A dash of Tabasco sauce please…..



You’re an Oyster!
You don’t have a ton of complexity or identity on your own, so you’ve made an effort to focus on making a nice and sturdy house. It gives you the appearance of being interesting as well as a good place to hide from your critics and those who might expose your secrets. At least you can remind us all of what humble beginnings we’ve all come from. People associate you with really good crackers.

Take the Animal Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

So I’m back on the road again. This past week, one day trip to HK for a meeting. Then flying off to HK again this weekend. Next week to Korea’s Jeju Island for some team building exercises. Jeju island apparently is the honeymoon getaway for many Korean newlyweds. We’ll see how it is…. excited for my first Korea visit!

Mixed views of the added travels for Sept. More HK and Beijing as well before a week long holiday with the B-‘s family end of the month.

Fun stuff….

Labor Day Weekend!! We’re going to hop on a plane to exotic…

…Cincinnati ?!

We’re off to see the bris for P’s godson’s brother in America’s Heartland. It will be good to see one of P’s good friends, who happens to be going to law school right now. Now this is not exactly what I was expecting to do on Labor Day weekend – we as a rule try to avoid any sort of travel, not even to New Jersey. It’s supposed to be full of BBQ and the close of summer activities. It seems that the most exciting thing that’s going on is a full-fledged renaissance fair -I’ve always heard of them back in my D & D days, but never really went to any. The other thing to look forward to is the Cincinnati food – according to Food Network, the things to check out are the local style chili and Graeter’s French Style ice cream . We’re going to check out the Montgomery Inn at the Boathouse as soon as we touch down.

The Last Week of August (No Way!)

Last Wednesday: Quintessence, Vegan and raw food. Very… interesting. Not something I’d do regularly, but it was different. Eye-catching, even. Kind of tasty and filling.

Venieros Italian Bakery in the East Villagegreat stuff!

Summer reading continued: Re-reading (or at least doing a better job of reading than I did of it the last time) Neil deGrasse Tyson’s “Origins” (the book supplement to the Nova mini-series, which is currently airing on the local PBS station).

Immediate past summer reading included some chick lit:

How Nancy Drew Saved My Life, by Lauren Baratz-Logsted. Interesting read – very snappy tone from the narrator, Charlotte, who goes off to Iceland to be a nanny for the American ambassador, a seemingly sweet and dubious single dad. The mystery was odd, leaving me with a singularly bittersweet taste in the mouth, and the same to be said about the romance. Yes, it seems that Charlotte decided to grow up, but at what cost? The ending just left me feeling weird and wanting to shake her.

My Favorite Witch, by Annette Blair – a fun sexy read, if not a tad bit predictable ending (so very much foreseeable). Happy ending. A bit of tv’s “Bewitched” and tv’s “Charmed” plus a little of the movie “The Cutting Edge” (for the old-fashioned romance and hockey elements). The magical spells don’t seem terribly brilliant (Harry Potter almost does that better; this might as well be New Age-y Positive Thinking for all I cared), but the charm is there.

Some on-line reading:

Time’s Lisa Takeuchi Cullen on Blogging tips, on her blog on Worklife. Generally, I’ve come to enjoy this whole blog set up that Time has – gives insight into their reporters’ work and thinking and on the topics they cover. Cullen’s interesting for putting in the different perspectives – as an APA and a working mom; even her post on being Catholic (which later became an interesting Time article) were thoughtful stuff.

Asians in the News: Indian Jews, the Washington Post’s fascinating look at a decreasing community in India.

Yet another Internet quiz: rather amusing outcome, in that I am a snake on the Chinese horoscope scheme of things.



You’re a Boa Constrictor!
You’re that person who is always offering massages to people and you spend a lot of time training yourself to get better at giving them. Sometimes, however, you make people just a little nervous with how close you’re getting to their neck. But you can usually knead them right back into a false sense of security, er, I mean into feeling comfortable. Your mouth seems to be capable of opening wider than anyone else’s. You’ve sometimes wondered what it would be like to be made out of feathers.
Take the Animal Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.