Archive for November, 2008

After a four hour flight, I’m back.  I was going to write a witty discourse on traveling, mostly musing how it is a metaphoric statement on life, but I just had four non-stop days of eating … so I’m not gonna.

I just felt like saying I was going to, because it makes me seem like I’m more ambitious than I really am.  I guess it sort of defeats the purpose when I write to my anonymous readers my best-laid plans.

Anyway, I was checking the ‘ol blog when I noticed a comment was under consideration.  Curious, I checked and it looked like someone had merely clipped out a portion of a prior entry and re-entered it.  I looked at the source and I was brought to another page that say in bold red letters, “THIS IS AN ATTACK SITE!”

It’s official.  I am under attack by the dangers of the Internetz.

Tread carefully, readers, it’s a dangerous world out there.  Still, should I be flattered that I’m at least somewhat worth attacking?

No?  Didn’t think so.  Oh well.  Hope all had a merry happy celebratory holiday that is now mostly about turkey slaughter…but at least it’s less about the ‘accidental’ small-pox induced ethnic cleansing.

It’s always nice to return home for the holidays. I remembered how good it felt back in college when the air turned a bit colder and the season was a bit brighter. The familiarity was like donning a warm blanket, or wearing comfortable and worn-in shoes. When I left for college and returned home, it was also a breath of fresh air to be back in my childhood bed and to spend some time with family and friends.

But strangely (and a bit inevitably I suppose), all of the trips back home during college and through my transition into the real world makes me feel as though I never left and haven’t changed. The faces of old friends are the same to me, the laughter and joy shared with family feels as good as it always has - and with that comes the flood of memories of old feelings.

The person I am when I away, the changes that I feel when I’m out on my own and trying to pave my way somehow shed when I step off the plane or out of the car and arrive back in Dallas. I realized today that these are where my roots are, and the people back here are what are the very foundation of who I am.

Not only do old memories and feelings sometimes come flooding back - but even the old insecurities - a few whispers and remnants of who I once was.

It’s good to be home, and to be in my bed. It’s really nice to see my family and friends - and they will always be a reminder to me of my past.

It makes me thankful for the new place I have carved out on my own - slowly but surely. Though my roots continue to run deep, they lie hidden away and continue to grow unseen to me while I hopefully stretch my arms higher towards the sky. I can only hope that theses trips and reminders of the remnants of who I was once - a naive, foolhardy, stubborn and incredibly sensitive kid - will help me always strive to be a better adult.

I’m back at home in Dallas, a few pounds heavier and quite proud of how successfully I managed to fight off the many spurts of an impending food coma. Though I had hopes of posting some photos from today’s festivities (and last week’s pre-festivities) I decided to go ahead with one of my favorite things - the good ‘ol fashioned list. In the spirit of the holiday, here are a few things I am thankful for (which are quite obvious as well) -

Family who are always supportive and loving
Friends who are basically family by choice
Being able to survive (and then some) in a new urban city
Having a job that helps with #3
Un-spotty internet at home
Cheese
Hair ties
Harry Potter
Clean sheets
Puppies

I could go on - but I think I’ll go to bed instead. One of the things I am most thankful for in my life…

As much as I love, adore, obsess, and talk about food - strangely enough, I don’t cook very often. Other than the occasional special event or holiday, I usually stick to very VERY basic (read: college-style) cooking.

My usual laundry list of foods include Ramen noodles, spaghetti-os, and sometimes baked chicken and rice when I feel fancy. When I feel healthy on the one day a month I decide to do something good for my body, I just throw together some baby greens, balsamic vinegar, cheese, egg and meat. Mmm.

At any rate, my dear friend decided to throw a pre-Thanksgiving dinner which was one of THE BEST meals of my life. Forget fancy-schmancy candle-lit dinners with food that I can barely spell or pronounce - this tops a good chunk of those places. It was downright comfortable, deeeeelicious food.

Here was the menu:

Starters:
Split pea & ham soup
Home-made potato salad

Main Course:
Fried Turkey
Sausage, apple and cranberry stuffing
Stuffed twice baked potatoes
Broccoli rice casserole
Sweet potato casserole w/pecan topping
Veggie dish

Dessert:
Apple brown betty
Pumpkin pie
MITCHELL’s Pumpkin ice cream

Jealous? You should be. My mish-mash of Thanksgiving pictures will come soon, but I guess the POINT of this post is that I added a new dish to my list of “Things Shay can kinda sorta make that isn’t toxic, is quite edible, and people say they can stomach it.”

