On my hubby's request, I whipped up this Japanese side dish, Hijiki. It's a type of seaweed that is seasoned with a hint of sweetness. It doesn't look very pretty in this picture, but it tastes pretty good. It's incredibly easy to make, all you need is oil, hijiki, carrots, sugar, soy sauce, water and mirin.
Stealthy Josh snapped a Kodak moment of me, unconscious and drooling on the bus.
I have been bugging Josh for ages to blog or sign up for Facebook to no avail. When I discovered that he posted two videos from our trip to Alaska to a website, I was really tickled to see some evidence of his Internet self-expression. As of tonight, he's already received 497 views on the running down from the Harding Ice Field video and 725 for the whale splashing in the ocean one; probably more views than my last six months of blogging combined!
Two people even left the same comment for the ice field video, "GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY", they write. I don't know if they're talking about his sexual orientation, his mood or something else. Watch the ice field video, I think it's pretty amusing. He is very talented running downhill in the snow and it's very funny that he's filming himself while doing it. Unfortunately, the video doesn't show the steepness very well - the only way to make it down alive or uninjured is to be masterful at managing downward momentum. I'm very fearful and extremely stinky when it comes to that, so I'm in complete awe and reverence.
We're back from a week in Alaska and here are my random thoughts:
1. Alaska is vast and remote. We didn't get cell phone reception for the most part and when we did it was poor. This was a real shocker since we got very good internet/cell phone speeds in Hawaii. Also, in Hawaii, I had access to regular toilets. I won't go into details about Alaska's but it's was not uncommon for me to want to pee on the side of the road instead of my other options.
2. The most enjoyable parts of the trip: white water rafting in pouring rain (whee! the water was so cold on contact), flying in an airplane and then landing on a glacier (beautiful mountain views), having time to watch a romantic comedy (Definitely, maybe) with very little guilt.
3. Mostly I was homesick and missed my kids desperately. My father in law has a nice blog post about his experience with them.
4. I do not like hiking in the snow! Especially when there is elevation because I hate/fear the trip down. The 7.7 mile rountrip to the Harding Ice Field is ridiculously dangerous. Parts of it were like rock climbing (of course we had zero equipment) and other parts were just too death defying for me. Uncomfortable, dangerous and no fun -- I have a video of Josh wringing out his wet socks after we were done.
5. Completely overrated - the aformentioned Harding Ice Fields (best hike in Alaska, touted our B&B host. Ha!), Denali national park (SUCKS big time: 12 hours on a bus, getting up at 4:30 AM, seeing wildlife like moose, bear, caribou, fox, etc. sounds impressive until you realize they were seen as specks...Would have been nice to have binoculars...still you feel pretty removed.), short cruise in Seward (glaciers were nice, but I'd rather climb/walk/hike/fly to see them).
6. I was very disturbed by how people don't value animal life as much. Furs are more than condoned; they're a way of life. Thinking about how smart salmon are to return to the place where they were born and that large fish like halibut are shot before they're pulled on board makes me conflicted to eat them. Confronted by the cycle of life/food chain (wolves eating moose, bears eating wolves, etc. makes me sad. I want to be a vegetarian. I've reduced my meat consumption in half, but it's not enough. I feel guilty about eating eggs and drinking milk too. It's been on my mind a lot - the struggle and conflict to change my diet.
My final recommendation is that instead of going to Alaska, I would go to Iceland.
These are samples of the grotesque/illegal items available for sale in that creepy store.
I was really sad to be away from my kids for a week. Now that I'm back it's like we're strangers. They've grown and matured so much I barely recognize them and I have a sinking feeling Dazee doesn't remember me that well. So heartbreaking...
I couldn't sleep a wink on our red eye flight; it was like torture.
When I was young, I was able to sleep at anytime anywhere. I remember
sleeping for 20 hours straight on a flight to Bangkok. When we landed,
I was upset and groggy from a deep sleep, I even forgot my luggage on
the plane. I could never see myself be this carefree or irresponsible
now.
We just came out of a very creepy store that sold everything that I
thought was illegal. IVORY, boasts the sign in the front. In addition
to ivory, they were selling mammoth tusks, skunk skins, dog heads,
plastic beads, knives and a taxidermist zoo, complete with bear, lion,
moose, elk, rabbit, etc.
It's a quarter to 9 and I'm getting ready to ride a tram that's going
to take us up 2300 feet to dine at the top of a mountain with views of
glaciers and everything around us. The sun is shining as bright as it
did at 9 o'clock this morning and I just slathered on some sunscreen.
