Ballers

This was a ballin' weekend of epic proportions.

SNOWMAGEDDON HAPPENED.  In a big, big way.  Between when I woke up at 6 on Friday morning and when I next looked out the window at 7:30am before leaving the house, it was a totally different landscape.  I'm not going to lie, it was hard getting the Big Yam into daycare.  I had the brill idea to tow him in our sled but our sled is one designed for babies and he weighs a metric tonne and it was like pulling a Loony Toons anvil behind me.  It took me half an hour to go a distance that usually takes me 7 minutes.  I left a nasty, nasty message on the Dotytron's celly to the effect of: LET ME HAVE THE CAR FOR ONCE YOU G-D SADIST.  YOU LOOK AFTER CHILDREN, I ACTUALLY HAVE TO DEAL WITH CLIENTS, IT'S WAY MORE IMPORTANT THAT I'M AT WORK ON TIME.

It was the worst. But I came home and something magical had happened: our neighbours who had the good fortune to work from home had shovelled all our sidewalk and walkways for us!  So sweet!  And my other neighbour who drives a sweet Audi SUV (ballers) gave me a ride in their car to go grab the Big Yam (good thing, since it took the Dotytron 2 hours to get home - the snowplows in their infinite wisdom plowed in all the exits on the 401 so he ended up in like, Whitby, before he could get off and turn around).  I love my neighbourhood.  The people on my street are so darned sweet.  This is what makes a community happen.

Our friend R's birthday party was being held on Friday night so against all odds, we managed to traverse the Hoth-like streets and get to Spin, which is that ping pong place that's kind of like a club.  It's also co-owned by Susan Sarandon, aka Ehmdo's boyfriend's Tim Robbins' ex.  MHui and R are ballers so we had a private room and there were DELICIOUS snacks.  Guys, Susan Sarandon is a really good cook!  We had devilled eggs (pictured above), fried chicken and waffles, Philly cheese steak skewers, mini grilled cheese sandwiches, crab cakes, and shrimp'n'grits in little cones. So good.  I made two kinds of cupcakes for the bday boy: vanilla with salted caramel buttercream and chocolate with brown sugar buttercream.

Two people thrilled with overnight babysitting

I didn't think I'd have the mustard to make it through the night, but as soon as I played one round of ping pong I was like, filled with typical competitive, steroid-like juice.  Unfortunately, we had to take the Big Yam to Chinese school the next morning so our overnight babysitting opportunity to sleep in was squandered.  We only had about 5 hours sleep and it was rough getting through Saturday.  

We had lunch at Congee Queen whereupon I ordered about 6 dishes for 2 adults.  It was obscene.  We followed this with dinner at Chung King Garden with our Discerning Coyote friend and JJ and S and their kids.  EPIC PEKING DUCK PARTY.  Then, because S loves cream puffs, we took them to Beard Papa for their inaugural Japanese cream puff experience.  

As an aside, My Fitness Pal insists that a Beard Papa cream puff is only 220 calories.  Uhhh, sure My Fitness Pal, if you say so.  I'm not complaining.  What's the word for when you know something is wrong but you choose to believe it because it suits your delusion?  Whatever, that's what my belief that Beard Papa cream puffs are only 220 calories is.  

Somewhere in there I was so crunked from lack of sleep the night before that I left the house in my pajamas with one of my mom's fur coats thrown over top.  The best line my mum said in relation to my grandma being in a nursing home:  "I have to find her [my Poh Poh] new tops, they [the nursing home] are having trouble laundering her clothes because they're all cashmere."  This is so revealing on so many levels.  ONLY MY MUM WOULD SEND SOMEONE TO A NURSING HOME WITH CASHMERE TOPS.  ONLY MY GRANDMA WOULD HAVE A WARDROBE CONSISTING ENTIRELY OF CASHMERE AND FURS.  LOL!  P.S. I told you all the way back in 2007 that I come from a long, long line of ballin' cashmere lovers.  

This kid needs a haircut like whoa.  So bowl-tastic right now!!!

At the nursing home visiting Poh Poh.  Poh Poh is wearing one of her new, non-cashmere tops.

