We had a Mother's Day lunch for my mother at the Japanese restaurant on Kingsway. Brother number two footed the bill for my mother, brother number four, and the four of us. That was nice. Betty and I haven't eaten there in ages and I'm sure the place has changed hands a few times since our last visit, so it was good to know that the food is good, especially the sashimi and tempura.
My mother is selectively forgetting details about Matthew's autumn preschool drop off/pick up plans, so that's pissing me off. Bro' number four told us that Season's Restaurant is trying to woo him back as sous chef. There were no long awkward moments of silence at the table.
Betty and I finally got our thank-you from an unnamed Asian male (for fulfilling a favour): an offer to pay for part of Betty's mom's dinner. Gee, that's a mighty nice gesture—he could've at least picked up the take-out instead of having us do it. Works out to $19 for four hours work, a bitchin' $4.75 per hour. Talk about taking the easy and cheap way out. But I'm not surprised. Generosity, charity, and selflessness are alien concepts here, no matter how many bible stories are thrown at him. There's a bumper sticker that comes to mind: "Jesus, Save Us From Your Followers." Well, there's some progress this year, payment was in immediate cash instead of a postdated cheque.
And no, the money doesn't matter to me. The thought does.
As for me, I bought Betty an elegant rectangular black-dialed Seiko with bracelet band from Rodeo Jewellers, baked her a cheesecake, did all the dishes, sterilized the countertop, and dropped her off at Value Village while I stayed home to play baker man.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.
My ADSL went down this morning. My daughter's elementary school plummeted from a top 30 percentile to a bottom 32 percentile in the latest elementary school FSA results published in Saturday's Vancouver Sun.
The only down thing that was positive this weekend was my achieving the goal of losing 10 lbs. My sister-in-law and Bro' number one and family were glaringly missing this weekend. I strongly suspect sis hasn't lost her 7 lbs and didn't want to lose her side of our bet. But I did it, I did it! I'm setting my sights on five more, yep a whopping 15 lbs total by June 30, 2006. Whatever you do, make it good.
As I finish writing this entry, cheesecake #2 is done. The colour and texture are perfect. There are some cracks, but I can live with them. I need an oven thermometer then, because clearly too high a temperature was what wrecked my previous attempt. The oven dial reading is off substantially.
***
What makes people happy? Whatever it is, would it sustain me? What would?***
I have to unclutter my life. Get a thermometer. Accept the smaller cracks. Starting now.[Addendum. This entry was written on Mother's Day but posted today after getting the ADSL back up. None of the cheesecakes, as it turns out, met my standards. I blame Martha Stewart. I purchased and used one of her heavy-duty, grey-coloured springform pans. The colour and added mass create an uneven heat transfer such that the periphery cooks much too quickly. I'm reverting to a standard pan to test out my theory.]
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