You Catch More Flies with Honey...

Salads are the new Pasta.  I'm all about warning people on new trends and this one is here to stay. I may have just made that one up, but salads are awesome.

As I got older, I started to trend my eating habits away from meat.  Like it or love it, I did.  I'm from the South (SHOCKING, I know.), so this wasn't a problem because seafood is our meat.  I was always prejudiced against Chinese shrimp and refused to buy non-Louisiana shrimp in the supermarket because I support my local commerce.  Here in Macau, it's even more imperative that you monitor what you eat.  So I stopped eating meat completely after the incident with the chicken in the Red Market, surely I wrote about that..., and I only eat fish and the like, but mostly veggies.  Healthy is the future.

Also prawn crackers.  I know, I thought "Gross" too before I moved out here and they're everywhere.  Prawn crackers are the new potato chips in this household, at least.

Work is productive.  I think (knock on wood) we have a prototype at last that seems promising and stable.  I have the utmost faith in its ability to produce results.  Once that is determined, the sky is the limit.

Also, we did end up going to see Lady Gaga last minute last week.  She added 3 more tour dates in HK and released a ton of tickets last minute and we snapped five of those suckers up.  It was actually a super good concert and in light of a vote the UMC conference held last week (from my best friend's fb posts, truthfully and in a nutshell, I gather it was to look down on same sex couples...), her concert was a message of acceptance and love and being proud of who you are.  I can appreciate that message.  Also to the UMC: you are human and who are you to judge?

Soapbox moment: If you have been made a God in the eyes of the world, fine, you can judge.  But let none of the rest of us forget: judge not lest ye be judged.  The reason I am not married to a church is because when I worked for mine, I found out my church is human.  Glass shattering moment there, folks. The bottom line in this world should be that we treat everyone with respect and love because the fact of the matter is: no one knows what is out there in the ether.  We believe, but no one KNOWS and there is a fundamental difference between the two.  So have your convictions.  I choose to live by another law and when you condemn me for it, it doesn't matter because I know that I love my fellow human beings.  I will come back to my church when you accept everyone without judgement as we were meant to do.

Soapbox moment over.  I'm sure I'll get in trouble with a lot of people for that one.  Keep it to yourself though, because I have spent 26 years trying to be comfortable in my own skin and come up with my own beliefs.  I finally am and I have.  At LSU, the holy rollers scream at college students in "Free Speech Alley" as if they will actually make a difference to a bunch of twenty-something year old sinners.  They're merely a pageant. Garnering attention for themselves, but not for their message because hate does nothing to communicate a point.  "You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar." How many times did I hear that from my mother growing up?  Heck, I still get that from her!

Anywho.  Enough of me being preachy.  I'm tired of hearing myself rant.

And in True Me Fashion...

It has taken me two months to get back on track. But here I am. Back. AND on track.

I know, you're welcome.

I wish I could sum up my two vacations in March in one sentence apiece.  I can't, so I'll just give you a brief overview in a few words.

Bali: Scuba diving, Open Water certified, beach, floaties, water, friends.

Japan: Brother, cold, walking, amazing, sushi, rice balls, cherry blossoms, clean.

Maybe later I can write more.  Because there is oh so much more to say about all of theses places and things.  Don't take my word for it, go! And see for yourself.

Tonight was date night: Erin and I went to see the Avengers in 3D.  And Date Night did not disappoint.  Naturally.  I for reals am going to be lost without my best roomie.

We have started doing dive inspections at work: win! Tomorrow is diving and that means I miss yoga, making me 0-3 in getting to yoga this week, but at least it's some form of work out and I get to have lunch, instead of spending my lunch period wondering why I do this to myself (as I do in yoga, sometimes).

Big weekend planned: it's Tuesday in HK with Roomies.  We have an appointment at the consulate for new passport pages and then we're going to the EYE DOCTOR.  Exciting right? Totally jealous?  I thought so.  And it's ok.  Not everyone can be as awesome as we are.  Maybe there will even be some Greek food involved AND some tax discussion.  But don't get crazy.

There it is folks.  I am still alive and well in Macoma.  Still missing home, still having good days and bad days.  But mostly good ones lately.  Never boring, never dull.