We're planning to take a hike after dinner and get back into our room
by midnight! I'm very pleased about where we're staying tonight
because it's a 4 star hotel. Nice work, Josh.
I finished putting the rest of the 2 dozen or so plants RC gave me into the ground today. I hope they thrive. I will update you with pictures when I get back from my trip to Alaska next week.
I've been feeling a lot of guilt about how I should be spending more time at home or mother differently. And that maybe I should have waited for more spacing between my children so that I can give better individual attention to each. Today, someone at work provided some words of comfort and hopefully wisdom to me. She has teenage kids and said that if you take a group of kids, look at them, interview them, look at their grades/activities, it's not like you can separate them into two distinct groups: Oh-those-kids-moms-worked-full-time-jobs and these-kids-came-from-households-with-stay-at-home-moms.
It's a relief to know that they'll all thrive and that it's hard to screw up big time. A lot of it seems hard-wired and beyond your control?
I can not believe how sweet my friend RC is...after reading my blog which lamented how I won't have any Thai basil in the garden, she took the bull by the horns and bought me 16 lively plants! Contrast this to my husband, who ordered the seeds at least a month too late from a sketchy purveyor in eBay (he only paid $1 but the seeds never arrived). The plants are so nice, I'm sure she got them by doing that normal people do - going into a nice store and getting some help from knowledgeable sales people which ended with the reward of going home with some nice looking plants. If I were to get a divorce from my friend, she's going to have to pay a lot in alimony. I'm going to argue to the judge that she got me accustomed to a certain style of living. I'm sure she'll retort that my husband's lifestyle should be the marker but I'll argue that he just was an affair based on looks while she was the person I depended on for plants, food, conversation, etc.!
Here we are, catching her in the act at various stages. Dazee pretty much stuffs as much food as she can in her mouth. She stops when her gag reflex kicks in and then she throws up. Yesterday, I pulled out a grape tomato, and two large strawberries. It was like seeing a magic trick (the one where he pulls out a very long string of hankerchiefs from something unlikely, like a parrot's throat). As I pulled each morsel out of her mouth, I was in complete amazement over how she got that much volume of food inside her mouth.
It was like running a high quality day care today; we had 4 children in our backyard. High quality because the ratio of adult to children was 1 to 1. Although some of us weren't paying that much attention...
I like to think my 2nd daughter is blond. Her hair is lighter than everyone else in the family. But when we put her next to an Aryan baby, it's pretty clear, she's a brunette, and a chunky one to boot.
A friend of Josh's from college, (names have been changed to protect their privacy), Smoke, his wife and one year old daughter came to stay one night with us. It was a lot of fun having them and for me, it was interesting to see how another couple behaves towards each other and towards their child. Mostly it made me feel like J and I are so type A. They are so relax-o. Smoke even fell asleep on the living room floor, when he woke, I offered some fruit medley, he declined ever so contentedly, "No thanks, I don't think I could be happier than I am right now." But we only had a half hour to get them out the door to the airport! Josh and I started shitting bricks for them. We tried to rush them, but Smoke gave me a nice talk at a very leisurely pace on how he's missed flights before and concluded that it's really OK to miss them. One of the most egregious examples he gave was missing a flight to a work retreat. He had a to buy another ticket on the spot on his own dime! To which Josh offered his iron-clad philosophy, "We don't miss flights in this family. That's not an option." I felt a little nostalgic for my old life, where I didn't stress about missing flights. I guess I could go either way, Type Anal or zzz. Being with J has made me a little more uptight about flights.
Whenever there's a bee nearby, I always thought Josh went nuts. He would go into this panicky, fearful, over-protective mode - "Stay away!" he would bark, while commanding me to run as fast as possible. If I didn't go berserk like him and make a show of flight-or-fight, he would take matters into his own hands and try to push or throw me away from the bee. In fact, I always thought he was over-reacting and treated his reaction as Tarzan-like chest thumping but in a funny way because a big man was afraid of a little bee.
Well I got my come-uppance last week when I got stung by a bee. It's been ridiculously painful. Because it's only the second bee sting in my lifetime, I didn't really have a good idea of how much it can hurt.
Then I recalled that in Thai, a bee sting is called a bee punch. That's a much more accurate statemtent of what happened to me. I got punched by a bee.
