Author: Doris

Sundays on the C&O

Most Sunday mornings at sunrise, you can find me on the C & O canal getting ready to do my weekend run.  The trail is pretty empty, as you’d expect – execpt for about 25-30 Korean runners.  For a long time I wondered why Koreans liked running at 6 am on Sundays.

Then, one weekend, I saw this sign:

A cute little aid station!

So now the mystery was answered.  A Korean running club.  A few months passed and I kept waving happily to my early morning running pals.  Then, one morning, near my parked car, I saw a whole table full of Korean delicacies.  A pot of rice, dumplings, and who knows what else.  I could see the steam rising from the food.

Then I became intensely interested in wondering if I could pass myself off as a member of the Korean Marathon Club.  I didn’t take any of the food – but every few weeks, the food would magically appear again in the parking lot and I would look longingly at it as I drove away.

This weekend, I ran into a guy setting up the little aid station.  Here’s Harrison, the president of the Korean Marathon Club.  Finisher of 53 marathons and on his morning 20 mile trail run.  He’s made me an honorary member of the club.  I get to eat all the goodies!  I’m so excited.  The little aid station has ice cold water, gatorade and cute little Korean granola bars.  I missed the big buffet table this past Sunday, but I’ll be on the lookout for it.  I have to text Harrison as I want to pay dues, but the website, of course, is all in Korean.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Happy Mother’s Day y’all.  Jeremy made me cinnamon buns.  Just follow the recipe in the Joy of Cooking and everyone will be amazed.  I prefer the one with nuts – I’m not a fan of frosting.  But some people in the family are allergic to nuts, so they were limited to the ones with only frosting.  I’m sure they were disappointed.

Vince holding my unnaturally colored flowers:

Every once in a while, you get a photo of Edda that just, kind of, maybe, shows a glimpse of what she would look like without Rett Syndrome.  You gotta make sure there is no arm brace, no wheelchair, no bib and no one really holding her.  I can’t decide if this is one of them.  She’s still clenching her teeth a little tightly, but it’s close.  She looks like such a grown-up!

Bette’s birthday always coincides with Mother’s Day.  So we sung her the birthday song and gave her a lot of soap/bath products.

Since it was Mother’s Day, we insisted that the children sit at the table.  Usually, they sit at the island or drift in and out during the meal.  It’s a tight squeeze, but we did it.

Cinnamon buns demolished!

A Interesting Conversation @ Bojo’s

Bojo is a local fast food restaurant.  One day, I ordered a senior coffee with two pieces of fried chickens and sat there enjoying my meal and browsing the internet.  There was a high school girl working there part time also having her meal there.  Evidently, Bojo offers free meals for their workers.  She had a lot on her plate, one could imagine.

The restaurant is very clean and has a lot of spaces which I enjoy the most, besides their fast food.  Since just two of us there and at odd hours (3:00 PM in the afternoon), she looked at me, a yellow-skinned, probably well-educated (?) old fellow. and guessing I work at Y12 complex (a part of Oak Ridge National Lab). We started to strike a conversation which, eventually, lasted more than 30 minutes.

Surprisingly, we covered a lot of topics.  Among many other things, we covered how to handle money, how to accumulate wealth for future growth, how to mange personal and co-worker’s relationships, how to get into higher education, even how to pick future partner.  She is about 14 or 15.  And I was surprised she is interested in all these things early on, especially at her age.  One thing for sure, she is not coming from well-to-do middle-middle class family or above because those kids probably just bury themselves on iPhone, i…, etc.  They probably don’t bother to work at minimum wage level.  Or just working in order to have better resume to get into some elite colleges.  I am sure she isn’t going out to save the World but herself.  This makes her even more sweeter, I think.

Since I have no body voluntarily ask me about all these things almost forever, I didn’t hold back to tell her all my point of views and experience.  But, of course, I did emphasize to her several times that all I said was just based on experience.  Some of them, may be entirely off the mark, even they are categorical wrong.

With my humble background carried an empty stomach all the time as a kid as well as with Rena’s experience as a youngster attending one-classroom school, I hope our experience and knowledge can help to boost her upward mobility a bit.

After our conversation, she said thanks.  Sitting here at different time and place, I wish her all the best, whole heartily.

Pulled pork.

Vince hosted his first dinner party tonight.  He needed to plan and cook a meal for one of his scouting badges and he picked tonight to pull it off.  He wanted to make pulled pork BBQ sandwiches.  He cooked pork in the slow cooker all day.  Then he made coleslaw with bacon for a side.  There was also brussel sprouts, roasted carrots and a salad.

Vince invited Seth and Christine (who are living in our basement during their home remodel).  We talked about all our junior high experiences.

Busy Mom, Especially This Year

Well, Mom and I are going to Turkey for a two-week land tour soon.  In June, she is going to Europe with her relatives to have a 12-day tours.  In August, we are going to have a family re-union in Pacific Northwest for 2 weeks (can’t wait & look forward to it).  Then, she is planning a Russia trip with her big brother and sister.  During Thanksgiving and X’mas time, I guess she will be busy with her grand kids too.

We are also planning a trip to Machu Picchu, Peru in January or February time frame.

Besides her gardening work and a planned addition to our U Street (with her WA PE stamp, she got the BUILDING PERMITS fairly quick), I guess she is pretty busy with her other stuffs and that is good.

There are a lot of positions still available in my place and, I have no doubt, she could help us a lot.  But I discourage her to get into the work force again.  I believe, there is no sense for us to have two incomes once more. With no one notices the baton, any non-short-term investment return is virtually nil to us.  Instead, to enjoy today is the best.  It is even more self-evident, in light of one of our good friends has been diagnosed with cancer recently, that every one can only visit this World once, not twice.

Classes are over.

Classes are over!  After the last final, my nursing class went to a nearby restaurant to celebrate.  Here is a photo with me actually in it.  I handed over huge-ass camera to a waitress and she took the photo with everyone in it.  I’m posting the out-take, which I always like better than the “regular” one.

I love the feeling that you get when you are done with the last final.  The feeling of complete done-ness.  You never really get that as a grown-up that often.  As a grown-up, things are never done.  The house is never completely clean, there is always something lingering at work, the kids always need something.  But school?  School can be done done done.  And then you can celebrate and have a beer in the bright sunlight.

I took about 300 photos at this party.  It was the strangest thing – everyone, everyone clamored to have their photos taken.  This is so not my generation.  So many of my like-aged friends do not want to pose, do not want to acknowledge the camera.  I have cultivated my camera skills to be stealthy.  To not bother people as they do their thing.  I’m very good at taking photos on the sly.

The selfie / Facebook generation cannot resist having photo after photo taken of them.  I would take 20-30 photos of a single person and they would pose in all the possible pose-able positions.  Smiling, smirking, laughing!  I have not had an easier time getting 300 photos of any set of people.

Flowers, Flowers, Everywhere at U Street

Since Mom went back in early April, she has been busying on her garden, with a lot of veggies and flowers planted.  She took several pictures and asks me to publish on our family blog.  They are looking very nice and, sorry to say, I miss them all.

Actually, flowers there are much prettier due to rich soil and fine weather.  Of course, Rena’s love of working on top of dirt is part of it.  She is typically a farmer.  I am more like a city boy.  One just looks at her hands that would tell all the stories.  Her hands are just like sand paper 🙂