Quality vs Quantity

I am a food lover.  Let me just put that on out there, 'k?  I have even gone so far as to refer to myself a food snob.   I grew up poor and didn't really know good food quality until I got much older.  I have grown into an appreciation of food that I didn't always have.  Now, don't get me wrong, I am willing to try new things. I even had squirrel gumbo once!  

Over the years, though, I have come to realize that the majority of folks i talk to love buffets.  They are all about the buffet.  I, on the other hand, have always loathed the buffet, in just about any capacity.  I hate everything about buffets; I can't stand paying a set price for food that I will never eat enough of for it to have been worth the price I paid, I don't like going to a place to eat where I am paying to serve myself  (it defeats the purpose of going out, doesn't it?), using the same nasty dirty food scoopers that everyone and their child has had their unwashed hands all over before I got there and most of all, I can't stand the idea that I am supposed to over look the lack of quality in favor of the mass quantity that is laid out in front of me.  However, I am no longer going to make apologies for being a food snob.  Because I am right.  Period. 

Tonight was a typical example of what I am talking about.  Officer's club.  Mongolian BBQ buffet.  I am there specifically because there is a going away dinner taking place for three coworkers.  You pay a set price, grab a bowl, scoop out the meat (in this case, beef, chicken, and shrimp) take as many veggies as you want, give it to a guy who takes the bowl to the kitchen, cooks it up and brings you the food you scooped into your bowl and you eat it.  All around me there were people with their bowls over flowing with food (all you can eat, after all) and here I am, with a little bit of chicken, a little bit of shrimp, a little bit of meat and some veggies.  And it sucked.  All of it.  There is nothing wrong with chicken, beef or shrimp.  It was THIS beef, chicken and shrimp.  Poor quality, small rubbery chicken andshrimp.  Meat that was so lousy that it could barely be chewed.  And folks were just eating it up.  Like they were starving on a desert island. I just don't understand it.  I will pay whatever price I must pay for a decent meal and would rather eat nothing then have nothing worth eating.

Now somebody bring me a ladder so I can climb down off my soapbox.

My Macy moo

I simply couldn't resist putting this video of my dog and my two nephews playing in Seattle, Washington.  It's good to know that she is having such a good time there!  I sleep better at night because I know she is being loved and cared for the same way I love and care for her.  Life is good...

Annyong haseyo!

Hello from the ROK!  That's the Republic of Korea for those who aren't in-the-know.  Yes, it's been 6 months since i have written and in that time I have been transferred from Shreveport, Louisiana to Osan Air Base in South Korea.   I have been here for two months now and now that I have gotten over the shock of the move, I am happy.  The worst part of this one year assignment was having to leave my dog, Macy.  I am so fortunate and grateful that my brother and sister in law agreed to keep her for a year.  I can't wait for the day i can come home and pet her and hug her again.

I have to live in a dorm here and that is difficult.  The room is small, damp, musty, and dark.  And it's a DORM!  I am 36 years old for cryin' out loud.  Ok.  Enough bitching. 

South Korea is a beautiful, mountinous country.  It sort of reminds me of upstate NY.  It's humid here, which bothers most people here, but I like it.  It cools down in the evenings and walking around is just awesome.  I went on a hike about a month ago up Mt. Songri and visited Bupju Temple and both were just amazing!  It was a 7km hike one way, up hill.  A steep hill.  The best workout I ever had in my life for sure.  I am going to take a trip to China next month which I am very excited about.   I will bring my camera and take pictures. 

Meanwhile, the countdown until I go back to the United States continues...only 10 months to go!  Whoo hoo!

Mommy, I wanna bicycle!!

A friend of mine has been talking recently about getting back into bike riding.  She has a bicycle and hasn't ridden it in awhile and after talking with her about it for a few weeks (in passing only), I told her today that I would look into buying a bike so we could ride together.  Nothing big, mind you.  No Lance Armstrong-ing.  No triathilons.  No racing.  Just something different to do for exercise on a Saturday afternoon. 

It's been a lot of years since I last bought a bicycle.  I think I lived in Germany and my ex-husband bought me a Cannondale.  I know it was an expensive bike (mountain), and I never rode it.  I hated the idea of mountain bikes.  I was much more comfortable with the old 10-speed street bike I had when I was a kid.  I couldn't understand what the draw was for these ugly-ass mountain bikes that everyone was buying even though the majority of the buyers lived nowhere near any mountains. 

What I did remember, though, as I made my way into the bike shop tonight, was that I needed a 24" frame ('cause I am super short), and that I wasn't interested in spending $600 for a leisurely Saturday afternoon ride.  I was ready for anything!  Knew exactly what I wanted and knew how to get it! 

Much like many of my little adventures recently, I was in for a rude awakening.  Do you know they don't measure bikes in inches anymore?  The guy says to me the I need a 47cm frame.  I don't even know how many inches that converted to (the GMAT studying hasn't been going very well. Shut up.)  He also told me that I can't get by without spending over $500 for a bike. Cheapest bike in the store:  $699.   I think I paid $50 bucks for my Huffy 10-speed, that I beat the shit out of and lasted for 5 years (or until I bought a car, I don't really remember).

