if you use your visa card any time from 10/15-12/24 at banana republic, you can get %15 off one item. just thought i would share.

here is the link for the coupon.

also, save $20 at sephora.com with promotional code FF2007. That didn't come with an expiration date...so use it soon and stock up!

happy shopping!

Dear Friends and Family,

I have accepted the challenge to raise funds to support the Austin Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure and the Komen Austin Race for the Cure in its promise to save lives and end breast cancer forever by empowering people, ensuring quality of care for all and energizing science to find the cures. Please help Komen Austin reach its fundraising goal of $1,000,000 in honor of their 10th Annual Race for the Cure!

Brian and I are running the race in honor of my friend Julie's mom...Mama Sheng, my grandmother, and my 5th grade teacher, Charlotte Strader, who are all breast cancer survivors.

Now, I haven't been running in, oh, about 1.5 years :) so your support and encouragement will be much appreciated! If you would like to support us by making a donation, please visit my personal page and donate online. If you prefer, you may also send your gift to the address listed below.

Three reasons to donate today:
1. Your gift funds breast cancer education, screening and treatment programs in Bastrop, Caldwell, Hays, Travis and Williamson counties.
2. Your gift supports the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Award and Research Grant Program.
3. Your gift is tax-deductible.

More information on the Austin Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure and the Komen Austin Race for the Cure can be found at komenaustin.org.

I greatly appreciate your support and will keep you posted on my progress.

Best,

Mindy Wong

To send a donation:

Make all checks payable to: Komen Austin
(Please designate the name of the person you are supporting in the memo field).
Mail to:

Komen Austin
P.O. Box 2164
Austin, Texas 78768

Alopecia Areata is an incurable autoimmune disease that attacks the hair follicle. Patchy hair loss to full body hair loss is the result of this disease. September is Alopecia Areata awareness month! We're ending the month with a bang and raising awareness in the Austin Tx. community. There is no cure for alopecia, so funding is limited. All proceeds will go to the National Alopecia Areata Foundation research project, in hopes for a cure.

Join us at Stubbs BBQ Restaurant Sunday, September 30th from 3-6:30pm.The donation at the door is $20. Children under 8yrs old are free. Your donation will include: bbq plate, tea, Live Music by Dysfunkshun Junkshun, George Devore and cool Jazz by Lies a Bloom. Bring extra moola, we'll have fantastic silent auction items! Lots of child friendly attractions: Toni Maxaroni the Clown, Reptile show, moonwalk jumpy and more!

LOCKS of LOVE will stand by for those who would like to donate 10" or more of hair. This event is the stepping stone to helping the community understand alopecia. I envision an environment that is understanding and familiar for our children and adults with hair loss.

THANK YOU!

For more info about alopecia, contact: http://www.naaf.org/ If you cannot attend our bash but would like to make a contribution, contact me at katbarry@austin.rr.com or send it directly to NAAF.

happy mooncake festival day! The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar (usually around mid- or late-September, this year it is September 25), a date that parallels the Autumn Equinox of the solar calendar. This is the ideal time, when the moon is at its fullest and brightest, to celebrate the abundance of the summer's harvest. The traditional food of this festival is the mooncake, of which there are many different varieties. this, by far, is my favorite chinese holidays...and probably the tastiest. i can probably eat mooncake all year long, but they only sell them this time of year. so my family stocks up.

Of course my favorite is the traditional cantonese version...lotus paste with the egg yoke inside. we stock up on those and freeze them and eat them year round...yummm! i *should* only eat at most 1/4 of a whole cake in one sitting, but that never ever happens :)

and in the recent years, my mommy has been buying us these mini mooncakes in assorted flavors such as, green tea, pomelo, red bean, date, and other assorted tea flavors. these are b's favorites...he smoked a box of 12 last year all by himself. i like these for 2 reasons...they are single serving sizes and the variety of flavors.

And now, the newest incarnation of the mooncake is ice cream mooncakes. Haagen-Dazs created the latest ice cream attraction and it comes in 4 delicious flavors - vanilla, strawberry, chocolate and macadamia nuts coated with white or milk chocolate and stuffed with mango sorbet (for the egg yoke) for a perfect treat. unfortunately, they are only selling them at certain and limited asian supermarkets in the states, but all over asia. There are a couple other companies, Swensens and Gelare, who also have ventured into the mooncake business.

i hope everyone gets to eat some mooncake, enjoy the beautiful harvest moon and the company of family and good friends.

Check out macworld.com for the live update of the event going on right now :)

whole new line of ipods...including one that is just like the iphone...
http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/09/04/livecoverage/index.php

• iphone ring tone maker - using of course itunes
• shuffles updated with new colors including project (red)
• nano is redesigned - full metal construction, better 2" screen, video capable, cover flow, new UI, and games
• ipod classic - full metal case, new UI, 80gig and 160gig models now,
• ipod touch - just like the iphone minus the phone part...yes wifi is part of it and so is safari among many great features, 8gig or 16gig models.
• apple & starbucks partnership

they really should post this in every classroom and give one to every incoming freshman...

Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

Rule 1 : Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3 : You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4 : If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5 : Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6 : If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8 : Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9 : Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11 : Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

so apparently you can't increase your child's ability to learn words and/or increase their intellegence with a dvd. shocking! :) click here to read the whole article.

do you sometimes feel that you aren't getting as much gas as the pumps says? the truth is, sometimes you really aren't. in texas now, the state aggriculture department has made public the fuel station out of compliance report. the information is on the stations that have been out of compliance for the past 60 days. this report is updated periodically and is current only as of the date indicated in the header of the report. They even provide the definitions of the offenses. some offense are minor and are not harmful to consumers, such as "LED Outage" but others are more serious. austin has a handful with major violations, mainly with smaller gas stations. houston on the other hand, lots that are shorting people. it's bad enough that it takes $50-$60 to fill up my camry these days...i don't need people shorting me on gas. check out the list before you go fill up.

for those who grew up in houston, i'm sure you remember marvin zindler of channel 13 news. he lost his battle with cancer today. he was 85 years old.
"Known for his trademark white hairpieces, blue lenses and signature sign-off, Marvin was a fearless, flamboyant and trail-blazing broadcaster. His nightly reports helped create a new genre of broadcast journalism that became a staple in television newsrooms across the country. Marvin Zindler made his mark as a consumer advocacy reporter and was one of the first in Houston to investigate controversial issues and institutions." rest in peace marvin. houston has lost one of its greatest advocates.
to see more of his 13 year career at channel 13, visit their website.

before i start this post, i have to say...i really love my pup. he's the best and greatest dog ever. i could not ask for a better dog. i mean come on, how can you not love this face?!?!

okay...on to the post.

so, i've had this urge the last couple days to bake cookies and to use my new kitchenaid stand mixer. and not just any cookies, but sugar cookies and learn how to decorate them with icing and such. (yes, occasionally, i get these overly time consuming ideas that i have to do...ie: like making cards to give to people or planning and designing my whole wedding.) so i searched for recipes in my Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook, Food Network, Epicurious and even in my binder full of recipes i've clipped over the last 10 years. none of them interested me or were way too much work for sugar cookies. finally i ran across gordon and yvonne's blog and she had a recipe for cookies AND icing! and the photo of the finished product looked amazing. so i went to the store picked up all the necessary ingredients, made the cookie dough tuesday night so it could chill over night as the recipe instructed. so yesterday, i get off work, and i get to baking so I can the cookies can cool off. i go to work with the cookie cutters trying to make perfect longhorns, duckies, planes, teddy bears, dogs, and martini glasses. after about an hour of cookie cutting and baking i was done. and pretty darn proud. by the last batch (3rd in the group) they looked perfect and they tasted so yummy! so i let them cool on the kitchen table.

now, during this whole time, my beloved dog is laying right outside the kitchen entrance (because he's not allowed in the kitchen when i'm cooking since i'm a klutz and drop stuff on the floor.) so i'm sure he was totally being tortured. to make it worse i went straight into cooking dinner...so double whammy. all this time, my beautiful cookies were all just hanging out while b and i eat dinner. mind you, luca at this point isn't even sniffing around the kitchen.

after dinner b & i had to go run an errand. we were gone no longer then 30 mins...max. before we left i even pushed the cooling racks further back on the table and pushed in all the chairs just in case he got a little bit tempted to go after the cookies. alas, the will power of the little white dog was stronger. we get home, he's all happy to see us then suddenly he lowers his head, and uncurl his tail and walks straight in to his room (laundry room) as we head to the kitchen. and to my shock and horror, he knocked over the rack of perfect cookies...not the first two batch ones that were slightly too brown or misshaped...the perfect ones. to make things worse, he ate 15 cookies. that is a whole lot of calories and sugar for a pup his size. i was furious with him. and he knew it. he was sitting in his room, head bowed, ears back, tail tucked between his legs..."i'm sorry...i couldn't help it. the cookies were taunting me." so to say the least he is in solitary confinement for disobedience and just in case he tosses his cookies. oddly enough, the only two cookies he did not eat from the batch were the two dog shaped cookies. they were left sitting on my kitchen floor, perfect, untouched, not even chipped.

