Chinese New Year

So currently I’m watching the late-night winter olympics from Vancouver. At first they showed men’s indoor/circle skating (whatever it is), and that’s pretty cool. Some attractive guys, as well. Now they’re showing women’s luge, which has got to be the most boring winter Olympic sport there is. Watching people almost motionlessly glide around an ice tunnel… exciting. So I thought I’d take the opportunity to finally update my blog.

As of… December?

I don’t have cancer. That thing on my arm was/is just some ruptured thing or something like that. I can’t remember exactly what the dermatologist said it was. Unfortunately, it will not fucking go away on its own. So, if I want it gone, I have to, sans health care, pay for the dermatologist to remove it. Ugh. And it’s better not to dwell on what that might feel like, since when they did the biopsy my arm wasn’t exactly numb.

Christmas went really really well. Pretty much everyone liked all the presents they got, and everyone was in good spirits. My sister and I got an XBOX 360 together from my brother and mom, not including whatever other presents we got. That was unexpected. My brother got me a bunch of DPN needles for knitting, which was really nice. My dad really liked the presents I/we got him–saying that the book choice couldn’t have been any better (Scientifica) and really appreciating the Snowman cap I made him. He’s been wearing it all over the place since then, apparently drawing both looks of awe from children as well as strange glances. My mom had already relayed the information to me partially before, but when my dad told me about it over the phone last week, it really made me smile.

I didn’t do anything for New Year’s Eve.

About two weeks ago I made kimchi–red pepper whole cabbage kind, and some ‘white’ cabbage kind. It turned out really well (at least the red one did for certain), though I haven’t eaten any yet. I just had to try to “juice,” per the recipe, and it had the appropriate spice and tang. I also made takuan for the second kind–I couldn’t find the recipe I used before, and the sweetness and vinegar taste of this one ended up way too mild for my taste.

On Saturday (Feb. 13), the day before Chinese New Year, I thoroughly cleaned my room from about 3 p.m. to 12 a.m. I also got to change my bedding completely. Consequently, my room looks so much better. Not so dingy. I really wish I could get rid of a lot of things, though, because I don’t like having so many unnecessary “possessions.” But while I’m certainly no hoarder, I have a difficulty getting rid of things I have given any kind of sentimental attachment to.

The day before that, I went grocery shopping with my mom and sister, and we went to a lot of dfferent ‘ethnic’ food stores, as usual. We finally went to the other K&S, which was a lot cooler than I thought it would be. When we went to the Laotian/Vietnamese/Chinese/etc. place we usually go to that has a good selection of produce, I really embarrassed myself. The clerk who’s always there when we go is really cute. The morning before leaving to go grocery shopping, I had been trying to compile the addresses of all the places we might go to, because I had yet to create an organized list of the names and addresses. So I went to the website of said store to find the address and saw that there was an “about” section, and decided to read it. I saw that the owners were a family from Laos of a husband and wife whose two sons sometimes worked with them. So when I was at the counter I asked the guy what some common Laotian foods were, because I honestly have almost no familiarity with Lao anything. So he described a few to me, and I think he asked me why I was wondering, and I said that I saw that his family was Laotian so I thought I’d ask since I didn’t know anything about Lao food. He replied, “Not Laotian. We (my brother and I) were born in Laos. We’re Chinese.” I just said, “Oh! I’m so sorry!” I felt so stupid… Fortunately he was pretty much done bagging my groceries at that point. So I just left. And now he probably thinks I’m stalking him, even though I just looked at the website for an unrelated reason. In truth, I actually initially figured he was Chinese, or possibly even Vietnamese, from the way that he looked, until I read that stupid website. I guess I should have paid better attention. Anyway, after that my mom, sister, and I went to some Korean place to eat and had a pretty mediocre hot pot, but a seriously delicious kimchi/tofu/pork belly bulgogi. I could absolutely go for some right now.

And for the first time in who knows how long, I actually KIND of studied today! After watching “Nightwatch” I got out my Russian book and wrote the alphabet on a bunch of index cards, and then decided to do the same with the kanji section from my first Genki book, as well as working on some Excel to print out for the back of the cards to keep it neat. I haven’t finished them yet, but it’s some kind of progress.

I also ordered about $400 worth of clothes online about a week and a half ago (and, in contrast, have contributed nothing to Haiti). I would have ordered more but I tried to keep reducing my choices because I really feel uncomfortable spending a lot of money. Anyway, I got a bunch of cute clothes that fit but look like shit on my currently-fat ass. So along with the room cleaning for CNY, I intend to also restart my diet. It’s day two of the New Year, and I meant to have started on Sunday, but I’ll pick up on it within a week. About two weeks ago I spent ten minutes/100 calories on the elliptical. The second half was pretty awful–I’m in pretty much the worst shape of my life.