Browse Author: beakatude

Fish, Friends, and Cocktails

On Friday night we drove up to Hollywood to celebrate Patty’s 31st birthday at Geisha House. It was the usual Hollywood-ish crowd with some weird-looking geishas milling around the restaurant as if they were part of the decor. The dj was basically a girl controlling an iPod upstairs. We tried the Maguro Spicy Taru-Taru Crispy Rice, which was spicy tuna on top of crispy rice rectangles and garnished with a fried slice of jalapeno – pretty creative. Patty had a pretty good cocktail called a Miniari that was made with pomegranate juice, sake, lychee, and mint. It tasted somewhat like a sweeter mojito. I don’t really like mint but if I did, it would have been really tasty to me. Anyway, it was nice to see everyone together and the brother even stopped by. Happy Birthday, Patty!

Check!

I went to the first part of a 3-day workshop today and discovered that my instructor was deaf. I didn’t actually realize it until she started signing while she spoke. Huh? She’s speaking perfectly with just a bit of a Virginian accent. (I only knew it was Virginian because she told us.) It just sounded a little Canadian to me. (Pronounces “mouth” more like “mooth”). Anyway, it was amazing. I guess she was born hearing (which she loved), then became hard-of-hearing (which she hated), and then completely deaf (which she’s fine with). I suppose it’s better to be one or the other. She also had an interpreter seated in the audience to act as her ears whenever we asked questions. It seemed so natural. She was an effective speaker, an entertaining teacher, and as we saw in the video clips she presented, a great therapist.
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On a side note…much of today’s lecture was going over normal development of an infant from birth to 18 months. She had an awesome handout that laid out gross motor, fine motor, oral motor, language, and cognitive development for each age group (clusters of three months). It was a very good review and now I have something to easily refer to when I have my own rugrat. I can just imagine having a crumpled version of the handout tucked in my back pocket to constantly keep track. Oh…I’m sure the therapist in me will be feeding my baby and saying, “Tongue lateralization? Check. No rotary chew yet?! Oh no! You’re behind!” How annoying is that?!

Courtyard BBQ

For Memorial Day, we had a neighborhood BBQ in our courtyard. We’ve been meaning to do this for some time now and it’s taken almost 3 years to actually pull it off. We all know each other but this time we actually got to hang out in the sun and have some beers together. In fact, a new couple just moved in a few months ago and we finally got to meet face-to-face. One of them even happened to be a 1st grade teacher working in one of the elementary schools that we send students to for Kindergarten every year. It’s always nice to meet someone who actually knows what I do for a living. Instead of asking “What’s an occupational therapist?” She said, “You’re an OT? That’s great!” Anyway, Jes fired up some tasty carne asada, I made some guac, and our neighbors brought homemade chocolate chip cookies, and 7-layer dip. By the end of the BBQ, I had just enough energy to help put everything away and then crashed at 6:00 pm and didn’t actually get out of bed until this morning. All the sun/heat and a considerable amount of “fruit” really wiped me out. What great way to end a long four-day weekend.  Here are the photos.

it’s all good

This is my first post from the new macbook. After a little reformatting by my Admin, this little machine is good as new and running better than ever. Apparently this crashing thing with the Adobe Suite has been a common problem for the new Intel macs. Admin found this article. I have to give props to my Admin for staying up late reinstalling everything while I slept. Maybe I won’t fire him yet.
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Anyway, this new OS is going to take some getting used to. Just a simple cut and paste requires pushing a new “open apple” key instead of “ctrl”. Just today I was still back on my ThinkPad streaming some music off the network and chatting with my brother. Just call me a baby duck.

stupid apple

On May 27, 2006, I became a Mac whore. Stupid Apple.

For a while now, I’ve admired the design of Apple products and even their retail store. We probably visit the store about every two weeks, fiddling with the computers, checking out the newest iPods, and shaking our heads with disgust and shame that we too have gotten sucked into their packaging and product design. All I could hear in my head was “it’s so preeeeety”.

They recently came out with the new MacBook that has an Intel processor and more reasonable price.  With some debate and confusion, I did it.  I forked over the money and said, “Yes, make me an Apple whore”. I got the white 13″ model with a 2.0 GHz processor and 60 MB hard drive.  I must say that it’s pretty snazzy with a new magnetic power cord, newly designed keyboard, and solid feel.  And it’s purty.

When we got home, we just turned it on and it was ready to go. Amazing! All I needed to do was decide what my login name was going to be and what language I was going to use. Today, I tried to install the Adobe CreativeSuite today and it totally crashed on me. Aren’t Macs not supposed to crash?!  I tried to restart and it would fall apart after the first couple seconds. So now my Network Admin is helping me reinstall Mac OS X and it should be good as new in about 2 hours and 5 minutes (according to the installation window). Cross your fingers…I may need to call Apple Care soon.

Project 4: Supa Dupa Gangsta Ducky Hat

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Last week, I learned how to make a stockinette stitch. It basically involves knitting a row, then purling a row, and so on. Yesterday, I started to make a hat that would fit a small child but I got tired and kept having to fix my work. So, I unraveled it and went to sleep. Tonight, instead of starting over, I made a mini-hat just so I could practice the pattern without stressing myself out. Coincidentally, duckie was willing to be my model and boy does the hat fit well. Doesn’t he look fly in his new gangsta hat?