All that pain at Ikea was worth it...mostly

Originally uploaded by Raymond Yee.

Laura and I made a trek to Ikea to buy this Galant Table. I didn't want to go, but the many months of having our laser printer' sitting on the floor had to come to an end. The afternoon was more stressful than I had anticipated. When we had to figure out whether a long shelf could fit in the back of our car, I panicked and declared that we most certainly needed to come back another day with a rental U-Haul. I was wrong; the shelf did fit snugly. I was happy to get away from the lines and the crowds.

Unfortunately, when we got home and began to assemble our table, we realized that we were missing a necessary frame. Argh! Injustice! I called the Ikea help line to complain that the woman who filled out our cash&carry order neglected to add a frame. I tried to get the clerk to send us the frame but to no avail -- of course. Fortunately, Laura had enough sense to get me off the phone. She just wanted the table.

We went back to Ikea to get the missing frame. Of course, we encountered another very long line. Why couldn't Ikea just take our order on the phone and have us swing by to pick it up directly? No, if you want to buy Ikea, you must submit to the unforgiving discipline of Ikea.

In the end, we were very happy to bring a bit more order to our apartment. But can I forgive Ikea? I'm sure I'll go crawling back to that den of just-good-enough furniture within the year's end.

Lychee season!

Originally uploaded by Raymond Yee.

Living in California, I get so used to eating almost any food I want any time of the year. Lychees are an exception to the rule for me. When I see them at the market, I think of a few preciously short weeks in summer. There's no time like the present to (over-)indulge in them.

Since the beginning of July, I've dropped my time at the university to
60% so that I can have two full days a week to write a book. I
originally set out to write on the subject matter of the class I taught
in the spring, "Mixing and Remixing Information." That is, the book is
geared to teaching how to combine the varied sources of information on
the Web into a new and useful creation. After a couple of months of
sporadic hard labor, with a solid book outline in hand, I am currently
looking for a publisher. The conceptual framework for the book has held
up to the scrutiny of knowledgable reviewers. Finding a sufficient
market of buyers, on the other hand, remains a major hurdle. The book
in its current form is pitched at programmers and designers who enjoy
the process of creating programs and websites. In writing the book
proposal, I was already challenged to broaden my audience from hardcore
programmers to non-programmers who are nonetheless comfortable with the
Web. Now, I strive to reach a still wider audience. I can't imagine
many of my friends' reading the book as outlined, for instance. How can
I write a book that would captivate people such as my friends and
family who certainly use the Web but who don't program? That's the
question I'm now exploring.

I wish I were a more avid reader of novels and short fiction. When I
walk into bookstores, I gravitate towards the shelves of nonfiction
books, where I am able to dive into particular books and size them up
quickly for their content, style, and enjoyability. When I look at the
fiction section, I am lost. I've recently forced myself to take up
reading a novel or two. Some weeks ago, I borrowed Anansi Boys: A Novel
from the Berkeley Public Library. I forced myself through the first two
chapters but finally decided to return the book unfinished. I didn't
have to finish what I had started, Laura reminded me. Two weeks ago,
while browsing the new books at my church library, I decided to borrow Gilead: A Novel. Reading about Marilynne Robinson's book in The New York Review of Books
had made me receptive to picking the book up in the first place. At
about fifty pages into the novel, I've decided that I would like to
push towards the end. I can't say that I'm excited about the book;
rather, I've grown mildly affectionate for the narrator and now want to
see how the story turns out. As I read more fiction, maybe I'll turn
how to more quickly size up a work. So far, I have had to withhold my
judgement, giving myself over to the author more than I would usually
do for any work of nonfiction, just to decide whether to read the whole
book. Is this an issue of commitment?

Laura and I have been enjoying our Netflix subscription even though we've become minor couch potatoes. We've been watching lots of TV series (As Time Goes By, Numb3rs, The Dead Zone) but occasionally, some movies slip into our queue. Laura recently introduced me to Frederico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria. I want to see more Fellini; La Strada arrived several days ago and awaits our viewing pleasure.

a bowl of homemade carrot soup with lots o' carrots

Originally uploaded by Raymond Yee.

A clear-brothed soup with large chunks of lightly cooked carrots is a childhood comfort food for me. I had never ventured to make it for myself until this past Sunday. The results were deeply satisfying.

Great Pentecost-related art work

Originally uploaded by Raymond Yee.

I was really taken by the art work that went with Pentecost. See Pentecost Sunday at First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley 2006 - a photoset on Flickr for more pictures.

Drift wood undrifted

Originally uploaded by Raymond Yee.

Laura and I had a wonderful time on the North Coast this weekend. We had lunch in Petaluma, spent an hour on the windy and scenic Sonomoa Coast State Beach, eat dinner at the Gualala Hotel, spent the night in Ukiah, bought a piece of folk art in Healdsburg, and then had dinner with an out-of-town friend in Berkeley.

The picture shows drift wood reconstructed on the Sonoma Coast State Beach.

Spotted at Berkeley Bowl: I didn't know that you can buy sour grapes

Originally uploaded by Raymond Yee.

Aren't sour grapes only of our own making?

I used to be big fan of the World Almanac

Originally uploaded by Raymond Yee.

As I kid, I loved owning and browsing through reference books such as The World Almanac. For quite a few years, I would excitedly plunk down money for each new edition of the almanac. Now in the age of the internet and given that I'm a lot older and less in a serendipitous frame of mind, I'm less inclined to buy a copy of the alamanac.