NaBloPoMo '08 Postmortem

I received one of those self-help feel good-emails from a friend and one of the "twelve commandments" for happiness was "Don't hold postmortems".  What?  For a person who analyzes everything to death, that's like saying knock me out cold right now so I can stop thinking.  Every work project that I've been involved with has had huge post-mortems. Usually they are quite difficult and painful as everyone knows that most of the same mistakes will be made again.  There is no way a project would be approved if the real budget and schedule were presented up front.  All project managers underestimate the amount of roadblocks and challenges that a large project faces.  But to completely forgo a postmortem?  Everyone needs an opportunity to get things off their chests even if it doesn't necessarily produce a positive result for the future. I had to dig up the email and share the picture:



For NaBloPoMo '08, I was completely obsessed with getting posts ready for this month starting even in October.  I was afraid to be left high and dry over the weekends and during my business trip, so I would crank out five posts at a time and have them published in the future.  However, this did nothing for keeping things current.  Like I didn't even have a proper Thanksgiving post like I did last year.  But I loved seeing the posts neatly lined up to be posted at 12:05AM every day.  It was total control and organizational heaven.  And it was great to finally get some of those old drafts completed (some were more than a year old). But of course, since the creative juices got flowing, I ended up with many more drafts than I did when I started the month.  At least the blog isn't going dead anytime soon.  Since I have so many posts written beforehand, I will probably have posts for the first week of December while we're on vacation. BTW, even this post was written on November 26 (and I'm on vacation right now). So congrats to me on another NaBloPoMo in the bag!

I Can Haz Crafty!

I bought this craft kit for a haunted tree house while I was on one of my business trips, probably out of guilt to make sure that I would spend "quality" time with the kids when I got back.  This would have been a great idea except for the fact that I am not crafty at all.  Sure, I can knit and cross stitch, but glue?  No skillz there.  But my kids have had enough training in this sort of thing from school and preschool to help me along. 

In the beginning, I assembled the house with Dova outside on the deck while Adam buzzed around the yard on his dirt bike (nerve wracking at best - I have only one set of eyes).  After Adam joined us, I had to constantly bite my tongue, trying not to yell at their unbridled enthusiasm and spoiling our quality time.  It was pretty hard to let go of total control and perfection, but I did let them place most of the doodads.  I took ownership of the ladder, the black spider with the red jewel eyes and the rising moon with the face.

I think the tree house turned out pretty darned good, as well as the photo, with real fall leaves in the background.

Conservation of Good Portraits

A while back, I posted a set of conservation laws for parents that still seem to hold true, especially when it comes to good behavior and good eating.  Doug thinks that these "laws" are self-prophesizing, because I keep saying them out loud.  Now I have a new one to add, conservation of good portraits.  If one child has a good portrait, the other won't.  Here are the specimens:



This is Dova's first great portrait.  She actually looks as cute as she does in real life, complete with a mischievous smile. In previous years, she looked:


scared,                 sort of smiling (this is good compared to goofy below),


and bored.



Adam usually has a pretty good portrait, but this fake smile is too much like a grimace.  Unfortunately, we will be on vacation when retakes are scheduled, so we'll have to live with this one.  In previous years, he looked:


Cute,                                laughing,


goofy,           and OK except that someone combed his hair straight down.

I thought their sibling portrait this year came out well, but Doug thinks it looks weird because Dova's head looks so much bigger than Adam's.



Since I've posted all of their other school portraits, I'll have to post these other great sibling shots from previous years for completeness:



One thing is for sure, I'll never tire of looking at their portraits!

The Little Mermaid rises from my DVD player

The Little Mermaid (Two-Disc Platinum Edition)

Two years ago in 2006, Disney opened its vault and produced the two-disc platinum edition of The Little Mermaid.  Since Dova was nearly three years old and I had a $3 coupon from BJs, I bought it for her thinking that she might like it.  Little did I know that I was really introducing her to the Disney Princess cult. Our trip to Walt Disney World a couple months later sealed the induction.  Dova watched the movie EVERY SINGLE DAY and became obsessed with mermaids (still is). A few weeks after I bought the DVD set, she lost the DVD.  I came home one day and Doug told me that she simply couldn't find it.  Now, Dova has a penchant for losing stuff by putting things in the darndest places, so we turned the house upside down looking for it. Day after day we searched for the missing DVD.  We looked in the kitchen drawers, clothes drawers, bookshelves (extremely tedious), toy boxes, baseboard vents and even outside.  Doug and I became totally obsessed that the DVD went missing.  After a few weeks, she kept asking to see the movie again, so I broke down and bought a used copy of the original DVD on eBay.  I wasn't going to pay top dollar for another platinum edition. The quality of the original DVD was definitely subpar compared to the new enhanced color version.  And it kept skipping near the end so I was constantly rubbing the scratches out with toothpaste.  We had two DVD boxes for The Little Mermaid on our shelf, the platinum 2-disc version with only disc 2, and the old original version.  Finally after a year or so, we resigned ourselves to the fact that we would never see disc 1 again.

