1's and 0's --- digital voice of Rainy Rose

Homes reverted to REO with below market price?

2009-11-11T19:35:00.000-08:00

Bank owned houses are pretty much everywhere right now. It's a common phenomenon that owners bought at the hype went under water and could not afford mortgage anymore (or chose not to). They went default and bank took back the house, normally around how much owners still owed on the mortgage.

Occasionally, I saw homes reverted with a way below market price, and I could not but wonder why? Why wouldn't the owner just sell the house? If they sell the house, they could actually pay off the mortgage and possibly even gain some money, instead of trashing the credit and walk away from a profitable home. So what were the reasons that prevented them from doing so?

A few that I could think of are :

They had hopes that things would work out miraculously and they would be able to keep their homes.
They were in denial that they refused to recognize selling house was even an option. They only believed in staying, and 'see what we will see'.
They somehow believed that they may be able to get back the home even after auction or after ownership reverted. (CA does not have redemption period though)
They were deeply stressed or depressed that they had no motivation or energy to do/plan anything proactive, they became passively waiting for whatever outcome
They hoped to work things out and mistakenly thought (or were told) banks would give them more time. When they realized it's not going to work out, it's already too late to sell
They didn't know what to do. Staying one day is one day. After all, there were homes that were foreclosed for over a year and owner still lived there, rent free!
They didn't know the market price, they were disconnected from reality;
they didn't know where to sleep if they really sold the home, too much anxieties when considering the unknowns;
They owed other big debts as well, so they filed bankruptcy and didn't care anymore

What else... hmm...

10. First lender got the house, second lien was wiped out, which made it appear as if the house was reverted to bank with much lower than market price. Owner tried short sale previously but second lien holder refused to make a deal.

We do believe in miracles, but I guess we all agree miracles don't happen that often, otherwise they won't be called miracles, right? Perhaps it's better not to lose the ability to act upon situations? Perhaps it's always good to have back up plans?

How long would cats run away

2009-11-06T16:31:00.000-08:00

Mocca was missing after Monday night, 7ish. I remembered seeing her coming home to eat 'dinner'. The she did not return before midnight when the door was closed. It was not very unusual for either Mocca or Rocca to run outside all night long. I have no idea what they were doing out there, and always wondered where they slept?

Tue. morning I did not see her coming home either. After I went home from work, I left door open until midnight again. No shadow of Mocca. Rocca was constantly in and out though. I started to worry, none of them have been away for more than 24 hours so far. I wonder if Rocca noticed her sister was missing.

Still no Mocca on Wed. night. I started looking online to see any news in local shelters, looked on craigslist, and searched for other peoples' experiences about how long cats would be gone and what might have happened and where I could possibly find them.

Thur. noon, I took a lunch break from work and drove around home, calling her name. I droved slowly and stopped by frequently to listen if she was miou-miouing for help somewhere.

(When she was little, she used to get trapped in back door neighbor's high fences. She could not get back and would cry at night when she heard me calling her name. But she is a big girl now and seems to go just everywhere she likes.)

I drove around and called and called, no replies. Even Rocca did not show up, so I guessed this would not work.

Thur. night, I was about to start making flyers to post around neighborhood and shelters, even though big part of me really wondered about the odds of getting her back... :(

Just right before I started, wo-waaa, I heard miou-miou... and there she was, Mocca came back home! It was like a miracle :D Though people may say cats can go away for days, even weeks or months. But it is really case dependent. Most often, they were just gone I believe.

I had absolutely no idea where she went. She looked alright, no hurt, not particularly starving, not extra dirty. I let her eat and bathed her and applied flea medicine. She was probably feeling annoyed being greeted with 'torture' after she finally returned after 72 hours.

But she was all clean and cute and tired and fell into asleep shortly after, lying next to me :) Who knows how long she would be gone next time? I don't think there is any way I could prevent her from going somewhere farther away either. After all, she is free. I hope she would always remember to come home, and travel safely...

(Perhaps I would look into possibly put a GPS device on her, heh.)

Gentle Dental II

2009-10-29T19:56:00.000-07:00

After a lot of debate, I decided to try it with caution.
Arrived right before 10 am, no one was there. Feel some chill coming up, I sat down and started to fill out the forms. I noticed they have more forms than my previous dental.

One form says there is $25 charge for canceling appointment within 24 hour and has to be made on a biz day. ($125 if specialist involved.) I have not seen dental office charges for this. Should this be a red flag? There is also extra charge if called for emergency but then was not one (by doctor's definition?)

Another form says patients are responsible for any fee that insurance does not cover...Gentle Dental will try to explain to patients if they do not understand the insurance plans as they can be complicated... etc. Should this be a red flag that they are warning me I will be responsible with all kinds of fees down the road?

Another form warned patients about 'change of treatment'. It basically said the plan could change if things coming up differently during treatment and dentist had to make a different call. Then it reminded me one reviewer complained about Gentle Dental changed the treatment while he was sitting on the chair being operated.

While I was filling out the form, there suddenly came a few parties, apparently they double or triple booked their slots, as they only had one doctor there at that time! So... most people just sat and wait.

One man got into long conversation with the plan organizer. She was losing patience but tried to be professional. Basically he seemed not have decided to stick to this place or swinging back to his previous dentist.

She said, "You need to make a decision. I can hold on to the files until you decide, maybe next week?... I don't want to process further because it's wasting time if you decide to go back. And it costs me money to make copies of files..."

(So far, I actually did not disagree with her, even though she was losing patience and becoming unprofessional. But I would lose patience over repeated explanations too.)

She said, "If you decided to go back, just have your dentist contact Gentle Dental and we will send x-rays and whatever files over. But if you want to walk out with your files, then it would be $27 for x-rays, plus $2/per page for documents."

The man grumbled...

She said, "I am trying to save you some money. We will send whatever documents to your dentist if you simply have him call us."

Then I realized one reviewer complained Gentle Dental charged him for x-rays as 'good-bye' pay when he was pissed and decided to leave. I now see the reviewer was not fair in this case. Because he could choose not to take out a copy but just have his new dentist call them instead. I believe that's how most dental places handle files. They pass to each other without involving patients. After all, it does cost extra to make copies of x-rays.

After I was done with the forms, I approached the counter and asked her if I would be able to get a list of things done before I leave. I was trying to prevent any surprise bills sending to me weeks later. She said, "All you are going to have today is taking x-rays and we will have a treatment plan for you."

Oh ho, sounded like the nightmare was gonna happen, like all other reviewers complained. The sales pressure, selling me thousand dollar treatment plan, blah blah...

I quickly said, "I don't have much time today" (I raised my head looking at the clock on the wall, hinting it's already 10:30 am, half an hour late for my appointment), "I am afraid I won't have time to go through the treatment plan, can I just have my front tooth checked?" She said, "sure", then she started to write something on my file. I assumed she was making a note for my request.

Finally I was called. The technician greeted me and said, "I know you just want to check your front tooth, but we need x-rays so the doctor could diagnose." I thought, "fine, taking all those x-rays shouldn't cost me anything. Besides, if I decide to go to other dentist, I can simply have them send files over."

I sat down and was ready to be taken 20 x-rays, like some reviewer said. The x-rays would then be used to put up a treatment plan... I had it all prepared (and rehearsed in my head).

The first one started from my front tooth. After one beep, the technician told me it's done and asked me to follow him. I was surprisingly shocked! Wow, they did honor my request and were only going to look at my front tooth without other tricks!

I sat on the chair for a while, waiting for that only dentist, who was still drilling another patient. Finally it's my turn, she asked me about the pain and knocked on a few tooth (knocking test?) and a cold test (pulp test) and decided the nerve died. I asked, "If the nerve died, why would I feel pain?". She explained, "The nerve died inside and was causing inflammation to the nearby tooth..."

Through out the short session, I asked many questions to make sure I understood what happened and what would happen.

Time to jump off the chair, the plan organizer was sitting by me all the time as well. And to my surprise, she said, "Good questions! You asked all those good questions. Other patients just sat there and say ok ok..." Now I felt delighted to get compliments out of the blue, ha ha.

I followed her to the front desk and showed her a sheet of all the items with cost from my insurance plan that I brought with me. I asked her to point out the items involved in root canal and crown. She quickly got information from computer, printed them out and helped me identified each item, including what we did today. She also understood the flex plan if I'd like to wait to do it next Jan. as apparently some other patients were considering that, since it's near year end. (I had some other dental office did not understand the flex plan and I had to explain it before.)

So far, I actually felt surprised as I had very low expectations before I came, yet nothing bad happened. I was not sold to any pricy product. And the plan organizer seemed very helpful. She did try to put an upgraded plan for crown, such as gold metal and porcelain trim. Those items are not covered by insurance at all and cost more than $350. I asked about those items and she explained. As long as I knew what those items are, I could still choose to add them or not. She did not add sales pressure on me by telling me it's much better to have etc.

After my own visit to Gentle Dental, I think overall it really depends on your perspective. I believe if someone who is not prepared to ask questions and understands what they are doing and what other alternatives they have, they might feel ripped off.

If I did not request I only wanted to check my front tooth, I would have taken lots of x-rays and went on the same route.
If I did not ask the plan organizer to explain items on the crown, I might thought the metal upgrade is required (as she put it there automatically, yes, sales strategy maybe.)
It you are looking for prompt appointment, this is not the place to come. (Funny, they charge people for canceling appointments yet they overbook?).
If you don't know you can ask them to transfer x-ray and documents for free, you will end up paying for them.
The dentist I visited today did not seem particularly 'gentle', the way she knock tested on my tooth.

My HMO insurance covered my exam for today. However, based on a lot of bad reviews, I still yet wait and see if there is any surprise bill to come. Since I only took one x-ray and simple exam (no gum test, no full test, no cleaning), I seriously doubt if they can make up anything to bill me.

Even though I survived my first visit with surprise, I am still not sure if I should go back though, as I am still concerned something bad might happen down the road, based on all negative reviews. Seriously, all reviews are bad, not even one positive review. It's the 'high possibility' that something bad might happen that bugs me.

Gentle Dental I

2009-10-28T20:06:00.000-07:00

My front tooth suddenly started having throbbing pain! It reminded me one of my back tooth once had that too, and the pain was so unbearable that I managed to get numbing medicine and call dentist immediately. I wanted to say I 'rushed' to the drugstore, yet I remembered for certain moments, the pain was so harsh that I could not move (it would stimulate the nerve more).

Unfortunately I signed up HMO this year, after not having used enough benefits from PPO while paying high premium previously, so I could only go to that one dentist I have chosen from my provider --- Gentle Dental in Sunnyvale.

I called and was very afraid not being able to schedule anything soon enough, to my big surprise, I got an appointment for tomorrow morning at 10. I was a bit suspicious and asked if anything is available in the afternoon. As I view 'vacancy' a bad sign. But I was told 'no'. So I accepted it with relief.

After I got home, I located Gentle Dental through google map, and right there, it popped up and I saw *1 star* with 12 reviews. I was stunned! I started to go over the reviews and then quickly looked it up on Yelp --- 1 star, 6 reviews. My heart sank...

To summarize the reviews :
1. I will most likely be overcharged. They may send me a bill later different from what they showed me over the counter.
2. I am mostly guaranteed to be under sales pressure of taking some (if not all) of their treatment plans, which easily run over thousands.
3. I run the risks of needing further repair after their treatment (for the same tooth).
4. I will not be honored about my request if I simply want a teeth cleaning and refuse to go with treatment plan

Sounds pretty damn terrible, doesn't it?

There was this picture formed in my head... tomorrow when I walked in, I would first spend time filling out the forms, then being pulled into a room while they take tons of x-rays, then going back to waiting area, finally after I finished reading an entire magazine, someone will call my name, hand me a to-do list too long to list here, each item cost hundreds... adding up to thousands or more. I will then request I just want to check and possibly do fillings for my front tooth. They will say sure, let's do the fillings. Then in the middle of drilling... they will tell me, your tooth looks too bad, it can not be fixed with filling, you will need to schedule for root canal. I will not be able to argue as I was lying on the chair with a numb mouth. Then I will be charged for consulting, planning, x-rays, filling, and root canal + crown down the road...

The more I played the movie, the more I felt miserable... I had an urge to cancel it tomorrow morning. Yet do I have a better option with HMO right now? Would it be better to go with another provider? Would I be able to get an appointment before the pain kills me?

Nook

2009-10-20T22:22:00.000-07:00

Just saw Barns and Nobles is debuting their Nook by next month, to compete with Amazon's Kindle of course. The price is set to be the same as $259. I wonder if Amazon dropped the price because they knew Nook is coming out with that price, or B&N followed the new price instead.

Look at the comparison chart, I like the followings about Nook :

1. it's got the iPhone touch, the color touch and control navigation at the bottom. Browse through books by its cover is cool.

2. It can read PDF (Kindle can do that only on the upgraded version, which costs much more)

3. It allows extending memory though micro SD card, which is always a good thing, especially when you can play mp3 as well.

4. You can lend ebooks to friends for 10 days, ha! This is an interesting idea.

5. It says it beats Amazon in terms of ebooks available (more than a million), I am surprised.

6. More than 500,000 free ebooks. This is nice too, I don't expect them to be any new top seller, however, a lot of old or classic novels are great bonus.

I am surpised by #5 and #6, since I buy books mostly from Amazon, and would assume they will surely beat B&N in terms of content available. Perhaps content can not be solely measured by numbers either. Looks like Nook is little bit smaller to carry as well (a little bit thicker though), I actually prefer it this way.

I suspect how comfy it is to read ebooks on a 6" diagonal screen, and I do like the feel of papers, so even though Kindle has been there for a long while, I never bothered to look into it much. (Plus it's not cheap.) Recently it caught my attention more as I learned it can 'read' books to you as well. That is a BIG plus to me. I work in front of computer all day long and by the time I get home, my eyes are usually tired already. Being able to listen to a book is much appealing than read it. For this reason, the screen size is not important anymore.

One last thing nice about Nook is you can try it out at local B&N store, heh. So far it looks like Nook is beating Kindle with its features. I am not sure if ebooks are more expensive than Amazon though, as most of the regular books at B&N are :(

Perhaps someone will offer a better Noodle = Nook + Kindle ?

Eww... Kind of gross...

2009-10-07T20:20:00.000-07:00

My lovely kitty, Mocca, came home late at night... with something in her mouth. I screamed, realizing it was a mouse within a few seconds. The thought of a cute cute innocent Mocca became a gross killer made me completely stunned for more than 10 minutes. I was so shocked and speechless. I thought it was a civilized world now and cats only catch mice to play for fun nowadays, if they do.

After I screamed, Mocca stepped outside, and started enjoying her late night snack. Eww... I managed to grab my camera to keep some evidence. Then I shut the door to leave her do whatever she likes as a nightgown in the wildness. Even the second day, I still felt afraid to get close to her, as the image was so vivid and made me feel sickening. I had to brain wash myself as it's animal's nature and there is nothing wrong with it. Perhaps she eats a mouse is just like we eat a chicken? We cook our chicken now that we 'evolved'. But ancient human beings did eat raw meat, right? Maybe it's just cruel to see eating something alive? Well, I wasn't sure if the mouse has been dead for a while, maybe Mocca found a dead body?

I did not find any visible 'leftover' by the door... I wonder if there is any way to prevent it from happening again :~|

Angry, can't you see what's happening?

2009-10-03T14:58:00.000-07:00

1. Free rent ---
Many stupid or irresponsible or naive and ignorant people bought houses more than what they could afford. I was astonished to find how many homes were bought with less than 5% down payment, even 0%, while they don't have savings set aside in case of job loss. Now that their 'imaginary/inflated' equity diminished, they went default. They could stay at the house, rent free, for like 2 years, thanks for US government's interference to dissuade banks to foreclose it immediately. I, as tax payer, am paying for their free rent! Why should I ? Angry...

2. Greedy banks ---
They are the ones invented all kinds of fancy, exotic loan products, which disillusioned buyers into thinking they could afford a home with no or little money down. Don't have enough income? No problem, you pay interest only with great short term rate! (Yes, buyers are responsible too.)
Government bailed out greedy banks so that banks can have more buffer holding off already foreclosed properties. They control the number of homes going to the market in order to control home prices. They know if they list all foreclosed homes at once, too many inventories would drive price down. Again, tax payers are paying for the bail out money! Angry...

3. Strategic default ---
It has become more and more popular for people to do this. Basically this is done by buying a second home at low price, then walk away from their first home. Why? Their first home they bought it too high, they had little equity, they owed way more than their mortgage, so they might as well just give it up. They knew their credit will be ruined after foreclosure, which would disqualify them to buy next home, so they buy it first, then foreclose the previous home. Smart huh? Ironically it is legal right now. Immoral. Again, tax payers end up paying for them. Angry...

4. FHA loan ---
Government is trying to help with overflowing house inventory. They changed the criteria to enable borrowers put down as little as 3% to buy a home again, and you don't need to be a teacher or veteran. OMG, isn't that what put us into this mess to begin with? What they are doing is only to help with 'near future', a faked housing market improvement, but statistics already showed a high percentage of default rate on this group of loans! Why should we even let them? The worst case when too many defaults happen to this FHA loans, our great government probably would have to bail them out too. With whose money? You bet it's from tax payers...

5. Unemployment insurance ---
Obama's economic rescue is tinted with socialism without strict criteria. Working people are paying for non-working class, regardless if they are already well off. The unemployment insurance should have an asset criteria. Why should we, tax payer, people who still work hard, pay for those who already has good asset, but simply do not work? Ridiculous.

Can't you see why I am angry? The middle working class, responsible ones end up paying for those otherwise! I should have put down 0% for my first house and simply walked away too! I would not have lost any money, and paid no commission to greedy agents. Oh, talk about commission, angry about real estate agents trying to make $$$ on sellers who are already losing. Tricky ones also play games with buyers, telling them they've got multiple competitive offers on the same property, trying to hike up the sell price.

Ok, I will stop here. When it involves group of people, it becomes politics. No wonder politics is always a sensitive and heated topic.

Hot day, kitty bath day

2009-09-27T17:45:00.000-07:00

Bathing my kitty, Mocca. She appeared to be dirty after some wild playing on the field maybe. Since it was a hot day, might as well took a bath, since she never liked hair dryer.

I don't think she liked it, but she was apparently cooperative enough not to spill all over me, or jumping and struggling through out. Her face was like, "Fine.... I will just get over with it."

I learned to leave her head to the last, as she started to be fuzzy once her head was wet. Does she look peaceful enough to you? :)

She decided to get dry by squeezing herself against the glass window behind the blinds where lots of sunshine went through...

Sat. Brunch with pineapple salad

2009-09-26T14:04:00.000-07:00

I got some pineapple at Lucky's for sale price at $2.5 each. Not bad huh?

I decided to make pineapple salad instead of eating it directly. My memories about eating pineapple is it hurts my tongue. I remembered when I was a kid, we ate it with pinch of salt, supposedly to dull the pungency ?

