Jeanne's Scrabble Revenge

After being thoroughly beaten twice by Robby at Scrabble, I finally won tonight's grueling game. Actually, I "pwned" him: 428 to 232. It was by far my best game, mostly due to lucky draws. I consistently drew the perfect balance of consonants & vowels. Plus, I stumbled upon a seven-letter word that I was able to place over a triple-word space: "boori(s)h" (95 points). Robby was able to use a seven-letter word too: "ti(n)gles" (74 points). I was also able use four triple-word spaces: "boori(s)h", "ounce", "feuds", & "qualm". Robby was able to get away with using "exe" and "da", which are not real words. I was afraid to challenge him, so he got away with the points. But I did challenge him the third time, on "pe", which ended up being in the Scrabble online dictionary (a Hebrew word).

I usually don't mind losing to Robby, the Scrabble Master, but tonight, it felt good to win, especially with lots of luck on my side.

Sci-Fi doesn't let us down this time!

Robby & I finally finished watching Battlestar Galactica tonight. It's awesome. After 6 months of renting this Sy-Fy Channel's show, we completed Season 4.5. Wow, we highly recommend it.

Of course, no T.V. show will ever beat The Wire, but Battlestar Galactica is certainly one of the most entertaining and exciting shows we've watched.

Thumbs up!

Beware of the Scrabble Master

Robby and I have played Scrabble for the last two nights, and I have had my ego crushed by the Scrabble Master. In each game, he was able to put down all seven letters to gain 50 points on top of his own score. His seven-letter words were "DOUBTER" & "ARRANGE". Plus, in the second game he used "BLITZ" as the first word on the board, which earned him 52 points. His scores: 326 & 385. Mine: 256 & 297. GEEZ.

Afterward, he insisted that we play Boggle because I always win at Boggle & he wanted to make me feel better, but I was so thoroughly decimated by those brutal games that I whimpered back to my computer and busied myself until bedtime!

Who knew that "un" was a word? It means "one" in the Scrabble dictionary. In Spanish?! How could it count on the Scrabble board?! & "ed" is a word in the Scrabble dictionary too. It means "education", but it's an abbreviation! Just a few sly ways that Robby was able to add long words onto mine.

Nesting Phase

Robby & I was in the nesting phase a few weeks ago. I took down the curtains from our bedroom, then washed and ironed them. I have never ironed curtains before. Robby cleaned out our electronics drawer, and we both cleaned out our closets. I took a 40+ year old Sears dresser from my old room in the O.C. & lined it with pretty green shelf paper. If you've ever seen Freaks & Geeks, it's the same dresser as Lindsay's in her bedroom. A classic, elegant white dress with gold trim that once belonged to my eldest sister. We dropped off 5 bags of belongings to the Goodwill. Robby even wiped the bathroom mini-blinds, the most difficult task in the whole apartment. Now, my closet is filled with boxes labeled "3-6 months" & "6-12 months." Our receiving blankets & diaper cloths are folded. Our changing pad is covered with a waterproof sheet. & I've started packing a labor & postpartum bag.



I've often wished futilely that I could get through this rite of passage (figuratively & literally) without actually experiencing it, that the baby would magically appear in the bassinet & I could forgo the birthing experience, but life just doesn't happen that way.

Holidays are Over, Preparing for Baby

Robby and I spent three weeks in the Bay Area with my siblings & their daughters. I helped out with the daily activities of my nieces (taking them to school, picking them up, Chinese school, etc.). We had two baby showers - one organized by my former English-teaching colleagues at Paly & the other by my sister. We received lots of useful & cute baby gifts.

Robby left for New Jersey for a week to help his dad & stepmom pack for their move to Connecticut. He predicted that he trip would be a nostalgic and sentimental trip down memory lane, but after a few days of steadily packing up his room, he was hardly emotionally struck by the emptiness of it. The next time we go to the East Coast, we will be heading to Connecticut, unfamiliar territory to me and Robby's new home away from home.

Robby watched Avatar three times & was so inspired by the film that he wrote an article that related it to his dissertation topic. You can find it on his blog. I wasn't so impressed by the movie. If James Cameron spent so many years coming up with the story, couldn't it have been a bit more original? It hardly strayed from the basic imperialist story. I give it an F for storyline, though the immersive 3D quality was very impressive.

We returned to Los Angeles on January 10th and loaded our living room with baby gifts. At this moment, Robby became stunned by the reality of the near future...We're having a baby! & babies come with lots of stuff! We've tried to minimize our baby needs; we simply don't have room for it in our modest one-bedroom apartment. When people pose the commonly asked question, "What gender is your baby?", we say, "We don't know. We're going to wait." Then they ask, "Well, how will you decorate the baby's room?" We say flatly, "The baby is going in the living room." The entitled right that a tiny, little baby needs its own room totally baffles me. Anyway, we are suspicious of the trappings of the ever-growing BABY INDUSTRY, much as we were when we encountered the WEDDING INDUSTRY.

