bangers and mash

The one thing I didn’t expect about going part-time was how much it was going to enhance the degree to which I enjoy my career. Don’t get me wrong, it's still a stressful job, but not having to do it all the time does change the experience significantly. Now that I have regular days away from the hospital (and just as an aside on other thing that I’m learning is how short the day is between school dropoff and pickup—it seems on paper like you should have all day to do things but in all honesty we drop off, I take the baby to the playground for an hour or two, come home, put her down for nap, clean up, give her lunch, clean up again, play a little bit more, and then it’s time to collect the boys and the rest of the day is lost to cat herding), work seems like a respite from some of the more Sisyphusean elements of household management more so than the other way around. It’s not so much of a physical respite, because obviously I have to wake up earlier and am generally running around more at the hospital; but it’s definitely a psychological respite, and a surprisingly pleasant one. One that reminds me that hey, I get to be a doctor now! I get to do smart-people stuff! I get to wear scrubs and run around and have intelligent conversations about grown-up things, and when I ask people to do stuff, 95% of the time they actually do it instead of arguing with me about the logic of eating vegetables or wearing underwear! Gorgeous.

I think the kids are enjoying having me around more (though I honestly think that they’re so young and their grasp of time is so imperfect that I think another month or two of the new status quo and they’ll forget that it hasn’t always been like this—Mack in particular refers to things as having happened “years ago” when in actuality they happened, like, last week) and in a number of ways both concrete and intangible, things at home are just easier. For example, Cal has parent-teacher conferences this week, and I actually just...signed up for them. Just like that. No elaborate swapping of my call schedule. No canceling clinic appointments for Joe. No picking the latest possible meeting spot and then watching the clock tick down at work, hoping that I wouldn’t get held up by an emergency add-on. Things are much more straightforward now, and that desperate “survival mode” feeling has faded—the one where I counted the end of every single day as a success purely because it ended. Life has ceased feeling so binary, split between the absolutely necessary things I needed to do in order to keep everything functioning; and all the other things. Now life has space. Nuance. Color. I actually ask the kids now in the evening: "So...what do you guys want to do?"

Small changes. Big results.

*          *          *

I've been getting my hair cut at a Supercuts equivalent for the past few years, mostly for convenience (well, scratch "mostly" and substitute "totally") because when time was the tightest, even the act of taking time to get my hair trimmed seemed hopelessly self-indulgent.  So, basically I would just wait as long as possible between trims, and when it started getting to true Yoko Ono circa 1974 territory I would wander into a Supercuts, demand that they cut off some of the bottom hair parts, wander out 10 minutes and some half-hearted snips later, immediately put my hair in a ponytail and forget about the existence of hair until the next time I got Yoko-ed.  

Anyway. I decided today that it was finally time to have an actual hairstyle again (my hair for the last five years has been less a "style" than variations on the theme of "Hair, comma, Lots") and made an appointment at an actual salon. I explained to the stylist the particular challenges of my hair: namely, it is coarse, tends towards frizzy, spends a lot of time squashed under a scrub cap, and I wanted it to at least be long enough to still put up in a ponytail but otherwise wanted to spend little to no time styling it. I also said (and perhaps this was inadvisable) that I didn't really care what she did to it--well, I cared, but that I would defer to her best judgement, since my only request was that she make my head look better and had no further suggestions beyond that. The stylist nodded and fingered and mm-hmmed attentively. Then she asked me: "Have you ever had bangs?"

I said that of course I had had bangs when I was much younger (Asian Lady Law, look in the handbook), but that I'd grown them out in college and hadn't had them since. 

"Do you want to try them again?" She asked.

I considered. On one hand, I think bangs are probably a pain in the ass. The upkeep. The frequent trims. The hair in the face. The inevitable scrub hat mashing. But then on the other hand, if I had bangs, maybe it would bring me one step closer to my spirit animal, April Ludgate.

(You notice I did not say "Aubrey Plaza," because the point is that while I want to look good, I want to care approximately as much about my style as April Ludgate, which is to say: not at all.)

Anyway, I let her cut the bangs, along with the rest of my hair, and I think I'm not precisely sure how I feel about them yet. On one hand, I definitely have a hair style now (like, my hair is not just in the random fluffy shape that it takes when hair is allowed to roam independently on my scalp), but I'm not sure that I love the style, nor am I convinced that it doesn't look like a wig, and having bangs again is going to take getting used to. For one, the hairdresser said I had to "retrain my part," whatever that means. And also, the constant feeling of hair on my forehead is still pretty annoying. I didn't really want to include a photo (for vanity reasons of course: end of the day, no makeup, not dressed cute or ANYTHING) but I realize talking about getting a haircut and not including a photo is kind of a cocktease, so here you go. Please keep in mind all of the above and that this was taken under horrible fluorescent lighting in an elementary school hallway after Parent-Teacher conference and before pickup from Nerd Club...uh, Lego Robotics Team.

Of course, there are benefits. The last time I had bangs, my sophomore year of college, the bangs could hide my forehead acne. And now they can cover my forehead wrinkles. Maturity, you guys!

treat yo self

"Are you Korean?" one of the nurses in the endoscopy unit asked me yesterday.

"Nope, Chinese," I told her, and waited for the second part, which, in my experience, is usually 1.) asking if I can help translate for an Asian-eque patient who can't speak English, or 2.) asking if I know a certain other Asian person, even though (SECRET INFO) we don't all actually know each other.

But actually, she said: "Oh.  Because my daughter and I went to a great Korean foot massage place this past weekend.  It was totally..."  At which point I wheeled around, grabbed her by her lapels (uh, her scrub lapels) and rasped, like Christian Bale's constipated Batman, tell me more about this massage place.

Because I have been looking for a good Asian massage place since we moved to Atlanta almost four years ago.  I just specify Asian because usually they're a lot cheaper, and are generally disinterested in talking to you, which for me is perfect.  (I don't even like chatting with the lady at the salon who cuts my hair, which I probably why I never get my hair cut until it starts getting into Yoko Ono territory.)  I used to go to this old Chinese reflexology place in New York, which was on the second floor of a brownstone above, I think, a nail salon (I know, so typical), but we don't live in New York anymore, and most of the massage places I've seen around Atlanta have been of the fancy ladies-who-lunch variety, or at the very least, ladies-who-Groupon.