Also, if you ever get the chance to see Bobby McFerrin in concert, doooooooooo ittttttttt! He was awesome. And I say that not only because he's the only concert I've had the opportunity to see since the Red Hot Chili Peppers in August.

We'd go see freaking Lady Gaga but bitch so popular she sold out in a couple hours. Freaking lack of good concerts in Asia. Let me tell you.

But anyway. A lovely evening out had by all in Macau tonight. And the only people we saw were three of the good ones. We had a pre - dinner drink, dinner, concert, and post concert drink (x 3) and only saw three people from work. And they were all people we enjoy spending time with.

Congrats to the girls involved for a lovely evening with LOW drama and high drinking/fun content! I love you all and I am stoked about our evening!

Tuesday is the new Saturday.

Get on board people. You heard it here first. Tuesday is the new Saturday.

But first, Monday.

I set our microwave on fire Monday night. Completely unintentionally. The moral of this story (because there always is one...) always read all of the directions first before commencing the recipe. Because generally there are key words you might miss otherwise. For example: Cook for eight minutes on high. Some microwaves cook at different temperatures, so be sure to monitor your potato chips. ~ When they say this, they mean it. I didn't and it so did. I set our microwave on fire. And Erin and I reacted about the same, which was to hope that the fire would go out on its own.

It didn't.

So we put it out.

So we had ceviche, Ruffles with Ridges, and sangria. Whilst watching Weeds for our Monday night extravaganza. I'm now taking applications to be my Monday night buddy for a short period of time between Erin's exit and mine. Little effort involved. Must like: cooking, baking, wine, Fleetwood Mac, being a hermit, beer, libations, fresh food, our bodega across the street, The Porch, sleeping, genuine people, and vacations. If interested, apply within. Much pressure, big shoes to fill.

Must also keep calm under pressure and have extreme anti-social tendencies when appropriate.

So out of the three recipes attempted on Monday night (the new Friday), two were an unabashed success. Ceviche and sangria were amazing. The potato chips were awesome when baked - regular AND purple yams! But the microwave potato crisps remain on hold.

Setting my microwave on fire once in one week is enough for now.

Fleetwood Mac said it best: Never break the chains.

Sometimes life starts spinning out of control and instead of grabbing onto it, we kick that proverbial ball and it just spins away, forgetting that we're supposed to be on board.

I think somewhere in this past week/weekend of mine, my ball starting rolling and ran away without me. I kicked that kinetic ball of life and it said "thanks for breaking the chains" and escaped as quickly as it could. I'm left holding the remains of those chains and wondering why I kicked it, what prompted me to kick it, and what I might be able to do to get it back.

I'm a control freak, Type-A personality through and through. When I start to feel out of control, I bake or throw myself into work with a reckless abandon. I baked a lot this weekend and today at work, I want time to pass as quickly as possible so I can go home and maybe take a sleeping pill to forget everything for 9 hours or so until I wake up tomorrow, and so on and so forth until my life gets tired of rolling and we find each other again.

I don't think I expect too much from life, but I do wish it would give me a little bit better of a chance. Or maybe I should say, I wish it would let me give myself a little bit of a chance because quite often when I get a glimmer of something good and hopeful, I manage to snuff it out post haste. What is it about basic human instinct that disallows us from just letting ourselves be happy and relinquishing control of those things we can't really manipulate to begin with?

I need a beach in my future. Stat.

Weekends need filling

So last weekend, Erin and I watched a couple movies. It was cold, kinda rainy...

Actually, I think it was just cloudy, but in my memory it's rainy as well because that's the way I justify our lazy day.

We made dinner: our special tuna salad wraps with roasted garlic mayo, snap peas for an appetizer, and wine. Because that's just how we roll. We bundled up in the living room (on separate couches) and lit candles and watched two movies.

The Tree of Life.

