10 Things: Checking In

1. Finished finals last Thursday, yay!

2. I wrote my last final paper in under two hours while working on an server related incident at work, boo!

3. JT keeps asking me, "How do you spell an?" Yeah, I don't get it either. Of course, he is the king of random these days. His favorite knock knock joke is, "Knock knock? (Who's there?) Pumpkin! (Pumpkin who?) Pumpkin in the head!" Huh?

4. Evie and I are on spring break together and so I took a few days off to do very little of anything. Took the kids to a museum and play ground today and had lunch with some of mommy bloggers I love to read. I was so not worthy, but they were awesome.

5. I bought lunch from this place. If you are ever in Oakland, ohmygodyouneedtotryittheyareSOgood.

6. I got my grades, they were both Bs. At least I tried obviously, not hard enough.

7. I need to seriously start thinking about law school since I'll be applying this fall for next fall. I want to stay local. Unfortunately the law schools that are local or relatively local are Hastings aka Univ. of California, Boalt Hall aka Berkeley, Stanford, and Santa Clara University. In other words, really hard to get into. These Bs aren't helping me any.

8. If it weren't for some amazing people and their support, my grades would have been far worse. My parents are in Vietnam, I can't even begin to thank them or speak of how much their support and almost free babysitting mean to me and this whole endeavor, but I do hope that painting their bathroom this weekend and cleaning up the house before they get back will speak a volume or two.

9. I hugged my dad for the first time in probably twenty five years when I dropped off my parents at the airport when they went on their trip. I normally just hug my mom and say, "bye dad be good"...It was...why didn't I ever do it sooner? He seemed surprised, but we had really talked on the way there, as adults about life and his worries and frustrations. I'll have to come back to this somewhere along the way but it felt so good to just give my dad a hug. He's always been one of those stereotypical hands off, laconic, stoic Asian immigrant fathers and so that hug meant SO much. The best part? He hugged me back and I got to yell at him, "quit yelling at mom dad and have fun!"

10. Another person whose support I would have failed without is my dear hubby J. I haven't hugged him today yet, but he gets one almost every day because he so deserves them. He works so hard and then helps me out when he gets home by occupying the kids for me when I have to study or work late. Sometimes he has to bathe them and put the kids to bed by himself, duties I normally do. He's not perfect with his video game and mac and cheese methods, but hey, he was a latchkey kid and a gamer who likes to wing it. Some people might think that these are things any husband and father would do in similar circumstances, but you know, it never hurts to let the people you love know that every little bit of help is appreciated.

Hope everyone is doing well. Aren't you glad it's spring?

Transcripts

Senator Obama's excellent speech on race 2008:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/18/america/18obamaspeech.php

President Bill Clinton's speech on the same subject in 1995:
http://www.afn.org/~dks/race/clinton-e6.html

Both are excellent and ask serious questions about the state of our union in terms of race. Both have very similar messages and portray a nuanced understanding of different sides of the race issue. Both sadden me as they make me think of how Bill was accused of racism in South Carolina and how Obama is accused of playing the race card simply because of his race. Things are better than they were in 1995, there are more minority faces on television and in higher offices for example; probably due much more to the silent work of many more ordinary people than the president. I have hope that whether it is Clinton or Obama, things will only get better.

For more excellent historic social justice speeches (including some from Hillary) check this link:

http://www.sojust.net/speeches.html

Girl Scout Guilt

As seen on PostSecret. One of my secrets? I live in fear that Evie and JT will grow up thinking I sucked as a parent. My other secret? I hope I'm not spoiling them. Damned if you do, and damned if you don't. College funds can double as therapy funds I guess. (We're checking it out at a GS meeting the first week of April.)

Goodnight Arthur

Arthur C. Clarke died today. I was working on assigning some poor soul a two day engineering task when J called to tell me that bit of news specifically. I wasn't surprised. The man was old. 90 they say, though he had a vision much older and wiser; he was the messiah of science fiction and he hooked me young.

