Cafe Firenze or Chef Fabio and Top Chef

My husband and I went out to dinner tonight while my mom watched the girls. After much discussion, we drove over to Moorpark to check out Cafe Firenze which is the restaurant of Fabio Viviani from Top Chef.

The place looked like a zoo but we were given a table immediately. We were seated a few feet from the kitchen which turned out to be one of the best tables in the place. The kitchen was open and had two bars on either side for diners to sit watching the kitchen like dinner theatre. Our table was a small two top a few feet away so you had your own private table but had direct vision of all kitchen activity and Fabio as well as direct view of all food taken out.

The service was pretty good, which seems rare in Ventura County. The food was kind of average although my husband thought it was pretty good compared to typical Simi Valley restaurant options. We had the beef carpaccio for a starter and it was delicious. My husband had gnocchi, which is one of my favorites, but I thought the gnocchi, although light, were mealy and mushy. They came in a pesto, which my husband said was a bit bland. I had the chicken picata which was not bad, but rather average. The chicken was a bit dry too. Dessert was rather good as we shared cannoli, which was plenty for two and was quite yummy and fairly traditional with plent of pistachios for garnish.

All-in-all, we would give it another try but I thought that Fabio's food was a lot like him, more flash than substance.

Major Milestone Moment

I registered Sofia for kindergarten today! She will start kindergarten in the fall. This is another parenting bittersweet moment. I am so excited that my baby will be starting kindergarten and embarking on her primary education, but saddened that she really is not a baby anymore. It is hard not to be motivated by the decrease in childcare costs as well!

I do wonder how she will do in kindergarten. Sofia has a marvelous loving and joyful spirit. She is sweet and kind and creative. Alas, she is also full of energy and seems to have some focusing issues. She wants to focus on what she wants to when she wants to! I worry that this may be difficult for a kindergarten teacher to handle. She has been known to climb the shelving or the door frames during preschool. Luckily, her preschool just started her spending the morning in the kindergarten class and she seems to be doing well. During this years daily pickups from preschool, I have spent most days arriving with the fear of catching her teacher’s gaze only to find that sad little exasperated head shack, “Rough day today,” or “She did not have her listening ears on today.”

However, since she started half-day kindergarten, I have been noticing more days of, “She had a good day today mom!” or “Come look at her work it is amazing!” She can write her first name in cursive and she is reading books with one-syllable words! I think I am actually looking forward to kindergarten in the fall!

Whirlpool Calypso Dryer R.I.P.

The clothes dryer died a few days ago. Actually, it has been struggling for the past year, I just kept ignoring it. Clothes have taken longer and longer to dry. Currently, it runs but without any heat. Frankly, with two kids, I find a working washer and dryer to be a necessity. We seem to have tons of laundry daily. As usual, although I would love to have depended on the husband to fix it up, he was on another business trip. So I searched the internet and found a repairman who could come over in the evening and check it out. As I waited 3-4 days for my appointment, I frantically washed as much clothing as I could and hung the clothes but still kind of fluffed them up in my heat-free dryer.

So the repairman can the other night and spent an hour dismantling the dryer only to exclaim, “Oh no!” I called out to him, “That does not sound good?” He proceeded to show me the interior of my dryer, which was filled with black lint. Apparently, we have probably had several dryer fires over the years. The thing is apparently a fire hazard and could have flamed up at any time and we are probably lucky the previous fires did not burn the house down! (And frankly as a working mom, I do run the dryer as I head up to bed at night!) So he decommissioned the dryer and now I have to go shopping for a replacement this weekend. I hate shopping. Ugh. And the really crappy thing…the dryer is only 6 years old!!!!! And it was a fancy higher-end whirlpool model! And I can’t even blame Whirlpool since it seems the people who installed the dryer used a substandard too long vent which contributed to the fires and the people who built our house installed a convoluted venting system from the laundry room to the outside.

The Subtle Knife - Philip Pullman

The Subtle Knife is the second novel in the His Dark Materials series, written by Philip Pullman, and published in 1997. This is the book that tells the tale of what happens after The Golden Compass. We learn more about the witches, the nature of dust and the Authority (God), Lee Scoresby, and Stanislaus Grumman. In this book, Lyra's adventure continues as she travels from her own world into other worlds; especially one where she meets Will Parry, a boy from our world, and together they search for the boy's lost father. Will finds a passage to an alternate world to escape threats in his own world. Will and Lyra return to our world and meet Dr. Mary Malone who is researching dust in her own world. After exchanging information on dust or perhaps our equivalent, dark matter, Will and Lyra return to the other world and Will comes into possession of the Subtle Knife - a tool that can create portals between worlds and can cut easily through anything, matter or spirit - and he is the only one who can wield it. The children continue their journey together to learn more about dust and to find Will’s father.

