Month: January 2018

I spent some time today listening to Jeremy’s ideas about congestion pricing with autonomous vehicles.  In order for me to do this, sometimes I have to consciously tell myself that I want to be a kind person and the person I want to be the kindest to is my husband.  And in order to be super kind to him, I need to spend 20 minutes talking to him about congestion pricing and walking through the calculations that he’s done on an Excel spreadsheet and ask engaging questions even though the whole thing is seems crazy to me since how can you possibly predict what will happen with autonomous vehicles, lanes which don’t exist yet and what people will pay to share a ride or have their own ride?  He’s really excited about congestion pricing.  He’s spending his weekends making spreadsheets.

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Jeremy took me out to lunch.  And then he took me shopping for pants.  We went to the Levi’s store at the newly built outlet mall a bit north of us.  He got skinny pants for five dollars.  His first pair of pants with stretch in them and also a tapered into the ankle cut.  Sexy.

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I made some M&M cookies. They tasted OK, but they could have been better.  But I made a poor judgement call and used whole wheat flour.  No good.  But they mostly got eaten.

Kappa came into town today so we moved Sunday night dinner to today (Monday, MLK day).  Vince made ribs, collard greens and brussel sprouts to go with my whole wheat M&M cookies.

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Kappa is staying in the guest room which has all of Jeremy’s biking equipment.  Jeremy showed him all of his indoor computer / biking. 

A quiet weekend planned for us.  Yesterday, it reached a high of 70 at Dulles.  Right now it’s 25 on it’s way down to 15.  Jeremy went biking outside today for the first time since the day after Christmas.  On that day, he got a flat and it was bitterly cold and I had to go rescue him.  Today, there was no rescuing involved.  I worked a few hours today, trying to get some comp time saved up.  I’m a little afraid that I’m going to have to work full time as a nurse for a year (this is Plan B.  Plan A was part time) so I’m trying to figure it out with the primary job & the secondary job.

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Vince had a busy day.  He had a scout planning meeting at 8:30 am for their big winter campout and then I picked him up from that to take him to an interview with the scouts for a summer position at one of their local sleep-away camps.  We got there early and sat in the car waiting for the appointed time.

I spent the 30 minutes or so in the car waiting with Vince trying to wipe off all the marker he had on his forearms, palms and nails.  I started in with some spit on my finger, but Vince recoiled at that but then I remembered that I had Edda’s wipes in her backpack.  (You can see some of the green marker on his palm).  Edda and I decided that we were going to wait in the car while Vince went in to interview.  He was gone for about 20 minutes.  When he came back, he was pretty exuberant – they asked him all straightforward questions, the toughest one was – What will you do with a troublemaker?  I asked if all the other interviewees had their parents there.  He said the waiting room was super awkward and, yes, everyone else had their parents in the room.  Whoops.  I asked if he asked how much the pay was, I asked if he asked what the scheduling was (days off?).  He said he has no idea about any of that and didn’t ask anything, he didn’t care, it was going to be super cool and he’d do it even if they paid him only a dollar.

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To celebrate his first real interview, I took him and Edda out to lunch.  He wanted sushi/ramen.  We went to Maki on the Rockville Pike.  We’ve tried coming here before, but the wait was too long.  I was not optimistic.  But we got seated quickly and it was very, very good.  Highly recommended.  Vince is so good with Edda, helping me manuver her into and out of the car.  Walking her from the car into the restaurant and then helping me get her into her wheelchair.

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Jeremy is trying to sous-vide some ribs for Sunday night dinner (which this week is Monday night dinner).

On Wed night, we went to Dara’s mom’s service.  She passed away at the beginning of the year.  We got there a little bit late, but just in time to hear Dara speak about his mother.  It was a very moving service, with monks doing Buddhist chants.  At some moments, many of the people gathered around would join in on the chanting and you could kind of feel like resonant energy deep in your body.  <3

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Tonight, we went to New Fortune restaurant with the other 24 host families for the kids coming in late January from my mom’s high school in Shanghai.  We ended up sitting with 3 or 4 teachers from RM who are hosting the teachers of the Chinese students in their homes.  They served an entire 10 course banquet.  From cold jellyfish all the way down to the final noodle dish and then oranges.  I haven’t had a Chinese banquet in a long, long time.

My parents got to meet Vince’s Chinese teacher – Mrs. Poo (though the kids call her by her maiden name – Wang Lao Shi).  My dad was especially interested because he’s Vince’s #1 tutor.  Vince’s sping break trip to China got cancelled, not enough students signed up (I think they need 24 <- that’s a lot).

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Vince’s MacBook’s screen got damaged.  He insists that he didn’t step on it, drop it, sit on it, or throw it.  We took it to this place called (charmingly) uBreakiFix – it’s going to be almost $500 to fix it.  Jeremy tried to figure out if he could fix it himself, but the parts that you could buy online to fix it yourself got really close to $400.  So then it’s only an extra $100 for the labor.  I think they have to pretty much replace the lid/screen of the laptop.  Oh – Jeremy just clarified, the will just replace the glass part – Vince gets to keep his stickers on the laptop case.

Look who came early from school today.  Some freezing rain was forecasted for this afternoon, so they sent all the kids home at noon.  Vince watched Edda this afternoon while I worked b/c I told the afternoon caregiver to not come to the house to be safe & warm at her home.  “Watched” meant that Vince had her snuggled in his bed all afternoon watching Parks and Rec. Vince says she loves Parks and Rec.  I’m not so sure.  Vince alternates between wanting snow days and not wanting snow days.  He doesn’t want to go to school because it’s work and he often moans to me at home because it’s so boring.  Ahh, the seesaw of life.  Work on one end, bored on the other.  I guess Disneyland is at the fulcrum.

