Biking Gem - Baylands

Mia, Dave and Kate,

I am not sure I should even tell you this. Yesterday I discovered a bike lane to the Baylands without having to cross any major streets. Go down Loma Verde and turn right on Bayshore, the road that parallels 101, and in less than a quarter of a mile, there is a pedestrian bike path that goes under the freeway and takes you straight into a fabulous bird sanctuary. Within 10 minutes of biking, we were surrounded by flocks of pelicans, coots, swallows, Canadian geese, pheasants and tons that I didn't recognize. We saw a gorgeous hawk too. I am SO sorry I did not know about this route when you were here. Next time? Hopefully Mia can ride Emma's bike and I even have one Dave or Kate can use.

The mom youtube has been taken off the web. It was a mom condensing a day's nag into three minutes of William Tell overture. It was pretty funny!

Pip - rabbit help. I found great tufts of fur in Viva's cage, but no bald patches. Is this normal molting? Or should I worry?

Emma's in drill team for skating and Freestyle 2. If anyone is around April 27th weekend, she'll be in the local ice skating show. Come for your birthday Pip :) I'll buy you something and give it to you two years later.

No luck with the Solar office assistant position. They needed an accountant/bookkeeper which I couldn't fake.

kate - are the worms still alive?

Keep blogging the rest of you -
Miss you guys,
Pen

For moms everywhere

This is hilarious. Anybody who has ever parented will be able to relate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_oc1j5NakY

Pip - thanks for rabbit tips. It's horribly expensive to spay rabbits here. I'm thinking of selling ziplock bags of rabbit poop to pay for her food. Apparently you can apply directly to plants. I didn't know you and Ry had a rabbit. Come and visit!

RABBITS!

Hey Pen!

The bunny, sorry Viva is SO CUTE! They are really good to litter train and now you've figured out which corner you should have no problems...we keep Bilbo in our flat and he's brilliant, only ever goes in his litter tray. The main problem with letting them roam free is that they do just like to nibble things...electrical cables are popular - our rabbit we had in HK (Casper) used to frequently stop our washing machine from working by eating through all the cables except the live one...I wonder how he figured it out! Anyway, Bilbo's the same, so we do have to keep him out of bedrooms and the living room as this would be like going to the funfair with all the wires for tv's etc etc!

Food wise you need to give them lots of hay and green veggie - we usually buy green cabbage leaf, the dark stuff is good, and also things like Curly Cale. Herbs are also good but I find I can't grow them fast enough!! Bilbo LOVES Parsley and Casper used to love mint as well so you could try that. The fruit and carrots are good but quite sweet so should be kept as treats...we often give Bilbo the carrot peel when we cook them for dinner. Hay is a must as it will help them grind their teeth so they won't get too long and also make sure there's a stick or block of wood they can nibble on for fun and to keep their teeth healthy.

I think that's it...very easy animals to look after generally...yes...the adolecent thing! Is Viva a girl or boy? We had to give Bilbo a certain operation to get him to be less excitable by Ryan's legs!! They can also get agressive eventually if they can't find a mate so we thought it best to get doen before that happened. He's much better now and such a playful friendly rabbit...loves attention and wants to know who's visiting 'his' house and what's going on!!

Hope you enjoy it!

New Fluffy Addition

We rescued a Rex rabbit (Viva, short for Velveeta, hopefully forever) from one of our neighbours, and one of Hana's Paly peers who oddly enough got a bunny six months before graduation. Viva (previously known as Bunny) was left to live with mom and yappy cockapoo - not a happy situation. Thankfully we managed to litter train her and she now roams around the living room without leaving too much debris. She still nibbles at furniture but is getting quite good at knowing what she should and shouldn't be chewing on. Emma noticed that she consistently eliminated in one corner of her cage and so I bought a box and put it in that corner. Viva decided to pooh everywhere EXCEPT that corner of the cage. Chi suggested I put another litter box in her new favorite pooh corner. I figured that if she decided not to go there also, at least I would have a very small area of the cage left to clean. However, she decided that one box would do for sleeping and one for poohing so it's worked out well. She loves parsley and rosemary and basil - I'm thinking she would taste pretty darn good with herbs infused from within but I get very evil looks from Emma whenever I suggest it.

Pip - would love any rabbit training tips from you. I hear they go through an adolescent stage. What else do they like to eat? We've given her snap peas, honeysuckle, dandelion leaves and flowers, napa cabbage, radiccio, brussel sprouts, broccoli, apples (big hit) and banana. Parsley and Basil are her favorite.

I went for an interview as Office Manager with a start up company Solar Notion. Unfortunately they needed someone with accountancy bookkeeping skills so I've bought a "Bookkeeping for Dummies" and hope I can fudge my way through it. It ought to be really fun place to work. There are four guys and they already have $60 million in funding. Michael Green is one of the four people working there.

Thanks for posting the photo of See Sum. I love her hair, she is so hip. How old is she?

meeting with See Sum

We went for a meal in London with See Sum, and we met Carol and Ishbelle there too, as well as their aunt and uncle. They are over here to visit another of See Sum's sisters who is ill with cancer.

I hadn't seen See Sum and Carol since 1994 and Ishbelle since 1973.

I've put some photos on http://www.flickr.com/photos/sayling/sets/

STEAK!

Pen!!

Steak knives arrived this morning (In time for our 2 year anniversary!!)...THANKS!! They're fab! Looking forward to sitting down to a nice steak soon! Hope things are well with you & Emma. Can't believe Hana's at College already...makes me feel OLD!

Loads of love,
Pip & Ry. xxx

Pachelbelled out and Nobel prize for Maths

Found a t-shirt which I thought Mia would like. Do you want me to get it Kate?













For those of you who have been overexposed to Pachelbel's Canon in D, here are some links you might like

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uISuvTiTYJA

Also, had to vent and get this out. My frenemy, Penny (mother of Emma's friend) has always struck me as a bit of an ignorant, Asian-phobic (her kids are not the brightest) insular mid-Western American stereotype at its worst, and her favorite anecdote for putting down Asian nerds is this.

Why is that despite consistently winning international math competitions (designed for testing creative math solutions, but I doubt she would know that), Singapore has never won a Nobel prize for math?

Apart from the fact that Singapore has a population the size of LA, and Nobel prize winners are from all over Europe and America where they are more likely to have Nobel nominating connections, there ISN'T a Nobel Prize for maths. I think her point is that Asians are not creative because they don't indulge in imaginary play enough as they spend too much time learning facts and don't know how to think outside the box. Which is ironic really because you are talking about a race that invented the compass, gunpowder, paper, chopsticks, acupuncture, feng shui, medicine, MSG, Peking Duck, potstickers, dim sum, Tai Chi, Karate, gourmet cuisine, etc. (OK, I know it was over a long period of time and there are a lot of us, but still)

The next time she tells me this (she's already done it twice), I'm just going to ask her this...

Why despite consistently winning International math competitions, has Singapore never won a Nobel prize for math?

Because there isn't one...

btw - I guess David wasn't thrilled about his gay picture being posted on the web because he hadn't met some of you and you wouldn't know how very masculine he is in real life.

Hana off to CC

Here's the link for more photos of Don and Hana's road trip to Colorado
http://www.stark.ws/events/HanaTripAug07/index.html