I again read this book straight through so I have to say it was an exciting read. However, I did not find it as enchanting as the Golden Compass and I think that may be due to this book being a darker storyline and also less satisfying in plot as it seemed to be a bridge between books 1 and 2. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but I was disappointed in the ending because you know I love a happy ending where happy people end up together. I suspect this series is not going to provide me the ultimate happy ending as i am currently reading The Amber Spyglass, book 3.

Working the Holiday

There are many wonderful benefits for working for my employer. Unfortunately, the amount of holidays covered is not one of them. I am finding it difficult to concentrate today knowing much of America has the day off to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, but I am here working. Now before my readers thnk this is some racial slight, keep in mind my employer only offers 6 holidays each year and there are many other holidays that are slighted as well! Oh well, I love my job. I love my job. I love my job. Alas, I am still struggling with my gratitude.

Try a Little Gratitude (or Love Thy Job)

I had the chance to talk about gratitude and happiness this week in the support group I run for chronic pain patients. We were planning out some topic ideas for future sessions and I shared my goal for 2009 was "gratitude." It reminded me that gratitude is something I need to practice regularly in the hopes of making it a habit. I've blogged before about the relationship between gratitude and happiness. Let the gratitude begin...

With so many people losing their jobs of late, I have been trying to appreciate the fact that I even have a job. In fact, I am grateful for so many aspects of my work. The following represent, in no particular order, the top ten reasons I love my job:

1. I get to help people, most of which are actually motivated to put in effort, find ways to live better and feel better.
2. I make good money, have great benefits, including plenty of paid time off to enjoy life outside of work.
3. I get paid to do things that are also good for me, like practice and model deep relaxation or meditation techniques.
4. I get to work in a huge hospital close to many resources, and this has even come in handy for my own medical conditions. Come on, who can say they broke an ankle or passed a kidney stone without missing any work!
5. It may be small but I have my own office even though most people in my department have to share space while we await new office space.
6. I get to go to work and every day there are colleagues and friends who are pleasant, friendly, and helpful.
7. I get to work independently, making my own decisions on scheduling, treatment planning, program development.
8. Did I mention the benefits? Over a month of paid leave each year. And being unionized, raises and bonuses annually!
9. If I do not go in to work, people genuinely miss my presence!
10. We only have one staff meeting a month.

Well, these are a few of the things about my job for which I am thankful. My goal is to appreciate my blessings and having a good rewarding job is certainly a major blessing I don't usually appreciate as much as I would like!

The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman

I have to admit that I never heard of this book or the book series His Dark Materials until I watched the movie with my girls over the holidays on VOD. We enjoyed the movie but the end drove me crazy. I can not stand not knowing what happens and the movie ended with a cliffhanger! Perhaps I am not completely in touch with the movie industry, but it also appeared tome that this movie may not have been as popular as expected and clearly a sequel may never appear. Alas, another set of books to read.

I did read The Golden Compass, which was actually first published as Northern Lights in 1995. The story is set in a parallel universe and tells of Lyra Belacqua's journey north in search of her missing friend, Roger, and her imprisoned father, Lord Asriel, who has been conducting experiments with a mysterious substance known as Dust. In Lyra's world, all humans are born with an animal "partner" called a daemon, sort of a person's external expression of a soul. Hurt a daemon, you hurt their human. Lyra meets many interesting characters on her journey, including Mrs. Coulter (who turns out to be related to Lyra), witches and other supernatural beings, and Iorek Byrnison, an armoured bear. Given a special instrument, an alethiometer, Lyra learns to use it on her journey. The alethiometer can tell the truth, if you ask the right questions and you learn how to read the answers.

The story was pretty compelling and moved very fast. The characters were interesting although many were not very likeable or loveable. Lyra, however, is very loyal, and she grows on you throughout the book to become a fairly interesting and compelling heroine. I must admit the ending surprised me. Both times actually, during the movie and then again in the book. And both times I was sucked in and had to know what happened next. So I purchased Book 2: The Subtle Knife.

I am not sure yet how I would ultimately rate this book or the series. However, I must admit once I started the book I felt compelled to read it to the end and I was always guessing what would happen next. Therefore, I have to recommend this book as a good read.

the host - Stephenie Meyer

I wanted to hate this book. Frankly, I only read it because it was by Stephenie Meyer and I did end up really liking the twilight series. The thought of a parasite in my body, much less an alien taking over your body, is pretty repellent. Yet, I did like the book and I came to love the characters, especially the main character, you guessed it: a parasite. I am more impressed by Stephenie Meyers after this book since she was able to take a pretty toxic premise and come up with a book that kept me interested right up to the last page.