Why are companies such flexible job haters? Who came up with this 9-5 (or longer), five days a week bullshit? Many people I know would love to have a flexible job - I know I would love it and be just as productive if not more, if I could get Wednesdays off or work from home 2 days a week or work part time and job-share with someone.
Adding to my idea of mandating food scrap recycling, I'm ready to impose that everyone with a suitable plot of land grow something edible or raise sheep, pigs, chickens or cows. Wouldn't it be great if we could exchange produce/meat/livestock products with neighbors? I offered this idea to Josh on the train but he poo-pooed it, thinking that we can't abandon technology and go back to our ancestral model of acquiring food. Ironically, I thought growing your own stuff is more ethical and sustainable...Last night I was reading a few things about Monsanto, how much chemical processing and fossil fuels it takes to get food to the table and how evil and scary certain industrial practices are. I really feel bad for how animals are treated and scared about all the antibiotics and hormones used in meat/dairy/egg processing.
Why doesn't every municipality mandate food scrap recycling? An added benefit is that we will have compost available for the entire town. Instead, every town I've ever lived in has recycling only for glass, metal and paper. It takes a lot of energy to recycle these things and who knows if it's worth it in the end? Whereas composting food scrap is easy, fast and really works.
So my hubby "hijacks" an email I receive from a friend asking about backpacks to carry babies in on hiking trips. He preaches to her about his moral values- "Cheap Cheap here (we use "husband" and "cheap" interchangeably.) We have the "backcountry" by kelty kids. You can have it (or borrow) if you like. It's decent for the kid carrying (well padded and comfortable), but doesn't have any extra storage. I think we've used two times ... maybe three. Not enough for each family to own one ... I think one per every 4 families is probably enough .. maybe 1 per 5 or 6 families. So feel free to use - also to come visit again. I have a push lawnmower (no gas or electricity) ... you can try that out too if you want. ;)"
Many moms give their 2-3 yr old ice cream at play dates. I feel like I can't refuse it for Sadie because it would create such an awkward situation. I don't give my children ice cream - ever. Yesterday at the pre-school picnic, even the school arranged for an ice cream truck. Both children and adults were lining up for treats, but Josh and I poo-pooed it and even told the school director we thought it was a mistake.
Good thing that my deprived daughter doesn't even like ice cream, maybe because she's never been exposed to it. The few times she's been tainted by getting it, she took a bite or two and turned up her nose. Yay Sadie!!!
I wonder, while growing up, if it ever occurred to my whitey white Jewy husband that he'd be living with an East Asian harem.
Here are the fabled monogrammed towels -- I pulled together three of them.
Whoa! The grass really grew at my mother's old house.
Whenever I lose anything important that I use on a daily basis, like a wallet, I always feel shame, despair, regret and helplessness. Recently I lost my cell phone. Predictably, psychological trauma unfolded. For the first 4-5 days, I pretended I knew where it was. Oh I left it in the office or in my coat pocket, I repeated to myself. My husband ignored my self-delusion, sprang to action by activating a new phone for me. Even though I had a new phone, I still had a sinking feeling and felt pangs for the old one. I had a degree of certainty that I lost it either at the NY public library or at Naniwa, a Japanese restaurant. For a few more days, I did nothing to recover my cell phone except fret about it a few times daily. Then by day 10, I started writing down recover cell phone on my to-do list. I still did nothing about it.
Today, day 15, I got the courage to call the library. I got disconnected or hung up on, about six times by their lost and found department. When I finally I got through, I was asked to describe my cell phone. I was at a loss for words. How the fuck do you describe a cell phone? I blathered something unintelligible. Verizon, I shouted (as this is the service provider). Then I helpfully blurted, Motorola. He put me on hold, came back and said, I didn't find anything and then hung up on me. I was at the peak of frustration because I wondered if he didn't find anything based on my very descriptive description or he really went into the lost and found box, encountered a black hole and dutifully reported back the truth to me.
After this unsavory experience, I met Josh and a friend for lunch at Naniwa. As soon as the waitress came by, I relayed to her how I lost a cell phone. I could see Josh rolling his eyes. He pretty much wrote it off and considered it gone. She told me that I should go check with the hostess because they did find a cell phone and do it now before it gets too busy. Excited by this shred of hope, I ran up to the front and told the waitress at the bar that I lost a cell phone. She nodded and told me to go to the coat check guy. I told him about my situation and that I lost it about two weeks ago. He made me feel as if he did have it. After a few minutes of wait time, he came back with a shoe box full of random possessions, like an umbrella and other stuff, each item carefully wrapped up with white printer paper, secured by a rubber band, with a date and Japanese lettering written on them. Cell phone, cell phone, he recited as he rummaged through this box and then he handed me something that looked like a pickle jar. He laughed and I laughed. Then he gave me my cell phone! I was so happy, I wanted to hug and kiss him. And I could tell he was really happy for me too.