Sunday we did a big Chinese New Year meal at my mum's house featuring 10 different kinds of preparations of dried and subsequently reconstituted mushrooms (my favorite!  Not being sarcastic!) and a bunch of different fungi.  All the names of the dishes mean something so you have to eat them because of auspiciousness.  We also had goh, which phonetically sounds like "rising higher" so all people who work salaried jobs are supposed to eat it because it means promotions and the like.  My favorite goh is lo bak goh (turnip cake) which some of you have probably had at a Cantonese dim sum place.  The sweet goh are less my thing.  

Then we headed back downtown to finally go home.  The Dotytron was CRAAAANKY.  Only like, 4 people in the world have seen the Dotytron be cranky.  Sometimes he's not even all that mad, but the volume and timbre and matter-of-factness of the delivery make it seem like what he's saying is extra withering.  Like, the last time we went to the cottage with the kdubsguelph crew, SMckay made burgers for dinner and the Dotytron was all like, "YOU ONLY BOUGHT A SMALL JAR OF PICKLES," which for him was just an observation but it makes it sound like a huge criticism.  I would say something like, "are there any more pickles?  No?  It's okay, I don't always eat them on my burger anyway," but the Dotytron is always like, full-steam ahead with the whole, "YOU ONLY BOUGHT A SMALL JAR OF PICKLES," thing.  

In this case, he was full-on cranky because he hadn't had a chance to play guitar all weekend and we were going to Momma D's to shovel her driveway and he knew that meant his night was a write-off.  Sometime between the morning and the evening he had also somehow gotten heart-set on Cinnabon and at first our drive home wasn't going to allow for a Cinnabon stop so he was being extra persnickety.  I convinced him we could do it and the turnaround in his demeanor once I got back in the car with the Cinnabons in hand was like, galling.  

Momma D is kind of notorious for under-ordering pizza.  She eats like a bird, so she thinks two pieces per adult is totally enough.  I thought I would have to do some finagling to get her to order a large instead of a medium, but she was fine with a large...it still meant that the Dotytron and I got 2.5 pieces each.  To give you some perspective, when we order from Pizza Paul's in Geneseo, we order two large pizzas (and the larges are LARGE down there), and 40 wings, for me, the Dotytron, and two kids.  LOL!  And we nearly finish everything, too.  Lucky we had the Cinnabons to chase it down.  I feel like this is a classic white person thing.  Okay, I just checked My Fitness Pal and one Cinnabon is 880 calories, so maybe the reduced pizza serving was okay.  I'm just an inveterate glutton.

Last night I got our lives back on track and we had brown rice with muttar paneer and red lentil dhal w/ yogurt & lime.  This entire meal is still less calories than a Cinnabon.  Heh.  

Fin.

Chinese New Year!

ZOMG - we had a crazy freakin' weekend.  It was fun and very sociable, but exhausting.  

Friday night was chill, but the hectic nature of the day and the week preceding it meant that the Dotytron and I passed out at like, 9pm in pools of our own drool, laid out on our respective couches of choice.  It was pathetic.

Saturday we spent going buck, cleaning up a storm to get the house ready for Chinese New Year, which is technically just the lunar new year, celebrated by a lot of East Asians, not just Chinese people, even though we like to think we have exclusive purview over it.  False!  

We did get to start Saturday off with cheese blintzes with blueberry sauce and bacon though.  Which the Big Yam turned his nose up at, because he's a weirdo.

Then we went and grabbed our friends Paul & Sandra to take them to Paul and Sandy's Real BBQ out in the wilds of Etobicoke.  Just take a minute to appreciate that thematic unity.  We ate with a Paul and Sandra at Paul & Sandy's.  BEST.  We really like the food there.  The Dotytron and I split ribs, chicken, brisket and meatloaf.  The brisket at Paul & Sandy's is some of the best I've ever had.  So juicy and tender and flavourful - falling apart but with a nice, robust, even layer of fat melting across the top.  So freakin' good.  The Big Yam ate like a pig, because when it comes to barbecue - he's not a weirdo.

