TGIF!

This has been quite a week. 

January has passed by all so quickly anyway, don't you think?

We're heading to Copenhagen to eat at NOMA!

(Uggs vs. Sorels? Discuss ballets, Keds, and Cons for travel.)

Maybe Berlin and/or Hamburg?

Definitely Paris for Valentine's Day.

Oh, the Places You'll Go! 

(Though I'll probably never go to Burning Man.)

Tomorrow we celebrate Chinese new year part deux.

But tonight we celebrate Charleen's birthday!

Happy birthday (tomorrow) to you!

Gong Hei Fat Choy!

Yesterday we went to Chinatown 

to pick up some char sui and chicken 

with Jon's Por Por.

It was freezing cold, but we got our groceries:

two whole chickens

looks like four orders of char sui

some pastries

Jon's Por Por had her apartment decked out for the new year.

She vyed (prayed) with the food,

then she divvied it up for us

before we left.

Tonight I separated the meat from the skin and bones

of the half chicken she gave us.

(Is that a kidney or some other organ on the right?)

Meat!

No veins or cartilage!

The best!

  

Here's the tastiest of the char sui--the lusciously caramelized part.

There seems to be a nice collection of meat fat,

meat jelly, and meat juice.

Going to stir fry this all up in a beautiful fried rice!

Hopefully this dragon year is lucky and prosperous for you!

It seems like an okay year for the pig (yay!)--

the dog (Jon) needs to be a bit more cautious though.

TGIF!

Stealth Mountain
Just look at those peaks!

Despite the freezing temperatures and the chance of snow, it's Friday, and I know this weekend will be awesome:

Jon's back from nearly being ambushed by deer at this scary hotel.

Speaking of scary, this homemade video has been my life for the past week or so.

Check out Stealth Mountain (@StealthMountain). Now to start a twitter bot that scolds people for using "alot" instead of "a lot."

Some DIY/craft blogs with such cute stuff: Thanks, I Made It, with an i.e., Dismount Creative, Wit & Whistle. I'm looking at you Morse code necklace.

It's the last weekend to slide at the New Museum, so it's now or never. 

Monday is Chinese New Year's day! Wear some red for luck.

What I want to do for my twenty-ninth birthday.

TGIF!

Reboot

After looking at some other blogs, I decided to give my blog a reboot. There are actually tons of really cool gadgets and template things to help you out. New year, new blog look!

Note: Writing in script with a mouse is kind of a pain in the butt, but I think the title came out kind of nice.

Day 67

Mmm . . . So tasty. I love eating dinner. Been eating lots of chocolate otherwise. To keep up energy and blood sugar and spirits and such.

My coworker is having a boy. Yay!

Day 66

While passing by the David Letterman studio I spied heavy-duty cases that had snowflakes on them. Initially I thought they were holiday ornaments for the set. They had packed it up and were shipping them somewhere to Connecticut for storage or something. But then I saw "Snow Patrol" written on the side of one case. The band? Probably. I'm not at all familiar with the band except that there's a lyric by them and reference to them in the book I just finished cold reading today. What a coincidence.

Mercedes House, 555 W. 53rd Street

This . . .

. . . is . . .

. . . how . . .

. . . they built . . .

. . . it.

Thinking about moving here
and need an insider's scoop?
E-mail me.

Retiring

Today is the last day for one of S&S's publishing legends, Beth Sue Rose. She handled subrights for Scholastic. She was excellent at her job. She kind of scared me.

In 2004-2005, I sat outside her office as an editorial intern because that's where a spare cube was. She has the most unique voice that sort of sank into you. In my short tenure back at S&S, I've talked to her once or twice about book deadlines for Scholastic, but I've mostly kept a low profile on her radar.

She had an amazing fashion sense, as wonderfully illustrated above. She sent the illustration to everyone along with her farewell e-mail. It's a great depiction. A bit satirical, but beautiful and more or less true.

Last 2011 Personal Day

On the second to last Thursday of the 2011 year,

I had the day off, so we embarked on a journey . . .

to New Jersey.

 

(This seagull is bigger than your small dog.)

We had a private ferry ride. 

The gray cloud is smoke across Jersey City into the Financial District.

On a map, I saw that it was called "FiDi."

The smoke came from a warehouse fire in Elizabeth, NJ.

That's about two Turnpike exits.

It was Thursday.

News reports said they wouldn't have it out until after Christmas.

That means they estimated that it'd be at least Monday

before the fire would be contained.

Monday!

We got some genetic testing done to make sure our babies,

at some point in the future,

won't have scales or something horrible.

It seemed like the responsible thing to do.