I found cutting pineapple was a lot easier using a serrated knife, as it cuts through the fiber well. Honey mustard salad dressing was used to compliment the sweetness of pineapple. Result was fantastic (Ken's salad dressing was used, as I did not have honey to make a fresh batch.)

As for chip dip, I always made it with various fresh veges, garlic, chili, and chili powder. My boyfriend loved it.

(PS. I made this salad with Marie's Honey Dijon dressing later. Did not like it! Feels like it has too much of salty flavor, even though the bottle is cuter. I will stick to Ken's.)

Types of home sellers

2009-09-22T23:18:00.000-07:00

I found bay area housing market is really random right now, and it has a lot to do with people, besides the economy itself.

Sellers ---
Type 1 : In denial
These sellers have seen but refuse to agree with the housing price drop, when it comes to their own homes. They put their homes on market, hoping to sell at similar peak price, which is usually what they have paid for. They are defensive and overly protective when buyers try to negotiate with a more realistic lower price.

Type 2 : Ignorant
These sellers live in their own world for the most part, surrounding housing price drop sound too far away from them, or they may not even pay much attention to real numbers. 'Drop' is a relative word and they barely integrate the new facts into their own home. They put their homes on the market even higher than peak price. In their mind, house prices should always appreciate along the time line. Few buyers would even bother to talk to them before a decent price drop.

Type 3 : Motivated
These sellers want or need to part with their homes. They put homes on market around/slightly above fair market price, and will negotiate/accept a "reasonable" offer. They are more willing to work with buyers, throw in washer/dryer/fridge/storage, making fix or credit back to buyer. While they are motivated, they tend also have their bottom line set tight. They won't walk away with too much of a bargain price, yet in general, it will be a decent deal.

Type 4 : All-or-nothing
These sellers put their homes on the market for a good money, usually above market price. Ironically, they are already financially distressed. Their homes will be listed on the market for months, maybe they take a few small price reduction, yet nothing substantial, and finally the home is on its way to foreclosure. Once the default notice is filed, they take the home off market. Hey, free rent for a year or 2 from now on, why bother ?

Type 5 : Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps
These sellers list their homes with slightly above market price. If homes are sold, then great; if not, let's wait and see. Perhaps the right buyer will eventually come, perhaps the market will turn better, perhaps someone will offer to rent it. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps...

Surely sellers change, too. Some may become more motivated from being in denial after a while, and some may change from all-or-nothing to all-or-something. With all kinds of sellers, and all kinds of price tags, no wonder home prices are everywhere. Then it is double influenced by all kinds of buyers ...

How do you like my hair style?

2009-09-20T23:47:00.000-07:00

I meant, how do you like my design and execution of this hair style, not applied on me directly, apparently :D

Cute ? Scary ? :)

Avocado Ice Cream

2009-09-19T23:08:00.000-07:00

Heard about this before, saw it in super market (Ranch 99), but have never tried it, now finally made my first attempt making it ...

I used about 3.5 small sized avocado, one can of condensed milk, half can of coconut milk, and a small lemon. Lemon juice is used to prevent avocado turn black. (It really worked wonder. I applied it to the left over half avocado, plastic wrapped it, left in fridge. The next day, it was still freshly green :D )

The making was simple, crushed avocado and mixed everything with hand mixer. Transformed it to ice cream maker and let it run for half an hour or so. (I added some diced pineapple in the middle. )

The final texture was smooth and very creamy. Taste-wise, I really couldn't say I love it, as avocado did not have too much flavor itself when I thought about it. Maybe next time I will add some pineapple juice too?

(Sweetened red beans on top)

Hey ya

2009-09-18T10:24:00.000-07:00

Looking for signs of recession -- Ghost fleet?

2009-09-14T22:20:00.000-07:00

At first it reminded me of, yes, pirates of Caribbean, ha!
But it's not about that, it's no fiction, it's real, except they are not really ghost fleet either. However, they gave me same creepy feeling about the economy... No one has a crystal ball about the near feature of global economy, there is no big wall with you-can't-miss-it written signs (maybe there is, I have not found it), yet there are signs here and there, depending on how we read them.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1212013/Revealed-The-ghost-fleet-recession.html

Looks like it's gonna be a cold winter to come...

Saying Hi

2009-09-11T19:33:00.000-07:00

popeye chicken salad

2009-09-02T19:26:00.000-07:00

I had some crave for popeye chicken, well, the truth was more of being enticed by the coupons they sneaked into my mail box. It was pretty greasy, which was a known fact without spelling it out loud. To accommodate hot days, I made a salad with it ---

1. roman lettuce, chopped, washed and drained (the salad spinner worked really great, except sometimes small leaves got caught and stuck in the basket and took longer than just rinsed it clean. Also, occasionally small leaves found their ways into the middle of top spinning lid and decided to stay there. I have not found a great way to force those tiny bits out yet :| )

2. iceberg lettuce, chopped, washed and drained

3. red pepper, cleaned and diced (did not have tomato in the fridge)

4. carrots --- julienned with chef's knife, I could have used some shredding tool, but since it's small amount, I was lazy to wash extra tool than the knife I was already using

5. Queen Spanish Olives --- sliced. I most often used this in salad, and I almost always sliced them. As a result, I wondered why didn't I just buy those Spanish olives pieces instead of big queen sized ones? No real answer except they looked nicer and appeared to be better quality?

6. Egg --- soft boiled and crushed. The softer egg yolk really gave a nice vivid color.

7. Honey mustard salad dressing + some shredded 4 cheese + dash of salt + freshly ground black pepper.

8. popeye chicken (leg and thigh) --- toasted, removed most skins and fat and bones.

Assembled my salad with items 1-7, places item 8 on top. Since the chicken was hot, and salad served as a cold base, they were not suppose to be tossed all together.

It looked pretty and prompted me to post this blog. And yes it's yummy!

hot day for kitties

2009-09-01T19:23:00.000-07:00

The past weekend was pretty hot around... I did not see my kitties lying around, I searched for each room and closets, finally found them as I opened the shower door wider --- both tucked themselves inside the tub, ha.

How do you determine home comps?

2009-08-28T18:37:00.000-07:00

Comps is used to determine home values. Most often it uses data from neighboring homes that were sold within the 6 months. Yet we can only compare numbers. So it's easy to say $price/per sqft, which would be the sales price divided by the living area. There are many popular websites help estimating home values, such as zillow, redfin, eappraisal, cyberhomes etc. And probably each site use different algorithms to determine the final values.

These days home prices are everywhere. Needless to say it's hard to run a computer analyses to give an accurate number. I use Zillow the most, and have found most homes sell much less than zillow price.

Since numbers are 'easier', how come these sites don't factor in lot size? And I would be interested to see if they can one day incorporate other non-number factors in a more systematical way :

1. how much it should decrease if it's on a major traffic road? (this needs to define traffic road first obviously.)
2. how much does it affect the value if it's on T-junction ?
3. how much does it affect the value if the neighbood houses are not update?
4. how much does it increase the value based on school scores?
5. old kitchen/newer kitchen? how much ?
6. old bath/newer bath? how much?
7. floor plan? what type will cause the value drop?
8. how much does brightness and openess add to the value?
9. neighborhood density --- this should not be hard, minimum numbers is just calculate how many homes within certain radius, and I would really like to see this in the comps. It would at least give me an idea before I drive over. I would know if I should expect to see 5 cars parked in front of neighbor's home, or street parking are fully occupied and no space for visitors at all. In fact, south bay can get so crowded that a lot of 2 or 3 bed condos only offer 1 parking space. Even single family houses can have only one car garage, as it was the norm back in the ... 50's??

Online home price estimate can only use numbers based on sales. If there are no similar homes sold recently, it will be far off. It has no idea if the house has any update. It does not know the floor plan. It does not know if the house is having an apartment complex overlooking into the yard, nor does it know if the neighbor has fierceful dogs or drives a noisy motorcycle, or rent out all the rooms so that street parking is always difficult.

As technology advances, can't we have better system to evaluate home values and disclose/compare more information?

bank-owned house #4

2009-08-19T19:18:00.000-07:00

Is this a steal?? Well, it's stolen!

========================
market facts
========================
S. Sunnyvale Ave, Sunnyvale 94086
(right at the corner of S. sunnyvale and Iowa, facing the new town center)
2 bd/3 bath, 1472 sq ft
lot : 5500 sq ft
last sold : 11/07/2006 for $925000 !
(REO : 07/28/2009 $561,000)
Listed : 08/07/2009 for $455,400 !
========================

I went to see it immediately after it was listed. Looked at the price, I would believe it's a steal! Well, it was stolen within 1 week. Cash offer?

From a distance, looked like it has a grand double door at entrance.

Living room. The door has a sign saying 'Exit', so we believed it was used as office previously.

A room right next to the living room. The door also leads to the outside! Together with the living room door, they look like a double door from outside, ha.

Walking toward the kitchen, which is at the very back of the house.

Kitchen --- the door in the back leads right outside to the open carport.

Kitchen has no stove, which is common in bank owned houses, and I just learned that banks would not loan you if stove is missing. They consider it a requirement for 'livability', which I totally disagree :( I can survive with an electric hot plate and microwave.

Shooting from the kitchen. It has a dining area next to it, then living area leading to the 'exit' (or entrance?).

Small master bedroom with attached bathroom. Nothing exciting, outside the window, immediate neighbor is a multiplex rental building. You can possibly wave to say hi.

Simple master bathroom. At least nothing is horrible.

Let's go upstairs. (Well, I shot it while going down).

Wow.... this is so cool! Completely like a cabin penthouse.

A closet? An attic for sleep in?

Even bathroom is full of wood paneling.

Viewing backward towards the stairway.

Side view, the patio door leads to the dinning area, carport at the back connected to kitchen area.

Carport area. I checked the county parcel map online, the whole parking area belongs to this house! Maybe it is partially rented to the shop next door?

===========================================
Pros :

Great price value
Convenient location --- right at downtown Sunnyvale
Good for doing business (A medicine shop right next to it on Iowa, 2 houses away was a law firm on S. Sunnyvale)
Cool 'penthouse' on second floor
Bright and fairly clean

Cons :

Noisy --- S. Sunnyvale is 2 lane traffic road, with buses stopping by; I noticed some of the windows and patio doors were double pane already, yet could not stop the noise
Not homey --- there are total of 5 doors leading to the outside, 2 doors on S. Sunnyvale, patio double door to Iowa, 2 back doors to the carport, with one of them inside a bathroom! Isn't that weird? No fence around the house at all. Well, if it was used for business, it's meant to be 'open' to the public I suppose.
No privacy even with carport --- shared drive way with the shop next to it. I think the house owns the parking area, and rented out spaces to the shop. (Extra income?)
Penthouse --- cool or weird? different people probably will call it differently, heh.

bank-owned house #3

2009-08-16T21:36:00.000-07:00

Nelson Ct., 95054

=====================
Market fact
5 bed/ 3 bath
2571 sq ft
Lot 5,662 sqft

House was on market since Jan. 09. Asking price was originally over $600+k, dropped a few times, and stayed at $566k for 2 months, no one bought it, took another drop to $499k in mid July. All of a sudden, bidding war exploded. 6 offers, one of them was all-cash, the highest one went over the previous asking price and offered $570k! Unbelievable... Is the winner a true winner in the future? Only time can tell...

Front -- definitely not very attractive for the way they added the second story.

Attractive neighbor on the right hand side --- nice plus.

Living room -- original hardwood floor adds value, crown molding all around.

Closer look of the floor, perhaps can use some finish and wax?

Small kitchen --- needs update. Maybe extends the whole kitchen into the eat in area. Didn't like the dull looking floor tiles. For most cases, diagonal tiling would look much better.

Eww... bathroom needs work...

Wow... very nice dining/family room! Marble fireplace, newly finished floor (don't look like real wood though).

Ehh... what's this ugly structure in the back yard?

The other half of the back yard. Minus : traffic road outside the yard.

Upstairs bonus room. I kind of liked the 2 tone blue. It works well with the floor.

Lots of windows and lights... almost too many.

Spacious master bathroom with jacuzzi tub (if it works or not is another question.)

Open the closet door only to find broken parts...

This photo was taken from a strange room next to master bedroom. It has a door open up to the roof. The addition was done not harmoniously with the existing architecture. It felt pretty abrupt.

Water damage in the garage.

=========================
Pros :

Decent addition with new floor, new paint, crown molding, recess lighting.
Spacious --- living room, great room, 4 bed/2 bath down stairs; one huge master bed and bath upstairs, plus the blue bonus room.
Possibly makes good rental property.
With some amount of work, it could be great value. (Zillow price showed it was above $900k around 2006)
Nice immediate neighbor house adds value
Convenient location, close to Rivermark

Cons :

Ugly front look, could be hard to make it pretty due to the way the addition was done
Back facing traffic road
Lots of fixes around.
Not sure about the condition and workmanship . (My boyfriend said it felt like it might fall down?)
addition was done totally different from the original house. Different floor, different finish, different tone. Felt inconsistent even though it was one house.

bank-owned house #2

2009-08-14T07:02:00.000-07:00

Eastwood cir., Santa Clara, 95054
=================
Market facts :
=================
1500+ sq ft. 4 bed/2 bath, 5-6000 sq ft lot
close to Rivermark
Asking $486k, gone within 10 days...

Compared to house #1, this is the kind of front look that's appealing to me. Nothing strange, squarish ranch-style looking.

Entrance door to living room --- a step down area, not sure why. It does not look like an addition.

Living room --- nice marble around fire place, ugly and rough carpeting (I would replace it).

Structured space for TV? How do they fit big screen TV? recess lighting is a plus though.

Spacious open kitchen/dining area, sliding door to the back yard.

Alternative view for kitchen/dining.

The other side of the house consist of 4 bedrooms and 2 baths, with hall way cabinets. Crown molding all around.

Closer look at the cabinets, you will see lots of defects, missing panel even. They don't look as nice as previous photo anymore :(

This is typical for bank-owned houses. Missing trim with cut open outlets, or missing outlet covers. I have no idea why they do that.

One of the bedroom. This one is not too bad.

Entering master bedroom, the only room that has carpet. The rest rooms are with cheap laminate.

Dirty window with peeled off paint.

Stained carpet...

Master bath with cut open outlet.

Back yard. No living plants at all (a bit scary ? :P )

back yard continued...

The right hand side structure is the master bedroom, the window facing the patio is master bath window. I don't feel comfortable sitting in the patio, relaxed and enjoying BBQ while staring at a toilet window, guess I am too picky?? Otherwise, it's a small yard, could make it lovely again. I like the way they curved around the center lawn area.

Converted garage --- with recess lighting (how funny) !

======================

pros :

Not bad location,close to Rivermark and HWY,
Immediate neighborhood looks fine; (however, it looks worse within 1 mile)
Decent curb appeal and house structure;
Good sized open kitchen/dining, plenty of bedrooms;
Nicely priced

cons :

Both living room and dining area are step down;
Garage is far from kitchen, have to haul groceries up to the hall way, then down to the kitchen;
More defects need fix than shown in photos, wall holes and broken doors etc.
Do not like master bathroom layout, need to re-do it;
Do not like bathroom window facing the back yard;
Laminate floor is done with cheap quality, so is living carpet;
Do not like converted garage.

So what are bank-owned houses like...

2009-08-13T19:31:00.000-07:00

Market is surely flooded with bank owned houses, I have took many trips to visit these "new age products" that have been dominating the US economy for the past 2 years, sadly...

House 1 --- Santa Cruz Ave, 95051

Expanded living room, looks actually pretty cool, huh? :)

Galley style kitchen, adjacent to garage, open to a casual dining area;

the fireplace shown in previous photo was to the right hand side of the kitchen. So if I knock out the wall and replace it with a center island, it would be facing directly to the fireplace.

Back door to the garage. Not sure why, but the garage roof is pretty low, as you can see the edge almost touched the door top.

Not very attractive front layout, especially with the low roof garage.

A closer look of entrance door. The trim/paint were peeling off, which is common for bank-owned houses.
Don't expect some lush backyard.

Brick patio outside dining area. It's pretty cool in fact, the brick floor I meant, not the patio door. The door was functional, maybe some adjustment and a new screen.
the other side of the house. Again, the stone floor with live flowers made it pretty. I think the plants survived through neighbor's water :)

Master bedroom. Hardwood floor is nice. Bathroom is small, or, tiny.

==================
Market facts
==================
1460 sq ft. 3 bed/2 bath, 5000 sq ft lot
Started at $599k in June, which I thought was over priced.
Dropped twice to $525k in 2 months, and is pending now.

Pros:
Spacious living area, can open up kitchen to create a great room. Nice hardwood floors in all 3 bedrooms.
Both sides have 'patio', potentially could create an atrium on one side.
Conveniently located in a decent neighborhood in Santa Clara.

Cons:
Ugly structured outlook, unattractive curb appeal, which could highly affect resale value.
All 3 rooms are small, and crowded at the back. Small lot.
Immediate neighbors' houses are unattractive and possibly modified.

Good bye my 'American Dream'

2009-07-15T17:00:00.000-07:00

Last memories with my house...

Empty living room ---

My recently remodeled kitchen ---
I am very glad with my design (such as 36" 4-drawer cabinets for most dinnerware and flatware, 2-drawer cabinets with glass doors for taller bottles, deep single sink with soap dispenser, extra seating space on the inside kitchen isle etc...). I would follow similar principles when I design my next project!

Looks like my kitty did not want to leave!

Surely will miss the gorgeous private huge backyard!

Good bye my first 'American Dream'. I am sure I will have next one coming some time in the future...

Home made Chinese sweet rice wrappings

2009-05-31T20:12:00.000-07:00

Just realized it's around Chinese Boat Festival again... I decided to make some Chinese sweet rice wrappings that were traditionally eaten around this time. Long story short, they were originally made to throw into the river for the poet who drowned himself agonized by the rotten government. Hence they were wrapped in leaves so that fishes wouldn't eat them all before he had a chance... (if he somehow survived )...

I first prepared the fillings one day ahead : pressure cooked chicken leg meat, and sauted fresh vegetables (corn, carrot, onions, shiraki mushroom) with some of the sauce from cooked chicken. I added Chinese five spice to both items.

Then soaked sweet rice and bamboo leaves over night. Dried bamboo leaves can be bought at Asian market. It often comes with a plastic bag of plenty. The idea of soaking is to soften the leaves so that they come back to live and flexible to manipulate again... like brain washing? ;D

For salty rice wrappings, I prefer long grain ones, which has a firmer texture; it can be made with sweet fillings too (red bean paste is traditional), in that case I would go with short grain (round) sweet rice instead. Soaking the rice would make it contain enough moisture and be able to cook faster as well. Here the photo was drained and I added some red long grain rice too. (I do this often when I happen to have some variation stuff in hand.)

Almost ready, just needed some cotton thread. I bought it probably at Michale's when I tried to make Roman shade myself. Craft stores, Wal-Mart or even Home Depot could carry it. BTW, I bought my Titanium scissor and really loved it. It made cutting so pleasant! I pre-cut some thread to 2 feet length.

