Instead of regular e-cards

My default party food is a black bean and corn salad. It travels really well and gets better the longer it sits.
- can black beans, rinsed- can corn, drained- one red pepper diced- a couple of tomatos diced- half a red onion diced- juice and zest of a lime (or lemon if you don’t have a lime)- one tbsp hot sauce- something green for garnish (cilantro by preference but flat leaf parsley works too)
That’s it. Throw all the ingredients together and stir.
— http://ask.metafilter.com/107171/Have-food-Will-travel

Day 4 began with a trip to one of the many urgent care centers in central Florida (is this a central Florida thing? we don’t have nearly the same amount of them in Chicago). Stitches out by a doctor with shaking hands (and a VERY brave daughter), and then off to Disney Boardwalk for another mediocre park lunch of pulled pork sandwiches and cheeseburgers.

Day 4 ended with a trip to Celebration, Florida to see how the Disneyites live. They live with fake snow (bubbles) every hour until December 31, apparently.

Above average sushi with incredibly slow service for dinner.

Day 3 lunch: mediocre Irish pub in Downtown Disney where Pedro left his credit card. Guess what we’re doing tomorrow!
Day 3 dinner: Cityfish for good oyster po boy and seafood pasta and clam chowder. OK conch chowder and seafood nachos.
Day spent at Downtown Disney riding merry-go-rounds and trains.
Evening at one of the many outlet malls in Orlando.

Downtown Disney was very cold.
Universal CityWalk was very small.

Day 1 lunch/dinner: Pollo Tropical
Day 2 brunch: Chan’s dimsum
Day 2 dinner: Tabla Indian restaurant
Margaritas @ Margaritaville’s take-out window

International Drive is apparently the Street of Crap, says Pedro.

1. I just did the first of two loads of laundry. In it were three pairs of (Pedro’s) sweatpants, three (of Pedro’s) t-shirts, a ton of underwear and socks and (my) tights. We are, apparently, pretty casual these days.
2. I took inventory as I was in the basement laundry room: two 40-lb. bags of dog food, two cases of Shin Ramyun (20 packages each), two cases of instant udon. This is high cuisine!
3. In t-minus six days, we leave for Orlando. Why Orlando? We are not going to Disneyworld, nor are we going for its culinary inspirations (are there any?). We are going because it will be warmer than Chicago. It will, right?
4. Sosie has worn a little Beibei backpack all day. She has to wear her jacket over it. She wore it through her gym class. She has not taken it off. Hopefully it is not full of bricks.
5. A fellow mom told me she got angry at her husband this morning for feeding their toddler son Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I told her it was a good thing I was not married to her because Sosie got 1.5 bowls of ice cream for breakfast.

1. Please don’t yell at your children in front of other people — especially when the other people are your children’s teachers, and you are at a parent-teacher conference, and your child starts to cry, and the teacher is embarrassed. At least stop yelling when the teacher starts to talk about solutions to the problem at hand — otherwise she will think you just want to yell and you don’t want a solution.
2. The former has made me come downstairs for another drink. These days it’s Old Overholt.
3. I am also binging on store-bought seven-layer dip and tortilla chips. This is stress eating and drinking.
4. Sosie loves Dumbo.
5. This is now on the recipe list: Crispy Crepes with Apple, Brie, and Prosciutto.

1. History. Today. Amazing.
2. When Sosie is older, she will not even understand why this was a momentous occasion, and that is fine. It will be a different world.
3. I understand that Obama is not a Christ-like figure, and he will not heal us of leprosy, but geez: a brown person in the White House? With a brown family? With a weird name?Amazing. Amazing. I can’t stop tearing up.
4. We had frozen xiao long bao to celebrate tonight.
5. Juan-Boy woke us up in the middle of the night for kisses and to say that Sosie would also be president someday. It must have been a big night for Juan-Boy to show emotion like that.

1. My life is such now that I can only discuss shows on Noggin. Likes: Lazytown, Wonder Pets, Blue’s Clues, Yo Gabba Gabba, Jack’s Music Show. Dislikes: Wow Wow Wubbzy, Dora.
2. Are people just normally nice and cordial? Don’t they find that boring? I am starting to think that maybe I am too grumpy and sarcastic for the general public.
3. Likewise: Is it weird that Sosie prefers to interact with dogs over her peers? Are we raising a weird kid?
4. Braised short ribs needs to be on the menu soon.
5. And some Tom Kha Gai soup.

1. I was having my students categorize their Chinese vocab words by parts of speech (fascinating!) today, and we were talking about (the lack of) grammar instruction in English classes, and one of them said, “English has always been about how you feel about books.” I told him I would write that down.
2. Is it Chinese to be pushy? Or are other Chinese people pushy because I am also Chinese? This is a work- and life-related question.
3. Sosie will not put on clothes. I blame this on Juan-Boy.
4. I am eating tortilla chips and whitefish dip with wine-from-a-box for dinner for the second night in a row. I blame this on Juan-Boy too.
5. The end of the quarter is Friday, and for this, I am happy I switched departments. I will not grade another essay until my students are in fourth-year Chinese

1. Last night I dreamt that someone was trying to install a scantron machine in our hallway bathroom. I actually got up and went out into the hallway to stop him.
2. Sosie did not sleep in this morning. Maybe she does not understand that it is the weekend.
3. Falafel sounds good today. And soup.
4. We are going to take Sosie to a Halloween party this afternoon to show her that other kids wear costumes and they do not melt. They survive.
5. Darn that Juan-Boy. His slow motion may have cost us a trip to Vegas.