I giddily ran back to our table and relayed this wonderful story to my lunch companions. I felt like the people at Naniwa really know how to run a lost and found. Every person at Naniwa that I talked to knew about the cell phone. It was like they have a Town Hall meeting at every opening or closing to talk about all that was found, so that they can provide a reassuring experience to frazzled customers like me. A well run lost and found is a real competitive advantage. I think they should go into a highly lucrative consulting business of how to run a tip top shape lost and found.
Having worked with Josh a few times in the garden, I can make a hasty conclusion that his approach is more big picture to my tendency to be a perfectionist.
When we planted the cherry tree, he dug a pathetic, shallow hole. I insisted on something deeper. Maybe it's easier for me to be more exacting because I don't have to do the work; in the case of the cherry tree hole, he was forced to make it bigger at my behest.
I don't know if I can change my garden personality. Today for example, I got really upset that he tried to transplant multiple bulbs at one time into shallow holes, while I spent a lot of time preparing a nice trench for them. After that, I gingerly placed each bulb into their new deep home. Because I started working pretty late in the day, I quickly ran out of light and that forced me to stop working. Otherwise, I feel like I could have spent all day staring at my trench trying to perfect it. Similarly, while we were weeding, Josh took out a few of them, in a lackadaisical, half-assed way and then he abandoned the task and quickly moved on (or got distracted) to something else. It was interesting to see this hasty side of Josh, as he's normally a lot more patient and deliberate.
I went to work at full speed, determined to pull them ALL out. I felt a lot of consternation if I didn't do something just right - if the top part of a weed came out but not the roots, I was very critical of myself. After I cleared the area in a major way, I lamented to Josh how I could spend all day weeding this bed and still feel like the job was not done.
My approach was time consuming and inefficient, but doing it any other way made me feel like I was doing something wrong. Take cooking, for instance, he is more of a perfectionist, taking great care in preparing meals, while I'm more of a speed queen.
I have a hypothesis - for activities that we do all the time, maybe because we are more skilled and have more practice, we can and tend to do those with haste or finesse. On the other hand, for activities that are new or occasional, we feel a little intimdiated by the foreigness so we approach them slowly and deliberately like a nerdy beginner. And for the biggest hastiest conclusion of them all -- because I tend to be a hasty person, maybe that means I tend to feel comfortable simplifying everything while people like Josh take the time to consider each situation uniquely? I do feel like I can get to the crux of a situation quickly, in fact, I enjoy forming conclusions from very little evidence. I guess I'd make a poor scientist, because I'd rather spend time intuiting than actually setting up an experiment. Or maybe I just need to figure out areas where I have good intuition, then I can beat out any slow-assed scientist any time. I think I can read into people's emotions and intentions a lot better than Josh. Somehow, I can create a lot of context out of thin air, while he places a lot of emphasis on words. I did read somewhere that words count for only 7% of meaning, things like body language, tone, etc. account for the rest. If that's true, that's good for me, because it's harder for me to pay attention to words. I prefer to read faces and tones.
I think I'm going hastily end my long rambly post.
I don't agree with all of Mayor Bloomberg's points in his testimony, made in 2006 to the Senate, but I'm really excited by his plain language, liberalism and realism.
I especially love this passage: "It’s as if we expect border control agents to do what a century of communism could not: defeat the natural market forces of supply and demand… and defeat the natural human desire for freedom and opportunity. You might as well as sit in your beach chair and tell the tide not to come in. As long as America remains a nation dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” people from near and far will continue to seek entry into our country."
Our new computer was set up last night! Woo hooo!!!!
I was sitting outside the house, digging up bulbs when the UPS guy made the delivery. From far away, I could make out the super big font on the box, "REFURBISHED", it screamed, flaunting how my husband likes to buy things. I would have thought that the marketers would have had the good sense to spare our fragile egos by not advertising to the world that we buy non-virginal goods. It's stupid, but I did feel a little embarrassed.
Invariably, in all of our first birthday party pics, the mom is always cut off.
Is the photographer (dad) to blame or is this a fact of life that moms are merely lap props?