Now ready to roll!

Step 1 : fold 2 leaves like a V with a cone shape bottom.

Step 2 : spread a layer of rice.

Step 3 : add fillings.

Step 4 : cover it with another layer of rice.

Step 5 : now the tricky part... bent the top leaves over while keeping the triangular shape at bottom.

Step 6 : fold the top over completely.

Step 7 : fold the edges.

Step 8 : tie it with cotton thread.

Step 9 : Finished the cute little thing!

Step 10: Send all ready ones to the steamer. Steam them for 30 minutes.

They can be kept in fridge for a few days and months in freezer. It's convenient to heat them up with just microwave. Time to enjoy!

Tips :

1. Do not put too much fillings at first try. Notice we need to fold over the top half of the leaves, so rule of thumb is avoid more than half of the area while doing the filling. Don't do too little either, as it's hard to form the shape without volume :)

2. Make sure the palm holds the wrapping tight, especially during the folding and tie steps. Tie it really hard to keep the shape.

3. Do not over steam for chewy rice texture. If you prefer the other way, cook them in water, and the rice will be soft and sticky.

4. pre-cut some cotton thread could save the struggle while wrapping with one hand.

5. When microwaving it, simply run it through faucet water first to get the leaves all wet, then throw it in the microwave. The rice won't get de-hydrated and hard to chew then.

Comments and questions are welcome. BTW, there are certainly variations of how you wrap them and shape them, even the way you cook them. So it's definitely NOT the ONLY way. Also, does this remind you of making tamale? I have never tried that before, yet read about it online. And felt familiar when I read it. I will post my making of first try of tamale some time in the future, stay tuned!

Sit in the tubs

2009-05-24T23:10:00.000-07:00

Long weekend, we went to visit a 'famous' place selling tubs : tubz, located at Fremont. It took us a while to find it :(

I was looking for something compact, preferably free standing, deep soaking, good looking, for under $1000. No, I am not a fan for jacuzzi, so that's optional. And I don't think any would be available within my budget anyways.

There were indeed lots of choices; however, I found it hard to find the one I wanted. They really don't have much free standing deep soaking ones. Except a handsome bigger one and cost a fortune :(

Probably the 'deep soaking' idea was not popular enough yet, even though I did see the new trend coming. In Japan, they call it 'Ofuro'. Something like this would be awesome, except I'd like a smaller one to just sit in. No, this image was from website, the store did not carry it...

This one below was probably most close to what I'd like to have, except it was not free standing, and the 'sitting' area puts me higher and I would not be able to soak deep enough then :( The design was weird to me, with the overflow, it became soaking below your rib cage? I wanted something to soak in from shoulders down!

Direct Buy -- 2

2009-05-23T20:50:00.000-07:00

I came back from Direct Buy open house just now. I searched more online and understood more about what happened.

So they greeted me, warmed me up with some history and then all visitors sat through the introduction session, conducted by one person with the aid of DVD. At the very beginning, the person asked us to save questions until later since most likely we all will have questions. Then we watched the DVD and listened to his chosen examples of savings on items, big and small. Some of the examples he used :

. some name brand (forgot which one) hardwood bedroom set, newspaper clip showed deep discount sale at $3200 (originally $6000), member's price : $2500

. Samsonite luggage (30% savings)

. Vacuum cleaner (30% savings)

. crystal candle holders, on sale on Macy's site : $99, member's price : $54

I was impressed that they actually carry small items though. I thought it was for big, high end stuff, that you need to spend $20000 in order to save $5000.

After the intro, we were quickly broken apart into individual groups, each party had an agent, and the group never got back together again. We never had a chance to ask questions together. As I read the forum now, they were doing this on purpose. Because they sometimes offer different package to different members, but they don't want others to hear it. I was thinking now, they knew there would be negative view points among visitors and they do not want potential customers to get influenced.

Well, at least the standard package was revealed in front of the whole group :

$6990 (first 2 years) + $198 per year (for the next 3-10 years)

I had to say I was pretty shocked!

In my mind, the friend paid $2500! Later I learned that was the price 7 years ago. Oh well... I did not just walk out yet. Because my goal has not accomplished yet. I first asked a few questions that I have concerns, for example, return.

Q : "How about returns? Can I return stuff here?"
A : "It depends on the manufacturer's policy. For most cases, small items, non-customized pieces, you can return them but there will most likely be restocking fees. "
(I thought. At least mentioned possible fees. "Plus shipping" I guess)

Q : "Can I look at few prices for Anderson Windows?"
A : "We don't carry Anderson windows. We have Pella."

Big disappointment! (RED FLAG). I immediately lost my first and biggest indicator. I requested to see some 'real' things to compare. The agent took me on a tour around the show room.

At the hardwood floor section, I asked for Pergo floor. I thought it was a good indicator as it was well known name for laminate.
A : "We don't carry Pergo."

RED FLAG!

Kitchen section -- my eyes shined when I saw Wusthof knives! I love those. Then I had to ask for more :

Q : "Do you have All-Clad cookware?"
A : "No we don't have All-Clad."

BIG disappointment!

Still, I have not given up the possibility of membership savings, given that it's spread over 10 years. I found the agent was not helping much when I tried to poke for price comparison and I was told to think about 30% in average.

And then I realized I needed to make a decision to join on the spot or would not be allowed to go back again. I was denied of any chances to come visit together with my boyfriend since he could not make it today. She claimed the policy was to protect members. Because if we walk out the door and tell retailer that we know the mark up, and try to negotiate for a better price, it would irritate retailers. And if they complain to manufacturers, manufacturers may stop working with DirectBuy and members will have less selections.

Here is the puzzle ---

1. If we, as visitors, can not see the catalog, how could we walk to retail stores and claim the price on this item is $$ ? Who does not know retailers need markup to run their biz? It sounds foolish to just say "hey, you must have 30% mark up there. I want another 20% off.".

2. Even if we, as visitors, do somehow see some prices upon open house, if we don't join, we are banned from joining. What's the use to walk to retailers and ask for discount? It's not like "if you don't sell it to me with extra 20% off, I am gonna buy from DirectBuy." Because we can't, ironically.

So what's all the pressure about asking us to make a big decision while refuse to reveal enough information (real price comparison)?

I have not thought that much on the spot, yet was mainly under the pressure about deciding, fearing I would be making a decision that I regret deeply later, either spending a fortune right on the spot or being banned from possible savings for years to come! I had no idea I needed to make such decision before I came over. It was printed on the visitor's pass at the bottom, which no one really reads!

I spent totally about 3.5 hours there, being through the intro session, walked around with the agents, lots of talk with the agent, sat around to look at the 'Direction' periodical myself (only material allowed for visitors) to guesstimate my potential savings, talked to a couple who just sign up (yes, at least one couple signed up)... My left brain and right brain could not reach an agreement.

Funny, at last the agent gave up on me. She decided it was not for me, and walked me out to the door. At that point, she became cold and did not even bother to respond when I said 'thank you' twice.

I was a bit surprised by the fact that they really tried to sell you the membership, however, they were reluctant to give you much choices. She stayed firm I could not visit again, and no fee negotiations. She even told me if I sign up at a different location, and if they find out, they will revoke my membership, with no refund on fees of course. (Oh, fee is non-refundable once you sign up.)

I wonder if other members were treated the same. The only discount I got was if I pay full price of $6990 immediately instead of installment, I can get $600 discount. That's it.

I drove home, still not knowing if I made the right decision. I then found and read this forum. It explained a lot, and perhaps I did make the right one.

http://edumacation.com/DirectBuyRateThatCompanyComments

Direct Buy -- 1

2009-05-22T19:25:00.000-07:00

Like many others, we all have seen infomercials on TV these days. I did not even think about it back then. It just feels like those 'as seen on TV' stuff, you know, most is too good to be true. Watching the 'members' saying on TV as "We have saved 20 thousand dollars..." My mind could not but wonder how much did you spend??

Until I met someone who is a member, who has been doing real estate investment for years. Basically he buys a piece of land, builds homes and sells them for profit. He told me it's worth for him in that biz, but it would not work for regular people just to buy a piece of furniture. After all, membership fee costs him $2500.

Wow, $2500 is a lot of money, I thought. But he did tell me examples like he got some cheap carpet for $.59 per sq ft, 50% of Home Depot.

I did not think too much about it and that was months ago. I am the kind of person who shops around and do diligent price comparison and watches my budgets. I don't buy those high end furniture anyways. I don't install a luxurious jacuzzi tub or show case outdoor kitchen.

Until I started spending tons of time designing my additions, I recalled the name , Direct Buy. I looked at their website. There was certainly no pricing information whatsoever. So it's really hard to compare and see if I could really save 'after' re-coup membership. Then I saw they have this visitor's pass. I decided to sign up and take a look in person.

My goal was simple. I was going to try look at a few products and compare the prices for real. And my indicators will be Anderson windows, hardwood flooring, tiles and mattresses.

I did not read any of the fine prints on the visitor's pass. I just printed it out and thought I was set. (mistake 1). I did searched a little on member's forum on their own site (mistake 2), and mostly I found good comments. It did prepare me with ideas that they not only offer products, they also offer contractor services too. I called back as they requested to get a confirmation number. The person on the other side spoke with unclear voices, I finally said " I could not hear you." before she kept on reading some terms. (mistake 3).

door bell rang at 5:30 am

2009-05-11T23:17:00.000-07:00

I woke up around 5:30 am, trying to get back to sleep. Then out of no where, I heard my door bell ring. All of a sudden I felt freaky. Of course I did not jump out of bed to answer the door. But could not stop playing all possibly scenario in my mind...

1. Some kid was playing a prank (he/she was surely an early bird)
2. some other wireless device triggered my wireless bell remotely (what a coincidence ??)
3. my kitty jumped out high and accidentally pressed the button (pretty hard to picture that)
4. some small stone hit the button (did not hear strong wind outside)
5. solicitor --- must be out of their mind to think people would say 'yes' at 5:30 am
6. my front yard sprinkler went out of order and water shoot out sky high, someone walked by and tried to tell me about it (timer has been reset to 7 am already if I recall correctly)
7. my kitty got trapped again in back door neighbor's house, and they stopped by to tell me (5:30 am? last time they posted a note on my door)
8. danger happened, someone was trying to alert me to leave the house (should I really jump out?)
9. ghost?

... I decided if there to be real danger, the door bell would probably ring again... I felt into asleep...

black magic -- what's it about?

2009-05-03T22:19:00.000-07:00

My boyfriend's best friend just got married yesterday. He was the best man and designated driver. So he painted on the windows "Just married" for the day. When he drove back, he has not had time to remove them yet.

My house sign was taken off for a week, because bank would not let me refinance if it is active on the market.

My neighbor across the street walked over today, and brought me 2 beautiful roses (called 'black magic') from their garden. I opened the door, he simply said, " This is from Barbara and me. We wish you the best."

I closed the door and had no idea what it was about... My boyfriend said they must mistakenly thought we were just married. And perhaps they were thinking that was why I was selling the house. Or he might have thought my house was sold and I am moving away soon...

Pasta sauces --- same price?

2009-04-25T22:44:00.000-07:00

I bought 2 jars of pasta sauces home, and put them inside the cabinet. I then I noticed they were not of the same sizes as my old ones. Granted, I would probably find out if I did not still have some old ones, and if I did not place them side by side.

The red sauce one. New jar was taller, so appeared to be bigger. (The one on the right hand side in the photo above.)

Looked at them carefully, the older one said 26 oz.

Now looked at the new jar :

Wow, 24 oz. It's actually less! (It was taller, but actually thinner --- smaller in cross section area.)

White sauces : (taller one on the right hand side was OLD one). They did not do the trick to make the new bottle taller.

Ya, new one was, again, shrunk in size. 15 Oz. vs. 16 oz.

I realized food price is going up. Even though the price per jar stayed the same, which easily made people not feel about it, they were smart to reduce the size slightly and even changed the jar height!

How did this happen??

2009-04-10T21:51:00.000-07:00

Came home late on a Friday night, shocked to find door handle (the one between house and garage) was half lying on the floor, and half loosely hanging there. How did this happen?? I immediately went inside the house and checked around rooms, drawers..., everything seemed to be fine, luckily, except the door handle.

I still could not understand what happened. This is the 10th day house was on the market, I saw 2 biz cards on the counter, so I knew there were at least 2 groups of people stopped by. If this was an accident, shouldn't they at least have the courtesy to call me and tell me what happened?

I tried to imagine the scenario that someone locked themselves inside the garage, and tried to break in back to the house because they left their belongs there. But no, that's not possible, since they could easily open the garage door by pressing a button and enter the house from the front entrance. If they also locked the front door, the agent could get the key again inside the lock box. So that is not possible.

I called my agent. He did not help any, he told me even if I found out which agents have been inside the house today, they would not admit anything. He suggested calling the police if I am concerned. Calling the police? My car was broken in last year in public, they did not even bother come down to make records...

Besides, I already scheduled an open house for tomorrow, I could not leave it un-fixed and show people this terrible sight. So I started trying putting the handles back. But no matter how I tried, they could not be screwed tight. I did not know what was wrong, since I had never put a door handle together before, nor did I have much time to figure it out. Fortunately I had another spare set. I managed to put that set on.

Then I realized what went wrong with the original one. The 2 long hollow cylinders that were supposed to accommodate the 2 long screws coming from the other side were complete broken off in the middle (as seen on the 4th photo). No wonder the screws could not tighten them anymore.

I could not imagine how it got broken. Could it be one kid was hanging on one side of the door, another kid hang on the other side?? Or 2 kids (adults?) tried to pull the handle from opposite side? How much strength does it take to break them?

I don't think I would ever learn what happened... But felt annoyed that whoever did this did not even bother to apologize. Even if this is buyer's market, I don't think they should lose their courtesy and basic manners! The showing agent was horrible not telling me as well!

2009-03-25T21:44:00.000-07:00

Roasted chicken legs, fried rice with celery, red pepper, onion and mushrooms... I almost always use my Panasonic infrared toaster oven for roasting chicken legs. It takes about 15-20 min. each side, and does not heat up the whole house (well, unless it's cold cold winter night, then that's not a bad side effect.) But I assume (and it should be) that the smaller oven is greener though. And that's enough to make me feel I am doing it right ;D

I brought home some bleeding hearts

2009-03-21T17:36:00.000-07:00

I spent an hour in Summer Winds Nursery in Sunnyvale. There were surely plenty of interesting plants, trees, flowers and shrubs... In general, the bigger the plants, the bigger the number is on the price tag. So, even though there are many that I was also fond of, I weighed my pocket, the economy, the job market, I picked a plant that I really liked : bleeding hearts for $9.99. Only 2 pots there: one had pretty stems with leaves wide spreading and with eye catching flowers; the other had shorter stem, denser leaves and no flowers at all. From the photo, you know which one I picked.

Bleeding Hearts :

excellent perennial for the shade garden, very attractive with their light transparent green color, deeply divided and fern like foliage and blooms are borne on arching flowers stems above the foliage. Their 1 inch, heart-shaped flowers have rose pink, red or white outer petals with strongly reflexed tips, and the inner petals are white and exerted. There is a variety with white outer petals and an exerted red flower like inner petal. (I wonder where to find them.)

Planting

average, medium wet, well-drained, organically rich soil in part shade to full shade.

Care

For the Bleeding Heart, there is no serious insect or disease problems. Organic matter in the soil will supply all the protection the roots need. Foliage dies down in the fall. Some susceptibility to aphid infestations. Occasionally stem rot appears but this can be prevented by planting in clean soil.

Because Bleeding Hearts last for years, they will probably become overcrowded and need dividing in 3-4 years. Dig up in early spring but be sure to handle the roots very carefully because they are extremely brittle. Each piece of root division should have an eye or bud however, the root need not be more than 3 feet long. New planting locations should be well marked and cleaned removing dormant stems remaining if any.

water out emergency

2009-03-19T22:59:00.000-07:00

I didn't remember when the last time was when I did exterior house cleaning, if ever. Finally it's time to clean up a little and give it a fresh look. Since it's really not THAT bad, I just grabbed a chair (for height), 2 brushes, a water bucket, a bottle of pine sol, and the garden hose. I had hose in one hand and brush in another. Bucket filled with mix of water and pine sol as cleaning agent. It was not too hard. After about an hour, my water started to trickle, instead of spray. Puzzled, I went to disconnect the sprayer completely and tested the water pressure. There was water coming out, yet the pressure was definitely low. I wondered if there was water usage limit during the day now... Well, I continued my work with bucket water instead. It definitely was a bit more difficult and time consuming, but I've got a strange personality that I just would prefer to finish the work.

After another hour, I heard door bell ring. A guy dressed with uniform was standing outside. He explained to me that there was a water outage at the end of the road, some house's yard was becoming swimming pool...and they were doing emergency rescue/fixing. He told me the water would be completely shut down for the next couple of hours, possibly until 10 pm.

"Until 10?" I almost screamed. It was only 4:30 pm.

Consider I was not even half way through my cleaning, fine, I could/had to continue another day, but I was planning to take a hot shower, got clean and comfortable at least. There might even be spider web on my hair, let alone I was in wet dirty clothes...

I rushed to the bathroom, trying to see if I could at least save a bathtub of hot water first. Too late, they already shut it off :| :( :((

Oh, well, I was glad at least I was wearing those plastic gloves so that my hands were not that dirty. I changed to clean clothes, used drinking water to wipe my face and hands. Basically, I pretended I was outside camping where water was lacking.

10 min. later my bf called, said he was done with finals and was coming back and was hungry. Hungry? We don't have water, honey.

Nevertheless, I managed to cooked some fried rice with the following ingredients that required almost no washing :

. pre-washed rice with drinking water
. a piece of chili that can be wiped clean
. an egg
. frozen corns
. frozen peas
. sun-dried tomato
. a piece of vege burger

Yummy, yummy, he ate it all. Too bad, I did not have a photo for it.

Water came back around 7:30 pm, yay! Now I could finally make my beef stew :)

doing my tax

2009-03-19T00:19:00.000-07:00

Yes, one of the things we just need to live through each year. I remembered days when I needed to dig out all the old documents to find my cost basis for each stock I sold. Things got more complicated if the stocks went through split, multiple times through out the years... And if you invest in mutual funds and reinvest the dividends, you probably have an idea how painful that is, trying to locate share's cost basis, when we normally trade in terms of dollar amount instead of shares.

Thanks to better technology each year, I am pleased that I no longer need to go through those trouble anymore. Most of my financial services provide me details of break down on securities acquired date, sold date, how many shares, the cost I paid, the proceeds I made etc. *IF* I just trust their data. So far, I have not noticed much problem. A good thing, indeed.

I also liked turbo tax online that I could see my past return data. I tried out the premier version this year. One thing I was not satisfied was that the investment spread sheet where I enter data myself, I would really prefer the columns match exactly as those on form 1040, schedule D, heh. That could save me some brain power, especially when I got tired of all the numbers and they started dancing on their own...

