Insert shameless plug here

Posted on October 26, 2007 by chatty

My neighbor Rick has a new blog up and running, to go along with his food site, CalorieLookup.com. If you’ve ever wondered how many calories are in those vanilla wafer cookies you wolfed down yesterday afternoon … you can look it up on his site. Actually … I just looked it up and those particular vanilla wafers that I – er, I mean you – ate yesterday aren’t on there right now, but the cool thing about CL is that I can add my own foods to the list if I don’t find it. That is, you can add your vanilla wafers if you don’t find them. Because, I certainly didn’t eat any cookies yesterday. Right.

Rick is doing some other cool stuff … like tagging your foods, and saving your favorites. Cheers.

Fashion Forward

Posted on October 26, 2007 by chatty

A few notes about the Women’s Conference held at the firm, for the firm’s employees. Yes, a great opportunity to learn more on career development, do some networking with others from the firm (4,000 attendees is the number thrown around), hear some motivating speakers, both fellow employees as well as writers/speakers/etc (Last year I saw Dr. Pamela Peeke speak, and today I saw her climbing out of a cab in front of the conference center for today’s session.)

But what did I concern myself with? People-watching. Really, women-watching (and if your question is, can men go to the women’s conference? the answer is yes). This conference brings together devs, testers, PMs, Sales, Managers, GMs, Marketing, Editors (like me). The spectrum is wide. So is the wardrobe. I’m tempted to spend the next keynote doing some research. How many women walking in are casually dressed? Dressed for success? Wearing $150 jeans? Wearing a swag t-shirt? Of course then I would want to cross-reference with how many are from Seattle/Puget Sound vs. the rest of the country vs. the rest of the world (and, where in the world. I saw people from Brazil, Spain, Nigeria, Norway, India, the U.K., etc).

Very few women today were wearing suits. Many many were wearing jeans. I saw lots of Sevens, a few Luckys and many that looked expensive. Not as much fleece as one would expect. I wonder if these lovely ladies did as I did, and dressed it up slightly (nice jeans with a sweater and cute heels). Cute gauchos on a woman from Latin America. A beautiful patterened dress (yes! a dress) on a tall blonde. The U.K. PM had a silvery/white knitted top with baggy sleeves. She was also wearing brown cowboy boots. Peasant blouses, silky tank tops. Suede boots. Lots of Coach bags. Lots of LV, too.

I brought my camera with the second day, but it was rather crowded in the halls and don’t think I would have gotten any good footage.

Oh, and back to the conference. While I attended many good sessions with many great motivating speakers, all talking about mentoring, networking, negotiating, breaking through the stuck points, that kind of stuff … probably the best session I went to was a technology panel discussing the firm and Web 2.0. Go figure. Am hoping they do more of those in the future. I can only attend so many sessions on negotiating skills.

rowing beneath an amazing night sky

Posted on October 24, 2007 by chatty

Yesterday started with practice at 5 a.m. Generally I dislike early morning practices this late in the season because it’s dark when you get out there, and the sun is barely rising when you head back in.

Yesteday it was a beautiful night sky and a brilliant Seattle skyline. Incredibly clear sky with stars so bright it was sometimes hard to maintain focus in the boat. I was very nearly sure I had spotted several shooting stars within the first 20 minutes or so of being on Lake Union. Later on our coach said something about a meteor shower … I never saw anything in the news to confirm it. The husband suggested that maybe the shower wasn’t exactly planned. At any rate, 4 or 5 shooting stars. Or something. Can’t recall seeing one of those since I was at Camp Jewell in 7th grade.

Tuesday was sunny and wonderfully warm. Highs in the 70s. What a wonderful relief from the gray, foggy, cloudy, rainy weather that is October. Through March. April … and sometimes May. How lucky we are!

Today I walked Max and it was pouring rain.

How lucky we were.

Practice: 3 x 10 minutes. Increasing the rates 4 min, 3 min, 2 min then 1 min. Varying rates between 24 and 32.
Our third piece was much improved over the first. That is the type of practice I prefer.

