toastykitten

Trader Joe's
Darden's restaurant group (includes Olive Garden, Yard House, etc)
REI 

All the big tech companies have said they'll pay hourly employees as usual. 

Meanwhile, Congress debating whether they should go on recess. Apparently my rep re-introduced a bill from 2013 that allows Congress to take votes from home. 

In chapter 14 of Becoming, Michelle Obama describes Barack Obama missing a key vote because Malia, their first infant child at the time, was spiking a fever. This causes him a lot of trouble politically. I don't think he ever did anything to resolve the issue, but pretty much left Michelle Obama to raising the kids and dealing with it. 

When AOC took office, she instituted a generous paid parental leave policy and committed to paying her staffers at least $52k a year. 

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!

Mark is taking public transportation with me tomorrow. L.A. Man Takes Train! Does! Not! Compute! ^_^

Training people is hard work. Especially on software you think is poorly designed in the first place. And also with people who are just not really computer-literate. I find it frustrating, and I have to keep remembering that I need to keep my mouth shut - I kept wanting to just install Firefox for her, but then I'd have to teach her how to use Firefox and that would take up another day that we don't have. On the other hand, once she masters that, it would really cut down on the work we do.

Amy Sedaris new book "Hospitality Under the Influence" looks hilarious. I flipped through it at the bookstore, and there's this one drawing of a woman bending over with a mirror to look at her vagina. It's so added to my wishlist. (Yes, there are real recipes and advice about hospitality, too.)

I watched episode 1 of Naruto last night, years after everyone finished the 150th episode. I'm not hooked yet, but I probably will be by the end of episode 4.

Aidell's makes really good, really delicious meat. We had their teriyaki chicken meatballs for dinner tonight, and they were awesome. On the plus side, they are also hormone-free and nitrite-free, which I did not know before. We originally got into their artichoke and garlic sausage.

I finished The Best American Short Stories compilation edited by E.L. Doctorow. I forget which year it is, but his selections were great - I loved the genuine diversity - in perspective, in feel, in culture - and loved reading all the contributor notes at the end. It was fun finding out what exactly the authors were inspired by. I think Junot Diaz is my new (to me) favorite discovery this year.

I also re-read I Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan. No, I never watched the movie. The most surprising thing about the re-read this time around was that the book takes place in the seventies, and was written in that time period, so there are a lot of references to Nam and demonstrations. It's also a book about totally ordinary people without any extraordinary ambitions who get thrown for a loop by the choices they made. It's surprisingly compelling - I wouldn't call it excellent writing, but it's much more succinct and powerful than I thought it would be.

I Think We Should Start Talking About Starting A Band - I think I know this guy. And the guy he's talking to.

I think the writers of Boston Legal have been reading way too much manga. First it's all the slashiness, and now the incest...

September 30 is Free Museum Day. Check the site to see if any of your museums are participating. We're going to take Kaitlin to the Exploratorium.

I have been unable to find my work badge. This is not good, considering it also contains my train pass for October. If I don't find it, I'm going to have to shell out $7 a day for the train.

I'm currently reading Hokum, an Anthology of African-American Humor, edited by Paul Beatty. It is hilarious, and I actually had no idea that Al Sharpton was funny. Or Mike Tyson, for that matter. Really, really unintentionally funny. Some of it, though, I'm having trouble discerning the funny in it because it is so depressing and bitter.

We watched Studio 60 and so far I think I like it. I say I think because I couldn't keep up with half the dialogue - by the time I was done processing one person's speech the show had moved on to the next day. I need a transcript of the show. Oh, and I think Amanda Peet was terrible. I totally didn't buy her as the new young president "with spunk". And who says "spunk" anymore?

I bought a dress yesterday. I need shoes, though. My fault for picking a white dress (with flowers), but I don't want to wear black at a wedding. Instead of shopping more today, though, I'm gonna see Superman Returns.

The musician Momus writes about the similarities between Japan and Germany and how he prefers most of their cultural habits/attitudes/ways of living to the Anglo ones. However, nowhere does he explain their similar tastes in pr0n, which is the one thing that I've always wondered about.

New season of 30 Days July 26th! On July 26th - the first episode is about and is called "Immigration." In the show, a border patroling minuteman (who just so happens to be a legal Cuban immigrant) moves in with an undocumented Mexican family in East Los Angeles. (My first reaction was, a fucking Cuban immigrant decided to be a minuteman? WTF? But after thinking about it, I could totally see it.) Morgan Spurlock's doing one episode where he's in jail for 30 days.

