Another year of thanks

Another Thanksgiving has passed, as has one more year in which I have been able to count many blessings. I am so thankful for...

My job
I am not only thankful to have a job, but also for one which gives me quite a lot of personal and professional satisfaction. Kelvin and I are both really happy with our clinics and I am thrilled to have the chance to continue to be so active in OB. We are especially happy to no longer be residents when days off are few and far between, and holidays are days that often go unnoticed (some people actually get Veterans' Day or Columbus Day off?!). It is rather challenging to get a chance to visit with out-of-town family or friends when you are working 80-100 hours per week and don't have time off to travel. This year, Kelvin and I both had (paid) holidays of both Thanksgiving day and the Friday after, and we were able to make the trip to Orange County to see K's family.

Family
We are thankful to have been able to see so many members of both our immediate and extended families this summer at our wedding. While it is difficult to have my parents on the east coast and I miss them a lot, especially around the holidays, it is nice to have a California family. And even if we weren't able to travel, our "family" now includes at least two of us, and I would have been thankful to spend the holiday weekend with my husband alone (which is what Christmas is looking like). Although Kenn was in Hawaii, Kelvin's youngest sister Theresa was home from college to join Kat and his parents, and we had a great relaxing weekend with them.

Good food
One of K's favorite parts of coming "home" is the culinary delights. We definitely never leave SoCal hungry! We enjoyed lots of good food (which included quails, which I tried for the first time), as well as homemade Shabu Shabu (Japanese hot pot). Katherine got a chocolate bomb cake (always a hit), and Theresa made delicious cake pops (at right) for our Thanksgiving day feast.



On Saturday, we made a trip to Wurstküche, a new trendy LA (Little Tokyo) hotdog place where we tasted exotic rabbit and rattlesnake sausages.

(K, Theresa, Mom, Eddie, Kat, and me awaiting our food)


The food arrives!


More food (and good friends)
In addition to eating with family, we spent time at Chamreun's house on Friday, where we had another whole Thanksgiving feast. I love pretty much all thanksgiving food, particularly turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. Worried I wouldn't get turkey this weekend (Asians don't usually do turkeys), I cooked a mini Thanksgiving dinner for us on Tuesday, including a tiny 5-lb turkey which turned out okay!







However, we lucked out with round 2 of turkey on Friday, along with a fun night of fellowship and games (we are sore from Wii tennis).

Chamreun's delicious turkey




Tina + K on Saturday at Wurstküche


We also got to catch up with Kimie and Vin briefly on Wednesday night, when we overnighted in Sacramento prior to leaving on an early flight to So Cal. We miss our residency friends!

LOVE
Sandra, one of Kelvin's friends from junior high, got married to her college sweetheart David this weekend and we were thankful to be able to attend their wedding.
The weather was GORGEOUS-- i.e. 70 degrees and sunny (I still envy nice wedding weather!), and the ceremony and reception very lovely.

The áo dài shots (K's grandma brought this one for me from Vietnam in the spring!)





The procession starts (these flower girls were adorable!)


The bride appears, escorted by her parents


I loved the Christmas decor at the altar


Husband and wife!


What else did we do this weekend?
We watched some football.
We took a lot of naps. I am thankful for naps.
We braved some Black Friday madness (at reasonable hours) and found a few deals, but didn't get sprayed by pepper. For that I am thankful, too :)

And what else am I thankful for? The season of Christmas!

(our tree was up well before Thanksgiving :))

The next ten

I have now passed the decade of my 20s (sniff, sniff). Actually, with med school, residency and being single, the 20s were quite hard and I actually really look forward to this next decade! While it was a big birthday (#) for me, but I am not very into celebrating (much), so we did things quietly.

I had to work all day and actually had to stay in clinic a bit late due to a busy afternoon, but was pleasantly surprised at work with a yummy pumpkin latte (thanks, Mandy!) and mint hot chocolate (I had plenty of sugar!), a lovely card signed by all my staff, and beautiful (and very fragrant) tuber roses from Cyn.

My parents also had a vase of flowers delivered to me at my desk! I have never been very observant of flowers and can't usually manage to remember to water them to keep them alive, but I have changed my tune, as they really liven up a room (/house) and I have managed to keep alive some indoor succulents (I know, not too hard) and bromeliads.