This is why my list is short.

Anyway!

Here it is below - an Apple Brown Betty recipe. Kind of like an apple pie, but without the crust. Thanks to the self-spamming that I heartily engage in on a daily basis, I was emailed this recipe by Daily Sugar. That’s right, I don’t steal credit. Though it is quite tempting. Happy baking!

Ingredients
5-6 Granny Smith apples, peeled and thinly sliced (¼-inch)
½ tbsp. ground cinnamon
¾ tbsp. granulated sugar
2¼ c. all-purpose flour
2¼ c. dark brown sugar
4/5 of a stick unsalted butter, melted

1. Toss apple slices in sugar and cinnamon.

2. Mix flour and brown sugar on low speed with a mixer.

3. Slowly add butter to flour and brown sugar and mix until you get a sand-like consistency.

4. Butter and flour bottom and sides of 9-by-9 baking dish.

5. Pour ¼-inch layer of flour/sugar/butter crumble into dish.

6. Add a single layer of apples. Gently: Don’t press down.

7. Continue layering: ¼-inch of crumble, then apples.

8. Finish with a layer of crumble. (When complete, there should be two layers of apples, with a thin layer of crumble on the bottom and in the middle and a more substantial layer on top.) Cover with foil.

9. Bake at 350° for 90 minutes.

10. Serve hot with vanilla ice cream.

I’ve always wondered why people love to pass up one of the best holidays ever - if anything, the one and true American holiday. What other day celebrates giving thanks in the form of eating, sleeping, and being all around lazy before the consumer-whoring craze begins.

Why aren’t there songs, or banners, or something commemorate this fine celebration of togetherness (and more importantly, food)?

This befuddles me.

In light of the absence of celebratory fervor, here is my little Thanksgiving haiku - 

Food on the table

Friends and family gather

This is the best day

Ok.  So I have to work on my haiku skills……

The word “Meh” has officially been deemed word-worthy enough to be included into the ever so prestigious book of words - the dictionary. My favorite reference book, with the Thesaurus coming in at a close second.

At any rate, last night I was perusing through one of my favorite children’s book - the Phantom Tollbooth. I decided to skim through the portion where Milo, the protagonist, descends upon Dictionopolis, the land of words. There he met the Duke of Definition, the Minister of Meaning, the Earl of Essence, the Count of Connotation, and the Undersecretary of Understanding who were more than happy to share a plethora of synonyms - after all, they reasoned, one word is as good as another so why not use them all?

This got me thinking about the expression “meh.” So concise, yet so expressive. Both “eh” and the explanation of a mediocre feeling: meh. This is so useful, in fact, that it merits thinking up of a whole new slew of half portmanteaus happily mated with onomatopoeia, which I propose below -

Blurgh
Made famous by the 30 Rock Liz Lemon, it is the perfect mixture of the “ugh” “blah” and “argh” feeling, similar to those you might feel when you walk through a crowded, noisy, urine-smelling subway and you’re late for your morning meeting.

Mmrrf
Employing both the staple “mm-hmm” to a stupid question and a slight riff of the “rf” indicating confusion, this little gem can be employed for the situations where you are inclined to pretend to agree, yet feel the urge to express your disdain. Or when you’re caught off guard to a punch in the stomach.

Squee!
Mixing both the excitement of a girlish “ee” and the beginnings of a surprised “squeal,” this happy hybrid of expression can be used quite generously when encountering things such as free money, free food, fat babies and streaming shiba inu puppies.

Fack
Not quite onomatopoeia nor a portmanteau, a short laundry list of expressive words would not be complete without a pseudo-expletive. Close enough to the original yet not so close to become too embarrassing (and not as nerdy as the usage of “frack” or “gorram”) this word is especially useful when used in a ridiculous, frustrating situation that often may spell disaster. Especially encouraged to be used with an emphasis on the ‘a’ - you know, because of the kids.

Who said the English language was hard to learn?

I woke up this morning ready to begin a new day, especially after one of the best Thanksgiving dinners I’ve ever enjoyed in my life. After a very satisfying 10-hour food coma, I rolled out of bed and did what any normal person does - checked my email.