If you have used turbo tax, you know there is that tax number on top, indicating how much you owe or how much refund you would get. As I entered data, both numbers (federal and state) changed. I found it a bit exciting to see the numbers jumping quickly, going up, going down, up, down, up, down... especially when some big numbers were inputted. It reminded me of the slot machine somehow, only that I would never be able to hit a jack pot through filing a tax return, heh. It might be a good incentive to have people file earlier, say, "if you are the 1000th person to file for the year, your refund doubles or the amount you owe gets reduced to 50%", ha! I guess my brain was kind of tinted with the tax numbers.

Nevertheless, "thanks to" the terrible economy, the loss in investments... I am looking forward to see some money coming back to my pockets.

Do local financial branches really help?

2009-03-17T23:23:00.001-07:00

Today I had a busy morning running around until 2:30 pm.

First stop: Ross store
Purpose : returning items

I actually like shopping at Ross, who does not like bargain hunting? Yes some complain that things get dis-organized and true they don't have all the sizes, colors and styles. But that's where the discount comes from, right? They've surely got shoppers around. I wonder if it's related to the bad economy. But makes sense for the assumption. So I made my trip before noon in order to avoid long line, and I picked the store on Homestead. I compared the 2 on El Camino Real, and on Homestead, and found return is easier/faster for the latter. For the one on El Camino, they try to scan the item, find it on the receipt and cross it out with a pen. With the computer technology, I wonder why they need to do that. After the scan, it should log which item is returned. The store on Homestead does not bother to cross out items manually, nor does Home Depot. Home Depot is even easier that they could scan a few receipts at once, then scan all the items. It automatically finds items on one of the receipts!

Second stop: Wellsfargo bank, the branch around the corner of Homestead and Kifer.
Purpose : opening a rollover IRA account

First there was this woman greeted me and tried to redirect me to someone helpful. I was not impressed that she was not quite sure who could help me in terms of opening a rollover IRA account. She made 3 attempts trying to bring me to the right person. At the end, I was sitting there waiting for their specialist getting off the phone. About 10 minutes later, I finally got to talk to her only to find out she was a full service consultant. She could not help me open an account. I was given a phone number to call instead... I thought local branch would be easier to just fill out the forms on the spot and get my account number right away. Guess I was quite wrong :(

Third stop: TD Ameritrade on Stevens Creek Blvd.
Purpose : get wire information for 401k rollover and check my current account schedule

I told the front desk why I was there and waited for someone to help me for about 5-10 minutes. Then I repeat my purpose to her. I got half way through --- got the wire information sheet. And was told it was bad timing, she needed to run. Asked me to talk to her manager for account schedule thing. I waited again for her manager to get off the phone. While I was waiting, the first guy who welcomed me asked if I needed anything else. I repeated again about checking my account schedule. He then told me only manager could change schedule setting. Finally I talked to the manager, I REPEATED why I was there again...

The manager looked at my account on her computer, and I was quite surprised that even she could not see everything. She told me she had to call to ask about the 'special setting' for my account.

The thing is, I had accounts with TD Waterhouse and Ameritrade respectively. Later they merged. The good news was, they dropped the stock trading commission to $9.99; however, they raised the mutual fund commission from $17.99 to $49.99! That was a killer to me. I do buy mutual funds, and definitely not willing to pay the hefty fee. So back then I talked to the customer service through the phone, in order to keep me staying with them, I was offered to keep my old fee schedule. That information was just told to me, there was nowhere to be seen online after I logged on. Later I called again asking if I open an IRA account, could I have same old schedule too? And you bet they told me, "yes, just go ahead and open it, we will set it up for you."

The manager called in, and the line was busy, so another waiting time. About 5-10 minutes later, manager got off the phone and told me the bad news. There was nothing specially set for my account. The commission schedule is no different than anyone else. I was pretty upset as you could imagine. The manager was saying, we could discuss about it, while another guy approached her and could not wait to ask her about some trade he made this morning... I left without further 'negotiation'. I think I was ready to dump TD Ameritrade. Terrible experience.

A few hours later, I thought about it again. I wonder if the manager was telling me the truth. I mean, how would I know? She could play a strategy, telling me one thing, then trying to give me what I already have as part of her 'offering'. That would make her final offer sweeter, ha! Well, if that's the case (she lied to me now), I wouldn't trust them anymore; if she told me the truth, I still wouldn't trust them anymore (they lied to me before, or they screwed up the setting). So I guess it does not matter then.

A chair for 3

2009-03-15T22:21:00.001-07:00

I have been doing home remodeling and fixing and painting for a while now, finally it's time to 'relocate' my kitties to the backyard. I made them a nice kitty home inside my big big storage in the yard, put a jumbo moving box there with a couple of big thick cushions. I sat there inside the storage with them for a while and made sure they liked their new bedding. They have food, water, litter box, a small 'tree' for scratching their nails... all the necessities. Except for toys, not yet. I left the door ajar, so they could go play in the yard any time they want to.

I used to keep them indoor only, and whenever I opened the door, they would try to run out. Now that I moved them outdoors, they try to run inside the house almost all the time. How ironic! I let them come in to the house when I am around. However, there is no litter box inside anymore. I wonder how often I should let them go to bathrooms. I noticed it seemed they could stay indoor for hours and hours without needing a bathroom. So I googled it. Some say adult cats goes to bathroom 1-3 times a day. Ok, I guess not that frequent. I hope they would alert me when they need to though. But before I understand their language, I guess I would try to toss them out whenever they make continuous sound... Safe enough? We'll see...

Right now I am typing this blog while sitting on my task chair. They both are sleeping on the chair with me and making purring sound. A chair of 3 :)

The Final Countdown

2009-02-26T21:48:00.001-08:00

Before I left work this afternoon, (yes, we are still working in the last week for former customers), I heard some familiar music started playing... 'the final count down' by Europe. Heh. It is the final count down for us to work together for KnowledgePlex. Tomorrow, the last day, we are going to have our final task together, as a great team. In order not to jinx it, let's not say what the task is yet... hoping for the best. Friends, if you are reading this, pray and hope for the best for us...

Company's fate?

2009-02-23T15:56:00.000-08:00

So... my company has been trying hard to find fundings for the past 6 months, since we were screwed by Fannie Mae and could not get the granted sum from them after they sank themselves. Our boss has kept open about the tough situation to us for a while, and no one knew how long we could keep surviving...

Today boss announced that we wouldn't be able to afford after March 1st, and encouraged us to look for new jobs. He would be happy to write recommendations for us.

It's sad news, knowing it finally came to the end, but it was not shocking for sure, since we all knew the situation for a while already. What's next?

Playing with paint

2009-02-17T23:09:00.001-08:00

Well... busy and tired these days, did not get chances to update my blog for a while... My kitchen was almost done, except for painting or window treatment. So I proceeded with choosing colors. Here are some photos as I tested possible color schema:

Light blue wall or deep blue wall? brown reddish wood trim or white trim ? light blue door or deep blue door? I found my imagination is not that great :(

Finally decided, light blue wall, deep blue doors and white window frame. I am satisfied with the result. It looks even better in person than in the photo below. It was difficult to paint the dark wood window frame into white. Took me hours and hours, layers and layers of paint!

And I finished painting my fireplace too! It made the room a lot brighter... I painted the brick wall with Swiss Coffee semi-gloss, same as kitchen window frames, so that they match each other; painted the fire insert with semi-gloss black paint (specified good for metal and anti-rust), then metallic gold oil paint around the trim.

Kitchen Remodel -- phase II - Day 6

2009-02-01T23:39:00.000-08:00

Sunday, continue with kitchen work. Good that at least my kitchen contractors were willing to come today to finish things, because I would be around freely, instead of working from home, and my boyfriend would be available (before super ball kicked off) to demand a good finish.

I already made a list of 'to-be-fixed' since I doubted they would bother to come and help me later. Main things to finish today included plumbing, hooking up appliances and fixing cabinet drawers of course.

Plumbing went fine until the water coming out of faucet appeared weaker than before. The water still flew, yet not as strong as it used to be. Contractors showed me water pressure was nice at the bottom, so there must be something changed inside the faucet. It took them a while, yet they could not fix it. They told me it was the faucet. Well, I needed to look into that later. The faucet was an expensive one with nice quality, so I did not want to throw it away. I could not totally agree the faucet would just change in a few days while staying unused. That sounded bizarre.

The drawers were big headache to me. We insisted they fix each one of them. They were pretty unhappy, yet they did fix them one by one by adjusting and adding some filler in between the drawer wall and extension hardware. At the end, I was relieved finally none of the drawers would fall out of the track anymore, and most of them became smoother.

I made the right decision to move the gas line lower, and together with the granite tightly surrounding the stove, it made a whole difference from before!

It definitely looked a lot nicer with the back adding one more strip surrounding the stove top :

I chose to install dark colored switch and outlet on the back splash, as my original granite color was more black/brown (called 'tan brown'). The new color (called Paradiso) was a bit brighter, but black seemed fitting well with the stove, and most of my appliances.

The stove did not sticking out anymore, after gas line and outlet moved down to the bottom. Money well spent on this one.

I finally had my kitchen back, with stainless steel appliances (Bosch Dish washer, Maytag stove, Frigidaire refrigerator and freezer, Zero-Radius 16 gauge 32" sink), it's looking really good :)

Job not complete yet... wall and window frames still needed treatment... Stay tuned!

Kitchen Remodel -- phase II - Day 5

2009-01-31T23:12:00.000-08:00

David Ruiz and his 3 crew members arrived at 8 am sharp, that was a good sign. Upon opening the door, I was surprised that they all looked pretty young. They quickly set up the prep work around the kitchen with coverings on the floor, and set up machine in my backyard. Then started to level the plywood my contractors laid on top of cabinets.

David showed me it was not flat enough to lay granite, and if it's not leveled, the stone could break. (see the gap below the ruler)

So they measured across the board in different lines, and marked the area that needed adjustment with a pencil (areas that gap was visible between the board and the level ruler).

Then they took out the plywood and added some 'fillers' at the bottom, put the plywood back, measured it again, until it's all good to go, then nailed down plywood back.

They also needed to trim the island plywood, as it ran 96" long. The island granite piece was 98" long, with 1.5" bull nose on one side already and they were about to make one on the other. I was concerned about this previous days, and already told David over the phone that he might need to trim the plywood in order to fit. I even tried to remind him to bring proper tools. Remember the first day my contractors showed up and then left, telling me they did not bring the right tools? I thought that was strange, but lesson learned.

David told me not to worry about it. I guess I have had too much stress with my contractors that I felt I needed to be on top of things before they went wrong. My contractors tend to fix things through short cut, instead of doing it right (re-do it in the correct way), unless I firmly insist. It was tiring to bear with their defensive talk and insist they fix it.

Photo : about to lay granite top. Note the cutting was around the sink to minimize the seam.

They did it nicely so that the seam was barely noticeable.

I bought a sink I really liked. It was 16 gauge (thicker than regular 18 gauge ones), with a nice polish and no-radius square shape gave it a modern, clean, professional look! It was spacious and a lot deeper than standard ones. I did not like double sink, as it's difficult to wash bigger pots, baking sheets etc. So I mainly looked for single bowl, and I thought this one looked really cool!

I was glad David's team was nicely working together and they seemed happy (playing songs while they were working with the machine). They measured things carefully, and even moved the stove back to the spot (the stove was very heavy) just to make sure everything would fit before they cut the granite. My kitchen contractors would not do that, they took the stove out when prep the area. And when they started to lay the cabinets, they merely measured the space without bothering move the real stove back for precision. Well, they told me they have installed many kitchens and the appliances should be of standard size. I probably worried too much, but I didn't trust the 'standard' size when it came to exact fitting and was afraid of any no-good fix they would need later. Luckily, the stove fit, barely, which was not a bad thing actually, it looked more like custom fitting.

After one whole day's work, from 8 am to 5:30 pm, my kitchen looked so nice with new granite counter top, and I was very glad with my new choice on the color. The wavy pattern and combination of blue/gray/red/purple/black/brown made it looking really good. (I found it was not easy to photo the correct color of granite. It changes color easily according to the lighting.)

I was very satisfied with David's work. They took all the measurements carefully, and was easy to communicate with, and did a great job on granite installation, where details were taken care of.

Kitchen Remodel -- phase II - Day 4

2009-01-30T23:30:00.000-08:00

Today was granite installation day, supposedly, exciting. However, excitement was replaced by stress when granite contractor, David, called me and told me the bad news...

"Flora, have you come looked at the colors? The island piece had a different color tone from the side pieces. It looked lighter. Do you want to come and see them yourself? I don't want to deliver them and you tell me you don't want them."

David was very nice to wait for the store to open another island piece, and compared and called me back a few times. There was just no good match. I decided to ask him to wait until I go there myself.

I ordered my granite slabs from Jerong in Hayward, referred by the tile store I went previously, where I found my discontinued kitchen tile. And David was referred by Jerong. I looked at some other colors on their website, I almost felt too tired to drive there and made my decision based on website photos. But my boyfriend suggested me go see them in person.

I convinced myself to drive up there, since I knew it would be the safest. They showed me the color I picked previously. Putting the island piece side by side to regular piece, I could see the difference. It was almost acceptable, though I prefer not. I was glad David was as picky as I
, and pretty communicative. After talking to him a few times over the phone, I already liked him better than my current cabinet contractors.

After looking through more than 100 colors they had in store (yes, it was interesting, they were very colorful, and eye catching, beautiful stones...), I finally decided on a new color, which was 1.5 times as much as my previous order. See, that's why people always say, be prepared to pay a lot more than your original budget when doing remodel, and I totally agree.

After I picked the new color, I decided to let David choose the exact pieces for me. Since granite slabs are from natual stone, they are a little different from piece to piece, especially those with irregular patterns. I decided to trust David to pick them for me.

Experience learned. Next time when I need to buy granite slabs, I would go in person, make sure they have matching pieces for the different sizes I choose. Even if they are the same family (same 'color name'), they can look differently.

Kitchen Remodel -- phase II - Day 3

2009-01-29T22:32:00.000-08:00

First thing today was asking them to re-do the top crown molding that showed a big seam in between. When I showed them it was unacceptable, they were trying to tell me it would not be visible after applying more paint. Sign... I disliked this kind of self-defense talk. It was big enough for anyone to see, just go replace it!

I measured my stove more, and decided to pay extra to move the gas line and outlet down to the bottom in order to have stove fit better against the wall. Well, 2.25" may seem a small number, but sometimes it can make a big difference in terms of perception of beauty. I hope that's the case.

Before :
After :
They also installed the cabinet handles today, adding some more finish around cabinets at the bottom, back and installed 2 wooden brackets for the island. Contractor Zhang asked if I still had same wall paint so that he could apply on the new posts. Well, all I knew was there were various paints left in the garage by the previous owner, which meant they were at least a few years old already. Luckily I found one with the word 'wall' on the outside. I opened it, it looked alright, so I passed it to him.

Later I regretted it though. I could have saved it to patch up my current walls. As for the posts, since contractor later told me they needed extra semi-gloss paint layer, there was no need to use out the left over wall paint! They also said, "It would be impossible to get extra paint from stores that matches exact same color/tone after years."... then why did you use out mine? :(

Cabinet drawers had big problems on the hardware and/or alignment. They did not open/close smoothly. Total of 14 drawers, only 1 was great. That sounded horrible, right? I had noticed that 2 days ago and mentioned to them yesterday already. I insisted they try more, so they applied some oil to the rail, and made 'some adjustment'. Then I could say I had 2 good drawers now, 12 left to go.

Bad drawers fell out of rail :

Contractor Zhang told me the new hardware was rough and it would get smooth after a month's usage, and after a lot of pulling and pushing. I did not think I should pay for sharpening the hardware with a month's manual efforts. And I really disliked they telling me "they could not be fixed." I finally talked to Ina, the cabinet store manager who referred the contractors to me. She talked to them and told me they would try to come back and fix the drawers. Will see how that goes... I already foresee me disagreeing with them in terms of acceptability.

After the painting job, the recessed lighting were placed back. Switches, outlets were done. Cabinets and hardware looked nicely from outside, only wish the drawers worked better.

Kitchen Remodel -- phase II - Day 2

2009-01-28T20:12:00.000-08:00

Another early day. Contractors arrived at 9 am, I just got out of bed literally. They started to measure and put in cabinets. I was a bit concerned about my stove size. For some reason, it was sticking out before, even though it should be standard 30" stove. When I looked at demo photos or visited showrooms in person, the stove seemed fitting in nicely. Not my stove, at least not before.

Despite the contractor believed it should be standard size, I went ahead, measured once, twice, three times... and discussed it with one of them. I was told not to worry, and he had installed at least 100+ kitchens before. He showed me the current gas line position on the wall and told me I could move it lower (with extra charge). I looked the stove back and realized that should be the main problem the stove was sticking out to the front, though was not sure if that was the only reason.

The gas pipe connected to the stove was at the bottom, and there was extra room down there to connect to the gas line on the wall, but not anywhere higher up. Since I could not modify the stove itself, the only thing I could try to do is modify the gas line position on the wall. Well, another decision to be made, and I decided to postpone for now until all the cabinets were done.

They soon had the island cabinets ready and I needed to run to get 2 brackets. Also, ran out of electrical outlets to use on the posts. I am glad Home Depot is very close to my home. I am sure my contractors are happy about that too, since they had to run around a few times every now and then, whenever material is needed. I rushed to Home Depot, picked up some lighting switches, outlets etc. It took me a while to find the wooden brackets. I found a pattern I liked and it looked like good size. I paid and went home quickly only to find out they were too big :( I returned to Home Depot, returned them, and looked for a new pair. Unfortunately, I did not have much choice, the only one that fitted my need was of a boring, traditional curved pattern... oh, well, I didn't have time to shop at other stores, nor did I feel like to. There were still lots of things to be taken care of first, such as I need to reschedule my granite contractor. Also contact kitchen cabinet store about inside panel missing for 2 cabinets.

My contractor went back to finish recessing lighting after installed the dimmer switch. He complained the wires were way too old and dangerous. Not much I could do now, unless I decided to change all the house wiring. That sounded like an extended project out of nowhere. Yet it did seem to take him extra long to work on it.

There was some cracking on the wall inside my front room, which I just noticed the other day. It was straight lines with 90 degree angle at bottom. I was a bit concerned and had them take a look...

Contractor Yu said it was because the original dry wall was not done well, and need to cut open the wall, put in another wall to fix.

Contractor Zhang said it looked like due to minor earthquake shaking, said it was normal, every house has a few, and suggested just caulk it.

Mr. Zhang cut it open and we decided Mr. Yu was right, the dry wall inside had a big seam. It looked like the connection was badly done. But Mr. Zhang's solution was better, we just caulked it without getting into too much trouble.

The kitchen looked more like a kitchen now.

However, when I looked around, I found at least 2 problems now. One was the connection was badly done on the crown molding, as shown in the photo below. It was next to the entrance, too visible to ignore.