Also, she said the magic words, which were: foot massage.  Because I think I've come to terms with the fact that I don't like body massages.  I just don't.  I keep thinking I should like them, because, you know, everyone likes massages, and look at me, with my bad posture and high stress job.  But I just haven't ever gotten a body massage that I liked--and don't use this opportunity to tell me about your "happy ending" massage story because I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT.  Mostly massages are just painful.  Maybe I just don't have enough muscle to massage?  Because massages, no matter how light or soft I tell them to go, just feel like people contusing my bones for half an hour, and then I'm bruised for, like, a week after.  So body massages are not my thing.

Foot massages, though, I can get behind.  Because those are rarely painful, and my feet, I am on them a lot.  See also: pregnancy.  So I got the info, and today, since I was post-call and therefore early off from work, I went there.

It's called "Treat Your Feet," which I'm sure you can see because you are able to read.  It's located in one of these super-industrial strip malls on the Buford Highway (which Atlanta locals will know is the place to go for Ethnic Stuffs), but the inside is actually really nice, much more luxurious than I was expecting.

Anyway, after I told them what I wanted, they hustled me into this dim room with these amazing overstuffed pillowy chairs, and brought out this bucket of hot water for me to soak my feet.  And it is because I am not a vain person that I will show you what my feet look like, because hey, these are not good-looking feet right here.  I can also tell now, looking at this picture full-sized, that despite it being fairly early in the day (it was about 10:30am when I took this picture) that I already had a line from the elastic where my socks were, which, I KNOW MOM, means I should probably obtain some compression stockings at some point, only they're so tight and itchy and I hate them so whatever, I'd rather be swollen.

I didn't take any pictures of the massage part because that would be weird (also it was kind of dark), but know that there was oils and kneading and hot stones and some kind of crazy little foot hammer like in "Raise the Red Lantern," and at the end, they even did a brief face/scalp/neck/shoulder massage, which was like, bonus.  (The shoulder massage hurt a little bit, but the scalp massage was awesome--I wear a scrub hat a lot of the time, so who knows, maybe it's cutting off circulation to my scalp and that explains all my mental problems.)

Want to know the best part?  The best, best, best part is that the one hour foot massage, with the head and neck massage, only costs $30.  Actually, with this coupon (I used the "Early Bird" special because it was a better deal, but I actually I could have used either, since it is a Thursday and I am a lady, SO FAR AS YOU KNOW) only cost $26.  Twenty-six dollars, people.  So that's a hell of a good deal.  So much so that I gave them a $15 tip, because I felt kind of guilty that my enjoyment of the experience so far outweighed the cost.  Also, my dad taught me that tipping well is what you do when you're a decent person, especially if you intend to return to a place of business again.  Which I most certainly will.

(Sorry, this is all very region-specific, and exactly the kind of post that would get me despondent on another blog, because why can't anyone tell me where to get an awesome $26 hourlong massage here in Bismarck?  Or wherever you live.  But now you know where to go when you visit Atlanta, between the Aquarium and The New World of Coke.)

Since I was already on the Buford Highway, I decided to stop by one of the many ethnic eateries for lunch, and while I was tempted to go for Korean food (one of my favorite restaurants was actually right across the street), I decided to go for something which is actually even harder to find in Atlanta, which is a good bowl of Chinese noodles.  I think the place I went to was called The BBQ Corner II, which, I guess, presupposes the existence of a BBQ Corner I.  Anyway, it was not really a BBQ place, except for the fact that they did sell Chinese-style grilled pork and duck.  I had the duck noodle soup and some dim sum style desserts (basically sesame-encrusted glutinous rice balls filled with sweet red bean paste, deep fried).  It wasn't anything mind-blowing, but in a town where it's hard to find real Chinatown-style casual Chinese food, it was more than good enough. Final bill, including a soda, $10.

So.  As post-call days go, not too bad.

winter melon soup

One of the somewhat annoying things about this pregnancy (and this has by far been the most symptom-laden of my three pregnancies to date--about which more later, if I feel like whining) is the fact that I really haven't felt hungry for, oh, the past four and a half months. Not that I'm not eating, of course--I am, pretty much as usual. But I just feel kind of generally blergh about the idea of food, and I haven't been really hungry in the classic sense since about the middle of November. I just kind of eat when it's eatin' time, because I know I should, and because my stomach is making noises. These days I'm usually indifferent at best about food before I eat, and then after, I feel kind of bloat-y and nauseous.

Eighteen weeks and counting. This had better be a mighty cute baby is all I'm saying.

I have been craving certain types of foods (this, again, is no different from before I was pregnant, only that I'm paying more attention to foods that don't fill me with a sense of mortal loathing), but these foods are not so difficult to locate in Atlanta. Mostly I've been craving Chinese soups. Real Chinese soups. Not the messes you find in your Chinese takeout restaurants--your MSG-laden wonton soups, your cornstarch-thickened hot sour soups or what have you.  And it's really not that I have anything in particular against takeout Chinese food--it has its place, and I enjoy a mess of greasy pan-fried noodles with beef as much as the next person. It's just a different cuisine entirely.  Authentic Chinese soups--what they in Chinatown call "slow fire soups" (I believe this is the more literal translation--anyone who speaks Chinese better than I please correct if necessary), are a different beast; soups that have been slowly simmering over the stove for hours, if not all day.

Chinese "slow fire" soups are different than Western-style soups in that they are much more broth-oriented. Many Western-style soups (consommé excluded) do kind of straddle that line between soup and stew--the solid ingredients are the focus rather than the broth itself. Chinese soups tend to focus more on the liquid component. You could filter our all the solids and still have an exquisite bowl of soup--clear yet full-bodied. Not to get all medical on you (nor to get you to focus on the common end-point of all ingested foodstuffs) but Chinese soups could well be included in a clears-only diet, whereas most Western soups would be excluded until one's diet was advanced to full regular.

What I decided I wanted to make was a winter melon soup.

(Thankfully, my go-to Asian mart sells winter melon pre-hacked into usable-sized chunks, because I seem to have left my machete in the car.)

Now let's not let the fact that I have never in my life made a winter melon soup, nor the need for a few specialty ingredients deter you. That's what the Internet is for. I skimmed this recipe from Epicurious (which I used more as inspiration rather than explicit instruction, because--stuff a whole chicken's hollowed out organ cavities with matchsticked scallions ham and ginger to make my own chicken broth? How much time do you think I have?) and kind of cobbled together my own recipe out of what schedule constraints and ingredients I could readily get my hands on. And now here it is for you.