I left the bike store with my tail between my legs and a handful of catalogs (which, I have concluded, is where the money for the bikes are going).  On the way home I had an epiphany...EBAY!  I was sure I could go search on ebay for my bike! $699 my ass, Mr. Bike Shop Man!  I'd show him!  The Rocky theme began to play in my head and I barely even acknowledged my dog as I zipped over to the computer, full of hope and excitement and pulled up an ebay search...

$699, it turns out, is a pretty damn good price.  *sigh*

Back up on my soapbox

I am a supporter of the death penalty.  So don't get me wrong when I go off on the media coverage of the execution of Saddam Hussein. 

My beef is this;  the difference between seeing people blown away, eaten by sharks, and sawed into little bits and pieces in the movies and seeing someone about to die for real on screen, big or little, is the emotion that humans feel.   I feel that Hussein deserved to die for his crimes.  I also feel that the U.S. is doing the death penalty a huge injustice by 1) delaying a death sentence for 6,10, or 20 years before carrying it out and 2) not allowing the general public to view it.    Then I turned on today's news. 

While the broadcasts I have seen stop short of actually showing Hussein hanging, MSNBC shows everything up until that exact moment.  That is some serious shit.  Then MSNBC gives a warning that they are about to show a picture of a dead Hussein and if you don't want to see it, look away.  The picture of him dead was NOTHING compared to the video of him about to die.  The warning should come before the process of the execution, not before the picture of a dead guy.  My reaction was definitely from the pre-execution and to a human being about to loose their life.  The picture of him dead was nothing.  If I, a proponent of the death penalty, had this reaction, then chances are this is going to play on the emotions of some of the American public who are going to turn around and say that he shouldn't have been executed.  Unable to separate feeling bad for a person who is about to die from the fact that they deserved it.  

I asked myself if I would have felt differently if it wasn't a hanging, but lethal injection.  I don't know for sure, but I think I might have.  Maybe because lethal injection sort of has the feel of a medical procedure rather than an execution.  If he was put to death via Guillotine, I would have probably felt the same as I did about the hanging.  Just seems barbaric.  I suppose that is the point though, right?  That is probably one of the reasons why the death pentaly in the U.S. isn't a deterrent.  

It's a tough call, I guess.  But in the mean time, how about if the U.S. started public caning?  Talk about a deterrent!  Hoo ah!

Scrubs, whales and Scrubs again

I am watching Scrubs again.  The best show on TV.  It reruns on TBS and I didn't watch it when it first came out so now it's all new to me.  But more about Scrubs later... A commercial came on just now that was for one of those new cell phones.  It had two people floating under the ocean and they were talking about the phone.  Then a woman floats up to them and says "nice phone" and this big honkin' whale swims down on her from above and eats her!  It completely freaked me out.  That was one f**ked up commerical.  I may have nightmares.

Back to Scrubs.  Best show on TV.  Yesterday I was watching an episode and Dr. Dorian (Zach Braff) was trying to diagnose a patient and he comes up with this diagnosis that is a remote disease that only people in the Congo get and has been eradicated since the late 18th century or something like that.  Dr. Cox's character starts on one of his truly priceless tirades about Dr. Dorian "looking for zebra's".  It was hysterical.  What made it even funnier was that when my brother was in medical school he told me a story about exactly that.  Med students, who have only learned enough to be dangerous, that come up with these remote diagnoses for people who have something simple and common.  But they are so eager to save the world and see something they learned about that they will look for "zebras" in a field of horses.

Reading it over, I realize that it looses a little something in the relay of the story.  But I don't care.  My blog.  Neener neener.

Goin' to the chapel...yo

Not me of course.  I would never go to the chapel for the purpose of getting married.  However, my oldest friend, Cindi, sure did.   I just returned from her wedding in NY.  It was really amazing.  A wedding right out of "The Sopranos".   Aside from the fact that the wedding took place on the first night of Hanukkah and was a full Catholic Mass ceremony which was ironic only to my Jewish ass, it was truly something wonderful.  For several reasons...

To begin with, I was a first time bridesmaid.  All kinds of cool stuff comes along with that.  We get to wear really beautiful dresses (although I am told that we lucked out and that most bridesmaid dresses are these lacy, poofy, taffeta numbers that no person who isn't a pre-op transexual would be caught dead in), we get to ride in the limo, just us girls and the bride!  Although the limo, in this case, was a stretch Ford Explorer, and we get to sit in the 'bride room' during the cocktail hour portion of the reception and get fed and liquored up by a private wait staff.  I tanked on Shirley Temple's.  Bring on the grenadene and marachino cherries!

If I forgot someone's name during the course of the week, all i had to do was shout out "Joey" "Tony" "Anthony" "Johnny" or "Bruno" and I was bound to be right.  Italian Catholic wedding.  Being that the wedding took place in my home town in NY, i found myself wondering on many occasions if I ever sounded like that when I spoke?  Ay yo. Yo ay.  I was laughing most of the time which was really great, and when I wasn't laughing, I was scarfing on the best Italian food in life. 

Overall the trip was a great success.  I suppose that this means I need to learn how to spell Cindi's new last name.  It's some Italian number that starts with an "M" and ends with an "i".  You'd think that since her and her now husband have been together for almost 8 years that I would have tried to figure that part out sooner.  Who knew?

Here are some pictures!