I had spent considerable effort procuring supplies to make the Momofuku Milk Bar Birthday Cake for our dessert, but then was a total loser and forgot it at home.  Luckily for us, but unluckily for P & S, we got to have a slice.  They missed out.  The Momofuku cakes are frustrating and labour intensive, because they're all build in a 6" round cake mould.  So you make all the composite elements (in the case of the cake below, that's 4 - the cake itself, the birthday cake "crumb" - little crunchy bits of salty, sandy goodness, the frosting, and the milk soak), then stamp out the cake layers out of the sheet you've baked and layer it all together.  It's nuts.  Not only that, but of COURSE you have to go out and buy sheets of acetate to line your cake mould and so that you have something to support the finished height of the cake.  Then, you also have to go and buy speciality ingredients like glucose and 

citric acid.  Yes, that's right.  Glucose and CITRIC ACID (which you use like, a pinch of in the cake).  It's bonkers.  Needless to say, the Big Yam was over the moon happy about all the Kitchen Aid mixer use in the service of the Birthday Cake.

At the end of it though, I can safely say that this cake is FREAKIN' delicious.  It's mean to invoke the spirit of boxed cake mix (the funfetti variety, specifically) but it's a particularly delectable iteration.  The genius thing about Christina Tosi (the pastry chef at Milk Bar) is that she has one of those born and bred understandings of texture and flavour balance in a dessert.  The crunch of the crumbs against the tender cake, the tang of the frosting ameliorating the sweetness, the punch of salt crystals, they all work together to invoke and play to the elemental cravings of a person.  It's all about balance to the excess.  It's all about understanding the best part of a something - be it the awesomeness of the graham cracker crust, or doing a dessert shout out to those people who love the nutty, crumbly bits of crunchy streusel on top of a fruit crisp - the people who will eat the crisp and leave the fruit, or the ones who love the buttery, toasty taste of unadorned pie crust (she has a pie crust frosting that is mind-blowing).  It's clever, but also grounded in giving people what they want and not over-intellectualizing things.  It's pleasurable AND smart food.  This cake is divine:

Sunday was the most buck.  Big Yam slept in until 7pm (that's good!) - but that meant it was a MAD scramble to get out the door and up to the burbs to make parent & tot hours at our preferred pool (that's bad).  Do you have ANY idea how much we have to pack to go swimming in the burbs?  It's insane.  The prep to swimming time ratio is like, 95:1.  Then we went to T & T and Costco.  Then it was home, to sew my Poh Poh's pants (my mum made me), then taking Poh Poh out to lunch (at Phoenix, yum!), then it was back home to hang out with my mom and Poh Poh some more, then over to R & R's house so that the Dotytron could give R a guitar lesson, then picking up takeout and then home.  It was EXHAUSTING.  Also, our car almost exploded from all the crap we were carting around by the end of it.  It was also the best guitar lesson of the Dotytron's life, because R & R gave him beer, bought Babu samosas and mutton patties, made chocolate chip cookies, AND R gave me a pair of jeggings that didn't fit her (!!!!!!!!!!!!)  You know what I did?  Brought over HALF OF A CAKE (the cake pictured above, actually).  WHAT THE HECK?!?  So imbalanced an exchange!  


Yesterday I took a 1/2 day off work (even though I really should not have because of the volume of work I have to do) to attend to final preparations for our Chinese dinner.  We had Momma D and her friend/roomie R over for dinner.   Even though about half the dishes were bought from T & T - it ended up being a bit of work.  The dishes I was making aren't the kind you make in advance - you can't steam a fish in advance of boil dumplings in advance.  We had 8 dishes: fried turnip cake, steamed rice with Chinese sausage, Buddha's delight (vegetarian dish), steamed green bass, roasted pork & bbq duck, oyster omelet, and pork & chive dumplings.  I also got this coconut & red bean pudding that we ate cold slices of for dessert.  I obviously made a TONNE of food and now we have leftovers for days.

Warning: don't look at the photos below if you have issues with toddlers wearing hilarious (and possibly racist?!) cultural attire.  We bought the Big Yam this outfit at Pac Mall two weekends ago and I dressed him in it for dinner last night.  It was AMAZING.  He was so cute in it that we could barely stand it.  He was also very slippery because of the silk/polyester.  LOL!  Seriously, we could barely get a grip on him.  I keep looking at these photos because he's just so adorbs that it makes me happy.  We'll definitely have him sporting these threads more often.  

Fin.

Year of the Rabbit

Hoppy Year of the Rabbit (see what I did there?)!