Here is me pictured with my gorgeous tuber roses, and a seatbelt bag from Kelvin-- a very durable, recycled bag which I will now use for work (love it!). My parents sent me a package with lovely decorations for the house.



Kelvin chose the location for a lovely dinner out -- at a restaurant called the Looking Glass House in Eureka, which was themed in the style of Alice and Wonderland. It had lovely decor, looked out over the bay (except it was dark last night!), and had cute menu items including drinks like the "Cheshire Cat," "Mad Tea Party," and "Queen of Hearts." We enjoyed two-for-one appetizers including diablo prawns and gruyere fondue (well, I enjoyed the cheese!), french onion soup, and fish tacos.



It was definitely a hit! After my one champagne julep, I took an extended 2.5 hour nap on our couch when we got home, but really enjoyed the meal and my birthday :) Thanks for all the calls, texts, emails, and FB messages!

Kitchen victories

After my Halloween-time pumpkin curry disaster, I really needed to redeem myself in the cooking department. We have had success this week and so I wanted to share a couple of tasty recipes!

Kelvin and I are big fans of seafood-- I usually make at least one seafood dish per week, whether it's something with shrimp, scallops (my favorite), tuna, white fish, or crab. I haven't attempted whole lobster at home yet, but we were tempted to buy some lobster tails the last time we were at Costco. We picked up clams last time instead, and this recipe turned out really well!

1. Clams in wine sauce

Ingredients (serves 4, or 2-3 if you eat as many clams as K and I did)
3 lbs of littleneck clams in shells
14.5 oz can diced tomatoes
1/2 c chopped onion
1 tsp olive oil
1.5 c white wine
1/2 c chicken broth
1/4 tsp pepper
1 tsp each of oregano/rosemary/thyme/parsley (if available)-- I just used dried rosemary


1. Combine white wine, chicken broth, tomatoes, and pepper in a microwave-safe bowl, microwave on high for 1 minute
2. In a dutch oven, add oil, herbs, and onion, sautee x 2 minutes
3. Add wine mixture to pan, bring to a boil
4. Stir in clams, cook 5 minutes or until clams open; discard any unopened shells

The clams go great with either rice (Kelvin's pick) or fresh baguette or other toasted bread for dipping/mopping.

The extra broth-sauce can also be reused-- I made a pretty decent chicken marsala the following night using the leftover liquid and adding mushrooms. MMM!

2. Beef stroganoff (in the crockpot)



We have a basically brand-new crockpot that Kelvin's Mom gave us a while ago. I love the idea of cooking in a slow-cooker-- throwing ingredients in, and letting them simmer away while we are at work, coming home to a cooked meal. However, out of laziness/inertia/not knowing where or with what to start, I hadn't yet cooked anything in it, until this weekend.

I was looking for a way to use up some extra thin-sliced beef (from pho earlier in the week) and mushrooms in our fridge, and this "salvage the leftovers" recipe turned out really well! I mixed- and matched from a few recipes I saw for this one:

Ingredients

1 lb. beef (I used thin strips of flank steak)
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 clove garlic
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/2 cup of broth (I had leftover beef broth), water, or white wine
1 cup sliced mushrooms (I used more like 2 cups because that's what we had left and we love
mushrooms*) - can substitute canned mushrooms if desired
2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
8 oz. sour cream
12-16 oz. egg noodles

Directions: Combine all ingredients except noodles and sour cream in crockpot, cook on low for 6 (-8) hours. Stir in sour cream until well blended. Serve over cooked egg noodles (my choice) or rice.

The meat was soooo tender, and we both loved it. I heard that ribs are great in the crockpot.
Do you have any favorite crockpot recipes to try?

* We briefly checked out the Redwoods' Annual Mushroom Fair in Eureka today and saw hundreds of species of locally-harvested toxic and edible mushrooms!