Oatmeal Brulee

1. Good for you, Colin Powell.
2. The Alaskan-inspired rap was pretty good. I am sure I’m not original in saying that I want to be friends with Amy Poehler and Tina Fey.
3. I almost typed “Sarah Palin” instead of “Tina Fey.”
4. Juan-Boy woke up and said that today was my rest day since I was feeling a little ill. It is now 10:55am, and he’s been asleep for at least an hour, while I’ve been feeding pad thai to the Goblin.
5. No Thong Thai for us anymore. It was ketchup pad thai and tomatoey Panang curry. While we were eating, Juan-Boy said, “But I like ketchup, so it’s not too bad.” On the way home, he said, “We’re not going back there anymore.”

1. Piggy Sosie usually wakes up between 6:30 and 7 every morning. Today she woke up at 8:45am. Oink oink.
2. Periwinkle the Cat Next Door is whiny and selfish.
3. Piggy Sosie should not eat mushrooms sauteed in butter. They do not agree with her little tummy.
4. One of the songs on Barney informs the viewer, “You can tell a shape by the shape that it’s in.”
5. I am going to pretend to be a cheerleader too.

1. Eel and shrimp fried rice for breakfast today.
2. I hope that spinach quiche is cooked through! At least it’s not my department that I’ll be sickening.
3. Melonhead woke up in the middle of the night yelping yelping yelping. I thought she was having a seizure, but no, just yelping. She stopped once I started petting her, and then she went back to sleep.
4. Sosie also woke up to say, “NO! No? No?” and then went back to sleep.
5. They did not wake up at the same times, so Mama Bear is pretty durn tired today you betcha.

The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama

1. Mushroom quiche this morning, but no sleeping in. Sosie woke up at 6:03am complaining of a full diaper. And then she wanted apples and noodles.
2. Schmonster’s baby shower this afternoon!
3. Melonhead’s cyst is no longer pea-sized. It is now nickel-sized. Dr. W tomorrow morning.
4. If we have wooden sushi and wooden pizza, we probably should have bought a wooden kitchen. Instead we have this plastic behemoth.
5. Pedro left leftover NY strip in the car in a take-out box for a whole day. He offered it to me for lunch.

1. Our battery died after leaving Gonggong in the car to listen to his newly checked-out CDs for an hour. We stopped a nice guy to give us a jump, but he (and we) couldn’t find the battery in his car (well, we could see it, but we couldn’t reach it). After twenty minutes, we stopped some high school kids who couldn’t figure out how to open their hood. Gonggong taught them how to jumpstart a car battery (they really could not care less), and we were soon on our way.
2. As I was writing that paragraph, Sosie just spit out the white of a hard-boiled egg she was eating. “Spit out” might be too strong a term. She just chewed, opened her mouth, and let everything fall out. Melonhead is licking it off the floor.
3. Now Sosie is trying to climb into another cabinet.
4. Video of that coming soon.
5. Melonhead is looking for more egg.

John McCain, as told by David Foster Wallace

1. I left school very early today to drive my coworker to the train station. His car door was torn off by another car. It’s the small things you take for granted, no?
2. There are more KFCs in China than in the USA.
3. I told my students that Chinese people call the Mexican busboys “amigos.” I am waiting for the phone calls now.
4. I would like new glasses.
5. I am stuffed full of a bad sandwich.

1. Meat Lite: Eggplant Lamb Lavash Wraps
2. I am glad that my school is Jewish in October.
3. The Chinese Goblin’s newest interests are hiding in cabinets, going to petting zoos, lining up bottles in straight lines on the floor, and batting the Poor Dog’s snout.
4. Don’t feel bad for Poor Dog. She fights back by hopping up and down.
5. Is cooked chicken poisonous 1.5 weeks later? It’s been refrigerated the whole time.

The New Yorker endorses Obama

1. Good news: Realtor says that our house is nice and just needs to be pared down to sell. Bad news: We will probably (definitely?) incur a loss. AND: When do we clean up this place?
2. I can’t find any measuring cups. The Chinese Goblin has absconded with them.
3. No mushroom quiche because I forgot pie crust. And, no, I do not make crust from scratch.
4. Whoops! We have to go meet Pedro’s friends for lunch in 40 minutes!
5. I wonder if Dominick’s has me pegged as the woman who comes shopping every Sunday at 7am with her baby and tries to buy alcohol.

1. Holy smokers! We have a realtor coming over to our house this afternoon. Are we really going to put it on the market? The biggest Yikes is that means we have to clean.
2. I didn’t pass. That explains my rum+Sprite at 11am.
3. Even though we have to clean, I am going to take a rum+Sprite-induced nap soon. Very soon. Before the Chinese Goblin wakes up.
4. Apple cake this afternoon.
5. Mushroom quiche and Pedro’s high school friends tomorrow for lunch.