Celebrating Umami

Forrest and I took Monday off from work to attend the "New Frontiers of Taste's, 100 years of Umami celebration." The first part of the day started with a panel discussion featuring food scientists, professors, chefs and sommeliers. The event was put together by the UMAMI Information Center and who knew such an organization existed??? I mean it's like having the Institute of Sucrose put together a celebration of all things sweet...

Interestingly enough, umami (or the 5th flavor) was discovered by a Japanese scientist 100 years ago but has only been publically recognized by the rest of western society since the mid 80's. The flavor is molecularly "glutamate" and it is what gives food a savory / rich flavor sensation. There was some interesting disucssion around how the receptors for umami might have evolved to make humans interested in eating proteins whereas the sucrose receptors make us essentially crave carbohydrates.

Anyhoo - I am totally nerding out now, but now nearly as much as the folks who were in attendance. In comparison, I am merely "interested" in food where some of the other attendees could be better classified as "fanatics"....

Visiting Soo, Dean and Baby Tae

H&H Reunion 2008

It has been two years since the last H&H Family Reunion and this time around, I'm a member of the family...the last time I was a "special friend" attendee. H&H stands for Henry and Hildegard, who are Forrest's maternal grandparents - so at this reunion, it is my mother in law Pat and her siblings; Steuart, Shirley, Deannie and their kids, grandkids and even some great-grandkids. The picture above has 38 people in it and what is even crazier is that 30 people are missing!!!

This year's reunion was hosted at the YMCA of the Rockes in Winter Park Colorado...about 2 hours west of the Denver airport. So it's near Vail and Breckenridge ski resorts.... The place was massive and there were tons of outdoor activities to do and really, I wouldn't mind going back there again.

The only thing I could pass on is the altitude... I have never experienced a sickness like that before in my life. We arrived in Denver at 1pm and around 5 am the following day, while I was sleeping, I was awoken by a splitting headache and could not go back to sleep...then to only make matters worse, I lost my lunch from the nausea. GROSS. The vomiting only happened once, but I fought the headache all weekend and then started to get bloody noses - not awesome. But I am happy to report that I am back to normal after having returned to California on Sunday.


You too can kill a raging tyrannasaurus rex during the group archery lessons!

Livestrong Challenge 2008 - San Jose, CA

Sunday was spent cycling over 50 miles of mostly flat suburban San Jose. Hiroko found this event and I somehow signed up and talked Forrest into it too..it must have been the fundraising for cancer that won me over because man oh man...I was soooooo over the cycling portion before it ever began.
Riders (not racers) lining up and awaiting the kickoff.
Forrest pre-bathroom line.
Hiroko's back full of support for cancer survivors.

Friday Night at the Ambassador

There are better pictures up on Chesternet but these are ones from my camera. Friday Chester IM'ed me to meet up for drinks and dinner at the Ambassador in the Tenderloin. Normally I am against hanging out in the 'loin but Sam offered to drive so...eh....

But what a surprise! The place is super cool on the inside with these booths that had phones so you could call each other. BUT the real treat is the happy hour menu!!!! It's about half the price of the regular menu so you can get a really good hamburger on a brioche bun and fries for $6 - ACK!

Almost a Fraud Victim....EEK!

So I got the craziest phone call today...
They said they were from our car warranty company and that we could renew our warranty…

They went through this whole schpeel, said it would be only $2,695 but if I bought today, they would knock $500 off the price… AND that there were different financing options so I could downpay whatever amount I wanted now…and call back with the rest.

So my first inclination was to ask for documentation of the warranty benefits before I moved forward because this guy was talking WAY too fast. But before I asked that....

It got squirrely because I said “I need to talk to my husband tonight about it and get back to you…besides I never received any notices from you guys that I could renew my warranty…”

They say “sure no prob, talk to your husband and call us back”

I say “great – what is the phone number”

They say “hold please”

And then they hang up.

I tried calling back the phone number from my caller ID…and guess what? It’s an invalid phone number.

TOTALLY CRAZY - I have never had that happen before.

Paper Anniversary

Today is our one year anniversary!
I can't believe it's already been a year already...What they say is true, time goes by A LOT faster as you get older.

Girls Weekend in Napa

Pictured above is me, Ann, Jana and mom at the entrance to Artessa winery. Jana has a big birthday this year and mom decided to organize a girls spa weekend to celebrate....We spent three days over the Fourth of July holiday working really hard on our relaxing. Friday was spent at Spa Terra (highly recommended) which is built into the side of a wine cave at the new Meritage Resort and Saturday was spent wine tasting then an evening concert at Momdavi Winery.

Below are pics from lunch at Carneros Della Notte.... Ann had met the owner at a fundraiser event in Los Angeles and we were treated to a picnic style lunch on the porch with loads of wine to sample.

