Random Winter Olympics TV musings…
Having CBC, Canadian TV, as an alternative for watching the Olympics is great. I even like the ads better, especially Frank and Gordon, the Bell Canada spokesbeavers. And who better to cover winter sports but the Canadians? I taped the opening ceremonies on both NBC and CBC and though I didn’t watch the entire CBC version (which was broadcast live), I’m pretty sure NBC cut out significant portions of sections that dragged on (some of the Renaissance and Baroque scenes) and, unfortunately, some nice transitions that brought the storyline together. And, just as NBC is interrupting their Olympics coverage with the Daytona 500 this coming Sunday, CBC kept their 54 year old institution “Hockey Night in Canada” on the schedule last Saturday. And speaking of hockey, it was great to see ex-San Jose Sharks goaltender Arturs “I want to be like wall” Irbe carrying the Latvian flag in the parade of nations.

When you visit the powder room of parents of toddlers don’t assume that the toilet paper roll isn’t actually hung on the spindle because they were too lazy or too busy to get around to it. It may be because their small child has learned the concept of spinning. Or it could be because they were too busy to get around to it. You may never learn the truth.

Four Things
Only because I miss her a LOT (and I want to be like all the cool kids) do I take the baton from Kathryn.

Four jobs I’ve had:
1. Selling jewelry (“pearls go beautifully with everything from denim to silk”)
2. Singing the GE theme song in pseudo-Chinese garb for an in-house GE commercial (“we bring good things to life”)
3. Driving the shuttle van around Wellesley College (textbooks are expensive!)
4. Programmer, software developer, software engineer (it’s all the same thing)

Four movies I can watch over and over:
1. A Room with a View
2. The Matrix
3. The Shawshank Redemption
4. Breakfast at Tiffany’s (almost anything with Audrey Hepburn)

Four places I’ve lived:
1. Wilton, CT
2. Wellesley, MA
3. Sunnyvale, CA
4. Mountain View, CA
(3 & 4 are the same in the grand scheme of things, but I haven’t lived in very many places)

Four TV shows I love:
1. Moonlighting
2. Sports Night (Sorkin is The Best)
3. Good Eats
4. Gilmore Girls

Four places I’ve vacationed:
1. Olomouc, Czech Republic
2. Verona, Italy
3. Cannon Beach, OR
4. Block Island, RI

Four of my favorite dishes:
1. My mom’s scallion pancakes
2. Pretty much any kind of pizza
3. Panzanella salad with top notch ingredients
4. Cheesecake

Four sites I visit daily:
1. Blogging Baby
2. flickr.com
3. AlterSlash (the unofficial SlashDot digest)
4. The New York Times

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. The Met’s Costume Institute
2. Playing with my son in the living room
3. Powell’s Bookstore
4. Watching a Broadway musical

Four bloggers I am tagging:
1. Skot (cuz if he does it, I can watch milk come out of my nose)
2. frykitty (mwah mwah!)
3. Medley (her tagline does include the word “Personal”
4. Pavel (because I promised him an IngenuiTEA)

I thought perhaps the stamp rate change had somehow hindered the USPS in creating a Chinese New Year stamp this year, but apparently there was none issued because they are done with all the animals. They finished off with the monkey in 2004, issued a commemorative sheet of all twelve animals in 2005 and … that’s it. If they don’t want to bother with new art, I hope they will at least reissue the appropriate animal with updated postage every year.

Lucy Jane Wasserstein, your mom loved you very very very much. Even if she described your conception as “a surreal cross between PBS’s ‘Nature’ and the Food Channel.” Or maybe especially because she did.

Playwright and author Wendy Wasserstein died on Monday. She was fifty-five. Here is my favorite monologue from her play “An American Daughter” wherein the Jewish African-American Doctor Judith Kaufman remembers some advice during Tashlikh.

When I started reading the cover article in the Seattle Times’ Sunday magazine “A Man, A Fence, An Empire“, I was expecting a boring “entrepreneur IPO’d, bought a mansion, blah blah” story. But the details in the breadth of coverage are fascinating. First there’s the atmosphere of the main character’s empire’s headquarters: a shack on a pier with two outhouses. And said character, Rick Preble, is from Maine so I imagined his “beguiling accent” as he told the story of how a little pile of wood outside a New Hampshire doorway led him to a niche market in fence postcaps that provided $15 million in sales last year. Along the way I found out that Lowe’s store design and marketing are more attractive to women, who typically hold the postcap buying power as it’s a decorative item. And I learned how Preble coped with making the hard choice to move his manufacturing to China, and that, contrary to what you may believe, he is getting high quality, detail oriented work that he would not have obtained from the ultimate mechanization of his production in the U.S. Preble and his partner (owner of that little pile of wood) sold the company for $8.5 million, but Preble has stayed on in his shack on the pier and travels the world evangelizing his postcaps.

When my friend Pavel moved from the SF Bay area to the Seattle area he was unable to find Republic of Tea’s Cardamon Cinnamon in local stores. I kept an eye out whenever I saw Republic of Tea displays and happened across it at Whole Foods in Seattle (this was before the Bellevue store opened) but they only had it loose, not in bags. He decided this was acceptable, but since then has been trying various methods of infusing loose tea in his mug at work. For reasons best left to psychoanalysts specializing in some odd cross-section of typical female behavior and Chinese culture, I felt responsible for achieving closure on his tea enjoyment. Thus when I came across the Teastick (and found out they take Paypal) I had to get it for him. Here’s his Teastick review. And here’s a photo I took of all the packaging it arrived in. (As for me, I just dump loose tea in the bottom of a teapot or mug. That way I can read my fortune.)

My father used to read me Dr. Seuss’ “Hop on Pop” and it’s the book I first remember recognizing words in. Thus, it’s the first book I ever read! I hadn’t looked at it since I was a kid but I bought a board book version for our son so I could read it to him. He loves it and actually asks for it in baby babble: “hob bob pob?”. In the book there’s a drawing of “Red, Ned, Ted and Ed in Bed.” I’ve decided that “Ted” is actually a self portrait of the author, Theodor Seuss Geisel. I’m sure I’m right because he looks like an actual human instead of a typical Seuss character and, well, his name was “Ted”, so of course it’s him. Perhaps this is common knowledge amongst Seuss fans. Now that I’ve noticed this neat self reference, the book is even more fun.

“Everything’s under control in there.” “He’s not happy, but he’s doing fine.” “It’s all good.” These were among the comments I heard from men exiting the restroom at a museum while my husband was inside with our crying (he hates diaper changes) toddler on the (thank you progressive culture) changing table. I was sitting contentedly outside on a bench, but all the “I’ve been there too” dads felt that a report from the interior was necessary for my sanity. And since I started laughing hysterically every time I received an unsolicited update, they must’ve thought I was pretty far gone.

California police officer attacked by pack of angry Chihuahuas. It’s not good to laugh at a police officer or anyone who is attacked by dogs but…I did anyway. That’s five little Chihuahuas. Minor injuries. He was back at work two hours later after a trip to the hospital. And when I noticed the webpage had been named “webankles30.html” I started laughing all over again. Then I recovered and did my usual weblog posting research (thinking, there’s no way I’m really going to write about this) and found the headline “Cop Attacked By Angry Dogs — Itty-Bitty Angry Dogs” and completely lost it. More wassail anyone?