Most confusing movie. Ever. Watched. It was so confusing. Instead of being described as "Impressionistic," it should be described as "Abstract." There are dinosaurs, dream sequences, flying, not a lot of talking, and a LOT of pictures from the Hubble telescope and a couple volcanoes. Sorry I just ruined the movie for you. It doesn't really have an ending so I guess I only partially ruined. Decide if you want, but I'm warning you: we watched for about 45 minutes before deciding we had to take an intermission to get cokes and popcorn. That last 1.5 hours was brutal with lots of me and Erin screaming "WHAT??? I DON'T UNDERSTAND THE DINOSAURS. WHY DID THAT JUST HAPPEN???"

So then we watched Trespass.

Which most of you will know as the Nicholas Cage Nicole Kidman action drama. It really pulls at the heart strings. But I will tell you this: at least it had a recognizable plot. We definitely understood that movie.

The moral of this post is if given a choice between these two movies: stick with the recognizable one. Impressionistic = crappy movies. Great art, crappy movies.

Let's play a game.

It's called "If I could be anywhere in the world where would I be?"

I'll start:

*Not. Here.

Not definitive enough? How about this one:

*Anywhere but here.

Ok, fine. It's a cheap shot, I get it.

*Anywhere on Earth but here.

Final Answer.

Can you tell my day was rough?

It started out fine, well, fine for Macau. Grey, foggy/smoggy (the two are interchangeable when you live in this part of Asia.), drizzly. I left my work pass upstairs and had to go back up to get it. Made the bus. Point for me

Go to work, passed out cookies I made so that I wouldn't eat them. Healthy living (Lent) started yesterday and what do I do? Naturally, I bake cookies. Sometimes I confuse even myself, so don't feel obligated to attempt to understand my reasoning. You are not alone.

And then, it was all down hill from there. I ran through daily checks (where I travel the building from B4 to L8 - a long way - looking for flaws in our system) setting a new record for speed, turned over my laundry on L2, and then changed for yoga. Went through an hour of torturing myself because I have to put a bathing suit on in two weeks before going back upstairs only to be tortured some more by soldering LEDs all day.

Now, normally this wouldn't be a problem, because I do like to solder...except for that time I was soldering and I lit my hair on fire with the soldering iron...

That was not fun.

But today, it kept spitting impurities at me and landing on my arms and then I flicked hot solder on my face because I solder like I paint: messy. Anyone who's worked with me at Totem Pole knows I am one of the messiest painters ever. Love it. Make a mess, though. So after flicking solder on myself Monday doing the same task, except that time it landed on my jeans, burned my leg through the denim (without burning the denim, I might add) before blistering the finger it stuck to when I attempted to brush it off...

Yeah, I know. About as brilliant as the time I tried to straighten a lamp plug with my tooth and chipped it. Disclaimer: I was NOT a professional electrician at the time. I use pliers now... NOT my very very expensive teeth.

My day just never stopped. Stripping cables, soldering, crimping, LEDs, cleaning, organizing, consolidating, redistributing... This project is either going to be my greatest triumph or my most heartbreaking defeat. For all our sakes, I hope it's the former, rather than the latter.

Then all of the sudden, it's time to go home and I want a beer. So I come home, drop my laundry in my room in my newly cleaned apartment (cleaner comes on Thursdays), put on my LSU polka dotted flip flops that I love and head out the door towards the pub. Halfway there, my flip flop breaks. I am, of course, pissed because this is not the first time I have put on flip flops here in China and had them break on me, no where near my house so that I have to limp back to my apartment to get new shoes, hoping the Chinese are not noticing me the entire time.

I make it home, put new shoes on, get to the pub in one piece and chat with some friends, then the new manager of the pub (who's a DICK - sorry for the language Mom, but he definitely is JUST that) lies to me about whether my favorite manager is there. AFTER he looks at me like I'm mental because I wanted mashed potatoes with cheese on top, not the fake cheese dip, a slice of cheese melted on top. Look, you jerk, this is my pub, this is what I eat at my pub, YOU are new, and I do not like you because you tried to talk to Erin and me during football games on the TV. Like an idiot. And also because you dress like a sleazy car salesman from the 70s. SO. If I've seen Ary there, don't lie to me about her being there. That just makes me dislike you even more.

But now I'm safe inside my apartment and I'm going to go to sleep. Because the only thing to do with a tough day is sleep it off and start over in the morning.

ALL SMILES!