The day continew with an outdoor concert at Mondavi Winery. The event was kicked off by Margrit Mondavi and a tribute to Robert Mondavi who passed away this year.
Consensus??? We need to do this more often! Leave the kids home with dads or grandfathers and the ladies need to head out for some relaxing!

Inhereting Stuff

So my mom started giving me some jewelery that used to belong to my grandmother on my father's side. For some reason, even as a pastor's wife, she had loads of jewelery...soome of it was costume and some of it was real but all of it was rather interesting. She passed away when I was in grade school and they had divided up her jewelery and passed it to all the kids. My mom got this ring which I had always admired as a kid...and now it's mine - mwha ha ha.

I have just always thought it was such a pretty color and shape with the delicate prongs. I'm thinking of having it re-set but the moms was pretty adamant that I wasn't "allowed to do that" so maybe I'll just get the tongs tightened....

Movie Review: The Happening

Not even worth my time in finding an image of the movie poster to use in this post. I liked Signs and The Sixth Sense but in this movie, all the suspense seemed like a bunch of cheap tricks...arg. Would it kill him to develop the characters or the storyline a little more? And really, he's got some money now so can't he get some other people to write the script, produce and direct the movie so he doesn't have to do all of it himself...you know, in a vaccum?

You want to know what was "happening?" A whole lotta nothing!
And it was the fucking plants! The plants were killing the people by releasing toxins.

My new uniform

Above I am modeling my latest cooking uniform....Hiroko got me the cutest cupcake apron for my birthday and this weekend was my first weekend wearing it. Thanks Hiroko!

Recently Forrest joked that I needed to get a "cake decorating uniform" something like a track suit, etc that I wear when I am in my baking zone... The man is crazy - but I think this new apron fits the bill.

Movie Review: Sex and the City

This weekend Hiroko put together a viewing of Sex in the City in the Marina...so I joined Susi, Vanessa, Melissa and Hiroko at Circa for cosmos and then over to the Marina theater for the 7pm showing.

Gotta tell ya - it was everything I hoped / wanted it to be....it was like an extended season finale, perfectly wrapping up all of the storylines neatly but not without a bumpy journey before getting there. The ending showed the characters in their true form...the type of people they were originally portrayed in the begininning of the series, finally reaching a place where they reach their goals, mature and are still exactly who they want to be.

I can't wait to get the DVD so I can add it to my Sex and the City collection :)

Fish Tales

I swear - I really caught that fish. Monday the in-laws setup a fishing trip in the Rogue River. Randy was our guide on the river and setup all of the fishing logistics for us. After sitting around in the boat for most of the morning, my fishing line caught onto something.....

It was a 15 minute struggle of me reeling in, then the fish taking more line, then me reeling in... it seemed like an exercise in futility at some point as we were fighting over the same 2 feet of fishing line over and over. Finally, I got the damned fish to the surface of the water and HOLY CRAP we all almost shit our pants when we caught sight of this monster. My arms still hurt from this experience and it's been 3 days.

Once we finally netted the fish and got it to shore to measure, we realized that it was freaking HUGE. We also noticed that it was a "native" salmon and therefore we had to throw it back. If the fin was clipped, it would indicate that it was a hatchery bred salmon and approved for human plunder. With recent decline in wild salmon, there are efforts to ban fishing in certain regions in hopes of increasing the spawning for future fishing seasons.

So here are my fish's stats...
45" long
26.5" girth
42 pounds (approx based on length/girth fish formula)

Roadtrip to Oregon

We went up to Ashland, OR for a few days to meet up with Forrest's parents . For those that are unfamiliar, Ashland is home to the largest Shakespeare festival in the US....and now it has expanded to the single largest theater company or something in the country that includes other non-Shakespearean plays as well.

Since it was a 6 hour drive from San Francisco, we decided to split up the drive....Forrest driving the first part and me driving the second half....I took a nap during the first half of the drive, much to the joy of Forrest - as it provides him the opportunity to take pictures of me sleeping with my mouth open (awesome).

Aging Gracefully

This picture is about 3 years old...but I apparently don't have that many recent pictures of myself, instead I have loads and loads of pictures...of food, particularly pastries.

So yesterday I celebrated another birthday, meaning I am now at the ripe old age of 31. I am officially in my 30's now. No more raging parties, late nights or even shots....Thank Goodness as in my old age it is getting harder and harder to get up in the morning...lol. Have a great rest of the weekend you'all.

Bridal Party kickoff!

This weekend was the first time all of us in Molly's bridal party got together :) We went to a bridal store down in the South Bay to try on dresses to pick a wedding dress for Molly and some bridesmaid and flower girl dresses for the rest of us. No dress for Molly just yet, but there are some great contenders - as for the bridal party, we were able to select our dresses..sooooo exciting!