Yesterday was a snow day - the first one in 12 years for the TDSB. This meant that when I woke up, the Dotytron was doing a little happy dance that involved much swiveling of the hips - trust me, his hips don't lie. This also meant that me and Master T had the unexpected pleasure of having the Dotytron home with us ALL DAY. It was GLORIOUS! But the time went really quickly - it just made us realize how it would be so nice to have a whole week of snow days.

A lot of our time was spent preparing the house for Chinese New Year, which meant cleaning the house from top to bottom. You're not supposed to sweep on New Year's day, as you're "sweeping" away all your good luck/prosperity, etc." For similar reasons you're not supposed to shower or bathe on New Year's day. I had originally planned on making this lamb and eggplant stew with tadiq (the crusty bottom on Persian rice), but the Dotytron kept balking at it and kept wanting for us to go out for Chinese food for dinner. I didn't want to brave the questionable downtown Chinese restaurants after navigating the questionable, post-storm downtown streets in the Captain, so we settled on a compromise, going to T&T, where we assembled a hodge-podge Chinese meal of randomness, behold:

We made dumplings (pot stickers and soup-filled), and steamed gai lan, and made rice with Chinese sausage (lap cheong), and bought prepared tofu with mushrooms and roasted bbq pork. It was a very pork heavy meal. We followed it up with pan-fried gow (a sweet cake, we bought 2 - 1 coconut and 1 osmanthus flavoured) and black sesame ice cream, because the Dotytron is OBSESSED with any and all things black sesame flavoured. He loves it more than anything. I went a little crazy at T & T and quickly filled up a basket full of random goodies - at one point, as I chucked a tray of coconut buns in the cart, I turned to the Dotytron and said, "I'm going a little crazy here" and he gave me a deadpan, dry, intensely sarcastic, "No. No. Please stop." As we all know, T & T is like the Dotytron's mecca. He loves it there and he loves Chinese food like few other things on earth.

This is what else we've been eating around here:

This was a random meal of homemade falafel balls with tahini-yoghurt sauce, served low-carb in Boston lettuce leaves (I had been remiss in defrosting the pitas.) It ended up working out rather well - I think I might actually prefer this way of eating falafel balls. Makes everything less bready. Alongside I made quick pickled beets.

We were supposed to host our friends S & A for dinner before things went all haywire with our weekend. I was planning a Southern-style menu with a baked ham, zucchini casserole, biscuits, sweet potatoes with marshmallow topping, etc. Upon my return home, faced with a fridge full of zucchini, I turned it into a pasta with whole wheat fusilli, T's chilies, ricotta, and zucchini. It was really tasty - creamy and spicy and chock full of tender bites of zucchini in every forkful.

We watched The King's Speech on the weekend. It wasn't my cup of tea (snork, British reference, snork!) I found it kind of stilted and predictable and Oscar-baity. The performances were decent but I was strangely unmoved by Bertie's plight. I think the real story would have been more stirring - the reluctant monarch who needs to rally the country during a time of crisis crippled with a speech impediment...but the film's depiction was lacking a certain momentum and urgency. They didn't manage to draw me in and make me care. Although I did particularly respond to Helen Bonham Carter as the future Queen Mum - she managed to convey the repressed cheekiness and twinkle the Queen Mum always had in her eye.

We also watched Blue Valentine. Opinions on this film are mixed in the Dotytron-Lagerfeld household, with Lagerfeld pro and the Dotytron con. Lagerfeld feels that the film is beautifully acted and beautifully shot - gorgeous, naturalistic shots suffused with the golden light of sunset on the Brooklyn bridge, or the eerie blue tones of a cheap, future-themed room in a campy sex hotel. I also loved the performances - so real (a lot of the dialogue was ad-libbed) and believable. The Dotytron contends that the story is uber-depressing and he has no interest in seeing these kinds of movies (an opinion shared by Dr. Rei, who has recently come out as wanting only to see movies about extraordinary people and/or the Harry Potter universe.) I believe that sometimes, the art of a film is in its exploration of the mundane. Watching Williams and Gosling (two of the finest actors of their generation) inhabit so fully the roles of Cindy and Dean as they meet, fall in love and subsequently fall out of love, is a treat, as is the dissection of a relationship in decline. The early love is so beautifully depicted - much has been made of Williams' charming tap-dance to Gosling's ukulele-accompanied warbling as one of the more charming scenes of nascent, young, sort-of-poor love ever and it's made all the more poignant by being cast into sharp relief with the rancor that follows.

