sick

It looks like it’s the season of getting sick. First, it was Seppo. Then it was Roopa. Then, it was Seppo again. Then it was Uyen. And now, it is me.

I think I have the stomach flu. I thought it was food poisoning, but I think I’m wrong. Monday at work was a sheer disaster. I had a non-stop barf fest yesterday. I barfed after I drove up to Seppo’s work. Then I barfed in the bathroom of the restaurant we met Seppo’s parents in. I had to leave the restaurant and lie down in the car, it was so bad. Then I barfed when I got home. Then I slept for like 3 hours, then got up and barfed again, spending about an hour with Roopa before going to sleep.

I’m pretty sure barfing again this morning would help things feel better, but I honestly don’t think there is anything left in there. I haven’t felt this awful in years.

t-day week(end)

I have no idea what I did on Tuesday, but here is the rest of my week.

• Wednesday:
• Go grocery shopping
• Go to doctor’s appointment
• Go grocery shopping again to pick up pie crusts I forgot the first time
• Drive to Bart station to go to SF to visit with Holly and help unpack some things then have dinner
• Rush home then to the airport to pick up Roopa
• Bake two pecan pies while chatting and fall asleep.

• Thursday:
• Wake up to call from younger cousin who is driving up
• Go back to sleep and wake up late
• Take Roopa to Bart
• Drop by Seppo’s parents’ to pick up cranberry-orange relish and sweet potatoes and grab a bite of sushi as well as bring some home to a sick Seppo
• Let Andrew in when he arrives,
• Go to Bart to pick up Holly
• Go shopping with Holly to pick up some greens, sald fixings, and a crudite platter
• Start gravy as Seppo works on butterflied turkey, realizing too late that it’s a really long gravy recipe
• Receive guests (Uyen, Charles, Long, Charlotte)
• Get food out a full hour later than estimated — heh
• Eat and eat and chat for hours

• Friday
• Sleep in
• Eat leftovers
• Hike around Lake Temescal with Seppo, cousin, and dog
• Dinner with Holly and Andre (tgf meet-n-greet? hahah) in the city, followed by hanging out at her house

• Saturday
• Lunch with Eugene and Andrew (older and younger cousins from different branches of the family) at Sahn Maru — Thanks, Eugene!
• Bring back take-out for sick-again Seppo
• Watch first episode of Freaks and Geeks, one of my NaNoWriMo rewards
• Work on NaNoWriMo for the first time in days

• Sunday
• Eat breakfast Seppo made
• Take Mobi to dog walk with Seppo
• Drive into city to meet with Leila and Roopa, then pick up Holly
• Enjoy tea for hours at Lovejoy Tea Room
• Hang out at Holly’s house with the girls
• Come home and finish NaNoWriMo
• Rewrite my self-review and finish a co-worker’s peer review

I think that was the gist of it.

Vacation: Day Three

I’m taking off the three days before the Thanksgiving day break. Counting the weekends, that’s a total of nine days off! Woo hoo! I don’t know when I last had so much time off to myself when I wasn’t going off to visit various people.

Sometimes, I need to just decompress. And I’ll have that chance! Yay!

So, today is Monday, day three of the nine day break. So far today, I slept in late, finished reading a book while still lying in bed, took my dog out for a stroll around the neighborhood and then to the dog park, came home and put in a load of laundry, and posted some comments on some blogs. The next thing for me is to start cooking dinner at some point, maybe around 3? It’s going to be the oven braised version of the short rib dish I made some time ago. I’m hoping I learned something from last time: use only a little bit of liquid, cook at a lower temperature for far longer, and use more seasoning.

I’m hoping I’ll get a little nap and some cleaning done too. Hee hee. I am giddy just thinking about the afternoon nap.

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I’ve been messing with WordPress and have migrated a snapshot of my blog to this test set-up. The thing I like about it is that all the entries are stored in a mysql database, and switching layout and themes is simply a matter of switching the css file, rather than having to “publish” all the content again to html files, as with blogger. I appreciate that the content is in fact quite independent of the layout. It makes a former UI engineer’s heart sing.

At the same time, I feel wary of moving it over, as I don’t know if frequent visitors will dislike the commenting system, or if I’ll get spammed by the blogspambots (whatever they are called). I also like that blogger has an external (to my server) backup of all my data, if something should go wrong with my setup.

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We booked a place to stay in London for our honeymoon! It will be half a block away from Oxford Street, right by the northeast corner of Hyde Park, a wimpy child’s stone’s throw to an Underground station. And what a deal it was. I highly recommend looking into Bidding for Travel, quite an aesthetically displeasing website that nonetheless has an amazing amount of information. It’s a website where people provide (free) expert help on bidding strategies on Priceline and Expedia. For instance, for hotels, here is a 13-part form you have to answer about where you want to go stay, what kind of accomodations you want, and what the lowest advertised fares you found were. Then they give you back a complete and detailed bidding strategy on how to get what you want at the lowest price. These people are scary, but really really competant.

I was able to take advantage of a bunch of discussions people were having about recently accepted bids in London, so I didn’t have to fill out the form. Now, we are trying to figure out which exact place to stay in Paris. We are going with our friend’s recommendation and will arrange for accomodations with Kudeta Home. They have several places where we want to stay, so we have to figure out which we like.

Seppo and I are quite excited about the prospect of eating our way through London and Paris. It’s so terrible! Yet so awesome. 😀

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Our invitations are coming along nicely. We’ve been playing with paper and fonts and think we are pretty much settled on what we want. Yay!

Solicitation for travel information

What specific places do you think we should see in London and Paris? What specific eateries and lodgings do you recommend? What tourist traps are ok to pass up? Lay it all on me, people. I know you have information.