FamiLee Life

Next Steven Spielberg

I just learned that my nephew Alex got a camcorder for his 8th grade graduation and has begun making videos/movies and posting them on YouTube. Here are two of his videos. Magic (Two in One) also features Alex's brother, Conner. The other video, Brooklyn Streets, is a tad more violent and features his friends from school. What I find amazing is that he figured out all of this editing and posting stuff on his own. Kids today are so much smarter than when we were kids.

Baseball Fever

My nephew Austin loves baseball. This photograph was taken from his most recent game in which he pitched his Little League team into the championship game for his region. They eventually lost the game and thus ended their bid to the state tournament. My brother told me that Austin, however, had won both games in which he pitched. As you can tell, he is a big kid - growing tall and strong. Clearly, those genes come from his mom's side of the family, but I would like to think that the athleticism comes from our side of the family.

My contribution to his wonderful athletic career thus far is the baseball glove. A custom Mizuno that I got him for his birthday. Good to see an actual photograph of it.

YouTube Can Be a Star!

I had blogged a while back about having been interviewed for a documentary on international adoption. I just discovered a number of YouTube clips of the interview, as it appears the film, titled Adopted The Movie, is nearing release (scheduled for Fall of 2007). These are clips of me talking about Asian Stereotypes, Beauty and Loss. It definitely is weird seeing yourself on screen. Being self-critical, I notice that I have some sort of mouth thing going on where the right side of my mouth is a la Sylvester Stallone (who has some sort of minor facial paralysis or something from what I understand). Hm...Have I had a stroke without knowing it? The other funny thing is the computer monitor. It is not recognizable, but I had put up the website for BigBadChineseMama.

Other friends also are YouTube stars these days. Here is Hapa9 and PhT deinstalling the Norae Shanty from a recent event at the Walker Art Center's Sculpture Garden in Minneapolis.

Riding,,,,Finding the Right Home

My good friend Christopher has many jobs (husband, father, writer, racer, and realtor). The latter job as a realtor pays the bills but I suspect it can be less than thrilling at times. It asks CC to compromise bits of who he is and slowly ends up changing the man (or at least that would be the fear). CC began to recognize his need to consolidate interests and came up with a novel one. He is now the only realtor in the Twin Cities and perhaps Midwest or US or (heck) world who offers cycling home tours. You can check out his new blog on this enterprising enterprise at CyclingHomeTour.Com.

If you are interested in riding the right home (or finding one), contact CC!

p.s., If you love the design of CC"s bus stop advertising sign, that was done by the lovely HW! If you want some cool graphics and designs, contact her by contacting me!

07-07-07

Photo courtesy of Crossmax

As I mentioned the other day, I hosted a 7-7-07 party to bring us all luck. Peter did his best to invoke lady luck with his charm and song. The goal was to go from sunset to sunrise culminating with a walk around the lake at 5:31 am when the sun rose. A few friends (Hapa9, PhT, Crossmax, and Kari) were strong and brave, whereas I tuckered out by 3:15 or so. With me fast asleep, they abandoned the sunrise walk and head home around 4:00 am on bicycles. Perhaps they did see the sunrise on the ride home. My apologies for missing out. I am getting old.

Ironing My Table

I like to entertain. So, when the most lucky date of the century came around, I threw a 7-7-07 party to usher in all the luck. As luck would have it indeed, yesterday was a blistering hot day. The kind of heat where you just sweat from standing still and find only shades of relief in the shade of trees, tall buildings, and (of course) air conditioning. It's the kind of day when you are loathe to be outside and oftentimes feel drained of all energy. Fortunately, I have a/c and the heat dissipated somewhat by evening when the festivities began. After a long evening of partying with luck and friends, I awoke this morning to notice a big white mark on my dining room table. It is not the first one but it was large and more visible than the other ones which were more streaky. This white mark was palm size.

I was puzzled by the white mark. I had assumed it was from a hot plate but was not sure how it goes about leaving such a mark. So I went online and discovered that it is a water mark that emerges from the condensation that built up from the heat of a plate. In this case, I believe the suspect plate was full of Korean bulgogi. It turns out that there is an easy solution for removing the white mark. It requires no special cleansers or oils. Instead, you just take a hot, non-steaming iron and place it over a towel on the said water spot. As the table heats up, it releases the water molecules and the white mark disappears! Magic, I tell you.

Yup, nothing like spending a Sunday afternoon ironing your table. Important life lessons for sure.