In summary, the book is told primarily through the eyes of an alien creature, a Soul. Souls are creatures that rely upon host bodies to survive. After insertion, they erase any mental presence of the being there prior and establish a claim over the body and mind. Upon waking inside her new body, Wanderer (or Wanda as she is eventually know by the humans) is shocked by the vividness of human emotions, memories, and senses, and the discovery that the host, Melanie, is not willing to give up her mind. Melanie is one of few "wild" humans - rebels who have evaded the alien souls that have taken over the Earth. With her younger brother Jamie and the man she loves, Jared, Mel is on the run from souls who hunt down host bodies for use.

Wanda, bombarded by Melanie’s memories and feelings, learns to love the humans, and eventually they make their way to the rebel hideaway of Melanie’s uncle, where Jamie and Jared are living. She lives with the rebels, initially treated spitefully as a “parasite,” the humans come to appreciate Wanda as an individual in her own right and an ally. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but I could not figure out how the story would end without an end to Melanie or Wanda. However, the ending although feeling a bit abrupt, was quite satisfying.

The female characters are a bit passive, which seems common with Stephenie Meyer’s work thus far. However, the women are still strong and compelling and the themes of selflessness, community, and kindness toward one's enemies are prominent throughout the novel, which makes for an interesting take on what makes one human.

2008 in Perspective

My Goal for 2008:

happiness
n. joy, the emotion of being happy.
n. Good luck; good fortune; prosperity.
n. An agreeable feeling or condition of the soul arising from good fortune or propitious happening of any kind; the possession of those circumstances or that state of being which is attended enjoyment; the state of being happy; contentment; joyful satisfaction; felicity; blessedness.
n. Fortuitous elegance; unstudied grace; — used especially of language.

I noticed that I had a goal on my blog for 2008 and this lead me to think what my new goal would be. On one hand, I don't think I fully achieved my 2008 goal so i could just continue the same goal forward to 2009. However, I think a new year is a good time to reassess needs and goals, and I decided to refocus my goal this year. My new goal for 2009 is more along the lines of gratitude, appreciation, and thankfulness. If you have read some of my blog posts from November you might notice these goals do align. I suspect being more in the moment of my life and appreciating the good already in my life is a better path to achieve some measure of happiness that sticks!

I hope to do some focused posting on some of the things I am grateful for in the future. Watch for it!

Red Beans and Rice

Well, after the botched meal yesterday, I decided I needed to redeem myself today and since I had the day off, I made a huge crock-pot full of red beans for dinner tonight. I must compliment myself and say they turned out pretty yummy. I did not make them as spicy as last time (which was a bit sad for the hubby and me, but this meant the girls actually ate them up and we can always add a little hot sauce to spice it up!). This time I used some chicken andouille sausage, leftover ham, and some sweet Italian sausage. They simmered all day and made the house smell spicy and delicious. Tonight for dinner, all I had to do was steam up some rice for dinner. Well, I made some garlic bread with my leftover French bread too. I might post my recipe some time. Red Beans and Rice is one of my favorite Southern meals and something I miss about Mississippi.

Happy New Year!

It has been a nice quiet New Year with the Flores Family. My parents watched the girls last night and I made dinner at home for Carlos and me. I have to admit I was impressed with myself for our dinner last night. After a full day’s work, then commute home only to pack up the girls and take them over to my parents, I cooked a yummy dinner. I made great shrimp scampi, with some pasta aglio e olio, green beans, and French bread. It was so good; I could eat it every day. Then I made dark chocolate fondue with bananas, angel food cake, biscotti, and fresh strawberries. It was delicious and easy to make. It made me wonder why I usually fail to cook dinner on weeknights or cook crap when I am capable for so much more!!

New years Day was also at home. I invited my parents over for dinner and we had ham. Now this meal was a bit of a mess. I planned my menu and seemed to forget I only have one oven. Now with the huge ham Carlos cooking monopolizing the entire oven, my potatoes au gratin sat and sat until the ham was finished. The ham for some reason took much longer than anticipated to get to temperature. Therefore, we all were starving waiting for the ham to be finished, only to then have to wait for the potatoes to cook. Dinner was very late, and the potatoes were undercooked when I finally gave up and said, “We have to eat now!” We played the Wii for hours while we waited for dinner. My parents said dinner was wonderful, but I am pretty sure they were just being nice.

The Southern Vampire Mysteries - Charlaine Harris

I finished all of Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries books in December. Well, all of the books that she has published to date. After enjoying the HBO series TrueBlood, I realized I needed to read the books upon which the television show was based. I have posted a bit about my fascination with TrueBlood. I find the television show strangely addicting, with quirky characters and an interesting spin on vampire lore. I was not sure what I would find in the books about Sookie Stackhouse.