I don't really have the amounts precisely because I'm a little slapdash as a cook, but here's what I used generally:

• Winter melon (Dur. May be hard to find in a regular supermarket, but an Asian grocery store should have it)
• One big carrot (to give the soup some easy sweetness)
• Smoked ham hocks (for adding porky fattiness to the broth--the kind I got were frozen but no matter--I used half of the package depicted)
• Chicken broth (I used one carton's worth)
• Water (About 1.5x as much as the chicken broth)
• Ginger (peeled carefully!) -- about two inches worth
• Scallions (one bunch)
• Dried shrimp (about a handful)
• Dried shitake mushrooms (about a handful too)
• Salt

Except for the winter melon, put everything into a pot and then simmer the shit out of it for three hours.

(Seriously, that's most of my "recipe."  LOOK, I DON'T COOK, OK?)

Fine: I peeled the carrot, cut the ginger into discs and cut the scallions into four sections, but seriously--that's about it.  Oh, but look at this cool thing I got at the Asian mart (it's not an Asian implement per se, but they happened to sell it there for super cheap):

Maybe you can't see it too well from the shadow of the pot lid, but it's this little permeable metal basket for broth-making ingredients. I wanted to flavor the broth with the scallions and the dried shrimp*, but I didn't want to go fishing them all out at the end either, because my goal was a nice, clean soup without a lot of bits floating around in it. So this basket seemed like a good option, almost like a giant version of those things that people use when they want to use loose tea instead of teabags.

Anyway, simmer the shit out of it. Salt the broth to taste, but don't get too crazy with the salt unless you want to RUIN EVERYTHING. After three hours, take out all your ham hocks and your little basket of scallions and dried shrimp--they've done their job, now they can go, because they are ugly.  I guess a purist might filter the broth through a fine mesh to get it really nice and clear, but what am I, Martha Stewart?  Just leave it, it's fine.

Cut up your winter melon (not including the peel, also get rid of the seeds and stringy stuff) and cut it into nice spoonable sized chunks. Add to the broth and simmer for another half an hour or so, or until the melon gets translucent and velvety.  I also added a little bit of Napa cabbage at the end because it seemed contextually similar and something else to soak up those nice soupy flavors, but you don't have to--it's not really a classic interpretation.

(I have seen some other recipe variations which included cilantro, which while I admit might improve the presentation--the palette runs somewhat monochromatic--also kind of defeats what to me is the essential appeal of winter melon soup.  I think of this soup the way that Ruth Reichl once described mushroom soup, which is that it is smooth and easy and comforting with no sharp edges to jar the palate.  I like cilantro, but it doesn't belong in every damn thing, people.)

Dish it out.  Serve with white rice.  Or put the rice and the soup right in the same bowl, like I do.

It's eatin' time.

How about you all? What easy ethnic comfort foods have you guys have been able to recreate reliably at home without too much fuss?

* I substituted dried shrimp for dried scallops, because even at the Asian food mart, there were no dried scallops to be found. Perhaps at a different market, or in Chinatown--a urban neighborhood which, so far as I am aware, Atlanta lacks. I do recall there being a jar of dried scallops in the fridge at my house during most of my childhood, and though they looked like ugly little dessicated eraser nubs, I can attest that the flavor is quite good--very salty and savory and jammed with flavor, like fishy Milk Duds.  Dried shrimp is a decent substitution though, or at least so says Ming Tsai, noted Chinese person who cooks stuff on the teevee.

best quality crab

I would be in remiss if I didn't respond to the numerous comments and e-mails and tweets that I received about this article in the Wall Street Journal, titled simply, "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior." If reading that headline elicited any emotion in you at all, in any direction, welcome to the human race, because this article has really be making the rounds and getting a lot of notice. Which, quite frankly, is probably exactly what the author intended, especially given that she--surprise!--had a new book that just came out this week. So kudos to her on that canny piece of marketing and publicity, first off, because if she wanted to get a lot of attention, IT WORKED.

If you haven't read the article yet, you probably should do that first. Go on, we'll all wait. (Foot tapping, tuneless humming, awkward throat clearing.)

So anyway, the gist of the article was this: Chinese mothers are superior because instead of coddling their children's fragile little psyches, they expect and demand excellence from them (mostly of the academic variety) with methods that I daresay would be considered extreme in Western culture. We can discuss whether or not this is true in the comments, I'm sure everyone has opinions, myself included. But what I would like to say first is that this is exactly the kind of topic that causes fist-fights on the internet. It has all the crucial elements, namely, a lady parent who holds one extreme point of view on a topic who writes what a heartfelt (possibly baiting) piece that implies (well, more like explicitly states in the title) that those lady parents who hold a different point of view are doing things wrong. THIS IS HOW INTERNET FISTICUFFS GET STARTED, PEOPLE. So before we talk about this, let's all agree that we're going to talk about this but not, you know, hurt people's feelings, even if we disagree with each other.

OK, now here's my opinion.

I am Chinese. I am a mother. But I don't think I'm the kind of Chinese mother described in the article. Perhaps this is in large part due to the fact that I am significantly Americanized, having been born and lived my whole life in this country. This is not a bad thing, and ultimately I don't raise my kids based on any kind of theory or cultural boilerplate--I don't even think I consider my approach to capital-P "Parenting" as much as the authors of Redbook or Women's Digest or Parent and Child Weekly would insist we surely must. I just have kids and enjoy them and for the most part I try every day to help them a little bit so that someday they will be happy, successful adults. That's definitely not the quote-unquote Chinese Mother approach described in the article. Is that good or bad? Time will tell, I guess. I've got two case studies developing as we speak.

My parents are Chinese parents more in the classic mold. I don't think they were as extreme as many (in my mind, an Asian parent is like an overbearing stage mom, only for academics. "What happened to the other two points?" was a common shorthand at my high school for getting a 98% on a test--nearly half the student body at my high school was Asian) but the ideas put forth in the article are true and cultural and deeply ingrained. And growing up, I definitely felt it. My parents pushed me, but they did it because that's what you do when you love your kids. You pushed them to be the very best. As the article stated, there is the sense that allowing your kids to not be the best is the worst kind of parental neglect. I was raised "the Chinese Way" and every day I am grateful for it.

There were some downsides to it too, though. In a culture where every child is expected to be "the best," there ends up being an awful lot of pressure on the child, because the fact of it is, not every child can be the best at everything. Everyone wants to think of their child as "above average," but by definition, 50% of all kids have to be average or below that, right? Is it fair to insist on the superlative if, statistically, it's impossible for everyone to be at the top? And how much of it can be shaped by work ethic versus intrinsic aptitude or desire?

