Very Alarming

I've not posted in a few days. More than a few, in fact. This makes me feel badly, but the reason has been a mixture of a renewed committment to actually apply myself at work, as well as the arrival of my new laptop computer. Theoretically, the laptop should make me write more blog entries, but it's quite tedious (simple, but tedious) to set the thing up. I still have to install an external mouse, as well as my printer. And I need to get rid of my old behemouth computer as well (anyone? any takers?)

Since the last posting:

-I interviewed my friend Chun for an article about her book. Chun, who was born and raised in China, made us a wonderful dinner consisting of these pork and egg dumplings (I absolutely fell in love with them!), roasted broccoli, steamed Chinese greens, whole steam-roasted fish, and rice. Chun's book is coming out in March. All three of you who read this blog and somehow don't know abut Chun can go to www.chunyu.org to find out more.

-I went out for pizza with Mr. Bir Toujour. Then we watched part of "Control Room" but fell asleep midway.

-Mr. Bir Toujour and I sallied over to SF's Chinatown for the launch of my friend Rosemary's book Good Luck Life (www.goodlucklife.com). The launch was at the Chinese Historical Society, and it was packed. Rosemary was a graceful rockstar as hundreds (seriously!) of people lined up all afternoon to have her sign their books. In the alley next to the Historical Society were these great events in conjunction with the book launch. Lion dancers (ages 10-16 or so, I think) performed twice, and then a dance troupe of young girls called the Flying Angels performed. Flying Angels = Chinese American Sparkle Motion, for you Donnie Darko fans out there.

In between attempts to say hello to Rosemary and catch the Flying Angels in action, Mr. Bir Toujour and I tromped all over Chinatown. Chinatown is a dangerous place for me, as I love cheap, useless plastic crap. I also love cheap, useful cooking utensils and overpriced, overpackaged Asian candies--all of which can be found in spades in Chinatown.

*Dude!* The fire alarm just went off. This is not uncommon at our chocolate factory. In that aspect, the alarms are not very effective, because they are the alarms that cried wolf. But they are loud as hell, and by sheer force of decible clear the place out.

I just got back from an anti-alarm walk around the block while the Fire Department came by. It's like high school or college dorm life, seeing all of these co-workers milling about the parking lot all interrupted and digruntled.

So now there's no point in picking up where I left off originally. Now it's time to return to workday life, to decide if I should write that article about Ashlee Simpson for Metro San Jose...