Judge tosses $54 million suit over missing pants via cnn.com

good to hear that there are still people with common sense and know right from wrong.



my original post about the story is here.

it seems like my weekends are more busy than my weekdays. i mean, yes, it is a different type of busy but i kind of miss sitting around at home with nothing to do :)

this weekend was a little of both. i went down to houston b/c i had to work sat. morning in baytown. we had 104 krbe out doing a radio remote. it was fun...just really hot and muggy so made working on a sat. that much tougher. i will post pics later. but i have to be thankful that it did not pour rain until after. i got to my exit off of the hwy to my parent's house and sheets of water just came pouring down! it took me almost 20 mins to get home when it should have only take less than 5. and it was totally flash flooding. i got home, showered off all the insect repellent and sunscreen, hung out with my parents for a bit and went off to meet my just because space for some quality girl time. we headed over to lot 8, which i've been wanting to visit for a while now. we needed to find something to wear to our dear friend's wedding in NYC next month. so I ended up talking her into buy two fabulous dresses and i picked up a beautiful halter dress for the wedding. (i would post pics, but i had to ask my just because space to help me take it back there to get the security sensor removed. oops.) ahh, the memories of our trips to the mall when we were in jr. high buying candy and crazy clothing. then we walked around the rice village some more and had a yummy dinner at kubo's. then we headed over to this chocolate, truffle, gelato place for dessert. i have to admit i was feeling a little sad...not because we were having a bad time or anything. but i knew that we wouldn't be having these spur of the moment girl times anymore once she is a married woman and moving to "music city usa". having been friends with someone for over 2 decades is pretty impressive...i'm sure gonna miss her. i have no doubt that we'll be friends forever, but i'll miss having my buddy in houston. got home and found my mommy in the kitchen making mango pudding (YUM!) so i helped out, learned how to do so. it's actually pretty easy. i will post the recipe sometime soon.

So that pretty much wrapped up sat. then there was church sunday morning, then back to my parent's home to pack up and drive home to see b and luca. and that pretty much wraps up my weekend. next weekend isn't any better...going away party on friday, working sat. in san antonio, then housework on sunday. boy...i need a weekend from my weekend.

and it's printable :)

Judge Tries Suing Pants Off Dry Cleaners via NYT.com
this really pisses me off. not just because i'm asian or an immigrant. just because this judge is that cocky, power hungry, selfish, self centered, and just plain mean. i mean seriously...$67.3 million?!?! This makes me think he doesn't deserve to be a judge. he doesn't seem to have good judgement. he obviously has no problem abusing the power he has, or the legal system. i mean seriously. it's a pair of pants. they offered a settlemen. get off your high horse and let's not waste every ones time and resources. and please don't cry in court...especially over a pair of pants. this just proves my theory of more idiots in the world. he ranks right up there with the TB infested lawyer and that whole family. and as an employee of the city, this isn't the way to win any sympathy from anyone...he's on the city payroll as an attorney adviser to the Office of Administrative Hearings, at a salary of $100,512. go buy your self another $1200 suit and move on. better yet, find a hobby.

Two jailed after bridge built by blind man collapses via Reuters
are the chinese on to something...or just no smart?

Sarah Jessica Parker launches Bitten

so i have to say i am quite excited about this. unfortunately, there is no steve & barry's here in austin. :( i'll have to either go to san anotnio, houston or kileen. i don't think i would be this excited if i didn't find some great things at s&b's when my sister, b and i went a couple weekends ago. we even braved the torrential rains to go...yes, my sister and i are shopaholics. we admit to our problem and have learned it is gentic...it comes from my mom :) but hey, at least we are frugal shoppers. back to the topic...so yeah, we found some pretty good buys. maybe it's because we are not expecting the greatest quality, but were surprised the fit was good...better than decent. my sister and i both purchased jeans and some tops. cute tops...similar to old navy..but a little bit cheaper. i got 2 dress shirts for $10 each and a brown top for $8. they also have lots of fun t-shirts. the jeans, i have to say, i am VERY impressed. i have a really hard time buying jeans....especially since i'm not willing to drop $150+ on jeans and am vertically challenged an have hips. so i was surprised when their jeans fit...and were totally cute! so i purchased 2 pairs for $22 total. and i have to say they are pretty comfy (i'm wearing them now) sure, they are not sevens, joe's or anything like that, but I have to say, not bad for $11.

so now i'm really wanting to go see the sjp line. i'm even tempted to drive to san antonio tomorrow or sunday to look. if anyone has a s&b's and has gone to look, let me know what you think.

i know i don't have kids but my sister and her kids are showing me some pretty nifty things that i, as a child, did not have. i use to think that certain things were overboard, but the truth of it is, i think i'm just secretly jealous that i didn't have these things as a kid. even my mom thinks they are nifty.

NYT: Commuters’ Cocktail Hour Likely to Keep Rolling
now i have to say, this would encourage lots of people to use public transportation. if i lived on the east coast, this would definitely help with the train ride home.

Groom with TB under federal quarantine

Yes, it's true: If you are old enough to do mathematics and you like chocolate, you might be able to figure out your age. By crunching these numbers (including the weekly frequency of your preference for chocolate), your age is mathematically revealed. Try it out to see for yourself.