike. My uncle has lost some weight since the last time I saw him, but he seems just as jovial as before. And he is a foodie. This is why when I told him that we would like to have seafood for dinner, I had an inkling that we may end up in the place where we actually ended up. The New Territories is another section of Hong Kong that is about a half hour away from Kowloon by car. The trip out there almost makes you think you’ve gone to another country – the roads are wider, there are fewer cars, limited numbers of high rises, and a lot more greenery. The particular neighborhood that we went to, Sai Kung, is right on the water. This is a place where the restaurants have a live fish market attached right in front of it. A word to potential visitors – do not order from the set menu at these restaurants…invest the time to pick your dinner from the fish tanks and be adventurous. Your taste buds and GI tract will thank you. Fortunately for us, my uncle is quite good at knowing what’s tasty, so he picked out a couple boxes of fresh uni, huge white clams, a red snapper, prawns, and slipper lobsters. All of these animals were alive and placed into clear plastic bags that were then handed to the manager at the neighboring restaurant who discussed with my uncle the best way to prepare each type of animal. We were seated at our table, and in about 15 minutes, the first of the condemned arrived at our table. Uni arranged neatly on a bed of ice, decorated with a huge fresh orchid and accompanied by wasabi and soy sauce. I am used to eating uni one piece at a time because it is 1) quite pricey and I can afford only one and 2) usually quite large and the texture can get a little mutinous on me if I try to eat a lot of it at once. I was being very delicate with my pickings when my uncle took my spoon and proceeded to heap a good inch of seafood onto it, telling me that this was the best way to eat it. He had basically concocted an uni shooter for me, with a little hit of wasabi on top. As with all shooters that are handed to me, I say thank you, take a deep breath, and well, shoot it. This uni was certainly different from others I’ve had because while I had half expected to have a baby-like reaction and spit up my food, the texture was like butter (albeit spicy, salty butter), and I really enjoyed it. The next thing out was a plate of steamed prawns with a soy and Szechuan pepper dipping sauce. Sweet, salty, spicy = goodness. The third item to hit the table was a front-runner for Best in Show. My uncle had bought 4 white clams (one for each of us – him, my aunt, Beney, and me), and each had been steamed then topped with a simple heap of vermicelli noodles and minced garlic. The smell alone was amazing, but the taste was even better. Even people who don’t like seafood could probably get on board with this dish – garlicky noodles are always a crowd pleaser, and the clam that soaked up all the garlicky goodness was sweet and moist and wasn’t fishy at all. The next thing we had were fried slipper lobsters that we didn’t actually finish since the flash frying had made the meat seize up, and it was pretty hard to eat. This will be important for later in this post. Dish #6 was the red snapper in a typical HK-style – steamed whole, then finished with a mound of scallions and ginger on top, with hot oil and soy sauce drizzled over it. It is a very simple dish, and it’s probably my favorite way to prepare fish (mainly because that’s how Dad does it). Dish #7 was actually a repeat of a previous dish, only in a different dress. My aunt and uncle had told the manager that the slipper lobster wasn’t very good, and the apologetic man sent out a fresh one to us, on the house. This time, the animal had simply been steamed. When it was brought out to the table, the manager used a pair of scissors to open up the shell and cut the flesh into pieces. This thing tasted like lobster, only sweeter, and needed absolutely no sauce whatsoever. By this time, I think I may have started to get a food-induced high, because I was kind of giddy. My uncle mentioned something about needing to get more food, so like an idiot, I giggled and said ok. We headed back to the fish tanks and picked out a monster crab. That would make it dish #8. The crab came out in a classic Chinese style – steamed then chopped up and stir fried with some ginger and scallions. To our surprise, yet another steamed slipper lobster appeared at our table. I guess my uncle ordered another one of those as we were heading back from picking out the crab. That would be a grand total of 9 dishes, for anyone keeping count. By the time we waddled back to the car, I am pretty sure that I had broken a button on my pants and made some protest about never wanting to eat again. My uncle, the foodie, knows his stuff, and will do his best to stuff his guests, too!

Asian Invasion 2010 - Day 12

2010-12-13T22:34:00.003-05:00

On Sunday morning, we said goodbye to Laura and Kim, who were returning to Vietnam. It was really fun hanging out with them in HK. All my previous visits to the city were focused on my family, so Laura really did a good job of showing me a completely different side of the city. Granted, we also did some world-class eating and shopping, but the night out in LKF was a blast. I think future visits to HK will include me staying at a hotel in TST where it’s closer to the action. I love my family and will visit them as well, but it feels like I’m almost a burden to them when I come to visit, and I don’t want to stress them out. Once the girls had left for the airport, Beney and I headed out to grab breakfast at yet another bakery, then packed up our stuff and headed to my grandma’s condo in Kowloon.

When we arrived, my aunt greeted us (she lives in the unit next to my grandma’s), and then got us into grandma’s house. My grandmother is 90+ years old (my dad said she’s exactly 90, but I’ve now heard 91 and 93, so let’s just say she’s 90-ish). Her walk is slow and shuffled, her hair thinner and grayer, her frame a little slimmer, and her hearing more impaired than the last time I was here, but her mind is just as sharp as it ever was, and she has a serious attitude to boot. As an example, she was most insistent that I was stupid for not being able to speak Cantonese. I know very few words that are not in the “food” or “profanity” category, and the word for stupid is one of them. I heard her use this word no less then 3 times within the first 10 minutes of arriving. I think Beney may have been just slightly taken aback. Through a bastardized language that consisted of a mixture of Mandarin, Cantonese, and pantomime, I was able to communicate that we would be going out for the afternoon and that we were not cold. Grandma was most insistent that both Beney and I would freeze in the 60 degree weather. I could not explain that we had just come from Seoul where it was snowing and quite literally freezing. Beney and I gamely fetched our jackets and kept them handy so grandma wouldn’t think that we were totally blowing her off. She made us some lunch before we finally set off.

Our main stop on Sunday was to Wang Tai Sin Temple. This is a place in the northern party of Kowloon (I think it’s in the New Kowloon section) where people go to pray and to get their fortunes told. It’s rather tourist-y in that sense. Beney and I checked out the temples devoted to various gods and saw a number of people making their offerings of incense and/or fruit and/or chicken. We made no such offerings but did pick up the fortune telling sticks and proceeded to shake out the sticks that would hold the truth to our futures. Here’s how it works – you go to the little stand where there are cylindrical bamboo containers of dozens of wooden sticks. Each stick has a number written on it. You then take that cylindrical container, walk over to the main temple, find yourself a spot to kneel, and then tilt the container at a slight angle (about 45 degrees) and proceed to shake it gently until one wooden stick falls out. That’s your number. You write that number down, put the stick back in the container, return the container to the little stand, and then proceed to the other side of the temple where there are dozens of fortune tellers hanging out in a warehouse, ready to tell you what the number that the Universe just granted you really means.

Beney and I went to one who purportedly spoke English, albeit highly broken and repetitive (we get it lady – very lucky, no worries, no problems). Beney opted for the primo treatment, which included a basic interpretation of her number and a palm reading. Both were highly favorable. The high points included confirmation that she would be highly successful in her career and that she would hold her job for decades (clearly a good thing since she loves her job), she should have no more than 2 kids (also a good thing since she says she wants exactly zero Mini-Me’s), and she would live well into her 80’s. That’s a pretty sweet fortune, if you ask me. As for my fortune, I should clarify that it had to do with relationships. Whereas Beney wanted to know about her career, I really wanted to know what to expect in my personal life. I sprung for the basic Interpret-the-Number-on-the-Stick treatment, so the lady told me that next year, I would meet a guy who all of my friends and family would dislike, but I would see the goodness of this person and we would be together. Only I shouldn’t get married quickly and should wait 2-3 years before actually getting hitched. So the lady basically told me that I would start dating again in 2011 and would be dating a guy that no one else really much cared for…in other words, she kind of knows my track record.

After learning what the fates had in store, we decided that we needed more nourishment and headed to a bakery (see a theme here?) for a snack before heading home. Grandma made dinner for us that night which consisted of meatballs, chicken soup, and bean sprouts and chives. Simple, home cooking, and really not bad for a lady in her 90’s.

Asian Invasion 2010 - Day 11

2010-12-13T22:33:00.000-05:00

The morning was spent exploring Kowloon and shopping at the Jade Market and fruit market. Beney and Kim picked out some pieces from the Jade Market, where Laura helped them to negotiate the prices down. We wandered around a bit until we found a vegetarian dim sum restaurant. The food was a bit odd since the “meat” was either imitation seafood or that odd wheat/gluten fake-meat that vegans seem to use as their universal meat substitute. It was ok but could not really compare to the real thing. We headed back to the hotel around 1:30 so that we could change and get ready for the next big meal, which was afternoon tea at the Landmark Mandarin Oriental.

The bar at LMO is pretty swank, and the afternoon tea consisted of modern twists on most of the traditional high tea fare. An added bonus – there was a dessert buffet available as you wait for tea, so we nibbled on mini cupcakes, fruit (dipped in one of the chocolate fountains), and strawberry pana cotta. We each had about 6 cups of tea (I chose Earl Grey) and polished off all of the scones, finger sandwiches, and desserts that came on the sleek trays. Laura had to take off right after tea to visit a friend in hospital, so Beney, Kim, and I went up to Victoria Peak until about dinner time.

The Peak is one of those must-see places in the city, and we took the Peak Tram to the top. The Tram is another one of those unique experiences, and you get some pretty scary views of the city from there…I’m pretty sure we were past 45 degrees at one point and only clinging to the side of the mountain through the magic of modern engineering and prayer. Once we arrived at the top, we entered the mall that is now the main entrance to the observation decks. It was a somewhat sad reminder of how commercial everything seems to be getting in HK. However, the views from the top of the viewing terrace almost make that rampant commercialism worth it. The sky had been overcast all day, but the clouds were well above the skyline, leaving us with a clear view of the city below and some interesting shots of the mega-mansions that crown the top of the Peak. Those homes, according to the tour books and the History Museum, have always been the priciest real estate in the city. That is mainly due to the exclusivity of the location and the fact that it is significantly cooler at the top of the Peak than it is in the valley below. That makes a world of difference in the summertime, when the temperature is just slightly warmer than Hell but much more humid.

Around 8, we headed back down from the Peak and went to Dragon I, a bar in the Lan Kwai Fong neighborhood. LKF is one neighborhood that I had never been to before since my previous visits had been with my family, and LKF is an area that is frequented by foreigners. The bar had a hipster vibe, with a massive bird cage (and live birds) in the open deck area. We grabbed a table there and started in with drinks and some snacks. The Japanese bar snacks (edamame, spring rolls, sushi, etc.) were ok, but the 2-for-1 happy hour special on the lychee martinis was even better. By the time Laura met up with us an hour later, I was feeling pretty happy. We finished up our drinks there and headed to Classified, where we were to meet up with some of Beney’s photojournalist friends. We ended up splitting a couple more bottles of wine with the guys, along with some more snacks. We actually closed the place down, which was surprising since it was only about 1AM. Guess the bar had had enough of the loud Americans. We hopped a cab for the lively trip back to Tsim Sha Tsui where our hotel was, and called it a night. Here’s hoping that we remembered to tip the cabbie – he didn’t give us any crap for being loud and singing in his car the whole ride home.

Asian Invasion 2010 - Day 10

2010-12-13T22:32:00.001-05:00

Friday morning started with a trip to Sweet Dynasty for a dim sum breakfast. We got the usual steamed shrimp dumplings, fried radish cakes, sticky rice in lotus leaf, and wonton noodle soup (a Hong Kong specialty). Service was pretty slow, but the food was tasty. We followed breakfast with a trip to the Hong Kong Museum of History. This may have been a museum that I had gone to on a previous trip, but I couldn’t recall. The museum pass was a bargain - $30HKD for access to 7 museums all week – so Beney and I each got one of those. The History Museum did an interesting job of discussing all aspects of the making of HK…all the way back to thousands of years ago and how the rocks were formed. That actually made some sense, given how HK is a collection of gigantic rocks that just so happen to form a natural harbor. It also shapes the way that people have lived and worked on this island for centuries. There is only one way to develop this particular patch of land, and that is to build up. That explains how the skyline got to be what it is today – pretty spectacular. The museum also showed a lot of different exhibits regarding daily life in HK over the years and the impact of British rule and the eventual handover back to China. Pretty interesting stuff, even for those who aren’t really history buffs.We skipped lunch and just picked up some tarts and breads at one of the bakeries in the mall so that we could be in our room by the time Laura and Kim got in. After the girls arrived and we checked in, we headed to HC mall to continue our window shopping. Dinner was also at the mall – Crystal Jade restaurant – and proved that you can basically spend an entire week in Hong Kong at the mall and never have to leave because everything you could possibly need is right there. Dinner included dumplings, baked radish pastries, crispy eel, wontons in soy and chili sauce, noodles with pickled vegetables, and beef noodle soup with chilies. Dinner was extremely filling but tasty, and we will have to try the Din Tai Fung at the other mall to see how their dumplings compare to Crystal Jade’s. We followed that eat-fest with one more trip to Sweet Dynasty, this time to sample their Chinese desserts. We split orders of mango custard, sesame ball soup, walnut soup with lotus seed, and tapioca with fresh fruit and coconut milk. Beney also got another order of the fried radish cakes, which seemed to throw off the waitress, but who the hell cares – fried food is good at any time of the day.

Asian Invasion 2010 - Day 9

2010-12-13T22:31:00.000-05:00

I am not a morning person, so the alarm going off at 4:30AM was brutal. I also tend to get stressed out when traveling, so I had made sure to call the cab company the night before to make sure that they would have a car available at 5:30AM to pick us up. This is why I almost went ballistic when I called at 5, 5:15, and 5:30, only to have no one answer. Beney was finally able to reach someone at 5:45 and told them to haul ass to her place to pick us up. The cabbie was able to get us to the airport with just enough time for me to check in and get my bags onboard. The flight itself was uneventful, but Korean Air does have some pretty good inflight entertainment. The song selection was good (got my short fix of K-pop) and the movies were extensive. I watched Inception and decided that I’ll need to get it on DVD as well – what an intense but amazing head trip of a movie. Getting into HK was a lot easier once we landed. The weather was also gorgeous – about 70 degrees and clear. We took a cab to the hotel and after checking our bags (had to wait for the room to be cleared), we headed to Harbour City mall for some lunch. We ended up doing a combo platter at Rice Paper, a Vietnamese restaurant. Lunch was tasty and filling, and we were able to check in once we got back to the hotel. The room was fairly nice, although the décor was a bit outdated. The location, however, couldn’t be beat – it was within minutes of Star Ferry terminal and a block away from Harbour City and Gateway malls. Beney and I headed back to HC mall to do some window shopping for the rest of the afternoon. I stress that it was just window shopping, as the stores there are pretty pricey…Vivienne Tam, Vivienne Westwood, Ferragamo, Prada, Chanel, etc. Amazing stores with gorgeous clothes and accessories but with prices that made me want to hurl a little. Around 8, we went to the Star Ferry terminal to check out the laser light show. There are a few dozen buildings on HK island that participate in a nightly laser show that you can watch from the Kowloon side of Victoria Harbor. The show was ok (I’ve seen better), but it was fun to see the reaction from the very diverse crowd that attended. The westerners didn’t seem too impressed and were more there for the people watching. Those from the mainland and East Asia seemed to be really bowled over by it, so they had some funny reactions. It was a clear night, so I also got some decent pictures of the HK skyline. After the show, we headed to one of the many food courts at the mall and got some sushi. For dessert, we split a chocolate mousse and brownie at the hotel’s bar. The dessert was good but the lounge act was only mediocre. Still, it was a pretty good start to the HK leg of the trip.

Asian Invasion 2010 - Day 8

2010-12-13T22:25:00.002-05:00

Wednesday was Laura’s last day in Seoul, so we spent the morning in Garonsu-jil, which seems to be a more modern section of the city. The shopping was high-end, and we started at Le Brunchie for, well, brunch. Eggs benedict, steak and cheese sandwich, and clam chowder, to be exact. Following a pretty filling brunch, we browsed some of the local boutiques, including a jewelry store that had some really unusual but beautiful pieces. Our shopping was cut short by the snow, though, and we headed back to base to get Laura packed up and off to the airport in case the weather would impact traffic the way it does in DC (i.e. everyone goes mental and forgets how to drive). After Laura left for the airport, Beney and I spent the rest of the afternoon packing for the next morning’s flight to Hong Kong. Dinner was takeout chicken…a lot of it. At least I can say that I ate my fill of Korean fried chicken and can truly testify that Kentucky's vresion doesn’t hold a candle to it.

Asian Invasion 2010 - Day 7

2010-12-09T05:17:00.013-05:00

Tuesday morning was spent watching a little bit of football (yay Pats!) and then heading to the War Museum to check out the exhibits. Laura and I skipped the outside exhibits since we'd done that on Monday already. The museum had some pretty interesting exhibits that included feudal weapons and uniforms, as well as replicas of a turtle ship and a feudal castle. Some of the exhibits featured moving parts, so it was kind of fun to watch demonstrations of historic naval battles where the Koreans beat the Japanese. However, the majority of the museum was dedicated to more modern warfare. That included evidence of the sinking of the SK ship Cheonan by a NK torpedo. The evidence is there, plain as day, sitting in a glass case next to pictures of each of the SK sailors who died onboard the ship. Two floors of the museum showcased different aspects of the Korean War, including the impact on civilians and the assistance provided by UN member nations. The tallies of the personnel committed to the fight, as well as those who were killed, wounded, captured, or declared missing, were overwhelmingly American, but there were a few countries that surprised me (Ethiopia?). In any case, it seemed pretty clear that the South Koreans were extremely grateful for the UN assistance.

After the museum, Laura and I headed back to base and relaxed for a bit before Beney got back from running errands. We decided that Laura's last night in Seoul should go out with a bang, norae-bang, to be exact. Before we did that, though, we had to cross off one more item from the must-eat list. Tteokbokki is a spicy rice cake stew that includes various forms of seafood, ramen noodles, vermicelli noodles, rice cake, egg, veggies, and in our case a couple of extras (rice cake cheese balls and ham). All of this goes into a pot filled with water and chili paste that is allowed to boil until all the seafood is cooked and the broth has thickened and turned red from the chili. Rice cakes, the star of the dish, are really tasteless sauce-delivery vehicles. Think of an extremely thick noodle (we're talking about the size of a pinky finger), and that's about what a rice cake looks like in the broth. Below are before and after pictures of the contents. It may all look and sound a bit bizarre, but it is REALLY tasty. And hot. Extremely hot. My face was red before I even had a sip of soju (that's kind of the Korean equivalent of vodka). Speaking of soju, we discovered by accident a delicious new drink - peach juice with soju and Sprite. It was basically a Korean version of a bellini, and it was a really tasty way to cool off from the spice.

After a very filling dinner, we were all filling a bit food comatose, but we managed to waddle out of the restaurant to do some shopping at Face Shop and then found a norae-bang place. We belted out songs for about an hour until we had gotten our Glee-induced high. Before heading home, we went to Kim's Club, which sounded like a Sam's Club warehouse-style grocery store, but was more like a Harris Teeter's/Balducci's/Target hybrid. You could buy pretty much anything you needed there, albeit not necessarily in a Costco-sized bulk package. We loaded up on some snacks and then headed back to base to nosh on chestnut cream buns and chips. Yet another lovely foodie-approved day.

Asian Invasion 2010 - Day 6

2010-12-06T20:05:00.019-05:00

Monday morning in Seoul started out nicely - with 3 hours of football! Ravens vs. Steelers, and I was wearing my #20 jersey and screaming at the tv like that would make the difference in the game. The girls had stayed up late the night before and made chive dumplings and quiches (trying to cook some of the leftover veggies from Beney's Thanksgiving feast that otherwise would go bad in the next few days). That definitely made for some good eats but it was much different from the usual football-watching snack. After the boys broke my heart, I changed out of my jersey (to avoid the shame of the loss), and we headed out to grab some coffee, then wandered over to the National War Museum. It turned out that the museum itself is closed on Mondays, but there are outdoor exhibits mainly featuring planes, helicopters, anti-aircraft guns, missiles, and artillery used in decades of war. It's really rather imposing. The other outdoor exhibit reminded me of the Vietnam Memorial that we have at home. There are black granite slabs where the names of every Korean soldier killed during the Korean War (50+ years and counting) are etched. The sad thing is that unlike in the US, where the slabs have a definite end, there are several blank slabs mounted to the wall, basically in anticipation of future losses. The names of the 2 Marines killed recently had already been added to that wall, just another reminder that this fight isn't over yet.

Since the museum was closed but the weather was fairly clear, we headed up to N Seoul Tower which sits atop Namsan, the largest of the mountain peaks in the city. To get to the Tower, you take a cable car up the mountain, then make a short (but steep) hike up a terraced walkway to get to the first of several open air observation decks. You get a great view of the city and the mountains from there. The Fortress Wall that is being rebuilt can also be visible from the observation decks. The wall will basically run the entire length of the mountains around Seoul and will be armed with defensive weapons. Construction on the wall has been ramping up due to the recent troubles, and it reminded me a lot of Hadrian's Wall or the Great Wall, both meant to keep out the bad guys on the border. Another interesting tidbit about the Tower decks - there are chain link fences around the decks where people attach padlocks (and supposedly throw away the key). The padlocks are supposed to represent your promise to lock yourself to someone forever, so the padlocks usually have names written on them along with something sweet and sappy. Of course, the three of us were the cynical Americans who thought it was really just a conspiracy by the local tourist trap shops, but it seemed to be a pretty popular thing to do.

Once we were done taking pictures at the Tower, we headed back to Beney's to relax a bit before heading back out on a mission to find my cousin some K-pop. This is a particularly addictive brand of pop music that features androgynous Asian men singing along in Korean and the obligatory English hook (e.g. "Oh yeah"). Think the very best (worst?) of BSB, N Sync, NKOTB, etc., only with perfectly smooth skin and about 20% less muscle mass. We went to Kyobo Bookstore and sampled a few of the CD's until I settled on one that had a lot of techno beats and seemed like something that my cousin might not have yet.

The bookstore was around the corner from a barbecue restaurant, so we went there for dinner. Korean barbecue is pretty tasty and comes with a whole bunch of standard side dishes (banchan). Dinner consisted of the following: barbecue beef (5 different cuts); barbecue pork belly; kim chi; tofu with chili paste; bitter leaves with chili paste; pickled radishes; "water" kimchi (no chili, just pickled cabbage); tofu soup with chili paste and vegetables; steamed scrambled egg; and nyaengmong (cold noodles). Dinner was extremely filling and tasty, but we still managed to save some room for dessert at Coco Bruni in the Itaewon neighborhood. We each got a different slab of cake (layer tart, marron (chestnut) tart, and praline tart), with a small pot of peppermint tea. One of Beney's friends from work joined us as well and it was a really sweet end to the day.

Asian Invasion 2010 - Day 5

2010-12-05T05:06:00.006-05:00

It's Sunday night in Seoul, and this is the first time that we've actually skipped dinner. That sounds almost sacreligious, but it's because we're still so full from lunch. We went to what has got to be the next big chain restaurant that will come to the US - Din Tai Fung. It's a Taiwanese chain that specializes in all sorts of dumplings and buns, along with some sides and noodle dishes. Between the 3 of us, we absolutely crushed about a quarter of the menu. In keeping with the audit mantra of "If it's not documented, it's not done," here is a list documenting what we had for lunch today:

Steamed soup dumplings - with pork (original)
Steamed soup dumplings - pork with Chinese cabbage
Steamed soup dumplings - pork with Pine mushrooms
Shrimp shumai
Sticky rice shumai
Pickled cucumber w/ chili oil
Sweet and sour soup
Beef noodle soup
Cold, sliced beef brisket

All of that came out to about $25/person, and considering it basically covered 2 meals, that was a pretty good deal. As an added bonus, the kitchen on the first floor where they roll out the dough and stuff the dumplings is visible from the floor, so I got to take some pictures and made a little video of the dough guy doing his thing. That definitely reminded me of when we were little and "helped" roll out the dumpling dough at grandpa's house...usually helping by making a mess and rolling out the dough in the shape of South America.

After lunch, we walked around the Myeongdong district, which is a big shopping area that has a lot of western labels and even more local cosmetic stores. My mom would love this place - it's got a ridiculous amount of skin care products being hawked from all directions. We walked around for a few hours, mostly window shopping, but then decided to head back to base since we still weren't hungry and wanted to get some rest before going out for the evening. On the way home, we did stop to get some pastries (of course). This time, we got these little football-shaped pastries that tasted a bit like a spongy cream puff dough, filled with vanilla custard. Each pastry was about the length of my thumb, so those suckers were deliciously addictive and went fast.

Now we're back at Beney's place just resting up for yet another fun night. I think we're going to do the norae-bang thing again, so I may need some performance-enhancing fuel before we head out again.

Asian Invasion 2010 - Day 4

2010-12-04T22:00:00.002-05:00

We slept in on Saturday morning but managed to make it out for a coffee run around noon before Beney went to her grandmother's birthday party. Laura and I went to the National Museum of Korea which is at the southern end of the base but has a completely separate entry point, so we ended up cabbing it over. The museum is huge and the building is immaculate. The exhibits were ok, but I think I'm used to seeing more interactive exhibits or perhaps at least more information in the placards to explain what I'm seeing. We took our time wandering through the exhibits, then decided to head back to Beney's place. This is where things started to go awry. The guards seemed to have absolutely no idea where the heck gate 52 was, so we got conflicting directions. With Beney's spare phone running out of juice, we kind of just wandered in the direction of where the last guard pointed to, which turned out to be the exact opposite of where we needed to go. However, we did encounter a food stall selling pastries and then spied a fried chicken restaurant, so we decided to check that out. The pastries we picked up at the food stall turned out to taste like pancakes with red bean paste filling, all in the shape of a mini muffin. It was yet another great find and further support that if you're in a foreign country, do what the locals do and eat what the locals eat. That goes for the KFC as well. For the uninitiated, Korean fried chicken should really be what KFC stands for...it's just a lot tastier and much less greasy than the usual American style. We split small orders of the original fried chicken cooked in olive oil and the soy sauce glazed chicken. Both were really tasty, and as much as I like to just try everything once, I really do hope there's time to go back to that store again.

We finally ended up meeting up with Beney to get back to her house. I did some cleaning while the girls went into Itaewon to get fitted for their custom suits. I only ordered a custom shirt (for < $40!), so I didn't really need to get a fitting. When they came back, we headed out for massages, which is admittedly an odd thing to do at 10:30PM on a Saturday night. These massage parlors stay open until 2 or 3AM, so there was a steady stream of customers while we were there. In the US, that would be shady as hell, but this place was a legitimate spa. I suppose it does kind of makes sense if you think about all those people who go out all night suffering for their fashion by wearing shoes that are completely uncomfortable...a foot massage can work out all the knots and discomfort at the end of a long night. I opted for a back massage instead, which I probably won't do again next time I'm here. What I'm used to in the US is a very relaxing, soothing treatment, with only some pressure when really needed to work out the kinks. What I experienced last night could potentially be classified as assault, as I repeatedly asked the lady to please stop jabbing me directly in the spine. The whole experience felt more like a beating, and sleeping was rather rough...I can't put any pressure on my shoulders or lower back, and I can see the initial flowering of a massive bruise covering my back. I guess Asian massages, like Asian parenting, is rough and you just have to grit your teeth and take it.

I was in an incredibly foul mood for the next hour, but managed to get my act together by the time we went to the next stop, which was a norae-bang bar. This is Korean-style karaoke, which is different from Japanese karaoke because rather than standing up in the middle of a room full of strangers and making an ass of yourself, you can do the same in a private room full of your friends. The girls did a good job leading the group in a Glee-inspired set. They got the entire room singing along to Journey, and it only took me 2 beers to work up enough liquid courage to screech along with the chorus. There were some whisperings of doing it again on Sunday night, so here's hoping the Autotune doesn't crap out and I get left having to use my own voice!

