1. 3 months ago 
   10 novels
2. 4 months ago 

   I don’t eat eggs. When I made deviled eggs for my housewarming, I had to look up how to boil an egg because I couldn’t peel them after I boiled them. I also tried frying an egg for my dad once and burned it. Apparently, non-stick pans are not enough to fry an egg.

   This about sums up my cooking skills. I can mess up some ridiculously easy things. 

   I used to hate seeing posts of food (I still pretty much do actually), but I want to post my cooking pictures because I’m THAT excited when I succeed!! But I’m gonna post my fails too. Just cuz.

   So what finally got me to try cooking? Missing my momma’s cooking when I moved up here! The only thing worth getting my butt to the kitchen and actually prepping food are things like kal-gook-soo, mandoo-gook, kong-namul-gook… yup, all them gook (soup) for the Gook (don’t use that). 

   This week’s fails consisted of burning my baby anchovies and overcooking/burning the soybean side dish. =)
3. 5 months ago 
   

   We used to call our parents’ friends “ahjumma”/”ahjushee” when we were kids. That means they had to have been only 26 by the time I was talking!

   Thank goodness for the new usage of “eemo” for friends nowadays.

    
4. 5 months ago 
   

   “On my honor I will try There’s a duty to be done and I say aye There’s a reason here for a reason above My honor is to try and my duty is to love…”

    
5. 5 months ago 

   Smile

   Smile: The Astonishing Powers of a Simple Act (Kindle Single) by Ron Gutman
   My rating: 4 of 5 stars
   
   Once past the cheesing intro, the research was fun and interesting. I especially loved the parts on the differences of smiles in different cultures. Asian emoticons have taken on a whole new light! ^_^
   
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   The Exploratorium has an exhibit of a mirror where when you look at your reflection, there are tears rolling down your reflected eyes. The effect is that it makes people more sad when they see their reflection crying. 

   I’ve also had surgery around my eyes that made my eyes puffy. For several days, I felt depressed and I figured it was because I constantly felt like I had fallen asleep sobbing and had woken up with puffy eyes.

   My point being, I really do believe the physical can lead to the emotional, not just the other way around. We typically think of sadness leading to crying, depression leading to puffy eyes, but it can go the other way around. This book mentions the same about smiles. Making yourself smile can lead to happiness!

   Somewhere in high school I think I picked that up about smiling too. I remember realizing that people would constantly ask me why I was mad, when in actuality, I wasn’t. I was just in a very neutral state of face. 

   Count on blunt mom to point out to you one day that my neutral face was actually a pouty, angry face. Wooonderful, is what I thought. How can I possibly change how I just look? Well, I simply started to purposefully make myself smile and laugh more. I became very aware of my neutral face and forced myself to never stay in my neutral face, but to smile instead.

   I distinctly remember the change. It was my senior year. Something did change that year. I remember becoming more confident, more happy. Now I seem to giggle or laugh at everything. Sometimes I annoy myself even and have to conscientiously make myself stop. 

   I think too much.

   Anyways, summaries I want to remember:

   • Asians smile more with their eyes than with their mouths and consider those kinds of smiles more genuine. Hence the emoticon, ^_^
   • Americans smile more with their mouths/teeth and consider those smiles more genuine. Hence the emoticon :-)
   • British people smile more showing their top and bottom teeth while Americans typically only show their top teeth. People can distinguish culture more from smiling photographs than solemn photographs.
   • Those who smile/laugh longer, live longer. Relationships also last longer when both parties are smilers. 
   • And, my favorite, “making others smile is more effective than making others happy.”
6. 5 months ago 

   Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

   The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
   My rating: 2 of 5 stars
   
   Gasp. Not like the Hitchhiker’s Guide? It’s kind of a sci-fi Alice in Wonderland, full of absolute nonsense, but less fun. At least for me. It had a couple of funny lines and I wondered for a brief moment whether “Googleplex” was taken from this book, but that’s about it. I’m gonna go watch the movie now and see if it’s any better…
   
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   I did watch the movie also. Maybe I just lack a whole lot of imagination, or maybe it was because I liked the actors for Arthur and Ford, but the movie was significantly better than reading through the book. In the book, why did Earth get blown up? To make way for the interstellar highway or because they located the origin to what Arthur had said in passing? Meh. 

7. 5 months ago 

   Flatland

   Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott
   My rating: 4 of 5 stars
   
   Re-reading it as a math teacher of 8 years makes this book so much fun and so much more brilliant! What a way to start thinking about non-Euclidean geometry and social status. I am definitely going to consider having my high school students read this. Plus, it’s FREE as an e-book!
   
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8. 5 months ago 
   

   Forever he will be remembered as the penguin lover. For.ever.

    
9. 5 months ago 
   

   This when I asked them to make a funny face. Too cute!

    
10. 5 months ago 
    

    I told them to smile and look at the face the goofball made! Hilarious!

     
11. 5 months ago 
    

    What a cutie patootie!

     
12. 5 months ago 
    

    Reminds me of my 21st birthday. Merry Christmas and Thank you Jesus!

     
13. 7 months ago  from bookmarklet
    Race, Religion and Same-Sex Marriage

    I’ve heard this argument before, comparing same sex-marriage to civil rights. How comparable are these two?

    I wonder how the whites used the Bible to enslave the black back in the days. What verses did they use to believe that blacks were inferior?

    Are the verses used against gay rights just as antiquated as these verses are now?

    Funny that both TED and NYTimes just posted on morality today. Maybe it’s their way of priming us for Thanksgiving and out of Halloween. :P

14. 7 months ago 

    Testosterone actually BLOCKS oxytocin which causes trust and morality. If he recommends 8 hugs a day to increase oxytocin and boys produce 10 times as much testosterone…*mathteacherdoingmath*… that’s 80 hugs a day, boys! I’m so scientific.

15. 11 months ago 

    New Job

    About 10 minutes before the flight attendant told me to turn off my phone, I had to decide: stay at my old job or switch.

    I called to tell a friend that I had decided to stay. Almost as soon as I got off the phone, I felt like it was the wrong decision. I called back and accepted the San Mateo offer. It looks like I’m off to a new job again in August!!

    For many reasons, I think it’s the right decision, but for many other reasons, I’m seriously scared it was the wrong one.

    But then, the phone was turned off and my 24 hour flight to get to Norway began. And now I’m here!! Hopefully, they find my suitcase and I can post more often. Technology these days is pretty dang cheap. Free wifi everywhere. =)

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