Sorry, not rheumatoid arthritis. Just me.

Thanks for all of your great questions! As will be a surprise to no one, I have sorted them out into categories for future answering. These three did not fit so well into little slots, so this first edition of 2009 Q&A will be a grab bag of sorts.

Heidikins asked:

What is your destination-vacation du jour?

We are going to Denver this summer (squeal!) courtesy of last year’s volleyball paycheck, and I am ridiculously excited. Aside from flying to San Francisco for my old job, I’ve never been west of Pittsburgh, so the thought of spending a week within sight of the Rockies is a big deal. We’re staying with friends of ours who moved out there about a year and a half ago, and we haven’t seen them since Christmas. Oh, and they have four kids, so I am prepared to be blown away by extreme cuteness.

JG and I are also planning to take a cruise next summer for our 5-year anniversary, but that is still in the concept stages. Nevertheless, that has not stopped me from making bargain cruise-y purchases already. What? It’ll stop me from buying a whole lot at once next year! Right? Right!

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Jen asked:

Who do people say you look like, famous or otherwise?

Let’s be honest. There are not that many Asian famous people out there, so when I have to pick someone for an ice-breaker or something, I usually say Ming-Na because she happens to be awesome. We don’t actually look alike at all, but most people will nod their heads and think, “Oh, yeah, she’s Asian.”

However, there was this one guy at my old job, who, within 30 seconds of being hired, asked me breathily, “Has anyone ever told you that you look exactly like Lucy Liu?”

I was taken aback (mostly because Lucy Liu and I do not look similar!), I said rather bluntly, “No, no one has.”

And then! He wouldn’t let it lie! He kept asking my co-workers, “Don’t you think RA looks like Lucy Liu?” and they would give him the most appalled, blank looks. Seriously, New Guy. What the freak? Let’s get past the slanty eyes, please.

On the non-famous side, people say I look like my mom, which is the truth. They also think my sister and I are twins, but that is only because we are exactly the same size and have eerily similar mannerisms.

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NGS asked:

When it’s 150 degrees outside, do you use the AC or just deal with fans?

Okay, when it’s 150 degrees outside, I am moving. But short of that, I have no qualms about turning on the AC. We use fans until it’s absolutely necessary to turn on the AC, but I’d say that 150 degrees would be it.

I absolutely loathe being hot because I sweat so easily (and way, way too much), and I always feel like I can only make myself so much cooler. When I’m cold, at least I can put on more clothing or run around or something, but there is no recourse when that limit of hotness sets in.

I’m pretty sure that Bill Russell didn’t write Red and Me for me. I barely know anything about basketball, and I only ever watch the sport during March Madness. I don’t follow the Celtics (when pressed, my family claims allegiance to the Knicks), so I don’t know anything about Bill Russell’s history with the team or Red Auerbach as its coach. I started to do a little background research when I first received the book, but I stopped myself, curious to see what I could glean from it with no base of knowledge.

As it turned out, I didn’t get very much. I don’t think the book is well-written, and I doubt that familiarity with basketball would have helped. I assume that Bill Russell is a really dynamic person in real life, but on the page, I felt bombarded with his repetitive metaphors. Red was a genius, a psychologist, a mathematician, a leader — repeat! — a genius, a psychologist, a mathematician, a leader, and so on. I kept rolling my eyes at the grandiose language: everything happened “instantly” and “absolutely.” I didn’t buy it.

Perhaps the greatest disappointment for me was that I didn’t think the book fully fleshed out the subtitle,”My Coach, My Lifelong Friend.” It seemed from the start that Bill Russell and Red Auerbach naturally got along with eachother, and I guess that’s all fine and good, but is it compelling? I couldn’t see how they had to work at their relationship, and surely that undersells what their friendship was.

Of all the basketball fans, Celtics fans, and fans of Bill Russell or Red Auerbach, I’m sure someone will like this book. It just wasn’t me.

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If his picture on the back jacket flap of Writing Places is any indication, William Zinsser is an adorable old man. He’s wearing a Panama hat and leaning against a subway stop with his hands in his pockets. It’s exactly how I would picture the man who wrote On Writing Well, which I hear is a classic text of writing courses, not that I ever had to read it (oops).

Writing Places is a petite volume about, well, where Zinsser wrote stuff. He tells about copy rooms and apartment offices and country homes and London flats — wherever his metal writing desk and typewriter settled for a time. It’s a memoir, I suppose, but more accurately, it’s a description of someone at work. Zinsser just happens to be a writer, so he writes about writing, and I drank in the whole thing in one fevered streak. At one point, I put it down because it was high time to go to sleep, but my mind was buzzing so busily with words and writers that I had finish reading.

I loved many lines throughout the book, but these were my favorites:

“Writers, I learned, are one of nature’s most unconfident species, in constant need of assurance that they are not doomed souls.” — on teaching his first nonfiction writing course at Yale

“The hard part of writing isn’t the writing; it’s the thinking.” — on On Writing Well

Zinsser’s tone was so comforting and instructive to me, and his words struck a chord. See, I’ve always downplayed my writing abilities by saying that I was a better editor than writer. But for Zinsser, being a good writer is being a good editor, and for me to shrug off my editing as a sort of second-class skill is assuming I am a doomed soul. Reading Writing Places made me want to get out there and write! Right now! Just thinking about it gives me a thrill.