Asian Invasion 2010 - Day 3

2010-12-04T06:10:00.002-05:00

Friday was mostly spent in Itaewon, which is a neighborhood near base that caters largely to foreigners. Laura and I had lunch at a French bistro, then went to the custom tailor that Beney recommended. Laura got a great deal on a 3-piece suit and dress, while I opted for a basic tailored shirt (< $40). After checking out a bunch of shops along the main street, we went to a day spa where I got my nails done and Laura got a massage. Once we were primped, we headed back to Beney's place to shower and change before the Thai embassy event. Around 6:30, an embassy car came to pick us up and dropped us off at the Lotte Hotel downtown, where there were over a hundred Thai nationals and foreign dignitaries there to celebrate the birthday of the King of Thailand. For some unknown reason, I actually wasn't hungry and therefore did not sample the spread. This was especially sad considering the fact that I LOVE Thai food! Oh well, maybe if Beney gets posted in Thailand in the future, I can make up for the foregone pad thai and coconut curry. At least when we left, the thank you gift that the Thai hosts gave us included a bottle of sweet chili sauce...that will have to get sampled once I get home.

After the Thai event, we went to the British Embassy, where Beney's friend John escorted us to the pub. Yes, the Brits have a pub in their embassy building, which I suppose should not be a surprise. What was surprising - they do not serve Guinness. I had to make do with a huge can of Bodington's, which may have been a bad move considering I skipped the appetizers at the Thai event and therefore hadn't eaten anything since lunch. We sat at a table with John and his friends from the French embassy (apparently it was French night at the pub, so there was quiche, some kind of salmon spread, and lots of bread and cheese). It seemed my appetite continued to be jet lagged since I didn't feel hungry and didn't partake in the delicious looking snacks. After about an hour, we went back to Beney's, had a couple of drinks, and changed before heading back out to Itaewon for a pub crawl.

We started the evening dragging Beney's friend from the US embassy out (it was really cold, and he gave us a ride, which was a huge help). We first went to Tony's cafe, where Beney knows the owner. That came in handy because my appetite decided to make an appearance around 11:30PM, and Tony hooked us up with a warm apple tart and ice cream despite the fact that the kitchen was officially closed. After pie and an Irish coffee, the midnight snack attack continued. We ended up breaking a cardinal rule of mine by going to McDonald's for some food. I had a few fries and a chicken nugget before realizing that a liquid diet would provide enough calories to sustain me. Going with that liquid diet thinking, we went to The Bungalow, where John and his friends were hanging out. I got a Long Island iced tea and we relaxed in the upstairs deck which was covered with sand (it's supposed to be a beach themed place, but it's weird wearing a sweater and boots, shivering in the sand). We left the comfy couch around 1AM to go dancing since the French insisted on "busting a move" (which, for the record, sounds weird in a French accent). I can't recall what the name of the club was, but it was a good time and reminded me a lot of the parties we used to go to in college, only with grown-up drinks and no nasty beer being chilled in a trash can full of ice.

We ended up cabbing it back to Beney's around 4AM, at which point we were totally exhausted but still stayed up for a while chatting. It was a REALLY fun night, and needless to say, there will be no pictures posted here (or anywhere, if I can help it) to protect the innocent...and myself.

Asian Invasion 2010 - Day 2

2010-12-04T05:10:00.003-05:00

The first full day in Seoul got off to a good start. Laura and I went to the embassy with Beney so we could get badges to get in and out of Yongsan without an escort. After breakfast at the embassy, Laura and I walked down the street to Gyeongbokgung, which seems to be the largest of the imperial palaces in Seoul. The history of the place is rather dark - it was burned down by the Japanese centuries ago, then rebuilt, then burned down by the Japanese again in the 19th century...rebuilding is still ongoing. There is a changing of the guard ceremony on what seems like an hourly basis. All traffic in and out of the palace gates stops during those changes, but it's a pretty colorful event to watch. The palace grounds are pretty extensive, going almost all the way back into the mountains. The palace actually consists of mulitple living quarters/homes for the emperor, his wife, concubines, servants, etc. There is also a huge pavilion surrounded by a moat that was used for entertaining visitors and holding state dinners. It will also be the model for my future dream house...I rather like the idea of a moat and the ability to pull up the drawbridge at a moment's notice!

After checking out every corner of the palace grounds, Laura and I met up with Beney and her friends Helen and John for lunch. We got bibimbap, so we crossed off one item from the Must-Eat-List. Bibimbap is basically a mix of rice, veggies, meat, a raw egg, and usually some kind of sauce all piled into a stone bowl that has been superheated (think they put it on hot coals or an oven). The heat from the stone bowl pretty much cooks the egg as you mix everything together and makes some of the rice crispy, so you get a bunch of different textures and flavors. The place we went to was ok, but the conversation was better. After lunch, Laura and I headed back to the palace and checked out the museum, which was ok but didn't have a lot of exhibits that we hadn't already explored on the grounds itself.

The next stop was Namdaemun, which is basically a few blocks of super intense shopping. A lot of the shops were hawking knock offs and knick knacks. We didn't buy anything from the shops, but it was just interesting to walk around in that hectic atmosphere and take it all in. The one thing that we did see as we were walking around was this delicious-looking sandwich-like snack that a bunch of people were munching on. Laura and I followed the travel of snackers back to this little food truck that already had a line about 10-people deep. The truck had a sloped hot plate with oil heating at the deep end that could then be splashed up the plate to grease it before laying down the dough. There was a lady who reached into a bucket to pull out a handful of dough, then reached into another bucket to pull out a handful of filling, then wrapped the dough around it and dropped it onto the hot plate, where another guy would flatten it down and turn it several times until the dough was golden and heated through. Once it was cooked, the guy scooped up the sandwich-y snack into a container and brushed on some soy sauce infused with peppers and onions. We really had no idea what this thing was called (still not sure) or what was in it - we just knew that with a line that deep, especially as it was starting to rain, that snack had to be pretty good. We bought one for 1000 won (< $1) and split it on the way back to base. The dough tasted a lot like a scallion pancake, and the filling turned out to be rice noodles and shredded veggies tossed with a little soy and sesame sauce. It was delicious, and it was the perfect snack on a cold drizzly afternoon.

Besides the sightseeing and food discoveries, the other thing that we started to learn was how to get around the city. Seoul is very different from American cities in part because the streets typically have no signs, buildings are not numbered in chronological order, and crossing at anywhere except a crosswalk is generally frowned upon and potentially suicidal. It was somewhat perplexing trying to explain to cab drivers that we needed to get to a specific gate at Yongsan Base, only to see them trying to figure out where the heck it was. The lack of street names basically means that people just need to know the neighborhood or perhaps be familiar with landmarks. The buildings are apparently numbered according to when they were built, so you could have 5 buildings lined up on a street, and they could be numbered 10, 1, 2, 6, and 5. It just seems like a very difficult system to grasp, but it must be feasible since Seoul has thousands of residents. The use of crosswalks is also an absolute must. People in this city drive like maniacs, and there were at least a couple of times where I thought that we were going to get crushed even though the sign said we had a green light to walk. Fortunately, the subway here is cheap and easy to navigate, so that is probably the best way to go...driving here can only increase blood pressure and take years off of your life.

Asian Invasion 2010 - Day 1

2010-12-01T11:55:00.002-05:00

Vacation! At long last! While the scheduling stars aligned and allowed me to take some time off of work in December, albeit with some work being done remotely, there were some ominous signs at the beginning of the trip. On Monday, I tried to check in for my flight, only to find out that United couldn't find the ticket...turns out that the codeshare flight was showing up fine at Continental but not at United, and that would mean more time at the airport. That was better than the original response when I called the airlines, which was that I didn't have a ticket AT ALL. Today was spent mainly in transit. The morning went pretty smoothly - mom and dad dropped me off at the airport and we got there with lots of time to spare. The flight from DC to Tokyo was fine and somewhat productive (got in a few more performance reviews and reviewed some things in the audit files). When we landed, though, we were told that the connecting flight to Seoul had been canceled. I spent the next 2 hours at Narita Airport trying to get booked on the next flight to Seoul as calmly as I could. I managed to not scream at anyone, and I got booked on another flight that actually landed at the exact same time as my original flight. Extra bonus - my checked bags made it, too! Beney and Laura were there at the airport, and we headed back to the US Embassy compound. Laura and I managed to help Beney dig into her 2nd Thanksgiving feast. That, plus a glass of red wine and some more work rounded up my first evening in Seoul. Tomorrow, we start at 7AM - need to get badges at the Embassy so we can get in and out of Yongsan Base without an escort - then off to the museums and the markets!

Things to Look Forward to...

2010-10-14T19:10:00.002-04:00

Maybe it was that last episode of Glee, but the thought "Come on, get happy" has been popping into my head all day. And with that in mind, I've been thinking about all the random good things (both big and small) that are on the horizon and that m-m-m-make me happy (little Tropic Thunder reference for you there).

Kushi. This is restaurant #4 on the DC/DC girls' (that would be me and Laura's) list of restaurants and will be sampled this Sunday! Kushi serves sushi but is better known as DC's first Japanese pub food restaurant. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but based on one of the episodes of Bizarre Foods that I saw, this usually means some kind of protein on a stick that you get to cook over a charcoal grill. In the show, that protein was some inappropriate organ from a chicken. Hopefully that is not on the menu, but I'm pretty much game for trying anything else.
Army 10 Miler. In all honesty, I'm not ready since it's only a couple of weeks away. I will be walking most of it, but I have to start somewhere. I know I say this every year, but I AM GOING TO BE A MORE DISCIPLINED RUNNER. Every other time I've done a big race, I've finished, felt energized and ready to run some more...and most importantly my parents have a good time checking out the vendor stands and poaching the food that's really meant for the runners. That's the nice thing about my parents - they're very easy to spot even in that huge finish area. There aren't that many 6'0" Chinese guys with matching 5'2" spouses munching on bagels and shamelessly carrying literally bags of loot around the Pentagon parking lot.
Weekend jog in Centennial Park. Although I deferred my entry for the Baltimore half to next year, I've got to get in a training run before the ATM. I finally got my teeny little Sansa mp3 player (seriously, $40 for 4GB and more playing time than my big iPod = bargain). Here's hoping the weather cooperates and I can finish at least a couple laps around the lake.
Afternoon tea in Annapolis. Liz and I went to Harrod's for high tea a few years ago when we went to visit Lara in London. Tea consisted of a warm pot of delicious Georgian blend tea (which apparently they don't sell on their website!), and a deceptively small tower of baked goodies. You wouldn't think that a scone, about half a sandwich, and some desserts would be all that filling, but by the end of the meal, we were pushing that last tartlet across the table at each other lie an air hockey puck. Next Saturday, we're going to try to recapture that London goodness by going to afternoon tea in Annapolis. This is Girls Night gone respectable (i.e. we're now Ladies Who Lunch). Looking forward to seeing if Americans can do a decent high tea, and catching up with the girls, especially Mama Vance!
Fall. My favorite season of the year, when it's cool and colorful. This also means pulling out the big comforter, making hot chocolate, and lots and lots of baking! Apples never taste as good as when they're wrapped in a delicious pie crust. :) Love it when the house smells like a bakery!
Asia trip. Just 47 days until wheels up, and it can't come soon enough. Life is getting back to normal and things aren't so bad at work, but I still feel like a Southwest commercial...want to get away? YES!

Still Standing

2010-10-08T00:10:00.002-04:00

It certainly has been a long time since my last blog post! I'll start with a quick recap of all the fun stuff before I dive into the heavy stuff.

First, the DC Dining Club is alive and well. The DC/DC, consisting of me and Laura so far, has a very simple mission...and that is to eat well and explore new restaurants. So far, we've done Zaytinya, Grapeseed, and Iron Bridge Wine Company. I think the next restaurant is my pick, and the new Japanese place in DC that Laura mentioned sounds like it will be the frontrunner.

I've also been trying to catch up on movies as much as possible. As much as I am a bit of a cheapskate, I do enjoy the extra splurge that is HBO. The convenience of having access to half a dozen series and dozens of other movies is quite nice. Liz and I also went to see The Town, which was actually really good. It restored my faith in Ben Affleck and reaffirmed that despite making poor life decisions (Gigli, anyone?), he still has some good acting skills. Then again, perhaps all it takes is sticking to making movies where he can play up his wicked Bah-ston accent and killer abs. Both were quite entertaining and seemed completely authentic.

Last month, I also managed to find time to buy a new car. It was a 3 horse race between a BMW X3, Acura RDX, and Honda CR-V. In the end, the CR-V won out, mainly because I could get essentially the same features as the other cars, only without so much of the flash and with less horsepower. I think 180 horses should be good enough, and while it does feel like the engine's working hard on those uphill inclines, I got it completely loaded without breaking the bank.

More recently (as in today), I got to go to a conference on the Eastern shore of MD. Liz got to go to, so we basically spent the morning in session learning about healthcare and finance issues, then spent the afternoon doing some work but also fitting in time for a walk outside in the perfect weather and a workout at the surprisingly decent gym before dinner. This evening's event included a trivia contest, and Liz and I both managed to place in the top 10. If anyone's looking to form a pub trivia team, there are 2 accountants who have a pretty extensive knowledge of 80's/90's music, sports, and otherwise random knowledge.

Finally, the plans for the big Asia trip this December are really starting to develop. Beney's got the Seoul leg pretty much planned out in terms of sightseeing, and with plans to celebrate Laura's birthday while we're in South Korea, we'll most likely be seeing the sights through bloodshot eyes and throbbing heads. That's a small price to pay for a girls getaway! Hong Kong is the second leg of the trip, and aside from Victoria Peak, Lantau Island, and massive amounts of shopping, I have planned the trip around meals. This includes afternoon tea at the Landmark Oriental, Peking duck and dumplings at the Shanghainese restaurant that Uncle Arthur always takes us to, and copious amounts of dim sum, tropical fruit (the more exotic, the better), and fresh seafood. We're talking competition-level eating here. Wheels up on Nov. 30, and I really cannot wait!

As with most things in life, there is a balance that is struck. With all the good stuff happening on a personal level, there was bound to be some offsets somewhere along the way. That came in the form of a special project that I was pulled onto at the last minute. The opportunity was a big one, and I am grateful that the partners tagged me to help with pulling together the proposal and helping with the execution of the project. At the same time, the project was not something that I'd really ever done before, and it has been an eye-opening experience. I used to think that I was a decent accountant. I am not the fastest learner, but if I truly want to understand an issue or a new concept, I try to research it as much as I can and ask others for their guidance. That being said, this project produced a month-long crisis of confidence, much more than I normally go through.

It's been a good learning experience from the sense that I got to see the process from the other side - that is, rather than reviewing someone else's work, I had to gather data and create the work that would eventually get audited. It's much harder than I thought it would be, and as disappointed as my team and the client may have been of me, there's pretty much nothing that anyone can say to me that I haven't already told myself, only in much harsher terms. That in itself is not really unusual, but the fact that I was wondering, "Why do you suck so bad?" multiple times a day, every single day, for a month, was not normal. The keynote speaker at the conference this morning made a comment about how the vast majority of people are hardwired to either freeze or flee from tough situations and that there's only a small number of people who are naturally inclined to fight back. I think I might straddle that border of fight/flee...there is a constant struggle between just giving up (not just this job, but accounting in general) and rationalizing that this is just one project, outside of my normal expectations and expertise, and this will eventually wrap up and I can get back to the stuff that I actually like doing. This mental war is raging constantly, and that is probably more exhausting than the physical drain of working 70+ hour weeks for a month and surviving on a steady diet of cookies, pita chips, and soda. Maybe I've matured a little because I ultimately decided that walking into Tom's office and sliding a resignation letter across the desk was not the first option to pursue. Still, this project has made me question everything that I have done in the last 9 years and makes me wonder if it was a mistake to get into accounting in the first place. The problem is, I don't really have an exit strategy at this point, so until I find one, it's best to stay put. Thus goes existential crisis #1,000,000.

In Case You Wanted to Procrastinate...

2010-07-07T18:21:00.003-04:00

...here are some websites to help waste time that would otherwise be used to do something productive.

http://www.sporcle.com/ - Like a website full of Facebook quizzes and games...except they don't suck. Thanks to my cousin for introducing me to this first class procrastination destination.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/ - This is the perfect place to shop for bizarre but awesome gifts for the terminally nerdy and socially crippled. Is it too early for me to put the Caffeinated maple-bacon lollipops or the Marshmallow Mforcer semi-automatic pistsol on my Xmas wishlist?

Cyber Com code cracking contest - For those who want to get their James Bond-on, there's a contest to crack the code embedded in the USCyberCom logo. Top prize...a t-shirt or tickets to the Spy Museum. Suggestion for better prize to award someone who can crack a code created by the NSA...how about a JOB?

http://joebartonwouldliketoapologize.com/ - For those who don't recall, JB is the Rep from Texas who apologized to the CEO of BP for the grilling he took from Congress... just further evidence that we most definitely need to mess with Texas.

And obviously, Blogger is a good site for those who don't want to, oh, I dunno, vacuum, iron, or do other chores on a Wednesday night.

July 4 and a Month's Worth of Other Randomness

2010-07-05T19:06:00.003-04:00

Once again, I am playing catch up on my blog. I've been spending a good deal of time going out with friends, running more diligently, and not checking my work email on the weekends. It's been a pretty sweet experience. Things at work have been relatively slow, and hospital busy season is right around the corner, so I'll have plenty of OT coming in the next couple of months.

So, in the meantime, I've done a decent amount of non-work stuff. That involved going to see SATC2 with Beney and Laura, and while the movie was a total letdown, the drinks and dinner afterwards with the girls made it a pretty fun night. After that, Laura and I worked on Beney's bon voyage party, which consisted of wrangling about 30 diplomats into a Georgetown restaurant for dinner and drinks. Of course, since it was a big send off party, we also had to make it memorable, so Laura and I came up with a bunch of tasks that Beney had to complete before the night was through. She didn't get them all done, but I think the ultimate goal (getting her blitzed) was achieved. The pictures from that night were also pretty tame, so her diplomatic status should be intact. Now the next big thing that I have to plan is my trip to Asia. Step 1 (booking vacation for the entire month of December is complete). Now I just need to make sure that Beney can actually get me on base for those particular weeks, and then I can book my tickets. More recently, I went to Aunt Tai's house for a July 4th barbecue. As always, the food was really good, and the drinks were flowing (this is the aunt that has her own margarita machine). My cousin and I somehow devised a drinking game while we were watching the fireworks on tv, and by 9:30 we were pretty buzzed...who says alcohol and explosives can't be entertaining? The rest of the weekend was spent on a home decorating kick. I've been in my house for almost 3 years now, and I'm just starting to really spend the time to put my own spin on how things look. Aside from the very expensive mattress that I bought (which may backfire, as I may never want to leave my pillowtop induced slumber), I finally bought some pictures for the wall, and I actually found some pieces that seem to make sense with the furniture. I'll never make it as an interior decorator, but at least I like the stuff that I've got, so I suppose that's all that matters. Tomorrow, it's back to the grind after a 4-day weekend, but another 5K race and girls night are right around the corner, so the rest of the month looks like it'll be busy but fun.

OBX 2010 Days 4 & 5

2010-05-13T23:56:00.002-04:00

Is it really Thursday already? It seems like I just got here! The weather finally cooperated yesterday, so after my morning run, a light breakfast, and a couple hours of work, Alex and I headed to the beach to soak up the sorely-needed vitamin D. It was probably around 85 degrees, so we were only out for a half hour or so before lunch. We headed to a local pizza place for lunch with the family, which was pretty tasty. That, however, was a bad move since the next stop was at a swimsuit store since several of us were on the hunt for nicer bathing suits. However, there is nothing more demoralizing than having pizza (or in my case, a sandwich) for lunch and then trying on skintight clothing. Alex has named her "food baby" George. I have decided to name mine Kuato, after the mutant from the greatest Martian/mind job/drug-induced adventure movie of all time. Needless to say, I chose not to buy anything and stuck to a t-short and shorts for the beach. You could say that I spared the lunches of the dozen or so people who were near us on the beach that afternoon. The only semi-eventful thing that happened yesterday on the beach was the group of college-age kids from next door who were playing on the beach and came over to ask for help with a group picture. Alex went over to help, and apparently they were asking her when we got out of school. Technically, my cousin is still in school since she's in law school, so she said she got out earlier this week. That was probably a little better than my response, which would have been 9 years ago. Still, can't complain that a bunch of semi-buzzed college kids thought I could pass for a 20 year old. After we headed back inside and got cleaned up, I worked on reviews for a bit before the dinner prep started. I helped myself to a margarita while the aunts and uncle whipped up roast beef, sweet potatos, corn, and a greek salad. 3 glasses of rioja accompanied my dinner, so I was feeling pretty awesome by the time family tv time (and a massive thunderstorm) rolled around.

Today was a bit more work-oriented. The storm from last night hadn't quite dissipated, so it was still really overcast when I got up this morning. I started finalizing the reviews that I'd drafted and following up with the client in a few cases to keep things moving. Since the rain seemed to be holding off, I grabbed my aunts and we went on a 4 mile stroll up and down the beach. The weather was definitely cold and windy, and that was enough to keep others off of the beach, and it felt like we had our own private oceanside retreat. The only other people we ran into during that entire stroll were the lifeguards who were on a training run. After 3 straight days of running in the sand, I had a much better appreciation for how fit these people must have been, as my legs are aching in the strangest places. Once we got back from our walk, we fixed a lunchtime feast consisting of leftovers from the previous 2 days, which was really pretty tasty. That held us over until dinner, which was at the Blue Point, arguably the best restaurant in the Outer Banks. The best part of the dinner, aside from the convo (my aunts have some pretty interesting stories) was the dessert. If it were socially acceptable, I think I would have just made a 3-course meal out of the key lime pie, pecan pie (with bourbon ice cream!), and strawberry rhubarb cobbler. Alas, I had to order like a grown up, so I had the mushroom soup (with bacon) and the baked catfish (with red beans and rice...and bacon!). Had there been some kind of bacon dessert, I probably would have ordered that too, but I guess we're not far enough south for that to appear on the menu yet. When we got home, my uncle cracked open another bottle of champagne, so we had a bubbly nightcap to go along with an episode of The Office and 30 Rock.

So, now I'm just catching up on postings before heading off to bed and getting ready for a round of conference calls in the morning, then brunch with the family, and then hitting the road for the long ride back to Baltimore and happy hour for a departing manager. All in all, this has been a pretty good week, and I feel like I've been somewhat productive and not that far behind in my work. I've also finished Eclipse, which means I can move on to the final book. So far, I've been successful in my plans to read the series first and then see the movies. That will save me from having to sit through the ear-splitting sound of a theater full of 10 year old's screeching over their 18 or 24 year old manchild crushes. Here's hoping that this week's R&R will be enough to tide me through next week's training and full-time return to the office.

OBX 2010 Day 3

2010-05-11T23:09:00.002-04:00

This will be a quick post since I've actually got to get some work done tonight and also want to get in a few more chapters of Eclipse (which I know is poorly written, but I've been sucked into the teen melodrama).

Today started with a jog along the beach, followed by an hour-long walk to cool down and find beach glass for my aunt. After breakfast, Aunt Fong taught us how to make the pastries that my grandpa used to make and which she's well-known for, too. After a quick lunch, I wrestled with the internet connection for a few hours, to no avail, so I switched back to my book and took a nap since I couldn't get to the reviews that I had started drafting. After my nap, we headed out to the Cobys' house in Nags Head for dinner. They grilled up some burgers and hot dogs for dinner, and we had a good time catching up with them and their family. After it started getting dark, we headed back home just in time to catch the vote-off in DWTS, then the second-to-last episode of Lost (fist pump for correctly predicting the smoke monster creation theory at the start of the episode). After a cookie for dessert, I am now back in my room and happy to be back online. Not exactly sure what happened, but the VPN seems to like me again, so I've been able to catch up on all the emails I've been getting for the last day and a half. Tomorrow, I'm going to finish writing and submitting the reviews...and then I'm logging off for the rest of the day in order to take advantage of the sunny 80+ degree weather. It's been in the low 60's since we got here, so other than the drunken college boys next door, hardly anyone's been out on the beach or jumping into the frigid water. Hopefully that all changes tomorrow!

OBX 2010 Days 1 & 2 - Life's a Beach...

2010-05-10T22:16:00.003-04:00

The long awaited vacation finally arrived, albeit with a mad dash to get work and multiple loads of laundry done. The former didn't quite get accomplished, so I've still got some work to do this week, but my teams are doing a significant amount of heavy lifting to keep things moving while I'm out, so I owe them big time. As for the laundry, that got done around 2AM on Sunday morning, so I got about 4 hours of sleep before heading over to Aunt Tai's house to begin the trek to the Outer Banks. I actually got to her house around 6:45AM, which was 15 minutes ahead of schedule and completely out of character. That allowed us to get down to Rockville with enough time to stop at Starbucks and fuel up before picking up Aunt Fong and then getting on the highway. I ended up driving both aunts in my car, so that was some interesting conversation on the way down.

We made it to NC in just over 5 hours and stopped at Awful Arthur's for lunch. This has been a family tradition since we first started coming to OBX 20 years ago. After a lunch of oysters and seared tuna, we killed some time by doing some shopping and stopping by the Italian bakery to pick up a satchel of macaroons. I'm rather indifferent to coconut, but these cookies are phenomenal, and I bought enough for everyone at the house. We made it there by 4 and settled in before heading out to the beach for a walk. I went for an hour-long stroll down the chilly beach with my aunts. It was way too cold for people to be out sunbathing, so the beach was really very empty. The waves were really choppy and actually seemed to have chopped a shelf into the beach (pictures to be loaded later, but it was almost like having a step leading to the shoreline. We headed back as the sun started to set and had a light dinner with champagne to celebrate Mother's Day. My mom wasn't there, but I'd at least called her earlier in the day to let her know I'd made it and that I'd bought her a Kitchenaid mixer for a Mother's Day present. My mom's not exactly a good cook, but she can follow instructions on the back of a box of cake mix, so this mixer will replace the one that's at least as old as I am (and that's pretty f'ing old).

Today was more of the same. I'd managed to get in a bit of work and start drafting performance evaluations but didn't head to the beach since it was 60 degrees and windy, so I didn't want to get sick. After breakfast and some work, we headed to lunch and then I drove around for a bit (since there are only 2 cars, I get to spend some quality time with my extended family by taking them around OBX). Lunch was at Sugar Creek today where I had my first experience with soft shell crab. It was ok, but I think the cartilege takes some getting used to. I think I'd prefer the hard shell Maryland version. Dinner tonight was homemade spaghetti bolognese, caprese salad, and garlic bread, with 2.5 bottles of Pezzi King zin to accompany the meal. I had 3 glasses with dinner, so I was feeling pretty awesome by the time family tv time rolled around. Tomorrow I'll have to get up a bit earlier to get some work done and get a run in before everyone else wakes up, but the latter will depend a bit on the weather.

So, to sum up, I've had about a bottle of wine in the last 2 days, eaten potentially a week's worth of calories, and generally felt my stress level go way, way down. That seems to be the hallmark of a pretty good start to a vacay.

Birthday Bender

2010-05-03T18:46:00.002-04:00

Today is my birthday, and I have officially entered the 30’s (note to reader: 30 is the end of your 20’s, so 31 is really the start of the 30’s). The birthday weekend started out promisingly. I left work early on Friday, as my crack team of auditors had done most of the legwork to issue financial statements on time, so I took the afternoon off to head to Beney’s swearing in ceremony. I got to State around 2:45, just in time for the start of the ceremony. It was pretty interesting to hear where all of these people were going, but the highlight for everyone there was Sec. Clinton walking in and doing a brief speech before officially swearing in this freshly baked batch of American diplomats. After pictures were taken and I caught up with Beney, I hurried back to Baltimore to get ready for Birthday Dinner #1. Liz and Shannon showed up at my place around 8, which was good since I had a bit of an appliance malfunction around 7:30 and needed some time to clean up my kitchen. Fortunately, I got that under control and could spend the rest of the night relaxing. We went to Iron Bridge for a really tasty dinner, but I started off with a wine flight of 3 California wines that were each half a glass. Note, however, that I had not eaten anything at all that day due to all the running around and such, so I was rather tipsy by the time they brought out the grilled brie and bread. By the time we got our steaks, I was pretty sure that my volume button was cranked up to Obnoxious and my face was beet red…but those are the hallmarks of a good time for me. We capped off dinner with desserts and coffee (my coffeecake and sorbet were pretty good, but I think Liz’s crème brulee/chocolate ganache pick was the best).

