Linda's Visit

Linda is a friend of ours from China. Actually, she is a colleague who worked with Tony in Shanghai and we became friends. She's here in the US for business and has spent the week with Tony at work. We figured by today, she was going to be pretty sick of western food. It was time to bring out the big guns and take her to dim sum. Tony picked her up at her hotel and brought her down to our humble home. After catching up on the gossip in China, we took off to our favorite dim sum joint.

We showed up, took our table and proceeded to order a ton of food. Seriously in about 10 minutes, the table was covered...with filled dishes and empty plates. It doesn't take long for us to grab what we like and inhale it. Chewing is completely optional and Matthew was on the hunt for his favorite buns.

There was a silence at the table as we savored the delicious food and Linda was pretty happy to have a taste of Chinese food today. After dim sum, we waddled out of the place and proceeded to take her to the mall. She had some items to pick up and take back with her to China. This chick basically cleared out the Apple store. I just hope she doesn't get stopped by customs in China.

We dropped Linda back at her hotel and look forward to seeing her again when she comes back to visit.

Chinglish

There was an article in the New York Times about the prevalence of Chinglish in China. I was laughing very hard since it brought back memories of the ridiculous signs we came across while living there. Not to mention, the unique menu items that were offered for our dining pleasure. We would often find "crab ovaries", "tantalizing penis", "orgasm meat" and other food items that we were never that adventurous to try. Perusing through the menu often brought chuckles at the table. The locals could never understand what was wrong with the uncivilized foreigners. That would be us.

I've written about this subject before. Follow the link for my original entry.

Cha-Ching

Home ownership. Totally sucks. The American dream. You know which dream I am referring to. The one where everyone should own a home. We thought when we got married, that it was the right thing to do. We purchased our first home, moved in and Matthew was born. It was our condo on Hope Street. Not bad. We moved in, we got a new roof. We didn't have to shell out any cash for it. Hey, that was pretty cool. Living in a condo, all the exterior maintenance, landscaping, snow shoveling, taken care by the association. Wow. I loved the American dream.

Then we decided, "Hey, Matthew needs a yard." So, we sold the condo, purchased a free standing home. With that comes, the major responsibilities... such as, snow plowing, landscaping, exterior and interior maintenance. So, we were in the American dream for about 2.5 years and then we rented out our home. We moved to China, didn't have to worry about "maintenance", since we had landlords in China and we were OK. Come back to the US and we had a few projects to do. We undertook expanding the deck, changing the garage doors, a siding project and a major rock removal.

That seemed to snowball into the roof project, complete with new skylights (five to be exact) and a new water system. We just waved goodbye to the roofing crew that were crawling all over the rooftop of my house all week, like goats. They would arrive, pull things off, throw things over the side of the house, and put up all new roofing shingles. Watching them maneuver like little monkeys on the roof was pretty fascinating. While that was going on, we had to replace the water system for the house. We had two contractors hanging out at the house, simultaneously.

I don't want to think about the large sizable checks that I wrote out to the contractors. In addition, we had to put all new plantings for the front lawn and, did I mention that a tree fell the other day? The tree just decided to give and crack and is now laying in the side yard. Can't resuscitate it at all, so that means, I have to call the tree company and have them come and remove it. Can you hear the cha-ching? Like I said, home ownership sucks.