The other problem is the island top. They installed the cabinets right next to the posts, and the plywood on top was next to the posts as well. That left no room for the granite to be mounted on top properly. Granite was supposed to be over hung around ply wood. I need to discuss this with them tomorrow, and find a solution since I've got a different contractor coming in for granite installation on Friday...

Kitchen Remodel -- phase II - Day 1

2009-01-27T21:58:00.000-08:00

Finally kitchen cabinets arrived. My contractors went early in the morning to pick them up and started preparing site for installation. There was a small change I made. We decided to remove the seal of an end window and just leave it open. The fridge set was supposed to go there, and they still do, so I have to think of a way to put blinds or decorations behind. Put that on my to-do list for now. Contractor went ahead and made the change, removed the wall and stud on top, then finished some wiring and put in insulation pad.

He turned off the electricity while doing the wiring. After he was done, he went back to turn it on. Mysteriously, electricity was still off in the kitchen area... We went to look at the electrical box outside in the yard. Everything was turned on already. Tried to turn them off and back on again. Still nothing.

Puzzled and troubled, he started looking in the house to see if there was the kind of 'reset' reciprocals 'before' the kitchen area. Because everything else followed by the reset switch would be off as he explained to me. He also told me a smart thing to do was to use tiny stickers on all the switches and outlets followed by the reset one at installation. That way, it would be easier to trace and debug later if anything goes wrong. Otherwise, we had no idea which ones would be affected without knowing the wiring route in the house.

I had that experience recently when changing a reciprocal in the bathroom. I did not know everything after it would be off. And it took me a while to figure out but I did, after hours though. The photo below showed the change I made. I did not like the color of the old one, which was yellowish. So I changed it to a while one. I was lazy to turn off the electricity when I did it. I thought I would be very careful not to touch the wire. I have done that before, a few times at least. But I have never installed this kind of reciprocals with reset button. After I was done with it, there was no electricity. And it took me a long time to re-wire back and forth and debug. While I finally got it back, my screwdriver accidentally 'connected' both the hot and ground wire and it instantly burned off a hole on the metal. I was shocked at the outburst, and thought, "oh mine, I am so glad it's not my finger!"

Back to the kitchen...

My contractor looked at places possible that was leading to the kitchen wiring, inside the front room, garage and even outside... did not find anything. Frustrated, he then turned back to the electrical box in the yard, and started testing the box itself.

Ah, he found out the bottom switch was not working, the one with red. It appeared to be turned on, yet no electricity. He said I needed to change the switch, it was bad. I had no idea why it went bad all of a sudden though. He also told me the black switches on top are better ones, the red switched at bottom are cheaper and not as good. I should replace/upgrade them. Ok, put that on my to-do list. Well, at least the good thing about being around was I got to see the problems and learned a little here and there from them.

After he found out where the problem was, he continued to his work of putting dry wall back.

Then started to tackle on recess lighting and outlets on the post. Since the outlets and light switches are on the post, and they did not leave room for them, they had to drill into the wood. And that took quite a while. We wanted minimum holes on the post, just big enough to insert the box.

After a long day's work, they left around 5:30... my contractor did not do anything for the electricity, as he mentioned he would (connect the wire to other switches temporarily), he said he would do it tomorrow. I thought it was fine, since I did not need the kitchen power anyways. Everything was gone, the stove, the sink, the dishwasher etc.... After they left, I then realized my house heater was on the same route, which left me with a cold cold night...

Pondering about housing market

2009-01-14T20:20:00.000-08:00

The housing meltdown has affected across the US continent, like a strong wave. The nature of a wave is that it propagates through. It does not hit all the places at the same time with the same strength. It has delays, and it could hit minor obstacles and cause redirect or refraction. After the wash, perhaps it's clearer to see which areas are stronger to keep its shape and which areas become highly distressed, or say, back to their original values. Hence most people know, real estate is highly localized market. The average numbers reported nationwide, even per State, or per County, could only be served as rough references. They are related, and will affect local markets, yet the extent is dominated by local profile. It's not easy to guess how much, how fast the changes will be. That's why even experts can not predict the future.

What I observed in Silicon Valley, school districts, prime location and land are among top reasons to keep house values. Interestingly, whether the house is old-style-50-year-old or equipped-with-modern-facilities-3-year-new actually affects less. For example, newly built KB Homes around central San Jose, 2200 sq.ft., single family home, with all the modern touch, has dropped from $750k+ to $550k- (more than 25% down) in 2 years; far west San Jose (close to Santana Row), the area was hot during 2006, house prices have dropped about 15-20%, same as Santa Clara area, closer to Lawrence; while good areas in Sunnyvale dropped less than 10% so far.

I watched a TV show last weekend, talking about real estate white elephant around San Francisco Bay. The mansion overlooks the bay, with all the sculpture and luxurious decorations that you can imagine, the asking price has dropped from 65 to 44, Million. Some say when the wave finally hit the white elephant, the bottom is not far away. Most people are expecting the market to stabilize before end of 2009.

Should we call the areas that dropped more as 'distressed' areas, hence better investment opportunity, or they simply went up too much than they should have? The so called 'good areas' that dropped less than 10%, could it be that the wave simply has not hit them right on yet, or could it be that they would withstand the storm and prove to be more worthy? I guess before end of 2009, before market stabilizes, no one really knows the answers.

The spinning dancer

2009-01-12T18:32:00.000-08:00

Clockwise or counterclockwise ?

Got this through email list from college classmate, thought it was pretty interesting. The email said it's associated with our brains (left side or right side) for different spin direction. At first I saw she spinning counterclockwise, and it fit my profile as an engineer (left brain), but I could also see she spin clock-wise after a few minutes. According to the email, there is about 14% of Americans can see both directions.

However, according to wiki, The spinning Dancer, it was 'wrongly' interpreted as related to brain, and it was mistakenly known as 'Right Brain–Left Brain test'. It has to do with the lack of depth dimension, ( since the picture is presented on a 2-D surface.) Another example cited on wiki is the Necker Cube.

I think that makes sense, the optical illusion, and reminded me of those popular '3-D' graphs years ago.

The author's website is quite interesting too : Nobuyuki Kayahara's website
I played for more than 5 minutes on the 3-points fractal, it's pretty creative. I wish it had sound effect, ha!

Have fun, happy new year!

Got heater working on Chrismas day

2008-12-25T17:29:00.000-08:00

The contractors decided not to work on Christmas Day. (They originally said they did not mind continuing the work. But it was perfectly fine. It's Christmas after all.)

I checked the heater again, some of them seemed finally heat up after one night. But that was not right. At first we suspected the new pipe was somehow clogged and causing water to flow the wrong way, even though still felt strange about the assumption. Finally, my bf went look at the hydraulic system, and read some vague descriptions on it, then suggested we might just not have enough water inside the pipes for the compressor to reach enough pressure to heat up the system. So we opened the incoming water valve briefly. The heater immediately started the 'heating sound' and the water pressure meter went up too. But we did not know what the correct pressure should be, so we just shut off the water value quickly and waited. After a while, it seemed the pipes were flowing hot water as they should be. I called that an end for now.

Kitchen Remodel --- Day 3

2008-12-24T21:51:00.000-08:00

Day 3 of remodeling, technically speaking, it's day 2, since no work was done on day 1.

Tough morning to start with. As the outlets were placed differently than planned, my boyfriend insisted they should do it right, as we (mostly 'I') have spent a lot of effort into designing and planning. We should not compromise on their 'forgot about it'.

So I told them when they got here, and asked to restore to original plan. We even had some alternative solutions that they could use. They were unhappy and raised their voices. Unpleasant it was. Since they did not speak English, I needed to translate between them and my bf. They finally agreed to change it. In fact, they did not bother to take out sheet rock wrapping at all, but said they would cut a hole into the 2x4 post for placing outlet box inside later.

Ironically, yesterday they were unwilling to do that, they told me it would weaken the post, hence the supporting structure. They offered a quick and dirty way of letting the outlet box sticking out from the dry wall, which I did not like. That was why we changed the layout plan. And now that we insisted they do it according to original plan and insisted it stay pretty, they reverted back to do things they were unwilling to do at the beginning.

So far I felt it took certain skills to get the best out of them. They could do the job well, yet they seemed to try to avoid extra work if they could get away with 'quick and dirty'. And they easily resort to self defense when proposed plan has potential to add a bit more task. Yet when they saw other alternatives actually add even more efforts, they would come to agree with the lighter one. Everything is negotiable?

So they re-routed the wire a bit to have them come out from the correct spots -- funny, it only took 20 minutes, yet they were unwilling to do it yesterday. Then they mixed dry wall compound and stared first layer of finish. I was told it would take a few layers to complete.

Another main thing they did today was to move the base board about 4.5 feet away so that I could place side board and base cabinets over where the heater was. They changed the plan as they looked further around the piping, and decided to extend the water pipe and just let cabinets go on top of them. Well, it was not ideal either, just the easiest way. The main issue was these base board were hydraulic system, they run hot water through to heat up the space. So all the pipes needed to stay connected. They first shut off the water main line, then emptied the existing water inside the pipes before they proceeded. Experience learned from the first day, as water ran out like a small fall when they cut the pipe.

At night I found the heating system had problems. The pipes did not get hot as they were suppose to :( And the engine kept making pumping sound from time to time... I wonder what went wrong, all they did was extending the pipe... I did not think they changed any other setting.

Kitchen Remodel --- Day 2

2008-12-23T21:35:00.000-08:00

Second day, I was up at 9 am, expecting my contractor team. I made coffee and toasted bread and ate them and checked the stock market and read my emails... no one showed up. Not feeling good, yet not too surprised either. I did not expect things to go I even expected some mistakes along the way, and some decisions later I would say, "I should have done it the other way." It was too much pressure to expect everything perfect, wasn't it?

Finally they showed up around 9:50 am and unloaded material got from Home Depot. I guess that was why they were late, as they went shopping first.

So the real things started by cutting base board heater pipe first... soon they put extra 2x4 around the post area and cut sheet rock to size, nailed them together... When I looked at it, I suddenly noticed, where were the electrical outlets that were suppose to come out from both posts? oops, they forgot :|

We went through some hassle of debating if there are enough empty space inside the wrapped up posts and whether we could install outlets. They told me it would stick out a bit, I certainly did not like the idea. It would look like a job poorly done.

When I finally compromised by moving the lighting switch from post A to post B, and one outlet on post B only, they complained about not enough wire left. But then they were able to make it happen afterward. I think they were just reluctant to do extra to fix mistakes.

One of them started cutting part of the counter top and rip out the cabinets below. After things were cleared out, they found there was no dry wall at the back of the cabinets. They were quite amazed and said they have never seen it built like this before. I more and more understood why sometimes things came up during the remodeling process, because no one knew what was behind where we could see before we opened it up.

Kitchen Remodel --- Day 1

2008-12-22T21:12:00.000-08:00

Christmas week, I started my kitchen remodeling, well, if I didn't count half of the demolition I did myself more than a year ago.

My contractor arrived around 9:30 am. That was a bit late than scheduled (9:00 am). I was pretty much expecting a crew, and was surprised to see him showing up alone.

Since it was about 2 weeks ago we talked about the plan (verbally, no written documents), we briefly recapped where to start and what prep work we could do before cabinets arrive in a month. Since I found matching tiles for the floor (yay!), the plan changed accordingly. Plus I decided to remove the baseboard heater underneath the kitchen island (to be built).

20 min. later, his partner showed up. Ahhh, they were a team of 2 seemed like. After we discussed the plan change, my contractor said he did not bring the proper saw to cut the pipe, as he did not expect the change. Without it, he could not start wrapping the posts. He concluded they would start tomorrow instead. Well ... ok ... I guess we could start on Tue. instead. Yet I could not help wondering. That was kind of odd, hmm... I heard some stories for remodeling that your floors got knocked open, and the workers were gone for weeks or even months, then insects, small creatures, even animals started moving in with you (into the crawl space) ... I hope nothing like that would happen to me.

(The photos shown were demolition I did last year. I removed the cabinets, tiled counter and knocked down the wall between kitchen and living room to make an open space.)

Trip to Bedrosians

2008-12-17T19:21:00.000-08:00

My kitchen has remained half demolished for more than 18 months now, really can use some remodeling. After talking to a couple of contractors and cabinet stores, it's finally on the go.

I needed some floor tiles to patch up a small area, yet could not find it at Home Depot. After some searching, I found Bedrosians carries same brand. I decided to take a piece of mine and see if I would be lucky enough to find it there.

The showroom was pretty. Lots of stones and tiles, bath and kitchen demo... Only if we could easily make our own homes like that. There were a few people sitting in the customer service area when I walked in, yet no one bothered to ask me what I wanted. Perhaps they learned most customers would like to help themselves around? Well, it did make me feel more comfortable as there was no pressure. So I just went straight inside and toured myself. After I wandered around and praised the beauty of lots of stones, I finally came back to the customer service area.

By that time, only one guy left there. I showed my tile and asked if they had the same one. He raised his head from his desk, glanced over the tile, then said "Monticello, it's discontinued." with a flat tone, without any delay either. On one hand, I was awed by his immediate response, he did not even take the tile from my hand and take a closer look, yet he recognized the tile instantly. The tile did have random pattern and color gradient going on. On the other hand, I was very disappointed to hear "it's discontinued."

After a second pause, I said, "I only needed a few pieces to patch a small area." He asked me how big the area was. (Sense of hope started to rise.) After a quick calculation, he said for that small area, it shouldn't be a problem. Woohoo! I found my tiles :) He then took me right to the display area where my tile was hung and made sure it was the same one. I could not help but told him how amazing it was for him to recognize the tile right away. He said, "well, you got trained, after working here for a while." Probably, yet still quite a pleasant shock to me. I wish all customer services had memories like that. It certainly would make things more efficient!

It was a good visit and I was certainly happy to find my tiles. Perhaps I should secure a couple of boxes just because they are discontinued...

Unexpected fire social

2008-12-16T16:39:00.000-08:00

Last night before I went home from work, I stopped by Safeway first. By the time I got home, it was around 7:30 pm, which was a bit later than usual. Dark and cold. Since I stopped by Safeway, I turned on to the street where I live from the farther end. As soon as I turned, I saw heavy smoke with fire into the sky closer to my house. Fire trucks, flashing light, bumper to bumper police cars on the street... From a distance, I could not tell which house was on fire, but my heart started pumping faster and faster as I drove closer and closer.

Finally I arrived in front of my home, the fire truck was a few feet away from me, and I was so relieved to see my home was still safe and sound. The fire was blowing higher up on a tree with cables. I could not tell if anyone's house was burning, or it was just the trees.

I went inside without lingering around to watch 'the show', since I did not want to add inconvenience for their fire-fighting job, besides, it was cold and dark. I took some photo from my yard, well, too dark to capture much. I then turned on the heater, making myself comfortable, got ready to cook. Suddenly it went quiet and I was in complete darkness. Lights went on and off a few times, then gave up. I found my flash light through sensing and searching in the dark.

I turned on my laptop, for a moment, I thought, 'cool, at least my laptop has battery', before it was on, I remembered there was no internet (cable down of course). Before I decided to light up some candles, I saw people walking towards my home, with flash light. They asked me to leave the house immediately, just for the sake of precaution. They told me to grab warm clothing and door key. I left like a refugee.

They asked me and my other neighbor to stay on the other side of the street, said it wouldn't take long... Remember, it was c-o-l-d... Luckily, our neighbors on the other side of the street took us in.

For more than an hour, I sat by the fire, with candle lights around, hearing stories... I learned neighbor couple A worked at Google and Cisco, they moved in early this year and have done a lot of remodeling to the house, including completely remodeled the kitchen, growing orchard in the back yard (cut down a big big tree), and now are converting garage into an in-law suite... neighbor B was adopted as a baby, always felt a pity with no brothers and sisters, 60 years later, which was last year, his family found him, and he's got 3 siblings and his mother was still around... I also learned there will be about 17 + 15 guests visiting neighbor C and D on Christmas day, guess the parking situation would be gloomy... In return, they now knew the 2 lovely kittens that went astray sometimes belong to me.

It was certainly an unusual night, luckily, things went back to normal in less than 2 hours. And I did not suffer standing in the cold much. I probably should make some cookies to thank my kind neighbors who provided warmth and lighting in the cold cold night.

Scary housing market

2008-12-12T18:43:00.000-08:00

I wrote a blog about an open house I visited back in Nov. I have not checked much about how the market is doing for a while, since it's gotta be depressing. Today by chance I looked it up, and that same house was still not sold, and has taken another price drop to $699,000 now (When I visited it, it was asking for $768,000). From $850k to $789k to $768k to ... to $699k. It has happened to quite some houses these days. It also reminded me of an article I read, the biggest mistake of selling a house is over-price. Buyers do not like houses on the market for too long, and if price drops, they feel there is something wrong with the house. In other words, dropping the price makes houses 'not appetizing'. Human nature ? --- good hot stuff should be gone as soon as it's available, right? (Not that I agree, just saying it's a general phenomena.)

Some of the common scenarios selling a house in this market :

keep dropping the price until it's low and enticing enough that someone finally can't resist;
change the listing from 'for sell' to 'for rent', trying to get through the tough time through rental income (better than vacant forever);
take it out of the market and wait until better time to come (if you can afford staying);
short sale;
foreclosure;

4 of the above have happened to my close neighbors recently. One dropped from $945k to $899k to $850k to $825k, and finally somebody offered. Another also asked for about $945k (house prices in silicon valley are notorious, aren't they?), yet they took it out of market after a short period of time when getting no offer. I did not see they drop the price at all. The third one, after a few months no sale, I now see they are listing for rent ($2500 per month). The forth one went into foreclosure and was auctioned (don't know the result). Isn't that scary? They are all within 0.3 miles from me :-S

What to expect for 2009? There is prediction saying the inventory would drop, but house price will not go up. The reason for inventory drop is seller tired of making huge cut on selling price, they would rather take it out of the listing if can't sell within 90 days. So the decrease in inventory will not be a good indicator on housing market in this case. Buyers will remain reluctant to offer more than base price, and most of them are still bargain hunting. I think inventory decrease is nonetheless a better sign than seeing 'open house' everywhere. At least that means less people are desperate and panicking. Emotions are highly contagious, just like emotions drive stock market, they do the same for housing market. Too many people get into panic will only cause unnecessary disorder. Worse than hibernation :|

Looking at economy is truly depressing. No wonder the new daily reminder to be happy these days is, "keep your smile, and don't look at your 401k."

Economy is so bad...

2008-12-11T18:53:00.000-08:00

Economy is so bad that we will just laugh with Jay at Tonight Show...

Economy is so bad that people used to eat macaroni and cheese, now they have to choose macaroni OR cheese
Economy is so bad that eBay is put on eBay
Economy is so bad that Hollywood stars are forced to raise their own kids
Financial experts are saying we are entering a new chapter in the American economy. I believe it's Chapter 11.
Man, things are not looking good. I opened the business section of the paper today. It said, "You Don't Want To Know." That was the headline.
Give you an idea how bad the American economy is -- Mexico is now calling for a fence along the border.
President Bush had a press conference today outside the Oval Office to talk about the economy. He would have had it inside but, you know, the bank has foreclosed on it.