Saturday was more of the same. I headed out around 10 to go to dim sum with Beney (birthday brunch #1). The foodie gods were smiling on us, as the wait wasn’t too terribly long. The food was tasty as always, but we didn’t get the almond jello that Beney wanted. Instead, we grabbed some iced coffees next door before heading out on a mini-shopping spree for the rest of the afternoon. Keep in mind that this coffee came after a brunch where we split a pot and a half of tea. That level of caffeine was not quite at the 2009 Psycho Lok level, but it was definitely good enough to keep us wired for the rest of the afternoon. We started at a little boutique near my house, then ended up at Columbia Mall. All in, we spent about 3-4 hours shopping and invested a decent chunk of change on supplementing/building our wardrobes. After we’d done our bit to help the local economy, I dropped Beney off at the train station, and I headed to mom and dad’s place for Birthday Dinner #2. My dad is a really good cook, so rather than going out, I asked if he could just make my favorite dish and we could stay in. Dinner was really good, and I got caught up on the goings on of my Canadian cousins (one had stayed with my parents for a week on vacation, another just became the father of twin girls). The rest of the night was spent in a semi-food coma, as I made it home and tried to catch up on some DVR’d shows but ended up waking up on the couch around 3AM and wandering off to bed.

Sunday was spa day with the girls. Liz and I each got facials, while Shannon got a massage. There’s really nothing quite like having someone literally rub all the tension out of your face. After being pampered for an hour or so, we headed to the art museum for brunch with Anne. Brunch has to be one of the best foodie concepts of all time. At what other meal is it perfectly acceptable for a person to order food that could qualify for breakfast/lunch/dinner/dessert all at once, AND drink cocktails before the sun goes down? A bellini and omelette make for a good meal, so that was how Birthday Brunch #2 went down. Afterwards, we headed back to Shannon’s apartment, as she’d baked us cupcakes that morning. Although my sister works for a bakery, I have to admit that I do love me some cake mix out of a box…the texture’s always perfect and it conjures up memories of when I was little and got to help dad with the baking.

Today was fairly slow at work. Still needed to get a lot done but without that ultra-panicky feeling that comes with statutory filings. The team went out to lunch at Cheesecake Factory, but by this point, I’d been binging for 3 straight days and needed a little detox. A small salad and some seared tuna were all I could handle, but it was pretty tasty. The rest of the day has pretty much been a blur of work here and there, catching up with folks in the office, and writing reviews. Not bad for spending my 31st in the office.

All told, this has been a fantastic (extended) birthday celebration! It was a lot of fun hanging out with the girls and my family, and it really made me appreciate the people who have stood by me through all these years.

My $0.02

2010-04-17T14:38:00.003-04:00

I made it into work last Saturday afternoon after running errands all morning. I went to Potbelly's to grab a late lunch before heading upstairs, though. As I was checking out, I handed the girl a $20 and then remembered that I had loads of loose change and gave her an extra $0.02. My lunch cost something like $5.82, so I was trying to save her some time by making the change easy. She then handed me $14.16. I pointed out that I'd actually given her the extra couple of pennies so she didn't have to think too hard and could just hand me a couple of dimes, and she then insisted that she had given me the right change. I didn't care about the money, but I was a little taken aback that she tried to make it sound like I was the stupid one...especially when I was absolutely, stone cold certain that I was right. I would think that my Penn degree trumps her Potbelly's training certificate. After I pointed out that 2-2=0 (so where was the 6?), the light bulb over her head (that was undoubtedly in need of some changing) slowly brightened. She tried to play it off with some excuse about being distracted and having a really long day. Yes, cry me a river, lady. Everyone I work with works 50+ hour weeks and can still do arithmetic accurately (without a calculator) after 2PM.

This whole discussion lasted about a minute, but it got me wondering how some people are able to function without the most basic of skills. I recall an incident years ago when someone, probably a helicopter parent in MoCo, suggested that math was not precise and that if students provided an answer that was close to the "suggested" answer, they should be given credit for it. I remember that my dad's response to hearing about this proposal was a steady stream of expletives in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin (a salty mix that we like to call Chinglish). Fortunately, that proposal was DOA, but I still remember it because it was such a foreign concept to me that there were parents out there who thought it was ok to raise their kids as morons and not correct them, for fear that correction would crush their fragile egos. Most of the Asian kids that I knew growing up had the exact opposite upbringing (constant correction), and while we now have our own unique brand of neuroses and self-esteem issues, we are at least able to hold down steady jobs and do productive things that help society like build bridges, practice medicine, or foot a balance sheet in under 20 seconds. Even if this accounting gig doesn't work out and I end up flipping burgers or working a cash register somewhere, I'll never be caught making mistakes like the checkout girl did this weekend.

After wrapping up work around 7:30, I headed to Beney's place in Arlington. We had a really late dinner at the bar and watched the tail end of the Caps game, which they eventually won. That was good, because I couldn't really eat until Nicky banged in the winning goal 20 seconds into OT. After dinner, we were both pretty wiped out so we stayed in and drank some peach lambic that Beney had bought from Teeters (sale of beer and wine in grocery stores = only redeeming quality of the State of Virginia). That gave us time to catch up on life and her adventures in the FS training.

*****

This week was more of the same: work, work, work, some rowing practice thrown in on the weekend, and then dinner with Beney (who now knows that she's been posted to Korea, so I'll be making a trip out there in December). Now I just have to make it through the next week and try not to stress out everyone around me as we race to get the bulk of the financial statements issued. Next weekend should be good - relaxing because the big stat financials push will be over, and fun because I'll be celebrating turning the big 2-5...for the 6th time. :)

Made It!

2010-04-12T19:26:00.004-04:00

This past weekend was rather busy, as I had a lot to do around the house and also had to get ready for the big race on Sunday. Saturday was spent cleaning up and doing load after load of laundry (which is amazing, considering I always think I have nothing to wear). After a few chores, I got in what was supposed to be a final run before the 10 miler, only to have my knee act up. I ended up icing that down for a couple of hours on and off, so I was able to walk again without much achiness. I left the house much later than I wanted to in order to get down to Beney's new place in Arlington, and that turned into an exercise in frustration. I would normally be able to make it to Arlington in about 45 minutes. On Saturday afternoon, it took just over 2 hours, so you can imagine how ticked off I was by the time I arrived in the navigational nightmare that is Virginia. After finally making it to Beney's new digs, we set off to pick up my race packet downtown. At least that process wasn't nearly as frustrating or time consuming as the ride down. Afterwards, we headed to Ben's Chili Bowl for a really late lunch. It was about 4 when we got there, and the line still snaked outside of the building and down the alley, which tells you just how popular the place is given the odd time of day. The food was pretty good and cheap, and it was pretty neat to be at a DC institution like that. After making a meal out of just about every food you're not supposed to eat before a big race, I headed to mom and dad's house. Mom was getting ready to go to the beach with my aunts, and I think dad might have been even more excited to get 4 days of peace and quiet.

Sunday morning started around 5:30 with a couple of slices of toast and jam and a couple of glasses of water to serve as pre-race fuel. Dad and I took Metro downtown but ended up bypassing a couple of trains at Metro Center because we both felt pretty queasy from the first leg of the trip. Something about the jerky front-t0-back motion of the car, coupled with the occasional tilting left-to-right just didn't sit right with me. I've taken Metro ever since I was a little kid, and the motion sickness has never affected me like it has recently. We eventually made it down to the Mall with about 20 minutes to spare. The weather was perfect for a road race, and after literally crawling through a fence to get into the runners' corral (no one seemed to know where the actual entrance was), I managed to make my way to the slowpokes' section in the back. The race started out well enough - the first 10K felt terrific and I was fairly confident that I would beat the short bus. Around mile 7.5, though, I hit a big old wall and ended up walking about a mile for the remaining quarter of the race. I had enough gas in the tank to sprint the last 100 yards or so through the finish line and was glad to have run most of the way. Not too bad, considering I'm not anywhere near the kind of shape I need to be in to run the MCM later this year. I'm using this as a baseline for the rest of my races this year...and therefore setting the bar really low. The ultimate goal is to finish the MCM in 4.5 hours, but for now, I'm just happy to have made it to the end of the 10 miler with minimal prep.

The rest of Sunday afternoon was spent recuperating with ice packs and a couple of hours of the Masters. Golf really isn't normally that exciting to me, but it was pretty impressive to see Phil make shot after ridiculous shot to win the tourney. The part where he blasted the ball into the trees off the tee for 3 or 4 consecutive holes is something that I could do. The part where he then blasted the ball back out of the trees and onto the green is what makes him a pro golfer and me just some dork roaming through the forest looking for her golf ball. It's hard not to root for a guy who can play like that and who seems like a pretty decent guy. Phil won and was greeted by his adoring family, and he seemed equally happy and grateful to them for their presence and support. What a contrast that would have been if Tiger had won (maybe greeted by his mom, his agent, some dude from Nike, and a bevy of Hooters girls?). Guess it just goes to show that winning is great, but it helps to have a support system, whether it's family cheering you on and greeting you at the finish line, or friends wishing you luck before a race. Just have to remember not to take all of that for granted on the way to the finish.

Going the Distance (hopefully)

2010-04-07T22:13:00.002-04:00

I signed up for my first marathon today, so I've effectively committed myself to being more disciplined in all aspects of my life for the next 6 months. This means I'm going to have to watch what I eat and get a reasonable amount of sleep and exercise from here on out. Sounds simple enough, but this is one race that I can't just show up for and really need to take seriously. 26.2 miles is no joke, and while I've been able to crank out 10 and 13 mile races with minimal preparation, those times were already borderline short-bus worthy (technically, it's the stragglers bus, but you get the idea...I was slow). Beney volunteered at one of the MCM medical stations last year, and she said that there were guys who had completed 25 miles and were literally hobbling along with the help of their friends to get to the finish line. That's a lot of dedication. My goal is to not be hobbling or otherwise phyiscally ill at the end of the race, so it's time to buckle down and get serious about this training regimen.

Having said all this, I should also disclose that I ordered a red velvet cheesecake for dessert today. I have not actually eaten that cake yet (saving it for tomorrow and Friday), so that is a small sign of progress. Normally, I wouldn't let little things like calories, the fact that it's almost 10:30 PM, or shame prevent me from demolishing a big slice of cake. At this late hour, though, I am thinking of my family cheering me on at the finish line and the big shiny finishers medal that I'll get for making it to the end. Aunt Tai and her friend Leslie also volunteered to work the MCM as actual volunteers for the race and as my own personal "scouts" (I envision these two ladies armed with clipboards and accosting Marines along the race route, asking them if they are single, reasonably intelligent, and gainfully employed. Cowboys and Steelers fans need not apply). With all of that in mind, I will forgo the late night binge and focus on cranking out the next 5 miles in my training program.

In other news, work is going fairly smoothly. After last week's frustrating crash course in tax accounting, it's back to the normal grind of the stat reports. Fortunately, my teams are all pretty solid and making good progress in getting the statements to completion, so I'm a lot more comfortable with our status and confident that we're going to make these deadlines (some will even make it with time to spare). It helps that I'm also lucid and have learned my lesson from last year, so sleep is a top priority. Sure it means that I'm getting in to the office at 10 because I'm running twice a day and still trying to fit in 6 hours of sleep (that seems to be the minimum to keep me from turning into The Incredible Bulk), but at least no one's getting yelled at, I'm not hating life, and we're getting the job done. Hurray for progress!

Back to Normal(ish)

2010-04-04T15:33:00.002-04:00

At last - something decent to write about! This past week at work was fairly unpleasant, but it ended on a higher note since we did get one plan issued and there are 2 others that are really close to issuance. Friday night was spent recuperating with a glass of wine and some grilled chicken, and catching up on hours of DVR'd shows. The beauty of DVR is that I can get through an hour-long show in half the time since I FF through all the commercials and any scenes that I think are going to be awkward or formulaic.

Saturday morning I slept in but did manage to get in a run in preparation for the 10 miler next week (ack!). My grand plan of scheduling a big race after busy season was designed to keep me disciplined and running throughout the long winter months. Instead, I was singularly focused on work and will most definitely not be hitting my goal of a 9-minute pace, but at least I know I'll finish and have a starting point for the even bigger races later in the year. After washing up and changing, I went hunting for sweet tea vodka that is now my new favorite vice. I drink a lot of iced tea to begin with, so turning that into an alcoholic beverage is just fabulous. I finally found the brand I was looking for and headed over to Liz's apartment afterwards. We "initiated" a new member to our merry band of auditors, so Shannon got her first exposure to Utah-style tacos. Milk shakes and The Ugly Truth followed, so it was a very good night since I got to hang out and catch up with friends AND spend part of the evening with Gerard Butler too.

This morning I slept in again but did get up in time to make it to brunch with Uncle Bruce and Aunt Tai. Alex is heading back to law school in a day or two, so it was a combination Easter/Alex's birthday/going back to law school brunch. The food was really good and I now have a new restaurant to add to the list of places to go for a high end meal. I love hanging out with my aunt and uncle because they're foodies and are more likely than not to give you a hard time about needing to eat more.

So, the plan for the rest of the day is to finish up some things in the office, run to Target or CVS to buy the last bunch of Cadbury dark chocolate eggs (and Peeps, if there are any left), be home by 7:30 to complete 3 more loads of laundry, then get in an hour and a half run, which will be my last long run until the race. Not a bad way to spend a lovely Easter weekend.

Fortress of Suckitude

2010-04-01T21:20:00.003-04:00

I promise that one day soon I will have a non-whiny post. In the meantime, allow me to wallow some more.

April is typically when I start to come a bit unhinged due to several straight months of non-stop work, lack of sleep, and caffeine/junk food-induced psychosis. So to top off all of that, tonight a team that I have been helping (but of which I am not actually a member) missed a deadline to issue their financials, and I was told that it was my fault. The partner's exact words were, "We're just going to blame it on you." I don't really think he was joking, either. Keep in mind that I do not actually audit this subsidiary and the team came to me asking for help. In almost 9 years at this firm, I've probably never felt lower or more useless. And for those who know me, that's really saying something. I've spent most of the day holed up in my office with the door closed, my radio on, and my attitude cranked up to Raging B-----. I suppose having an office where I can hide comes in handy for times like this.

Find a Happy Place....

2010-03-30T22:04:00.003-04:00

There's a scene in Finding Nemo where Peach, the starfish, says, "Find a happy place, find a happy place, FIND A HAPPY PLACE!" while she desperately tries to stay suction-cupped to the aquarium's glass as the evil Darla taps furiously on the glass to knock her off. Today, I feel like that starfish. This is mainly because once again I am feeling pretty overwhelmed with a deadline coming up in less than 20 hours that it looks like we will not be able to achieve. Did I mention that this deadline actually relates to another team, but I'm trying furiously to get them to the finish line on time while my other projects fall by the wayside? I consoled myself at dinner today by getting mac & cheese from Panera, which may just be laced with crack because I have strong cravings for it on an almost daily basis. Amazing how effective gobs of cheesy goodness can be at dulling the bitterness of an exercise in futility like this.

So, aside from a big heaping dose of whining, the other things that have been going on since my last post in (gasp!) January are as follows:

Wrapped up 2 SEC audit engagements. % of staff who survived working with me this busy season: 100 (a new record!)
Consumed hideous amounts of cupcakes...the scale (and mirror) in my bathroom are now cracked, but perhaps there is a correlation between the number of calories consumed and the significant improvement in my attitude and mood. Just goes to show that a well-fed auditor is a happy auditor.
Had dinner with my aunt and uncle a couple of times and have decided that vacationing with family members later this summer can be a very cool thing. They have excellent taste in adult beverages and are more than happy to educate a wannabe winesnob (that would be me) and share their vino.
Watched the Olympics - this is the one where the Americans won the most medals but somehow still got beaten by the Canadians more often than not. Was also shocked to learn during the opening ceremony that Jack Bauer's dad is Canadian...is it a coincidence that 24 has now been cancelled?
Went to the spa a couple of times. The lady at the spa spent about an hour each time rubbing lotion and other chemicals into my face until I looked a little more presentable.
Drove down to Newport News, VA for a new client. That's a 3.5 - 6 hour trip each way, depending on what time of day it is. The team was a lot of fun. Who knew that NN could have such decent restaurants and rocking cover bands who entertain a crowd of inappropriately dressed 40-year old women and a slightly smaller group of 20/30-something accountants?
Mentally trained for the 10-miler on April 11. That's mentally trained, as opposed to physically trained, since I seem to have slid back into that 9:30AM-2AM shift at work. Doesn't leave a lot of time for running or other non-sleep related activities.

So, that's it for now. The next few months will be interesting, what with my cousin coming to visit for the first time in about 10 years, the 10-miler and weekly training sessions gearing up, my and Liz's shared birthday, and the OBX trip in May. Until then, I will be crawling back under my tenkey and grinding away at these financial statements.

Busy Season 2010 Stats - Day 18

2010-01-22T01:31:00.004-05:00

Wow, has it already been 3 weeks since busy season started? Time has flown by, and although I'm not quite done (hell, we just got started on one of my clients), it feels like we're going to make it through just fine.

While I've been cranking away in a windowless conference room, the world seems to have suddenly spun off its axis. The following support this statement:

Thousands are dead, or alive but suffering in Haiti. Here's hoping that people get the help they need soon.
Massachusetts elected a Republican senator. Does this mean we can color the state purple now? Maybe a dark purple, like the color that the Ravens burned into the Pats and the field at Gillette stadium as they repeatedly raced their way into the end zone?
NBC kicked Conan off the air. They did this in order to return the most unfunny man in late night back to his 11:30 slot where he will hopefully one day be crushed under a hail of hair gel and flashlights (In the Year 2000, anyone?).

These would normally be signs of the apocalypse, but the sight of an audit team hard at work at 10PM on a Thursday evening tells me that at least some things are still normal and life, or at least work, will go on.

And without further ado, here are my updated stats:

Cupcakes consumed last week: 1. Alas, I did not anticipate my mother expropriating the latest shipment.
Sodas consumed today: 0. It is an official Vice in our busy season health challenge, and I'm not going to lose points by caving into my crack-like addiction to soft drinks.
Times I've been to the gym this week: 0. Pathetic? Yes. But the snooze button and the promise of 10 more precious minutes of sleep in a warm bed is soooo much more inviting than treking through the cold and then sweating it out at the gym.
People I pissed off at Hard Times for screaming like an idiot during the Ravens/Pats game: 2 or possibly more. This is why I usually watch football alone at home.
Stress level, on a scale of 1-10 (1 being beach bum tranquil and 10 being 8 cups of coffee and exhibiting signs of 3 types of psychosis): 6.5. This either means that I am managing my stress (and therefore my teams) much better...or the s___ has not quite hit the fan yet.
Audit adjustments identified so far: 1. Hurray! I am officially adding value.

Busy Season 2010 Stats - Day 3

2010-01-06T21:34:00.002-05:00

I figured a good tactic to make it through this busy season is to take a 10 minute break every 2 hours. So, here's as much of a recap of New Year's and busy season goings-on that I can provide in 8.5 minutes:

New Year's Eve Carbombs & Chaos Party! Those Vances sure do like their Guinness and whiskey...is it any wonder why I like them so much?! Survived another year and rang in the new year with Anne, Ryan, and friends. Was wise enough to not challenge a Vance all evening to drinking games but did manage to use my Asian superpowers to play and dominate in Wii bowling and later Wii tennis (credit also goes to my Dad - 16 years of coaching/screaming at me about my tennis game has finally paid off).
New year's shopping. Took a day trip to the outlet in Leesburg and bought a Kate Spade bag...then walked across the street and bought a Coach bag...then walked a little further down the street and bought a bunch of sweaters and pants from Ann Taylor.
The agony of defeat. My FF team imploded (damn you, stupid Colts, for benching your starters...have you any idea the damage done to certain fantasy football teams?!). Then the Eagles got crushed by the Cowboys. Don't really like the Eagles, but they were the lesser of two evils last weekend.
A glimmer of hope. Ravens make the playoffs!! McGahee rushes for 167 yards and 3 TD's...a week after the fantasy schedule ended. Oh well, at least my boys are making progress in real life.
BUSY SEASON STATS - DAY 3

Cupcakes consumed this week - 2...and counting
Average wake up time this week - 5:45AM
Trips to the gym this week - 3
Trips I was supposed to make to the gym this week - 3 (batting 1.000 so far in 2010!)
Conference calls today - 5
Clients visited today - 2
Degrees in the Coventry audit room around 5PM today - 300 (really, feels like we could have baked a cake in here)
Types of chocolate candy available in the snack drawer today - zero. BOOOOOOOO!

Ok, that's two back-to-back food references so that must mean it's feeding time for yours truly, and my break time is up. More BS stats to come (haha, that is such an appropriate title). Happy Busy Season to all!

Holidays 2009

2009-12-11T17:50:00.007-05:00

As usual, I am playing catch up. Not all that much has happened by way of odd events or random acts of hilarity, but here's a recap of what I've been up to recently, including holidays with the Lok/Liu family:

Wednesday before Thanksgiving - Caps game! Introduced Beney and re-introduced my sister to hockey. Caps won, Ovie got booted for a hard check (ref made a bad call - no blood = not that bad of a hit), and my voice was hoarse from all the screaming I did at the game. Must get to more games in the future.

Thanksgiving dinner. Sadly, I forgot to charge the battery for my camera, so I couldn't take the traditional picture of the dinner spread before my family pounced on it (really, it's just Animal Kingdom-like carnage). Just imagine a very big turkey, beef tenderloin, stuffing, and all manner of tasty Chinese dishes spreading over an entire kitchen island and a side table. Dinner was followed by hours of family fun playing the Wii. From that experience, we learned that my sister can in fact sit still for 3 minutes, my Dad can play real tennis well but will get his butt kicked by a 4 year-old playing Wii tennis, and my aunt can get stressed out doing yoga on Wii Fit. Also determined that I should never buy a Wii because that will result in me never leaving the house again and developing a wicked case of carpal tunnel.

Black Friday. It was pitch dark at 6AM, but that didn't deter me and dozens of others from heading out on a cold morning to scour the mall for good deals. Did my part for the economy by buying a couple of shirts, sweaters, pants, and coat...for myself. Oh wait, was I supposed to be shopping for others?

The Vances' Second Thanksgiving. Good food, good beer, really good apple dessert, and good times at Anne's house. Was especially thankful that the drinking games did not involve too much thinking because the food coma was seriously slowing down brain processing time.

Senior manager training in Florida - Nov. 30-Dec. 3. Orlando, FL was taken over by literally hundreds of drunk accountants. I met a bunch of new people, got re-inspired by the firm's leadership and some keynote speakers who taught me that you don't have to steamroll over others in order to get what you want (information that would have been useful yesterday!), and continued my week-long streak of eating 5000+ calories a day. Pretty sure that at this rate I'll be ready for the sumo wrestling circuit in just a few months.

Site visits to Client-That-Makes-Things-That-Go-Boom - Dec. 6-8. The itinerary was DC to San Jose, CA to Dallas, TX to DC. A tour of a factory and meetings with the audit teams gave us comfort that the teams were doing enough work and that the client was continuing to produce some badass aircraft and weapons to produce peace through power. The trip also managed to throw my sleep cycle further out of whack so that I am now fairly certain that I can operate effectively on normal business hours in Tokyo, but I'll be damned if I will make it into my office by 7AM EST.

Fantasy football implosion - I ended the regular season in second place, but good things are just not meant to be for me in the world of FF. Just like the Giants the other night, everything just fell apart and my playoffs were horrendous. Oh well, there's always next year.

Christmas Eve with the Maks. My mom still gets together with her friends from college, and earlier this summer, they went to the beach together with their families....all in all, it was 40 people crammed into 1 beach house. One of the families, the Maks, decided to throw a Christmas Eve bash and invited my family along. There were about 20 people there, but the highlight of the night was the roasted suckling pig that was literally carried in on a platter (see picture below...but only if you're ok with seeing where your food really comes from). White elephant gifts were exchanged, 60 pounds of roast pork was demolished, and my dad got to play mah jongg for 6 hours. A good night indeed!

Christmas 2009. LOTS of food, and this time, I remembered to bring my camera. The Wii was played for a bit, but we watched Angels and Demons after dinner. The movie was frequently interrupted by my mom, her older sister, and my uncle alternately screaming, "What's this movie called again?" Dinner and movies were followed by dessert (mostly cupcakes, which I'm starting to get sick of) and lots of gossiping about other family members. Basically a pretty standard Liu family Christmas.

In other news, my heater is broken, so I am currently wearing 3 layers of sweatshirts & tees, a jacket, and gloves...indoors...and praying for the repairman to come soon. Other random news learned today - my cousin Geoff (the Canadian Mounty) is expecting twins with his wife in March! Hurrah! No more pressure from the family to reproduce the first Lok family grandchild! 2010 is shaping up to be a good year already! :)

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Yes, that's a whole roasted pig...and it was delicious!!

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This is how you REALLY play mah jongg. Dad is the guy on the left, smiling because he just won a hand.

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Christmas dinner. And in our family, there's no such thing as too many cooks in the kitchen.

A Christmas Wishlist

2009-11-18T21:05:00.006-05:00

I know it's a little bit early to be talking about Xmas, but if the stores are already putting out candy canes and ornaments, and my neighbors have already plugged in their big cheesy plastic snowman, then maybe it's ok to talk about what I want for Christmas. In no particular order, here's what I'd like this year:

A computer that works. That means no blue screen of death, no slooooow boot up, and no freezing everytime I try to open up a frigging spreadsheet....AAAAAAGH!! For the record, today wasn't too bad. Only had to flip the bird to my computer screen twice today for lack of cooperation.

Patience. This would help with the computer issue. My staff may also consider it a present to them, too.

One measly championship...in anything. Consider the following teams that I support:
- Ravens - long shot
- my fantasy team - since the football gods hate me (despite me sacrificing my Redskins fandom), Michael Turner is now out for who knows how long, so no chance
- Penn basketball - similar to achieving world peace...a nice thought but completely impossible
- Caps - since my interest in hockey is relatively new, I don't think I've quite poisoned their playoff potential yet.

Pie weights. Admittedly, this is a bit random, but it is the holiday season and I am baking a lot again. Pie weights are needed to help pie crusts from blowing up into big puffs of dough while they're in the oven. I've been using pennies wrapped in aluminum foil, but I'm thinking it's time to invest those pennies in real kitchen gear so I don't have to do this MacGuyver baking anymore.

A BB gun. The local squirrels are running around foraging for food, but they seem to enjoy using my roof and windowsill as a nut-trafficking route. This is incredibly annoying especially since my roof slopes down in my bedroom, so it sounds like their scurrying is happening directly over my head. A couple of warning shots might make the little bastards plan their re-up and distribution differently (can you tell I've been re-watching The Wire recently?).

Everything Old Is New Again

2009-11-06T19:53:00.002-05:00

Is it just me, or does it seem like everything that was cool or popular circa 1985 is suddenly all the rage again? It started with Transformers, then GI Joe, and now V. For the uninitiated, V is a tv show about aliens (who look human but are really lizards) who come to Earth with a message of peace but who are really intent on turning people into food and slaves. The show originally aired in 1983, and the relaunch aired earlier this week (or tonight, thanks to the magic of DVR).

