Author: Doris

… it’s colder in SF than it was in Park City. What gives?!?!?!

I haven’t knit in months, but I started again this weekend.

Sundance has been pretty fun. There has been a rash of celebrity sightings. Personally, I’ve seen Dennis Quaid, Isabella Rosellini, and Emily Blunt. One of my friends ate sushi and sat a table away from Jessica Alba. All the guys were pretty jealous tho personally I dont think she is all that.

In terms of movies, my favorite has been the documentary, up the Yangtze. It featured the lives of these two young folks working on a three gorges tour boat that caters to foriegn tourists and a family tyt is forced to adapt to the changing landscape that the dam brings. It was extremely well done striking many themes of how china is coping with modernization. I highly recommend it. And it’ll be picked up too.

The other movie I liked was Sunshine Cleaning featuring Amy Adams. It is about these two sisters who start a business cleaning up crime scenes. Of course Amy Adams makes half the film for me but it is still a prettyfun movie

other updates. Someone snarfed my ski poles at the airport but I managed to find a really cheap pair at the slopes. I left my goggles in a friend’s car the last ski trip ski had to buy another pair. So I’m spending a bit more money than I intended to on this trip but it has been good overall. Today we saw like 3-6″ of new snow so it was a powder day.

Two more movies and it is back to SF!

“If I made you cry, please tell me why. I’ll try again if you’ll let me try.”

Vincent got a violin and Suzuki violin lessons for Christmas. Even though I know that Vince will have a nice time, I’m nervous about these lessons. I don’t know why I’m more worried about these lessons as opposed to the piano lessons we had in Singapore, but maybe it’s that now I’m away from the house from 5:30 am to 6:30 pm and Jeremy’s out of the house from 7:30 am to 6:45 pm and they recommend that a beginner violin player practice 3 times a day for 15 minutes. We barely make room in our schedule for sitting on the toilet and brushing our teeth and we are not doing too well on either thing.

Also, we run a very relaxed household. No one tells anyone else what to do. In a good light, you can say when we do things, we think about what the other person would like and incorporate it into our plans; in a bad light, we’re just terminally passive aggressive. Ruby is perpetually confused by this lack of alpha in the house and is always trying to protect us from chihuahuas. It results in a little bit of chaos and disorganization. But it also means we are really, really bad at making people (especially underage ones) do things like daily practice.

Made it to Park City, Utah yesterday where it is a balmy two degrees outside. The internet is sadly broken. Of course in a house full of computer geeks this is akin to not having hot water or shelter. At least we have three iPhones in the house on which to surf with and of course reception is really good in a frou frou place like here. Skiing today. It should be legendary.

On my blog, I usually don’t talk about work. It’s too bad because so many interesting things are happening, especially with Jeremy (you have to scroll down to the chart with all the flying arrows).

Ruby is 49 today which makes her the senior member of the household. She’s gotten a little grey around the muzzle and every once in a while, I see a little middle-age-dom creeping into her habits – mainly that sometimes she doesn’t want to get up from her nap to go outside in the cold to pee.

Ruby was born in the back of a Volvo – she has 3 brothers and sister. Zuni, Rio, Hoss and the only black dog of the litter which, when we met up with the owner when the pups were a year old, still hadn’t named him! Ruby’s mom is MayBell, the queen of our Austin neighborhood.

Ruby has lived in quarantine, a front yard, an apartment, a house and on a farm. She has lived in the country, in a small town, in the suburbs and 30 minutes from a Gucci store by subway. She has swum in the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Chesapeake, the Hudson, Lake George, tributaries to the Potomac and the Guadalupe. She is a retriever who doesn’t play fetch.

Tonight she got the leftovers from Sunday night dinner.

There is a gym at work that I joined the second day on the job. Since 5,000 people work at my office building, it is a full-service gym with 4-5 aerobics classes every day, personal trainers for hire, full complement of weights and exercise machines.

The first 2 months on the job, I was dutiful. I would go at lunch and run a couple of miles on the treadmill or row a 5K on the rower. Then I got bored. So I started going to exercise classes. I learned to dance like they do on TV with the hand/arm/shoulder/back/hip thing, I learned what a jab and upper cut was in kickboxing class, and I spent an hour sweating while two incredibly good looking gay men taught me how to Zumba.

But then I begged off and then I got sick for 3 weeks. Finally, I’m on my feet again and itching to take a break in the middle of the day and be outside. So I’ve decided to run outside. I’m always nervous looking for the perfect route. What happens if I get tired and can’t make it back to work? What happens if I get lost? Jeremy encouraged me to find something to run around so I won’t be tempted to cut the run short. Today, amidst flurries, I ran around the cemetery!