Oysters at the Bay

Sunday was a beautiful day at Tomales Bay.

Chamreun, Danny, and Tina, Kelvin's childhood friends from Orange County, drove up for Presidents' Day weekend. Although I had to come back to work on Sunday night, we spent a very pleasant day cooking out at Tomales Bay, north of SF.

I'd been out to Drake's Bay before to eat oysters, but this time, we went kind of overboard with food. We bought several pounds of ultra-fresh seafood and enjoyed (well, this was mostly Chamreun that did it for us) shucking the oysters, steaming the clams, and cooking the Korean bbq and fresh veggies. I think I am still full.



Enjoy the pictures!
Danny, Chamreun, K, me, Khuong, Tina



The Tanks




The spread (check out the grill)

Wine, limes, peppers, and mushrooms

Cajun clams

The master shucker getting to enjoy a clam

...and oyster (with Sriracha + lime)

Fab five

Wai Kiu, Hanh, and Mason joined us

BFF

Why it's ok that my house is 75 degrees

I absolutely hate being cold and in the cold. I have no idea how I survived for four years in the "Polar North" of Minnesota, but when Sacramento winters start seeming cold to me, it may be a sign that I am going to become a California "lifer." Feeling the cold wintry chill, I have been spending quite a lot of time drinking tea (or hot water, when I feel like I'm overdosing on tea), wearing slippers, and curled up by the heater at home, even accidentally singeing a blanket the other week due to my proximity...

In any case, some redemption (amidst receiving my last utilities bill) came today when I read a news blurb in Family Practice News about warm ambient temperatures, at least at night, lowering hypertensive surges.

Here is the article, by Bruce Jankin, from the Annual Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association:

"CHICAGO- Keeping the bedroom warm at night during the cold winter months curbs the morning surge in blood pressure, according to a randomized Japanese trial.

This finding may help explain the well-established increased mortality due to heart disease and stroke during the winter months. The data from this study indicate that if the ambient bedroom temperature is lower, morning blood pressure will be higher, the morning blood pressure surge will be greater, and there will be increased blood pressure variability during the 24-hour day, increasing the risk of a cardiac or cerebrovascular event, Dr. Keigo Saeki asserted at the annual scientific sessions of the American Heart Association.

The investigators randomized 140 healthy 18- to 65-year-old participants to spend a night in either an inadequately heated room at 12° C (54° F) or a room maintained at 22° C (72° F). Participants were required to remain in the room between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m., stay awake until 11 p.m., and rise by 6 a.m. Blood pressure was measured every 30 minutes through the night. The subjects had access to all the clothing and blankets they needed to stay comfortable, said Dr. Saeki of Nara (Japan) Medical University.

Mean systolic blood pressure during the first 2 hours after awakening in the morning was 121.1 mm Hg in subjects who slept in the cold room, significantly higher than the 114.0 mm Hg for those in the warm room. The morning systolic blood pressure surge also was significantly higher in subjects after a night in the inadequately heated room: 21.9 mm Hg, compared with 14.3 mm Hg after a night in the warm room. However, there was no difference between the two study groups in terms of lowest sleeping systolic blood pressure, which averaged 99 mm Hg across three readings.

Dr. Saeki declared having no relevant financial interests."

I think I will continue to keep my apartment at 72 degrees. Or rather 75. I really don't want to get hypertension.

Broke

I am not talking about my finances in the throes of funding a wedding.
Things are just breaking, left and right.

First it was my tire chains. On one mutual day off a couple of weekends ago, Kelvin and I were headed up to Tahoe to ski for the first time this season. The weather had been dry for several weeks; however, that day, 5 inches of snow were falling up in the Sierras. As tire chains were required, we spent a good 20 minutes in the roadside slush trying to apply them, only to set off driving again with a terrible "ker-thunk, ker-thunk, ker-thunk" sound. A link was broken on the left chain which made them unusable and, thoroughly disappointed, we turned around and came back to Sacramento. What seemed at first like a wasted day (I was sooo looking forward to skiing at Alpine Meadows, a resort to which I haven't been before and for which I bought discounted REI passes) ended up being quite relaxing (yay for Happy Day Spa); however, broke is broke (or "broken is broken"). And my new chains were more expensive than were those old ones.



Modem
My AT&T modem which came free with my phone/internet service 3.5 years ago, suddenly went kaput a couple of weeks ago, just after the tire issue above. I had been having connectivity issues for a few days, but then the connection just died. After long phone conversations with the internet guys online ("Yes, I did try to reboot. Yes, I did try to turn the modem off and on"), I realized that it was not an issue with the brand-new wireless router (the old one died back in November) or the DSL itself, but rather the modem. Although the modem came free with the AT&T service in 2007, it apparently wasn't under warranty and thus would not be replaced for free. I was told that I would have to buy a new one, which I should be able to get "anywhere."