That was sew 2005

Posted on October 20, 2007 by chatty

I am tired of swag.** When I receive swag from trade events, etc., I try to give it away or not accept them in the first place. I don’t like to accept things from companies, lest it appears that my journalistic integrity is compromised. I especially hate free t-shirts. I seem to not be able to get away from it, however, especially at work. There seems to be a t-shirt, jacket, or something for every all-hands meeting or team event out there.

The one free t-shirt I really wanted to wear, but never have, is the one I received when I raced in Opening Day in 2005. I see this more as a gift, like a ‘thank you for racing in this awesome event.’ And since it’s an invitational, it’s not like the 5K fun run where anyone can sign up and everyone gets the “free t-shirt” that really isn’t free, since you’re paying the race entry fee. I was more than OK with receiving a t-shirt for Opening Day (truth be told, I was REALLY excited for getting a gold medal since I was racing with an awesomely fast crew). Only thing was, out of all of the shirts we received, just one was a small, for the coxswain, of course. There might have been a men’s medium here or there, but somehow I ended up with a Men’s XL. What the hell am I supposed to do with a Men’s XL?

Well, I think it was Jody from rowing who triggered the idea to just tailor it so it would fit. That was two years ago. Today I actually did the dirty work. I also hemmed an apron that the husband purchased at Crate and Barrel last year during a post-holiday sale. It’s only taken me 10 months to do that. Yay.

Below is a pic of the shirt I trimmed, laid on top of a Men’s Large shirt:

That’s just a Large. Originally, the XL (and, yes, I should have snapped a shot before I cut it up but who thinks ahead like that?) was much larger. I cut 7 inches from the bottom; I took in 3.25 inches from both sides. I basically had to get rid of the short sleeves altogether, and then sewed up the arm holes another 3 inches on each side. Then I cut off the collar ring (what the heck do you call that thing?)

Voila! It only took 2.5 years.

I can’t wear this to many other places than the gym. But, hey, a new gym shirt. Yay gym!

**On a side note … SWAG, according to Wikipedia, stands for “Samples, Wearables and Gifts”. I always thought it meant “Shit We All Get”.

Food Part Deux

Posted on October 19, 2007 by chatty

Some dinner photos now. First, another Metropolitan Market dinner. Caesar Salad (we always get with lemon, no garlic); Teriyaki chicken, garlic mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables. Enjoyed Oct. 5.

Above: Roasted duck and chicken from King’s BBQ in the International District. This place is the quintessential little shop of Chinatown. Old men behind the counter chopping up poultry and pork that hangs in front of the store window. For weddings and other special events you can order a full roasted pig, with the head, skin, apple stuck in the mouth. Yum. I chanced upon such a site a few years ago when I stopped in to pick up some duck. Duck rocks. This we got when my parents were in town. Enjoyed on Oct. 6.

Below: Enjoyed tonight! Yay for biscuits. The husband had baked some with cheddar cheese in the center (He had called me at work during the day to entice me with such an idea). But of course I forgot to take the camera out before we ate them. These are plain biscuits … mother and child, so to speak. The circle is the leftover dough after the other biscuit was cut out. Yay! Eaten with some butternut squash soup.

Little sweet nothings

Posted on October 19, 2007 by chatty

Get ready for a deluge of postings. Yay!

I’ve finally downloaded some pics from my camera. I’ve been forgetful in posting these. Here are some yummy desserts for your viewing pleasure:

German chocolate cake and a mini pumpkin bundt cake. Both from the Metropolitan Market. Enjoyed on Oct 5.

A Top Pot doughnut (purchased at a Starbucks, despite my best intentions of banning Starbuck because of the debacle that is the Seattle Sonics. I blame Howard Schultz for the mean out-of-town owners. But I digress). Oh yeah. Chocolate Glazed. THE best.
Enjoyed on Oct. 6.

Tiny dancer

Posted on October 15, 2007 by chatty

Take this test, as pointed to by the super blog, Freakonomics. Which way is the dancer spinning? Are you a left-side brain person or a right-side?

The first five times I went to that site, no matter what I do, the dancer always spins counter-clockwise to me. I just went back to write this post and it’s going clockwise now. I just turned it back. Now it’s back to counter. The cynic in me believes it’s just a trick, that the maker of this little animation just makes it randomly go clockwise and then counter, to try to trick people.

What do you see?

Wha’ Happen?