Well, the books were even more addictive than the television series! Luckily, I bought the first seven books in a bundle for my Ereader on my phone: Dead Until Dark, Living Dead in Dallas, Club Dead, Dead to the World, Dead as a Doornail, Definitely Dead, and Altogether Dead. So I obsessively read one book after another in any free time I had. I read through lunches, in waiting rooms, during my daughter’s karate classes, and after they went to bed. I probably read all seven in a few days! Then after I finished book seven I went through withdrawal, until I located a copy of Book 8: From Dead to Worse, as an audio book for free download from my local library. (And that was interesting, I am not sure I would have liked it as much if I hadn’t already read the first seven. I just did not care for the voice of the person reading the book and she made Sookie seem trashier and less intelligent somehow.) However, now I am depressed, with no more books to obsessively read until the ninth book comes out in May, Dead and Gone. Although I did read the first chapter at Charlaine Harris’s website: http://www.charlaineharris.com/deadandgone.html

The series is a first-person account of Sookie Stackhouse's life as a barmaid and telepath in the fictional town of Bon Temps, Louisiana. The series is full of quirky characters, the most interesting is always Sookie, herself. Sookie is a telepath and her ability to read minds leads her on some fascinating and scary adventures and we learn throughout the books about all the various kinds of supernatural (or “supes”) beings that inhabit the human world. In addition to the vampires, there are shapeshifters of various types, faeries, and more. The twists and turns of navigating the supernatural world when you are human is pretty fascinating and Charlaine Harris must have a fantastic imagination and creative mind. In spite of the interesting supernatural characters, Sookie is by far the most fascinating character. You would think an uneducated Southern White barmaid to be pretty boring, but Sookie is intelligent, loyal, strong, passionate, and very human. She makes mistakes but ultimately does amazing things. I love characters with real feelings and flaws who triumph in the end. I would recommend this series to anyone unreservedly.

Snow Day

My wonderful husband had the great idea to take a spontaneous trip to the snow today. We got up early, drove to Big Bear, and spent the day at Snow Valley. We did not go to ski this trip, but spent the day at their sled park. The sled park is a big hill with multiple toboggan-style sled runs. They provide big sleds roomy enough for two and…a snow lift! It is the best part of sledding with half the work! No dragging sleds or kids up steep hills! And the ski lift is fun in itself, with great views and peace between speedy sled runs. The girls had a fabulous time and so did I. The only down side was the traffic to get to Big Bear the last few miles up into the mountain. I hope we can afford a ski trip this year, but sledding is pretty fun to and takes very little skill!

Sofia’s Fieldtrip to See Bolt at the El Capitan

Sofia went on her first major fieldtrip today at the preschool. She did go to the pumpkin patch in October but today her school took a trip down to Hollywood to the El Capitan Theatre to see Bolt in 3D. She seemed to enjoy it but I keep finding myself questioning the school’s choice for a fieldtrip. For those of you who have never been to the El Capitan, it is a bit of an experience: a movie theatre in the “old style” run by Disney. The theatre is grand with a fantastic multiple opening curtain and in addition, they usually have some sort of floorshow prior to the performance. When we saw HSM3, the show was lame with some kids chosen to do a game for prizes. For Bolt, there was a big Christmas-themed live action show with Disney characters, dancers, and even some Princesses.

It can be a fun but expensive experience. Open seating starts around $15. They have reserved VIP seating that runs around $25, I think. I can see this as a good venue for a fieldtrip, but not really for a bunch of 3- and 4-year-olds! Why take a large group of little kids, put them on a school bus for an hour drive to a movie theatre in the heart of Hollywood only to put them back on the bus for another hour drive home. I just do not get it. My daughter would have been excited about a trip to the local Regal to see Bolt as long as she could ride on a bus. Perhaps I am just a Scrooge, but I do not get it!

To Quote a Friend, "I've lost that blogging feeling."

Where has the month gone? I was so motivated to blog every day in November and now it has been half a month since I blogged at all! I can only plead the holidays but really I know from November that if I were committed to daily blogging I would have found the time. I will work on finding some peaceful place in between blogging daily and blogging infrequently.

I have been busy getting ready for Christmas. I put up the tree and Carlos put up the outside lights. The girls helped me decorate the tree. That means many ornaments in big bunches. It still looks beautiful. I'll try to post some pictures. I have most of the shopping done and just have a lot of wrapping to do. I need to get prepared for Christmas Eve dinner. All-in-all, I am feeling more prepared than overwhelmed at present.