We also put up a faux Christmas tree and made some paper ornaments

to get in the holiday spirit.

Psst! Want in on a BIG secret?

This time last year, I was grieving the loss of my grandma and trying to hire a copy editor to rush copyedit the first book in this series. Now there are two books (four, if you count the paperbacks--that have glitter on the covers!--and the hard covers)! With at least five more (or ten, counting the hard-cover format) on the way and in various stages of production (but mostly done).

My boss forwarded this ad to me that PW is blasting with the subject: Psst! Want in on a BIG secret?

It's all pretty exciting when a book sells really well or a series takes off.

Next spring we're launching a new series about a boy that moves with his family to another planet. It's kind of what inspired our space-themed holiday card this year.

Xmas Presents for an Almost Three-Year-Old

My friend and her little boy were in town for Xmas Eve,

so I went through my book collection and pulled out some of the best ones that I thought he'd like.

I didn't have wrapping paper--it's somewhere in our junk closet, maybe--

so I recycled the craft paper from our amazon.com purchases.

The goal was to spell his name and include a Xmas song lyric with the beginning of that name, 

plus a little drawing.

So . . .

Jingle bells = J

Hark the herald Angels sing = A

Rudolph the Red-Nosed ReinDeer = D

(I realized I spelled Rudolf as an alternative spelling when it was too late.

But then I realized that it didn't really matter.)

Have yourself a mErry little Christmas = E

(Nothing Xmassy begins with an E. Nothing.)

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! = N

There was an extra book, so I threw an exclamation point in.

Jaden read each letter perfectly--and got that it spelled his name, 

plus he identified most of my drawings too.

He's a genius!

I had planned on singing the Christmas songs too, 

but I really enjoyed watching him open the books, which he seemed to have liked.

Xmas success!

Christina Tosi's/Milk Bar's/Jon's Corn Cookies

Nat was hosting a cookie exchange pre-New Year's Eve party,

so we needed to make some interesting cookies.

The most interesting cookies we've had in awhile were the corn cookies 

from Momofuku Milk Bar.

To make these cookies, first, you probably would want to 

buy the book because the recipes are awesome.

Then mise en place yourself.

Here's the recipe from the book:

To cream (butter and sugar).

So creamed.

(Follow the excerpted page below to cream your cookies.
You get a good sense of the tone of the book too.
It's a good tone.
And it's easy to follow her directions too.)

 

I love that line: "You can certainly make delicious cookies 

without a mixer . . . But not these cookies."

Other ingredients tossed in.

Plopped to be chilled.

Scooped and flattened.

Baked.

Corn cookies.

They were a bit on the salty end, so we'll have to reduce or use a different salt next time.
Jon also made a brown butter sauce for it, but in the end we skipped setting that out for dipping.

Xmas 2011, the Second

For our second Xmas party (this was two out of three), we did a Yankee Swap with Jon's Mom's side of the family after dinner in Chinatown. Outside, it was whatever you think of when you hear "blustery."

On the way to dinner, I ran into a guy who lived in Metzger 3 with me

my freshman year at Rutgers in the elevator of Confucius Plaza. It was quite random. 

I hadn't seen him since our Japanese Poli-Sci class ended in spring 2005.
(Pam, if you're reading this, it was Mike Ling. Crazy, right?)

From the Yankee Swap I got a bag of dark chocolate, and Jon got a bag of assorted candies 

that had, in particular, gummi bears.

I've gained almost five pounds this holiday season.

Oof.

Happy New Year! 2012!

I'd been told that it was probably a bad idea 

to walk towards the Times Square New Year's crowds.

That there'd be drunk people throwing up in my hair and peeing on my shoes,

and all that good stuff.

But after watching Bridesmaids, it was 11:20 p.m. on New Year's Eve

and about fifty degrees outside.

And Jon had agreed to embark with me on my little adventure earlier.

The plan was to walk across town to the barricades penning the people
in Times Sqaure

 and then walk north toward Central Park,

to hopefully see the Road Runners' New Year's fireworks if possible

and maybe some Times Square action looking downtown.

We ended up at Columbus Circle where it wasn't too crowded.

We could look down Broadway, but not see anything significant.

I was kind of hoping to see some of the three tons of confetti

or even just hear the crowd count down.

Instead it was just a drunk tourist family counting down,

and then it was midnight.

Or rather it was 2012, and we saw fireworks!

They did each firework one at a time,

so it lasted for about twenty minutes.

It was marvelous.

At the end, they just blasted all the rest of the fireworks that they had.

We got home about twenty minutes later.

No one threw up on us, though we did narrowly avoid some vomit on the sidewalk.

Happy new year!

2012!