Photo documenting my making oatmeal bars

2008-12-08T00:12:00.000-08:00

After my first successful attempt in making oatmeal raspberry bars, I liked it so much that I was ready to make second batch, since most of the first batch went to coworkers and my next door neighbor.

I made small changes for the second try. I reduced the brown sugar just a bit, added extra 1/4 C. of instant Cappuccino mix to the base, used apricot jam, with reduced amount.

Photo 1 : making the mixture with a dinner fork --- not easy, quite labor intensive, I had to use hand to break it down in the middle ...

if I have a big working surface, I would try using a pastry scrapper, which I do have :But unfortunately, I didn't have spacious counter top, perhaps I should get a pastry blender (dough blender) first, at least I could do it in the bowl then :

That should reduce the amount of time and efforts. Most of all, if worked too long on the dough, it would warm up the dough, melt the butter, and causes the base to to lose the flaky texture :| (to compensate for this, I slided my pan into freezer for 10 min. while waiting for the oven to ramp up to 375 degree)

Photo 2 : mixing oatmeal into the dough base --- pretty straight forward

photo 3 : press the dough base into my baking pan (actually it's a handsome cooking pan :)

photo 4 : spread jam across top --- I did not measure how much jam to use, simply spread it, which was a mistake. I could have used a bit more.

photo 5 : spread walnuts, rest of the dough, sprinkled some shredded coconuts, ready to bake :)

photo 6 : Finished product --- I forgot to take a photo of it, this one was taken previously when I made the raspberry bars.

This time, I buttered up around the wall of the pan as well, and left jam out of the edge intentionally, so there was no sticking :) And the benefits of using a stainless steel pan was that I could cut right into it without worrying destroying the 'non-stick' coating (i.e. if I used a non-stick baking pan). Well, I have not tried other baking pan yet, so far my All-Clad was giving me even baking result. Satisfied enough.

Room to improve for next time (yes, there will be next time ;D) :

reduce flour by the same amount if adding cappuccino mix;
don't work on the dough for too long (try a different method);
use more jam (1/2 C at least I think), which prevents the base drying up
bake 20 min (leave oven unopened), 22 min is a bit long

that's about it ... going to enjoy my bar cookies now ...

Oatmeal Coconut Raspberry Bars

2008-12-05T23:30:00.000-08:00

I have not baked any dessert (cookie, cake, pie etc) for many years, and recently was inspired by Elliot (my coworker who brought homemade cookies one day), plus the holiday spirit, and some unexplainable crave maybe? I paid my visit to Safeway, got quick cooking oatmeal, sweetened shredded coconut, Ghiradelli bitter sweet chocolate, all-purpose flour... with unsalted butter in the fridge, all was set.

I found this recipe from epicurious.com . I was specifically looking for oatmeal bars with toppings. I made some variations to the recipe :

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 1/2 cups old-fashioned oats
3/4 cup raspberry jam --> try reduce it next time
sweetened shredded coconut (sprinkled some on top)
walnuts (spreaded on top)

I skipped the 1/4 C white sugar called for in original recipe (I almost always cut sugar when I follow dessert recipes, they seem often too sweet to me), and only srinkled some shredded coconut on top, instead of 1 1/2C and I added walnuts which was not called for.

The recipe looked simple and I tried to follow it by using food processor to mix the dough. I have seen people doing that on TV show, but maybe my food processor was not designed the same, it did not do a good job for that. Perhaps next time I would try using a mixer or just a folk instead.

The only baking pan I had was an 8x8 glass container. (Obviously I was not baking much, was I?) I decided to try using my 12" All-clad stainless steel pan instead. It turned out to be a great size for this recipe. I buttered the pan at the bottom lightly (simply used the original paper wrap for the butter stick I used out), then pressed in about 3/4 of the dough (I really did not measure it carefully) into the pan using a dinner fork, spreaded the jam across the top using the same folk, spreaded walnuts generously by hand, sprinkled the rest 1/4 dough, then sprinkled some shredded coconuts.

It took about 22 minutes at 375 degree using 'convectional oven bake' mode (I did open the oven to check it a couple of times, that might have dropped the temperature a little). I baked it until the coconut shreds turned slightly golden brown. After they were cooled for half an hour at least (the All-Clad pan probably slowed down the cooling process) , I then tried to cut a piece and it was delicious:) I managed to bring half to the dinner party tonight at my boss', everyone liked it. It did not matter if they were being extra nice or told the truth, I myself really loved it ;)

I am definitely going to make it again. Next time I would reduce the jam to 1/2 C or so (as long as it spread a thin layer on top, that's enough). Perhaps lightly butter around the pan could prevent the jam gets stuck to the pan. (No sticking at bottom, it was great.) Or perhaps I should have taken it out of the pan when it's still luckwarm, instead of all cooled down, which causes the jam to become hard.

Roasted turkey leg

2008-12-03T18:44:00.000-08:00

I made it twice recently. The first time, I only roasted 2 legs with some onions. I used my counter top infrared toaster oven. After 40 min., they turned out nice, moist and juicy. I marinated them for about 2 days in BBQ sauce. They tasted so good that I definitely had to do it again.

The second time, I added extra 2 wings, 2 potato, 1 carrot and more onions. So I had to fire up the big oven instead. It took about an hour of baking; the color and smell were wonderful, however, I think it was over done a bit --- not as moist as last time, too bad. But my boyfriend still ate the whole leg in no time :) Well, the nice thing about turning on the oven in the winter time was the bonus heat around the home anyways.

Turkey dumpling surprise

2008-12-03T18:34:00.000-08:00

Cooked turkey kimchi dumplings, sprinkled with soy sauce, sesame oil and green onions... yummy ...

I also liked (actually preferred) 'steamed' dumplings, which were made of different type of wraps. The wrap dough would be made from hot water + cold water, similar to those that I used when making green onion pie. The dumplings I made this time was from cold water only, so they had to be cooked in boiled water.

However, I found it interesting that by cooking less inside the water pot, and microwaved for 2 min. at the end, the skin got firmer from losing moisture, formed texture similar to steamed dumplings. Nice surprise :)

Making turkey dumplings

2008-12-01T19:30:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving was so much about turkey and pumpkin pies... I bought pre-made whole turkey meal from Safeway before, it was not bad at all; this year I bought uncooked ones and no surprise that we were going to eat a lot of turkey for days. I did not plan to roast or deep fry the whole turkey, as many did, that would be too much trouble for me. In fact, I have never done that in my life :P Instead, I separated different parts and made the followings (so far) :

turkey soup noodles (turkey broth made from all the bones and unused parts)
Thai green curry turkey with cabbage
turkey spaghetti
hot turkey sandwich, sauteed with mushrooms, onions, red pepper and bacon bites
Japanese style yellow curry turkey with potato
roasted turkey legs and wings in BBQ sauce
turkey breast sauteed with sun dried tomato
pasta with turkey breast, mushroom in white sauce

Yesterday I made turkey dumplings with kimchi. After all, turkey was just one type of meat and I was sure people would come up with all kinds of ideas on how to eat it! :) I used diced onion, red cabbage, some chili, kimchi and turkey breast. I did not use food processor, and it took me a while to cut turkey breast into small pieces :( I made my own dough for dumplings wraps. The freshly handmade dough wrap always tasted much better than machine made, and it was a lot easier to manipulate when doing the wrapping since it was elastic and flexible -- less likely to break, easy to seal even if it did.

I lined them up on cookie sheets with some flour at bottom to prevent sticking, before I put them into freezer, I sprinkled some water on them so that they would freeze better without drying up quickly and developing cracks. Now it's time to feel great to have a BIG freezer, which I happen do. Sliding 2 cookie sheets of dumplings into freezer was a piece of cake for me :)

Dinner and pie at Marie Calendar

2008-11-29T19:20:00.000-08:00

The longest official holiday vacation started from Wed. night I suppose. My boyfriend and I went out to Marie Calendar for dinner, as I always liked chicken pot pie and did not recall I ever had one there. Surely I have had lots of their frozen TV dinner pies, and wonder if it would be better inside the restaurant when made fresh.

We called and were told about 30 min. wait. Half an hour later when we arrived, it was not super busy, and apparently, our name has been called and crossed out earlier already. So we had a new wait in the lobby... meanwhile, I got a chance to look around. Then I saw the unbelievable scene of tons of pies piled up everywhere around the register side.

I was astonished to learn that they have made 5000 pies for the 2 day period for Thanksgiving! Pies were piled up according to its flavor with signs hanging down from the ceiling, marking each territory. The most popular was pumpkin pie. Well, tradition won. The second most was apple pie.

We had chicken pot pie and pot roast (beef) for dinner, plus a bottle of red wine --- inspired by their "half price off on whole bottle of wine, Wed. special". The pie indeed tasted differently than the frozen ones, most of all it's the pie crust. It was crispier and more flaky. Roast beef was alright. Nothing highly sensational, yet not bad either. I called it a fair dinner when coupled with promotional wine discount plus extra dinner coupon :)

We grabbed a French Apple pie on our way out for Thanksgiving brunch. It was pretty tasty. No wonder the store was piled up with pre-ordered pies!

My furry companions

2008-11-16T20:19:00.000-08:00

My 2 little kittens are growing bigger and bigger each day. They both like to eat now, even the small Rocca, who used to be reluctant to food. I used to suspect that she just had some problems with her breathing or her gum, that's why eating was not comfortable for her. Now that she's becoming healthier, she started to jump to food bowl as well. On the other hand, Mocca seemed to become larger than she is supposed to be! I wonder if kittens need to be on a diet before it's too late... hmm...

They are really sweet and great companions, and for the most part, they behave well (using standards for kittens). Often times when I call their names, and give them some hand or body gestures, they would follow me out of bedroom or garage. Quite often when I open bathroom door, I would find them both sitting in front of the door waiting...

They like to be around where I am. If I am sitting by the dinning table, they would try either climb onto my chair, or some seatings nearby, so that they could watch me and fall into asleep. When I read on the couch, they would follow me closer, estimate and then carefully make their steps, and finally land on comfortable positions, hold me and sleep like babies.

Also, Mocca grew more bounding to Rocca, and Rocca tried to get closer to me now. In the past, they usually took turns jumping on to me, almost felt like they were competitive to each other, and did not want to be at the same place at the same time; now they like to cuddle together with me.

Well, all is good, except they really get heavier now, and I can't have them sitting on me for too long!

Recent food log

2008-11-14T00:17:00.000-08:00

Sauteed steak :

This dish was made with top blade steak chunk, cucumber, onion, and some red pepper. I pressure cooked the beef first with a can of beer (yes, beer :) , onion, salt and pepper until it's tender. The I used it to make 2 meals: one was this sauteed dish, the other was Philly cheese steak. I liked both of them very much.

Chicken with cabbage in light BBQ sauce + multi-grain rice :

Chicken breast, cabbage, some onions, garlic and chili pepper . The trick was to cook cabbage in medium to high heat to evaporate excess water coming out. Otherwise it lost the chewing texture. I also cooked some multi-grain rice for it.

Roast beef sandwich on home-made curry bread :

I make sandwiches often, mostly for lunch, as I consider them healthy and tasty. I am a big fan for bread, especially fresh bread. One of my recent experiments was curry bread. I made them with some curry powder, diced onion, carrots and a bit of chilly. It was yummy :) The sandwich was made of sliced roast beef (bought from store), lettuce, tomato, minced green pepper, Dijon mustard and provolone cheese. Layered them into 2 slices of lightly toasted curry bread. Also stringed some Queen size Spanish olives (not shown in picture) by the side to add more flavor.

Broken shower arm - II

2008-11-12T19:00:00.000-08:00

Made an appointment at 9 am with Pennington Plumbing Services found on Yelp with good reviews. $95 an hour plus parts.

Gosh, he came at 8:20 am , 40 minutes earlier, a bit ridiculous to me ... -__-... sleepy...

He looked at it and pulled out a nipple extractor, it looked like this, but seemed longer :

We did not find this at Home Depot yesterday. The only set we found were all very short, and they did not quite fit the 1/2 inch pipe either.

He measured it approximately, and then asked if there was a power outlet outside of the house. Not knowing why he needed that, I showed him one right outside of the front entrance.

Then we started to hear some loud machine sound... ahhh, looked like he was using a reciprocating saw cutting something. My guess was the extractor was too long and the end was too small, so he was cutting it to the right diameter and length in order to fit in.

After about 10 min. he came back and used a wrench, together with the trimmed extractor to do the job. I believe it was within 5-10 min, the broken male piece was completely un-winded and out of the ear ell!

It took less than 40 minutes total, he had cleaned out the broken piece, connected our newly bought shower arm and the new shower head, everything looked nice enough, except a missing washer between the arm and the head. So the water still leaked a bit. We decided we could deal with getting a washer later ourselves. Good news was, shower was back :) --- with the expense of $100, plus our own time and efforts yesterday. Apparently we were not good plumbers :| Hmm... could have kept his custom made extractor, just in case...knock the wood.

Broken shower arm

2008-11-11T17:20:00.000-08:00

I bought a new chrome shower head with chrome cord and was excited that I could replace the current one. I switched the old one out and put the new one on. When it got tight, oddly it was upside down. So I needed an extra 180 degree turn. Yet it seemed very tight already (by hand --- mistake here, should have applied with a wrench, then the whole story would not exist), I wondered if I could turn the shower arm (instead of the shower head).

My boyfriend had more muscle and adjusted the shower arm to make the angle right. I then sealed it with tape and was happy it was done. Yay!

I turned on the water, oops, some sprinkle came out from the connection through the seal tape. It appeared it was not tight enough, too loose for the seal to work properly. We gave it another tighter turn. Now it was back to the original problem, upside down.

Ok, see if we could apply another 180 degree turn on the shower arm. It was so tight that it seemed hard to move though. I was afraid something might get broken since I knew my boyfriend's strength, and none of these stuff were made of titanium, plus these fixture could be more than half a century old and who knew how rusted inside they could be... right after I warned him, ouch, the shower arm was broken from the wall >_<...

Sadly, this is the only shower I have, and the shower was tiled. It could possibly mean breaking off the tiles and dry wall to get to the inside... but I do not have same tiles to patch it up ... not knowing how to fix it yet, I spent an hour scrubbing my bath tub so that at least I could still take a bath. I had to say, my bath tub had never been so clean.

After some research online, I found this thread. Wow, the pictures looked just like mine. I was amazed how many people talking about the same dilemma. Apparently, we did not invent this problem. However, it did not seem to have universal agreement on how to fix it. Different methods were applied, some people say it worked, some say it could damage the female connector...

To sum up, here were a list of options I could try:

Apply a 1/2 inch internal pipe wrench to the broken thread and pry it out by using an external wrench
Apply a nipple extractor instead of internal pipe wrench
Hack saw 2 cuts within 1/4 in. to each other, cut it to 99% without breaking into the female thread of the dog eared shower ell (sounds dangerous huh?), use long-nosed pliers get the broken piece out, then un-thread the rest of it
Use a Dremal with a ball end bit and CAREFULLY cut two opposing grooves then colapse the piece to remove.
Use screw driver and hammer to break them into pieces
Use files or chisels ...

Ok, I could see basically, there were 3 approaches using different tools:

First is to apply some support from inside and un-thread the broken piece as a whole;
Second, pry out a small piece and grab it as a start, then manually unwind the broken piece by "peel it off" counterclockwise (it would come out as a long metal thread, like when you peel an apple without breaking it off);
Third, break it into small pieces and collect them individually

We got the internal pipe wrench at Home Depot, it came as a set with 3/8, 1/2, 3/4 inches. Though we only needed the 1/2 one. It was an interesting piece with a floating 'mouth' that expanding into the pipe when you turn it.

No it did not work like a charm, as some posts said; in fact, it did not work at all in our case. There was no enough grip from the inside, despite we also tried cutting some grooves with Dremal as well as using hack saw to give it more gripping spots. Tried using hammer and screw driver, tried hammer a long nose plier... nothing worked *~* And we still needed to be careful not to damage the female adapter while we knock, cut and saw the broken male piece inside. It seemed the only thing we have not tried was to kick it! -_-

I guess the broken male piece was just too eroded into the female adapter. Guess it was meant to be the nature. When 2 things grew so tight for a long long time, they forgot how to be independent of each other anymore. They either did not remember how to live alone or did not want to anyways. They became one living creature, and they seemed to be mocking at us, "we either live together or die together. Save some sweat trying to break us apart...". They indeed became inseparable.

I could see why different people use different methods, and argue danger of one another now. It really had to do with how badly it was broken, how much was left inside, how tight the broken piece was, how rusted it was etc. Will see what the plumber says tomorrow when coming in for estimation. Stay tuned.

Open house example

2008-11-09T23:14:00.000-08:00

I stopped by an open house today on S. Mary in Sunnyvale. Not that I could buy it, but just curious about the market and I liked to see floor plans and how different people remodel their homes differently. It could be interesting, it could be mistakes to remember not to repeat.

I did some simple data digging before I went there. The asking price on MLSlisting was $768,000. It seemed alright in the current housing market for a 3-bed, 2-bath home, 1644 sq ft, 31 years old, in central Sunnyvale. I looked up on zillow, and was surprised to read it was asking for $850,000, and has been on zillow for over 160 days!

Apparently, they did not sell it 5-6 months ago. I bet they regretted. 160 days ago, the housing market was at least not so horrible. If they had asked for $799k back then, they might even got an offer higher than $800k. Now that the market plunged, they had to reduce the price more than once. The flyer was $789k, then marked down with a pen to $768k... still, there was no one there at the open house when we visited it.

The zillow estimate showed $805k. The reality was, even asking $768k, no offers coming in... The owners bought new place and moved to Texas already. Well, Texas should be much cheaper I suppose.

How would their return rate came out to be?

. House was bought in Oct, 2003 for $572k. That was 5 years ago.
. Assume their closing cost was about 1+% of the house, say $6k.
. Assume mortgage interest plus property tax after tax deduction was considered their rent, so out of the equation
. Approximate their expense on maintenance over the years, plus new double pan windows, kitchen remodel, new paint etc. ~ $22k
. Assume the sales commission is 5%

If the house gets sold at $750k, they would be having an ROI of

750-6-22-(750*5%) - 572 / 572 =~ 20%
That's about 4% per year gain.

Doesn't sound too lucrative, does it? Yet comparing to a lot of people whose houses actually lost 20% of value, they probably should still smile.

I can not but wonder if house is a good investment. There isn't any simple answer for that. It depends on how much one is willing to pay for 'monthly rent', when the house was bought, and how long the house was kept. Sure, remodel expense would be thrown into the equation too. What's the bottom line? My conclusion would be : don't pay monthly expense (mortgage interest, tax, maintenance) more than what you are willing to pay for renting a similar place, and don't sell when the house value drop below your purchase cost plus closing and remodel cost. That's just math, and based on the historic curve. I found it hard to follow when 'emotion' was added into the equation though. Always the biggest killer for any investment, isn't it?