I read 2001 after I fell asleep watching the movie. The book was easier and faster to digest than the movie. I remember I was sixteen and in love with pretentions and the things that others said were important to culture. For film, that was Stanley Kubrick. I have yet to find a Kubrick film I like. (I guess I'm not that geeky?) But thanks to Stanley, I found Arthur, and that's what's important here. I found the Aurthur who wasn't the greatest of writers who seemed to have copied and pasted whole passages between his books before copying and pasting was invented in order to get past having to rewrite descriptions of places like Jupiter. Still, despite going, "hmm, I swear I read this passage in 2010" while reading 2061; I loved his books. They made me think of science, space, frontiers, and other worlds.

If only they could jettison his body into space so that he could awake in 3001 to see if his predictions in that book came true. He fired my imagination and I thought when I first read his books that he must've died long ago. When I found out he wasn't, I thought he would live forever. Surely, someone would think to invent a cube full of terabytes to perserve this man's mind. Surely, Aurthur C. Clarke would never truly die.

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I've been working and prepping for finals. Be back later. =)

Just Us Girls

Monday night out with Evie was a mixed bag of emotions for me even though Evie assures me she had a great time. I wasn’t able to pull myself away from work till around 6pm and was about ten minutes late picking Evie up from her after school program. I was tired and a little cranky and so I couldn’t really muster up much excitement for her when I told her we would have a night out for just the two of us. She was duly confused and excited all at once as she pondered the meaning and significance of a night without her daddy and little brother. (I can just imagine her mental cost benefit analysis, a few hours without toddler brother who might eat something sticky and touch her, pro; a few hours out with somewhat boring and somewhat cranky mommy, con?)

We started out the night by recruiting a few other gals and called my cousin Hongie* (who brought her hubby along). We met at a favorite Japanese restaurant where we ordered Evie some sushi, including hamaguri (clam). I told Evie that we could pretend the hamaguri was for luck since Wikipedia said that a clam soup was a traditional food served for Girl’s Day. I sort of trust the truthiness of Wikipedia which claims that a soy based clam soup (with shells) is good to eat on Girl’s Day as it’s a “symbol of a united and peaceful couple.” I figured luck was a much better thing to be eating clams for than marriage/couple-hood which has no guarantees no matter how many clam shells in your soup. Dinner ended up being a lot of fun for both of us and was surprisingly relaxing. I found myself hugging Evie a lot during dinner as I realized that I don’t get to hug her all that much. I'm either busy or her little brother is usually on my lap whenever she wants one. I watched and listened as she chatted with her auntie Hongie and uncle A. I don’t really remember what we talked about other than the quiet passage of our daily lives and how we’re celebrating Girl’s Day with Hongie’s hubby A.

After dinner we went to Target and met up with Hongie’s sister Vannie to help Evie pick out a doll. Evie owns, not counting stuffed animals (do stuffed animals count as dolls?), maybe two dolls. Both were gifts that refused to stay at the bottom of Evie and JT’s massive toy piles. I think I’ve mentioned how much I dislike dolls in the past as I consider them, particularly Barbie, Bratz, and princess dolls, to be bad influences on young girls and their sense of self. The sheer impossibility of their beauty standards makes me uncomfortable with giving my daughter one of these things. We live in a diverse area with many different kinds of beauty and I’m hoping that Evie can learn to see them before she’s blinded by some unrealistic mass produced and marketed standard.

Still, I’m not completely obtuse on this issue. I do think dolls can help facilitate certain imaginative play for children. Sometimes I think girls benefit from having dolls and other toys which encourage them to think and use their imaginations. Maybe “girls” toys such as dolls, which do very little other than look cute, help girls use their creativity more than certain “boys” toys which beep or do all sorts of other fancy stuff (JT’s Buzz Lightyear action figure comes to mind). So, I guess I was warming up to the idea of giving Evie a doll on Monday. It was just a matter of finding the right doll; that is, no Barbie, no Bratz, and preferably olive toned, dark haired and doe eyed. Following those rules, Hongie, Vannie, Evie, and I ended up spending an hour going through Target’s pink toy aisles. No dolls fit our preferred description and I ended up pointing to an African American Barbie and asking Evie if she’d like that one. Evie, to her credit, said that the doll was pretty, but she didn’t want it because, she “[doesn’t] like brown dolls.”