Between me and Joe, I think I'm definitely the stricter parent. It doesn't always come out in the most flattering ways. Though I don't insult or shame them, I do yell at our kids more. I tolerate a lot less guff, though much of my short leash is related to etiquette and behavioral issues rather than academics per se. That said, we do push the math and the reading. We think about this a little more with Cal than with Mack since Cal's older and actually in school, but the fact is, as great as the school is, we just don't feel like Cal's working up to his potential. And who better to assess his potential than us, his parents, right?

But we're not strict about it. We don't set a timer for his work. If Cal's having a bad day, we'll sometimes skip it. If he starts getting overly frustrated about not understanding something, we'll take a break. We do have the sense that we want to make the experience of learning enjoyable so that it can ultimately be self-directed, rather than academic exercise just for the sake of the exercise. Those are the ways in which we are more "Western" in our parenting than the Chinese Mother that the article so lauds. Because ultimately, the most important thing for us is not that our kids are the best, but that they're happy.

But there are times--more often now that Cal is getting older--that I think I should be pushing him more. I think back to when I was Cal's age, and, in an academic sense, I was able to do more than he is doing now. Multiplying three-digit numbers by three-digit numbers in my head, which my dad would use to drill me, often while walking home from school or waiting for the bus. (It is somewhat inconceivable to me that I could do this at age four and five, since I can barely do this now, as an adult, but I did.) Playing the piano. Reading more. Writing more. I know it's not fair to compare, since we're different people, and there are things that Cal at this age is much better at then I was when I was five--but I was raised the way I was raised, and I worry that I'm not being tough enough on him. Not that the toughness is the important part, but I worry sometimes that I'm underestimating my own child, that I'm taking the easy way out, the lazy way, and that I'm failing him by not pushing him enough. I'm worried that I'm letting Cal down because I don't have the heart or the will or the patience to do what it may take.

I'm not saying that this so-called "Chinese Mother" approach is the right one, and there were certainly more than one descriptions in the article that made me wince, because the idea of doing it to my own kid was utterly unpalatable. So what do you think? Is Amy Chua a miserable, gloating harridan who pushes her children to achieve at the expense of their own sense of self-worth? Or is she a gutsy, uncompromising advocate for her children because she knows what they're capable of and she won't allow them to do any less?

Discuss. (But nicely, please.)

nerds of earth, I have your answer

It's been years since I've worn contact lenses regularly. I work some long hours, and I started noticing around the first year of my anesthesia residency that my eyes would get pretty tired and dry by the end of the day in contacts--it started feeling like that moment in your life that you switch from heels to flats, but, you know, on your eyeballs. (I'll give you a moment to process that imagery.) Also, with respect to my particular role in the workplace, there's something that I like to call "the splash factor"--all I have to do is look at my lenses at the end of the day and at all the projectile particulate that has accumulated there to make me glad that I always have a windshield in front of my eyes.

But you know, nice glasses can be expensive. My mom is an ophthalmologist, so for many of my formative years of glasses-wearing I relied on the insider connection with the optometrist to get a good deal on frames. However, in adulthood, I've had to get a few new pairs of frames (mostly related to my glasses getting smushed by someone's butt or cruelly twisted by my offspring--oddly, now that I never take my glasses off, my frames are much more protected) and every time I go to LensCrafters or what have you, I am floored by how much a pair of frames cost. A pair of designer frames (which, of course, are the only kinds that the big chains peddle) can cost anywhere between $150 to $300, and I'm not even talking about the ones with a blingity-bling Chanel medallion hanging off the sides.

At most chain optical stores, this also does not include the price of the lenses themselves, which--if you are a high myope like me and require a high-index refraction pair of lenses to lessen the Coke bottle effect--can jack up the price a couple hundred dollars more. Couple that with the fact that most people who wear glasses like to have a spare pair lying around for emergencies (see above: butt squashing, toddler torquing, etc.) and that's many, many hundreds of dollars for glasses.

Then I found this site called 39dollarglasses.com.

First of all, there are plenty of sites out there that offer cheap (albeit not brand-name) frames, some even for less than $39.00. However, 39dollarglasses.com is the place that I ordered my glasses from about a year ago, so it's the only one that I can speak to from personal experience. (Let me just explain in case this is in question that I am not sponsored by this or any company, nor do I generate any revenue or goodwill whether you click that link or not. I just really think that this is a hidden secret that people need to know about, because the last pair of glasses I got prior to discovering this genre of website cost more than six times the amount I spent on my web-bought frames, and now I am burning with self-righteous indignation against the brand-name glasses frame industry.)

The thing with glasses (which most of you who wear glasses understand) is that there is a highly specific fit, and not every frame fits every face. I know this as much as anyone--I have kind of a low nasal bridge (as many Asians do) and a roundish face, and on average I have to try on something like twenty pairs of glasses before I find a pair that feels right for me. So that's a problem with ordering glasses online--you can't try them on first. It's like buying shoes online. How particular are you about the fit of your shoes? If you are very persnickety, perhaps this is not the solution for you.

However, if you have a general sense of what kind of glasses look decent on you (I knew I wanted dark plastic frames with an ovalesque or rectangular shape), let me tell you a secret. The secret is in the numbers.

52-16-140 mm

128 mm

25 mm

Glasses come with measurements, did you know that? They do. Look, take off your glasses, and look on the inside surface of the stems. There should be three numbers. Those are the top three numbers listed above. The first one (in this case, 52mm) corresponds to the width of each individual lens bracket (or to be more precise: eye hole). The middle number (16mm) corresponds to the width of the nasal bridge piece. And the last number (140mm) corresponds to the length of the stem, which is the stick piece that goes over your ear. 128mm in this case is the width of the whole pair of glasses, and 25mm is the height of the lens frame (basically how librarian-reading-glasses-narrow or Carrie-Donovan-wide your peeping window is going to be top to bottom). If you can't try on the glasses before you buy them, these are the figures you need to know.

(I personally have kind of high cheeks so I know I can't get too wide of a measurement on the latter--I had a pair of rounded tortoise-shell glasses once that, due to the height of the frame, rested directly on my cheeks, and the constant feeling of having something on my face drove me, by small and insistent increments, completely insane. So insane that I eventually shelved those frames altogether and just swapped out the lenses into an old frame that I had lying around.)

