toastykitten

Mark's parents are here this weekend. Last night I had dinner with them, and gave them some of the treats my mom makes for the Lunar New Year. His mom instantly recognized one of them (the rosettes, which are these crunchy sweet things for good fortune in the coming year), saying, "I know how to make this! I have the tool and everything." She said it was probably the same batter, too.

Food. Bringing people together since forever.

But I'm not. I'll probably do that after dinner.

Work is going to be excruciatingly quiet next week, as most of the people in my department have taken off for vacation. Mark is in LA - next year we'll have to figure out a better holiday schedule. Both our families make big deals of the holidays, although Chinese New Year is a bigger deal. And then it's about the only time I see my nieces and nephews and hopefully undo a bit of the years of damage they have coming to them.

My sister tells me that she just saw Kaitlin's report card, and she's doing quite well - she's actually caught up with other kids her age. It turns out that she's pretty good at math. My sister got her a workbook so that she can work on learning about negative numbers. You know what's funny? Her English is getting so good she's starting to translate for me with my mom. I hardly even realized she was doing it, until she said to my mom, "What she's trying to say is that..." and I thought Oh my god is my Chinese that awful? Apparently it is.

I just got a letter from my adopted brother's daughter. It's a long story about how he was "adopted", and how the circumstances of his adoption created a lot of drama in my family - I'm not going to go into it. I guess technically she's my niece. Anyway, the name she chose for herself is Crystal. I spent some time with her in the village - she's about 18 and about to take the entrance exam for university. She was a bit shy at first, but Crystal talks. And talks. And talks. In fact, in the three or four days I spent with her, I don't think I said more than ten sentences. Her letter is short, though, and I wonder if she didn't have enough paper or something. She keeps telling me how beautiful I am, which is really unnerving. I think she's probably translating from her Chinese literally to English, which makes her sentences sound very odd. I'll probably write her after dinner. I'm going to have to get my parents to write the address, though.

Some stuff I've been thinking about:

Did you know that some teenagers make money by teaching people how to play Halo? Are you fucking kidding me? They also get paid $25 an hour, which is way too close to my actual salary for comfort. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Not that I'd be any good at this - I suck at video games.

Harold McGee lives close enough to me that he can drive to the Ranch 99 at Milpitas.

I found out that Six Apart's offices are only a couple of blocks up from my work. That is so odd. Current_TV is also in the building next to mine. I walk by sometimes and am so tempted to walk in - you can see the workers, dressed like skater boys watching their stuff. And all I can think is, Are they working or goofing off?

My China photos are slowly coming up. I'm so glad Flickr increased their bandwith limit. I'm up to Hangzhou right now, and will post up pictures of my parents' villages next. If you actually want to see my family, you'll have to add me as a contact first. There are also no pictures of me, unless you want to look at the New Orleans pictures.

Oh hey! New Asian-Am show, called My Life Disoriented. Did they make one of the Asians goth? Or is that just a white guy in heavy makeup? Time to add to the TiVo list.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Season's Greetings, etc!

I forgot to mention on Thursday Mark and I celebrated our fifth year together. We splurged on a meal at Bistro Elan, and even had the same waitress as last year!

I can't believe it's been five years. It sure doesn't feel like it. :P

Wow, I haven't written in here in a while.

Mark's okay and recovering nicely. We had a funny moment today because we are going over to my parents' house for dinner tonight, and Mark wanted to see if we could have crab. So I called my dad and asked him what was for dinner, and mentioned that Mark wanted to eat some crab. My dad said, "Crab?! He's still recovering from surgery! Maybe next time!" So no crab for Mark!

No, I have no idea why crab is bad for you after surgery. Something about the air, probably.

My parents have been really sweet about asking after Mark. They fretted about him almost as much as his own parents did. Somehow that comforts me.

