Weekly Roundup: April 19-25

I need chocolate.

Had lunch with Karen Tei Yamashita this week. She's awesome. She writes speculative fiction, but isn't in that world, so I had a great time throwing titles at her head and then lending her books. She filled me in on a decade's worth of book publishing gossip over Ethiopian food. Fun!

Freaking out about the Kaya Press author tours and the two weeks worth of publicizing I lost in there because I couldn't sleep. Sunyoung is at the Association for Asian American Studies conference in Hawai'i, and Patty is in New York, so communication is slower than usual. But one of our authors came in this week! And we're off and running next week. Argh! Too fast!

I'm sleeping now, for some reason. At the suggestion of my massage therapist, I started sleeping with a rolled up towel behind my neck to tilt my head back. It can't be that simple, can it? Must buy a shaped memory foam pillow. Still freaking out. Plus, went to the doctor this week and found out I definitely DON'T have sleep apnea, and nobody knows HWAT's wrong with me.

Saw Vin Diesel's new bad movie with Jaime. Really enjoyed it. Absolute fluff, nothing to analyze, but the car chases were exciting and fun.

The chicks are out around Lake Merritt. The baby birds, I mean. I saw two Canada goose chicks today, each one with its own set of parents. I wonder if the Canada geese lay in batches or only have one at a time. Wikipedia sez batches. They were hella cute! Did you know Canada goslings are yellow? That's right! Like larger versions of chick'n chicks with dark smudges on the down and longer legs. Very cute. Also saw two young seagulls ... not so cute.

Interesting article in Salon about eating organic and cheap: can it be done? Interestingly, yes, but you still need two privileges: flexible time schedule and cooking skills. I hadn't thought about the cooking skills part as a privilege, but of course, you have to have a kitchen at all, plus one with all the right pots and pans and equipment, to learn to cook properly. No, actually, you don't. I'm still remembering the best meal we had in China in 1983, which was a 13-course feast cooked by our host's 18-year-old son on two gas burner rings, a pot, and a wok. Of course, he DID have the flexible schedule and the cooking skills, though.

I'm a little tweaked about this racial Fatal Attraction knockoff called Obsessed. Not going to see it, but I'm bracing myself for the inevitable online onslaught. I already googled it and one of the top entries was from a white woman blogger, who goes out of her way to tell us she's blonde, screaming about the racism directed against blonde white women by black people. No, I'm not gonna link to it. She's already getting too much attention for it. Also, the comments would raise your blood pressure and I don't wanna do that to you.

What else? Not much else percolatin', although a lot is going on. Have a good week!

Comments

[Anna Feruglio Dal dAn]

Time and energy. I can cook really well from scratch, starting from raw ingredients, and I like doing so. But I need the time to shop, and I need the time to prepare the food. (Of course, I also need to be able to stay awake for more than a total of eight hours a day, which right now I can't).

Generations of women cooked two meals a day for large families while holding down full-time jobs. Did they have time for anything else in their lives? Not muchly.