So what do you do? Provided you already have a pair of glasses that fit OK and are not too different from the new pair that you want to get (for example, I'm not sure how it works with wire frames with the nose pads and the conversion to plastic frames), look at the numbers on the inside of your current glasses, and use those to extrapolate for the pair of new glasses you want to buy. THE NUMBERS ARE IMPORTANT. Trust me on this. No matter how adorable a pair of glasses looks online, if the numbers are not right, DO NOT BUY THEM, THEY WILL NOT FIT. This was of particular concern to me regarding the measurement for the nasal bridge; as a low-nasal-bridged individual, I knew that I needed a pair of glasses 16mm or narrower so that they would not slide down my face. If I went to Pearl Vision (or whatever) and tried on a pair of glasses, I would usually employ a test wherein I would put on the glasses and violently shake my head back and forth to see if the glasses would fall off. Since I cannot try on glasses online, I just go by the numbers. For the most part, if the nasal bridge part fits and the frames are not too wide for your head (example, if your current glasses are 128mm wide, do not buy glasses that are 134mm wide, even if they are super hot black with green trim OMG NERD CHIC!! Again, they will not fit). Believe me on this. I have spent way too much time trying on glasses to steer you wrong.

The glasses above are the ones I got a year ago, by the way. They are sturdy and well-made (not like the reading glasses you get next to the cash register at Walgreens or anything) and even with the upgraded package that offers a high-index refraction lens (you know, so the glass is thinner and not as heavy) it still came out to less than $80. For a pair of good glasses, that's a very, very fair price. (If you don't have a very strong presecription and don't need the high index refraction lenses, it's actually less than $50, which is yet another way in which people with better vision win. That and not needing glasses at all.) I got two pairs last winter--an heir and a spare, as it were--after my old pair of glasses from med school finally bit the dust (and yes, there was a period of time before the new glasses arrived that I was indeed wearing glasses haphazardly patched with some electrical tape, and also, briefly, some surgical suture) and I have been extremely pleased with them ever since. I even just ordered a pair of prescription sunglasses for driving, an extravagance that I'd never allowed myself, because really, who's going to pay hundreds of dollars for a pair of prescription sunglasses?

Not me. And hopefully, now, not you either.

(This post is not sponsored in any way. It's just ME sharing the good stuff with YOU. Now go forth and see clearly!)

food glorious food

Joe texted me this morning that Cal woke up tired and out of sorts, complaining about some vague thing or another, but since he didn't have a fever and manifested no objective signs of illness, it was off to school for him anyway.

Fifteen minutes later, I got another text that Cal barfed in the car, and so it was back home for him for a day of this:




Couch napping, fluids, episodes of "Planet Earth" narrated by the esteemed Sir David Attenborough. (I know this is yet another example of forcing upon my kid things that I loved as a kid, but Cal enjoys the natural sciences and hearing David Attenborough speak still puts me in a happy place of meditative Zen. He knows so many things about biomes!)

Luckily I was on call last night and able to get home early to the kids (there was no mystery where Cal got his bug, as Mack was basically pooping water for the past two days) and so this seems like as good a time as any to share my recipe for congee.




Let's make it clear that I cannot cook, though I do have a limited catalogue of mostly one-pot comfort food wonders that I tote out once in a while when the occasion calls for it. Congee is basically a Chinese rice porridge, and it is very simple to make, because in it's most stripped down form, it really only requires rice and water. You probably want it to have some, you know, flavor though, so usually I will do some variation on the below.

(Also let's be clear that calling this a "recipe" is perhaps generous, as I do not measure anything--consider it more of a rough blueprint, as most of the ingredients listed below are added to taste.)

At minimum, you will need:

- Rice
- Some form of clear liquid (I use a combination of water and chicken stock)

In what proportions? That is debatable. I think it somewhat depends on what kind of rice you use (I prefer an Asian new crop rice) but the closest I can come is one part rice to nine parts clear liquid. It's going to seem like too much clear liquid when you start boiling, but believe me, it is not--in fact, you may find yourself adding another can of chicken stock at the end if your congee ends up too thick.

Also at minimum, you need:

- Some ginger (at least a good, thumb-sized chunk, sliced)
- Scallions (Trader Joe's sells them as "green onions," which so far as I can tell are the same thing)
- Salt and pepper to taste

That's really all you need, but if you want to get fancy (or perhaps overly baroque in your opinion--I don't know if you're a congee purist) you can also add:

- Mushrooms of some sort (I got those baby Bellos--probably shitakes or those dried mushrooms they have at the Chinese People Grocery Store are better and more flavorful but it'll work with what you have)
- Peanuts
- Some kind of animal protein (I put in two frozen tilapia filets--they cook and get soft and then flake apart into smithereens, so it's really more of a fish chum infusion by the end than actual fish chunks. Alternatively you could use chicken or whatever.)

Put all the ingredients in a big pot. Use a big pot, because like polenta, this stuff grows. Put it on high until it starts to boil, and then put the heat all the way down. Simmer the shit out of it for two or three hours, until the rice breaks down, stirring occasionally. Like I said, you may need to add more water at the end, depending on how thick you like your porridge. Save the scallion tops (they are edible) and slice them for a garnish on top if you're so inclined.




Serve rice gruel to your kids like some cruel Dickensian orphan master. Tell them to eat it, it's good, and stop complaining that it's weird, they're half Chinese for chrissake. (You can probably skip that last part.)

pen nerds, unite! take back the night!

You may have noticed (though certainly the misguided companies that e-mail me soliciting product endorsements have not) that I do not run ads on this site. Never have. Sometimes I have used a free service that ran sidebar ads as part of their own business plan (Haloscan comes to mind--I used their service to run my comments section until that company imploded) but overall, I have never accepted money in exchange for ads or endorsements of any kinds. The only kind of endorsements I give--see the last blog entry, for instance--are ones that I do for free, in the spirit of a friend recommending something to a friend.

I know a lot of blogs--in fact, the majority of blogs--run some kind of ads to support themselves, and that is all good and fair. The reason I have chosen not to is multifactorial. First, this is a personal blog which happens to be written by a doctor. Corporate sponsorship is not necessary, nor would it necessarily be appropriate. Secondly, I need to keep things simple, as I have a hard enough time updating this blog as it is without thinking of peripherals like ad content and sidebars. Third, I have a job that pays the bills, and it's not worth it to me to run clutter-y, annoying ads in order to make whatever pittance in ad revenue I could generate.

So please just treat the following is a public service for pen nerds everywhere.

Full disclosure: after I talked about ordering from Jet Pens a few months ago, a representative from the company mailed me an envelope full of samples. I did not solicit the samples nor am I getting kickbacks from Jet Pens, but let it be known that I scroll through that Jet Pens website the way I page through the Ikea catalogue: pure visual porn.