Since I got sucked into L and D, Kelvin did the investigating into modem replacement. He first went to Radio Shack, where they only had AT&T-compatible modems (not ideal as we are moving to Arcata in September [we accepted a job offer!] and I don't know their carrier). They told him that a more "generic" one could be ordered online; however, I kind of needed immediate internet access. They suggested that he try Office Depot so off he went; however, they only had cable modems. K's' next stop was Target, which apparently only had only routers and no modems. He finally, and utterly frustrated, ended up at Best Buy (where we should have gone in the first place), which, like Radio Shack, only carried one that was compatible with AT&T and AT&T alone. Full circle bummer. In any case, it was bought. I hope we can use it in Arcata, otherwise we have the pleasure of buying another $70 modem. And we obviously have so much extra money lying around :)


Vacuum

I have bad luck with vacuums. I think I am on my second vacuum in the past 8 years. I don't know if it's that they get gummed up with my annoyingly thick hair or what, but somehow the vacuums that I've owned start blowing smoke and stop functioning not too long after purchase. Currently, I am borrowing K's vacuum; however, this one doesn't recline. It works well to suck up stuff; however, neither of us can figure out how to get the handle to release and recline. Therefore, in order to clean, you have to roll it around directly upright, which is rather comical, but also very tiring and inconvenient. Why can't my apparatuses (apparati?) work right?

I am interested to see what major item of machinery plans to break next.

Tết (Celebrating New Year, Asian-style!)

Chúc mừng năm mới" (Happy New Year, Asian-style)!

Although we couldn't go all the way to Orange County (/Little Saigon, or HCMC, "Big Saigon"), Kelvin and I took a trip to San Jose this weekend to experience a bit of the Tết holiday.

Tết is the Vietnamese New Year, the marking of spring based on the lunar calendar. It is usually celebrated on the same day as Chinese New Year (which is rather big out here on the west coast/California!), falls in January or early February (this year, New Year was Feb 3), and is celebrated for anywhere from three- fourteen days! This is the year of the cat.

There are many Tết-related customs which I learned about this year (last year, we were on our way to the Philippines and didn't have much exposure). It is a really big deal around here, and much more celebrated than our regular old "calendar year" New Year of Jan 1:

- cleaning the house (supposedly you are not allowed to clean on the new year, which makes many people feel obligated to clean frantically in the days leading up to the holiday; sweeping after the New Year is not allowed as it represents "sweeping the luck away")

- decorating the house: Most people erect a cây nêu, or an artificial New Year's tree, a bamboo pole decorated with charms and origami paper products

- cooking and eating lots of delicious food

- paying all of your debts

- going home and visiting lots of extended family

- giving money to children and elderly people; children are supposed to give a "new year's greeting" (such as wishing health, longevity, security) before they can receive money in red envelopes from their elders

- giving other gifts (especially "red" things and things related to the lucky numbers 6 or 8)

- strict policies on visitors: the Vietnamese believe that the first visitor a family receives in the year determines their fortune for the entire year; therefore, you should never enter the home of another family on New Year unless invited first (lest you be an "unlucky" person and set an unlucky tone!). It is an honor to be "the one invited" to a family's house. I heard that, to prevent a potentially "unlucky" person from being the "first enterer," the owner of the house sometimes slips out of the house shortly before midnight and returns just after midnight to be the "first" back in!

No-nos for Tết include:

- saying or doing bad things during the New Year

- sweeping as above

- giving unlucky gifts (watches/clocks, medicine, scissors/knives)

- eating duck or shrimp (unlucky, and representing poor prospects of success, respectively)

- wearing black or white (white being the color of funerals in Vietnam)

- refusing any wishes/gifts

Enjoy the pictures from the weekend (I hope shopping is allowable during Tết, we we did quite a bit of it!)!

Kelvin and his college friend, Jackie, at Santana Row in San Jose (this was my first time to this upscale outdoor mall, and I loved it! We just had to stop at the Container Store, one of my absolute stores ever :))



Santa Clara Co. Fairgrounds for the Tết Festival

inside...


I loved seeing all the kids in their áo dàis.
We ate good food and watched the conclusion of a beauty pageant.


What would an Asian celebration be without a ping pong tournament...?


We then left the fairgrounds for a bit more shopping...
Even the malls seemed to embrace the New Year theme! (but the red may have had to do with an American Heart Association celebration, not one for Tết)



Can you believe that this was my first time in a photo booth in my life thus far? :)


We stayed overnight with some of K's family's friends in S.J. and then met up with Erin/TJ for a yummy breakfast on Sunday.

We hit up the Jelly Belly Factory in Fairfield (only my 2nd time there), where K got to try such delicious flavors as barf and canned dogfood, before returning home for the Superbowl at Serena & Brad's!



Great times, great weather (it was in the 70s and sunny!), and great football (yay, Packers).
Happy New Year!