It surprised me that I still remember scenes from the original 1983 show. There was the scene where a car got blown up and one of the V (aliens) crawled out of the burning wreckage and showed his lizard face (heat exposes their true form). Then there was the scene where the lead V lady threw some guy into a glass room filled with sand...as well as some creepy crawly thing that scurried its way through the sand and then ate the victim. Finally, I recall the lead V lady devouring a hamster or some other small, cute rodent. That last one was especially traumatizing, as we had a guinea pig at my day care, and I thought they were really cute, not an option for Lunchable. Keep in mind that I was about 4 years old, so my parents letting me watch a show like that is perhaps an indication of lax parenting. Now, almost 30 years later, the show's back, and I can actually appreciate the storylines that mix the concepts of fascism, occupation and resistance, media tampering, and alien encounters all into one convenient hour-long package. I also appreciate the producers getting rid of the huge hair and red spandex unitards (yeah, nothing screams 80's like bad hair and awful clothes).

So, everything old seems new again. I'm ok with bringing back classic shows like V and remaking the Transformers, but I draw the line at remaking the Smurfs (you CANNOT mess with or do a live action version of the original) and bringing back leg warmers, big hair, and headbands.

Halloween and Other Randomness

2009-11-02T19:07:00.003-05:00

Here's the rundown on the last couple of weeks:

MCM 10K - Another race, another medal, another chance for mom and dad to load up on swag
Practice Thanksgiving - There is no such thing as too much turkey...or cider...or pie.
Halloween - Brit-com with zombies and close encounters with the deer-kind
Ravens v Broncos - A winning equation: purple sweater + purple Coach wristlet = 30-7 stomping of previously undefeated team.

MCM 10K

My last big race of this year was the Marine Corps 10K, which was the same day as the full marathon (we just started at the Smithsonian and ran 20 fewer miles...hahaha!). Mom and Dad came with me to the race again, as they were on the hunt again for freebies. The morning was cold but clear, and about 6000 people ran the 10K. I did ok and attacked The Wall (VERY steep hill leading to the Iwo Jima Memorial) at the end of the race. My knee was acting up again, though, so I got checked out by the ortho physician on duty and iced it until I couldn't stand the cold anymore. I met up with Mom and Dad before heading off to the refreshment area to grab some snacks and then head home. Mom and Dad seemed to enjoy it, and I did appreciate the moral support. Mom told me later that she was at the bottom of The Wall, cheering me on, so that was nice, even though I didn't actually hear her over the rest of the crowd.

Practice Thanksgiving

Anne invited some folks over to practice her Thanksgiving feast-preparing skills on Saturday, and if the test run is any indication, she's going to have a really good meal on the actual holiday. There's probably nothing as comforting (food-wise) as warm turkey, mashed potato, and stuffing, so helping the Vances polish off a turkey was a good way to spend the evening. Much better than manning the door, waiting for pint-sized candy panhandlers to stop by.

Halloween

After I left Anne's house, I headed to Silver Spring to see Shaun of the Dead with Beney. I don't usually like horror movies, so a British comedy that happens to feature zombies was a much better fit. On the way to the theater, though, I was driving along Rte. 29 when I suddenly was hit on the right side of my car by a flash of white. The impact dented an area around the rear passenger side of my car, just around the wheelwell. I figured it must have been a deer because no one would possibly run across 29 in the middle of the night for no reason. Then again, it was Halloween, and there could have been some drunken idiot running around, so I called the non-emergency number for the police to report the accident, just in case. I didn't get a call back, so I think Bambi just picked a fight with my Honda and lost. I got to the theater right on time and had a good time at the movies.

Ravens game

Yesterday was also a lot of fun, as I got invited to the company box at Ravens stadium. Since the big boss was going to be there and we were entertaining clients, I didn't wear my actual Ravens gear and stuck with a purple sweater instead. It also gave me a chance to break out a purple Coach wristlet that I saw at the mall recently and bought on a whim. The clouds breaking and rain stopping just as the game started should have been a sign that the football gods wanted the Ravens to have a good game. They ended up breaking their losing streak, and the Ravens looked really strong all game long. It was a good result for my new favorite team!

FF Week 6 Stats

2009-10-13T22:21:00.004-04:00

It's been a while since my last post, so this will be a long catchup entry. For those who want the cliff notes version, here it is:

Fantasy football record thru week 6 - 4-2 (not bad)

Baltimore half marathon - light rain and some shady spectators didn't stop me from setting a personal record. Oh, and I was able to walk just fine the next day, so that's progress!

Girls night - taco's + milkshakes + catching up with the girls = good times

Caps game - Uncle Ernie has some nice digs at the Verizon Center but could at least comp us for a drink or 2. And my sports fan theory is proving itself out - every time I root for loses!

Komen 5k - Another weekend, another race, another personal best

Holiday baking - Recipe #1 - apple pie (from scratch, of course). Nothing says the holidays are near like a delicious dessert and my kitchen looking like someone just dropped a bomb in it.

And for the extended, detailed version:

Fantasy football - Not much to say here other than I've only dropped 2 games so far, and both during bye weeks where I had to start multiple 2nd or 3rd stringers. That's a pretty good record to have, and picking up K. Faulk should improve my running game for the rest of the season, so here's hoping that at least my make-believe team will end up with a better record than the real-life teams I root for!

Baltimore half-marathon

I haven't trained as hard for these races as I really could, but I do my best and just tell myself that I've done that distance (or longer) before and can do it again. The Baltimore half was the weekend after the Army 10, so I hadn't really run all week since I hadn't stretched out too well after that race and was pretty sore. Still, I really wanted to finish the half because of the challenge and because I could also get another medal for doing the "double" (Frederick and Baltimore half marathons). So, I got up at 6AM, did some chores, and then scarfed down a bagel and fruit before heading to Ravens stadium at 7. I got there around 7:30 and avoided the massive backup at Russell Street by taking the next exit up to MLK and swinging around the stadium...then ended up sitting in the long line of cars on the quest for parking. My race didn't start until 9:45, so I had plenty of time to park and check out the end of the 5k race before making my way over to the start line. The race started on time, and the first 3 miles were pretty easy, with some rolling hills and generous downhills. By the time we rejoined the marathon course at mile 3, I was still feeling pretty strong. I figured I'd save my energy, though, for the end, and hit a water stop before approaching the big incline at mile 5. It was a steady climb for the next mile or so, and although I walked the first 50 feet, I ended up running the remainder of the hill because I felt an adrenaline rush and because it was a relay exchange point and I didn't want to crap out in front of all those people. By the time I got to the top of the hill, I was feeling really good and had passed a bunch of people. The rest of the course took us through some parts of Baltimore that I'd never been to before. Some neighborhoods were definitely nicer than others. The nice ones featured people cheering on the runners, playing music, and handing out goodies (gummy bears, pretzels, water, and beer!). The not-so-nice neighborhoods featured a hooker trying to cross the street (pretty sure that was her profession because nobody else wears shorts that short with fishnet stockings and stilettos), a junkie yelling encouragement, and a really pissed off lady leaning out of her window and yelling obscenities at the runners for waking her up. Ah, Charm City! The course concludes at Camden Yards and M&T stadium, and the last mile is really pretty energizing with all the people cheering on the runners and the final half mile that takes you through the stadiums. It was really a lot of fun, and the extra medal was just a nice (shiny!) bonus. It'll definitely be on my slate of races again for next year.

Girls' night - Liz and Anne were nice enough to come over to my house after the Half to hang out for a bit that evening, as we'd anticipated that I'd pretty much be crippled and wouldn't be able to make it down the stairs to my car. Surprisingly, I was in pretty good shape and was able to help with the taco's and milkshakes. After polishing off our overstuffed tacos, we caught up on work and gossip and a couple of episodes of Glee, which is my new favorite guilty pleasure. All in all, a great, relaxing night!

Caps game - Last Monday, the team went to the company box at the Verizon Center to see the Caps take on the Devils. I hadn't been to a hockey game in about 4 years, and the last time was also with a group from work and we got to use the company box. The main difference was that this time around, the entire arena was bathed in red and the fans were completely rabid. Not sure if DC's always been a hockey town, but I don't remember so many people being that into hockey before. The Caps lost in a shootout (just proving that if I cheer for a team, they will undoubtedly lose), but it was still a pretty exciting game and a lot of fun to watch. I even went out and bought tickets for a game next month, so I'm taking Beney and Melanie with me so they can also Rock the Red.

Komen 5k - This past weekend was the Maryland race for the cure, and the office women's initiative sponsored a team to participate. I ran the 5k race and shaved another minute off my time, so that was pretty good. It was cold and rainy but that was almost an incentive since it just made me want to get to the finish line faster. So, there's just one more race to go this month (actually, it's this upcoming weekend), and then it'll be a long layoff until the next races begin in the spring. Still, it's nice to end the running season on a high note of a pair of personal bests. We'll see how this weekend's MCM 10K goes (guess that'll also be a personal best since I've never actually raced that distance before).

Kitchen experiments - I make a trip to the farmers market almost every weekend, and this past weekend was an especially good trip since it was cold and raining and there were almost no patrons. The vendors were eager to unload as much of their produce as they could, so I got some good deals, especially on the apples. So with 6 pounds of apples, I decided to bake my first apple pie. Aside from a little (ok, a lot) of mess from the dough, it turned out pretty well. Now that I've got that crossed off my list, I can move on to the caramel apple pie (more advanced version of the classic), pecan pie, chocolate covered macaroons, pumpking pie, and cheesecake recipes that I've been meaning to try out. Good thing I've gotten into running...that should help to burn off all those extra calories.

4 Down, 3 To Go

2009-10-07T23:12:00.008-04:00

I think that my addictive personality is starting to manifest itself in road races. I am in no way a disciplined runner, but for whatever reason I have been signing up for more and more races. I started the year with 4 races on the schedule, and it's turned into 4 races in the month of October alone. I've still got 3 races left this month, but last Sunday was the Army 10 Miler, which has so far been my favorite race. It's enormous (30,000 people signed up, 22,000 ran), the course is pretty easy (only gently rolling hills), and the course is scenic (goes past the DC tidal basin and major monuments). So, here's the rundown on last weekend's festivities.

Saturday was somewhat hectic with me running errands in the morning, then literally running (just a 5k to stay loose), and then more running...only this time to the DC Armory to pick up my packet. I drove to my parents house for the night since I could buy myself an extra half hour of sleep in the morning. There was also the added fact that both of my parents were going to go to the race with me. I got up the next morning at 5 and scarfed down a bowl of cereal. I woke my dad up at 5:30 by saying, "Wake up daddy. The US Army wants to make you breakfast. Don't keep them waiting." My dad was up and ready to go by 5:45. We were at the Metro station just after six, along with about a dozen other people. By the time we made it down to Metro Center to transfer over to the blue line to the Pentagon, the Metro stations were packed. We got to the Pentagon a little after 7:30, just in time to watch the parachute teams and catch the Blackhawk flyover. My mom insisted on taking random pictures of me and others warming up (my warm up consisted of a little stretching and then wrestling the d-tag onto my shoe). I attempted to escape the photo frenzy by telling her that she couldn't pass a certain barrier, but the overly-helpful soldier manning that post waved her through and insisted she could accompany me to the runners' corral. Eventually, I persuaded her to go with my dad to find some breakfast, and she rolled out.

At 8:10, the second wave started and I took off. It is quite a sight to see literally thousands of people take off running, and even though I hadn't trained properly (not even as much as last year), it was still enough to get the adrenaline going to get in a decent first 6 miles. I had bought a new watch specifically to help gauge my pace, and I was clocking in the 11-minute range, which was faster than I wanted to go, but I figured that would give me some cushion on the home stretch. The first few miles are probably the most impressive. Running over the bridge into DC, you get a great view of the Potomac, and as you progress over the next few miles, you run past the Tidal Basin and its monuments and the Kennedy Center. One of the runners had brought a small camera with him and was snapping pictures of the monuments and the general scene as he ran - great idea that I'll have to remember for next year! By mile 6, we were in the heart of DC, but the liter of water I drank that morning meant that I had to make a pit stop during the race. That was unfortunate, because it added at least 10 minutes to my time (no joke, it was a ridiculous wait for the bathroom, and while I could have put in another mile in that time, I wasn't sure where the next bathroom would be, so I waited). I eventually finished in a pretty woeful time, but I finished nonetheless and still enjoyed the experience.

Here's me with Dad, just before the start gun. Notice the backpack my Dad brought...he came prepared to raid the food and giveaway tents!

At the finishers area, I picked up the latest in my collection of shiny finishers coins, plus some food and a bottle of water. By luck, I ran into Beney, who had come to cheer me on. We stocked up on some more cookies and muffins and then headed off to find my parents. When we found them, my mom and dad had clearly gotten their money's (or at least my money's) worth of food and random giveaways. They each had 2 bags stuffed with things like hats, cookies, muffins, bananas, bottled water, chocolate milk, Power Bars, Larabars (coconut cream pie protein bars - YUM!), Army hats, Army t-shirts, half a dozen snackable-type lunch kits, and a DVD on how to become an Army officer (yeah, not exactly applicable to either of them, but hey, it was free!). I was thoroughly mortified when my mom proceeded to pull out all this loot on the lawn across from the Pentagon Metro station where we were hanging out while the crowd cleared. Mom then proceeded to show me the pictures she'd taken that day with my camera. She ran into the mayor of DC and took a picture with him, then proceeded to take pictures with the color guard, random runners with rainbow wigs, and just lots of other random people. Mom and Dad both said they're really looking forward to the Marine Corps 10K I'm running at the end of the month. I think they meant they're looking forward to all the swag!

Making Like the Jeffersons....

2009-09-21T17:09:00.006-04:00

...and moving on up! Thursday was a big day for me professionally, as it marked my 8th year with the firm. It was also promotion day, so I am now a senior manager, which now means that I am also allowed to work in an office. Luckily, I was assigned one on the 5th floor where I usually sit and where most of my teams sit. I moved all my things out of my usual cube and into the office last night. After a client meeting this morning, I came into the office (my office!) to do some work. After 8 years of life in the cubes, it is very weird to be sitting in an enclosed area, unable to turnaround or look over and talk to people. It's almost claustrophobic. I am considering what to put in my office as decoration and so far have only come up with lucky bamboo, but one measly stalk of vegetation does not make for good decor. We'll have to see if a trip to Pier 1 or Pottery Barn can give me any other ideas in how to spruce up an otherwise spartan office. I am also going to have to remember that I do have an office and not go directly to cube 5063 as I have been for the last 4 years!

Other than the new digs, here's what else is going on with me:

My fantasy football team is now 2-1. Thanks much to the Atlanta Falcons for putting in a pathetic performance and coming up 20 points short of the expected fantasy points. Just like the Redskins last week (see below), I lost to a team that hasn't won in quite some time.
I am now a Ravens fan (yes, officially...I posted it on Facebook). Returning to the Redskins will require the firing of Coach Zorn and a change in ownership, as well as a sincere apology from current ownership to the fans who have suffered through a decade of greed and mismanagement. We need a Robin Hood to steal the team away from this Prince John, and sadly, that savior won't come anytime soon. In the meantime, I'm going to change my allegiance to a team that has a coach who doesn't always look completely panicked/shocked to find himself on the sideline of a football field calling plays, doesn't immediately pull out big wads of cash to plug the holes that pop up in its roster and coaching staff, has a defense led by a half-rabid/half-genius player who doesn't give a crap that people think he might be getting too old, and that is familiar with the concept of winning, especially against a team that hasn't won in 2 years. Plus, I like purple.
I am running the Army 10 Miler this Sunday despite logging no miles since the Navy 5 Miler a couple of weeks ago. I should be ok since I ran the Frederick Half with not much training either. After this weekend, it's the Baltimore half, the Race for the Cure 5k, and Marine Corps 10K. Here's hoping that my knees and lower back won't go on strike and abandon me on the course.

FF Week 1 Stats

2009-09-15T18:37:00.003-04:00

Fall is here, which means that the weather is cooling off, my audits are starting to scramble into high gear since busy season is right around the corner (and so my stress level is starting to rapidly increase), but most importantly…FOOTBALL IS BACK!! I am not by any means a football expert, and everyone knows I am a total klutz and would be a danger to myself and others if I were to even try and play football, but I do love watching the NFL and playing God with my fantasy football team. I actually won this week (which is more than I can say for the ‘Skins), and posted 100+ points! That is a huge improvement over last year, when I picked a kicker and defense first. Before you conclude that I am total moron or Al Davis-level insane for picking those positions first, I just didn’t fully understand how the draft worked then and assumed that the system would fill each position in order (i.e. QB, WR, RB, etc). I learned my lesson, got up to speed on how it's supposed to be done this year, even did a mock draft, and ended up picking a pretty solid team…or at least it was this week!

In honor of the start of the regular season, here are my stats from fantasy football (and other randomness) for the week (well, technically, the last 4 weeks):

Approx. points racked up in Week 1 of FF: 113
Cowboys on my FF team: 0 (out of principle)
Redskins on my FF team: 0 (out of a desire to win, for a change)
Training sessions taught during this year’s instructor rotation program: 4
Cities visited for training: 4
Number of times I went to Capogiro in Philly last week for gelato: 2
Flavors of gelato sampled at Capogiro: 4 (and no, I did not get 4 cups of gelato…there were 2 flavs in each small cup…I’m not that much of a fatty!)
Staff who attended happy hour after training in Philly last week: 30
Regrettable incidents that occurred during and after the Philly happy hour last week involving certain staff: You’ll never know (pleading the 5th here to protect the innocent)
Cities I visited yesterday: 3 (started in Secaucus, then flew to Miami, then flew home to Baltimore)
Mojitos consumed at dinner last night in Miami: 2
Miles I ran last week: 0
Miles I have to run at this Sunday’s race: 5
Likelihood that my time is going to suck at this Sunday’s race: 99.9%

Holiday Weekend Update

2009-09-07T22:11:00.002-04:00

The past couple of weeks have been spent mostly on the road, where I have been going to conferences or teaching. Somewhere along the way, I picked up a nasty head cold that I am only now getting over. The initial combination of bad cold and high fever made me think that I had caught the swine flu, but I don't think that's it since I'm better now without taking anything more than OTC cold and sinus meds and drinking gallons of hot tea. Things at work have been hectic, what with all the travelling and other commitments, it is challenging to prioritize things properly and ensure that it all gets done. The next couple of weeks will be more of the same, as I'll be teaching in Philly and New Jersey before heading to Miami for a day trip (sadly, it's for a business meeting, so no goofing off).

At least we got a 4 day holiday weekend to recharge a bit. Most of this weekend was spent with my family, since it was Dad's birthday. We had a few family meals together, including lunch at Kinkead's in DC. Mom invited a couple of Dad's friends, so our group of 7 covered most of the DC Restaurant Week menu that was still available. As an FYI, the mushroom ravioli, pistachio crusted salmon, and local peach cobbler are all exceptional. Dad's reaction to his lunch was a bit funny to watch. He said he enjoyed the meal (rare praise coming from him) but he initially thought that the portions were rather small. You have to understand that Chinese food is normally served family style, so if it doesn't come out on a big platter, he's going to think that something's wrong, or that it's just not going to be enough. Still, he realized afterwards that everything was portioned just right, so we weren't bursting at the seams when we left the restaurant. We stopped by Tivoli bakery on the way back and picked up a birthday cake for Dad before heading home.

Chris's friend Maddy was in town this weekend too, so I met up with her, her boyfriend and another friend on Friday night. They were hanging out in Adams Morgan, and it had been a while since I'd been down there. The last few times I went to DC on the weekends, it's been in the Dupont Circle area (i.e. Brickskeller, Buffalo Billiards, Lucky Bar, etc.), so it was nice to go down to AM again. We spent some time at Millie and Al's before wandering around to get some pizza and then heading to Bedrock Billiards where I rediscovered my love of foosball. I spent way too many hours dominating the foosball table and emasculating the boys at the KA house my sophomore/junior years, so while I was a bit rusty, I quickly regained my form and went on to win 2 out of 3 games that night. I was staying at my parents' house since I had to drop my car off the next day at the dealership in Rockville, so I ended up getting to their place around 4AM on Saturday morning. I was up at 7 to drop off the car and get a ride back with my dad. Although he questioned me about where the heck I was before getting in so late the previous night, he didn't do much digging or seem to notice that I had a slight hangover. We got back to the house around 8 and I went back to bed to sleep off the Guinness-induced achiness.

Sunday was pretty uneventful, with a trip to the Bethesda farmers market where I introduced Mom and Dad to the wonderful world of organic foods. They seemed to like the selection but were clearly appalled at the prices. We ended up getting some fruit from Toigo and breads from Atwaters and called it a day. I went home after lunch to do some much-needed cleaning and laundry and watched a few movies. Today was spent doing more of the same, plus packing. I made it up to Philly in just under 2 hours and have been prepping for tomorrow's class and working on some emails (will have to wait until tomorrow since for some reason I can't connect to our VPN from here). So, that's about it for Labor Day weekend 2009...lots of family, food, and relaxing, which is, I think, the purpose of the holiday.

Lessons Learned

2009-08-19T10:28:00.003-04:00

This was my first week back on the instructor rotation program, so I was in Cleveland, imparting knowledge to the kiddies as best I could. I'd been swamped with prepping for training and trying to get in planning work for a couple of clients, so I spent most nights in my hotel room working and prepping. I really didn't get to see much of the city. From what I did see, though, Cleveland does not rock (damn you and your lies, Drew Carey). The hotel and the training center were not really what I expected for a major international accounting firm, but that might be my big city snobbery shining through again. When you're used to hosting trainings in gleaming new office buildings and staying at 4- or 5-star hotels, everything else seems shabby.

So during this particular trip, I learned a few valuable lessons:

1. When leaving a message, make sure you hang up at the end of the call. I was leaving a message for a staff on their cell phone when I saw that he was trying to call me back. I finished up my message and then tried to pick up the other call, thinking that it would hang up on the other line. Problem was, I missed the incoming call, muttered my favorite 4-letter word that rhymes with "duck".... and then realized that I had said that straight into my phone, which was still recording the message on the other line. Oops! So much for not scaring the kiddies....

2. It is a good thing to wake up early and get a head start on the day. For 3 days in a row, I got up at 5:45AM to hit the gym (3-5 mile runs). I managed to turn in pretty good times, felt REALLY good during and after the runs, and made it to class on-time, all with absolutely no soreness afterwards. Maybe it's just because I was out of town, but I was super motivated to get in some mileage this week. We'll see if it keeps up, but somehow running early in the morning doesn't feel as hard as it does in the evening. Or maybe I was just sleep deprived?

3. As with all endurance events, epic happy hours require the appropriate training beforehand. As I realized on Wednesday night's HH with the class, my tolerance was not very high (wow, that could be interpreted in SO many ways), and as I haven't been drinking on a regular basis, I decided to take it easy and not try to keep up with the 23-year olds. I do not have a 20-year old's liver trapped in this 30 year old's body. What I do have is a 30 year old brain that is filled with reminders of similar events held in years past that have resulted in countless instances of stupidity, one self-inflicted black eye, and a pinch of shame. So, like a good, responsible, and mature trainer, I had 3 beers (not counting the Irish car bomb) and made a few friends by giving the next few shots to others. I was definitely feeling pretty happy with the world by the end of the night, but I was still able to get up in the morning and wrap up the last day of class with a decent amount of energy.

On a side note, the other highlight of this week was winning pub trivia. Yes, at long last, all the random crap that's in my head finally paid off! Actually, it was a tremendous team effort (team consisted of my accounting class, myself, and my awesome co-instructor). Together, we turned in a 100+ point performance, totally dominating the locals (just like the Angels did to the Indians). Along the way, we won a bunch of bonus rounds and got 2 pitchers of beer on the house, and that's before the gift card that we got for winning. Ah, the thrill of victory!!

Tomorrow, it's off to New York for a weekend conference (yes, I'm technically charging time all weekend-long for this event). On the plus side, I am the only person from Baltimore going so I am going to have to network and practice talking to strangers, which is still something I'm not comfortable with. And since it's New York, if it all goes horribly wrong, I can just go and drown my sorrows at Ginger Man or console myself with a couple of enormous cupcakes from Crumb.

Withdrawal

2009-08-06T13:12:00.001-04:00

This morning was pretty rough, as I woke up with a splitting headache and was literally sick to my stomach for a couple of hours. Eventually, I figured I'd gotten all the sick out of me and decided to clean up and get to work. The drive in was brutal, as there was a close call on the Beltway, when I was seriously debating whether or not I should just open my door to lose my lunch or if I could make it to the client site and to the restroom (I had just enough will power to do the latter). I couldn't figure out why I was feeling so bad. All I had to eat yesterday was a piece of fruit and a burrito bol from Chipotle that I split between lunch and dinner, but I was feeling just fine that evening - even got in a half hour run and lifted/stretched for another half hour, so everything was fine until I woke up. Then it dawned on me - I had no caffeine yesterday. I'm no expert on addiction, but the headache and nausea seemed to point to withdrawal symptoms. My healthier eating habits of late have mostly replaced the caffeine and sugar-laden goodies that used to make up the bulk of my diet. Apparently going cold turkey on the caff (even if inadvertently) is not a good idea, so I'll have to wean myself off of the stuff gradually in order to avoid nasty mornings in the future.

The other random thing that happened today was related to my computer. A new function popped up in the Format menu of Word. I now have some kind of "Asian layout" option that apparently no one else on my team has. I found it rather odd/creepy that my computer decided to give the one Asian user in the room an Asian layout function. Isn't this how the Terminator movies started, with the computers becoming self-aware?!

Taking the Scenic Route

2009-08-03T13:09:00.004-04:00

My blog posts have gotten fewer and far between, mainly because I've been sleeping in on the weekends. I don't suppose sleep counts as a hobby for most people, but it does for me. Anyway, I did manage to wake up at 8AM on Saturday to run a few errands, do some work, and then head down to DC to go kayaking with Beney.

It was pretty humid by the time I got there around 10:30, and I was also fuming a bit. Georgetown is a bit of a debacle when it comes to how the roads are laid out, so the 27th St. turnoff that I was looking for wasn't marked on the Whitehurst Freeway. I ended up driving around DC for a bit, driving in the general direction of the Potomac until I finally stumbled across the boathouse. Once we got on the water, everything was fine, though. Kayaking is a great way to work off a little road rage (or maybe a lot, in my case). It was a bit overcast for the rest of the morning, but that was just fine because the water was about 80 degrees and the air temp was around 85-90, so I wouldn't have lasted long in the sun. We paddled upstream for about an hour, dodging the faster kayaks and the random day boats that were tearing up the river looking for a good place to anchor. Along the way, we saw something distinctly DC - 3 Presidential helicopters flying overhead, making their way to the White House. I suppose that is better than the motorcades which make DC traffic even worse than it already is. The planes flying overhead on their way to DCA were another interesting sight...the last time I saw the underside of a plane that close overhead was in Hong Kong, where it felt like the planes could at any second clip the top of one of the skyscrapers. I couldn't help but think about that plane that crash landed in the Hudson...can't recall if that happened in the daytime, but if so, that must have been a hell of a sight for anyone on the water.

We spent a couple of hours kayaking up and down the Potomac, chatting and catching up, especially on plans for her birthday party. It'll be an interesting one, as it includes some thinking (Spy in the City - basically a scavenger hunt sponsored by the International Spy Museum), good food (Georgia Brown's for dinner), and general chaos (bowling at Lucky Strikes...beer + 12 lb. bowling balls + general clutziness = good times and potentially broken toes). We headed back to the boathouse around 1, having communed with nature for the 2 hours that we'd rented the kayaks. All in all, it was fun and pretty good exercise. I counted that towards a 40-min. cross training session that I was supposed to do that day anyway (since I wasn't paddling hard the whole time, I figured I did at least 40 min. of real exercise). And for under $20, it wasn't a bad way to spend the morning.