First up, the Pilot Hi-Tec-C Coleto

Jet Pens very kindly sent a pen barrel along with three 0.4mm ink cartridges in the standard red, black and blue, though certainly for those more adventurous of us there are many more colors available. (For instance, a choice between "Orange" and "Apricot Orange." It's the subtle differences.) The pen is easy to use and very standard as multi-barrel pens go--just jam the ink cartridges in, press down what color you want to use, and start diagramming that Krebs cycle, you multicolor pen nerd, you. I had bought a few of the regular Pilot Hi-Tec-Cs to use before, and I did like the pen, although the pen tip was a little scratchy for me (my own fault, 0.4mm is a very fine tip) and the fact that it was a pen with an actual cap rather than a retractable pen drove me crazy.

People seem to rave about the Hi-Tec-C Coleto, as it gets past two of the commonly voiced displeasures about the regular Hi-Tec-C, in that 1.) it's retractable, and 2.) as multi-cartridge pen, the pen barrel itself is thicker and therefore easier to grip. However, two problems with the Coleto that I noticed were that there seemed to be a lot of "wiggle" of the cartridge within the barrel of the pen, to the point that it kind of affected my handwriting. To be fair, it's a very thin cartridge with a needle tip nib, and I do tend to push hard when I write, so perhaps it's operator dependent. However, with my personal writing style, I think I would find it too scratchy and too delicate for heavy use.

Next up, the Sarasa Zebra Clip Gel Ink Pen in Blue-Black with an 0.4mm tip

I'd eyed this pen before, because unlike many of the rarer Japanese or Korean imports (which makes it sound like we're talking about rare anime reel-to-reels or something, but no, WE'RE STILL TALKING ABOUT PENS) this pen is actually available at Staples. My source at Jet Pens also tells me that the clip (it is spring-loaded, which makes it open and close wider than the standard pen clip) has made it popular among nurses. I also liked this pen because it's retractable (cannot emphasize the importance of this feature--I refuse to use a pen at work if it is not retractable) and it has a nice rubber grip which makes it comfortable to hold.

It's a fine pen. It writes smoothly, the gel is nice and non-blobby, it looks like it has a decent ink supply, and didn't skip even after a couple of test drops from a respectable height. (The skipping gel pen is a major pet peeve. I drop my pens a lot, due to, you know, the Earth's gravity; and I cannot tell you how many 0.5mm Pilot G2s I've had in my life that just stopped working despite a full ink cartridge because I dropped them once or twice. HATE.) However, it's nothing special. And at two bucks each, they're fifty cents more than the Uni-ball Signo RT UM-138, which is a gorgeous fine tipped pen, with many of the same properties and (I think) a more handsome design. True, no springy clip, but I have not yet evidenced need for a springy-clip pen in my life to this point, so for my money, I'll stick with the Uni-balls.




(Also impressive about the RT-138s is that one time I had an anesthesia record that I got pretty wet--got sprayed with saline or something. The ink barely smeared. I have rubbed my writing with a latex glove bare seconds after laying down the line, and nary a smudge. That's a good hospital pen, friends.)

OK, one last review: the Pentel Sliccies Gel Ink Multi-Pen

Again, a multi-pen with 0.4mm tip, only the Pentel multi holds two cartridges, not three. The barrel is clear plastic, nothing fancy that you'd use to sign the Declaration of Independence or anything, but cheap enough that you wouldn't cry if you lost it. Easy to use, a large range of colors (in the blue spectrum we have blue, blue black, sky blue, and milk blue...yes, I said milk blue). One benefit of the Sliccies over the Hi-Tec-C is that the ink supply seems a little wetter somehow, which I like--makes the pen glide over the paper easier. However, again, the ink cartridge is small (probably a commonality among most multi-pens, just for mechanical reasons) so I'd be worried about running out of ink constantly. I guess I'm just not a multi-pen kind of person.

Oh, and unrelated to Jet Pens, I got a few of these guys yesterday:

(It's the Pilot Precise V7 RT, in case you don't have your bifocals on.)

I usually don't like writing in a 0.7mm tip, because I prefer a more precise line and anything too thick tends to blob up on me. But I had to write a letter to someone and I knew that if I used my standard 0.38mm pen (I have them in both the Uni-ball Signo RT UM-138 as well as the Pilot G2s, which you can find in 0.38mm at your regular big box office supply store if you look hard enough) then my writing would be too small. The Pilot Precise V7 RT really fit the bill. It's a fatter, wetter line, but great for scrawling larger notes, and makes signing your name feel awesome. The one caveat with this pen is that it does tend to smudge and bleed quite a bit on the wrong kind of paper, or if your writing gets wet, so perhaps more for your correspondence than for writing in the hospital.

I should get a show on NPR where I just talk about pens. And then I could squawk at my co-host in an abrasive Boston accent and make corny Dad-jokes. Oh wait, that's "Car Talk." Still, if anyone has a programming slot on their local public radio station, call me. As demonstrated, I can talk about pens for a long time.

(Idle aside: my dream--and I think it's a stretch, though not impossible--is to be invited to be a guest on "Jordan, Jesse, Go!" Yes, now you know that my self-professed life's goal is to be featured as a one-time guest on a marginally well-known niche comedy podcast. I REACH FOR THE STARS.)

ok, ok

I haven't updated for a while, to the point that I was starting to get performance anxiety about my next post, like after two weeks off, whatever I put up there better be good. (You can see, of course, the ultra high standards to which I have held my blog in these past few months--that is to say, I try to mostly capitalize where needed and I do not use Microsoft Paint to draw pictures of penises onto people's faces.) But then I remembered that the best way to break out of that no-writing funk was just to throw a bunch of writing up there and just apologize in advance. So!

Really I just need something to do because the chatter on the internet (in the form of the SDN forums--I find it a little embarrassing calling attention to the fact they are globally known as the Student Doctor Network as I know that a good many people who check by on the forums are actually finished with the "student" phase of their lives; I in particular only check in with it to assess when I should be freaking out about a thing and how much I should be freaking) is that the results of the Anesthesia Oral Boards are to be posted today and I need something else to do instead of ritualistically checking my e-mail every five or ten minutes. So this is good, because I am writing this blog entry on my new iPad (about which more later--I got a bluetooth keyboard to pair with it so I can actually type more than 20 words per minute) and since the iPad famously cannot multitask, I can't exit out the check my e-mail without closing this window. This is known as forced distraction.

So, the iPad! It was a present. From me. To myself. We got the next installment of my book advance recently, and though I kept telling Joe that I wasn't going to use it to get anything for myself, I would just put it in the bank and save it for bills or childcare or to send Mack to Space College (for, as you know, that is what all kids will attend in The Future--no, not Starfleet Academy, that's fictional, I'm talking about a university on the moon), I found after looking deep within my soul that actually, I really, really did want an iPad. And also, Joe just started his attending job at [Big Academic Hospital] in town, which means that we are actually a two income family now with a little more to save, so what the hell am I, Hamlet? I got the fucking iPad. And it is awesome.

