Mom & I are leaving form Mesa Verde National Park after work. It is 400 miles away and very close to 4 corners 🙂
We will be back on Saturday and, Sunday, I need to fly back to DC. Will be back to Denver Tuesday night.
Last night, we went to swim. It was a nice pool.
Yup, 15 years since I’ve graced the halls of Wootton High School. Shudder. I got an email in my inbox today. I’m so old.
We spent a low key day at home today, going to the library and the mall. Vince and Edda are finally both well and getting enough to eat and sleep so everyone is doing much, much better.
I was brave and called my potential friend, Annie, up and invited her over this morning, but she was headed to IKEA today to shop with her hubby. He’s a steward on Singapore airlines so he just came back yesterday for a few days off, so I figured she would be going out with him today. I hate calling people and asking them if they’d like to do something, even though they have made it perfectly clear that it’s OK to do so. I’m concentrating on this more and trying to make more of an effort to do so.
I’m happy to report that Vince is coming out of his I hate school mode. We talked a lot about his old school this morning and thinking about writing letters to his old friends at school. And this afternoon, he filled up his backpack and his water bottle and went to pretend school for a good 15 minutes or so. It was really nice to see, he had been shunning his backpack and was willing to give Edda his waterbottle when she needs it for her school because he planned on staying home.
Hrm. I found a neat little lunch place today. It totally reminds me of Gooseberry’s from MIT. It’s an asian food truck parked outside the student union called NetAppetit. It’s 6 bucks, which is cheap on campus, and it’s a buffet. You can get whatever you want as long as it’s under 30oz, which is a hell lot of food. The crazy thing is that buffet is actually inside the truck, so there are like 5-6 people cramped inside trying to grab food. Not the easiest thing to do, especially when you’re holding a Coke and a Powerbook.
So keeping the kids happy means feeding them every 2 hours. They don’t actually eat enough in one sitting to make them full for longer than that amount of time. Today Vince and Edda had a meal at 8 am, 11 am, 3 pm, 4:30 pm and 7pm. Crazy.
We had to get out of the house between 1:30 and 3:30 pm today because our housekeeper, Rukia, came by and cleaned. We went to the Causeway mall and bumped into Matilda and Julia. Boy, we partied with them, made a craft and also had ice cream sundaes. Yum.
I’m exhausted, but of course, once the kids are asleep, I want to stay up and hang out!
Matilda and Julia came over today at 10:30 in the morning and we played and swam until 4:30 pm. Wow, what a day! The kids had a lot of fun, mainly playing in a huge cardboard box. Julia is good fun to have around. I ogled her real Louis Vuitton backback that she got from her hubby for her birthday.
Edda is still a bit unenthusiastic about eating.
I’m sitting here waiting for the bus by the Stanford Quad. It’ great to have wireless all over campus. It’s great to actually have a computer that has a battery that lasts long enough to be somewhat useful. I’m not starting to play around with ripping DVDs. I’ve gotten 300 gig hard drive, and i’m going to try to fill it up with something. 😛
Other than that it’s going to be a pretty busy week. I’ve got so many things on my agenda this week. Plus I’m trying to not go out to eat this week to pay for that 300 gig hard drive. sigh.
I realize that a lot of my time these days is taken up thinking and researching what stuff i ought to buy. It’s somewhat depressing, but somewhat it’s great cause I couldnt’ afford these things for so long! So I’m consumed with consumerism. nice.
Hopefully I’ll get together with Choon this week. His wedding is coming up. I suppose I ought to shopping for a suit too since i didn’t manage to get one for Arif’s wedding.
Friday will be poker tournament 4. Hopefulyl this time i’ll come out with the top prize. muahhahaha.
where is that dang bus?
Biking down a straight road at 40mph or some soccer mom driving a 3500 lbs car, with her kid in the back seat, trying to get the attention of said biker to tell him that he’s going 40 mph?
laff. this happened to me on saturday. get a grip people.
In order to ward off feelings of lameness and stuck-at-homeness and encouraged by a quickie call to my brother, Vince, Edda and I went out on the town and spent money like crazy. OK, really just semi-crazy. I went all over to the other side of the island in search of a 3-story indoor (air conditioned) playground and I didn’t find it. It was pretty lame looking around a mall and asking a bunch of people with kids where the indoor playground is and have them all look at me real funny. Vince was not convinced today’s 3 different cab rides were worth the effort.
We went to the Tampines Mall, the Suntec City mall and then home. We ate at McD at the Suntec City mall and Vince declared that he missed the McDonald’s in New York.
Vince is kind of hard to manage these days, he won’t go down for a nap easily. I can spend two hours in a darkened room with him and he just won’t nap, my usual rule is no napping after 4 pm which results in an 11:30pm bed time. Without a nap, he’s flipping out at 5pm. I really should get on top of the food as well, I have to get back into feeding them every 3 hours or so. I’m still not familiar enough with the grocery store to get them the things that they’ll eat, I’m usually rushing though trying to get dinner together and not concentrating on what is actually on the shelves. I’ve been here almost 3 week and I’ve gone grocery shopping at least every other day and I just realized tonight that there is no pasta in my grocery store.
On a good note, I met a potential friend! I’m so excited! She has two girls, ages 4 and 2 and she lives in my apartment complex and within 5 minutes of meeting us, she invited us over tomorrow. And tomorrow we have a playdate with Matilda!
Mom and Dad went there today. We even took pictures. It is a nice place for Honeymoon. Good picked. But, we did not stay. You would like to lunch there. But, no food there.
Tomorrow, we are going south.
I’m slowly flipping out. Enough about me…
I just finished Aloft by Chang Rae Lee. Thumbs up!
From the review section on Amazon (Debbie Lee Wesselmann – author of the review):
Chang-Rae Lee’s third novel brilliantly evokes the angst of a man stunted by his own passivity. Jerry Battle, by his own account, is not a fighter. He flies his airplane in only the fairest weather, and usually does so solo since from that height, with no one making demands on him, “everything looks perfect.” On the ground, though, his life is less than perfect. He would rather let the woman he loves live with another man than express his true feelings for her. He turns from the implications of his son’s extravagance in running the family landscape business, and he prefers to keep his distance from his gruff father. If Jerry sees the signs of imminent destruction, he keeps them to himself, for to bring them to the fore would be to require action on his part. In fact, the last time in his life when he took charge of his personal life, he pushed his wife and the mother of his children to her early death. All in all, he’d rather not know about the crises embroiling his family. However, when his adult daughter breaks some distressing news, all his carefully constructed aloofness begins to crumble.
With wit and insight, Lee has created not only a memorable character, but an unforgettable novel. The interior nature of the first person narrative might disappoint readers looking for more pizzazz to the plot, but the intimacy created as Jerry leads the reader through his thoughts – on everything from his young wife’s death to his father’s “years of being a pigheaded domineering irascible bull in the china shop of life” to his tender. confused feelings for his son and daughter – makes up for the lack of action. The emotional depth Lee provides is stunningly full. Although the imagery can be heavy-handed with its references to flight and being grounded, Jerry’s wry acknowledgment of these elements rescue them. The decadence of contemporary culture and the melting pot of Long Island provide strong foils to this novel essentially about a fifty-nine year old man coming of age.
Admittedly, this excellent novel is not for everyone. Its detailed examination of mundane but revelatory moments might get tedious for some. However, for those who like the quiet realism and intimacy of a man’s struggle against his own nature, this will be one of the best novels of 2004.