The Best Robe You'll Never Buy

We have a weekend subscription to the LA Times: every Thursday through Sunday we get the paper on our doorstep. The hefty Sunday paper is always chock full of extras I'll never peruse-- mostly store ads and coupons. Lately, though, I've been taking to carefully riffling through the coupon sections, because I've come across some really good ones, clipped them, and been able to save some serious money with them.

This past Sunday was no exception. I perused the paper as I sat at the dining table, eating my breakfast. No coupons of interest. Then I came across this one. I did a double-take, wondering if I was reading it correctly. You'll have to take a look for yourself-- yes, it was such a bizarre thing to find that I clipped it and scanned it (be sure to click on the pic for a larger image, and all the minute details):



I... am really not sure what to make of it! Clearly it was a joke-- perhaps it was printed too early for April Fool's Day? Or maybe it's right on time, since you don't normally find coupon clippers in the Thursday paper (April 1 is this Thursday). At first I thought it might be a very clever ad, and the *real* ad would be hidden somewhere in there. But try as I might, I could not find anything supporting this idea.

It looks really well done-- like a real ad, and anyone not paying close attention would've just mistaken it for another one of those "As Seen on TV" ads. The disclaimers become glaring only once you take a closer look. And pre-filling in the order form? Why do I get the feeling that it's an idiot-proof measure, to keep people who fail to see all those "not real" disclaimers from trying to submit an order form anyway? Why do I somehow suspect that this sort of ad has run before, people fell for it, and now they have their own version of "Warning: do not use hair dryer in the shower" label on it?

So... I still have no idea what it's supposed to mean. One thing's for certain: someone obviously had too much time on their hands!

Passing Notes, Modern Style

Remember when you were in school, and you used to pass notes to your classmates? This was in the day before cell phones became so prevalent across high school campuses, and well before text messages.

Well, today Allan and I were in a meeting that got a little boring. Part of it was the subject matter, and part of it was the speaker, and part of it was the fact that the speaker was remote, so instead of having a live, talking, moving human being to at least focus on, all we had to stare at was the screen with the presentation slides, and a disembodied voice emanating from the speakers in the ceiling.

We'd whisper to each other, but that isn't easy to do or keep surreptitious. So I asked him to bring up a Notepad-style app on his phone so we could converse that way. It was almost like IMing each other... except we could look over each other's shoulders as we typed. I'd type on one line, and Allan would type on the next line:

(Helly in red, Allan in blue)

Look we can pass notes
Haha
We're naughty
How naughty? ;-)
Naughty enough. does this remind you of school days
don't know too long ago
Lol. I should blog this. Save and send: )

It all reminded me a bit of our recent trip to Vegas, where I lost most of my voice on the first day, and had to resort to using Allan's phone to type casual messages to him at the breakfast table... and try to save what little voice I had left.

So there you have it. Passing notes, updated a little from the old-school style of pen-and-paper. Ain't technology grand? ;-)

TMI Toilet Tales

Warning: TMI follows. Do not read if you're squeamish about things that the title implies.

Our friend Joe has a penchant for Tweeting about his toilet-based gastrointestinal adventures. More poetic than disgusting, they are good for a chuckle... or a groan. They certainly lend credence to his threats to eat cabbage when things go awry!

Well, this past couple of days have provided some fodder for my own similar statuses/Tweets. Only they weren't so funny.

Wednesday evening we had dinner at my parents' house, after a day of shopping and dentist appointments in the Valley. The food was delicious-- miso soup with tofu and wakame, fried sea bass, fingerling potatoes and green beans. We went to bed satisfied and slept well. The next day, the adventures began. Todd was still in his pajamas, watching some Saturday morning television, when my mother noticed a funny odor coming from where he was. She noticed that his pants were not only wet, but stained and orangeish brown. It appeared to be diarrhea. Cleaned him up, changed him, disinfected the areas where he had sat, and all was well. Couple hours later, Todd went to the bathroom, as he normally does... only this time he decided to check the bowl (after the previous mishap) and called out to tell us that it had happened again-- there in the toilet, were orange globs of oil. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was. It wasn't diarrhea, it was simply... orange oil drops! Some of it had leaked onto his underwear, so I changed him yet again and sent him on his merry way.