Say what baby girl? That little comment earned her a gentle (at least I thought so) reminder from both myself and Vannie (who heard as well) on how all colors are beautiful to which Evie backtracked and said, “It’s ok, I like brown, really.” Which, of course, made me a bit frustrated that she basically just went along with whatever we were saying to please us; ARGH! This parenting thing: IT.IS.HARRRD!

We ended up getting a FurRealz Puppy. I don’t know how else to describe it other than it was not a doll and barks when you pet its back. Another toy for the toy pile achieved, we said goodbye to my cousins and headed to a bookstore where Evie was allowed to pick out some books. She chose a Magic Treehouse book (a fantasy series she’s been reading on her own) along with another copy of E.B. White’s The Trumpet of the Swan. I had been reading The Trumpet of the Swan to her for about a week at bedtime (a few weeks ago) when my copy, which I had managed to hold onto since the fourth grade, went missing. A sad loss for me, but I’m happy Evie chose to pick out another copy so that we can finish reading it together. We finished off our book selections with a picture book on Japanese Celebrations that should be educational for all of us.

All in all, it was a nice night out with my little girl. I learned a little bit more about her and she enjoyed having Mommy all to herself. When we returned home to our manly men, JT was sitting up watching Noggin while J was sprawled out next to him, exhausted. Apparently manly men play video games and “jump on daddy” while eating a nuked dinner. Evie went to bed asking when we were going to have a family day with daddy and JT.

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For those of you who remember, Hongie ended up having a parent teacher conference with that crazy parent from a few months ago. She stood her ground and the parent apologized only to accuse Hongie of not preparing her kid well enough despite all the other kids in the class being better prepared. When I was a kid I thought I might grow up to be a teacher. Hongie reminds me why I said, “Nahhh…”

Japanese Girl's Day

In an effort to help my kids remember their heritages, I try to celebrate some of the holidays from Japan and Korea alongside Vietnamese and American holidays when I'm aware of them. I recently found out that today is Hina Matsuri or Girl's Day in Japan. Of course, we've have to celebrate, even if I have to make things up as I go. Growing up Vietnamese American, I have little experience with what people in Japan do to celebrate Girl's Day. So with a little help from the internet, I've come up with a few things so far. In Japan dolls and special foods are the order of the day (according to wikipedia). I'm thinking of taking Evie to a toy store and letting her pick out a (non-Barbi, non-Bratz) doll and perhaps a few books from our local bookstore followed by dinner at a Japanese restaurant. In other words, a girls evening out with just me and Evie. J, when approached with this idea gallantly declared that he and JT, being "manly men", will be able to handle themselves. ("[We'll] kill our food, stuff it in the microwave, and eat its guts," according to J.)

Evie has no clue that anything special is being planned, it's just a regular school day for her. I can't wait for her to get home and surprise her.

Huhmmm...Yummy?

Ramar Foods produces a flavor of ice cream that we are absolutely addicted to, buko pandan. (That's coconut and uh...pandan flavor for you; in Viet pandan is la dua for my Viet readers out there.) We're a household of lactose intolerant people but for this ice cream, we're willing to brave the tummy aches, it's that good. J and my brother D love it so much that they pretty much ate the last half gallon I bought between the two of them, those fat bastards. So when dangled with the possiblity that we were going to a Costco near our local crack-ice-cream dealer, I jumped at the chance to get some more.

Anyhoo, while digging through our crack-ice-cream dealer's ice cream section, we noticed the following flavor:

Corn and queso...uh, I think I'll stick with the buko pandan.