The best, best thing that I love about the iPad is the fact that I can download Kindle books onto it, and I can already tell that this is going to change my freaking life. Back when the iPad was just a glimmer in Steve Job's eye, I was seriously considering getting a Kindle, though I ultimately didn't because I was trying to save my pennies. But the iPad is like a bright, color Kindle on which you can surf the internet, listen to podcasts, and play Plants vs. Zombies. If you got a boner just now, I'm pretty sure that you would like the iPad. And now I'm going to stop because who isn't already sick of hearing about this thing?


* * *


So I went to Target the other day to get some cookie mix, because Cal's class is having a "summer birthday party" celebration for all the kids who, by disadvantage of conception, celebrate their birthdays during summer vacation. Cal's birthday is July 22nd, so I'm going to send him in with some cookies for the party, because I want to pretend like I'm a real mom or something. I know that making cookies from a dry mix is not very impressive, but we're going to put M&Ms in them so who's going to tell me that's not totally fucking creative? YOU?

Anyway, so I was walking to the checkout line when I heard some lady talking what sounded very much like Cantonese, except the words didn't make any sense. For those of you who don't speak Cantonese, the sound of the language is very characteristic because it has a lot of tones and a lot of wide, flat vowel-type sounds (there was actually a great "Radiolab" episode about such so-called "tone-languages,"--but I digress), and I was looking around for the other Chinese lady when I realized that the sounds were actually being emitted by the lady at cash register, who was, in fact, a youngish African-American lady. She very pleasantly then turned to me and waved me over. "I can take you at this register." So I pushed my cart into her line and paid for my cookie mix.

"I'm sorry," she said, "I didn't see you." I told her that was OK, thinking she was still talking about ringing up my items. But then she went on. "My friend over there," she gestured to the other cashier one line over, a younger guy, "always says that I look Chinese, because my eyes are slanty." She used her fingers to push up the corners of her eyes, to illustrate what exactly she meant. "So he always calls me Chinese. So we just joke around and I pretend to talk Chinese to him." She smiled at me. "So that's what that was. I didn't see you." She handed me my bag of cookie mix. "I just didn't want you to think I was disrespecting you or anything."

She seemed so nice and so utterly without guile that I just smiled at her and told her that her Chinese language impression was actually pretty good.


* * *


I'm going to go check my email again.

Edited to add: I passed! U-S-A! U-S-A!

new pen reviews!

OK, fuck the boards, let's talk about something really important now. Let's talk about pens.

I placed an order for some new pens a few weeks ago (and then tweeted abundantly about it). And now I will talk about it some more, because that horse isn't quite dead yet. Anyway, these are special pens! SPECIAL JAPANESE PENS! From the island of Japan! Where all cute things originate!

Let us begin. First let me describe my pen needs. Like any medical person, I use my pen a lot. Now that I'm not a Peds resident anymore, I don't have quite the need that I once did to have intricate pages of checklists and patient flow charts, nor did I need a pen that would enable me to write a full set of metabolic lab results in the 0.5 inch margin alongside a patient's progress note, but hey, I still have pen needs. Mostly I write consult notes, keep anesthesia records, and sign my name one million times a day. I do like a good fine-tipped pen for the anesthesia records--I don't know if you've ever seen one, but for those of us who don't have computerized records (I did in my residency, but at my current hospital we still do hand charting) we do have to cram in quite a bit if information in a very small amount of space.




Other concerns: I wanted a pen that would make my writing look neat--I find that the wider the point, the more sloppy my writing tends to become. I wanted a pen with a good ink supply that didn't smear. And I wanted to find a pen in a color that other people didn't have. The reason for this is not just because I GOTTA BE ME! but because sometimes if I'm reading over an anesthesia consult note that someone else has written, I like to go through it and circle the important things so that they jump out at me, or add little clarifying notes of my own. When my pen is a slightly different color, I can see my own additions better, and it reminds me to do stuff (or not to do stuff, as the case may be).

So with this in mind, I got three types of pens. First was the Pilot Hi-Tec-C Gel Ink Pen with the 0.4 mm tip. The reason I got this pen, even though I've never seen it before or tried it in person, is that the pen enthusiasts of the world (and once you start to dig into this, you will find them all over the internet) swear that this is the world's greatest pen. I got a few in the blue-black color, because everyone else at work already has either a plain black or a plain blue pen, and if I got any of these other colors, people might start worrying that I was going to start signing my notes Mrs. Justin Beiber, MD. I don't think a pink pen flies in the hospital.




Up until now I've been a big fan of the Pilot Precise V5 RT, which is an excellent pen except that sometimes the ink is a little heavy so it can bleed and smear a little, and that occasionally after you drop it, it'll just be real scratchy and skippy for the rest of its natural life, even if it still does have a full ink barrel. So I knew I liked the feel of a needle tip pen. So tiny! So precise! And indeed, the Pilot Hi-Tec-C was all of these things.




Two issues I had with this pen. First of all was that, after using it for a full day at work, I began to realize why I had been using retractible pens all along. Because dealing with a pen cap is a pain in my ass. I know they have a retractible version of the Hi-Tec-C, but from all my research (and yes, there was research involved) it looks like the pen barrel was much thinner in the retractible version, thus making it hard to hold, and the ink supply was smaller. As it was, my other beef with the Hi-Tec-C is that it wasn't very comfortable to write with. I hold my pen weird (it's certainly not a ladylike grip, more of a ham-fisted grip that my dad was on my case endlessly about until he finally gave up) and if my pen barrels are too thin, I get hand cramps. Also the Hi-Tec-C did not have a padded grip, which I didn't like. It had these hard plastic ridges where you held the pen, which I guess is good for traction or whatever, but in terms of comfort, not my cup of tea. (I am also aware that they have the Hi-Tec-C with the rubber grip, but they only make those in black, blue and red.) I tried to put on my own rubber grip--you know, those ones that they sell at Staples for kids to put on their pencils--but then I ran into the problem of the damn pen cap again, in that it wouldn't fit on with the rubber grip in place. So the Pilot Hi-Tec-C is a good pen, lays down a great line, and the blue-black ink is a classy joint. However, maybe better for home than for work, unless you have a desk job and don't mind dealing with a pen cap from time to time.

Second pen was this: the Uni-ball Signo RT UM-138 Gel Pen with a 0.38 mm tip. I got this in blue-black and lavendar black.