The nuance in their relationship, the push and the pull of two people who have grown out of love sharing equal blame, is really well done. I can't say that I loved this movie - but I really liked it and thought it was worth watching. I'd take it over the pap of The King's Speech any day.

Tonight we're having dinner with the Roomie and L'Armi at their place. A late dinner as we have a contractor coming by to quote us on some stuff we can't afford.

Fin.

big weekend, guy!

this weekend is a super-duper special one. chinese new year! emma-lee's show! campfire at dufferin grove with pals! valentine's day! family day! long weekend flex!

buckcore.

last night we had dinner at big mouth kee with the whole fam, minus my grandparents and my sister, who stayed in the states. big d was in fine fettle, as he always is when dinner is at big mouth kee. he loves him some kee.

we started with some complimentary soup, featuring random fatty pork bits, lotus root, and tongue, which according to my mom's transliteration, is supposed to foretell a new year filled with only sweetness coming from your mouth...like you'll only have happy, good, auspicious things to say.

then we had roast pork...which was DELICIOUS. it also means something but i might have been too busy trying to snag the choice skin pieces to listen. oops. YOU TRY. the skin was ultra crispy and thin and not greasy at all. so effin' good.

deep fried lobster with garlic and pork. one of the only times when the OUTSIDE of the lobster is as lip-smackingly good as the inside.

this dish was my request: deep fried oysters that are so good. meaty pacific oysters encased in a shatteringly thin, light, sarcophagus of batter, with spicy salt for dipping.

fish with mushrooms and veggies. this dish also means something but again, i was too busy grabbing choice bits of everything to pay attention. uhhh...next year?

fried chicken - also tradish.

this is a traditional new year's dish because the name of one of the items is "fat choy" - like the chinese new year's greeting "kung hei fat choy" - VERY AUSPICIOUS! i think the actual fat choy is this fungus stuff that looks like hair. it sounds gross but when covered in a wonder-powder thickened sauce, the mushrooms, veggies and hair fungus are super-tasty.


chova's requested dish...it's thinly sliced pieces of tender pork with veggies.


fried soft tofu balls. SO GOOD! you bite in expecting some kind of resistance but that's like, silken tofu all up in there, sons.

braised, mostly boneless duck with seafood and mushrooms. holy cow, this was the bomb shiz.

finally, dessert. red bean soup. not pictured, deep fried black sesame paste filled glutinous rice dumplings.

we finished watched "dexter: season 4" holy crap that season scared the pants off of me...even if the implausibilities kept piling up. near the end, i was getting pretty p.o'd about all the coincidences and contrivances that were keeping the plot running. it started getting pretty credulity-stretching.

SPOILER ALERT







i'm SO GLAD that rita is donezo. she was SOOOOOOOOOOO annoying!!! so beyond annoying!!!!!! i've pretty much disliked her from her first appearance on the scene so i'm glad she's been dispensed with.

we slept in and for breakkie this morning i made us those oat scones i've posted about before. i subbed all whole wheat flour with no discernible deleterious effects.

we saddled up and headed out to check out the closest lighting store for bedroom, porch, and hallway lighting fixtures and shades. there's a lot of HORRID lighting options out there, folks. me, i'm a schoolhouse lighting fan. HUGE. that's all i want. like this:

but i would prefer a flush mount. i might be willing to consider a short little dangler like the one above for the upstairs and downstairs hallways. but for the bedrooms, i want something like this:

polished nickel or brushed chrome. either the above style or something like this:

look how nice and classy that looks! and how it honours the time when lil' ugmo was built. P.S. DID I MENTION THAT IT'S LIKE HALF THE PRICE WHEN YOU ORDER FROM U.S. LIGHTING STORES LIKE rejuvenation and schoolhouse electric? WAY TO MAKE ME NOT WANT TO SHOP IN CANADA, idiots! before i resort to buying it online and having it shipped to us and thus having to pay the hefty tariffs - our next approach will be to try printing out these pictures and going to union lighting or the door store in toronto and seeing if they have what we're looking for and doing some price comparisons.

no one has ever loved the look of milk glass more than i. nooooooooobody!

