<p>You’re right, working for a living. Eating vegetable bao for breakfast…wonton for lunch.</p>
<p>One of my most vivid memories of my three weeks in China in 1981, visiting a friend who was working there, was the birthday cake our host arranged as a surprise for one of our party. We were delighted at how absolutely gorgeous and picture-perfect it looked! … until we cut into it and discovered that the icing was sculpted lard.</p>
<p>Vegetable bao sounds infinitely better. Do they still have those little white ceramic pots of liquidy yogurt for breakfast?</p>
<p>Oh wait, we’re supposed to be drinking here, huh. (And not liquidy yogurt, either.) What’s that high-potency fire-water you drink in little shot glasses after dinner in China? Pour me some of that! Xie xie!</p>
<p>Xie xie indeed. We just tend to go to Korean restaurants and drink shoju. Not bad at all.</p>
<p>I have not had any ceramic pots of yogurt. Shanghai looks a lot like a big American city these days. Raisin Bran has arrived…</p>
<p>Loved the lard story.</p>
<p>Nasi goreng. My all-time favorite breakfast (Singapore). Don’t know from vegetable bao, but would love some nasi goreng.</p>
<p>jmmom - I think the least you can do is invite all us old geezers from the sweltering, humid, horrible buggy mid-Atlantic up to your Maine digs for a long, cool weekend. I promise to clean up after myself (but no one else…after all, it is a vacation…) I’ll even buy the lobster.</p>
<p>ADD-ing on…Curmudgeon, with your way with words you might esp. like this…have any of your kids transformed certain word into a type of shorthand that makes complete sense (unlike that sentence.) Both my S’s for years have been saying "We versed them in (soccer, tennis, battles, whatever…) Now we no longer say “that team versus that team” but the “teams verse each other”… </p>
<p>well, my youngest did it again yesterday to my amusement…He was singing a song to me that he made out and I asked him where he got the idea for it and he said “It just came to me out of the random.” </p>
<p>And instantly, I got what he meant because I get ideas “out of the random”, too - you know, that special place where ideas, emotions, and feelings just swirl about and you kinda just reach up and pull any one down</p>
<p>crash - consider yourself and all other comers invited. A new party thread! Someone wants to come somewhere else besides California! mootmom, you have competition!</p>
<p>But you don’t want to come yet! Oh no! We are sweltering, too, and we don’t have AC. Think early October! When the kids will be gone and won’t cramp our style ;)</p>
<p>My son has always said “verse” as opposed to “versus” too! Funny!</p>
<p>Another “verse”-er here. Always seemed weird to me, but then I saw or heard it somewhere official and have begun to think “versus” is now the archaic version, reserved only for fuddy-duddy parents. (Who? Me?!) I guess we might as well be saying “thee” and “thou.”</p>
<p>Yeah - “Versed” as an active verb has become part of our kid’s daily lexicon - wonder if it’s in the dictionary yet like that. Would love to hear some others ones…</p>
<p>…jmmom - thanks for the invite…I’m storing that away in case my S and I want to look at Maine schools in the future…and vice versa on this end…
although, how trusting we (or maybe just “I”) become on this site - I feel like I know many of you already – or at least, would definitely want you in my social circle (such an interesting, educated droll group - and so willing to discuss things (to death sometimes but never-the-less it beats the standard chit chat in my neighborhood) and after all, we are drinking buddies – but are we who we seem here? I mean, maybe Mudge is really a cute, worldly 14 year old psychopath and I an a 70 year old prison inmate having my transexual operation reversed…you get the gist.</p>
<p>I can vaguely remember back to what it was like when I was somewhat reticent to meet people in person whom I’d only ever known online, but it’s a dim memory by now. I’ve met people from all over the world through my Internet connections over the past 20 years, and I’m ready to meet pretty much any of you. (Reserving the right… 
) I’m still having that party after the kids take off for college, and y’all are still invited. I was and am serious.</p>
<p>Now, somebody better pour me a nice lemon drop before I start getting all sentimental and heartfelt and stuff. Oh wait, maybe that comes after a few too many lemon drops… I can’t remember.</p>
<p>crash - I know what you mean. There is something risky, it seems, in stepping out of cyberspace to see each other IRL. And not just the risk of finding an on-line weirdo, I’m thinking. But something about “breaking the spell.”</p>
<p>That said, last February I was part of a little cc get-together which “spontaneously combusted” when my trip to San Diego prompted a suggestion by carolyn that we might coffee-klatch. She, coureur, I and a former cc-poster had lunch at a local joint. Not scary at all. There was a whole “Party” thread going at the time and our party got pretty good ratings from the official judge, digmedia. :)</p>
<p>Well, I would like to meet so many of you … I , at times, feel that I am stuck in a sort of intellectual, generational wasteland these days. Being 53 with such a 9 year old, my contemporaries are often fifteen or twenty years younger than I and my frame of reference is blotto years away…
So many of you are interesting, insightful and…fun. I want fun buddies as I get older - life is so short and there’s still so much fun stuff to do and talk about. </p>
<p>So Bottmds Up, I’ll buy the next round.</p>
<p>I figured this would be the place to ask-
Our book group is meeting in someones garden this week instead of a coffee shop and the theme is “drinks” including alcoholic.
