Archive: March 2009

A progress report on my three resolutions for 2009:

Every day, I will clean for 15 minutes.
Another uneventfully successful month! Two things I have learned:

1. I love Method cleaning products. I know, I am totally late to this train, but I don’t have a convenient Target location, so I never bothered to try them. In January, however, I made the 30-minute trek to the nearest one and used part of a Christmas gift card for Method products. I do not exaggerate when I say that they might be the greatest factor in my cleaning success so far. Part of my hatred of cleaning stemmed from reeking of bleach and Lysol for the hours to follow, but no more! It’s silly and superficial that good-smelling products would make such a difference, but I think it’s like how some people are more organized when their office supplies are pretty. You know? Who cares if it works?
2. The vacuum is way too heavy for me to operate. Vacuuming is JG’s favorite chore, so he has always done it in the past, but I decided to take care of our bedroom for once. Um, no. It turned out to be the most back-breaking chore I attempted in the whole week. That night, I told JG that vacuuming is safely in his corner forevermore, amen.

Every week, I will write and send my grandmother a note.
For whatever reason, it was hard for me to figure out what to write in my grandma notes this month. Each week, I’d sit with a blank card in front of me, and I’d just tap my pen on my desk until something popped into my head. Regretfully, I think I mostly commented on the weather. Isn’t that awful? I wanted to write about the fun birthday things we did, but my grandmother didn’t acknowledge the day, so I felt strange bringing up the subject for fear that it would seem really passive-aggressive. In any case, I’m banking on the novelty of receiving snail mail to make up for my mundane weekly reports.

Every month, I will take at least a few hours just for myself.
I’ve realized that I feel guilty when I go to a part of the house by myself, but I don’t know exactly why. Am I being antisocial? Am I subconsciously mad at someone? So then I feel even more guilty because I don’t know why I feel guilty (thanks, Asian-New England upbringing), and I end up sitting with JG in the living room, seething over watching another basketball game when all I really want to do is go downstairs and read a book in peace and quiet.

This month, I finally shut off the crazy voices in my head and went off to read. It was freaking glorious. It made me remember that no one is going to bestow my “me time” on a silver platter with heavenly fanfare; sometimes, I just have to snatch it for myself, even if it seems grouchy or introverted. So maybe I’ll stay home instead of going to the gym, and I can spend the evening with a lovely read and a snack.  I’m much nicer afterward, and I’ve almost finished four books this month! Heck, yes.

To my great relief, my much-anticipated book club discussion on The Hunger Games went very well! Out of eight readers in all, the reactions ranged from “It was enjoyable” to “I loved it!” The conversation jumped around from reality television, the role of the media, expectations of teenagers, intensity of the action, and whether we’d want to see a movie version. Overall, I was very pleased with the turnout and the discussion. In general, people were grateful for a lighter, quicker book than others we’ve read, and almost everyone is looking forward to the sequel.

However, I have a nagging sense of doom lurking behind my relief. All of the books I’ve suggested for book club (Life of Pi, Eat Pray Love, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and The Hunger Games) have resulted in a fairly favorable response and, if nothing else, lively debate. What should I choose next? The pressure is on.

Nevertheless, I press on to the good stuff. I mentioned a chocolate chip cheese ball in passing last week, and several folks were curious about it. We picked a dairy/cheese theme for book club snacks because there was so much cheese in the meal descriptions, and let’s not forget Prim’s little goat! So when my black-bottom cupcakes went belly-up, this quick dessert came to the rescue with just a few ingredients from the store.

JG’s Aunt Judy brings this sweet dip to the beach every year, and as one of my book clubbers commented, it’s kind of like eating cream cheese frosting, to which I give a hearty fist pump. It’s not the most glamorous dish I make, but everyone likes it, and most of the ingredients are pantry staples.