I have to go to work tomorrow. I doubt I'll get anything done, given that half my department decided to take the day off as vacation like normal people. Unfortunately, I'm saving up my PTO for the trip to China (if the tickets ever get bought), and I've just gotten sick too many times this year. (Yes, the only form of time off we have is PTO and no sick days, and I'm still in the process of accrual. Technically. My boss tends to give me whatever days I want off, but I don't want to get her in trouble.)

I don't know why, but lately I've become really self-conscious about what I write in this journal. I've had this mood before - it comes and goes in waves, and it drives me fucking nuts.

Work is fine, and in fact, I'm getting pretty busy. There are two items of suckage - the company has decided to switch from LotusNotes to Outlook, and the company has also decided to comply with the California labor law for non-exempt employees requiring them to clock in and clock out on their computers.

I must be the only person who's not excited about using Outlook. I hate LotusNotes too - it's slow, it's buggy, and it does stupid shit like making all my meetings disappear. However, I'm pretty damn certain I'm going to get more spam with Outlook, more likelihood of getting viruses, and more annoyance because the interface irritates me and I have an (ir)rational hatred of all things Microsoft-related. I'm getting so annoyed that I even considered downloading OpenOffice and trying to run things on the Mozilla suite, except I realized that I probably don't have the administrative privileges to do that, and I'm not sure how I would do the Mozilla thing anyway. (I did install Firefox, though.)

The second item of suckage - supposedly the California labor law is supposed to guarantee that workers get paid the amount they work, but for my department it feels really constricting, and the fact that I'm dependent on the computer to clock in and out pisses me off. First off, I have to reboot my computer almost every morning. Second, my computer is slow. So that means that it's 8:15 before I can even log in properly. And by the end of the day I'm really tired, and I leave at 5PM sharp. If I have to log out, then I'll have to log out then, and it would look like I left 15 minutes early. Supposedly our department will work it out, but we'll see.

I made a few midyear resolutions. I broke some of them already. Why midyear? Because I'm lazy, that's why. And because I realized I need to get a grip on my finances already. I'm making a decent salary, but it seems to be disappearing as fast as I earn it.

1. Don't buy magazines or books. I broke this one already by buying the latest issue of Elle. I was really bored. Surprisingly, Elle was a bit more political than it usually is this month. I'm borrowing books from the library now, because I need to take a break from the books I have on my shelf. I'm currently reading Julie & Julia.
2. Eat out less, and eat healthier. Our biggest expense is eating out. I hit the farmer's market on Sunday. Damn, why didn't I do this every week? I got a one pound bag of salad mix for $4, a loaf of French bread, some really good tomatoes, and some great peaches and nectarines. I would have gotten more stuff, but I was afraid we wouldn't eat it all. The salad mix was excellent, and would have cost three times as much if I had bought it at Safeway. I'm going to need to figure out a plan for lunches.

Japanese TV blog. How awesome is that?

My Dale Carnegie class is almost over. Next week will be our last session, and I've decided to make double-fudge chocolate brownies for everyone. It's been a fun ride, and very useful, but I'm looking forward to having my Wednesday nights back.

My cell phone number is dead. My new cell phone is coming in this week. I decided to sign up with Sprint for their "fair and flexible" plan, because I can get 400 anytime minutes and my nights start at seven instead of nine, which will definitely be a relief. I can call people across the country now! I considered joining Cingular for a few days, because that's what Mark is under, but their plans are ridiculously priced, and don't offer any really good benefits.

I've decided to accept some more responsibilities at work, now that the other person is gone. Man, people are hitting me up for dirt about his departure, but I can't. It would be disrespectful to him anyway. My manager is considering hiring someone for my position (and we'll see what happens to me later).

I finished Selected Fictions by Jorges Luis Borges last week, and started Selected Poems by Jorges Luis Borges this week. I have become so anal retentive about my reading that I'm actually reading the poems in Spanish first, then the English translation. Needless to say, I haven't gotten very far, but I think I get a better sense of the poetry anyway. Since I'm forcing myself to re-read the lines until they make sense in both languages, it slows me down enough to take it in.

I'm the same way with manga. I prefer reading manga in Chinese, not because I'm trying to show off or anything, but because I read English too quickly, and I'll gloss over the pictures in order to get to the next scrap of dialogue. If I'm reading in Chinese, I'll spend my time figuring out the characters and their dialogues from the drawn actions.