Don't mess with the Zohan

2008-11-02T12:09:00.000-08:00

First impression when the movie got started was, it would be hard for me to watch in the theater where there was no subtitle. They all spoke with some middle Eastern accents! Well, the majority of them. Then as the story kept going, not bad, in fact, it was surprisingly entertaining. Though I did not particularly like the low class jokes about sex, and making out in the back room of a salon for every customer that comes to him was just way too much exaggeration. It deviated from his passion in hair-styling. I didn't see he got popular because he cut and designed good hair styles. That was a bit disappointing to me. Not enough creativity and inspiration. It was probably not meant to be an inspiring movie anyways.

The scene with Mariah Carey was corny, nothing ingeniously funny. The later part about making 'sound' resonate was interesting, reminded me of Chinese KuFu novels, but it was a bit overdone. I knew it was supposed to be an entertaining and perhaps ironic laughing movie, yet couldn't help thinking why they destroyed extra buildings out of nothing, heh.

Overall, recommended for a relaxed evening. It would probably entertain you just fine :)

Virtual garage sale frustration

2008-10-29T14:22:00.000-07:00

Case I --- late
Buyer : "I will be there at 2"
clock ticking... 2:35 pm... not a shadow showing up... finally phone rang.
Buyer : "I am on my way."
(Aren't you supposed to be here more than half an hour ago?)
I guess he called just because he was late and wanted to make sure I was still home.
Hey, at least he showed up. Oh yeah, there were 'no show' people on craigslist. After all, it's anonymous enough.

Case II --- I don't mean what I say
Buyer : "I WANT TO BUY YOUR POTTERY BARN WHITE DISHES!! Are they still available? When can I come pick them up? Can you please save them for me? I want all of them..."
Me : "Yes they are still available. I live in Sunnyvale ... I will be home tonight, if you'd like to stop by. Please let me know when you plan to come over and I will email you my address..."
NO RESPONSE ANYMORE.

Case III --- low ball plus looking for extra
(Selling 2 purses, A for $20, B for $40)
(the conversation took place through back and forth emails, each time I just felt the buyer was asking for something more...)

Buyer : "Can I get both for $35?"
(Wow, $35 is a discount for B, and he wants A for free?)

Buyer : "Can we meet in San Francisco?"
(Ask me to deliver all the way to the city? Hello, I live in Sunnyvale, didn't you read the posting? )

Buyer : "Do you still have original tags, authentication cards and boxes? I want to give them to my sisters as gifts."
(I am selling them at 85% off original prices... Don't you think you are asking too much and willing to pay too little? ...)

Buyer : "Oh, I live in the north bay and won't be able to go there until next week, can you keep them for me?"
(Due to the above 'question marks', I don't see any reason I should keep them for you from other potential buyers. Good luck, to you, and me.)

Case IV --- scam
Buyer : "Hi, It is my pleasure to mail you today about the posted advert of yours,i we like to make an enquiry if this item of yours posted is still available for pickup,i we be much greatful if you can give me a reasonable price.. Waiting for your respond soon.."

(... At least you need better grammar....)

Virture garage sale update (I)

2008-10-28T21:45:00.000-07:00

1. Dark Green Lounge Chaise - sold for $100.

2. Minolta digital camera, 4x optical, 4.0 Mega pixels - $sold for $30

3. Folding table - sold for $20

4. Pottery Barn White Collection - partially sold for $30 (7 Cereal bowls + 5 salad plates + serving platter)

5. CD player with subwoofer - sold for $15

6. Travel cosmetic case - sold for $5

7. Energy bulbs, 2 sets - sold for $8

Bathroom Vanity Shopping

2008-10-28T21:20:00.000-07:00

I am thinking of changing my bathroom vanity. It's been there forever... well, since I moved in here. I have a small bathroom, so I prefer to get something compact to make the space feel less crowded, or more roomy. Oh well, say goodbye to those grand double sink vanities, they are pretty cool and really nice to have, only if I have more space... :|

I looked online and on eBay, there were literally tons of them! I found something small and not expensive, and the seller happened to be located at Fremont. Plus, the 'store' is open to public now.

When we arrived, I was surprised to see a small warehouse. There was no store front, let alone any decoration. And there was certainly no price tag for anything. If you asked the person (probably the owner), he would name a price for you without hesitation. Heh.

Again, I could only accommodate small ones, so here are some in consideration :

Originally I was set on the first one. It's simple, nothing bulky, no extra storage, but did come with 2 small black glass wall shelves, same material as the counter top. However, my boyfriend was concerned that it's too easy to bump into it and it's hung on the wall, may not be stable enough. I more and more realized why Americans like 'big' and 'heavy' stuff. I guess they need them ... for safety, to compensate their 'activeness'.

So now the third one might be our pick. It's free standing, with some storage. The back of top shelf inside the storage was open, hence easy for connecting plumbing pipes. Ascetically it would not be my pick, but functionality wise, it's not a bad choice so far.

Virtual garage sale

2008-10-22T19:34:00.000-07:00

Busy with clean up these days, and helping my boyfriend's moving... I think most people had the experience of getting rid of a lot of stuff each time we move. So is my boyfriend. Well, I decided to run a garage sale. I never had my own garage sale before. For the most part, I think it's tedious, time consuming and not much money to make. I love craigslist. I either sell them on craigslist or eBay or just donate them.

The idea of garage sale was because there are too many things to list on craigslist and give each item some nice photos and a fair description. Still, I made the efforts to go through part of the stuff and took photos and posted them online.

Photos are always great for demo. Nowadays I would not buy anything online without a decent photo. When I sell things, I always try to do best photo shots. I found it interesting to go through my 'for sale' folder and looked at those things I used to own. They usually looked nicer and cleaner. Because I was selling them and had to show their best. Yet that would be too much work this time due to the large amount of things I am selling. I rampaged through most of them and just took one photo for each. It was not my usual way, but how much time do I want to spend for an item sell for 3 bucks, right?

I can imagine some of the items harder to sell, because they are of nice qualities, I bought them with high prices for their values, and somewhat reluctant to sell them low. For example, this tea cup set I bought at SoGo in Taipei years ago, it was a high end department store, and things are definitely not cheap there. I used it a few times only. I bought it because my then ex-boyfriend's parents liked to drink tea. It would be nice to have a tea set when they came visiting. I loved the kitties on the set. Each cup has a different color and different kitty expression.

Some of the things (probably quite a lot?) I bought on impulse, like this fully beaded dress from eBay. I thought it since it was very pretty on the display model and I actually got it with a good price too. But when would I be able to wear it ? heh. Not practical at all. It's been sleeping in the closet ever since I got it.

Then comes this Victoria's Secret red evening dress in Satin. Also kind of 'mood' of the moment purchase, never worn, and can't imagine when that would happen... SELL! (Too bad, it definitely looks better on model than hanging against a wall.)

For more photos and to see what I am selling, visit my garage sale.

Well, that's about half of the things I guess. Don't know when I am setting up a real physical garage sale yet. For now, I have started online virtual garage sale listing through craigslist. Will see how far it goes. Stay tuned.

Risotto with Chicken

2008-10-14T20:23:00.000-07:00

What's for dinner tonight?

I selected some ingredients I had in the fridge: celery, assorted baby peppers, shitaki mushroom, cooked chicken breast, chicken broth, and decided to make something between risotto and Spanish rice. I don't know if such thing exists. But if I make it, it does then :)

I heated up my chicken broth with pressure cooker, and threw in 1/2 cup wild rice with 2 cups of white rice, and pressure cooked for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, I cut all the vegetables, minced some garlic, and sliced chicken breast. With my index finger wounded, it took at least 3 times longer for me to cut up everything :(

Time for photo -- before they went into the frying pan.

After I sauteed the veges, I then added chicken breast, pasta sauce and hot sauce.

My rice looked well cooked and yummy now.

I blended in everything into one pot, and there I had my dinner risotto.

finger update

2008-10-10T23:56:00.000-07:00

Third day of my finger event.
I carefully removed the bandage around it, and took a good look at what's going on inside. I could not tell what the white stuff is around the nail. I assumed it was some oxidized medicine? Well, I was not sure if I need to clean it and re-apply medication and new artificial skin, or better leave it as is and let it grow back by itself. Well, I chose the latter for now...

Boogie By the Bay 2008

2008-10-10T19:00:00.000-07:00

This year was my second time at Boogie By the Bay since I started dancing a year ago. I recalled last year I was so awed by the grand scale of the event. In my memory, it was a thousand-people event, the crowd cheering was amazing, let alone seeing so many good dancers from out-of-town. The dance floor was always packed, (at least for the time period I was awake), and I really enjoyed all the workshop and all the social dancing I did, even though at the end I was really beaten and had no energy to feel 'happy' anymore. Ironic, wasn't it?

Perhaps it was so unforgettable last year, it has grown bigger in my head. This year it seemed fairly similar to last year, except I have already seen it, and no longer felt 'shocked' or 'surprised'.

It was a dilemma to decide what time to be awake. The workshop starts at 9 am, the whole day event lasts until midnight. Then the real hot social dancing runs somewhere after midnight to 3 am or so. The extreme enthusiasts stay until 4 am or into the dawn. At least that was what I heard. I knew friends who stayed until 3, until 4, and until 6...

I did same thing as last year, trying to get up for the morning workshop, partially because I still would like to learn all the skills, partially because my bf could not social dance yet, and workshop would benefit him more. Needless to say, I got pretty tired before midnight already. So I missed the late night dancing, when there were the most good dancers and the floor space was at least more reasonable. I felt like I could not have everything :| I wonder next year, or at next dance event, I should change my strategy by staying for late night dance and skip any morning/early afternoon workshops. After all, dancing with good dancers are more fun and better practice than taking workshops...

Kitchen Accident

2008-10-09T10:01:00.000-07:00

I sliced my finger badly when cutting peppers last night ... it happened in split second, and pain and blood followed. I noticed a quarter of my finger nail was gone, but I could not find it. The continuous bleeding made it hard to see.

After I applied Neosporin and artificial skin on, the pain accelerated exponentially that I felt my brain was lacking blood and O2 and felt nauseating and fainting. I took some pain killers and finally went to sleep when the medicine kicked in.

This Week's Menu

2008-10-08T19:46:00.000-07:00

I made a menu for this week, which I rarely do, if I ever did. The reason was I found myself keep forgetting what meal plans I have thought about or already planned, forgetting what ingredients I bought, and then iterating the thinking/planning process over and over, which is obviously tiring, time consuming and not very wise.

Despite I do love cooking, it is definitely more than double efforts when preparing a meal for 2. I guess 1 + 1 is rarely 2, unless it's strictly math. hmm... I can not imagine to feed a family of 5 or more...

So the menu goes like this :

Sun : (D) chicken leg soup with Chinese Burritos

Mon :
(L) roast beef sandwich
(D) chicken leg soup U-Don ==> added scrambled eggs with pepper as side dish

Tue :
(L) chicken salad with Cesare dressing
(D) ground beef spaghetti with red, yellow pepper, in tomato sauce
==> changed to chicken pasta ... in white sauce, with assorted pepper, broccoli, mushroom

Wed :
(L) cheese sandwich with chicken, assorted pepper, mushroom and bacon bites
==> changed to left over chicken pasta and un-eaten chicken salad from yesterday's lunch
(D) fried Rice with meat balls, celery and carrots + chicken soup

Thur:
(L) fried Rice
(D) roast beef sandwich

Fri :
(L) turkey wrap (maybe, if we have time, and IF we have turkey breast...)

Today is Wed. and apparently the menu has been modified along the way already. We will see how much it get carried out at the end. I knew changes were guaranteed, as long as it still saves me some efforts of re-thinking, it's not bad I guess. It also serves a nice purpose to remind me doing certain things a day ahead, such as thaw meat, set up timer for cooking rice etc.

Well, the down side is, it took me like an hour or so to finalize the menu :(

Weekend Furniture Shopping (II)

2008-10-06T22:55:00.000-07:00

Our furniture shopping fun continued this weekend ~~~ for the most part, we were looking for some comfy seating, and possibly for anything that caught our eyes. Most of all, it's fun to look at interesting designs and see what ideas people come up with. We did see more fun design, but too bad I did not photo them all.

Leather Recliner Loveseat $929-$1198

After our trip to Jenifer Convertibles, I have been looking online for recliner loveseats, and probably would opt for leather ones. See, my taste does change. 3 years ago, I bought black leather sectional with chaise, I liked it a lot for 1.5 year or so. Then I disliked the chilly winter night, when the sofa seemed to always give me a cold shoulder look. So... replaced with a modern shape, soft fabric, warm crimson color, with corner recliner... One year later, I am back to look at leather again (since my boyfriend promised to warm up the seat).

We found something we liked more than the fabric one at Jennifer Convertibles. It's of dark burgundy, with top grain leather around (leather-like on the side). The price ranged at $929-$1189 from 2 different stores. I was not able to confirm if they were of the same brand, since one store kept it like top secret, terrified to reveal :|

I had some concerns for the brand though. It's made by Ashley, same as my current one. I loved my current couch, it was perfect for me and stylish, until I found with someone much bigger and a lot less gentler, it could easily be flipped over (almost). After my boyfriend jumped on it a few times, it has become a dangerous spot :| The defect was due to its light weight and lack of good locking mechanism. The recliner came of the hook too easily (when strong force applied).

This leather loveseat seemed on the light weight side too, but at least the lock run across the bottom of 2 seats now. So if it does flip, both will die together. (Better or worse?) It also does inherit Ashley's "0" wall reclining, meaning you can 'lie down' further, like what I did in second picture :)

Lift-top coffee table

I have seen this 2 years ago, and have once debated to get it... or not. Now that we sat and ate in front of TV all the time, I started to reconsider it. My boyfriend thought it was really cool. There are certainly a lot more models of lift-top tables now than 2 years ago. My ideal one would be dark mahogany color, oval shape, with casters and simple design. Well, I have not found it yet. Guess I just need to lower my criteria and push some 'must have' traits into the basket of 'nice to have'. Well, that happens a lot in life, doesn't it?

Interestingly, my coworker just told me today that he did have a lift-top table. However, after a month, he rarely used that feature anymore. Issues : 1. the height does not match well when sitting on their couch; 2. depending on the seating, if you lay back or recline a bit, then the lift-top appears too far to reach; 3. after a while the table sinks into the carpet due to weight, it becomes much less mobile even with casters; 4. need to clear the top whenever you want to lift it or lower it.

Valid concerns, aren't they ?

Weekend Furniture Shopping (I)

2008-10-05T23:08:00.000-07:00

2 weeks ago, we wondered into Jennifer Convertibles in downtown Palo Alto, and saw a few pieces we liked :

Rock/Swivel Club Leather Chair $399

This is a leather chair, compact, classic, plus it rocks and swivels ! I have not seen a club leather chair that do both at the same time before :) Boyfriend said it was cool and it would be the kind of stuff that 10 years later you look at it and smile. I am not sure about that. I found my taste changes as years go by, heh. But nonetheless, it doesn't cost a fortune, so probably doesn't matter if it would pass (or fail) the test of 10 years.

Fabric Recliner Loveseat $699

Then there was this recliner loveseat that we liked. It felt comfy to sit on and both seats recline, great for watching TV or enjoying a movie together. There was no extra arm or cup holder in between, which we preferred, since it gave bigger space to cuddle, and no one's feet would be hanging in the air or squeezed under another leg or another arm or whatsoever. The 2 seats were tied together through one metal bar so that it was a bit more stable as well. Though it's still not super study.

Double Size Sofa Bed $499

This cute small sofa bed looked like it would be perfect for guest room, where guest is normally one person. Not sure how useful the storage ottoman would be, but for additional $10, I doubt who would not grab it together with.

Would sugar substitute cause dental decay?

2008-10-02T19:00:00.000-07:00

As I was brushing my teeth last night, the question came to my mind, "would sugar substitute cause dental decay, like regular sugar ?" I use sugar substitute from time to time recently, since it seemed to be a healthier choice. Mostly I only use it when I make a cup of mocca... yum... Well, yes, there are debates about health risks as well. Funny that I found on wiki, it said,

"There is some ongoing controversy over whether artificial sweeteners are health risks. This controversy is fueled by anecdotal reports and sometimes poorly-controlled studies that have gained publicity via the internet and popular press. Scientifically-controlled peer-reviewed studies have consistently failed to produce evidence of adverse effects caused by consumption of these products."

As to my original question, it does state 'artificial sweetener is tooth friendly'. Why? Because it is not consumed as food by the bacteria living in our mouth. Our teeth get decayed by acid, the waste generated after the bacteria utilizes sugar as their food intake. Since they don't eat sugar substitute, hence no acid is produced, therefore, tooth-friendly :)

Cloudy Day

2008-10-01T19:47:00.000-07:00

It was a dark, cloudy day at work.

We, as usual, had our stand-up daily meeting in the morning. We are a non-profit org with about 15 employees on site, so not a big deal to run a quick sync-up meeting every day.

Instead of going through regular briefing from each person, our founder showed up and made the announcement. Due to Fannie Mae's recent financial crisis, we had to let go of some people today.

It hit just like that, a big shock. It was out of the blue, thought the worst would not happen before Halloween at least.

Then came the most nervous time: announcing who had to leave. Well, probably easier this way than waiting at our seats, guessing who was on the list, with fast pumping hearts...

Our founder made sure it was not performance issue, rather, just financial decision. And said he would really want to bring all the people back, once we get more funding.

Half of the people had to leave...

Suddenly the office seemed awfully spacious, quieter and colder than usual.

I hope they find new jobs soon, if they need one. The economy is really scary. I don't know how long can the rest of us survive. I am keeping my fingers crossed, and praying for the best, whatever it may be. I have worked for 6 companies, and I enjoyed my job here the most. Yet, dreams can't beat reality I suppose, like 'happily ever after does not exist'. Really!?

Garage door opener project

2008-09-28T22:30:00.000-07:00

My ancient garage door remote was stolen during my car break-in few months ago. Since the company told me the model was way too old to get a remote that would work, I decided to install a new one completely.

I ordered one online after reading all the good reviews. They said it was not difficult to install... I did not recall if they mention if your garage shape were different, you may need extra this and extra that...

So the project started after my bf's brother, who does all kinds of home projects, told him, "Don't be scared, it is not that difficult." My bf estimated a whole day at most. That was about a month ago.

I did not quite know the details, since I was not around the garage most of the time when he was working on it. He took out my old opener brain and the railing. Then he measured the angle and length and cut a piece of 2x4, which I happen to have quite a few from my demolition previously. Then we cut some metal brackets (I helped him cut one I think, hehe) with my reciprocating saw (well, don't have all the tools we wanted.) And he hex-screwed the wood piece on to the wall. That was to support the rail.

Then the rail started to connect piece by piece. The next big thing is to hang the controller, which was quite heavy. Again, he cut the metal bracket and screwed around it.

