Centering the Clay

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 wild clover blooming in our front yard

\r\nAs Ted (Gossard) mentioned in his last comment, I\’ve been in the \’haze\’ for a long time.  In addition to raising 2 little kids, I\’ve been helping my mom with the care of my dad who is suffering with Alzheimers.  The last few months has been an amazingly difficult journey that, unfortunately, will not get any easier.  I may not be able to post as regularly as before, but hopefully I will be able to post once in a while.  If anything, just to vent or escape.  For any of you who are still checking in, my deepest thanks for your support.\r\n

Otra forma de ganar dinero jugando al blackjack en la red, es haciéndolo desde las páginas de http://www.pokeramor.es que ofrecen la opción de jugar gratuitamente.

No, the haze you see in the picture is not fog, it’s smoke.

There are mountain ranges in both pictures, but they’re covered by smoke at the moment.

I’ve lost count on how many fires we’ve had here in Los Angeles. I believe we’re on our 5th one in the last 6 days. You can click here for an Interactive Map of Los Angeles Wildfires.

The closest fire was about 5 miles away from our house, luckily it was the first one the fire department was able to put out last Saturday. On Wednesday the winds finally died down, so I thought we would see clear skies. Unfortunately I was mistaken. Once again, I was awaken with fresh smoky air and a new layer of ash on my car this morning.

My heart goes out to those who have incurred damages or loss during this fire storm. My hat goes off to all the fire fighters out there. They’ve been working nonstop for almost a week. They are without a doubt Los Angeles’ super heroes.

As many of you know, I am a huge Iron Chef fan. I’ve been watching the show ever since the first ones came over from Japan and all the voices were overdubbed. For those who are not familiar with the Iron Chef franchise, it is a culinary battle where 2 chefs must produce at least a 4 course meal (5 in the American version) with a secret ingredient (which is unveiled at the start of the show) within 60 minutes. This competition takes place in a Kitchen Stadium, where the chairman has his host of “Iron Chefs”. Each Iron Chef specializes in a specific type of cooking. My favorite has and always been Iron Chef Japanese, whose name is Chef Masaharu Morimoto. He’s the only Iron Chef that transfered over from the Japanese version to the American, and thank goodness for that!

All that to say, I was able to meet my culinary hero this weekend. He spoke and demonstrated some of the recipes from his new cookbook Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking. I’ll admit that I don’t usually buy cookbooks because I rarely follow recipes, but this one is not only beautifully done (looking at the pictures is like looking at artwork) but inspirational for any cook or chef. Below is a picture of me with Morimoto as he was signing my copy of his book. This was such an out of body experience and a dream come true.

Who are your heroes? Why are they heroes to you?

For anyone interested this Saturday, Sept. 29, is Museum Day.  Which is a nationwide event where participating museums and cultural institutions across the country offer free admission .  You can find a museum here.

Enjoy and have a fun weekend!

“If I came in this dressing room right now, talking all nicey-nicey I will be a liar and I will be a pretender…”
A quote from “Pepe” Correa, the legendary boxing trainer of Sugar Ray Leonard and Lennox Lewis on The Contender talking to one of his fighters after a loss.

When I heard that, I said to myself, “Wow, I want that person in my corner”. Someone who is honest and is looking out for my best interest. I don’t want people who are “nicey-nice”, ones who would rather agree than disagree for the sake of being non-confrontational. And yet, most of us, including myself have been and are “nicey-nice” friends. It’s simply easier to be that. It takes energy, thought, and tact to be an honest friend.

Fortunately, I do have honest friends in my corner. But it didn’t just happen. One must be the friend you want to have. It took for me to be an honest friend, to bring out the honesty in my friends.

What kind of people do you want in your corner? Are you being that kind of friend yourself?

Photograph of boxing gloves taken by Motu

For all who are interested, you can download several Sesame Street Episodes on iTunes for free. On the iTunes home page, scroll down to “Free on iTunes” and click on “Learn Along with Sesame”. It’s pretty cool!

I was tagged by Ted Gossard.

Rules of this tag:

1. Name the person with link who tagged you.

2. Complete the questionnaire without changing the questions.

3. Tag 6 or more people.

Q1. Are you happy/ satisfied with your blog, with its content and look? Yes, I’m pretty satisfied with my blog. This is a personal space for me. Sure I can spruce the look of it. But I have neither time or effort or desire, since I am not doing this as a profession. Content wise I am happy, since I am able to write about issues that are important or of interest to me.