Almost exactly two years later, Sandy at Momisodes posted this story about how they lost a CD from the library.  Magically, they found it inside of the CD player after taking it apart.  Her husband had moved the player and thought that it may have gotten lost inside.  Now this thought never occurred to us.  Our player is stacked with other electronic equipment inside a cabinet, so we didn't think a DVD could jump out of the tray inside of the device.  But seeing that picture in Sandy's post made me curious.  After the kids went to sleep that night, I pulled out the DVD player and shook it.  There was definitely something loose inside.  I grabbed a screwdriver and disassembled the unit.  Doug watched over me with bated breath.  As the cover slid off, there was the DVD in perfect condition!  After two years, we had finally found it!!  And to think that we berated Dova for years for losing the DVD.  The next day we played it for them, and sure enough, the color was dazzling and both kids were mesmerized all over.  Thank you Sandy for saving our sanity and finding our DVD!  Without that post, we probably would've gotten rid of the DVD player when it finally broke and never opened it up to find it.

WW - Rollerskating and Rollerblading

I guess all those ice skating and hockey lessons have paid off.
Happy Thanksgiving!

Tuesday Toot - Adam's awesome penalty kick

In this shot, Adam looks like he could be a teenager, not the youngest player at seven on his U10 team.  He turned eight on his last game of the season.

Adam's soccer team started out with a bang, but they had faltered since. In the first couple games, Adam scored goals, but by the end of the season he was placed on defense because of his ability to run down the ball and clear it out.  He was always asked to perform goal kicks because he has quite a kick.  Here are two shots showing his powerful yet not always controlled kick.



At Adam's second to last game, I took Dova and my camera, but her high-maintenance antics prevented me from taking many pictures.  There was a penalty against the opposing team and Adam was going to perform the penalty kick.  He didn't have a good angle being halfway to the sidelines as you can see below.  Can you tell I spend too much time as a Powerpoint engineer?

The opposing team lined up in front of their goalie with their arms up in the air. Adam stepped back and ran up to the ball.  I took a quick picture with my camera and then put it down because I wanted to see his shot with my own eyes.  He kicked the ball squarely and it soared into the air.  The ball peaked several feet above the hands of the opposing team and then dropped down under the top of the goal and hit the back of the net.  It was absolutely perfect, like a pro.  The parents on our team jumped to their feet and cheered for Adam, and his whole team jumped up and down.  I was beaming in pride for my boy.  It turned out to be his team's only goal, and the opposing team scored a goal later on ending the game in a tie.  Afterwards, I kept congratulating him on his awesome goal and retold the story to Doug over and over again.

 
Hosted by Mommy Community.

One Word Meme

Melissa at Taking What is Left posted this meme and I'm following suit.  Consider yourself tagged if you'd like.

Answer the following questions using one word (this is incredibly hard for me as you can tell):

Where is your cell phone? purse
Where is your significant other? chauffeuring
Your hair color? brown (not black, but that's a whole other post)
Your mother? obsessed (with fish oil these days)
Your father? dead
Your favorite thing? family
Your dream last night? college
Your dream/goal? happiness
The room you’re in? cube
Your hobby? blogging
Your fear? death (of my loved ones, not myself)
Where do you want to be in 6 years? 47
Where were you last night? massage
What you’re not? ordinary
One of your wish-list items? microphones (I'll be a podcaster someday yet!) 
Where you grew up? New York (can't make one word of it!)
The last thing you did? verify (bugs at work)
What are you wearing? purple
Your TV? CRT
Your pet? black
Your computer? noisy
Your mood? professional (sneaking in a post at work, after all)
Missing someone? no
Your car? BMW (do acronyms count as one word?)
Something you’re not wearing? make-up
Favorite store? Target
Your summer? busy
Love someone? many
Your favorite color? purple (double answer, how unoriginal!)
When is the last time you laughed? kids
Last time you cried? movie

Did I pass?

The Secret to Perfect Children's Hair

Dova insists on having long hair, but it can be a constant source of screaming when it comes to brushing. She has a knack for getting her hair into anything sticky.  Luckily, we have products to help us with her hair.  When it comes to hair products, I can unabashedly say that we are a Suave family.  Sure, it is partially because I'm too cheap frugal, but they really make great products, especially for kids.  When Suave came out with the strawberry shampoo in the pink bottle, I bet they totally cornered the market with girls. It even smells delicious! We also use the Suave conditioner and detangler spray on her hair all the time.  She has the most beautiful fine hair with natural red and golden highlights.  And I know that it's in good hands with Suave.