For this most recent iteration, I only had an hour and a half between getting home from work and serving the dip, so I disregarded the directions to form a pretty ball and cover it with chocolate chips. Instead, I softened the butter and the cream cheese in the microwave, threw everything together with a hand mixer, folded in the chocolate chips with a spatula, dumped it all into a bowl, sprinkled a layer of chocolate chips over the top, slapped on some plastic wrap, and tossed it in the freezer. When people arrived for book club, I set out the dip with a bowl of graham cracker sticks, and no one was the wiser.

Continue reading →

… nervous about leading my book club discussion on The Hunger Games tonight. I have notes about a media-saturated but oppressed society, the responsibility of teenagers, and the impact of reality television on our lives, but what if people didn’t like the book? It’s our first foray into YA fiction, too, which makes me even more apprehensive.

… annoyed because, out of a dozen cupcakes and two dozen sour cream cookies, exactly twelve cookies came out correctly. Ugh. I am stopping at the store on the way home from work for supplies to make a chocolate chip cheese ball to supplement my piddling dessert offerings.

… regretful that I forgot to send a card for my friend’s birthday today, even though I bought one for her a week ago. Oh, well. I’ll call her this afternoon.

… optimistic that, despite budget cuts at work, I might be allowed to go to a professional conference in Dallas this fall, pending the approval of my cost proposal. I kind of miss my travel time from my old job.

… unsure about responding to ads for potential freelance editing jobs. On the one hand, it would help me get experience and possible references; on the other hand, I imagine that the clients could be awful.

… indecisive about attending a day-long freelance workshop next month. The cost isn’t bad, but do I really want to spend a whole Saturday discussing pharmaceutical terminology, schmoozing with suits, and figuring out how to market myself?

… glad that the weekend is almost here.

… disappointed that the forecast calls for rain. We wanted to take Ted to the park and roam around, but it looks like that plan is shot.

… excited about going out to eat sometime over the weekend. The spot is yet to be determined, but it’ll be nice to get out.

… amazed that March is almost over.

Sometimes, JG’s students will goad a reluctant volunteer to ask, “Mr. JG, have you seen that show about the nerds? You kind of remind us of one of the characters.”

Then JG has to break it to them that, yes, we do watch The Big Bang Theory, and that student is hardly the first to bring up his resemblance to Sheldon Cooper.

Later, he always asks me, “I’m not really like that, am I? I’m not as arrogant or condescending as Sheldon, right?”

“Well,” I say slowly. “You, ah, are both very tall and thin. And you have the same hairline. I’m sure that’s what the kids mean.”

In that vein, I ordered JG a shirt for Valentine’s Day this year that elucidated the show’s version of Rock-Paper-Scissors. Thrown off by the decoy model (Dewey is 5’9”! He wears a Large!), I ordered a size too big, and so I went to the Cafepress site right away to submit an exchange request. In less than two hours, I received the following e-mail:

Dear RA,

I want you to be 100% satisfied with everything you purchase at CafePress.com. I am ordering you a replacement right away in the new size at no additional charge.

There is no need for a return! I don’t want you to incur any additional shipping charges. Please keep the original as our way of saying thanks for shopping at CafePress.com.

If there is anything else I can do for you please let me know.

Best Regards,

Danielle T.
CafePress.com Support Associate

What? “There is no need for a return”? I was stunned. Way to exceed my expectations, Cafepress!

Then I realized that I had this spare nerd shirt on my hands with a highly specific reference on it — what to do? It was too big and too small for the first local recipients I could think of. I considered holding a geeky giveaway, but I cringed at the thought that someone might win it that wouldn’t fully understand the shirt and give it the loving home it deserved.

Finally, I IMed Jen to see if her husband would like it. Before the arrival of her adorable baby, she and I had regular Tuesday morning chats to discuss the latest episode of How I Met Your Mother. Jen wasn’t sold on The Big Bang Theory from the start, but the show has gradually won her over. Her husband would love the shirt, she said. Why didn’t she send me something in return?

Why not, indeed?

I shipped the shirt across the country to Seattle, and over the weekend, I received a dense package of my own. A new baking book! Woo! There is not much that is more heartwarming than a blog gift exchange fueled by excellent customer service and overall geekiness, am I right?