Q2. Does your family know about your blog? My immediate family, yes. Some of my more distant, family members are not computer savy, therefore they do not know or care to know about it.

Q3. Do you feel embarrassed to let your friends know about your blog or you just consider it as a private thing? My blog is a personal space, and I am not a bit embarrassed about it. This is where I get to “think out loud” and work my thoughts out. This is where who ever is interested can get to know what I’m thinking, what I believe, and see where I am in “my journey”. Perhaps, by reading my posts, they will find some thing helpful or useful for their journey.

Q4. Did blogs cause positive changes in your thoughts? Yes.

Q5. Do you only open the blogs of those who comment on your blog or you love to go and discover more by yourself? I do check the blogs of those who comment on my blog. But I also love to check out the blogrolls of bloggers I follow and find interesting.

Q6. What does visitors counter mean to you? Do you care about putting it in your blog? I don’t publish my counter. I look at it once a day just to see who has stopped by to visit.

Q7. Did you try to imagine your fellow bloggers and give them real pictures? The first place I check in any blog is the “about me” page. If I can’t get a good sense of who the writer is by that page, I will not bother reading the blog. I don’t have to see the writer’s picture or know how he/she looks like. I just need to get a sense of who they are and where they are coming from. I am not a fan of “anonymous” writers. That is why I post a picture of myself (self taken) in my “about me” page. Hopefully, anyone who is interested will get a good sense of what I’m all about through that page and leave the guessing behind.

Q8. Do you think there is a real benefit for blogging? Yes. Like Ted, I have “met” kind people here.

Q9. Do you think that bloggers’ society is isolated from real world or interacts with events? I think some bloggers are isolated, while others are right on the money.

Q10. Does criticism annoy you or do you feel it’s a normal thing? I love challenging thoughts. I love having rational, mature, discussions.

Q11. Do you fear some political blogs and avoid them? Politics is not of interest to me, therefore I do not follow political blogs.

Q12. Did you get shocked by the arrest of some bloggers? I don’t know what bloggers you are talking about. Sorry, no offense, but who wrote these questions anyway? I vote to eliminate this one.

Q13. Did you think about what will happen to your blog after you die? Hmm, not really. I guess I’d have to leave a budget in my will to pay for hosting for it to continue. If not, I guess it’ll die with me. Will it be important enough? We’ll see…

Q14. What do you like to hear? What’s the song you might like to put a link to, in your blog? I’m with Ted on this one. I have to have it quiet for me to write. But if I’m not writing, I love to listen to U2, John Mayer, Lifehouse, Coldplay, and anything good from jazz to country. I do listen to pop radio once in a while, to keep me up with what’s current. I have already linked a couple of song in my blog, one from Five for Fighting, the other from Rob Thomas. Both are excellent, timeless songs in my humble opinion.

Now it’s my turn to tag some others: Noah Tutak, Armand Serrano, Tshaka Armstrong, Shannon Cobb, MommyZabs, Scott Clausen. I hope you have found this enjoyable. I’ll be looking forward to reading the answers from those I tagged! Thank you in advance for being good sports!

Who knew there was a national Grandparent’s day? I didn’t until recently. Where I found myself rushing to get cards and photos printed out for our perspective grandparents. Anyway, for those who are not aware, National Grandparents Day is a holiday celebrated on the first Sunday after Labor Day…uh, today. The official song of National Grandparents Day is “A Song For Grandma And Grandpa” by Johnny Prill. The official flower is the forget-me-not.

Forget-me-not

Happy Grandparent’s Day to all of you who have grandchildren. You are a blessing!
And for those who have grandparents, make sure you get in touch with them and tell them how much they are appreciated!

to stop and smell (or notice) the flowers once in a while….

Dalias from my mom’s birthday bouquet

Happy Labor Day everyone!  This year, it is also my mom’s birthday.  I’m already prepping her birthday dinner.  Happy Birthday Mom!

One of the great finds on our Hawaiian trip was the Punalu’u Bake shop which is officially “The Southernmost Bakery in the USA”. Here’s a picture of the entrance when we visited.

This clean, small bakery creates the worlds best (in my opinion) sweetbread. So delicious are their breads that I personally hand carried 2 loaves back to L.A. in addition to my 2 kids, carry-ons, and luggage. Taking the out most care not to smush them in our travel. A bite of this sweetbread is a bite of heaven. The good news is that you can try it for yourself, because they will ship to about anywhere. It makes for wonderful presents for any occasion. I personally love and recommend their Taro and Guava sweetbreads. You can check it out here!