Kaitlin even asked to talk to him, and it's fun hearing them talk to each other. It was her birthday a few weeks ago, and I gave her a set of 3 "girly" books - A Little Princess, The Secret Garden, and Anne of Green Gables. It also came with a gold locket. I actually wanted to give her a set of Chronicles of Narnia, but I didn't want to get her the giant paperback because she might be overwhelmed by it, and I couldn't find a cheap enough set that I could justify buying. So I decided to go with the girly when I realized that most of the books I'd gotten her had boy protagonists, and I wanted to balance that out a little. Anyway, she's reading A Little Princess right now, and she says "I love it. All my friends want me to bring it to school to read."

I got my visa photos today from a place a couple blocks from my house. They actually didn't make me want to rip them into shreds. So yay - my parents have bought the tickets to China, and we are very close to going! I just realized, though, that I don't have any good clothes to go to China - I have no idea what the weather is going to be like, except milder than their hot, humid, rainy summers. I'm thinking just seeing if I should stock up on casual pants, t-shirts, etc. I can't wear anything like tank tops, because then my parents will think I'm showing too much skin. How much underwear should I bring? What sort of shoes should I pack?

Yesterday I spent nearly two hours in traffic, my left foot stuck to the clutch, in order to get to Oakland to see my parents for dinner. My legs were practically numb when I got out of the car.

While I was there, I helped Kaitlin fill out her bazillion and one forms for school. I'm really annoyed that all of the forms were only in English, when the school is well aware that a large portion of their students are recent immigrants and have parents who cannot read in English, and may have no idea what they're actually signing. I explained as best I could to Kaitlin's mom what she was signing for, but I'm kind of aghast at some of what they're signing:

1. A free-lunch/reduced lunch form. This is actually fine - my sister and I filled these out, too when we were in elementary. I looked at her lunch menu for the month, and it's awesome - they get stuff like yogurt and whole-wheat grilled cheese sandwiches. Kaitlin, however, was adamant that they didn't get any of the food that was on the menu, but she couldn't tell me what they actually got for lunch. So who knows how successful this healthy lunch thing is?
2. A textbook form. This is ludicrous - this form states that parents will pay between $30 and $60 if a textbook is lost. The majority of the school's students are from low-income families! How the hell will they be able to afford that? Anyway, if Kaitlin loses her textbooks, I or any one of my sisters could cover it, but still. I warned Kaitlin not to lose her books.
3. An opt-out form for sharing parents' information in some public directory. Basically, Kaitlin's parents are automatically on some sort of list where they will receive junk mail unless they opt out. Arrgh - the only times my sister and I got handed an opt-out form, it was for sex education. That, I could see actually being fine, but this is not.
4. A form where we had to put down the parent/guardian's SSN. I don't remember what it was for, but I remember thinking it was stupid.
5. A form about absences/tardiness. The public schools must be getting really worried about losing their money. It's a lot stricter than when we were in school - if a child is more than 30 minutes late to class, it counts as an unexcused absence for the entire day. If a child is late more than three times in a week, or absent more than two times in a week, then they have to make it up with Saturday detention from 8:30-12:30 and helping out the school with gardening and stuff. Free labor??? Parents are not allowed to drop kids off at school before 8:20 because there is no adult supervision. Hello??? People have jobs to get to, where they'll be reprimanded, and possibly fired if they're late! It's an even bigger possibility for this student population, since most of them work low-wage jobs whose employers don't really give a shit about their employees. A child cannot legally be excused for anything other than "illness or death in the immediate family". If a child is out for more than three days, than a note from the doctor is required. Follow-up verification from the school by phone will be done. (Thank god they didn't implement this part when I was in school...) If a child has more than 3 unexcused absences, then the child will be classified as a "truant" and further steps with the school administration will be taken.
6. The emergency card. Standard.
7. The earthquake form. Wouldn't the emergency card contain all relevant information anyway? When I compared the two, there really wasn't any difference.

Are we considered an interfaith couple, if I don't really have a faith?