Sunday morning was mostly spent on work, but I did manage to venture down to the farmers market in Bethesda again. My food snobbery has reached new heights with this latest focus on buying as much of my food from local organic producers as possible. I have a budget of $50/week, $25 of which is allocated to purchases from the farmers market, and the remainder to be spent on sundries at a regular grocery store. My parents would freak out at the idea of spending $2.50/lb on fresh peaches, but ultimately, I am buying fresher, better tasting food, supporting the local economy and small businesses, throwing out less food because I'm only buying what I can finish in a week and not buying in bulk (sorry, Costco), and still spending the same amount of money. My 3 week experiment in organic eating has resulted in slightly improved mood and a slight drop on the scale...so far, so good.

Food for Thought

2009-07-19T17:51:00.006-04:00

Beney and I went to Bethesda this weekend for lunch, shopping, and to see a movie called Food, Inc., that had generated some good reviews in the Post. I was expecting something like a Supersized Me movie, but really, it was more of an indictment of corporate America and the food industry. Generally speaking, I don't usually care too much about social issues (I am not a crunchy granola tree hugger), but this was downright disturbing and got me thinking more about my own actions and my contributions to this corrupt and grossly unfair system. Apologies for the following rant, but I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut when I see such greed and stupidity occurring.

At the heart of the movie is the premise that a handful multinational corporations control over 80% of the world's food supply, much to the detriment of the consumer, the workers, and the environment. These companies raise animals in a pretty nasty environment and do so with the singular goal of raising the "product" as quickly and cheaply as possible. The chickens that are a major product of Maryland's eastern shore are grown and fattened at such an accelerated rate that they literally cannot support their own weight (I have to admit, my sadistic side giggled a little bit when they cut to a shot of a porky chicken taking two steps and then collapsing in a heap, panting...not unlike myself after I run). These animal factories are frequently staffed by illegal immigrants who were recruited to come to the US to work. Of course, these same companies that recruited and bring the illegals across the border have also never been charged with exploitation of workers or breaking any immigration laws. Instead, they have unspoken agreements with authorities to arrest and deport certain numbers of employees.

More disturbing were the corporations' actions against the average consumer and the very farmers who produce crops on their behalf. In one case, it was noted that almost all soybeans grown in the US are actually genetically engineered by a company that actually patented a seed that was resistent to a particular pesticide. As a result of that patent (in which the US courts granted the company the right to effectively own life), farmers who try to plant soybeans using their own "public" seeds (seeds that are basically organic and saved from the prior year's harvest rather than having been GE'd by this particular company) are being shut down. This company actually has 75 employees on its payroll to go and investigate farmers suspected of using their own seeds, then prosecutes those farmers to force them to buy and plant only the GE'd seeds. The tactics that the company uses to enforce this divine right to farming include physical intimidation (think of the mafia sending their heavies over to break some knees) to threats of financial ruin (drawing out a legal case to the point where the farmers declare bankruptcy or are forced to settle in order to survive).

The most frustrating part of the movie was when the producers interviewed a women whose 2 year old son died as a result of eating a hamburger tainted with e. Coli. For almost a decade this women has begged Congress to pass a law that would give the USDA the right to shut down and clean up factories that have been contaminated, especially when there are repeat offenses. This should be a no-brainer, but we are dealing with politicians here, so this common sense measure (Kevin's Law) still has not passed. From the number of food recalls in recent years (spinach, peanut butter, etc.), it is clear that this problem will only get worse if proper oversight is not given to the federal regulators. What was so sad about this whole story was the reason why this woman was fighting so hard. Her crusade was really about trying to get the company responsible for the contamination to admit their failure, apologize, and say how they were going to make things better. Instead, she has been slapped with the threat of legal action if she so much as says how she has changed her food buying practices or naming the company responsible for her child's death.

I left the movie feeling pretty disappointed with the inaction on the Hill and wondering how many dead babies it would take for Congress and the public in general to figure out that companies do not have the upperhand in this argument. I truly believe that it takes a personal tragedy for politicians, and really, the American public, to pay attention to these issues. In the meantime, lobbyists and corporate donations rule the day. I am perhaps one of the few Wharton grads who actually believes that corporations have a responsibility to their customers, and that profits are not just a measure of what comes through on the P&L. There is a cost associated with the reputation of being unsafe, unclean, and unethical. Is the damage really that much greater if a company spends a couple more pennies per share to ensure that it is producing safe food and that it is working cooperatively with the farmers who support this whole system? To them, the answer appears to be yes...that would be the greed talking. Personally, a company that has a catastophic product failure needs to do everything it can to ensure that the same mistake doesn't happen again and that no one else gets hurt. Its response should not be coming up with new ways to further consolidate its power over its suppliers and regulators in order to stymie the negative publicity that would develop the next time the same errors are made.

The good news is that there are very simple ways to start turning this situation around. Most of it boils down to the choices we make in the grocery store. Buying organic or bypassing the grocery store altogether and buying from farmers market, co-op, or community supported agriculture (CSA) farm would step outside of the manufactured food chain and hit the MNC's where it hurts...in the pocket. The other simple thing that can be done is to petition to get common-sense laws passed to protect the food chain. If Congress can even suggest debating a resolution to honor Michael Jackson, they sure as hell can pass a law protecting the food we eat.

Go see this movie and check out the website for more on how to get involved, listings of organic markets and restaurants, and other useful info.

NYC Trip - Day 3

2009-06-29T11:14:00.001-04:00

The alarm clock went off at 8:15 on Sunday morning, and none of us wanted to get up. After hitting the snooze about 5 more times, Maddie took the first turn in the shower, and then one by one, we each got showered and changed. Chris and most of the crew were headed to dim sum in Chinatown, while I gave Kat a call to meet up with her for brunch in midtown. The weather was great (a bit warm, very sunny), so I walked the 12 blocks to Kat’s place instead of taking a train. We headed to Eatery, which was the same place we’d gone to the last time I’d visited her and which had the best bloody mary’s ever. I wasn’t hung over, but the mass amounts of food (especially those ridiculously good cupcakes) made me think that I should take it easy. I decided that I wasn’t quite ready for that much tomato juice and vodka yet, so I went with a bellini instead, which was much lighter and really delicious. Oh, and there was some food involved, but if there was anything I learned from this weekend, it was that my alcohol tolerance was back up. Yay?!

It was really nice catching up with Kat over brunch. We’ve both been pretty inconsistent with keeping up with each other since we’re so busy (me because of a mild case of ADD and poor time management, her because she’s simultaneously planning a wedding, studying for the PA bar, and prosecuting criminals…she wins!). Yet, every time we talk or meet up, it’s like nothing’s changed from college and no time has passed at all. That’s kind of the hallmark of a good friend – when you can pick up the phone after not having talked for a while and pick up right where you left off. Kat walked me back towards the hotel, but not before we heard and spotted the start line for NYC’s Gay Pride parade. I hadn’t really realized that it was going on, although the guys in the ultra-short shorts should have been a tip off (only in NYC and maybe SF does seeing that outfit on the street not phase anyone). Since the roads were blocked off, we wandered over to Rockefeller Center and stood with the huge crowds of onlookers. The NYPD and FDNY representatives were walking by at that point, and they got a huge response from the crowd (they’re still treated like heroes after 9/11, as well they should). Next came the more flamboyant floats, blasting dance music and Village People songs, accompanied by men and women (sometimes both in the same body?) dancing along in spandex, rhinestones, and feathers. It was pretty over the top, so Kat and I headed back towards the hotel, where she caught a train back to her apartment, and I headed back to the room to get in a few more chapters of Twilight before my flight.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, other than the horrendous traffic around midtown, thanks to the parade and the almost endless sea of gawking tourists who have never seen drag queens before. I bet the parents walking around 5th Ave that afternoon were going to have a great time explaining all that they had seen to heir little kids. Eventually, we made our way past 5th Ave and were clear almost all the way to JFK. I managed not to scream at the guy in front of me in the security line who actually took my things out of the bin and used it for himself (really, I’ve never seen anyone that rude…he was totally oblivious). Fortunately, the guy behind me was nice and ran back to get me another bin, which restored my faith in New Yorkers. The flight home was quick, although I did manage to finish my book. That was good because I immediately launched into New Moon as soon as I got home. Tonight’s task is to go to the bookstore and buy the last 2 books in the series. At the rate I'm going, I should be able to finish off the whole series over the July 4th weekend.

NYC Trip - Day 2 - The Hunt

2009-06-28T16:01:00.002-04:00

On Saturday morning, the alarm clock went off at 9:15, far too early considering the 4AM bedtime from the day before. Nevertheless, I dragged myself out of bed, showered, and got ready for the day. I woke the girls at 10 and we managed to all be ready by 11. We were just a little late for The Hunt.

Scavenger hunts seem to be a big thing these days, at least among my friends. While it looks kind of goofy to those who don't do it, if you're willing to keep an open mind, want to find a new and fun way to explore a city, and are just a little shameless, then scavenger hunts are a pretty good way to spend a Saturday. We met at Union Square and divided up into 3 teams, then ventured out to take pictures or videos of as many of the things on the list as possible. Many of the items weren't necessarily objects but rather things that you might see people doing. For example, one of the items was a police officer eating a donut (extra points if you got a picture of you eating a donut with the cop). I asked 3 NYPD officers, but all of them said that wouldn't look good for the department and gave me a look that said Get the hell out of here. I'll give them credit - NYPD cops take some pride in their jobs, so it's hard to fault them for that. We ran all over town, talking to random people, discovering new parts of town, and in some cases doing some unfortunate things that I won't describe here (let's just say that it helps a LOT in this game if you don't have any shame). The best part of the Hunt was when we went to the west side of town, where the Intrepid is docked, to take a picture of us "swimming" in the Hudson River. The guys didn't actually jump in and swim because that would just be gross (and I thought the Inner Harbor was nasty). Instead, we spotted a boathouse with a long ramp that led into the water. We talked to the staff there about the Hunt and asked them if we could just let the guys put their feet in the water and dance "the swim." The staff were surprisingly pretty cool about it and gave everyone life jackets before sending us down the ramp and taping the whole thing. The onlookers must have been wondering if this was some kind of field trip for mental patients, but we didn't care - that was worth 2000 points! The neat thing was that it was a perfectly sunny afternoon, the boats were out on the Hudson, and kids were running around in the park and playing in the fountain. It was a very different side of the city that I had never seen before. I also now know where the Intrepid is docked, so I can go and check out the carrier the next time I'm in town.

We were back at the hotel by 4PM, the deadline for all teams. Chris and Maddie went to one of the rooms to judge all the pictures and videos while the rest of us hung out, talking about the random stuff we had done and the people we had met. The cool thing is that all of us were pretty impressed by how helpful people were. Most of them were amused, and others seemed pretty impressed by the whole event and thought it was a great idea. At the end of the day, all of my team's antics didn't help us much - we came in dead last, but it was still a really fun way to spend the day. I was completely exhausted, so I showered, changed, and relaxed in the hotel room and read a few more chapters of my book until we had to leave for dinner.

Saturday night's dinner was at Landmarc in the Time Warner building. Tammi and I were late since we stopped at Crumbs Bakery to buy a bunch of cupcakes (can there really ever be enough dessert?). When we got there, a few more folks (Tim, Jen A, Baxter) had joined the group that had met for dinner on Friday. Most of us got the NY strip steak, but I was rather disappointed, to be honest, at how tough it was. I'd had much better steaks in Chicago and even Omaha, of all places. Still, it was good company and a pretty good meal overall (the wine was delicious, and if I hadn't had so much of it that I can't remember what it was called, I would try to look for it at home). Chris got to show off his new Thomas Pink shirt and Steelers cufflinks, so I think he was pretty content. After dinner, I headed back to the hotel to drop off the cupcakes then headed to the club where everyone else had gone to. I had botched the address so I had a bit of a hike to get there but eventually found it. The top floor club area was packed and hot, but we still had a good time dancing (it helps me a lot when the beverages are flowing). We left the club around 4AM and got back to the hotel, exhausted. There were 4 girls in my room, and we stayed up a bit longer, chatting and diving into the cupcakes. I learned this morning that apparently our giggling and chatting had kept the boys up in the room across the hall - oops! Guess that's what happens when you put 4 girls and a box of sweets together - we get teleported back to 5th grade and act like little kids again. It was probably around 4:45 or 5 when we finally went to bed, at the end of yet another amazing day in the Big Apple.

NYC Trip - Day 1

2009-06-28T15:27:00.003-04:00

This past Thursday passed in a blur of activity. First, I was scrambling to finalize financial statements for one of my clients before rushing home to grab some laundry and throw some things in a bag for the weekend trip to NYC. I raced to my parents' house to make it for my 8PM appointment with the notary to get my refinancing paperwork signed. At 7:30, I got a call from the notary indicating that the paperwork had not yet been sent over from my mortgage company. My heart pretty much fell to my stomach. If I didn't get it signed on Thursday, I'd have to either wait until the following month or postpone my flight to NYC. I was not happy. After a number of calls to Chase and to the notary, I figured out that someone had told the title company that there was a second mortgage out on my house, which I and the settlement company argued was incorret. However, the settlement company could not release the paperwork until they got that resolved. This only made me more furious because that error meant that someone at the mortgage company made a big clerical error at best, or that there was identity theft involved and that I could have a major problem on my hands. Eventually, I talked to the one person at Chase who had been helpful and candid all the way through the process, and she was able to get it cleared up. The notary showed up at my parents' house at 10:30 and we finished up the paperwork around 11:30. I was relieved to be done with the refinancing. It didn't hurt that the rate that I got was so low that the mortgage company actually paid me $250 for closing costs (bonus!). I had trouble sleeping, so I started reading Twilight, which had just been delivered to me that afternoon (thank you Amazon!). Starting into the book might have been a bad idea...I was immediately sucked in and didn't go to bed until 1AM.

I was up 3 hours later and out the door by 4:30AM on Friday to catch my flight to JFK. I made it to Dulles and to the gate with about 20 minutes to spare (even though I left early, it's a big airport and the people-movers were pretty crammed). I got in a little more reading on the plane and decided that I need to buy the rest of the Twilight series - I just have to know how it ends!!

I got into JFK around 9AM, a bit delayed due to the weather, and Chris was there to meet me at the gate. My big bro hasn't changed much from college, except for the shaved head he sports now. We piled into a packed shareride van and headed to midtown. The van driver was pretty funny, pointing out interesting sites and telling us about how great things were when Rudy G was mayor and cleaning up the city. We finally arrived at the hotel and met with Maddie, Chris's friend from SF. We checked into the rooms (girls in one, boys in the other) and then headed off to find some food. We wandered up Broadway and found a sushi restaurant next to the Ed Sullivan Theater where they tape The Late Show. Lunch consisted of a "ladies lunch" bento box with miso soup, salad with seared tuna, crunchy salmon sushi roll, braised short ribs, and tempura shrimp. The food was terrific, but I was feeling pretty stuffed afterwards. We headed back to the hotel to meet up with some more of Chris's SF friends, Josh and Wendy, who had flown in for the weekend. At that point, I gave Chris the first part of his birthday present - a pair of Steelers cufflinks (thanks to Jay for inspiring me with his Eagles cufflinks). Chris was pretty excited about them, especially since he could show them off at dinner on Saturday.

After we got everyone settled, we walked up to Columbus Circle and did a bit of shopping at the Time Warner building. I bought Chris a French cuffed shirt from Thomas Pink so he could put his cufflinks to use. We checked out J. Crew and some other stores too, but I couldn't find anything that really fit or was in my price range. Chris and his friends took off to go shopping at Macy's, and I called Kat to meet up with her. She had gotten off of work a little early since she had wrapped up her trial (successfully!) and her apartment is pretty close to Columbus Circle. After a quick bite to eat at Whole Foods (I just nibbled on a cannoli since I was still pretty stuffed), we headed south and looked for "cute" clothes for the weekend. Like an idiot, I had only brought jeans, t-shirts, and workout clothes, completely forgetting that many NYC restaurants require appropriate attire. We ended up finding an Ann Taylor and where I was able to find a pretty affordable outfit, and I bought some sandals later on, so I was now ready to go for the rest of the weekend. Kat was awesome, as she has a great sense of style and has a knack for finding just the right pieces. It was almost dinnertime, so Kat headed back to her apartment and I went to the hotel to shower and change.

Dinner was at Carmine's, and in addition to Chris and his SF crew, two more Penn people, Phil and John, came with their wives/girlfriends. We had a huge Italian meal that was pretty good, and just the carb load that we needed to fuel the rest of the evening.

Chris had spotted a Yuengling truck on the way from the airport, so he was determined to have a pint of it before he left the city (apparently that's not available in SF). We first went to The Ginger Man, since they have the biggest selection of beer in the city. The actually did not serve Yuengling, so Chris went across the street to the Midtown Pub. As luck would have it, they did have what Chris was looking for, so we spent a few hours there hanging out and just having a good time. There was a lot of very badly mixed MJ songs going on, so the dancing was a little disjointed. Probably didn't help that the boys were doing rounds of Jaeger shots in between pints.

After a few hours, another friend of Chris's, Tim (not my ex), joined us, and we all headed to a club further south. The club was pretty nice, but we didn't stay long since Phil mentioned a rooftop lounge that was pretty relaxed and sounded like it had amazing views. That place did not disappoint. The elevator ride took us up to the top floor, which opened into a club. Stairs towards the back led to a rooftop cabana-like area that was actually not as packed as I would have thought. After a day that had been fairly hot and humid, the cool air felt really good, and the view of the NYC skyline was pretty cool. Drinks were expensive, so we hung out, chatting and dancing until about 3AM.

We split up then, with Phil heading home, Chris and I to the hotel to meet Tammi, the last member of our party, and the rest heading to White Castle (they had to see what all the hype was about). By the time everyone returned, it was about 4AMand we were all pretty beat, so after introducing Tammi to the rest of the group, we turned in. It was a great way to start the weekend!

Catching Up

2009-06-25T17:56:00.002-04:00

It’s been a while since the last post, so this will be a long catch-up entry. In case you’re looking for the Cliff Notes version, here it is:

Saturday, June 13 - Beney’s DC scavenger hunt and an after-hunt trip to Oyamel to watch 2 of her friends eat grasshopper taco’s. There are some things that even I won’t eat.

Week of June 16 – Trip to NC (which could either mean North Carolina or NASCAR Country, same thing) to do walkthroughs at a new client. Concluded that TX barbecue is the best but parts of NC are “perdy.”

Jogging – Making slow but steady progress…emphasis on slow, though.

Refinancing my house – Jumping onboard the Obama bandwagon. Any POTUS who drops my interest rate by more than 1.5% gets my support!

Random observations – Men are stupid. And in other shocking news, the sky is blue and the harbor water is filthy.

Upcoming – Chris’s 30th birthday weekend in NYC!

For the long version, see below:

Scavenger Hunt
Beney is the Queen of All Social Events, so the DC scavenger hunt that she hosted on June 13 was a great success. The turnout was ok, but with the fun that the groups had, hopefully the next one will be even better. I thought that an hour would give me time to get downtown and even get to a kiosk for some lunch on the Mall, but that was not to be. Metro was single track all the way in from MoCo, so the normally 45 minute ride took more like 1.5 hours. When I finally got there, Beney gave me the option of joining the one lone participant, but my stomach was grumbling so I opted to go to lunch instead. We went to Oyamel, which is this great Mexican place near the Verizon Center. They serve mostly small plates, so we each ordered a few dishes (I got a couple of mini tacos) and we split the fresh guacamole. It was fantastic! Apparently the weekend menu is special since that’s the only time they offer churros with Mexican hot chocolate. Churros are basically twisty dough sticks covered in cinnamon and sugar. You can get them at Costco for about $1 each, but since those are probably sold by the ton, stick to Oyamel’s! The hot chocolate is also special since Mexican HC is more like a chocolate fondue, only slightly thicker, the perfect dip. After a filling lunch, we went to the Capital Chophouse, where the teams were to meet up at the end of the hunt. I somehow found room for a couple of pints of their stout, which was pretty tasty (better than the other microbrew stout I had in Omaha). As the teams returned, it turned out that I probably would have done really well on the hunt, as I knew more than half of the answers immediately and probably had a good idea of which locations to hit and still make it back to the Chophouse in time (there was a time limit). I pointed out a few loopholes in the game that would probably have allowed me to win, but Beney decided that loopholes = cheating, and apparently the next hunt will include a Jen Clause to avoid such “abuse.” After the winners were determined and rewarded, the whole group headed back to Oyamel because someone got the great idea of trying out their house specialty, grasshopper tacos. I had this vision of two giant insects wrapped up in a tortilla shell, but what actually came out was a taco shell filled with something that looked like shredded pork. The tacos actually smelled pretty good (smoky and spicy), but when I got closer, I actually could see tiny eyes staring back. The little pieces of “meat” were actually teeny tiny grasshoppers. They were brown because of the seasoning and the quick grilling they received. Only 2 in our group were daring enough to eat the tacos, and both said that they tasted pretty good. There were only 2 problems – one was knowing what they were eating, and the other was texture. The first problem is fairly self explanatory…if you think something is gross, you usually don’t put it in your mouth. The second is the real kicker though. Apparently the texture is slightly crunchy, but then you get the “meat,” and the combination of crunch and squirt is just too much for me. I am throwing up in my mouth a little as I write this. I watched the carnage but stuck to my drink and a few chips and salsa. Thus ended another successful Beney-led outing.

Trip to the South
The next week, I headed to North Carolina for work with a staff and senior I hadn’t spent much time with previously. The client was located just outside of Charlotte, so I figured it couldn’t be that bad if there was an NBA franchise there. The first inkling that we were in the deep south was when we drove around looking for a gas station around 8 PM and found that none were open since they were still the old non-digital type. Instead of a credit card reader there was a rotary dial. This place was straight out of the 1950’s. The client was pretty well prepared and the work went pretty smoothly. We all got a kick out of the heavy southern drawl that most of the client personnel had. When you’re around that for a few days, you tend to pick up that accent, but I tried not to. I find that there’s almost nothing quite so ridiculous as an Asian person with a southern accent. The team did a good job and I’m glad I got the chance to get to know them a little better. We did get to sample some of the local Carolina barbecue, but it wasn’t as good as the stuff we had in Texas. Oddly enough, the best restaurant we went to was a sushi restaurant on the other side of town, where there were strip malls with modern buildings and neighborhoods that were filled with large homes and well-manicured lawns. Other than going out to dinner each night, there wasn’t much else to do in town, although that did give me a chance to catch up on some work for other clients and on the latest episode of True Blood (not really into the whole Twilight thing yet, but the R-rated vamp show is, I’m guessing, a much funnier, cooler, and more violent version).

Jogging
Not much to say here other than I’m starting up again with the goal of dropping my time down to the 90-100min range for the Army Ten Miler, the first of my 3 big races this fall. If I don’t, my dad might eat all the snacks by the time I finish. I am pretty excited that Anne and Jamie are doing the HoCo 5k, though! That definitely is a good motivator when you’re in a group of people who are really focused on doing well, so even though my main focus is on the 3 October races and I’ve been pacing in the mid 11’s, I’m still going to try to at least beat my last 5k time.

Doing my bit to help the economy
I’m refinancing my house, and the closing is tonight, so starting next month, I’ll be about $300/month richer. The whole process has been fairly painless, so I’m hoping that everything goes smoothly tonight. The only heartburn will be seeing my bank balance tomorrow…writing out a check for thousands of dollars is a bit stomach-turning, but it’s all in the name of saving down the line.

Random observations
A common theme from this week has been men doing stupid things. I went to Best Buy earlier in the week to buy a new camera for my trip to NYC this weekend and noticed a couple of guys who had walked in the store with their significant others. The men then promptly ditched these ladies when they weren’t looking and headed straight for the gaming area. There, they got into a huge jam session (it was either Guitar Hero or Rock Band…not sure as I’ve never played either), and they were spazzing and rocking out like they were actually playing real instruments and had real talent instead of having a plastic joy stick and computer-generated instruction dots to guide them. The funniest part was when these guys were picked up by their wives. They got a tap on the shoulder and immediately snapped-to, and basically had this look of, “Oh, hey, I was just checking out the game for the, uh, kids. Yeah, that’s it! The kids would totally love this. Yeah, the kids…if we had any.” Really guys, it’s not like she doesn’t know that you’re just a 6-year old stuck in a 40-year old’s body…just buy the game and embrace the nerdy gamer in you! I will say, though, that it’s a little embarrassing to watch these guys rock out when they have ZERO rhythm. Another example of men doing stupid things – the governor of SC. If you’re just some average person and you take off for the weekend without telling your family, there might be a few calls made by concerned loved ones. If you’re, let’s say, the chief executive of an entire state, people might start to notice when you disappear for days on end. Coming back with some lame-ass lie about flying to Argentina and driving along a 2-mile coastline to clear your head doesn’t exactly help your case…we all knew he was screwing around. When a politician’s wife doesn’t know where the politician is, he’s either with someone underage, not his wife, potentially a dude, or all of the above. Guys – stop the lying!

Weekend adventure
So, now that I'm all caught up, let's talk about the future. I am really looking forward to this weekend! Chris is flying in to NYC to celebrate his 30th birthday, and it should be a lot of fun. I met my “big brother” in college (he lived across the hall from me) and we’ve been friends ever since. I’m actually older than he is, but in Chris’s World, the fact that he’s 6’4” makes him the big brother. Regardless of his twisted, Steelers fan logic, he is a good friend and we always have a good time when we hang out. That hasn’t happened much since college because he’s out in San Fran, so it’s a fairly big deal when he comes back east. I’ve booked a few rooms at the Renaissance in Times Square for everyone who’s coming from out of town, so we’ll have a pretty crowded but swank place to crash. Besides the birthday dinner, Chris has planned a scavenger hunt on Saturday that may or may not result in me making a total ass of myself, but we shall see what’s on the list of things to find/do. I’m pretty competitive, so if I have to do something stupid to win a contest, there’s a good chance I might. Here’s hoping this weekend’s festivities don’t end up on YouTube.

How to Lose a Guy in Ten Seconds

2009-06-08T00:42:00.003-04:00

Traveling for work is something that I really enjoy. Although it does get a bit old after really long multiple week trips, I rather enjoy the short trips that last a week or less. I get to visit all sorts of places that I probably wouldn't think of going to on my own. For example, today I flew out to Omaha, NE for the first round of meetings related to a new contract that we won. I've never been to Omaha before, and although there was a bit of a mixup at the ticket counter, it did get sorted out and I made the flight on time. Even better, I got randomly upgraded to first class on the connecting flight from Memphis to Omaha, so that was fun. First class on those short haul flights just meant a bit more leg room (rather wasted on me, since I'm only 5'3" and could potentially fit in an overhead bin), but more snacks...I would agree that Twix are a premium snack, worthy only of those who pay twice as much as coach.

When we landed, the airline had unfortunately forgotten to load Liz's bags onto the second flight, so hopefully she'll be getting a call soon to let her know that her bags are on their way. Otherwise, we may be making an emergency shopping trip tomorrow during lunch. Once we got to the hotel in downtown Omaha, we headed to a local brewpub for dinner. After a couple of genuine Omaha steaks, I had a pint of stout before heading to the bar area to watch the Lakers-Magic game. I sampled 4 more beers during the course of the night (not to worry, though - the samples were the size of shooters, so they were a total rip off, but at least I got to try a bunch of new beers and keep the buzz going). I'm not a huge basketball fan, but I don't like Kobe and was really hoping that he and the Lakers would get shut down. That was not meant to be tonight, despite a pretty exciting OT game. While we were watching the game, a random guy came over and attempted to chat up Liz and potentially myself (definitely seemed like a scouting trip, to figure out which one of us might be interested...the fact that both of us were trying very hard not to make eye contact hopefully tipped him off that it was most definitely not on). We found out that he was staying at the same hotel as us, although we didn't bother to let him in on that tidbit. We also found out that he was only in town for a couple of days before returning to LA, which was yet another dagger in his attempt to gain some company for himself and his buddies (because a random hookup is exactly what a girl looks for on a business trip). It will be interesting tomorrow if we happen to see him and his crew at breakfast, or at one of the local restaurants.