1. Work has been insanely busy. That's good for me, because I am no longer bored.
2. I've been listening to NPR a lot. I don't listen to the stream, because I know it'll just piss me off. Instead, I picked the stuff that looked interesting and listened to those, such as Rebuilding Chinatown After the 1906 Quake, Gauging the Benefits of a Living Wage in L.A., and A Chat with Beverly Cleary
3. It's Beverly Cleary's 90th birthday! Her publisher is celebrating by declaring today Drop Everything And Read Day. I loved her stories, especially Ramona Quimby, Age 8 and the Mouse & the Motorcycle.
4. No Good For Me is one of my favorite fashion blogs. When did she start doing one for Jane?
5. Kaitlin is a card shark with more skills than Chinese men who've been playing for decades. While playing Chor Dai Jee (or Dai or Die or whatever the hell you call it), she beat me, my sister, Mark, and her mom several times. Too bad we cannot take her to Vegas with us.
6. Hey, remember when you were drooling over the revelation that the next Toyota Prius might get close to 100 mpg? Well, I took a random old issue of Dwell magazine with me to read on the train today, and came across this little nugget:

The VW 1-Liter Car

One mizzling day in April, Dr. Ferdinand Piech of Volkswagen broke an uncommon world record on the autobahn. His tortoise-like jet-black car consumed less than one liter of gas per 100 kilometers -- 239 miles per gallon. A concept car last spring, the 1-Liter is embarking on new developments. The two-seater is not a hybrid, but conserves through engine redesign, weight-saving measures, and aerodynamics. Updates at VWVortex. (I don't see any mention of this car on the website but I haven't dug very far.)

Yah, so this little blurb is from Jan/Feb 2003.

7. Did taxes. That was painful.

Anyway, I gotta pack. Later.

1. If there were ever a contest for EXTREME! Filing! I would so win.
2. Today is the third time this week I've dropped someone off at the airport. Thursday I pick Mark up. While we were waiting in line for the check-in counter to open, I noticed that there were a lot of people going to the Philippines. How did I know? Because they took their lives with them in boxes and boxes of stuff with their addresses on them, along with their luggage. It was a madhouse.
3. While eating dinner at my mom's house today, I flipped through the channels and landed on The Golden Palace, which was a short-lived spinoff of the Golden Girls. This episode was about racism and featured a young Don Cheadle, uttering the by-now-familiar-but-usually-dismissed admonishment, "Blanche, when I tell you something's bothering me, you need to take me seriously." Uh? How the hell was this bad eighties sitcom more useful in five minutes than an entire episode of Black.White? I think my world has been turned upside down again.
4. Kaitlin gets crankier than I do when she's hungry. I checked her homework and she's improving, but she really needs work on reading comprehension. And grammar. Like most immigrants to the U.S., she has the most trouble with tenses.
5. Tony Leung to star in English-language movie! *sigh* I've heard his English before - it's beautiful. The original lead character will be changed from an American to an American-born Chinese, played by Leung. - I don't know if that's ever happened before.

The power went out at my workplace. Do you want to know just how incompetent PG&E is? At around 9:30AM, the power went out. At around 11:00AM, we had an announcement from the building manager that the power would not return until about sometime between 3:00PM and 5:00PM, oh, and there's a slight chance that it might not be on tomorrow either, so you should call this number to see whether you should come in or not!

I came home, and grabbed a snack from the drugstore. While I was waiting in line, a thin, blonde woman in her fifties(?) with a small face told the cashier that she'd caught her husband cheating on her. "On the Internet. And he denied it. Even though I had the credit card bill in my hand, he just shrugged and said 'It wasn't me'." Her hands were shaking as she swept the credit card through. I felt kind of embarrassed, because I don't even know this woman. She looked well-off, in high-heeled boots and an expensive-looking sweater. She looked like she was fighting back tears, and then she said something about her blood pressure being high. Then she told the cashier that she would see her tomorrow and left.

Hao Wu on free speech in China and taking a stand. He was arrested on February 22 by the Chinese.

Today I've been reading How to Change the World: Social Entrepreuners and the Power of New Ideas, by David Bornstein. It's not about nonprofits exactly, but it's about how smart people pushed their ideas to improve the world/society and made it happen, and in doing so, changed the system. It's pretty fascinating.

There's a bit that I really liked:

The new circumstances demanded that people become more ethically self-guiding: People had to be able to put themselves in the shoes of those around them. Those who could not navigate situations in which rules were changing or could not master the skills of empathetic understanding would find themselves unable to manage their behavior wisely and ethically; increasingly, Drayton asserted, they would be seen as "loose cannons" and marginalized within society.

I think some people missed that memo.