To make a long story short, I was sent an address by the President-Elect Obama via YouTube. So, I clicked and watched.

Say what you will about him (love, hate, disagree, worship) you have to admit that his team is ridiculously savvy at this whole Internet thing. YouTube, Twitter, blogs - you name it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m17pz0R_qZo

I tried to embed the video, but obviously I am not as savvy as the Obama team. Le sigh.

My friends and I have been singing this non-stop since the first time I watched it.

It’s genius.  Either that, or we’re just easily manipulated and impressionable.  As my friend said, “some company needs to make this into a jingle.  Maybe a company that sells hamsters.  Or pianos…or popcorn!  I’d buy it.”

I love cute things.  I guess it’s genetically programmed in me to love such things, but one day I started thinking about what makes certain things cute.  I went to the local Exploratorium where they had a “cute machine” and you could modify normal, everyday things like cats and hammers to drip with super-duper-uber-cuteness.

Really - it’s true.   You CAN have a cute hammer.

Anyway, here are a few things I concluded.  Follow these few steps and in no time you can cute-ify almost anything, and thus appeal to the target demographic of children, women, some men and those with a soul everywhere:

1. Proportions.  When in doubt, shrink stuff - like so:

2. Faces.  Add a smile, frown, grouchy face, or puking face - either way, it changes things:

3. Anthropomorph items.

4. Exaggerate only CERTAIN features, and not EVERY feature.  For example, big ‘ol arms aren’t as cute…

…..as compared to big ‘ol eyes……

…..or just the simple big ‘ol head

5. Sometimes, you’ll get lucky with really ugly stuff.  Like pugs.  Or this.

Sometimes, you just can’t go wrong with anthropomorphizing animals.  And animals dressed as animals.

Happy cute-ifying!

Quite a few things on my mind today - the first is the sad fact that my inaugural blog does not work on Internet Explorer *sad face*

Since I am -

a) not a CSS guru

b) quite unadept at altering these sorts of things and

c) just lazy

I’m afraid my potential readers who are using IE will be at a disadvantage.  Given that I probably have a total of two readers (if I’m lucky), please just bear with me.

The second thing thing on my mind was Twitter, the newest “thing” that everybody and their mother (or close to it) has heard about, tried, or does each hour like a bad smoking habit.

Due to the fact that my job requires me to be looped into things - and also because I am, admittedly, a bit of an attention whore - I signed up for Twitter.  Although I had my qualms about it (what could be more self-aggrandizing than proclaiming to the whole world what you’re doing each second?) I found that it was actually a good place for information, quirky news, links, and other things to pass along to others.

Although, of course, you do have to sift through a few updates along the vein of “got my coffee” and “sitting around reading the newz lolz” … but hey, every twitter-er does it.  I do.

Anyway, I read the Tipping Point awhile ago and I recalled the idea of Mavens once I started thinking about Twitter.  For those of you scratching your heads and looking quizzically at the screen, Malcolm Gladwell presents the idea that there are certain people who are, in a sense, “information specialists.”  These are the friends, family members and colleagues who are the walking wikipedias of the world, sharing knowledge and information.

In a way, I like to think of myself as a pseudo-Maven.  Unfortunately for friends and the occasional colleague, I feel the urge to share useless viral video or a pointless (yet hilarious) link instead of useful facts - and Twitter is a veritable fountain of information.

But for those of you who are looking to dip a toe into Twitter and actually want to use it for REAL information, here is a smackeral that might get you started (and hooked) -

• CNN: www.twitter.com/cnnbrk
• Barack Obama: www.twitter.com/BarackObama
• Tiny Buddha (who leaves insightful messages each day!): www.twitter.com/tinybuddha
• CNET: www.twitter.com/CNETNews
• Me (woo): www.twitter.com/ShayFan

The funny thing was that I received an email today saying “Santa Claus is following you on Twitter.”  So I guess he really is watching.  Oh, and he direct messaged me too - “http://www.WelcomeToTheNorthPole.com is the best way to contact me.  I will respond!  See you there!”

And thus marks the beginning of Childhood version 3.0: the digital era.  Maybe in the future kids will actually be able to talk to a Hologram Santa.

In the meantime, do you think kids will tweet their holiday wish list?