Today all the news outlets were running silly little summaries of a new Pew Center report called One in 100 that addresses the prison population in the US. The report itself is well worth a read as it’s very well written and there are excellent graphics and charts throughout. The (currently popular) outrage over civil rights abuses in China is put in some context by the knowledge that there are 50% more people incarcerated in the US, despite China’s vastly larger population. One in 100 US adults is behind bars, one in fifteen black men.

Oh wait, did I mention that California spent $8.8 billion last year on corrections? Texas took a distant number two in that regard at $3.3 billion. Governor Schwarzenegger wants us to spend $10.3bn in 2008 according to his January budget Proposal. For those who’ve been following the news, this is the same budget proposal where he suggested that it would be a good idea to cut $4bn from education. I can’t imagine a better recipe for disaster.

I’ve read reams of literature on the increased effectiveness (not to mention vastly lower cost) of community-based reform for non-violent criminals. 48.4% of our prison population is incarcerated for non-violent offenses. There’s something terribly wrong with these statistics and nobody is doing anything about it.

Categories: politics
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A while back I tagged Rita with a meme called “7 weird/random things about yourself.” Instead of answering that meme, she recently turned it into a new one called “7 weird/random things about your significant other” and tagged both me and Kevin. After struggling with it for a solid week I gave up for two really good reasons: 1) Kevin and I have been together too long for me to think anything he does is weird, and 2) hey, I tagged Rita for the original meme, so isn’t it slightly illegal for her to tag me back?

I guess I’ve had a change of heart. In a few months Kevin and I will be celebrating 15 years of together-ness as we hit our first-date anniversary, and later this year we’ll be celebrating our 14th wedding anniversary, so I’m doing this meme as a public service to all couples who haven’t been together as long.

1. Kevin is a total guy. I know this one seems like a big duh, but it took me a few years to realize that. That’s when I did our relationship a great service; I put aside my prejudices and read Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. (I also learned to my surprise that I’m a total girl, but that’s for another meme.)

2. At the same time, Kevin is completely disinterested in watching football, basketball, or baseball. He knows plenty about them to make small talk, but if you really want to be his friend, hand him an epee and join him on the fencing strip. Some other alternatives: billiards, snowboarding, or scuba diving.

3. Kevin makes amazing pasta. From scratch. No really, he takes semolina flour and turns it into fettuccine. This is one of the reasons I married him.

4. Kevin also gives amazing massages. This is another reason I married him, and as a result he’s no longer allowed to give other people massages, only shoulders and neck.

5. Kevin’s patience is Buddha-like. Case in point, before we got married, he taught me how to drive a stick shift using HIS car without cringing or yelling even once. (Need I say this was yet another reason I married him?)

6. Kevin wants to do EVERYTHING himself. John Gray might argue this is one of those Mars guy things, but I think it ‘s unique to his family. I mean, how many guys you know would take on home improvement projects that required a jackhammer, a welding torch, or a hammer drill?

7. Kevin lets me drag him out to all sorts of music and art events, and afterwards he tells me how much he enjoyed them. He even watches cheesy comedies with me even though I refuse to watch scary movies with him. In all the years we’ve been together he’s only complained ONCE about the quality of my entertainment choices, and that was when I temporarily lost my mind and ordered Spice World via Netflix. What can I say? Darling, I know we’ll never get those 93 minutes of our lives back, but I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you.

Categories: memes
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This weekend was Ana’s birthday party. Friday night when we went to Costco to pick up her birthday cake, we stopped at a Taiwanese cafe called 三年２班 (Class 302) in Rowland Heights for dinner. It’s an adorable little place decorated with school paraphernalia, down to the desks and chairs. One of the dishes we ordered even came in a stackable tin lunch box that I recognized from having spent some of my elementary school years in Taiwan. The food, though not the cheapest, was pretty good, but I didn’t like sitting in those awkward wooden chairs. Maybe we can go back when I’m not so uncomfortably pregnant.

This year we rented facilities for both of the kids’ birthdays because I got tired of worrying about it raining on their winter parties and because I’m too big and tired to host them at home. There are some downsides: the limited menus, the strict time limits, the restrictions on the number of guests, and related to that, the uncertainty over whether the people we do invite will come. I was utterly thrilled about the turnout at Ana’s party though, especially when Peg brought Ashlyn and Summer!!! It’s been ages since we’ve hung out with them, and I really appreciated them making the drive up from the OC.

Now we can relax until next year. With baby number 3 slated to show in late April, I wonder if we should have a joint birthday party at home for all three of them next spring, when the chance of rain is next to nil here in So Cal. We’ll see…

Here’s a picture of Kevin giving Daisy a bath. Being a straight haired dog, Daisy always looks pretty good even when she hasn’t had a bath in *mumble mumble* months. What most people don’t realize is how much basset hounds shed. Back in the day I used to be the main producer of the hairy tumbleweeds that we find around the house, but ever since Daisy joined the family, she’s got me beat. We’d been wondering if she’s been shedding even more due to lack of baths, but she proved that theory wrong. Immediately after her bath she shed enough hair to fill a Swiffer Cloth just by doing a few laps around the dining table.