That evening (Thursday) I arrived home in Santa Barbara and went about my business, making a stop in the bathroom which entailed bringing in a magazine to read. Well, when I was finished, I took a quick peek in the bowl, as I always do to make sure there isn't anything alarming going on down there. Well, aside from a bit of softness that was probably the result of drinking more liquids than usual that day, I noticed some oil, as well. It was especially prominent on the toilet paper. And it was about the color you would expect when you mix orange and, well... brown. Obviously this was the same thing that had happened to my son.

So I got on the computer and Googled "orange oil in stool", where I came across a bevy of blog posts, articles and government advisories on a fish called escolar, the oil of which is indigestible by about 1/3 of the  human population. The common effect of escolar consumption on such people? Leakage of orange drops of oil! But... we had eaten sea bass, which isn't known to cause such an effect. Or so we thought (about the bass)... turns out that escolar is commonly mislabeled as other fish, such as orange roughy (a perch), butterfish, and... *drumroll* sea bass. I remembered that my mom had mentioned that had gotten this "sea bass" on sale-- less than half the price it normally is. I suspected that we had actually fallen victim to this mislabeling, and that what we had thought was bass was actually escolar.

Friday arrives and my body is still processing the fish I had for lunch on Thursday, before I left my parents' home to return to SB, still in the dark about what fun this meal would unleash. I had to go home during my lunch break to change my underwear because the damned stuff leaked without my even being aware of it! It's still coming out when I go to the bathroom-- even if I'm only peeing. My mom called me earlier that day (I had called her Thursday night, to tell her of my immediate Google findings) to report that she, too, had some oil in the stool and was leaking. As of Friday evening, neither Allan nor my dad have reported anything unusual, fingers crossed that it stays that way.

Anyway... lesson learned? Stay away from escolar if ever you come across it on some menu somewhere. And beware of white-fleshed fish priced much cheaper than it normally is. Sea bass normally $9/lb now costing less than $4/lb (and smaller, too)? There's a chance it's not really sea bass. There's a reason this stuff is banned in Japan. I'm just grateful that, given that the side effects could be much worse (nausea, actual diarrhea, vomiting) all my family has experienced is some annoying and inconveniencing oil leakage. I hope that my body finishes processing all this stuff and allows me to be free and clear soon. In the meantime, extra padding is my friend...

Busy Birthday Week

Whew! What a week! I worked Monday and am at work today (Friday), but took some time off in between. I'm sure I'll be ready for the weekend after today, though ;-)

We started off early Tuesday morning, getting up at Allan and Todd's usual 7am. I was up late the night before, packing, so I wasn't in much of a mood to be roused, but we had no choice. We left at 8am, dropped my car off at the Goleta train station, and drove off to Anaheim toward... Disneyland! It was the day of Allan's 40th birthday, and in celebration of this milestone, we opted to relive his rapidly-fading youth by visiting the "Happiest place on earth". We drove to our hotel, where we got our parking permit and walked half a mile down Harbor Blvd toward the main Disney entrance. After grabbing some eye-poppingly-expensive lunch, we met with Joe and Tabitha and, shortly thereafter, Amir and Priyanka. It wound up being the perfect number of people. I think if our little gaggle of 7 had gotten any larger, it would've been too difficult to maintain and stick together peacefully :-)

At some point we got in line for Todd's first real roller coaster ride-- Thunder Mountain-- only to be turned around once we were in line for a few minutes, because the ride got shut down for some reason. Bummer! We still enjoyed all sorts of other rides and activities. One of the most notable was the teacups, which Amir initially elected to sit out, not being a fan of self-induced dizziness. But when Todd expressed disappointment because he had looked forward to riding with him, Amir good-naturedly decidedly to join us at the last minute :-) Unfortunately, the teacups were too small for all 5 of us (me, Allan, Todd, Amir and Priyanka) to sit in-- mostly because of that freak named Allan :-P So Amir and Priyanka hopped out to another teacup, but since the whole point of them joining us was because Todd wanted it, he joined them, too. And of course, he wanted one of us to be with him, so I hopped out and joined them... leaving poor Allan all alone in his own teacup! :-D

Afterward we trooped back to our hotel, where we met Allan's family for dinner at a tapas-style restaurant. The food was delicious and the company was awesome-- we all had a really good time, mostly at the birthday boy's expense ;-) What an eclectic mix of people in our lives-- friends from church, friends from work, and family. After dinner we collapsed in our hotel room and bathed the boy just in time to step out to the back of the hotel and enjoy a splendid view (and sound!) of the Disney fireworks. What a great way to end the day.