A few days ago, we took an informative, day-long birthing class at Cedar-Sinai Hospital. The instructor demonstrated the baby's pathway through the pelvic bones, explained the different stages of labor, and taught us a few breathing exercises & labor positions. Interesting facts: 37% of the births at Cedar-Sinai are C-sections (wow, so high!) and 95% of the vaginal births involve the epidural. We ended the class by watching a short, graphic video of a woman in labor who undergoes an epidural. The actual birthing was first repulsive then heartwarming to me. I will be relieved once this little sucker is out of my body and breathing & feeding on its own, no longer restlessly kicking all the other organs in the shared space that is my abdomen.

That's all on the baby front.

Happy birthday to our mothers! This month, my mom turned a young 68 & Robby's mom turned a mature 49. The age difference of our family members still seem puzzling to us sometimes. Robby's stepmom is celebrating her birthday too this month. Happy birthday, everyone!

Officially now a yuppie family

Robby & I ambitiously sent out our first Christmas cards - 100 of them. What a feat. It took me two days to order the photos, write the holiday letter, buy the stamps, & assemble the envelopes. I sure love Costco.

Lots of things going on.

My grandpa Gong Gong passed away on Friday, December 11th, three days before my birthday. The funeral is in two days at Rose Hill Memorial Home in Whittier.

Gong Gong died at 96 years old, and before his fall and hip injury, he had few physical ailments - prostate cancer (common in older men), asthma, blindness, & deafness. I know 40-some-year-old people who take twice as many medications as he was taking before he died. His healthy took a downward spiral after the hip injury. Sitting in a hospital bed 24/7 sometimes seems more harmful than helpful, but he had a lot of healing to do & daily mobility was out of the question. Last week, he had a stroke in the majority of the left hemisphere of his brain. This affected the right side of his body. This also put him in the ICU for 2 days. My family went back and forth about life support. Luckily, his death was painless and quick, and my grandmother did not have to see his body invaded by tubes of fluids, running on man-made machines. She has lived her life for him more than for herself, so his death starts a new life for her at 89 years old.

Deaths and births have been occurring simultaneously in our family recently. Last summer, my paternal grandmother died less than a month before my niece was born. Robby and my wedding was shortly after that. This year, my sister gave birth to twins over Thanksgiving, and three weeks later, Gong Gong dies.

I can't say that any of this unfair in any sort of way. Our genes are resilient in old age, and we live for a very long time. When I was a child, I knew that I was very lucky to have known all my grandparents and that at one point in my life they would all wither and pass in a short period of time. I've so fortunate to have spent so much time with them.

I'm now 30 weeks pregnant & supposed to see the doctor every 2 weeks. Baby is doing well - kicking & punching all the time, like there's an earthquake in my belly. It's a strange feeling to have a little being incubating in my body.

Thanksgiving is finally over!

Robby's mom flew over from Germany and brought us lots of gifts. One large, hard-covered suitcase had nothing but goodies from Frankfurt: 6 bags of muesli, chocolate with hazelnut (our favorite), marzipan, delicious traditional German Christmas cookies, olive oil, a bottle of kids' carbonated drink called "Robby's bubble", bedding for the baby, etc. It was so overwhelming!

Ma only spent 3 days with us. We took her for Indian food (pani puri, mmm), sushi, Mexican, and a big American breakfast. We also saw the Globe Theater from England perform Shakespeare's Love's Labour Lost at Santa Monica College. We helped her buy a Macbook and took her to frolic in the lovely aisles of Target. We also had Shanghai-nese dim sum with my parents. It was a wonderful weekend.

Then, we had a hectic Thanksgiving weekend that involved a seven-hour drive up to San Francisco. It usually takes 5 hours. We thought we were clever to leave on Tuesday, but we left our house at 4pm & hit traffic on the 405 through West LA. Not fun.

Nonetheless, visiting family is always a blast. Tiring, but fun. My oldest sister gave birth to a set of cute girl twins on Wednesday. We participated in a birthday dinner and birthday party for my four-year-old niece. Robby watched Ninja Assassin. We had a delicious Thanksgiving dinner with 13 family members, including an auntie who was visiting from Beijing whom I hadn't seen in six years.

We spent another seven hours driving down to Los Angeles on Sunday night (with a million other travelers). It feels good to be home with our fish Practice Three.

Time to buckle down and finish these two terms papers. They're due next Tuesday, and my fall semester at USC will be over! Now, if I could only finish these papers...

P.S. Baby kicks all the time.