Shabu and the Redwoods

Serena, Brad and Shabu came up to visit us this past weekend! Serena & Brad were the first of our residency friends to see our new pad and experience Arcata, and we loved having them here! We (especially I) loved that they also brought their furry child, the shih-tzu Shabu, who enjoyed frolicking in the park and trails around our neighborhood and (I think) seeing the redwood trees :)

On Friday night, we went out to eat at the Plaza Grill in downtown Arcata. All of the food, from the tomato basil soup, to the macaroni and cheese, to the scallops I tried, was great! They mistakenly brought me the scallops entree instead of the appetizer and, while I was really nervous to have to "send the food back," they took care of it and didn't charge me for either dish, which was a big blessing. We enjoyed walking around the shops and galleries, open late on Friday for Arts Arcata.

On Saturday, we headed to the Avenue of the Giants to explore some of the roadside attractions.

Here is Shabu, getting ready for our road trip:


We walked through the trail at the Founders' Grove.



Little dog with a BIG tree cross-section!


We went to the Shrine Drive-Through tree and park:


I'd been to this tree park before (on my first trip to the Avenue about 4 years ago!) but somehow missed these cute treehouses.







We then stopped at Confusion Hill, which we have been meaning to check out for a while. Right off Hwy 101, it entices travelers with its mysterious signs... but we didn't know what excitement it would actually hold.

We luckily enjoyed our interesting turkey-sausage-cucumber-tomato-basil- cheese baguette sandwiches (Kelvin's creation) before we visited the attractions, as it was definitely weird and left our stomachs feeling a bit unsettled.



They have a few "stations" which show off optical illusions of height and balance. The "Gravity House," a slanted house built into the hillside, made us feel really dizzy, but was kind of fun for its trick pictures which obviously show us defying gravity.






(Serena looks a little ill in this picture)


We concluded our day with some shopping at the anniversary sale at Holly Yashi (one of Serena's favorite jewelers... they have really pretty stuff!), fresh oysters, dinner at our house, wine, and the zombie show "Walking Dead" (Kelvin's choice).

We had to see our friends off this morning, as they had to make the 6-hour (or so) trip back to Sac, but in between watching football, we checked out the sand dunes on the Samoa Peninsula, where you can explore the natural scenery and ride ATVs on the many trails, if you are so inclined.





(I look a bit "fluffy" here in my multiple layers)


It was a fun weekend with good weather and good friends! We are already missing having a cute little doggie around... I may have to do some research about area dog breeders or pet options...

Paycheck drama

If you were on facebook this weekend, you may know that I had a little incident with my paycheck. An envelope that had both my most recent paycheck+paystub, along with two previous paystubs, fell directly into our shredder (on the "auto-shred" setting). Luckily, I reacted fairly quickly, stopping the shredder and then extracting the remaining documents before more than just about a corner of each item was eaten up, but it was still horrifying. I sort of sat there in shock for a few minutes trying to figure out a) how it happened (I obviously have exceptional klutzy aim and really bad luck) and b) how significant it was.

This sounds really funny right now (and thank you, all who "liked" my FB status update... this one needed a "dislike" button), but, having just gotten reimbursed for the hospital OB work I'd done so far, I was really stressed about how the partially-shredded check should be handled. I generally do direct deposit, but, due to some changes in our directed retirement contributions (to catch up to all of you who actually have been making money for several years; I think the payroll department knows my name pretty well), there is some lag in the direct deposit mechanism (it usually takes a pay period or so) and so I have gotten a few actual checks. From now on, I am going to avoid that at all costs, due to this unfortunate near-catastrophe.

As you can see from the picture above [the back of the check, for obvious reasons], only a portion of the check got shredded; the information missing was the actual check number (which actually could be ascertained from the attached stub), but the entire amount, the employer's name, and my name were all intact. Thankfully, our local bank accepted the check without a problem although the clerk looked at me with a weird expression (I'm not sure she'd ever had a request to deposit a shredded check), had to check with her manager, and then tried to hide her smile...

Thankfully, I didn't have to go to the payroll lady on my knees to beg for a replacement check (as I'm pretty sure she's annoyed with me from all the changes we've made to our contributions). I'm hoping to lay low for a while and have no further payroll incidents. And I might put our shredder on the neutral setting for now... until I actually intend to shred something.

Did you know...?