we're doing our valentine's home-cooked meal tonight. steak, creamed spinach, baked potato, butter-sautéed mushrooms with cognac, some beer and chocolate soufflés for dessert. then we're heading out to see emma-lee play at the rivoli:

consider coming out!

fin.

if the dotytron and i were amigurumi characters that played ukuleles

...our version of the ventures' "walk don't run" would be like this:



this is u900. i believe they are a band. they have a myspace page and a few precious videos on youtube of them being adorable and japanese. adorably japanese? is there any other kind? well...i guess there's sex surrogate doll-loving japanese. or grown-men-dressed-like-giant-babies japanese.

it's my grandpa's birthday next weekend. because chinese new year is this weekend and there'll be a mass run of every slant-eyed, yellow skin, laundromat owner/railroad builder within a 100km radius of a ho-lee chow on any respectable chinese restaurant of repute and there aren't enough tables on a saturday to accommodate the family and 100+ of my grandpa's closest friends which means that he had to move his birthday dinner to sunday, a night that's not nearly as amenable to my sister, chova, or basically anyone that's NOT a retiree, we're doing a small family birthday dinner for him on the saturday. just family. which is kind of preferable because family tends to get lost in the shuffle of the dog-and-pony-and-sea-cucumber show that is the usual banquet/mah jong fests.

so, the last time we were all together, we cooked up the idea of the family paying for grandpa's birthday meal and US deciding on the menu. we've been calling it "dream menu" night and we're SUPER stoked. everyone gets to pick ONE dish. now, if you know anything about chinese banquet dining - there's a certain rhythm, order, and tradition to things. certain dishes have a semiotic/symbolic significance and there's a certain order and flow to the way the meal unfolds. "dream menu" is blowing all of that outta the water. lol! it's kind of the best. so far the pickings are thus:

little ze: peking duck
chova: shark's fin soup (chova has been eating shark's fin soup since he was a baby)
miss ramona: these fried crab claw things that feature a little nub of crab claw encased in a shrimp filling and then deep fried. her original pick was the WRAPPERS from pot stickers (but they don't serve that at pak fook - the family's go-to restaurant).
the dotytron: curried stuffed crab shells with breadcrumb topping
my sister: 3 egg steamed dish
rico: curried crab
s-dawg: sweet'n'sour pork
me: fried pork riblets with spicy salt

you'll see that we're leaning heavy on the seafood and pork right now. we have NO starches and NO vegetables at the moment and none of the traditional "wow" items to commemorate birthdays. i'm SO PUMPED for "dream menu"!!!

speaking of chinese new year, this year is the year of the tiger. if i was going to have a kid, it'd be pretty awesome if we could have a tiger baby. next year is the year of the rabbit - not as cool, methinks.

this year also marks the first year where, as a married lady, i start being the giver, rather than recipient of lai see, also known to you round-eyes as "lucky money" - the stuff in the red envelopes. G at work was lovely enough to hook me up with some red envelopes and i dragged dr. rei with me to the bank to get some crisp, new bills to stuff them with. i'm supposed to give to the "kids" (read: unmarried people) in my generation and younger, so basically my brothers, and my niece and nephew.

we're doing a chinese new year dinner up in markham on friday night with my family at big mouth kee (aka big d's favorite restaurant in the whole freakin' world). i like being chinese. the dotytron also likes being chinese, which is nice.

fin.

in a different time, in a different place

...maybe this is the wedding dress i would have worn:

this is a jenny packham gown i tried on at "white toronto" that elicited squeals of delight from dr. rei and her mater and insistent urging that i purchase it right away from the latter. i will admit that it did fit like a dream and the fit gave me a lovely hourglass figure that i don't actually possess and gave me some evidence that perhaps my "i can't wear strapless" edict is perhaps a little preemptive. i did feel gorgeous in it, but it was the kind of "okay for an hour, alright i'm done now" gorgeous. that's a dress for a wedding (capital w, even) not a jokey performance piece featuring a groom who might very well be wearing jeans and stan smith's if he has his druthers.