I have a lot of evidence, here's the most recent one. Note big sis' hand going in for the center of the daisy, or raisin. The plate that the cake is sitting on was painted by me, while the delicious carrot cake was baked by my mother in law!
Last night we made my father in law trudge out an old projector along with boxes and boxes full of slides from over 30 years ago. It was fun to see pictures of Josh and his sister at the same age as my children. I liked seeing the similarities of how the genes got passed down. Daisy looks and acts just like Josh used to!
I don't know if my father in law enjoyed this activity or not - he certainly tried to ruin all the fun. He sat at a distance, was hemming and hawing or frowning the whole time. Not only that, he threatened to throw out all the slides, calling them useless trash. Can you imagine?! Who doesn't enjoy going through old photographs, talking about good memories, pointing out the out-dated cars/technologies, fads and seeing things you didn't see before?
Here are some highlights:
1. The baby car seat that Bailee sat in gave way to some riotous laughter-- it looked like a funny contraption, had a fat rubber tube that restrained her, but best of all, pudgy baby Bailee sat shotgun, facing forward!!!!
2. My mother in law, sporting long flowing hair (which tempted me to get the same carefree romantic hairstyle for myself) to her waist, tending to the garden with her parents. Josh pointed out the cars in the background - so 70s! Even a VW bug bus!!!
3. The baby high chair was made of wood and looked like a piece of furniture, it even had turned legs and a fan back. Nowadays, everything is plastic and made in China. As a side note, I used a nail cutter to cut a hang nail while I was there and noticed how well it worked (not like all the junky nail cutters we own). I flipped it over and saw the engraving, Made in the USA! NOTHING is made in the USA (except my kids) in my house! I'm sure it's over 30 years old, just like everything else in Josh's house.
4. Pictures of the same plant, still alive, from more than 30 years ago, and it grew more than 4 times its height but in the same itty bitty pot!
5. The pre-cursor to my husband's current white, straight and perfect teeth - crooked, chipped and pretty rotten looking. (Aren't I a terrible person?!)
6. My mother in law, jauntily dressed and accessorized while on vacation in Europe. Can you imagine that she walked long days on cobblestone in cute shoes? In comparison, I pretty much look like a slob in my sneaks. I bet her shoes were made in Italy and my Pearl Izumi sneakers are made in China.
Farnk, I don't think you should throw out those slides. Imagine the endless possibilities of entertaining blog entries from poring over them.
The smile shutter feature on Sony cameras is actually effective. You can even set the sensitivity of it to detect "Low", "Medium" or "High" smiles. I tried to trick the camera by making funny faces that weren't really smiles and it knew!
We're packing up the kids and going to Burlington, VT for Memorial Day weekend in our newly acquired mini-van, the Honda Odyssey. Sometimes I wish we had an RV so I can poop, pee and wash my hands on the road.
There's been very little sunshine since we put in the first plantings. Nothing but rain. I feared that some of the miniscule seedlings would get washed away. I'm happy to report that the cilantro is doing awesome. We're going to have a lot of cilantro this summer.
So I need to brainstorm what we can use it for, like guacamole and Thai beef noodle soup.
Interestingly, I think white people only use the top part of the plant or the leaves, discarding the rest, whereas Asians also use the stalk and Thais consider the roots to be the best part of the plant. In conventional supermarkets like A&P, my mom was mystified that they don't even sell the roots, the clueless white people cut off the cilantro roots!!!
This reminds me of a few anecdotes:
1. We once took a co-worker out to Wu Lang Ye, an authentic Szechuan restaurant where you can get a menu in printed only in Chinese. He ordered in Chinese and a variety of interesting-looking food stuffs arrived. He was so excited and relayed to us how special all of this food was and how hard it is to find it in NY. He encouraged all of us to try but no one was brave enough except a white co-worker. As he started chewing on the food, he asked what he was eating. My Chinese co-worker non-chalantly pointed to each of the dishes in front of him and recited, "Tongue", "Pork Stomach", "Intestine". My white co-worker nearly choked and the rest of us were laughing so hard, we were tearing.
2. A Chinese friend of mine from childhood told me a story about a fish that only has one eye. When that fish is served in her family, her parents fight over who gets to eat the eye.
3. My aunts in Thailand only eat the head and the tail of a fish. My mom claims that the best part of a fish is the cheek.
4. Another childhood Chinese friend told me a saying that Chinese people will eat anything with a stomach pointing down. She clarified that it meant Chinese people will eat all animals.