Now I know that you're going to see that purple pen and say WHAT THE HELL, WHAT ABOUT ALL THAT STUFF THAT YOU WERE SAYING ABOUT MRS. JUSTIN BEIBER, YOU GOT A PURPLE PEN FOR WORK? Hold on there, pen friends. It's not purple. It's lavender-black. The difference, which, I hope to illustrate here:




So there. The purple is even less obvious if you don't have the actual purple pen barrel next to it--I think the external cue makes the ink look more purply than it really is. I actually polled about five nurses, showing them an anesthesia record and a few notes that I wrote without showing them the pen, asking them what color they thought the ink was. Every one of them said either "black" or "dark blue." So it really doesn't look that purple, and it really is a nice pen. Fine point, smooth writing, beautiful lush line, not blobby, not bleedy, and above all, retractible.

Plus, it's not really that expensive, running you $1.50 per pen. I mean, yes, it's more expensive than a giant box of Bic ballpoints, but this is not your general distribution pen, this is your pen, the one you label with your name, the one you keep in your breast pocket and make sure no one steals. Both the blue-black and the lavender-black are fantastic colors, and after I let Joe try one, he insisted that I order him a box of his own, so see, just as much of a hit with the fellas as with the ladies.

(All photos and pens courtesy of Jet Pens, which is probably a really dangerous site if you have an Asian office supply fetish and have some time to waste.)

product names lost in translation

From the Asian grocery store this morning:

specs

Did you know they make special-fitting glasses for Asian people? It's true. Something about the flatter nose bridge and smaller faces of my rice-eating brethren makes it that standard eyeglasses that fit well can be hard to find, which is rather inconvenient, as I don't know any Asian people who don't wear glasses.

I always thought it was just me that needed to try on five thousand pairs of glasses before I found ones that wouldn't just slide off my face (in my youth, I first wore pink plastic frames with highly unfortunate mother of pearl "accents" that would stay on purely by virtue of the fact that they were so big that they would rest on my cheekbones--I subsequently moved onto wire-frames with the wire/silicone pad nose gripper things, which fit much better, but which I try to eschew now because they make me look like Sun Yat Sen and I want to be FASHIONABLE) but now I know that I can just blame it on anthropology. Still, since "Asian fit" glasses are not widely available (Oakley makes a line of "Asian fit" sunglasses, and of course they have tons of cool eyewear in Japan, but that's this whole other country and most of it isn't available here) I still have a hell of a hard time every time I need to switch my frames.

So. I need new glasses. First off, the old pair are broke-ass. This is largely my fault. First of all, I sleep in my glasses, because how else is the obsessive-compulsive fitful myopic sleeper supposed to know what time it is each and every time she wakes up in the middle of the night? (Yes, Lasik, I know.) Secondly, my lenses are all scratched up (particularly the left, my lookin' eye) because I use the fiberoptic scope a lot at work, and a metal eyepiece on plastic lenses is not a good flavor combination. I was talking to a pathologist the other day, and asked him how he managed to protect his glasses when he was looking through a microscope all day long, and he paused about one second too long before telling me that he takes off his glasses before looking in the scope, dumbass. (That last bit was implied, not explicit.)

Yes, so anyway, frames abused, lenses scratched. Lastly, my prescription has gotten worse. I figured this out because I was driving one day and I could not read the road signs until I was right up under them. "Why do they print those signs so blurry?" I wondered. Then I realized that despite being related to two ophthalmologists (my mom and Joe--well, actually, three, my uncle is an ophthalmologist too) I have not had my eyes checked for something like five or six years.





So anyway, I got new glasses. They are coming in the mail. They are exactly the same as my old glasses, only better, because they will not be broke-ass and I will be able to see out of them. The end.

double happiness

Hey all, happy new year. Thanks for all the e-mails regarding restaurant recommendations--I guess the Atlanta restaurant scene is not quite the New York restaurant scene, but I keep thinking SOMEONE must know how to make a good tandoori chicken nearby and be willing to sell it to me, right? I know the Buford Highway is where I'm going to have to go to get any good ethnic food, but it's just such a production to get there. It involves PLANNING and DRIVING and GETTING LOST and U-TURNS IN FRONT OF EARL'S CLASSIC GUITAR EMPORIUM. So maybe I should learn how to cook.

Chinese New Year was fun. Cal was super excited to have my parents here, and Mack pooped himself with glee at meeting his grandparents. (Well, he pooped, anyway.)




Oh, and a tangentially related story, I went to Krispie Kreme the other day, because--well, it's a really boring story, but basically, I went to the bank, and then I was trying to find things to do to keep me out of the house for longer to practice being away from the baby for at least an hour and a half, because, dude, cut the cord already, and there was a Krispie Kreme, and I knew my parents were coming, and Cal had mentioned wanting to eat some donuts, and--yeah, see, I told you it was boring. Anyway, I got six donuts, which seemed like more than enough at the time, and the person at the register told me that the total was six-something, but was I sure I didn't want to just get a full dozen for just seven-something?

Oh no, I demurred, we couldn't possible eat A DOZEN DONUTS. And then I took the donuts home and ate three. And then Joe ate two. So by the time my parents got here, there was only one donut left, and it wasn't even the kind that my dad liked. (Original Glazed, for you dad-stalkers out there. Now you can entice him into your trap, consisting of a basket held up by a branch tied to a rope, under which is stacked a pile of donuts. You're welcome.)

After my dad grudgingly ate the last donut (he doesn't like custard filled, because he's CRAZY and hates deliciousness) I relayed the story of, "but for only a dollar more, you could super-size your donut order" etcetera etcetera, with the moral of the story being, and that's how they get you, and that's why America has a 95% left main occlusion, The End. Which is true. I waited for him to start telling me how right I was, and how cunning I was for not getting sucked into their commercial enticements.

But instead, my dad looked at me like I had just confirmed what he knew all along, namely that I was NOT VERY SMART, and said, "Yeah, you'll never make that mistake again. NEVER just get six donuts at Krispie Kreme. Either get four, or get the full dozen. Six is not a good deal. Usually I get a dozen, and if your sister is home, she'll eat two, and I'll eat ten."

HE EATS TEN DONUTS? And before you start thinking that my dad is some gigantic fatty fatty fat fat, let me just show you a picture from this weekend:




Clearly, he is Kobayashi. Anyway, Joe went out the next morning and bought a box of a dozen donuts. And then we ate them. And lo, they were good. Happy New Year.

(Fin.)

(What? I didn't say it was a good story.)

(Full picture set here.)

(Parentheses! Who doesn't love 'em?)