Should any further attempt be made by random slimy guys to chat up any member of my team, I may have to play the enforcer again and bounce those guys out. I remember one time in college when I had to lay down the law at a friend's house party. It was after the Army-Navy game, and there were a bunch of Army guys hanging out, drinking, and one was hitting on my roommate at the time, who was in a serious relationship and wanted nothing to do with the Drunken Bastard but couldn't get rid of him. I probably had been playing flip cup for an hour or so and had no common sense at the time but still felt a sense of loyalty to my friend. I proceeded to walk over, tap DB on the shoulder, grab him by the neck when he turned around and slammed him to the wall. I told him to back off before I called my roommate's boyfriend and all of his guys over to throw him out the window, and he nodded ok. When I let go of his neck, he said something to the effect of "I think I'm either very afraid or in love." Pretty sure I made a move to go over and set him straight but Beney hauled me away before I got into any further trouble. Now that I'm a bit older, I will likely not resort to physical violence to deter unwanted suitors and protect the herd of innocent accountants from the rabid group of slimy LA finance hyenas. Instead, I am pretty sure that any mention of marriage and children will be just as effective as a faceful of mace to most men, so I'll give that a go the next time.

2 Down, 3 to Go

2009-06-07T10:27:00.003-04:00

Yesterday was the Komen Global Race for the Cure, a massive 5k that happens every year in DC. That was my second race of the year, so I only have 3 more road races to go. I hadn't run the Komen race in a while, and this time I took my family with me. Mel was whining the whole way about being tired and not having trained properly...I told her to suck it up and just do her best. The weather was great, just silghtly on the cool side, and the rain held off until well after we were done running. The event was hosted by the Komen Foundation executives, local and national newspeople, and the Bidens. We saw the VP's motorcade go by around 7:15, so we knew that we were going to be starting late (all of the pre-race festivities were supposed to have started at 7, and the Bidens were a part of that). Once the race started, I went at a nice, easy pace, but Mel said she felt awful and I told her to walk a bit and then catch up. I actually stopped twice and waited about 30 seconds, even walking back a bit to find her, but I didn't see her. Eventually, I just finished the race on my own and met up with her later. My time was awful (12 min. pace), but the multiple stops probably prevented me from finishing closer to the mid-11's. I still have a lot of work to do before I reach my goal of finishing the ATM and Baltimore half in a 10 min pace or better. However, yesterday was more about family and running for a cause. It's truly impressive to see the number of survivors who attended. Cancer runs in my family, but I don't feel afraid of my chances of getting that diagnosis. I don't feel that it is a death sentence, especially if it's caught early. There's no cure yet, but there are certainly effective treatments that can knock it out at least temporarily. Next year, my goal is to recruit more people to the race and raise more for the Foundation. Thanks to all who contributed! It is truly a worthy cause, and if there's ever a race for beginners, this is a great one to get involved in, so sign up next year!!

OBX - Day 4

2009-06-03T11:51:00.001-04:00

The last day at the beach started the same as the previous days, with a long walk on the beach after breakfast. Only this time, the clouds were rolling in and the waves were picking up. On my way back to the house, I saw a few lifeguards who were heading to their stations stop to talk to each other, and I guessed that they were trying to figure out if they should red flag the beach or not. Usually there is also a Coast Guard helo that patrols the beach, but that day, there were three of them sweeping the coastline, so that could not have been a good sign. I’m not a strong swimmer, so I had no plans of venturing further than knee-deep into the ocean...riptides are nothing to play around with.

What was a bit worrisome to me was a good sign for the 4 who had gone out to rent wetsuits the day before. High seas means bigger waves, perfect for surfing. This wasn’t Hawaii, though, so 6 ft. waves were probably as big as they got. We went out on the beach for a while and watched as Alex’s boyfriend, cousins and uncle struggled with the surfboard and boogie board. When they came back, their faces were red from the exertion and the waves smacking them in the face. The lifeguards looked pretty relieved, too. Every time I looked over, the poor guy had his eyes trained on the group of novice surfers, pretty much knowing that he was going to have to do his best Hasselhoff impression and race over to pull those guys out of the water.

After the surfers showered and changed, we headed to a local pizza place for lunch. It was too crowded, though, and Alex and I wandered around looking for somewhere else to go. We ended up at this kind of shady looking diner that turned out to be pretty good. We all shared ceviche and burgers, and if I can remember it the next time I’m there, I’ll probably go back. Alex then took me to buy fudge for my parents and Mel, and I also stopped by Tulio’s to buy a bunch of macaroons for them.

And with that, I said my good byes to the family, hopped in my car, and headed home. On the way, I stopped at Southland, which was a family tradition. It is just yards away from the Virginia state line on the NC side, and it is a combination restaurant/gas station/gift shop. And by gift shop, I mean they sell random trinkets to the OBX visitors, as well as smoked ham, guns, and cigarettes. Yeah, welcome to the South! We used to stop there on the way home for breakfast when I was little, and it was always a bit funny to see the expression on the locals’ faces when my big Asian family walked in. I remember waitresses speaking for slowly and loudly when asking for our orders (because clearly speaking louder makes all the difference when you’re talking to someone in a foreign language), then looking totally relieved when we responded back in perfect non-accented English. This time, I didn’t stop for breakfast but instead headed to the back room that was filled with wall to wall cartons of cigarettes, dip, and other tobacco paraphernalia. Since I don’t smoke and have no idea what to ask for, I had to call my dad and could hear his co-worker in the background providing the exact order. Two cartons of Marlboro’s and $75 later, I was back on the road and making good time to my parents’ house.

It was a minor miracle that I didn’t dive into the fudge or bag of cookies on my way back. My car had never smelled so good before! Mom and dad were pretty happy about the treats, as evidenced by the fact that when I went to have some dessert, there were only 3 macaroons left out of a bag of 8. Mom was raving about the cookies and already looking up the address for Tulio’s when I left, so I am pretty sure I know who the cookie monster is.

So, 4 days at the beach with my extended family did a world of good. I got some work done and didn’t feel completely overwhelmed/guilty when I got back to work. I was well rested, a little tanner, and feeling like life really isn’t all that bad. It would be better, though, if I had the chance to take a long head-clearing walk on the beach every morning and every night. And macaroons wouldn’t hurt, either (seriously, even if you don’t like coconut, those cookies were awesome).

OBX - Day 3

2009-06-02T18:42:00.001-04:00

On Tuesday morning, I got up around 7 and headed upstairs for my morning coffee, toast, and banana breakfast on the deck overlooking the ocean. If I had that view and those accommodations every morning, I might just convert to being a morning person. Tai and Bruce were already out on their morning walk, and they got back around 8 with some beach glass they had found on the way. Beach glass is basically shards of glass that have been batted about in the ocean so much that the sand and debris has worn down the edges and dulled the glass so that it is smooth and the color is translucent. Tai found a few light green and amber pieces, and one clear one that hadn’t “cooked” quite long enough to become that distinctive translucent, milky white yet, but it was close enough. Since there weren’t that many people on the beach yet, I decided to go for a jog...I was feeling ambitious and fortified with a real breakfast for a change. Jogging on the beach seems like it would be a lot of fun, but when you’re clumsy and have slacked off on a regular training schedule (again!), it becomes a bit of an ordeal. I made it up to Buck Island and turned around, so it was about a 20 minute jog for 2 miles. Not great, but my ankles were once again throbbing from shifting around in the sand, so I figured it was time to go home.

When I got back to the house, I had just enough time to shower and change before lunch at The Blue Point Grill with Alex, Chris, Aunt Tai, and Uncle Bruce. The rest of the family was venturing further south to Kill Devil Hills for more shopping and such. I was more interested in going to the place that served pecan pie and bourbon ice cream. Lunch at BPG was good as always, and my tuna salad was actually made from whole chunks of fresh tuna (no chicken of the sea confusion here). For dessert, we got a key lime pie and the pecan pie, so everyone got to taste two of BPG’s best desserts. Sufficiently stuffed, my aunt and cousin decided that would be a good time to go shopping for cute sundresses. Perhaps if we’d waited an hour or so, my sugar high would have kicked in and I would have been happy to shop. As it was, I spent the next few minutes trying on J Crew dresses that might have been ok before lunch but were now sprouting all sorts of unwelcome lumps and creases. After a couple more shops, I drew the line at a store that specialized only in clothing that was pink, covered in ribbons or butterflies, or all of the above. I felt like I needed to get a tattoo or drink some grain alcohol to offset the pinkness, but alas, there were no needles or flasks to be had, so I hung out with Chris and my Uncle Bruce while the girls shopped. Uncle Bruce’s sister Chris and her husband were making dinner that night and were doing a Hawaiian theme, so we were on the hunt for lei’s. We didn’t find any even though we looked in half a dozen stores, but I did buy myself 4 shot glasses so that the next time we have girls night, we can measure out more accurately just how much of a hangover we want to inflict on ourselves.

Dinner was already well underway and the margarita machine was on full blast, so that was a welcome relief to all the shopping that day. I probably had 3 before dinner…hard to tell when people are constantly refilling your glass. When we sat down to dinner, I was pretty hungry, and everything was pretty good. You wouldn’t think that a marinade including ginger, soy sauce, and pineapple would work, but it did. Dessert was macaroons (plain and chocolate chip) from Tulio’s, who apparently is a pastry equivalent of the Soup Nazi. I’m not really partial to coconut, but those macaroons were awesome. After cleaning up the dishes, we all headed out for a sunset walk on the beach. We went for a good hour long stroll, dodging the sand crabs that come out in force at night. Chris tried to rumble with one but quickly backed off when the crab put up it’s two big front claws and started shuffling towards him (that’s crab talk for Do you want a piece?). When we got home, the adults went to bed, and Chris, Alex and I went down to the basement to watch movies. They had The Crow on VHS (yeah, throwback), so we watched that and somehow got the munchies and dipped into the stash of caramel fudge that Alex had picked up on the way to the beach.

All in all, yet another glorious, 10,000 calorie day at the beach!

OBX - Day 2

2009-06-02T17:45:00.001-04:00

Yes, I’m way behind on my blogging, so let’s just pretend it’s circa Monday, May 25 (Memorial Day), and this post will make a lot more sense….

Day 2 in the Outer Banks started out with a coffee, toast, a banana, and the Washington Post on the 3rd floor deck overlooking a sand dune, and just beyond, the Atlantic Ocean. After polishing off breakfast and reading the paper for a good hour or so, I decided it was time to hit the beach.

I changed into a t-shirt, shorts and flip flops, and ran into Uncle Bruce’s mom at the door, so I asked her if she wanted to come along, which she did. Beth and I probably walked about 3 miles or so. The weather was gorgeous (slightly cool when the cloud cover rolled in, just a little warm when the sun was out), and there weren’t that many people on the beach as we headed north on the beach towards Buck Island. BI, for the OBX uninitiated, is another one of those exclusive oceanside communities with enormous houses with their own private walkways to the beach. The houses were pretty distracting, so we didn’t turn around and head south until we realized that our ankles were throbbing quite a bit from all the shifting of weight on the sand.

When we got back to the house, the “kids” were just getting up and heading to the beach. I say kids, but that would be my 25 year old cousin, her 25 year old boyfriend, my cousin’s 24 year old cousin, and her 39 year old boyfriend (hmm…reminds me of Sesame Street…one of these things is not like the others…). While they were at the beach, I took some time to check email, check out the library (which consisted of an astonishing variety of trashy romance novels, cookbooks, and Oprah book of the month club selections…all disappointing), and just chatting with my aunt. When Alex and Chris got back, the three of us went out for lunch. We went to The Tomato Patch, which is one of the restaurants that was there when my family first went to OBX about 20 years ago. After a long leisurely lunch, where Alex bitched about school, and I bitched about work, and we both bitched about our crazy family, we decided to go to Bacchus for the daily afternoon wine tasting. I felt bad for Chris, because Alex and I spent all of lunch reminiscing and getting him up to speed on the insanity that is the Liu family holiday meal (the Asian version of a Walker family meal, for those of you who watch Brothers and Sisters). The wine tasting was a pretty good deal – 6 wines for $5 – and pretty tasty too. Alex bought a couple of bottles from the tasting, and then we hit the Brew Thru for margarita mix. BT is another OBX novelty that I’ve never seen outside of the beach which consists of you driving your car into this car wash-type building, only instead of getting sprayed with soap, a very helpful stoner/hippie type comes over, asks you what type of beverage you want, hands it to you, and you’re on your way. Drinking and driving = bad? Not in the OBX. With beverages in hand, we headed back to the house to help with dinner preparations.

My aunt and uncle are foodies. Dinner does not consist of whatever is a) not fuzzy/smelly/about to hatch or b) ready to make in 2 minutes. They buy the good stuff and take their time preparing everything so it comes out right. So, as they made fresh guacamole for the troops to munch on, I helped myself to a margarita…or 4. My uncle at one point turned around and said that I’d gotten some sun (damn Asian glow). I responded with yes, I did…and in related news, the sun has been renamed Jose Cuervo. Dinner was served at exactly 6PM and consisted of fresh salad, corn on the cob, fresh bread and Irish butter, Angus steaks, and pasta with lobster and butter sauce. Yum!! The food was delicious, and since most of us were too stuffed to do anything else, we watched a Star Wars marathon on Spike for the rest of the night.

OBX - Day 1

2009-05-25T09:15:00.002-04:00

Vacation! Such a lovely, lovely word. The last few days at work were spent frantically trying to get as much done as possible, but as always, not everything gets done, so I will have a stack of work waiting for me upon my return. Saturday was productive. Had brunch with Lara, Anne, Liz, plus a bunch of other former EY-ers that I hadn't seen in quite a while. I met Brady for the first time, and he is just as cute and cuddly as in the pictures. I little droolier than advertised, but still a major cutie. After brunch, the afternoon disappeared in a whirlwind of errands and chores that had to be done before leaving for the beach. I ended up going to bed around 1:30AM on Sunday. I must have been really pumped for the beach, because I was up at 6AM, out the door by 6:30, and at my aunt's house at 6:50, ready to go.

I drove the 300+ miles down to North Carolina with my aunt's 76 year old mother-in-law as my passenger. I have to say, that was one of the most pleasant road trips I've taken. She's really nice and the conversation was good, and I certainly learned a lot more about that side of my aunt's family. You see, this vacation is truly a break from the tedium of normal life and from the constant bickering that is often associated with vacationing with my immediate family. My aunt's rented beach house is being shared with my uncle's sister and brother-in-law, their daughter and her boyfriend, and my cousin Alex and her boyfriend. All very cool people who routinely keep the fridge stocked with beer and tasty snacks and are on a neverending hunt for fun things to do. Hard to believe that I am actually distantly related to these people!

Once we got to the Outer Banks (OBX, for the uninitiated), we headed straight for Awful Arthur's. We found that place the first year we came down here, which must have been when I was around 10 or so, and we've been going there ever since. It's a great oyster bar and seafood restaurant, and even though it looks a little crummy from the outside, it's actually pretty nice. If you go there, get some oysters on the half shell, grilled teriyaki tuna sandwich, and you'll be good to go.

Anyway, like a complete idiot, I remembered to bring everything except for my camera, so I will have to bum a few shots from my cousin's camera and upload them later. However, I will try to describe the scene right now, which is just before 9:30AM on Memorial Day. I am lounging on the 3rd floor of the house, which is oceanfront...that means that the only thing separating the house from the ocean is a strategically placed sand dune. The walk to the ocean is about 1 minute (even less if you don't mind wading through the brush behind the house and potentially getting chewed up by mosquitos). Looking out from the window, I see the tops of the sand dunes, speckled with tall, wild grass, and just beyond is nothing but blue sea (well, blue-ish gray today) and a gray horizon. It's pretty cloudy out right now, so there might be a storm coming later. For now, the waves are breaking pretty gently and there aren't that many people on the beach yet. Perfect time for me to go out and search the sand for shells.

30

2009-05-11T21:52:00.005-04:00

Earlier this month, I officially hit the Big 3-0! Yes, that's right -I somehow managed to stumble my way through 3 decades of Life. And how did I celebrate my 30th birthday? With self-torment, lots and lots of food, and good friends standing by me and happy to celebrate with me. That's actually a pretty good summation of my life in general, but here's how it played out on May 3, 2009:

I woke up at 4AM on Sunday. I'd had about 4 hours of sleep because I was nervous/excited about the Frederick half. I hadn't trained properly, and for the previous 2 weeks I had waffled on whether or not to even run the race (after all, I'd been so hopped up on caffeine and stress during that time, that the only thing I wanted was to sit on my couch and drink). Ultimately, I figured I might as well try, so I had driven to mom and dad's house the night before, pinned the race bib to my t-shirt, looped the timing chip through my shoe, and packed my trusty bag of Cheerios for race day. Dad drove me up to the Frederick start line in his new car. I could tell that he was pretty jazzed about the new vehicle (dark blue VW Passat CC...very sleek, very stylish, very un-Dad-like). We talked about all the cool things the car could do, but of course, Dad being Dad, he wasn't quite sure how to get the car to do all that stuff. When we got to the fairgrounds, we sat in the car for 5 minutes while he tried to figure out how to turn off the headlights. And Dad being Dad, he had taken the owner's guide out of the car so he could read it at night in his spare time (yes, really, my dad reads a car owner's manual for fun) and had forgotten it at home. We finally figured out how to turn the damn thing off, so we made our way over to the start corrale area. I had picked up Derrek's race packet but as he was running late and I was for once on time, I asked Dad to hold the fort and told Derrek to look for the tallest Chinese guy he could find...in most crowds, that would usually mean my Dad.

The race started promptly at 6:30, and I started out feeling pretty good. Through the first 6 miles, the sky was overcast but the rain held off. Then I hit mile 7 and the first of a set of rolling hills, and that's when my legs started nagging me and the heavens opened up. Over the next 6 miles, the steady rain soaked through my clothes and skin, and I had a hell of a time focusing on running. I walked pretty much every uphill that remained and tried to pick up the pace on the downhills and straightaways. I finally made it to the finish line, and Liz and Anne were there to cheer me on, as was Derrek, who'd finished about a half hour before me. I staggered across the finish line under the 3 hour mark, and I was handed a finisher's medal for making it that far under my own power. I was definitely not the fastest and I got passed by people who had run twice the distance and one guy with NO shoes, but by God, I finished! It was painful but that last few hundred yards through the grandstand was good because there were people cheering us on.

I met up with my friends after leaving the finishers area, and they were awesome enough to have brought a cake! I found Dad and split a slice of cake with him, and I have to say, there is nothing that tastes so good after a punishing run than cake with chocolate frosting. As we were getting ready to leave, Anne pointed out that my leg appeared to be bleeding. I looked down and realized that my normally white, blue, and grey shoes were now tinged with pink. Hmm...not good. I went to the medical tent, and the nurse cleaned up and bandaged the back of my foot, right where the back of the shoe had rubbed off all the skin around my ankle. I figured I'd have a nasty blister but I didn't realize I'd probably been bleeding since mile 5. After that got taken care of, we all headed back - the Baltimore crew back to their homes for some much needed rest, and me and Dad back to his house so I could take a shower and get ready for lunch.

Mom, Dad, Mel, and I headed to Silver Fountain for dim sum with David, Christine, Uncle Lincoln, and Auntie Fong-Fong. All this time and we didn't realize that there was a dim sum place less than 15 minutes from mom and dad's house. The food was really pretty good, and I think I've got a new go-to place when I'm in the Rockville area. Getting together with the family is always interesting. Everyone was surprisingly in a good mood that day, and catching up with everyone was fun. It was all good until the parents started talking about getting old and debating the appropriate frequency of getting a colonoscopy, then talking about their individual results. Making matters worse, David's and my parents are all getting rather hard of hearing, and we were in a bustling dim sum place, so hearing them say "COLONOSCOPY? YOU GOT ONE? I GOT ONE TOO! IT WAS SO UNCOMFORTABLE..." was just a tad embarassing. Fortunately, lunch ended soon after and we headed back to mom and dad's house. I promptly passed out from the race and the food coma, then woke up a couple of hours later to head back to Baltimore and dinner with the girls.

Anne, Liz, and I met at Pazo for a double-birthday dinner (Liz and I have the same birthday!). We split a whole bunch of dishes, as it is a tapas place, as well as a carafe of sangria. Everything was very tasty but I think the best was still the croquettas. Really, how can you go wrong with a bite-sized portion of creamy mashed potato, mixed with cheese, that's been lightly battered and fried? I probably could have demolished a couple of orders on my own, but I restrained myself. There was still the dessert course, and the three of us each ordered something different and got to sample some really tasty sweets.

All in all, it was a good way to bring in the new decade - good friends, good food, and completing a personal challenge.

A (Little Bit of) Personal History

2009-04-27T19:23:00.004-04:00

It's been a long couple of weeks, and I am still somewhat delirious from a sleep cycle that's been thrown seriously out of whack. Tomorrow I will issue 3 audit reports and an agreed-upon procedures report ON TIME, so it will all have been worth it. I'm glad that I can at least have some time at the end of the day to do a little blogging to decompress before I get some sleep (and I'm actually going to get 4 hours!!).

Over the past few days, I've wondered about why I continue in this particular line of work. It's can be pretty tedious and frustrating at times, perhaps more so than other professional work. First thing that came to mind is that this work maybe isn't so bad and I should quit my whining because much of my pain is self-inflicted...I could be delegating better or not putzing around so much on the weekends and getting in more work than I do. Second thing that I realized is that regardless of what career I have, I think I will always push myself beyond what I thought were my limits. Since my caffeine pills had kicked in, my brain then went through (at warp speed) all the various reasons why I could be like this - 1) I'm competitive so I want to see if I can outlast everyone else? (since I'm the only manager 3 left in the office, I guess I win?); 2) parental guilt...as in, my parents had it a lot worse, so I need to suck it up and put in as much effort as I can so that someday I can support them; or maybe 3) I have an addictive personality, so frequent and repetitive summation of numbers to me is like crack to Whitney Houston.

Finally, after the caffeine-induced heart palpitations subsided (yes, according to Beney and Wikipedia, there is such a thing as caffeine intoxication!), and after spotting a well-placed ad for a geneology website, I realized that I am just a product of my ancestors. It's in my blood to work. I'm just lucky I get to do my work in a climate-controlled facility with running water (oh wait, I work in Baltimore...). This idea of heritage got me thinking about my grandparents, whom I have to admit I haven't really thought of much outside of the holidays. For a couple of people who didn't speak any English, never made it past the eighth grade in China, and lived apart for 10+ years, they did a hell of a good job keeping their family together and raising 5 kids.

And this ultimately led me to look up the article that The Washington Post ran on my grandpa shortly after he passed away almost 5 years ago. Some of the details are a little off, but the gist of the stories are true, and the picture of my grandpa standing in front of a stove is something that brings back a LOT of memories. That man was in the kitchen a LOT. Some of my earliest memories are of playing with dough and rolling out dumpling wrappers with grandpa instructing.

It's interesting to read that article now, 5 years later. It definitely gives some background as to why I'm such a big supporter of the US military (but especially the Navy) and why I am slightly obsessive about dumplings and believe that only my blood relatives can make good ones (my dad learned from the best - his mom and his father-in-law). But most importantly, I like the way the reporter describes my grandparents. As a 5 year old, I certainly didn't appreciate the fact that my grandparents worked for decades and could have been enjoying a quiet, relaxing retirement but were instead looking after their rambunctuous 5 year old grandson (my cousin, David, and I were born on the exact same day and year), and their angelic, albeit porky granddaughter (yours truly). Yet, they looked after us for years, without complaint or financial incentive or even a thank you from us grandkids.

They were still looking out for us even when they were very, very old and ill. Grandma called every single day just to say hello and to hear our voices. Grandpa actually literally held on until he saw all of his grandkids before he passed.

That summer, I was working on the audit at Children's when I got a call from my sis asking if I was going to see grandpa in the hospital. At first, I was ticked that I didn't know that grandpa was even in the hospital, but then again, he had been admitted quite a few times in the previous months, so maybe it wasn't such a big deal. Since Washington Adventist was only about 15 min. away, I told her I'd meet her there right after work. When I got there and went to the information desk to figure out what room he was in, they directed me to the ICU. That wasn't good. When I got to the ICU waiting area and saw a couple of my aunts and uncles and cousins, that was REALLY not good. My family didn't (and still doesn't) get together much outside of holidays, weddings, kids' birthdays, or deaths. Mel and I went with Mom to grandpa's room and he was hooked up to all manner of IV's and monitors. Mel immediately started bawling, and I got a little freaked out as a result. Mom, though, is a cool customer and held it together. We said hello to grandpa, and the only movement that occurred was rapid blinking and a squeeze of his hand. He was so weak and so filled with tubes that he couldn't speak or do much else. I can't remember what Mel or Mom said, but waited until they left and then told him in Chinese that I loved him and would come back and visit him tomorrow. We returned home after that and had finished up dinner about an hour later. I'm a slow eater, so everyone else had cleared out of the kitchen when I picked up my plate to take it to the sink. The phone rang and my dad answered from another room. I heard my sister scream and I knew that grandpa was gone. Mel was in tears, and pretty soon I was too. My mom later told us that grandpa had actually passed about 15 minutes after we left his room. My aunts, uncles and cousins had all gone in to see him before, so Mel, mom, and I were the last ones there. He had literally held on to make sure we were all ok before he left.

So, what does all of this rambling personal history have to do with all-nighters, putting up with tedious work, and berating myself for not working even more? Simple. It's in my blood.

And now for something completely different...and delicious...

2009-04-23T21:55:00.003-04:00

Sleep deprivation may be taking its toll again. I'm about to embark on my second all-nighter this week. But before I do, thought I'd share a vid that I thought was pretty hilarious. The nerd in me just can't help but appreciate this exceptional use (waste?) of perfectly good cured meat. And there's even a vegan version for the meat-averse. But really, everyone knows that everything's better with bacon.

Time is NOT on My Side

2009-03-31T23:26:00.002-04:00

This morning started off a bit shaky. I was at work until about 3AM cleaning up a set of workpapers that apparently were a big pile of poo. Fortunately, I had to take my poor smashed up car to the insurance office at 9:45, so I still got about 4 hours of sleep after getting home. The car drop off went smoothly, although I did find it rather interesting that the Progressive concierge office was located at an intersection that was clearly created by some sadistic insurance agent. Seriously, the left turn into the complex requires you to cross over the off-ramp from a highway while simultaneously dodging the traffic that is trying to get onto the highway from yet another angle. The cynic in me believes that Progressive designed its office to be at the intersection of Collision and Greed. The drop off itself went smoothly, and I got my rental car pretty quickly. Aside from the fact that I have to jack the seat up all the way in order to see over the hood, it's a pretty good ride.

After a couple of meetings in Bethesda, I got back to the office around 4:30 and have been working since then on getting one of our out-of-state teams out of the weeds. There are some days where I wish I could call a time out and just have a bit more time to take care of what I need to. I realize that it's just work and it somehow always gets done, but I don't have kids or pets or dependents of any sort...the only thing that I can really leave an imprint on is my work, so I take it very seriously, and I try to make it mine. This probably explains why I yelled at another manager who accused my team of not being proactive and essentially slacking off. I don't give a damn what people say about me, but when they go after the rest of the team (who, by the way, have been doing ALL of the heavy lifting for this other group for months), the gloves come off. The partner on the other team jumped on and tried to back up his guy, but I cut off the convo...it was almost F-bomb time, so I decided to let that one go until after we get what we need from these clowns.

Everyone has those days when it feels like it's just never going to end. It's not good for the soul, though, when those days start to stack up...

Not-so-busy season...kind of

2009-03-30T23:02:00.004-04:00

Busy season is officially over! Over the last few weeks, I have (over)indulged in sleeping in on the weekends, caught up on hours of tv shows that I have missed, went to dim sum not once but twice, started running again (am up to 6 miles), and caught up with friends (thank goodness I still have some left...more on that to come). The work, however, keeps piling on. The see-saw that had very decidedly tipped towards the "life" side is now about to flip pretty dramatically to the "work" side over the next few weeks. Not helping matters is the fact that the office recently let go of some more people, so we are again having to scramble to readjust and reassign. It's a good thing that the people I work with are pretty deeply invested in doing a good job and helping each other out. This job would be unbearable if people were only looking out for themselves or sabotaging each other to get ahead. We'll see how these next few weeks go, but I know that I have to take charge of these projects if I'm going to keep my sanity.