So I’m now 31 weeks pregnant and +18 lbs. Only 9 weeks left, but it feels like an eternity. The bad: I’ve been sleeping very, very poorly. It’s supposed to be normal during the 3rd trimester, but the last two times it didn’t start this early. I’m also constantly congested, and my taste buds seem to have a mind of their own. Everything tastes off. The good: I’ve been keeping the horrid leg cramps at bay just by standing up regularly. Also, at my checkup last week I learned that my 3-hour glucose tolerance test came back negative. Hooray, I’m not diabetic!

Categories: chinese, food, kids and parenting, pets, pregnancy
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This weekend we reached an important milestone in our financial life: we stuck to our credit card budget two statements in a roll! I haven’t been this excited since we paid off all our student loans. Back then it was me wielding the whip that got us there, but I haven’t shown much financial restraint since. Sure, I’ve gone through all the motions of making a budget, but it was just this number in an Excel spreadsheet. Every month I’d pay all the bills and tell Kevin, oh well, we’ve gone over again.

Finally Kevin got tired of hearing that we weren’t putting as much into savings as I’d hoped, so he made it his personal challenge for 2008 to stick to the plan. He started logging into our accounts every week and coloring in a thermometer representing our budget, and during the final week of each billing cycle we’ve been finding ourselves going to extremes to keep from bursting the thermometer. Not that there’s any real consequence to bursting the thermometer. It’s just a fun game.

Speaking of games, Alex drew this impressively accurate representation of Pacman using the pattern editor in Animal Crossing. He has never played Pacman before. When we asked him where he’d seen it before, he said he noticed it on somebody’s T-shirt. If the kid does not have a photographic memory, I’d say he has something close to it.

Over the 3-day weekend we had a Harry Potter movie marathon at home. By Monday night we’d watched all five movies, and when I went back to work today I was experiencing serious Harry Potter withdrawal. I don’t know how I’m going to make it ’til November when the Half-Blood Prince finally comes out.

One thing I noticed was that Alex watched both Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets with rapt attention but barely paid attention to Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire, and Order of the Phoenix. Kevin thought it was just short attention span, but I have a different theory. As a kid I never paid much attention to movies or TV shows unless they had at least one character who was my age, and I think that’s what happening here. In movies 1 and 2, Harry, Ron, and Hermione were ages 11 and 12, older than Alex but still young enough for him to feel like they’re not much older. By the 3rd movie, the characters are 13 years old and full of teenage sturm und drang, and I don’t think Alex can relate to that just yet.

With all the lazing around this weekend I experienced the worst leg cramp ever Monday night. My first thought was blood clot (panic!!!) but Kevin assures me I had it this bad the last two pregnancies and rubbed my leg until the pain went away. Also I’m pretty sure my cold is gone and that my runny nose is just due to rhinitis of pregnancy, yet something else I’d experienced the last two times. And finally, I’m back up to +17 pounds, thanks to a huge batch of oatmeal cookies I baked and subsequently ate. (Hey, at least they were made of oatmeal.)

Categories: harry potter, kids and parenting, pregnancy, shopping, toys
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A lot of people at work brought up Valentine’s Day this week. When they asked what I was planning I told them that we already had our Valentine’s Day outing last Sunday. Some people seemed to think that celebrating V-day at the opera was a perfectly appropriate thing, but others didn’t seem to get the concept. I know art in general and opera specifically is not for everyone but how could lovers not be touched by great singers, a fabulous orchestra, and luscious set-design telling a timeless story of tragic love? On top of all that, the audience was much younger than I expected. There were loads of twenty-something college students and hipster couples in attendance challenging any assumptions about the appeal of opera to the younger generation.

When I was getting blank stares at this point I segued briefly into the more material gifts like the lovely Merkur double-edge safety razor, badger hair brush and shave soap Julie got me.

It’s hard to believe that from roughly the turn of the century until 1971 everyone used these razors and now there’s not a single US manufacturer. It’s too bad, because all the marketing and downstream revenue lock-in is costing everyone the chance to enjoy a closer, more comfortable, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly shave.

Today Alex came home with a Valentine’s Day magnetic dart set given by a classmate to each of the kids in his second-grade class. We were *greatly* amused to see that it had items such as “clean the kitchen” and “breakfast in bed” printed in the various sections. Amused doesn’t even begin to describe the reaction he got from us when he told us that two of the other items were “shave” and “wear a dress.”

Categories: art, kids and parenting, toys
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