Fun at work

Don't know if you can see it clearly in this picture, but try to figure out what is going on here. Some folks at work got very crafty with some standard issue corporate bookcases.

Can you guess what's going on here?

>>ANSWER IS....Tetris!

And for you super dorks out there that had to point out to me that the far left piece does not belong, congratulations on being right... That's just how the bookcases come - standard issue.

Mother's Day lunch in Los Gatos

Photo courtesy of Sam. Apparently we just didn't care to have him in the picture because we never tried asking a passerby to take a photo of alla of us. For Mother's Day we trekked down from the city to a restaurant called Tapestry in Los Gatos. Surprisingly everyone was in the South Bay this weekend. My parents, well, they live there full time...Sam was down in San Jose the night before for a bachelor party and Forrest's parents were in LG for a wedding...

"They can smell the korean on you"

On our way to a Mother's Day lunch, we stopped to get some gas. What you don't see is that the car in front of us is full of Koreans...HOMELAND Koreans. Not your garden variety immigrant koreans who walk among us and understand what's going on - but the kind that are pure tourists and can't figure out how to pump gas at the gas station.

They asked Forrest for help by saying "ex-a-cyoo-sah-me" which means "excuse me" trying to get his attention. He then goes over there and I notice some discussion and then some smiling and head nodding...interesting.

He then cruises back to the car, opens the door and laughingly says to me "there are some Korean tourists there who need help if you want to help them." I declined and Forrest called ma"a hater." Once all back in the vehicle, I stated that it's not wierd for them to ask the whitest man at the gas station for help because "they can smell the korean on you....they were confused and thought you were one of them."

Travelin for work...Mission Beach Wave House

Was in San Diego last week for our channel partner conference and as with all corporate conferences, there is a "party"...something that would be really really fun if you weren't there with a bunch of people from work. Mind you, I do like my co-workers but you'all got to be careful to avoid any CLMs (career limiting maneuvers) like getting too wasted, shouting obscenities or coming on too a senior manager etc etc. I've seen most of these things in play, they are particularly exciting to watch during a sales conference. Sales people are crazy!

Not only did we get to watch the barely legal high school / college students professionally surf the fake waves, our own colleagues suited up, surfed and boogie boarded. I did not get up there..ha.
It is pretty ingenious really.... It's a curved plastic pool onto which they shoot out water and if forms a wave that the people were riding with snowboard sized boards. They had two outdoor wave pools and one massive indoor pool - which was hosting a kid's swimming lesson or something during our company party...strange.
And now for the cuisine - tell me how appetizing does that look? It looks like furry shit on a stick! Now frozen chocolate covered bananas sound like a great idea, just not all sitting on a plate together like that. It took every last bit of self control that I had to not point and laugh the entire evening....

Nerdopolis 2008

Met with with Chester and his UC Berkeley crew in San Mateo for a movie viewing of "This American Life." What I didn't know was that this was filmed LIVE in NYC that night and we were basically watching it live on tape delay in San Mateo...if I had known what the deal was, I might have actually forked out the cash to fly to NYC to watch it live....that's ho much of a nerd lover I am.


Timing of this "live event" was suspiciously close to the launch of the This American Life's second TV season....but shit - I don't care what they are plugging, I just enjoy what they are doing and will watch/listen in any medium they choose to broadcast in.

Cycling as a Service hits Laguna Seca

That's Forrest's work team for the "24 Hours of Adrenaline" mountain bike race down at the Laguna Seca raceway in Monterey. You can't tell from this photo - but it was flippin cold as shit in Monterey this weekend. I literally spent the entire time in the car....and 2 hours at a local spa getting a massage and facial on a heated massage table ;)

Working from home

You know, it's not so much the price of gas (as I drive Honda) as it is the drive itself. I hate the act of driving with every fiber of my body. I quite enjoy being in the car, but just as long as someone else is driving. I think it is the requirement to pay attention that makes me crazy.

Sometimes I take Caltrain and sometimes I carpool...and that helps quite a bit. I know it sounds stupid but I feel so "urban" when I take public transportation like the train or BART. I'm such the suburban schmuck.

So lately, I have been working from home more frequently, trying to average about 2 days a week in the home office (which is really the same room as the living, dining and kitchen). But it makes for a great two second commute from bed to my desk. It's great because I get a ton of stuff done - all the copywriting and content reviewing to my heart's content AND some laundry in between!

The only downside is the sheer and utter loneliness. Sometimes, if I work two days straight at home I don't actually ever make it out of the building...making me a little stir crazy. Forrest will come home from work and I hover around him...because it's the reaction of "OMG - it's a person - eeeeek!!!" It's quite pathetic how lonely I get at home by myself for just 9 hours. Even though when I go into the office, I don't really socialize with anyone anyways.

There's no point to this post really, I just wanted to share...