So, aside from the usual work, I am rediscovering that I did in fact have a personal life at one point. We had girls night last month, which consisted of tacos, much alcohol, and chick flicks (incl. Labyrinth...haven't seen that since I was a kid, but it did reconfirm that David Bowie is really creepy). A few weeks later, Beney came back from her one year bender in South Korea. She returned just in time for St. Patty's Day and just before every NATO ship in the Pacific turned its guns on the Korean peninsula...good timing! We went out on St. Paddy's weekend and had dinner, Guinness, and shots of some sort at James Joyce. Anne and Ryan had to head home afterwards to take care of the canine kiddo, but Beney, Liz, Jacob, and I ended up playing darts and having another round at Max's. It's a little scary that my aim and coordination actually improve the more I drink (barring the occasional collision with inanimate objects). And speaking of collisions, the only excitement over the past week or so has been the car accident that I got in last week. Nice when some jackass decides that making a left turn through my car would be a good idea. Fortunately, it happened in front of a club that the police patrol in force due to general drunken stupidity that goes on there, so the response time from the cops was about 2 seconds. I was plenty ticked off, and there was a fleeting desire to see how quickly I could take the piece of my fender that was hanging on for dear life and brain the idiot girl who rammed my car. Sanity and a general reluctance to do jail time set in, though, and I drove home and watched a movie since I was still rather shaken from the crash and couldn't sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a long day - have to take the car to the insurance adjuster/body shop in the morning and then head to Bethesda for a couple of meetings before returning to the office.

Now that busy season's over, I've had some time to take stock of what's happened so far. I'm not exactly sure how/why I keep going. I have not performed as well as I have in the past, and it seems that with each passing year, I fall more and more behind where I used to be. I definitely like the people I work with, and the work itself isn't so bad, but I do spend probably too much time in the office and not enough time with people that I used to really connect with and who have basically written me off over the past few years. Kat and Eric are both getting married this summer/fall, and I'm not invited to either of their weddings...and these are people I used to hang out with all the time and still consider to be friends, but I can't blame them...I haven't exactly made an effort. I haven't spoken with my sister or parents at all over the past month or so aside from calling to tell them that I might need to borrow a car due to the accident. The biggest things I have to look forward to are a bunch of road races that involve me trying to beat as many strangers as possible...that is just sad! So, New Resolution for Self - get a frigging life outside of work. It would be cool to blog about something besides how many memos I can write in a day or how many staff I've terrified in a 24-hour period.

FINAL Busy Season Stats

2009-03-01T12:58:00.004-05:00

Purpose: To chronicle the events of busy season 2009 and to conclude upon results of procedures.

Procedures:

1. Work. Flat out. For 54 days straight. For 12-15 hours per day (except for weekends, when it was more like 4-8 hours per day). Two clients included in sample. Results: Noted that results on one client met expectations, while the other did not meet expectations. Deficiencies noted will be discussed and documented in future performance reviews (both external and self-reviews).

2. Bond with team. As previously noted, results at one client met expectations but not the other. On the client where expectations were not met, team bonding was not an issue - they were pretty much a cohesive unit to begin with. On the second client, potential personality conflicts were identified. However, the risk of a total team meltdown were mitigated by having game night. It was noted that pictionary and Cranium were crowd pleasers, while scattergories and "the movie game" were somewhat less popular. This was likely due to the utter domination exhibited by the senior manager and manager in these games. Response: Hate the game, not the player.

3. Bake copious amounts of sweets. Approximately 150 cookies baked, utilizing 10 sticks of butter, 11.25 cups of flour, 7.5 cups of sugar, and 60 oz. of chocolate chips. Results: Sugar rush, potential diabetic coma...although the usual post-dinner slump is more likely to blame for the latter.

4. Attempt to engage in exercise. Results: Inconsistent. Alternate procedures included sleep, stress, and whining about not having enough time to exercise. These alternative steps were deemed sufficient since sleep is needed for basic functionality and to avoid complete and utter madness. Stress and whining surely take off calories since the act of typing complaints into IM or the phone surely burns calories. Just nod your head and agree.

Conclusion: Audits are complete and although additional clean up of documentation is required, unqualified opinions are supportable. Physical and mental health - marginal but improving. My life is still deemed reasonable.

Busy Season Stats: Day 43

2009-02-16T23:59:00.002-05:00

It is midnight and I am once again still at work. Granted, I didn't get in until 8:30 this morning, but this has still been a pretty long day. I think that after almost a month and a half, the fatigue is starting to take its toll. I find myself frequently making rookie mistakes (and anyone who works with me knows that I don't even let the rookies get off easy for making those kinds of errors). This weekend was another sure sign that something was off and my body was screaming for some relief, as I slept for 9 hours, straight through 2 alarms (one right next to my head). I got up around 9AM on Saturday and realized I was already late for work. I consoled my delinquent self by gorging on a donut. Take that, stupid diet!

One of the interesting things about busy season is that it tends to bring out the best or worst in people, and there is not much in-between. I have often equated this time of year to boot camp (not that I know what that's like, but I'll just have to go by what Hollywood tells me). This is the time when a tremendous amount of pressure is placed on a small band of people who will either crack or find the will to struggle on and come out stronger for it. Those who break will likely come to the realization that this is not the right path for them and pack it in during the next few weeks...the accounting equivalent of washing out. After all, it really does take a certain kind of person, a very particular personality to deal with this kind of work, which is neither glamorous nor exciting nor understood by 99.9% of the population (for the last freakin' time - I DO NOT DO TAXES!) Others will be anxiously looking to see who will make it through the next round of promotions and outlast the dreaded Layoff.

Now, we have not been "officially" told that there will be a new round of cuts, but there is enough discussion to make it pretty clear that something is in the works. I have alternately been anxious and blasé about the potential for being canned. I have reached a point in my career where I have to give some serious thought to whether or not I want to stay in this profession and potentially try to make partner some day. If I decide that is not something I'm serious about, then this is probably a good time to go. The thing is, I really want to be the one to make that call. Despite my self doubt, I would like to think that I have put in 8 years of true effort and that even if I have some off moments, those will not be frequent or prolonged. Until I hear otherwise, I will try my best to continue plugging away, helping the staff and seniors where I can, and trying to go against my natural pessimistic inclinations and be positive.

So, as it is late and the audit program has once again failed to open after much begging, pleading, cursing, etc, here are some stats before I go home:

Times we played "the movie game" and ended in a tie, much to the consternation of a certain senior: 2
Hours worked so far this week: 20
Bags of chocolate chips purchased with the intention of actually baking cookies for the team: 2
Bags of chocolate chips "tested" for "quality control" by me to ensure that the team would like them: 1 (what can I say, there are worse things to be addicted to than chocolate)
Hour at which I realized that today was Monday: 7PM (yes, an entire day when I had no idea what day it was)
Memos re-written today: 4
Times I saw the video of that hysterical lady in Hong Kong airport and thought, "Holy crap, that is totally me": 1
Times I have kicked my own ass today for making stupid, ridiculous, unforgivably avoidable errors: countless

Busy Season Stats: Day 33

2009-02-07T00:15:00.004-05:00

Apparently the 33 straight days of non-stop work has started to take its toll on me. I had started to make headway in building a rapport with some of the mid- to high-level executives at my newer client. However, during a client meeting this morning, I attempted to describe how I thought they were obtaining information from their external vendor. I meant to say, “So I think you take a data dump from the vendor’s system and import it into your spreadsheets.” That would have been fine, except I forgot to say the word “data” and said "on" instead of "from"… so that basically changed the meaning a tad bit, which caused my senior manager to give me the “Oh my god” look and the client to giggle a little bit. Also, I couldn’t keep eye contact with anyone for the rest of the meeting. That one will probably get a lot of replay on the internal blooper reel that is always running in my head. I’ve also had John Mayer’s “My Stupid Mouth” in my head all day. Great.

At lunch, further evidence that today was the day that the Universe decided that I should get punk’d. I polished off the slice of pizza I had left over from earlier in the week, and then the staff came in and said that the restaurant they had ordered from for lunch had given them an extra crab cake sandwich. Naturally, I volunteered to take one for the team and not let a good sandwich go to waste. I was halfway done with picking at the crab cake when the senior looked up and said, “Um, so you know how the Tax guys came and picked up their three boxes for lunch…apparently they’re short a crab cake sandwich.” I looked down at the sandwich I was picking at (which now consisted of just about everything but a crab cake, since that’s all I ate). I proceeded to put the fork down, closed the box, peaked around the corner to make sure that there weren’t any half-starved Tax managers lurking in the hallway ready to pounce, and then made a dash for the nearest garbage can in the kitchen to get rid of the evidence. Oh yeah, and I trust that none of you loyal readers will tip off the Tax guys. If you are thinking of doing so, read on for more evidence of what happens to those who cross me…

As I returned from my evidence-ditching mission, talk turned to the last episode of Grey’s. I really can’t stand the two main characters (Mer-Der), but I love Dr. Yang, and Dr. Bailey’s a close second. After all, there aren’t that many short, hard-charging women on TV who are tough on the outside but are a lot softer on the inside than they let most people believe, and I seem to have a natural affinity to them. So it should come as no surprise that I was pleased when the senior admitted that her codename for me was Dr. Yang. Hey, I will take Yang any day over the ever-annoying Izzie or Meredith. Yang gets all the good lines, is the best in her class, and every once in a while dates an attractive, successful surgeon. Not a bad character to be compared to.

I left the client around 2:30 and headed to the office. When I got there, I found that the senior who is leaving the country on Monday had literally dumped all the workpapers on the staff’s desk and left. All I had was an email to say that the work had been “transitioned” to the brand new staff. I was LIVID. I got a quick update from both of the staff I was working with and at one point mentioned that I was going to cancel this guy’s flight if he attempted to leave the country without properly closing out the work. Is it really so difficult to just send a quick email to say that he had to leave early today and to provide some idea as to what was done, what needed doing, and who needed talking to? I only started to calm down a bit after sending a furious email to the offending senior, plus one to HR and IT to confirm that they would not let him proceed with the formal exit procedures until I had spoken with him. I was dead serious in not letting them know that this guy was not to leave the building on Monday without talking to me first. At this point, I am past the fury and just want to know what needs to get done so I can start putting a plan in place to tackle those items. But word definitely gets around fast. I got a message from another senior saying that he’d heard about flight cancellations...I suppose that’s a warning that I need to be careful in what I say and who I say it to. In this case, I think I’m justified in going a little ballistic, and it probably doesn’t hurt to occasionally put others on notice that I DO NOT SCREW AROUND when it comes to work during busy season. After venting to Anne a bit and getting an oh-so-appropriate emoticon from another senior (it’s a screaming cat unloading an AK-47…just take my word for it – it’s funny), I felt a lot better. I will probably feel even better when I polish off the rest of this bottle of wine (not a big fan of shiraz but this one is growing on me, as is the buzz).

So, after a very up and down day and generally-trending-upward week, here are the stats:
Miles driven today: 80
Bags carried: 3 (1 purse, 1 laptop bag, 1 enormous black mesh bag for files)
Staff terrified out of their wits at the idea of working with me: 2 for sure, but potentially all 30-40 or so now that they know my wrath can go global
Trips to the car wash needed this weekend: probably at least 2 (my gray car looks white now from all the salt)
Total amount I’ve had to pay for parking so far this busy season: $20
Number of other people in the office when I left today: 0

Busy Season Stats: Day 31

2009-02-04T22:17:00.002-05:00

Yes, I have arrived at the momentous one-month mark. 31 straight days of work. So far, I am quite satisfied that I have not had any nervous breakdowns or any Christian Bale-like freak-outs in the middle of the audit room. I believe I have started to find that sweet-spot of management, that happy medium between being too hands off and being a micro-manager. The staff still seem pretty terrified when I walk into the room and don't ask questions of me unless I ask them if there's anything they want to go over, but that's not because I've yelled or been a total dictator (at least I don't think I have....). Hopefully that will pass with time, but I think I have become a little less Dwight and a little more Jim now.

During the last month, much has happened outside of the audit room. Probably the most exciting thing is that Lara had a little boy! I got her text while I was in the airport and let out a "Yay!" that I think caught the TSA guy offguard, but I was super excited. How exciting to start the new year with a new life and all the excitement and fun and responsibility that goes with it! And it's a good year for her son to be born in. The Year of the Ox in the Chinese zodiac is associated with hard-working, dependable, and responsible people. Those are pretty good traits for a kid to have, especially for the parents' sake!

As for me, the familial detente persists, but in happier news, girls night is on for this weekend, so there will be a nice break to drink some wine, watch some cheesy TV, and generally not do any work after 8PM. In addition, plans have been made for mini-breaks throughout the summer to reconnect with friends. My friend from college is turning 30 in June, and he is flying back to the East coast with some of his friends from the Bay Area where he lives now, so his friends from both sides of the country can get together and help the big guy celebrate (seriously, he's a big guy...tallest Chinese man you will meet outside of the NBA). Even more exciting is the news that Beney's coming back to the US after a year-long stint in Korea. The guys at Camp Casey will be bummed, but the Korean-American Samantha Jones needs to return to her natural stomping grounds. Plus, there are rumors of imminent ballistic missile attacks from the North, so now would be a good time to leave the area, regardless of how little credence you put in those rumors. I'll have to hammer out the details with her and Kat, but I think a girls weekend in NYC doing nothing but catching up, going to the spa, and drinking martinis is long overdue.

I'm also turning 30 in May and have the Frederick 1/2 to run on my birthday, so I'll have to keep training for the race and plan a post-race birthday dinner at some point. I'm amazed that I've actually got things in my calendar now that are not work-related, but I have a feeling that my personal calendar is going to fill up even faster with Beney back. She really is my best friend and partner in crime (not literally, of course, but there were some close calls in college), and isn't afraid to literally drag me out of the house to go out and have some fun. So, it'll be great to have some of the old Penn crew back. There are definitely days where I wish I could go back 10 years to my sophomore year of college when the only hard decisions to make were whether or not to go to class and which party to go to. That's life, I guess...with great age comes responsibility.

Now, as I need to finish writing a couple of memos before calling it a night, on to the latest round of Busy Season Stats:

Sodas consumed today: 3
Number of people who told me I look tired: 2
Babies born during the last week to current or former managers I've worked with: 2 (1 boy, 1 girl)
Dollars lost in Super Bowl squares pool: 25
Bottles of wine consumed over the weekend: 1
Bottles of wine to be brought to Anne's house for girls night: 3 (have to save room for the cosmos too)
Vacations planned: 2.5 (working on the details for NYC in March)
Peanut butter products consumed without any complications from salmonella (so far): 8 (Reese's peanut butter cups will be the death of me...or at least these pants...)
Number of times I've sung along to Bon Jovi's Bad Medicine on the radio, replaced it with "Bad Debt Expense," and laughed hysterically: 2 (it was late, I was in my car. Admit it - you do it too)

Hope for the New Year

2009-01-27T22:49:00.004-05:00

Yes, I realize that I am a day late in writing about the Lunar New Year. Perhaps I run on Asian time. For anyone who went to Penn, you know that means that Asian people tend to be late. Then again, I personally am never late. I always arrive precisely when I mean to (congratulations to anyone who picked up on that reference to The Lord of the Rings...sadly, just more evidence that I am a massive dork).

So, on to the New Year, and a few things I have to get off my chest. I promise the next post will be back to the usual work-related/random insomnia-induced drivel that I usually produce.

Lunar New Year is a major holiday in most Asian cultures that involves fireworks, handing out of gifts to children, wishing prosperity and health to others, and of course, eating copious amounts of food with one's relatives. New Year's eve is when most families get together, but my family is broken and the last thing I really wanted to do was spend time with them. I flew back from Boston on Sunday morning and got a call from my aunt and uncle asking if I wanted to meet them for dim sum. Never one to turn down good food and good company, I met them around 1 and spent a couple of hours catching up with them and enjoying the feeling of being with family members who did not judge me or deride me for my appearance, weight, job choice, work ethic, housecleaning skills, etc, etc (or at least had the courtesy not to do so every time we saw each other). When I got home, I called Mel and left her a message with some ideas on other places to continue job hunting. And once again, I offered to let her stay with me for a while, at least to give her some breathing room and time to pull herself together and find some direction.

Without getting into the gory details, let's just say that my family is dysfunctional to the nth degree. There is no end to the amount of psychoanalysis that I do on myself on a daily basis to understand why I respond to things the way I do, how I can get a grip on my pretty fierce temper, and how I can express honest concern and compassion for others without appearing to be completely disingenuous. The answer always lies in the way I was raised, the boot camp-like atmosphere that I grew up in. Granted, I've never actually been to boot camp, but if it involves yelling, belittling others, and generally breaking an individual down to the point where one either succumbs to the relentless pressure, or digs deep, fights back, and becomes stronger for it, I think that's a pretty close analogy to my "childhood." Even the cadence of my speech is very choppy, very sharp, as if I'm barking orders or hurling insults at people when really, that is not my intention. This has led to the development of my reputation as a hard ass (admittedly, that has its benefits at work). Despite the reputation, there are times when I am very appreciative for that training. Times like now, during busy season, where 12+ hour days are the norm. This busy season really hasn't been that bad, and if anything, I think I've been calmer and more in control of myself than ever. That's all a part of the training.

And yet, everyone reacts differently to that kind of pressure cooker environment. Years ago, I decided that I couldn't give up (I suppose you could infer that would mean I still had some hope and optimism left in me), so I dealt with whatever I had to and worked and worked until I could stand on my own. Not everyone reacts the same way, though. It is very painful to watch someone you care about collapse into themselves and seemingly give up. There is a certain sense of helplessness that I feel in not being able to really fix this. I spend most of my day looking at data, trying to reach a logical conclusion using the resources at my disposal, and usually getting to a satisfactory result. If only Real Life were that easy.

My hope for the new year is not peace on earth. That's too tall an order. I'd like to start a little smaller and a bit closer to home and just hope for peace for my family.

Busy Season Stats: Day 20

2009-01-25T20:14:00.003-05:00

It is now 3 weeks into busy season, and Client #1 is in good shape while Client #2 has just started up and we are currently in crazy, crank-out-the-work mode. Since my last post, we swore in a new President, determined the Super Bowl match up, and seen an airplane land in the Hudson River with no major casualties. In other words, the world has kept on spinning while I've been locked away in a conference room. I have to say, though, that 60+ hour work weeks have not been all that bad. It forces one to prioritize all things, not just at work. Things like laundry or dishes that could wait an hour or so now need to be done right now so that the rest of the schedule doesn't get thrown out of whack. Working out is another one of those things that just can't be denied. Even if I can't hit the gym, I'll at least do push ups and crunches until my mid-section aches and my arms feel like jello. No, that's probably not the right amount of reps to do, but I do at least feel like I'm getting a bit stronger and burning some calories.

So, to wrap things up, here are my more recent busy season stats:

Flights taken: 2
Bottles of wine purchased last week: 12
Bottles of wine consumed last Friday night: 1 (and it was delicious!)
Pages of review notes from the coordinating partner: 3 (NOT good)
Episodes of "24" missed: 5 (and please don't spoil it for me!)
Number of times my computer bag was re-scanned because my pencil case apparently resembles an explosive device: 3
Donuts eaten: 0
Episodes of The Biggest Loser watched in order to develop the willpower to forgo a trip to Dunkin Donuts: 2
Average hours worked: 60 (not bad)

Damn, This Might Be My Future....

2009-01-14T23:24:00.002-05:00

I got a kick out of this article that I saw on Yahoo yesterday. I especially like what drove her to wait so long and what she did in the meantime (worked her butt off for 70+ years). Hmm...it's like looking into a crystal ball!

Busy Season Stats: Day 10

2009-01-14T22:59:00.002-05:00

It's been a while since my last post, but of course, that's because I am busy (as the title suggests). Anyway, it's been ten straight days of hard core work and I’m still standing. Granted, I haven’t had much interest in doing much besides sleeping when I get home, but I did manage to lift some weights a couple times last week. Things are progressing reasonably well at my one client that is in full swing, and we are making slow but steady progress on the other where we’re playing catch up. Overall, things look like they’re on track to wind down nicely by the end of February, at which point I think I will have worked about 150-200 hours of overtime over 54 straight days.

There’s not much non-work related news to report. The main highlight of this week is that I got to participate in my very first videoconference. It’s rather funny when you’re looking at a screen full of people who are looking very intently at the piece of paper in front of them and trying very hard not to look up, almost fearful of seeing their own giant heads displayed on the big flat panel HD screen. Oh wait, that was me too (it's pretty horrifying when you look up and think, "Oh my god, why did no one tell me that my hair is doing that?!" and then trying to calm insane hair without looking like an ass in front of the partners and client).

So, clearly, there isn’t much else to talk about except for, you guessed it, the latest round of random busy season stats:

Hours worked so far this week: 47 (and counting)
Memos written: 5
Songs purchased on iTunes because I can't finish that memo when that damn song is in my head and I just have to hear it right now: 3
Mornings where I woke up kicking myself for oversleeping and not going for a run: 4
Cars left in the parking lot besides mine for the last 2 nights I left work: 0
Number of times the partner said, “Ugh! Jen, you’re killing me”: 3 (in the same phone call…pretty sure that’s bad)
Number of bugs caught by me but disposed of by a staff because I HATE bugs: 1
Non-firm-approved emoticons added to my Sametime palette: 2 (both from the partner, so I guess that's at least partner-approved)
Average hours of sleep per night: 5
Hours of TV watched: 0
Hours spent fantasizing about relaxing vacation in California wine country: about 1
Cookies baked this week: 6 dozen (doubled the batch since they went so fast last time)
Number of pants that suddenly seem to make me look like the Michelin Man Goes Business Casual: 3 (yikes!! time to hit the gym)
Salads eaten this week: 2
Meals consumed this week that were loaded with grease, salt, butter, cream, or other foods that scream “Eat me!” but could eventually kill you: 2 (salads consumed this week offset the effect of gluttonous dishes consumed…therefore impact to overall personal health is immaterial…FPW)
Instances of overwhelming nerdiness boiling over: 1 (see above)

Busy Season Stats: Day 4

2009-01-08T21:34:00.002-05:00

Nerd Alert - There is nothing of any major interest to anyone who is not a big giant accounting dork (or are friends of said dork). The low points of the day were when I rolled in late (overslept, damn it) and when I hung up on the partner and the team in Texas...twice. You would think that I could work a telephone, but I think the buttons on this frigging thing were rearranged. The high point was when I thought I started to make some headway in showing the partner that I am not a total idiot despite insisting that the correct journal entry to record was to both debit and credit inventory (just changing the cost centers).

Now, for those who need further proof of my nerdiness, here are today's Busy Season Stats:

Hours overslept: 2 (actually got 7 last night, which is not good...was supposed to go to the gym and be in to work early)
Days it took my team to polish off the 3 dozen cookies that I baked: 2.5
Senior managers shocked that there were no cookies left during the afternoon Snack Attack: 1
Memos left to review tonight: 3
Time it took for me to change my dinner order from salad to cheese pizza: 30 seconds
Number of pictures Beney has sent me so far to show that South Korea apparently has a higher population of US Army officers than actual South Koreans: 4

Busy Season Stats: Day 3

2009-01-07T19:54:00.002-05:00

I got off to a great start this week, but I am starting to drag a bit today. I had a late night yesterday and went to bed at 4AM, only to have my arch-enemy, the alarm clock, blast away my sweet dreams at 8AM this morning. After dragging myself into the shower, I was in the car and at the office by 9:30. I had a half hour to get set up and then went off to the first of several meetings for the day. I am somehow still functional and can maintain at least a neutral demeanor. I always look tired and slightly annoyed (can’t help it – my face is just naturally that way…lucky me), but at least my attitude is not nearly as defeated as my appearance. So, with that, here are some of today's stats (day 3 of busy season):

Cookies consumed: 0 (yay! will power!)
Meetings: 5
Hours spent in meetings: 6
Hours worked so far this week: 36
Hours slept so far this week: 9
Computer crashes: 1
Cups of coffee consumed: 2

Busy Season Stats: Day 1

2009-01-06T00:29:00.004-05:00

Oh, the joy of busy season! Nothing like coming back from the holiday break relaxed, recharged, and ready to go. I've started my training regimen again, so that might have something to do with the sudden burst of energy. More likely, it's due to the knowledge that we have a VERY limited amount of time to get things done, and to get them done right.

Today started early, getting up at 5, getting washed up and then out the door at 6. The only flub of the morning was when I realized that I did not have my badge, so rather than arguing with the armed guards and possibly getting cuffed and stuffed at the gate, I had to turn around to fetch it, but I still made it to the office pretty early. There is something to be said for only having to tap the brakes once or twice and getting in to the office in about a half hour. I got a few hours of work in before I had to leave for a meeting that lasted for about 6 hours in the middle of the day. After the meeting ended, I headed back to the office, worked a few more hours, headed to Baltimore to grab some files from my desk that I need for the rest of the week, then headed home, baked cookies for my team (the managers were jokingly "volunteered" to bake for the rest of the team...and I do not intend to let them down), and did about 20 minutes of strength training. Whew! It's been a long day. Not sure that I'll be able to do this very frequently, but I've been up for almost 19 hours now and am still feeling pretty strong.

So, since I am a bean counter and like to look at numbers (and hopefully see progress), here are this day's stats:

Time in to the office: 6:45AM
Time out of the office: 9:30PM
Time in A&D training: 6 hours
Emails sent: about 20
Blog posts: 2 (clearly, I am energized and in a sharing mood!)
Cookies baked: 3 dozen
Time spent lifting/stretching: 20 min

The Word of the Day Is...

2009-01-05T19:20:00.004-05:00

...cougar.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend this weekend regarding the definition of a cougar. She thought she wasn't, and I thought she was and had just stalked and pounced on her first prey. For those of you who do not know, a cougar is not just a wild cat. It is also the term used for a woman who dates much younger men. The definition of "much younger," though, is debatable. In general, I think anything > a 10-year age gap is Big Cat Exhibit territory. However, let's say it's a 30-something woman. In that case, I think that anything > a 5-year age gap is cougar-like. The rationale is that men typically take much longer to mature emotionally, especially when they've just reached adulthood. Therefore, a 30-year old woman dating, let's say, a 23-year old man would be dating someone not 7 years younger, but maybe closer to maybe 10 to 15 years younger than her emotional age. That's just enough of an age gap to make most people cringe, so that to me equals cougar.

Now, there's nothing wrong with dating a "much younger" guy, but it does leave a girl potentially open for boatloads of ridicule and a broken heart. So, with that in mind, I can only advise my friend to stick to dating guys her own age, but if she does feel the need for younger game, that she at least sound a warning and make sure that both sides know what they're getting into.

Personal Bests and the 2009 To-Do List

2009-01-03T21:04:00.003-05:00

New Year's Eve was spent in the office, although I did make it out with enough time to make a couple batches of cookies before the Vances' party. Batch 1 was a bit too well-done, but batch 2 was better, so I boxed it immediately (nothing like fresh, warm cookies!) and hopped in the car. The party was a bit smaller than last year, but it was still a lot of fun. Nothing like playing games and chatting with cool people to make for a good new year's. The rest of the weekend was spent running errands, relaxing a bit before busy season starts on Monday, and thinking about what needs to be done in the coming year.

Of course, before one makes plans for the future, it is often helpful to look to the past first. With that in mind, I figured I should come up with a list of personal bests (effort to focus on the good stuff and leave the not-so-good behind). Everybody seems to come out with a top 10 list of the highlights of the year. However, since I don't have much of a life outside of work, I will have to shorten that list to 5 if I want to talk about personal highlights for 2008. (Note to self - get a life in 2009 so I will actually have 10 things to talk about in December 2009...)