I mentioned spiked watermelon as a joke- and the host got all excited.
I have never had it before and doesn’t really sound all that appealing- anybody tried it before?
I was thinking making a pitcher of coconut rum and pineapple 
although drinking anything alcoholic doesn’t really go with our books- we are finishing up reading Princess by Jean Sasson about the horrors of growing up in the Saudi royal family- but perhaps it is a reminder that we are pretty free to do whatever we want?</p>
<p>Spiked watermelons are delicious, only there is an easier way to do it.</p>
<p>Cut up the melon and take all the seeds out. Soak it all in vodka in a tupperware or baking dish. Soak it in the frigde until verrrry cold. Then pour the vodka back out into a pitcher, straining the watermelon. </p>
<p>Take as much watermelon as you feel like and puree it in a food processor with the vodka. Less = drier, more = fruitier.</p>
<p>Serve in martini glasses; garnish with mint. Yummy.</p>
<p>I know a way that’s easier still: cut the mellown in half. Scrape it to the rind, and throw away the fuit. Fill the empty rind with ice, leaving enough space for a vodka bottle. Stick the bottle in the ice. After it’s properly chilled, drink the vodka straight from the bottle.</p>
<p>LOL!! guess you like em dry…</p>
<p>Sorry about that, Sybb! I thought we were stopping to watch the desert tortoise cross the road. You must’ve been hiding behind a cactus, you shy thing. The whole time we’ve been on this road trip, someone has been kicking the back of my seat. If you all don’t behave, I’m going to drive everyone down to see the World’s Largest Thermometer at the Bun Boy in Baker! :eek: </p>
<p>Ds’s Senior proofs have arrived. He looks like Mandrake the Magician (thanks to the pointy goatee and a curled-up mustache), but I am not complaining. I’ve waited a long time to see that boy in a cap and gown, and even though one of the other moms at the portrait studio said that he reminded her of a hangin’ judge, at least it’s a step toward graduating. :)</p>
<p>But I needed the company, and probably the drink. Today has not been a good day. Don’t mean to be morose, but I know you folks will cheer me up.</p>
<p>I hestitate to even combine today’s two sucker punches in the same post, but that’s how the day went, so here goes:</p>
<p>My aunt died today. Just shy of 90 and she had four extra years that we never expected, so there is no shock and no upset. But still, the tears do flow. My own mother died 30 years ago, so Dear Aunt has always taken care to fill the empty spot where she can. Surrogate grandma to DS, always finding another old family photo to give me, a story to tell, a love-is-blind acceptance of all we are and all we do. And a “pistol” too. She picked the spot where she wants her ashes, in cousin’s “upper garden.” Says she’s going to be our Miracle Gro. Here’s to you, Aunt_________.</p>
<p>Against that backdrop, my *?#@?! PDA disappeared all of my Tasks today. I live by this thing and have tasks out for months and years to come in my categories of Business, College, Financial, Boards I am on etc. etc. Something screwy in the hotsync operation and now I am bereft. Well, I just hope I get most of the important things done.</p>
<p>Oh well, off to the showers and we have evening plans. When I return, maybe you’ll all be swizzling something that will sound good.</p>
<p>jmmom, I am so sorry for your loss. </p>
<p>I understand how you are feeling. My grandmother was also an expert at unconditional love and filled a very maternal place in my life. When she died at 96-- a merciful and timely death, really-- I was surprised how hard it hit me. I was a mess.</p>
<p>I will raise my glass to your aunt: To a well-lived, loving life; to stepping in where you are needed, and being missed by those who knew you best!</p>
<p>I think your PDA was very considerate to cancell everything from your schedule so you could have a day to be sad, and grieve, and think about your aunt. However, everything for months out? Seems it went a bit too far. ;)</p>
<p>When my grandmother was dying I got the chance to lie down next to her and talk to her. I told her that she had made a major difference in my life and had set the bar so high for being a wonderful grandmother. I told her there was no way I could ever repay it, but that my grandchildren, yet unborn, would be getting the same sort of grandmother in me. She wouldn’t be there to see it, but I wanted her to know that it would happen, thanks to her. Without opening her eyes, she smiled, nodded, and said, “That’s good… You kids were so much fun.”</p>
<p>Savor those beautiful memories… and pay it forward. :)</p>
<p>SBMom - thank you. I am feeling better now. Your thoughts are beautiful and just right. I will pay it forward. </p>
<p>And I like the way you think on the #!$*% PDA. How thoughtful of it.</p>