5. I think the best part of a crab are the eggs. When cooked, they look very strange and are bright orange in color. When I order crab in a non-Asian restaurant, I'm always disappointed that they've scraped out the eggs. I can hear my mom thinking suspiciously, they're saving the best parts for themselves, but I'm pretty sure they scrape the eggs out of the crab (consider it innards) and chuck it. Probably the same thing happens with fish. I'm always disappointed when I order whole fried fish and the eggs are not there. I console myself by thinking that I got a male fish. Fried fish eggs are just so heavenly.
6. Another friend interned at Per Se. Part of his job was to do arcane things like remove a tiny little part of a lettuce and discard the rest.
We have been very frustrated that our daughter is not yet potty trained. But maybe she's not really delayed in this competency, based on where we live. Josh ordered the DVD, POTTY POWER and it's apparently super popular around here, as I just got an email from Netflix advising me of a delay due to the title's inavailability from my "local shipping center". My DVD is going to come from "Coppell, TX" where everyone has all the potty power they need.
Categories:
Menstrual Cups
My father in law's emailed comments, in praise of NPR's All Things Considered's live earthquake coverage, were read on program on May 15, 2008. Click here to listen to it.
Coincidentally, this morning, I read an especially poignant NYT article, In Rubble, Couple Clung to Each Other, and to Life . It's about the physical and emotional struggles of a Chinese couple trapped in earthquake debris.
Can you believe that baby corn is literally a baby corn? I thought maybe they might be a midget or small variety of corn, but in actuality they are regular corn picked at immaturity, before they reach their adult size. I feel a little funny eating a baby corn now. I have the same feeling eating an egg. It's like I'm eating a fetus. I wonder if pro-life supporters eat baby corn or eggs?
BTW, I always thought baby corn from a can tastes really bland and gross. It was not until I went to Thailand that I had fresh baby corn. I was hooked; it's so delicious. If you go to Thailand, make sure you eat some baby corn. You can get it at any restaurant as part of a mixed vegetable stir fry. Factoid: Thailand is one of the world's biggest exporters of baby corn!
Looking at seed catalogs or web sites is so mouth-watering.
I love their copy writers: delicious and nutrious! touts one. Pretty to look at AND good to eat! entices another.
I'm ready to empty my bank account on seeds.
Today, we put the tomatoes, jalapenos, basil, cilantro and dill into the ground! I'm especially excited about the tomatoes because I picked out some neat ones (Grape tomatoes, Lemon Boy, Black Prince and a surprise rainbow heirloom tomato -- ooh will it be pink, orange, black, yellow or who knows?!) as well as the regulars (Early Girl, Better Boys and Beef Steak).
We're also going to plant Thai or holy basil, if we can ever locate the plant or seeds.
So they created Simpsons avatars of themselves through Simpsonizeme.com and used them as the name plates on their doors. We were all cracking up.
Now that I'm in the comfort of my own home, I decided to load in a picture of myself and create my Simpson avatar. Behold, the before and after pics.
(I chose the skin tone, sex and nerdy style of dress for my avatar.)
As you can see it didn't work very well for me. So I'm going to do Daisy next (half white) and then Josh (fully white) to see how they turn out.
My towels are back-ordered and not scheduled to arrive until early June. Bummer!!!!
My little one turned one today!
Today, she took 62 steps before falling! A few days ago, she reached a max of 47 steps and less than a week ago, I counted around 14 steps.
I think these colorful Rembrandt tulips came out the nicest in the garden. They are tall, dramatic and colorful.
Digital scrapbooking! I'm going to make photobooks to:
a) pass the time
b) find a use for the thousands of pictures that I'm taking of my kids
c) give an outlet to my "creative" energy
I'm going to have to figure out which vendor and which software to use; I will be reviewing them all on the blog. I already started by saying I think the Mypublisher software sucks. But this is because I know how to use PhotoShop. Ideally, I'd like to use something less intense than Photoshop but don't want to use simpleton bloatware.
I'm quite upset over the Mypublisher software. First off, the dang thing makes you install a local application that can easily be web-based. Then it has the nerve to not give you a choice of which directory to install and where to keep the files that it produces. Finally, if you delete unwanted files, it doesn't show up in the program any more but it's still being secretly stored on your hard drive. Making one stinky 50MB photo book costed me at least 600MB of space on my hard drive. I'm supremely pissed.
