Avert your eyes!

This has been such a busy week at work. We call it “Kindergarten Transition Week”. In other words, no kids come to school because all the grown-ups are too busy gathering around a tiny knee-high table talking about where they should go next year for Kindergarten and how much therapy they will need. Well, as the only therapist at the preschool, my poor intern and I have been driving from school to school, sitting through meeting after meeting, and looking at documents with tiny print until we’re cross-eyed. I can barely remember whose meeting I went to just this morning! Anyway, it’s Wednesday and I have two more days to endure. I didn’t think sitting around all day could be more tiring than chasing kids around but I think it might be.
Things I’ve thought about during my meetings:

  • “I wonder if I could hang our summer jellyfish projects from the clinic ceilings the same way this teacher has: paperclip+string+clothespin…clever.”
  • “99 Ranch, tofu, kimchee, soybean juice, mochi ice cream…mmm…mochi ice cream”
  • “Did I close the garage door this morning?”
  • “This dad looks like the dad in ‘American Pie’.”
  • “I wish I could trade places with Koa right now. I could use a long nap.”
  • “That lady seated across from me is too large to be wearing a denim skirt that tight and short. I wish the table was higher…eew.”

I’m so mac-dumb.

On Sunday night, I was fiddling around with some new software that I just installed on the macbook. I thought I’d update some of beakatude and upload the pages using a new ftp software that I had to learn. Well, learning how to skillfully navigate on this new OS and doing what I usually do on the Thinkpad has been quite an adventure. Something so simple as to delete something from your desktop requires two-finger tapping the mousepad and clicking “move to trash”. Whatever happened to the delete button?
Speaking of deleting…in my mac-dumbness, I accidentally deleted the index to my website. Haha. No problem, I’ve done THAT before. Previously, all I had to do was upload the backup index that’s on my computer and voila, solved. Not so fast…apparently it’s not that simple with my new site. Fortunately, my wonderful Admin managed to fix it by the end of the night but it involved a whole lot of reinstalling and reconfiguring stuff. *sigh* I’ll learn to love my macbook soon.

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.
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.
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.