We also installed the laser detection at the bottom of the door, a pair of sensor that sits across the door to each other and form a straight line if object gets in when the door is operating.

Then of course we need the have the wall switch replaced.

Project completed. And, it worked! Yay! **) ^^)

(PS. The controller is not as steady as I wanted though. As it has only single bracket supporting it, it shakes perpendicular to the rail when the door is operating. My bf said it would not go anywhere... but ... it shakes...)

Visiting Chihuly glass exhibition

2008-09-26T23:02:00.000-07:00

Heard this months ago, yet kept postponing ... it seemed there were always millions of other things to do and not enough weekends around. Now that Bei mentioned it was pretty good, we finally decided to make the effort in the last weekend of the exhibition. Thanks to Bei's reminder, we bought tickets online in advance as they were easily sold out. I have to admit it seemed a bit odd to me. A museum with tickets sold out? Well, weird as it might sound, it is true.

We arrived at SF early in order to get a nice parking spot (which we did) and shoot some photos (we did that too :). I knew SF would be cold at night, but did not imagine it was kind of foggy and really chilly in the afternoon already. The De Young museum is next to California Academy of Science, which is going to open tomorrow. We got some photos in front of it, well, before the opening ceremony. I could imagine how crowded it would be tomorrow around this area, as people flood in trying to peek into the Science museum (for free), and/or catch the last chance for Chihuly exhibition.

Since we arrived early, we also visited the 9th floor observation tower. Always nice to climb high and overlook the world beneath, don't you think so?

I did not count how many rooms there were for the exhibition, maybe about 10? Each room was designated for a certain theme or collection. The dish-like flowers looked beautiful, hanging on the wall. They were colorful and big!

The reeds was gorgeous with perfect purple color, one of my favorite. Chihuly's reeds originated in his 'Chihuly Over Venice' project of 1996, using the river and glass together - it was a surprise. According to Chihuly, "Obviously people are going to look at them and see things they want to see in them. I prefer that than if I told them what it is they should be seeing.".

Then there was the room where 2 boats were presented on top of black glossy platform, where the glass projects carried inside the boat formed clear reflective images, quite some visual stimulation. I liked the boat filled with all kinds of balls. They just appeared so cute. I think that was the chemistry generated when you see rounded objects, like stuff animals :) These balls were pretty big. Imagine this boat filled about half of the room.

Then there was the room where glass projects were hung from the ceiling. It was interesting, as I looked up and tried to reach them :) Of course I was not allowed to touch them.

The last room was like an overview of all projects in previous rooms. They were of various shapes and colors. I liked the green spikes and those cute balls hidden here and there. They looked like dinosaur eggs to me, what do you think? :)

Ahh...Sunkist is caffeinated too

2008-09-23T10:29:00.000-07:00

Months ago I did a blog for caffeine database, and was surprised that Mountain Dew contains more caffeine than regular coke. I browsed through the database yet did not pay attention to Sunkist. After all, it's an orange, citrus drink... shouldn't it be kids friendly?

Yesterday I just learned Sunkist is actually caffeinated. I could hardly believe it. I buy sodas from time to time, and I try to get both kinds, with and without caffeine. For all these years, I bought Sunkist and considered it the 'other' category, i.e. no caffeine. Now I just realized that was a big 'misunderstanding'. It actually contains more caffeine than coke, just like Mountain Dew. Pretty astonished...

Should I just assume all sodas are caffeinated by default unless said otherwise? :(

Suprising Rocca

2008-09-17T22:04:00.000-07:00

Rocca is my other kitten, sister of Mocca. She is the tiny one, as she refused to eat when little. She was bottle fed until almost 3 months old and finally weighed 2 pounds. As she grows each day, she is eating better now, and I noticed she seemed to have aspirational problems. She breaths more heavily and makes louder sound. We suspect that was part of the reason she does not like being held as much, as it could make it more difficult for her to breathe. She was sneezing a lot when she got here 2 weeks ago, then Mocca was sneezing too. No idea who passed to whom... Good news is they both are doing better recently.

Rocca was hiding at the corner when first arrived. It took a day for her to come out, then another few days for her to get close by. Now she completely changed --- she became the lap kitten! That was a big surprise :D She climbed on our laps often now, and simply stayed there, feeling comfy... then started to doze... then gave up her whole head... then who knows what she was dreaming about... :)

Not sure if kittens have competitions going on, it seemed since Rocca started to climb on us often now, Mocca on the other hand stays a foot away. She is still super sweet though. Hopefully the 2 sisters will stay in peaceful and playful mode foreve.

Sweet Mocca

2008-09-14T22:44:00.001-07:00

Mocca was the bigger one, comparing to Rocca, of course. When we visited them at the kitten adoption fair, we could only hold them and had them sit on our laps without really playing or interacting enough with them, like what I did with fostering kittens. We got a feel Mocca was ok being held, while Rocca did not seem enjoying it.

After 2 weeks, we were delighted and amazed that Mocca was such a sweet girl! She would follow me around while I was cleaning up books, making meals, copying files (a bit tricky to get her away from my keyboard), and best of all, she does not attack our food. While we eat in front of TV, she just came sit next to us on the couch, quietly, well, purring like a machine. We rarely need to guide her to leave us alone in order to enjoy our meals, which was always a big hassle with my foster ones. Quite often she would rub her face against us to show affection, or walk towards us and then just lie down on the floor a feet away, like she knew she looked cute that way. She's got pretty fur coat too. Cute, pretty and sweet, what else can you ask of a girl? :)

Restoring my computer

2008-09-14T21:43:00.000-07:00

After I tried several virus scan software, including Spybot and Housecall, it did not kill the virus. I decided it's time to restore my laptop completely. After all, it's been 4 years, and the system was stuffed by too much junk that I could not get rid of by simply 'remove program'. It took me many hours to go through my personal files first and make copies for them. Now an external USB HD came really handy. I happen to have a small one, 20 GB, barely enough for all my files. Ironically, I got this HD 5 years ago for the same reason. My old laptop got virus!

I found the original box for my laptop. Call me funny, I am the kind of person who keeps boxes. Perhaps I picked up the habit from someone else, or perhaps later I found it handy when moving or selling stuff. Inside the box, I got out the restoring disc set and instruction. It was still in sealed pasctic package. Never thought I would need it one day, yet at least it's comforting that I do have it.

I followed the instruction, inserting the first CD and press C while turning on the laptop. I suppose "C" means telling the computer it's booting from CD-ROM. After minutes, it slowly showed up the screen looked like it was starting the restoring process, and prompt me to confirm to continue. After I confirmed, it went to start windows. That was weird, "is the virus so serious that it prevents me to restore my laptop completely??"

I gave it a second try, turned off the computer and repeated the same process all over. This time it did not jump back to windows, and seemed was making more progress, just when I thought it would work, it prompt me disc error message...

"Ugh... is the disc too old and got defects already?" I gave it another try by re-inserting the disc. Finally, it started working, while I kept my fingers crossed.

Yay! Everything worked well, and my laptop was back to a clean state and spit out more than 30GB space. For quite a while, I thought I only have 20 GB HD as it seemed space was really tight for me somehow. First thing I set up was connecting to my wireless router. Good that I remembered to write down my WEP code before the restoring process. That made connecting a snap. Then I started downloading and installing the standard things that I use, such as pidgin and Firefox... I placed my old log for pidgin back to the same directory, so I retrieved my archives with no problems. For Firefox, I placed my bookmark back to my favorite, but it was not working :( Perhaps because it's Firefox 3 that I installed now? I have not installed MS Office yet, debating maybe I could get by without it. Maybe star office will do? I have to check it out.

It is indeed time consuming to restore computer. I guess I should start creating backup regularly :|

Got virus in my computer :(

2008-09-08T12:37:00.000-07:00

I got virus on my computer a few days ago, so I could not use browser properly now :( And perhaps some other applications either. How did it happen? As far as I recall, it went like this :

One night me and my boyfriend were sitting in the couch, having TV on, and also browsing on our laptops, respectively. Then I saw he was looking at a website to rate chick's photos (male nature??)... so I googled and found a site to rate guys' photos, hehe. After we went through a few ratings on the guys, my browser seemed not responding anymore. I killed it and restarted my firefox. Strangely, it kept throwing out errors telling me Internet Explorer was not responding... I thought it was just hung by some running process. I restarted computer, it did not go away!

My bf tried to look through it and thought my laptop had damaged memory. I was not totally convinced. It seemed the browser was behaving strangely too, the links found on google did not go where they were suppose to anymore. Ok, we decided it was invaded by virus last night. I googled virus tool, and found the site I had gone to a few times for free online scan : housecall.trendmicro.com
The browser returned me message that the site was down, while my bf could successfully load it on his laptop!

Not sure how I am going to fix it yet... :(

South Bay Swing -- Labor Day Weekend

2008-09-02T00:12:00.000-07:00

(Photos by Michael M. Cohen)

It was the 24th annual South Bay Swing event held at Wyndham Hotel at San Jose. I was here last year too, and that was my first time going to a dance convention. It surely was a lot of fun doing workshop and learn all kinds of things, as I was completely new to West Coast Swing back then. Since all workshop was included in the weekend package, I took as many as I could, not limited to one dance. Yes, I was pretty dead tired at the end.

This year I recommended it to my boyfriend, who recently started learning dancing. I later decided to get the weekend package as well. I thought I could always learn something new, and it would be helpful for my bf to speed up by going through the patterns and skills with him.

We stayed with each other without rotating in all the workshop we went together. He enjoyed learning (at least that was what he told me). I also learned about leader's steps and positions, in order to have better understanding, which was new to me. It was nice to have someone sharing same interest, it would be even better when one day he can dance just as good, if not better, as I. The disadvantage was, it seemed less guys asked me to dance now :( But it wasn't a big deal, if I really wanted to social dance, I would probably be more active. For now, it was good enough to have someone keep me warm in the cold air-conditioned room.

It was nice they invited Kyle & Sarah to come over. They are great dancers and workshop was full. I have attended a few of their workshop before, and they constantly emphasized on the connection, the subtle motion about leading/redirecting the follower, instead of pulling or pushing her around. It took not only understanding (and remembering) in leader's mind, but also great muscle control and movements to make it happen. Probably constant practicing and correcting is the key. Besides their workshop, Nick Jay, Miguel and Rob all gave interesting workshop too. Call the event decently done, once again.

This convention was like a warm-up for the coming up biggest wcs event in bay area, Boogie by the bay. In fact, we got our tickets and booked hotel nearby already. Burlingame wasn't that far to drive to; however it would be tiring to take many workshop and late night dancing for 4 consecutive days. Let's call it a nice treat to ourselves :)

Journey to my kitten adoption -- part IV

2008-09-01T22:53:00.000-07:00

Part IV is the end, but also the beginning of another journey. Now I am officially welcoming 2 new family members, Mocca and Rocca. They arrived at my home on 8/31/2008. This should be marked as their 'birthday'. They are about 3 months old now, however, due to their reluctance in eating, they are still pretty small in size, especially Rocca. I saved some canned tuna for them this morning when making sandwiches, they seemed enjoying it. I guess that would be one thing I could always treat them when they refuse to eat again.

Mocca was the bigger sister, and less timid. She poked and circled around when arrived. Her face looked like a raccoon, super cute and sweet. Rocca however was hiding in a corner, hesitating to come out. She is definitely too skinny. Hopefully as time goes by, she would become healthier.

After the tuna treat, Rocca came out of the corner and started to explore the surroundings as well. Good sign. They both use their 'bathroom' properly, another good sign. There is still a lot remaining to be discovered... For now, my home is not empty anymore.

Journey to my kitten adoption -- part III

2008-08-29T14:24:00.000-07:00

Caramel was supposed to have had her spay operation done yesterday. But I did not hear back from Laurie by the end of the day. Still nothing this morning...

I decided to send a friendly email to ask about how it went. She replied immediately, apologized that she got overwhelmed yesterday and forgot to update us about Caramel's schedule change. Due to the heatwave (yes, it was and is still super hot, isn't it?), the power went out in the clinic yesterday and the spay was rescheduled to tomorrow. So we just need to wait one (or 2) more days to have them home.

It is exciting as it finally gets closer and closer to actually take them home; on the other hand, I am also a bit anxious, as it would be a big commitment for the kittens. I certainly hope we will be a happy family, however I have yet to see it come true. It's an odd feeling, I think that's what people refer to as 'cold feet'? No, it's definitely not bad at all for taking kittens home, it has far more excitement than fear, but as I imagine if I am going to marry someone, for the rest of my life, then perhaps the fear would be exponential... Well, nothing I need to worry about in the near future anyways, just food for thought. Back to the kittens... yes, I am looking forward to seeing them playing at home.

Journey to my kitten adoption -- part II

2008-08-27T23:26:00.000-07:00

Our efforts continued ...
8/16 : my third visit to the sisters at Palo Alto. I brought my camera this time, so I could take clearer photos. Now Laurie started to feel softened by our sincerity and persistence. She let us hold the 2 kittens and sit away from other visitors. We enjoyed ourselves with the 2 lovely creatures. They crawled along our arms and looked so comfy. Biscotti just hit 2 lbs, and got spayed 3 days ago. It seemed her wound was a bit swollen. But she was not complaining and did not appear fuzzy though. I recalled my foster kittens all became nuts the night after they had the surgery... Caramel was still under weight. She remained in need of bottle feeding every day.

8/17 : Our second email to Laurie, with 3 photos attached. We wanted to show her our 'not-going-to-give-up' spirit, and demonstrate how comfortable the 2 kittens were with us. We let her know since Biscotti was spayed, we were willing to adopt her right away and at the same time put down deposit for reserving Caramel, should she consider us good adoption candidate.

... No reply from Laurie....
Our plan for next step : visit them again in the coming fair on 8/27.

8/26 : Got email from Laurie. Caramel finally made her way to 2 lbs and ready for spay operation in 2 days. She was telling us she was now sending emails to inform all interested parties and would like to know who were still interested and available for adoption. She's ready to let them go this weekend... Finally! That was exciting news. Even though she was still vague who she would pick to be the 'winner'. But at least, the waiting is going to come to an end, one way or the other. We replied immediately, telling her how much they both have been constantly in our minds, and we were just planning to visit them again the following day.

8/27 : We paid our 4th visits to them. It seemed Caramel has become more and more independent and feisty. She was restless and resisted the idea of being held. We had to settle her down with a pink blanket with her own scent. Laurie finally came to agreeing attitude with us, and said the deal could be considered made, as long as the operation go smoothly the next day. She showed us around the pet store, suggested the brand of food, the type of litter, the kind of toys that drove them crazy... We ended up getting a purple litter dome, kitten food, cans and laser pointer... but we still went home without kittens...

Now, I am just waiting to hear from Laurie, then I would finally know if Sat. could be the day I welcome 2 babies home. The waiting is ending... soon...

Journey to my kitten adoption -- part I

2008-08-26T23:55:00.000-07:00

7/11 : I found a lovely pair of sister kittens at IBOK's site, named Caramel and Biscotti. (IBOK : itty bitty orphan kitty rescue).

7/13 : I met them in the kitten adoption fair at Campbell, they were only 4-5 weeks old, so little that looked like couldn't fill up my palm. Laurie, who ran the fair and also was fostering the pair, would not let them out of the carrier. So all I could do was looking at them from outside. They were tiny and cuddling together, like a pair of colorful mice. Laurie was bottle feeding them, as they were orphan kittens and had some problems in receiving food. They were reluctant about food! (Against survival theory?) Laurie told me, given the situation, they weren't be available in another month or 2. I was encouraged to fill out the application and indicate my interest in adopting this pair, and was told they would contact me later for progress.

8/6 : Almost a month passed away, I have not heard of anything about the sisters. I decided to re-visit them in their Wed. fair, together with my boyfriend, so that he could meet them for the first time and see how he felt as well. Biscotti has grown bigger, still on the smaller side though, while Caramel remained tiny. None of them weighted 2 pounds yet. This time, I got to hold them, and they were just lovely, sweet and super cute, lying on our laps. My boyfriend loved them too. So we decided to adopt them if possible. However, we were told, many people showed interests in them, because they were so unique and absolutely adorable. They would not let anyone reserve them. They wanted to wait until both were big enough to go, and then select the best matching family for the adoption. So now it's not a question of whether we want to adopt them or not, it's a matter of whether we would be chosen!

8/7 : Since it sounded like a competition with other potential families, we needed to get ahead of the game. Our strategy started with follow-up email. We showed Laurie our genuine interest in adopting them in the email. We also emphasized how absolutely we loved them, and described our expert experiences in taking care of kittens/cats through previous fostering/raising experiences. And we even acknowledged the hard work they have been doing for the cat community, and thanked them for keep doing so...

8/9 : got a short reply from Laurie : "will let you know what we decide on these two one way or another. It will have to be after we have had them spayed and they are ready to go, which will be about another two weeks."

No conclusion ... everything was still open in the air ...

Food log

2008-08-24T17:32:00.000-07:00

Posting some photos to log what I made recently. The chicken soup with rice noodle was made with chicken legs, sweet corn from fresh produce stores (really sweet), carrots, mushrooms and rice noodles. We liked the soup a lot.

The other 2 photos were brunches for weekends. I made bread with my bread machine. I love fresh bread. And loved my bread machine. Besides bread, we made some sunny side up eggs, grilled burger with cheese, peanut butter and jam, fresh fruits, plum wine, cracker and cheese, smoked almonds, mocha cake roll, and of course, coffee. It was a luxury to just relax in the yard and enjoy the food and conversation. Too comfortable that I almost felt guilty. Shouldn't I be doing something more 'productive'? My to-do list was still hanging long... I think I'd better accept that it will never end. There will always be things jump on my to-do list, and I would never have enough time to finish all of them. That adds stress, yet it was a sign of alive too. Don't you agree? Or, I should just list brunch on my to-do list too :)

Birthdday party at Chuck E. Cheese

2008-08-23T18:30:00.000-07:00

It was 3-year-old birthday party for Thomas, nephew of my boyfriend. I have never been to Chuck E. Cheese before, looked like they specialized in throwing parties for little kids. They had people in animal costumes, they sang birthday song, they danced a bit, they tried to cheer up the kids and the atmosphere .... I'd say they did an OK job, not particularly impressive. Thomas' 5-year-old sister, Erika, was in fact afraid of those people inside costume. I guess they could look abnormally big to her, or, like some monsters?

I wonder how much a 3-year-old could understand those birthday gifts or remember much about this event. I myself barely recall much when I was 3. But time has changed. When I was 3, there was no personal video camera around like nowadays. There was limited photos taken, let alone videos. The very few photos I have had were in black and white, and they became precious to me. I wish I had memories for those photos, yet it was blank...

The party went well, we played some games after the birthday song and cake. I had to admit it was a place that adults could have some fun too, not a bad choice for a lazy Sat. afternoon. Too bad I forgot to bring my camera, so this blog had to go pic-less.

Happy Birthday to Thomas. Don't people say, 3 is a critical age for kids that a lot of their personalities are shaped by the age of 3?