We sat down to dinner last Wednesday, and I looked down glumly at my grilled pork chop. I didn’t want to say anything, but my stony silence was poor camouflage.

“I’m having a hard time,” I said slowly, “but I don’t want to fight because it’s the day before our anniversary.”

JG looked up at me. “What’s wrong?”

On Monday, we broke our streak of not fighting about the kitchen renovation when JG told me that he was tired of being yelled at when things weren’t exactly to my specifications. It was a fair accusation (although I beg to differ that I don’t actually raise my voice), but my defenses rose immediately. I was tired of things not being correct, and I didn’t like nagging, but I knew anything I would have said would have come off as retaliatory. I pressed my lips together and let it lie.

The problem, as I explained that night, was that I did not feel that I could rely on JG to do the things he said he would do. I would ask him to do something, he would say yes, and then he would forget to do it or tell me to remind him. Great! Now, it’s on my to-do list. In some cases, he would say, “Remind me when I’m on the computer.” Then I’d have to make a mental note to watch for when he was on his computer but not actively involved in something, and then remember what it was I was supposed to remind him to do. Being The Constant Reminderer grated on me; why couldn’t JG remember his own tasks?

For a time, I wrote reminders on the kitchen dry-erase board so that we could avoid this frustrating dialog, but then I remembered that JG hated to get tasks via e-mail at school. “They can pile work on you without even talking to you!” he griped one evening. I didn’t want to be the faceless task assigner, and I knew there was value in the conversation — what if the task didn’t make sense or we were waiting on something else? — so I backed off the lists, and we were back where we started. I would ask JG to do something, mentally refuse to remind him if he didn’t do it (out of principle!), do it myself, become bitter, and then snap about how things in the new kitchen weren’t right. Each of our complaints fed the other. I’d peck at JG about minor things because I didn’t think he would do them, and he wouldn’t do the things I asked because he thought he’d do them incorrectly, at least in my eyes. Resentment abounded.

JG nodded as I laid out my thought process. He appreciated that I considered how a list on the board would be impersonal, but having a tangible list was helpful because what is on the front of my mind is not necessarily the same for him. To my relief, JG understood how the reminders put the onus right back on me, and neither of us liked how reminding quickly morphed into nagging.

“So, what do we do?” I asked.

For now, we’re going to try the dry erase board list again, except that I’ll include rough timeframes when I jot down reminders. Yesterday, I wrote, “Transfer money for groomer: this week,” and “Return library books: Wednesday,” because we had talked about how he would do these things. If he has objections or questions, we can talk about it, but at least the task is in his frame of reference. I just hope we’ll get away from the ask-forget-remind-forget-resent progression.

A progress report on my three resolutions for 2009:

Every day, I will clean for 15 minutes.
At the midpoint of the year, I submit my first back-sliding report. I did not succeed at this resolution this month. We are still figuring out how summer will go with JG at home for most of the day, but as much as I love that he is around the house, it kind of cramps my style of guerrilla cleaning. I’m not sure why, but I feel better doing it when JG’s not around. Granted, the house is still clean, but I have not been very conscientious about my 15 minutes. To combat my slacking, I have moved my chore check-off list to a place of prominence on my dresser, instead of underneath stacks of books on my night stand.

For what it’s worth, my newest favorite cleaning tip (courtesy of How to Clean Stuff) is to clean tubs with a Magic Eraser. I already loved these mysterious white sponges of awesomeness, but it never occurred to me to bring them in to the bathrooms. Getting rid of the scum is almost enjoyable now, if only because I know it’s really gone.

Every week, I will write and send my grandmother a note.
Success! The combination of my stockpile of blank cards at work and my PDA reminder is working like a charm. I have started to send other people notes for the heck of it (although not weekly), and I like how this resolution is starting to make me more aware of when I haven’t talked with someone in a while.

Every month, I will take at least a few hours just for myself.
Hm. Once again, I am puzzled at this last one. Why is it not even on my radar during the month? JG plays volleyball with a local league every Tuesday, and that has become my de facto night to edit pictures, read on the couch, or play with Ted, so does that count? I think it might because I’m spending time on my own, but I am also not a huge fan of it because it’s not intentional of me. Whatever the case, it’s clear that I need to keep this resolution at the fore.

In other news …
We are managing with our CSA pretty well, I think. So far, we haven’t thrown out anything, but it has been a challenge to get through the veritable deluge of lettuce. We’ve been forced to try a handful of new recipes (like fish-vegetable packets and chicken-lettuce wraps), and our pasta intake is very much decreased. The weekly grocery bill has gone down overall, even taking into account our produce share.

July will be a tough month in this respect because of various trips we have planned, but I’m trying to set up a few friends to take our produce in our place. Even though our meal-planning regimen is a little more panicked each week, the CSA has been a success for us. I’m trying not to be nervous about the bigger vegetable-laden harvests to come.