Posted on October 12, 2007 by chatty

So as part of my scintillating job as a Web site editor, I get to examine fun web traffic reports. Like any editor I try to find good stories to promote, hope that a lot of people read the story, and then try to repeat this over and over again. I check traffic reports at work on a daily basis to see if we are succeeding. I had yet to visit the Web statistics of this blog until today, so I thought I’d report on it.

Total “hits” for Sept.: 11,064
Average for the month: 369
High: 1473, on Sept. 8
Low: 49, on Sept. 23

Thanks to anyone for the “steady” stream of traffic. I’m going to guess some of this traffic is coming from RSS readers, that are continuously coming to the site to fetch anything new. Thank you, RSS.

The high is curious. It’s far higher than the average, as you can see. Came on a day when I posted about my new toy, the Nano. What made it popular? Trying to figure it out. One speculation … I teased the post with a short one, saying look here I’ll write more later. Perhaps the crowds of readers that I have kept returning, waiting impatiently for me to post? What readers? Where are you? Speak up. If you happened to peruse the site on 9/8 (think back. I think it was a Saturday), please let me know why, so that I can repeat.

As for the low, well Sept. 23 was a day I did not post, exhausted by a weekend of activities that required me to be somewhere other than in front of my laptop. I think it’s reasonable to assume that with nothing new posted, perhaps my faithful readers, whoever you are, didn’t bother to go to the blog because the RSS feeds indicated no new stories, on top of the fact that there is a good chance that my readers are the same people I was hanging with that weekend, also exhausted from a flurry of activities.

Graphical representation of September traffic:

Later on, I’ll have to see what the weather was like on these days. See if there is any correlation between good weather in Seattle (where I’m going to guess a lot of you are from, maybe?) and fewer page views. Stay tuned.

Soup is good food. Until you OD on the stuff

Posted on October 10, 2007 by chatty

No dinner photos lately. First, Mom and Dad were in town and I kept forgetting to take pics of dinner. (Dinner 1 = duck and chicken from King’s Barbecue in the International District. Dinner 2 = the husband’s red sauce with sausage, over whole wheat penne pasta). Second, I have a cold this week so my past two meals have been chicken soup. Which tastes good. Until you’ve had three cans of it. Plus, soup for lunch. Then, not so good. So, hopefully will provide some new pics later this week. I have a few pics backlogged in my digital camera. I’ll get those up, too.

Plus, update on the pull-ups. Despite my tired sick self, I attempted another pull-up. I’m now doing two a day. One in the morning and one in the evening. It’s like an addiction, except that I can only do one right now. I’ve got to work up to two. Anyway. Now I’m doing without the cheating jump. Am working on keeping my legs straight so as to avoid the second cheat. Will keep you updated. Hopefully will get back to the gym very soon.

Pull ups, I own you. Or, I will very soon.

Posted on October 9, 2007 by chatty

October 7, 2007 will go down in history as the day I, Chatty Cha, did a pull-up. Unassisted, no help from anyone. Just me. My parents were in town and I was showing off. We have a pull up bar in the door jamb of one of our rooms, and my dad was observing it, not quite sure what it was, maybe. So it was one of those “Dad, look what I can do! Lookit me!” kinds of scenes. Apparently that doesn’t end when you’re 8. Anyway, there I was, doing a pull up. Kind of shocked me so I ran over to the husband to tell him. Later on when we broke it down I admitted to a few cheats (no, my trainer did not give me “the clear“). First, I used an underhand grip, i.e. my palms are facing towards me. That’s an easier grip. Two, my legs are usually behind me, but on this particular day they were sort of in front of me and the husband acknowledged that this is another cheating technique. So? Fine.

The next day, I showed off to the husband (“Honey! Look at me! Look what I can do! Are you watching? Look Look Look). And I did another one. Woohoo. But the husband looked at me and asked, “Did you jump a little bit? Give yourself some momentum?” So what? Ok. So one more cheating tactic on my sole pull-up of the day.

I’m still pretty excited. I credit this summer’s workouts, including the summer-long gym membership, the changes in the plan as I began to incorporate Kate’s circuit-like schedule, and plus, well, the cheating. But just a little bit. I’m working on some improvements. Call it Pull Ups v1.1