we tried on some HILARIOUS numbers...one of which was pure sequined, deco, roaring 20s, olsen-twins madness and we had a grand time. i even got to wear those chicken cutlet boob things! now THAT'S something i'd seriously consider. they stick onto your skin, they bring you up a cup size and they're the best bra replacement EVER. i was prancing around topless in the change room with just those tacked onto my boobs with nary a potentially revealing slip to be found. LOVE THEM! anyway, at the end of the day, it was quite easy for me to take off the $2000 dress with only the mildest, faintest, barely registering twinges of regret. i'm not that girl. i'm not getting tied to the hitching post with that guy who gets married to that girl. so i'm glad i had the opportunity to play dress up and take pictures and be a vision in white and at the end of the day come home to my sweet little vintage number. best of both worlds!

biggie night w/ the hamcamp klik was fantastic (minus hanbo who was felled by flu.) taking a cue from big poppa we feasted on "a t-bone steak, cheese eggs and welch's grape" (the cheese is in the creamed spinach, and showed up later.) let's just say biggie knew how to EAT. hooee...that s**t was intense, sons. i mean, i ate it, but i kind of fell like hell after. especially when we broke out one of the goosetang clan's patented, odd-ball, viennese dessert tables. this one consisted of dr. rei-provided/biggie-inspired snacks like, twinkies - microwaved so the filling gets a little bit gooey - (the dotytron doesn't microwave his because he wants the full nutritional value), frito's version of ring-a-lo's (which aren't as good as proper ring-a-lo's because they're a little too corny and the holes aren't big enough for you to stick your fingers through and eat them off your fingies), hostess ketchup chips (question; what are the three little "flame" like mascot dudes on the hostess bag supposed to be? i say they're supposed to be chips), and my cheesecake brownies (second iteration of cheese in the menu.)

what definitely made the night was the conversation...we talked about everything under the sun...palestine, deflation, negative inflation, the lack of sanity in the stock market, the disappearance of the gold standard, how we're due for a return of idealism, sincerity, dignity, grace, and compassion, amnesty international, the dire need for interdisciplinary bridge-building, macro-level rigor to bind us from our solipsistic pursuits of the increasingly specialized...it was a soul-satisfying talk that resulted in more than one goosebump-raising ideological moment. that's ultimately why i cherish the goosetang so. we understand each other (which isn't to say that we agree all the time) and it's so refreshing to be able to have cogent, in-depth conversations with people who are so intellectually stimulating and share me and the dotytron's confusion. what makes it even better is our shared cultural awareness...so we can seamlessly flow between that kind of talk and then spin off into i r serious cat talk (dr. rei's favorite.) that's what i love about my siblings, too and that's probably where i got the taste for it.

the next day i went to visit G and M and their respective families. those two had the CUTEST babies i've ever seen. now we all know i'm biased towards ethnic babies...but seriously...THE CUTEST. freakin' adorable. i was baby hogging to the max and could feel definite uterine twinges. little baby G was giving me the most exasperated rollseyes as he was sleeping in my arms and has the most delicious sturdy little body and super-pouty lips. meanwhile, baby C has GINORMOUS wide eyes and a thatch of hair that looks like it's already been styled into a quasi skater-faux hawk. they're the kind of babies that you could just eat up with a spoon.

then it was hardcore family time...we watched the disney video and kind of figured out where we're going to stay on our big disneyworld family vacation in december '08. my niece also put on this awesome iron man costume:

and i gave her a hair cut and we went for japanese all you can eat and made breakfast and went to scarborough town centre to watch a lion dance. then we went back to markham and had dinner with my grandparents. somewhere in there my dodgeball team played my brother's dodgeball team (we won!) and i got some praise from s-dawg on what a good dodgeball player i am (seriously, i'm not gonna lie...i totally played the game of my LIFE on sunday)

then the dotytron and i came home late sunday and he went a little bit buck getting ready for school after a 12 week hiatus. he was stressing to the max. we went to bed really early after unpacking, but not before conducting our own little chinese new year eve ritual. we stood in front of the picture of the kitchen god that we had posted and bowed three times. then we smeared honey on his lips (to sweeten his words to heaven to the jade emperor):

then we burned him and we're going to put up a new picture today.

when i get home from dodgeball we're also going to fry up some of the tradtional sweet cakes and sweet turnip cakes to eat so that we're lucky and prosperous and will ascend the corporate ladder this year.

okay, that's enough outta me for one day. i'll be back with a whackload of book reviews shortly.

fin.