... that you can get books on Kindle from the library?!
I really like my Kindle, which Kelvin got me last Christmas. My very tech-savvy Dad was able to load a ton of free books (some classics, some mysteries, some contemporary literature) onto it last Christmas, which I will probably never make it through. The Kindle is really great for travel-- I am never unhappy or bored if I know I won't run out of reading material. However, I am a big library patron and I love reading (newer) books and books for free. Before we moved, I had requested (don't laugh, Vanessa or others) the latest Nicholas Sparks' book (Safe Haven) in an e-format from the Sacramento library, and I just got an e-mail that it became available this week! I had never downloaded any book, much less a library electronic-book, onto the device, but it was successful! I am not sure how it all really works-- I was supposed to download it within a 72-hour window from the SacLibrary site, and then supposedly have access to "read it" for up to 21 days (I am not sure what happens then, though... it may just disappear from the Kindle). How cool is this??? I am pretty certain that Humboldt libraries don't offer this same technology, but it is my hope that they could be headed there... But I wouldn't really recommend this book as one of Sparks' best (Stick with The Notebook).

.... that you can grind coffee at the supermarket?
I do not have a coffee grinder. I am not a coffee addict nor connoisseur (you can tell I am not a coffee snob because I recently purchased coffee bags... [tea bags, but coffee-flavored], because they were 50% off at Safeway and faster than brewing coffee for one [Kelvin is not a coffee drinker]). I gladly accept ground coffee as a gift and do use my coffee maker once per week, but I have never been able to grind the coffee that I'd previously received. I noticed, the few times we'd been to Costco, that they have a complimentary grinder; however, I have never once actually remembered to bring the coffee to grind. And Costco is all the way in Eureka (a looong 20 min drive [we are so spoiled]).

Nevertheless, this week I noticed that Safeway has a coffee grinder! DUH! I'm blindly in love with Costco and so I guess I didn't even think that there would be other locations that may offer the same coffee-service, but there you have it. Despite this observation, I still forgot to bring my coffee to grind the last time I shopped at Safeway, but I will re-attempt the grinding mission this week... Maybe I should just leave the coffee (now, probably 2 years old!) in my car as a reminder...

.... that Bowling scoring is not rocket science?


Kelvin started a clinic bowling league; the different clinic sites have put together teams to compete every Thursday for the next 10 weeks. I am not a big bowler. I am not a good bowler. Nevertheless, being married to Kelvin (did you know he has his own shoes?!) made it pretty clear that I was going to be an active participant. I was secretly hoping that I'd get called to do a delivery yesterday so I could miss bowling (despite being up the whole previous night with a laboring pt), but I didn't get so lucky. Some of the other players really looked like they'd played lots of games in their lifetimes...

I did learn how to score bowling, though. This little alley in Fieldbrook doesn't even have a computerized scoring system... so we were on our own. I knew some bowling terms, but knew absolutely NOTHING about scoring until yesterday. Luckily, Kelvin, our team's leader, taught me how to tally up the scores which, while initially was totally confusing, is actually quite logical. I learned a new skill this week! And check out the scores.... I even topped him in round #2!




Team "Tekkies"-- Elise, Kelly, Kelvin, me



Did you learn anything new this week?

Halloween Grinch

I am not a big fan of Halloween. Actually, Halloween is just about my least favorite holiday, second only to Valentine's Day (which I really detest). I have no specific religious objection to the celebration. I actually am a fan of most Halloween candy, especially the tiny candy pumpkins and I will pretty much never turn chocolate down. I like scary movies. I just think that everything regarding the holiday is so over the top and every year, I really dread the "dress up" aspect.

I really, really, really hate dressing up. I am not a very creative person by nature, nor am I very stylish dresser, and thinking of a "cute" or ingenious costume is never appealing to me. I would wear workout pants every day of my life if I could; it takes a great deal of energy for me to put on something more interesting. As a child, I went multiple years dressed as either a witch or (alternatively) a bag of jellybeans or grapes (depending on what color balloons we had on hand) and, while I probably did enjoy Halloween back then, my interest waned drastically after about middle school. In recent years, I have been secretly very happy to "miss" Halloween and its wild parties by either being on vacation abroad or otherwise out-of-town. I was thankful that, this year, we weren't invited to any kind of Halloween get-togethers... except at work (which we couldn't really get out of), where we were encouraged to dress up for clinic and participate in a Halloween potluck!