Don't let Adam's messy hair fool you, he simply refused to have it brushed for this picture (and Dova was in one of her "moods"). He got the best of mom and dad's hair, super thick (mom) and curly (dad).  He uses the watermelon soccer shampoo in his favorite color, green.  What could be more perfect?  Being able to knock them down perhaps?



And Suave is just a super cool company.  You have to check out the hysterical In the Motherhood video series starring Jenny McCarthy, Leah Remini and Chelsea Handler. This web series is sponsored by Suave and written by moms like you (if you're a mom reading this) and me (if I could actually get my act together and submit a story).  They also sponsor Glamour Reel Moments featuring short films directed by women in Hollywood.

Photo Hunters - Reflection

I just came back from a business trip in Seattle, where it rained incessantly for three days. This shot was taken from a trip two years ago, where we got several beautiful sunny days. On the Space needle observation deck, I took this reflection of the vista and me against the glass window. Ack! Am I wearing a dress? We also had a group lunch in the restaurant. Here's a close-up of me in the window with my Silver Surfer (aka Canon S2 IS, yes I name my cameras).

Another Maddening Conversation with Dova

Here's one of the maddening conversations that I had with Dova recently :

Mom:  Dova, you're going to take a bath tonight.
Dova:  No, I'm not.
Mom:  Yes you are, you need to.
Dova:  I'm agreeing with you.  No bath.
Mom:  What??  You're not agreeing with me, I said you have to take a bath!
Dova:  NO!
Mom:  YES!
Dova:  You'll have to take the challenge.
Mom:  You're a challenge all right!
Dova:  I'll take your word for it.

Where does this 4-year-old come up with these sayings? It is so hard to keep a straight face when she says them.  I actually had this conversation with her on the phone, while I was traveling in Seattle.  Doug was having a hard time getting her to take a bath so I talked to her, thinking that I could straighten her out.  I felt like reaching through the phone line and strangling her like Bart Simpson.

In reality, she loves bath time once you get her in.  She even posed for these photographs.  Here is an eerie one taken totally by accident (for lack of a real flash, I put the black lens cap over the on-camera flash to divert the direct light):



It is almost too creepy, like she's a ghost or a ball-jointed doll. So I have to show it with the fun picture on top (with the full-on flash) to take the unreal edge off.


Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

Thankfully I'm not a packrat!!

What Kind of Packrat Are You?

Minimalist Maniac You must have gotten a packratitis vaccine, because you don’t seem to have a trace of it! You hate clutter, and you never hang on to anything you don’t need. Your friends and family members tremble in fear when you offer to help them clean up their homes. Next time you need something you don’t happen to have, try finding the necessities at discount prices on Kijiji.com. For more information about National Declutter Day, or to win a visit from TLC's "Clean Sweep" star Tava Smiley, visit www.kijiji.com.

Fun quizzes, surveys & blog quizzes by

Apparently I have reached materialistic zen where I try not to accumulate possessions or hold on to anything. I am constantly trying to get rid of stuff and have a critical eye about getting anything new. Of course, I can't help myself when it comes to gadgets and games, but they don't take up a lot of space.  Usually...

I found this quiz through Kijiji, a free, local classifieds website, who declares this Saturday, November 22, National Declutter Day.

WW - Dova and Adam meet Holly and Hal

Holly & Hal Moose™ are the newest additions to the Build-A-Bear Workshop. Enter to win a $25 gift certificate for Build-A-Bear Workshop over at contest bytes.

I'm In Crossword Geek Heaven!

Image from Wired Blog.

We record The Simpsons on our DVR at home and I usually half-watch it while I peck away at my computer nearby.  Last night, Doug put on an episode and I glanced over to see Lisa doing a crossword puzzle on an upright board. I said, "Hey, that looks just like Wordplay."  Wordplay is a documentary about the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament starring the editor of The New York Times crossword, Will Shortz.  You'd think this would be a snoozer of a movie, but it was actually "on the edge of your seat" exciting.  I rooted for the underdog Tyler Hinman, and loved following the lives of the incredibly talented contestants.  Celebrities including Jon Stewart (hysterical), Bob Dole, and Bill Clinton also appeared in it.  Will Shortz is extremely charismatic and plenty of women (including a friend of mine) have mortal crushes on him.  At the end of the Simpsons episode, Will and a puzzlemaker, Merl Reagle, made cameo appearances.  Wow, how cool!  But it turned out to be even cooler when I found out more today.