We had arranged for a weekend away (just the two of us) months ago for this weekend.  It’s hard to be spontaneous – sometimes I think it’s just that we are no fun, but I try!  I try!  We had planned for a cross country skiing trip in West Virginia and we were worried over Christmas that there wouldn’t be enough snow (there was no snow on the webcams when we logged into them over Christmas) but as the week started out bitterly cold here – we didn’t want to go cross country skiing in the mountains where it was predicted to be low of -9 and high of 0.  So we hastily switched gears and went to Charlottesville instead. 

We first stopped off at a quilt shop in town (Cottonwood Quilts).

Checked into our cute little hotel on campus – Oakhurst Inn.

Walked the 1.5 miles to a pie shop – The Pie Chest.

Then went to see the Star Wars movie.  Jeremy ordered the darkest beer, I ordered the lightest.

The Star Wars movie was fun, then we had dinner at the Citizen Burger Bar and walked home.  Chilly.

The next morning, we went to a spin class where – OMG – that is one weird, hard, sweaty, dark workout.  I think I’m in shape, but I’m not in shape for all these movements out of the seat of the bike and my crotch really hurt and my bootie pants were too short because they are for running and not for biking. 

Then breakfast at the Oakhurst Cafe.

Then we went to Monticello because we forgot that we were there in the summer of 2011, but didn’t realize it until we were pulling into the parking lot.  (I tried to look it up on the blog, but I spelled Monticello wrong.)  In my defense, now that I look back on the blog, Vince must have been a total PITA and I remember none of the tour.  Or my memory is just that bad.

Lunch at a soup place – Revolutionary Soup

Back to the hotel for a nap and some quilting/reading

We took the free trolley from our hotel to downtown.

Dinner at Lampo – a fancy pizza joint.

Then we went to an Elvis/David Bowie birthday party tribute concert to benefit the UVA cancer center at the Southern Cafe Music Hall

Then today, we booked it back to Bethesda – we saw The Post there about the publication of the Pentagon Papers and then had lunch at SweetGreen.

It was so so so cold.  We wore long underwear the whole time.  We left at noon on Friday.  Adriana picked up Edda from aftercare at about 5:30 pm on Friday and stayed with Edda until 5pm on Sunday.  Vince was home and he took care of Maxi.  Mom & Dad came by to feed Edda, Vince and Adriana on Friday night.  On Sat, Edda and Adriana went to the movies (Ferdinand) and we had made an enchilada that they could reheat on Sat night.  Vince had a scout obligation on Sat night and we had arranged rides for him.  Jeremy and I talked a lot about work.  Jeremy’s thinking about autonomous vehicles and thinking about various different models that he wants to run – it can be kind of like the phase transition modeling he did as a graduate student.  Weird that polymers and traffic can behave the same?  Maybe.  I’m ruminating about nursing jobs – my original plan isn’t working out so well…  I might have to go to plan B. 

We had IKEA meatballs for dinner tonight – thanks mom & dad for the frozen meatball deliciousness.  Vince took one whiff of the powderized gravy and said -mmmmm, smells like IKEA.  The kids unexpectedly had school cancelled today.  With the “bomb cyclone” passing through, temps are really, really cold.  Ning hung out with Edda most of the day, allowing for Jeremy & I to have a full, uninterrupted workday.  Vince was in heaven, staying in his boxer shorts most of the day.

School is back in session.  Which means Chinese tutoring is back on the table.  Dad showed up in his outdoor working clothes.  Vince was amused by all the patches – esp the jeans pockets to repair the original jacket pockets.

One of Edda’s classmates is Japanese and they invited us to their New Year’s Day party!  So much more civilized than a New Year’s eve party.  And because they are Japanese, all the food was super super cute.

And look who I met!  Mark L*vy from College Gardens!  We went to first – 8th grade together.  We must have sat next to each other sometimes L*e , L*vy.  We are totally caught up now lol. 

Vince hung out with the kids in the basement.  He did not know anyone down there (we did not know anyone upstairs so it was an even steven situation) and said that no one in the basement was speaking English – the languages were Japanese or French. 

Everyone is moaning and groaning about school starting tomorrow, but we are READY! 

Vickey & I have been friends for almost ten years.  We both had milestone birthdays (I’m the older one, Vickey is the youthful one) this year and the goal was to go out to celebrate sometime between our birthdays.  We just squeaked in under the wire, we went out to dinner on Thurs and Vickey’s birthday was on Friday.  We went to Rasika – an Indian restaurant downtown.  This was one of the best meals I’ve ever had – totally worth the price.  We spent a lot of time discussing which restaurant to go to – it needed to be good value, food we couldn’t make at home.  A good time – both husbands were there and no children were present!  Fun 🙂  And we had a long discussion about urinals.

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Soojung sent me 4-5 pairs of *ahem* striking leggings – the above is only one of the fine pairs.  She did not want them – I told her I could wear them to the gym.  And I did wear them to the gym, which was fine until I recognized a friend who was working out there as well and then I felt incredibly self conscious looking completely ridiculous.

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I’ve been running outside a lot.  OMG so cold!  So cold. 

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We went to cousins tonight for dinner.  This is our last Christmas celebration – somehow the Martins were the last ones to get together.  We got lots of warm fuzzy things 🙂  Happy New Year.  2017 was tough.  2018 will be better.