5. One year of home ownership...and no foreclosure in sight!

Just over a year ago, I signed away almost all the money I had in the world to buy my townhouse. A year later, my house is worth about $30k less than what I paid, but then again, I'm not looking to move anytime soon. Plus, you can't put a price on freedom, and there's nothing like coming home and knowing that you can paint the walls, nail holes in the wall, and do whatever the hell you want, whenever the hell you want. That's what I call a sanctuary.

4. My sister and I get along...who would've guessed?

Mel moved in a few months ago, and I am personally very proud of the fact that we have not fought once. This may be partly due to us being on entirely different schedules and not seeing much of each other, but considering how we used to treat each other when we were little, it's a small miracle that no hair has been pulled and no tears have been shed (hers, not mine...). Living with my kid sister has made me appreciate her more since she's the only sibling I have, and there were a few times this year where I thought something had happened to her, which brought out my maternal instinct (shocking that I have one). I worry about her constantly, but like my parents, I have to let her follow her own path and make her own mistakes before she finds the way to success and happiness.

3. David's wedding

My cousin and I share the same birthday, although I am about 2 hours older than he is. That means that we have been competing pretty much since birth, but he won this particular race fair and square - he got hitched! And to a nice, pretty, very supportive woman he met in church. It's amazing to see how mature he has become, and the family really likes his wife. As an added bonus, the wedding was a lot of fun and did not result in any of the Liu family drama that makes us look like the Asian American version of Brothers and Sisters. Well, to be fair, there was some drama when one of the aunts brought some other random relatives without telling my cousin, so there was a bit of a seating problem and some whining from the unexpected guests. I believe that was resolved by David's mom pretty quickly, but no doubt that incident will feed more fuel to the fire for my mom's dislike of the Aunt Who Brings Random People to Weddings.

2. Army 10-Miler

It's just under half as impressive as running a marathon! Ok, that was a really bad math joke. However, finishing my first road race was one of the high points of the year. After several months of alternately disciplined then half-hearted training, I managed to complete all 10 miles under my target time, without walking for long stretches, and still felt pretty good at the end. I felt so good, in fact, that I signed up for 4 more races in 2009. I am pretty sure I am going to beat my 2008 ATM pace next time, but it was a good start to what could become a healthy obsession.

1. Europe trip

Of course, I have to top off the list with the weeklong trip to London and Rome. How can you possibly beat two historic cities to explore, good food, and great company? It was definitely a blast, and I've got the flash drive full of pictures to prove it!

So, that was it for 2008. On to bigger and even better things in 2009! And those things include the following to-do's (in my vocabulary, that's a much stronger commitment than a meager "resolution"):
1. Work out at least 4 times a week. That includes any combination of cardio/strength sessions.
2. Complete 4 road races (Frederick 1/2, ATM, Baltimore 1/2, and MCM 10k) and improve my pace in each race.
3. Curse less. Yes, this will be a challenge because I probably swear more than a drunken sailor, but I will try.
4. Talk to/visit mom and dad at least once a week. They live nearby and there's really no reason to avoid talking to them. They're in their 60's, and although my grandparents lived into their 80's, who knows how much time any of us have left. I'd like to try living my life without regret.
5. Splurge on a vacay to wine country. I've wanted to go back to Sonoma for a while now, and there's no reason why I can't use some of my savings to indulge a little...and it'll be educational because I'll make an effort to stay just sober enough to learn a little bit about wine.
6. Be a little less critical of others, and myself. Yeah, maybe I deserve the Lok Ness Monster moniker...then again, it's not my intention to scare others. I have to be a little less scary and a little more approachable while still staying true to myself (I'm not very good at faking). One way to do that is to let the little things go and not jump on every possible thing that goes wrong.

Holiday Fun

2008-12-26T18:20:00.002-05:00

Merry Christmas to all! I hope everyone had a great time with their families and friends. This year's Christmas was one of the more entertaining holidays I've celebrated. After partially recovering from a nasty head cold that put me out of commission on Tuesday (still not 100%, but getting there), I got up early on Wednesday to bake pecan pies to contribute to the meal. I headed to Aunt Tai's house a little before 2 and actually beat my parents there. The rest of the family had already arrived, although Richard and Betsy weren't there, so we didn't have their two little babies to entertain us. When my parents got there, mom was still riled up from dad's wrong turns that led to their slight delay. After mom had announced my dad's incompetence, and my uncle handed my dad a consolation beer, we tucked into the Christmas feast. The menu was somewhat scaled down this year, as I later learned that we had actually forgotten to take some of the other dishes out of the fridge or microwave where they were jammed because we were running out of space: turkey, beef Wellington, wild rice & sausage stuffing, roasted potatoes, curry beef pastries, spring rolls, barbecue ribs, potato salad, cinnamon rolls, meatballs and tomato sauce. From the menu, you can see that my family does not really stick to the traditional - it's really more about what everyone likes, regardless of what time of year it happens to be.

After everyone had sufficiently stuffed themselves, my uncle mentioned that he had Iron Man on blue ray, so he set that up for me and most of my cousins joined me for the movie on the big screen in the basement. The movie was awesome, and I will definitely make an effort to catch the sequel when it comes out in theaters. When the movie ended, we went upstairs for dessert, which consisted of my pies, apple pie, ice cream, fruit cake, chocolate rum balls, Godiva chocolates, and a rum cake made by the aunt that no one in my family likes. All of the desserts were sampled except for the rum cake, which only my dad was brave enough to try. In all honesty, it was probably fine, but my mom and her siblings had enough unpleasant experiences with the lady that they weren't taking any chances. As we were eating dessert, one of my uncles moved on to the harder alcohol in the liquor cabinet and had a glass of cognac. I only mention this because my uncle, who usually speaks his mind, was clearly having a great time, talking very loudly about almost everything. It must have sounded like a massive domestic dispute to anyone who could have heard us, but it was really just the sound of my big crazy family having a good time.

While everyone was sitting around chatting, I handed out my Christmas presents. The family had agreed that only the little kids would get presents from the extended family, which was ok with me. That just meant that we all got stuff for our immediate family. The first part of his gift was a couple of really fragrant teas to go with all the biscuits that I had brought him from England. The second part of his gift was actually for him and mom, and it was a gift card to Fogo de Chao. Dad seemed a little perplexed that I got him a gift card, but when I showed him the menu (really, just a picture of various cuts of juicy steak), he did a 180 and looked pretty excited. Mom seemed pretty happy with the gift card too, especially when I told her that she if she and dad went for lunch instead of dinner, they could go twice. Clearly, the key to my family's heart is through its enormous, iron-clad stomach. I got my mom a sweater, too, and for Mel, I bought a tailored shirt and some Bumble & Bumble hair stuff that she likes. They all seemed happy with their presents, so I think that was a pretty successful shopping trip this year.

And speaking of shopping, I did manage to brave the crowds today and went to the mall with Aunt Tai. She is the "cool aunt" and is definitely much more fashion forward than the rest of the family. She picked out some pieces that I probably would not have considered, but they actually looked quite decent and I ended up buying a jacket and some "fun" shirts ("fun" being defined as not appropriate for work and therefore can only be worn at bars or other places where I should be up to no good).

And so went another Christmas with the family, with everyone well-fed and content.

Where the Heck Am I?

2008-12-17T22:48:00.002-05:00

I consider myself a fairly experienced traveller, given that I take at least a dozen flights each year for business. This past week was a bit unusual, though, as I started in DC, flew out to California, then Texas, then back home...in the span of 3 days. My system is pretty much out of whack to begin with, but all the travelling and time zone changes led to me getting by on about 3-4 hours of sleep a night, although I was still functional. Good sign for busy season!

The trips were for site visits for my new client, and I have to say that it was one of the more enjoyable business trips that I've ever taken. The teams were both extremely well-prepared for myself and the partner, so we had very efficient meetings to go over their status. The cool part, though, was the tour of the facilities. I've been at the firm for just over 7 years, and this is the first client that I've had which actually makes something. So the first tour we took was to view the satellites that were currently being built. The satellites are assembled in a clean room, so we went through the standard cleaning procedures (clean jackets, hair nets, booties, air shower) and headed into the assembly area. I really didn't understand the technical information that the client rep provided, but I did gather that the satellite we were looking at was just one of several that would ultimately be sent into orbit in the next few years to help speed up communications around the world. The satellite itself was what I expected - a very large boxy thing with solar panels and other attachments jutting out from various places. For a multi-million dollar piece of equipment, there were certainly some pieces that looked like they were held together by duct tape.

The very next day, we were up and out of the hotel by 4:30 to catch a 6AM flight to Dallas for the second site visit. We landed in the very overcast Dallas-Fort Worth area and headed to the client site, where we talked business for a couple of hours before jumping in the car and driving down the road to the air base where the planes were being built. Walking into the building and passing by the various program offices with the titles Program Director and Chief Test Pilot, I had a sudden, almost violent urge to start spewing out lines from Top Gun (I feel the need, the need for speed!!!). I've had a lifelong interest in military jets (actually had my heart set on applying to the USNA to become a pilot before mom and dad nixed that idea), so this was about as close as I'd ever get to sitting in the cockpit. The planes were in various states of assembly, and the factory itself was enormous. We walked about a half mile down one wing of the factory to take a look at the newest model that was being built, and that was only about a half of the line. Since it was overcast, none of the jets were being put through their paces, but there were enough models and pictures of the finished product displayed around the building for me to have a pretty good appreciation of the incredible amount of firepower that those planes could unleash. I could only muster two words when the partner asked me what I thought: So...Cool!

We went out to dinner that night in downtown Fort Worth. I'd heard the saying that everything is bigger in Texas, and I totally believed it when my dinner came out. I had carne asada with a couple of enchiladas, which also came with sides of rice, beans, guacamole, and fresh salsa. My arteries are currently seizing in protest as I think about that meal. I mainly got it because I'd never had carne asada before, and if I ever go back to Fort Worth, I am definitely getting that dish again. I managed to eat about a quarter of the plate and stopped so I could save some room for dessert (apple crumb with fresh cinnamon ice cream...so good!).

The next day, I worked from the hotel and left for the airport around 4PM, only to have my flight delayed due to weather. I ultimately got home around midnight, and was pretty tired, so I slept pretty well. I woke up the next morning not really knowing where I was. I realized I was home when I rolled over and saw the ceiling fan...then the clock and realized that I was also quite late for work.

And so went another week at work. I am looking forward to at least a much quieter week starting tomorrow, so hopefully I'll be able to catch up on all those things that got pushed to the end of the year. At least I'll be able

Amusement (and Annoyance) of the Day

2008-12-09T21:03:00.006-05:00

I'm still in the getting-to-know-you phase at my newer client, and lunch is really the best time to talk about non-work things with the team and start to bond with them. Since I'm one of the few girls on the team who actually likes and follows football, today at lunch I was talking to the staff about the 'Skins loss (see? I told you so!) and Division I-AA college football. Penn just so happens to be a AA football school and used to be pretty good, at least when I went there. So I let it slip that I went to Penn, and the reactions I got were pretty amusing. Every once in a while, I'll get someone who actually seems genuinely impressed that I got into that school. Most of the time, the people who find out that tidbit try to mask their look of shock (as in, "Are you serious? They let you in to Penn?"). I think the partner had a little bit of the latter going on and seemed to be trying not to laugh. That would have been unfortunate (snarfing milk = funny; snarfing sauteed vegetables = gross/painful...although still pretty funny). After all, I am the over-enthusiastic manager who thinks that fighter jets and missile defense systems are cool but doesn't really know how they all get accounted for, which is kind of my job. I am all about setting low expectations and then over-delivering...an Ivy League degree kind of raises the bar. Then again, Dubya went to an Ivy, so maybe I'm not so disappointing in comparison...

Now on to the annoyance - my microwave blew out. I know, not a huge deal to most, but when more than 50% of your meals are either leftovers or frozen into a compressed brick, that kitchen appliance becomes critically important to your survival. I am now back in the stone age, actually cooking meals during the weekday. This is highly unusual behavior. Guess I will have to make a run to Costco this weekend to buy a new microwave...and a carload of frozen food to break it in!

My Life is Like the Stock Market….

2008-12-05T20:28:00.000-05:00

…some days I’m way up, and other days I’m so down there’s a circuit breaker that gets tripped and I just shut down. Warning – there’s a decent amount of whine here, so if you’re pregnant or underage, step away from this post.

Yesterday was an up day. I spent some quality time at my other big client, had a pretty productive day, answered almost all of the questions that were fired at me, and had a chat with the partner about my performance that wasn’t too bad. All in all, it was a good day. I felt like I was making some progress out there and wasn’t going to be fired in the next few months. Of course, it also didn’t hurt that I left at 5:45, made it to back to Columbia in a record 45 minutes despite the rain, and met up with the girls for Anne’s birthday dinner. Any day that ends with good friends and frozen/fruity/alcoholic beverages can only be described as good. Oh, and there was a decent episode of Grey’s on when I got home (except for the crazy Izzie/ zombie Denny crap).

Today started out as a circuit breaker day and ended about even. I got in late to work because of an appointment in the morning (because I’m a complete clod and manage to break my glasses or other valuables or injure myself on an alarmingly frequent basis). The first 4 emails I read when I got in the car were pretty bad – I screwed up at work (apparently pretty badly) and since I wasn’t in the office, the rest of the team was cleaning up after me. If there’s one thing that my strict Chinese/Republican upbringing has taught me, it’s that you are responsible for and clean up your own messes. I apologized to Anne and sent Dan an “I completely suck” email. It did get smoothed over with the client, but it took me a few hours to not dwell on it and be productive on the mountain of work I had piling up. I’m not a complete basket case, but there is definitely a decline in quality and speed when I screw up – until I get over it, I pretty much second and triple guess every move I make, whether it's writing emails or making a phone call. I did eventually suck it up and deal, so the rest of the afternoon was spent getting through some memos and writing reviews, so at least I ended on a relatively productive note. Hopefully this weekend will give me a chance to go for a long run and get all this self-loathing out of my system.

Recovering...from...Food...Coma...

2008-11-28T15:50:00.002-05:00

Where to begin? It's been a few weeks since my last post, and that's mainly because I've just been working. Nothing new to report there except that it's shocking how quickly the year has gone by and how much there is left to do.

So, clearly the most interesting thing that has happened recently was Thanksgiving and the massive quantities of food that my family puts away. Now, clearly, eating loads of food is the whole point of Thanksgiving. However, I doubt there are many families that have the variety of foods that mine seems to put together every holiday. The meal consists of the standard turkey, roast beef, roasted vegetables, and stuffing, but we also have a lot of things that you normally won't see on a standard American table. My dad pitched in summertime staples like ribs and potato salad, mainly because my cousins like those dishes a lot. One of my aunts brought jellyfish and thousand year old eggs, beef curry pastries, and a dish whose name I only know in Chinese but consists of the bean curd substance that vegans usually use to substitute for meat, mixed with wood ear mushrooms, tiger lily shoots, and bamboo shoots.

The only thing I did not eat was the thousand year old eggs. Those are a Chinese delicacy, but the fact that it was once on Fear Factor as one of the nasty eating challenges is an indicator of how scary it looks. To be fair, they're not actually a thousand years old. They're duck eggs (which look just like chicken eggs), except they have been preserved in some kind of substance (I'm guessing soy sauce?) and buried in a pit for a few months until they turn black. Really. The creamy whites and bright yellow yolks that you are used to seeing in an ordinary hard boiled egg are transformed into something that looks more like a charcoal-gray lump surrouned by black jello. I am pretty adventurous and open minded when it comes to food, but that is one food that I have tried only once in my lifetime and will never go back to.

After gorging ourselves on the Thanksgiving feast, we amused ourselves by watching my cousin's kids, Charlie and Paige, run around and generally do cute kid things. They are 3 and 1, respectively, so just about everything they say or do is "aw, isn't that cute" inducing. They really are cute and pretty sharp kids, but it was a little annoying when my uncle kept implying that I should have kids soon so my parents (who were clearly smitten by my cousin's kids) could have their own grandkids to chase around. Ah, now I remember why family get-togethers only happen twice a year.

The family started to leave around 6, but my parents, Mel, and I stuck around at my aunt's house to finish watching the Cowboys game and to play a few rounds of mah jongg. My aunt Tai always hosts the holiday meals since she has the biggest house and is also the most hospitable of her siblings. She is The Cool Aunt, while my mom and her older sister can arguably be described as Mean and Meaner. It is pretty common for my immediate family to be the last ones at Tai's house since I think we get along with her family the best. And we almost always end up playing mah jongg, which seems to be a distinctly Chinese addiction. The game is a lot like gin rummy except you use tiles that you noisily "wash" (shuffle). In between drawing and discarding tiles, you get the chance to sit around the table with 3 other people and catch up on life. You can learn a lot about your family from those conversations. My mom frequently complains about my weight and appearance and my sister's poor grades in front of us and the whole family. My aunt often comes to our defense, but my favorite quote from the night came from my mom in response to my aunt's comments about hurting feelings: "We're Chinese. We don't care about feelings." For anyone who doesn't get me and why I am the way that I am, just refer to that comment and know that how I was raised is also how I tend to treat others, although that is somewhat tempered by having American friends who were not raised to be robots.

So, all in all, it was another typical family get together. Good food and lots of it. About a half hour grilling about being single, fat, and grotesque (if I were French, I think I'd be ringing the bell at Notre Dame), followed by 2 hours of blissful football watching and a few rounds of mah jongg. One holiday down, one more to go!

Day 8 - London and the Trip Home

2008-11-18T22:41:00.002-05:00

On Saturday, Liz, Lara and I headed out the door for the tube ride to Heathrow. Lara saw us to the gate and we all said good bye at the end of a very fun week. Hard to believe, but the next time we see Lara, she'll be a mom (well, I guess she is already a mom, but at least then she'll be able to show off the baby)!

Liz and I grabbed some sandwiches at one of the cafes, and then we stopped by the duty free store so I could spend half of my remaining British pounds on bags of Cadbury chocolates. I ended up buying 4 big bags of candy, so it was a good thing my gym bag was empty and I could stash the goods in there. There was still some time before our flight, so after wandering around the terminal for a bit, we found an empty waiting area and went through my pictures from the week. I have to say, Heathrow's new terminal (which I think only serves BA) is really quite nice. It's got a very sleek look, and the shops are all pretty high end, even the restaurants (there's a Gordon Ramsay cafe there).

When our flight was called and we went to the gate, I got pulled aside for a random security screening. In the side area where they were doing the more detailed check, there was one other guy who had also been picked for screening. Unfortunately, he was making a fuss, accusing the security guards of being racist and only pulling him aside because he wasn't white. BA supervisors had to be called over to help calm the guy down. I was very close to telling him to shut his trap and just cooperate, but extra security had been called in and they were handling it. That was only my second time being pulled for the random screening, and I'm not white either, so for that guy to be calling the process racist was ludicrous. Frankly, if I can give the rest of the passengers on the plane some peace of mind by showing that at least I'm not carrying anything dangerous, then I'm glad to spend 2 extra minutes at the gate.

The flight home was pretty turbulent, but that made it easier to stay awake and fend off the impending jet lag. I also watched Tropic Thunder (awesome!), Brideshead Revisited, 3 episodes of The Wire, and listened to the new Coldplay CD in its entirety. All in all, a very productive flight!

It was hard to believe that the week was already over, but as they say, all good things must come to an end. A week of very little work (yes, I did check email a few times...no, I did not reply), amazing sights, good food, and great friends to share it all with was a welcome respite from work. I have to say that after seven years, it has gotten increasingly difficult to motivate myself to put in the effort that I used to, say when I was a new senior. So the insomnia, occasional apathy, and more frequent grumpiness had taken their toll. I didn't quite realize it until I got up on Monday morning at 6 and noticed that the black puffy circles under my eyes had smoothed out somewhat. I even made it into work around 7:15, which is highly unusual for me.

So, it's now back to the daily grind, but hopefully the trip will have served its purpose and recharged my batteries. At the very least, it was great to spend time with the girls and remember that there is life outside of work!

Day 7 - London

2008-11-16T18:07:00.003-05:00

On Friday, Lara headed to work while Liz and I slept in. I think all three of us were happy to have a bit of a rest from all of the walking we'd done earlier in the week. Liz and I left the flat around 11:30, grabbed some brunch at the French bakery, then headed downtown to get check out the half-price tickets at Leicester Square. We settled on Chicago, which I hadn't seen before onstage and which had really good seats (5th row, just off center). We walked around London for a bit, taking a few wrong turns before finding our way to Green Park near Buckingham Palace and just chatting.

We headed west around 1:30 to stop in at Harrod's before tea. The store is absolutely over the top. It takes up about 2 city blocks and has just about everything that you could want. The first floor has cosmetics, jewelry, and food halls. I ended up buying a few tins of biscuits (that's cookies, to us Americans) and gift boxes of jams and jellies. My dad likes that kind of stuff, so I figured he'd enjoy it or at least find some use for the tin boxes. The 2nd and 3rd floors contain mostly clothing, but it's not like what you would find in the US. Even Neiman Marcus has labels that are relatively affordable. Harrod's, however, had just about every square inch of retail space covered by designer labels like Escada, Valentino, Gucci, Max Mara, and Armani. The clothes are beautiful to look at, but I'm sure the prices are frightening. The best part of the store, though, was probably the pet section upstairs. It's not even just a pet store in the sense that they sell toys and clothes and even food for pets (because they do all of that). They actually have real animals for sale, and the biggest attraction was probably the half a dozen miniature schnauzers that were up and about wrestling with each other and generally doing cute puppy things.

Before long, it was time to head over to The Georgian Room for tea time. Liz and I settled for the traditional tea, which consists of your basic tea sandwiches, a couple of scones, and mini cakes, along with a steaming pot of soothing tea. We got the Georgian blend, which I think is a house specialty and was very good. The tray of snacks didn't look especially huge, but by the time I'd finished the sandwiches, I was pretty full. I managed to put away another scone but couldn't make it through the cake tray. Instead, I took a little piece of 4 of the cakes to at least get a taste. All of it was really good, and afternoon tea is definitely a tradition that I could partake in more often. We finished up our tea around 5 and headed back to Lara's flat to regroup before heading back out for dinner and the show.

Dinner was at Cafe Pacifico, a Mexican place around Covent Garden, and it was packed with people taking advantage of happy hour. Fortunately, that meant there weren't as many people actually sitting down to eat dinner, so we were seated right away. I ordered up a strawberry margarita, since I'd gotten pretty used to consuming at least 1 alcohol unit a day for the past week and had no intention of breaking a good streak. The food was really good, and it was nice to get in a hot meal (temperature and spice-wise) on a cold night. We finished up dinner pretty quickly and walked down to Regents Street to see the Christmas lights that were recently hung up. I keep forgetting that Thanksgiving is an American holiday, so Christmas is really the only big holiday that the British celebrate after Guy Fawkes.

We headed to the theater around 8 to catch the 8:30 curtain for Chicago. The show was great, and I've never been that close to the stage before. The actors are actually able to make eye contact with you, so it's a lot different from being up in the nosebleed seats. Unfortunately, Lara was seated in front of a couple that talked the whole time and kept kneeing the back of her chair. I was seated next to a couple that appeared intent on sucking each other's faces off, so my eyes stayed pretty much glued to the stage. Occasionally, the pair next to me needed a break from their intense tonsil hockey match, and the girl used that opportunity to demolish an entire bag of Cadbury eclairs (we could tell how many she'd eaten because the wrappers were all over the floor). Aside from the annoying people around us, the show itself was great, and the West End continued to show that they're able to keep pace with Broadway.

Once the show let out, we got on the tube and went back to Lara's flat. The ride home was uneventful, other than the gross couple seated across from us. There was a much older man and a young woman standing strangely close to him. During a particularly bumpy section of the track, it looked like the girl was just jolted forward because of the train, but when she continued leaning forward and made out with the old guy, there were more than a few eyebrows raised. I don't think I actually said, "Ewww" out loud, but I definitely was looking for anything to take my mind off of the trainwreck (no pun intended) in front of me.

Day 6 - Rome/London

2008-11-16T17:03:00.002-05:00

Thursday was a much less hectic day since the only thing we absolutely had to do was to catch the flight back to Heathrow. We had a leisurely breakfast at the hotel, then headed to Da Vinci airport. Fortunately, the Alitalia strike appeared to be over, for the moment, so there were no flight delays anticipated due to labor issues. We made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare, but the storm clouds had been rolling in and the lightning and heavy rain caused a minor delay. We had time to get lunch at the nearby stand and wander the airport shops (seriously, who's going to buy a Gucci outfit at the airport?) before our flight was finally called.

We made it to Heathrow a couple of hours behind schedule since there were a lot of other delayed flights that had to get cleared out before ours. When we landed, we headed back to Lara's place. We stopped by the butchers and Tesco to pick up ingredients for a steak salad, which was really tasty! I knew it'd be pretty good since Lara's blog mentions it pretty frequently, but it's also fairly easy to make. We also caught up on the shows we'd missed while we'd been away, so we watched Desperate Housewives and Brothers and Sisters before heading to bed.

Day 5 - Rome - Vatican City (Part 2)

2008-11-16T14:00:00.023-05:00

The Raphael Rooms:

Once we had gone through the Vatican museums and sent out a few postcards from the Vatican post office, we headed outside to nearby St. Peter's Square. We thought that Wednesday morning mass would be over by then, but we were able to catch the tail end of the mass. Pope Benedict was there, and he certainly received a huge ovation from the crowd when he gave his final blessings and addressed the crowd.

Once mass was over, the crowd seemed to converge on St. Peter's Basilica, so we headed to a nearby restaurant for lunch. Despite what the tour book said, lunch around the very touristy Vatican City was respectable. It certainly didn't hurt that lunch only cost about 10 euros, so it was also the least expensive meal we'd had yet. We returned to St. Peter's Square and headed to the Basilica after lunch.

A view of the dome of the Basilica:

Art around the Basilica:

Bernini's Baldacchino (altar canopy):

Bernini's Apse:

Michelangelo's Pieta:

The next part of the Basilica tour was the crypt, which houses the tombs for many of the popes, including Pope John Paul II. There were a few nuns and devotees who were seated in front of his tomb, praying, and Vatican police stood guard to ensure that the crowd kept moving and stayed respectful of the solemnity of the tomb. Some of the oldest tombs dated back to the 600's or 700's, and the artistry of the stone slabs covering the tombs is still impressive today.

The last part of the Basilica tour was the cupola, or the roof. Liz and Lara took some time to rest while I took the final tour. For 7 euros, a lift takes you most of the way to the top and drops you off at the base of the dome. The view from the roof is nice, but you get a somewhat obstructed view of the city. Before heading the rest of the 300 meters or so to the top of the dome, I headed inside to get the view of the inside of St. Peter's Basilica from the top. A metal grating prevents anyone from going over the top and crashing to the ground below, but even for those who don't have a fear of heights, it can be a little nerve wracking to lean over the side like that.

I took the stairs to the very top, and let's just say that it's a good thing that I am neither claustrophobic nor completely out of shape. The stairway is extremely narrow and steep in some places, so there were some casualties along the way (some of the high school students in front of me had to sit down on the stairs to take a breather, including one who looked like she was going to throw up). Despite the long walk, the view from the top was totally worth it!

We went back to the hotel to rest up after yet another long day of touring, then got ready for an all-out Italian dinner. There are about 4-6 courses in a normal Italian meal, so we were trying to have as many of those courses as possible. We found a little restaurant near Piazza Barberini and had 3 courses, including dessert. Liz and I split a small bottle of chianti, and I also had the limoncello that they brought as an apperitif, so I guess that counts as 4 courses in total. Dinner was really pretty good, and I can cross saltimbocca, spaghetti alla carbonara, and gelati off of my list of must-eats in Rome. Since we were flying back to London the next morning, we stayed in for the rest of the night. Fortuantely, Lara found a channel that showed the previous night's Jay Leno and Conan episodes, so we got our fix of American comedy.