Next day, we got up and made our way to Van Nuys for our semi-annual dentist appointments, and then to my parents' house for dinner and some more rest. The next morning, Allan headed out to San Bernardino while I slept in and caught the Amtrak train from Van Nuys to Goleta. I *barely* made it on the train on time-- we arrived at the station one minute before the train arrived, and I was still trying to find the kiosk that would print out the ticket I'd reserved online a week earlier! Fortunately I found it, printed out my ticket, made a mad dash across the platform, and boarded the train just in time to find a seat and have the train pull out of the station as I sat down. I saw my mom's car still waiting in the passenger drop-off zone as we passed by it, waiting to make sure I'd made it safely on. I enjoyed a nice, relaxing trip back to SB, reading and snoozing and enjoying the sights of the ocean and mountains. Not something I'd be able to do if I were to drive that same stretch!

I arrived at the Goleta station just in time to hop in my car (which was still parked safely there after 2 nights) and drive to Luigi's Pizza for a parent meeting with the headmaster of Todd's school, mostly discussing finances and fundraising strategies for the coming year. It was nice not to have to worry about what to do for dinner, at least :-)

And now I shall look forward to finishing up work and going home this evening to enjoy a couple days to myself in the apartment. No boys, since Allan will still be in LA at least through Saturday. Ahhhh.... peace, quiet, and a clean home! :-D

Mid-March Updates

Hello, blog.

I can't believe it's been nearly two weeks since I've last spoken to you. It's been an insanely busy month.

We started off at the beginning of it by taking a volunteer day at our church's preschool, running errands and doing miscellaneous chores around the place. We worked hard, but also enjoyed ourselves. And we were rewarded with free tickets to Disneyland as part of Disney's Give-A-Day-Get-A-Day program. We were lucky we got our volunteer day in when we did, because a week or two later, Disney reached the maximum number of vouchers it was planning to give out this year for the program, and shut it down. What was the max? 1 million. That's right-- in the span of less than 3 months, 1 million people signed up. What I'm more curious about is how many of those people actually return to volunteering on their own. Someday, when Todd is older, I'd love to take him to the one of the animal shelters here and volunteer.

First weekend in March, we took a trip down to Rowland Heights, where Allan grew up. Friends that he's known since age 5 and now live far away were all in town at their mother's house that weekend, and he wanted to visit with them. Two of them we had already visited nearly 3 years ago, when we were going through Seattle on our way from Vancouver back down to Santa Barbara. The other kids there were either quite a bit older than Todd (ages 9 and 11) or quite a bit younger (ages 2.5 to baby) so there was nobody really his age to play with. We walked up the street a few houses to Allan's mother's house and visited with her and her dogs for a little while. It was nice to see folks we wouldn't otherwise see on a regular basis.

The following weekend (this past one), we again took a trip down to LA, to Sara and Jason's house in Topanga. Every March since 2003, Sara has held a St. Patrick's Day dinner at her place, serving boiled cabbage, potato leek soup and corned beef. The food is delicious, the desserts are divine, and the company is mad. These days, most of us have graduated and dispersed across the country, but enough of us are still in Southern California that we were able to see each other for the 8th annual dinner. We took Todd, who had a grand time playing with Sara's cat. I even tried stroking its super-soft fur, but apparently the cat knew that I wasn't overly fond of his ilk, for he flattened his ears and took a swipe at my hand! Yikes! I rest my case :-D

This week Allan has been busy with jury duty, which just happens to coincide with the one time at work where he actually has a hard deadline to meet (for once! He's really earning his paycheck now!), so he's getting little sleep himself these days, going to court in the daytime and working at night. We're really looking forward to this coming weekend, where we can do nothing but rest and relax... and then spend the week after that enjoying Disneyland for Allan's 40th birthday with friends and family!

By the time we get back and settled into the daily routine again, it will be Spring Break (yay for kid-less week!) and the end of March. Let's see if April is any less hectic than March, because May promises to be another busy busy month!

Getting Better With Age

Today's post comes from another plinky.com prompt:

What gets better with age? (Explain why older = better)

With Allan a few short weeks from reaching that age milestone that crosses the threshold to middle age, I thought this was a rather appropriate topic ;-)

The first thing that came to mind was wine, since everyone always talks about aged wine, but since I'm not much of a wine drinker, I wouldn't know. Still, along the lines of food and drink, I'd have to pick Red Vines. They taste much better stale than fresh! :-9 Similarly, hard and chewy gummy bears are delightful, as well!