My last post talked about experiencing life. Well, you must experience this!

Mahalo!

I’m back from our Kona vacation in the Big Island (Na`alehu) of Hawaii.  Here are a couple of pictures I took, with my new Nikon D40x (which I love!!).  I hope they will bring peaceful and happy thoughts to your day where ever you are.

 

It was an amazing trip, to say the least!  Sure there were moments where I wanted to bury my head, especially when my 1.5 year old decided to cry and scream  uncontrollably on our red eye flight back or when she had a huge “accident” in the pool.  This trip was a reminder that (for me at least) life is about experience.  Whether good or bad, it is the catalyst for growth and development.  This trip made me realize I was playing it too “safe” in my daily life in the sake of convenience.  Well, this trip has renewed my adventurous side and self confidence that I can take some risks and go beyond my daily living.  I’m already thinking of small half day trips I can do with my kids to my favorite restaurant in Chinatown and visit the beach more often before the weather cools down.  Life is too short to play it “safe”.  Of course, this is not a call for complete abandonment.  This is about thinking out of the box, the ordinary, to set yourself for failures and successes.  To live life not motivated by fear, but with confidence.

What is life about for you? Do you thrive or shun new experiences?

Hi Everyone. Sorry I haven’t written in over a week. It was my son’s 4th birthday on the 14th, so I was busy planning his parties. Yes, I did use the plural term of ‘party’ (what was I thinking right?!). Our house is too small to invite Johel’s friends and family to one event, so I had to break it up to 3. One party for the family, one at his school, then the last one with friends. They all turned out really well, it just became a whole week’s worth of work. Anyway, we’re done with all our birthdays…. for now 8-).

On to our next venture… family vacation. Yipee!! Yup, we are going on vacation to the Big Island of Hawaii next week. I’m not planning to bring my computer or do any blogging. Hopefully, I’ll be lounging by the kiddie sand pool soaking in the sun… boy I can’t wait! Until then, I’ll be packing and preparing for our trip. No worries, I’ll be back early September to blog!

Have a great rest of the summer everyone! Fall is around the corner.

How are you planning to spend the rest of the summer?

Have you ever lost something important and you cannot find it? You know that “crazy and frenzy feeling”? Well, that is where I am now.

For the last 3 days, I along with my darling husband, have looked in every nook and cranny of our house to find my cash. Yes, I did say cash. For the last year or so, I’ve had a stash of money that I’ve been saving. It got to a pretty good size, and I was about to buy a new digital still camera with it. But then my lovely husband got one for me for my birthday, so in turn I was going to buy a new iPod for him for his birthday, since his broke a few months ago. Well, I was ready to go to the mall, kid in tow, I reached for my money stash, only to find it gone! To my disbelief, somehow, I’ve managed to misplaced over $500. Well, of course my first reaction was shock then panic started to set in. I looked everywhere. And to this day, I don’t know where it went. All I can figure is that I left it on our desk, where my youngest one can reach for it, and she threw it in the trash (because she loves doing that right now). What can I do, laugh or cry? I almost cried. And I’m not at the laughing stage yet. I’m somewhere in the middle. In my heart, I’m letting it go. It’s very difficult for me, since this was one of those things I treasured. And perhaps that is why it’s gone. I do believe everything happens for a reason. Perhaps that is the lesson I needed to learn. Not to hold such earthly treasures too close. Well, if that is the lesson, I have learned it. It was an expensive lesson that I will never forget.

What lessons have you learned recently?

Here’s a picture of one the two crabs I cooked up for my birthday dinner.  It was my first time cooking with live crabs.  It wasn’t easy killing them, glad my mom was around, she ended up doing “the deed”.   Here’s a good place for information on how to handle live crabs.  I ended up stir-frying them with garlic, ginger, leeks, and red peppers.  It was delicious.  And I have to say, having gone through the whole process (of picking them out, killing, cleaning then cooking them up), it made me appreciate these crabs more.  I almost didn’t want to waste any part of them.  But I’m very glad that we have supermarkets where we can pick out pieces of meat already prepared for us.  I can’t imagine having to go through this process with a mammal.  Crustaceans were hard enough.  At least next time I have a better idea of what to do, but I think it’ll still be difficult for me.

Am I a wimp?  Perhaps. However, I’m glad it have gone through this exercise.  It was enlightening.

Have you eaten anything you’ve killed?  What was your experience like?