I was surprised over and over yesterday by the different costumes donned by the clinic staff! We had witches, Elvis, a wolf from Red Riding Hood, Dracula, Superman, a bloody lumberjack and lots more. Not wanting to purchase or go out of my way to get a Halloween costume, I went as a farmer ("just blending in" to normal town dress, per Wai Kiu!) and Kelvin did a concealed-Superman costume, complete with his (actual) glasses and attempted side-part. I was able to borrow a straw hat which, after a few hours, didn't even annoy me anymore, and I think patients got a kick out of their providers being in costume (some kept giggling uncontrollably). Nevertheless, I am thankful that there aren't any more Halloweens for another year. I wish Halloween was like Leap Year.




SuperK

Some more holiday LIKES and DISLIKES:
LIKE: Carving pumpkins

We carved pumpkins on Saturday (Kelvin's first carving experience!). Still traumatized by the smashing pumpkins episode, we kept our carvings sequestered inside until the Day Of, but then did display them on our porch for the evening of trick or treating. The finished the evening intact.

Before

During


After:
(My apple logo)


(Kelvin's scary pumpkin)



DISLIKE: Pumpkin curry

I thought I would be resourceful and try to make some dishes out of the "pumpkin guts" from our carved specimens above. I saved the pumpkin seeds, which I toasted and salted, and they turned out okay. Then the plan was to make a curry with the pumpkin "meat." It was a very, very bad idea. Kelvin, still skeptical of all things "curried" after our trip to India in November of last year, was already not looking forward to the meal. And, to my chagrin, it totally bombed. Even I, who eats just about anything, could not get over the stringy texture. Kelvin was trying to spare my feelings, I think, and picked out most of the chicken to eat with his rice. However, I couldn't really find anything salvageable about the meal and ended up (GASP-- this is how rare this is) throwing most of it out. Let's just say that it will probably be another year before I attempt another curry... and there will be a high bar.

LIKE: Haunted Houses

We heard word that there is a family in McKinleyville that decorates their house-on-a-hill every year for Halloween and invites the public in (raising funds for "Safe and Sober") to tour their Haunted House. Next year will actually be their last year, as their youngest son is graduating, so we were so happy to get a glimpse. It was absolutely wonderful. They had a driveway spiderweb, crawling bushes, a talking-head-on-a-platter (which kept Kelvin scratching his head for about 10 minutes), swooping ghosts, a haunted nursery, a gruesome dinner party, scary clowns, and oh, so much more. I tend to be very scared by things "jumping out," and definitely did my share of shrieking amidst the tour. It was a great way to spend Halloween.

DISLIKE: Greedy children
This was actually the first year that Kelvin and I had the opportunity of handing out candy to trick-or-treaters! We've both been living the apartment life for quite some time, and we were excited to hand out the Halloween candy we'd purchased way in advance. Before going out to the Haunted House (we were probably gone just over an hour), we left out a good sized bucket of candy with a sign asking the kids to please help themselves to a piece. When we returned, all the candy, including the bucket, was gone. It was really disheartening, as we suspected that some teen probably stole the whole thing at the beginning of the hour, depriving all of the other trick-or-treaters of a treat. We had a few more visitors after we returned home, but I think our generosity was a bit tainted by the incident. I think that, next year, we will go to the McKinleyville mansion a bit later in the evening as to be around more for the earlier trick-or-treaters and to keep watch for the hooligans that try to ruin Halloween for all.

LIKE: Scary Movies
I am a big fan of mystery novels as well as scary movies. We watched The Lovely Bones over the weekend which was filled with some good suspense. I saw Tim Burton's Corpse Bride last week, which was really awesome! And, if you have not seen it, Perfect Getaway is about the scariest movie I've seen this year (do not watch it alone, or if you plan on visiting Hawaii anytime soon).

But that is about all I like about Halloween.
BRING ON CHRISTMAS! (Now THAT is a holiday worth celebrating!)