A well-loved stuffed animal. These tend to be the ones favored by a small child, the animal that brought him/her joy and comfort throughout the years. Some of my favorite stuffed animals that I've possessed for 20+ years, though showing signs of wear ( = signs of love!), always remind me of how much I loved them (and still do), and always brings about pleasant feelings of nostalgia. And if it's still in good condition, it can be passed on to the next generation, along with old memories already built-in!

A good, classic book. Something you can enjoy at an early age, and then read again for the first time years later. I've been revisiting a lot of books that I read as a child or in high school, and memories of my reactions to them and the impact they had on me still lingered. Opening those same stories 15, 20, 25 years later not only brought back a flood of pleasant memories, but because I was reading them through older, wiser eyes, the stories seemed to have likewise magically evolved. My enjoyment of them only deepened.

Sex. This is just common sense. With more experience, you learn what works for you and your partner, and what doesn't.

On a more serious, philosophical note, I believe one's capacity to appreciate/enjoy things in life (both big and little) improves with age. When you're no longer rushing through life at the speed of light, high on youthful abandon, you start taking the time to stop and smell the roses. Pardon the terrible cliche, but it does sum it up. I've never been much for the arts or music (though I took art and piano lessons), and never saw anything beyond the practical value of foreign languages, but these days I'm coming to really realize and appreciate the beauty of such things. Age helps with that. And I think that's a large part of the driving force behind my creation of "Helly's List of Things to Learn" I posted about recently. Life is short. Make the best use of it while you can.

Readin', Writin' and... Trainin'?

Last Tuesday, I attended a presentation sponsored by the Santa Barbara chapter of the STC (Society for Technical Communication) It was a discussion on Trends, Tools and Technologies of Software User Assistance (UA). This immediately piqued my interested. I've always had an interest in the field of training, having had experience with it in the military and in grad school. Since my background is in computer science, it seems natural that I could try to combine the two. But where? How? It's a known fact that I don't like kids, so grade school is out. Dealing with adolescents and teenagers? Don't even want to think about it. I'll have one of my own soon enough, thank you. College? Maybe, but there's no real job stability in that. University? No thank you. First of all, I'm not qualified, and second of all, professorships are oriented more towards research than teaching.

Two years ago I took a day-long career development course held onsite. It was primarily to help us identify our strengths and weaknesses, and apply them towards our current jobs. No surprise, I turned out to have an affinity for organization and attention to detail. At the end of the course, I approached the instructor and told her that, quite frankly, the job SHE had was my idea of an ideal job. Well, save for all the traveling. Maybe in my younger years, but not now, with a family. That's when she pointed out that a lot of organizations that sell products like we do have in-house staff to run training for its salespeople. I had never heard of that, and was glad she had mentioned it to me.

Later I discovered that our company actually has its own small, separate training department which currently trains and documents help files for our customers. I started researching it more, especially at the encouragement of my manager, who's really supportive of professional development endeavors. Fast forward to nearly 2 years later, where a discussion with my manager about upcoming goals (new year, new start!) brought about some concrete plans to pursue this further.

The presentation was rather informative. It revealed a whole word of possibilities in the area of technical communication. While a large part of the focus was on the technical writing aspect of it, there was clearly more to "software user assistance" than just writing help manuals. There were all kinds of parts to it, from the typical tech writing to online documentation to actual training. I got a brief introduction to some of the tools and standards out there, and I picked up a flier for the upcoming WritersUA conference in Seattle, WA. I also perused the STC's website and noticed that in May, they've got their annual conference in Dallas, TX. For both conferences, the seminars and workshops look really interesting. The STC conference especially has a lot of sessions devoted to the area of education and training. I'd really love to go. The conference alone would cost nearly $1800 (including the pre-conference overview certification, which would be ideal for a newbie like me), plus travel expenses on top of it. Since I'm not exactly working in the tech comm area, there isn't much justification for the company to foot the bill for it, but it was nice to take a peek at what's out there, learning-wise. Maybe next year. I'd certainly learn a lot!

In the meantime, my book on technical training finally arrived after a week on hold at the library, and I shall delve into it :-)