On my way home, I listened to Sunday's episode of NPR's Sunday Puzzle podcast like I do every Monday.  Weekend Edition anchor Liane Hansen mentioned that Will was going to appear on The Simpsons that night.  It was a brand new Simpsons episode, "Homer and Lisa Exchange Cross Words." And then I read further in the Wordplay blog that all the puzzles that appeared in the episode were written by Merl Reagle himself.  To put icing on the cake, the puzzle that appears at the end of the episode was actually the puzzle that appeared in the Sunday New York Times on the same day!  Wow, how cool is that!

Of course this is only cool if you love crosswords. When I was in high school, I subscribed to Games Magazine and did all the crosswords.  Admittedly, I wasn't all that good at it, as I often took the easy clues.  In my last job, a couple of colleagues and I got together every Friday morning over donuts and did the Boston Globe cross word on-line, trying to make the best time. Most of our times were around 8 minutes, but once I blew through one puzzle in a little over 5 minutes.  I love the instant feedback of knowing when you've hit a wrong letter, so sitting down and doing a crossword puzzle on paper these days is a rare occurrence for me. 

When I asked my husband (a non-puzzler), what he thought about the puzzle appearing in the paper as well as the Simpsons episode, he said, "It's queer, but cool."  I guess you have to be a crossword geek to appreciate it.

11-18-08 Edited to add - I totally forgot to add the Mr. Burns and Mr. Smithers (as voiced by Harry Shearer) read the prizes for the Sunday Puzzle as well. Awesome!

Fight Club - Does this make me a Brad Pitt fan?

Fight Club (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)

In our household, Doug and I have totally different tastes in movies. I love suspense, drama and dark psychological thrillers (and classic musicals too, but that's another story). He likes more lighter fare, such as comedies, and even romance (gag me!). I don't like extremely violent films, and I actually walked out of Natural Born Killers. But in the case of Fight Club, I heard enough about it to know that I had to see it. Doug refused to see it because it had fighting in it. But I won't rule out a movie on violence alone, as it is often a necessary device in a story such as this.

I saw Fight Club on one of my business trips last year. It totally blew my mind and I loved it. Yes, fighting is a component, but the psychological mind warp is the main crux of the movie. The inner life of an insomniac exposed (which I can relate to). It pushes sanity right to the edge and into psychosis.  After the plot revealed itself in the end, I thought of watching it again with the twist in mind. But there was no need to, since the scenes had been seared into my memory. I can remember just about every scene, in great detail, even now a year later. I tried to convince Doug to watch it after I got home, but he still refused. I tried to explain that it was originally optioned by a female producer, Laura Zisken, but that didn't help either. Not even saying that it is now one of my all time favorite movies could convince him.

The fact that I love this movie and several other similar movies with Brad Pitt makes me wonder if I can call myself a fan of Brad Pitt. I always thought of him as a pretty boy with no substance. Maybe my previous dislike for him comes from my disdain of Jennifer Aniston (I totally don't understand why guys find her attractive - not cute, not smart and not talented). These movies have totally changed my perspective of Brad: Se7en, 12 Monkeys, Fight Club, and Babel. These are not your run-of-the-mill blockbusters. Yes, he is wildly successful and the target of paparazzi especially in conjuction with Angelina Jolie. But have his "fans" really seen these movies? Se7en is quite disturbing is definitely not for the light of heart (I will not be asking Doug to see that one). Are these movies successful because of him, or is he successful because of them?

This also reminds me of girls who like Johnny Depp vs. girls who like Brad Pitt. (I picked two random links of crazy fans from YouTube, and I think the Brad Pitt girls are embarrassing...) Ten years ago, I would've have definitely said Johnny Depp for his looks and quirky yet sensitive roles in movies. I could not get past Brad Pitt's pretty face and actually look at his work. But in the last few years, these movies have made me think twice. Perhaps I will have to join the ranks of the mindless fandom, but only as a moviephile.  But still, if I were to choose, I would still pick Depp.

I can be a talking head too!

At BlogHer Boston, I did an interview with Hooked on Phonics about the trials and triumphs of getting Adam to read. If you're a long time reader, you've heard the story about how Adam finally broke through and started reading on his own. If not, check out this video where I blah blah blah about it.

Side note:  Watching myself on this video is extremely painful, even worse than listening to myself in the audio interview with Manic Mommies. And what's with my hands waving around?  I'm Chinese, not Italian (apparently I can insult two stereotypes at once)!  So if I ever decide to branch outside of blogging, it will be strictly audio without video, as I could never survive editing video material of myself.  And just like I use photographs to distract people from my writing in blogging, I would probably use music (piano playing) to distract people from my speaking.  Maybe I just like a lot of props .