Baltimore eating, summer reading, and Derrick the driver

I have to be back on campus starting this afternoon. But the last couple of weeks have been great. I took a wonderful trip to Baltimore and New York. Loved being back on the East Coast and seeing so many good friends. I also met up with my old boss, who is now the head of news at NPR, and got a cool tour of the studio. Watched as Lakshmi Singh (in a very casual flowy button-down blouse) gave the 4 p.m. news roundup.

The trip made me consider expanding my job search outside LA. New York would be great, in part because it would allow me to see my hairdresser Sunny in Chinatown on a regular basis. He is from Hong Kong and his English is atrocious, but he has flair. Actually, he is Liz's hairdresser since college days but I have adopted him as well. Here we are:

The other highlight of my trip was a dinner with Brent at the Charleston Restaurant in Baltimore. For all my foodie-ness, this was my first fine dining experience. The Charleston's chef, Cindy Wolf, offers a flexible tasting menu, in that you choose the number of courses you want and then you choose your courses from a seasonal list.

My most delicious course was the grilled sea scallop on a bed of pureed sweet potato. It was a really smart combination of flavors and textures: A sprinkling of toasted pine nuts and bacon for salt and crunch, and a smooth lemon-butter sauce for a bit of tartness.

Even though this was a world-class restaurant, there were lots of small homey touches to make you feel very pampered: Small glasses of champagne (3 oz) for people who want to celebrate just a little bit; a complimentary dessert course; free valet parking; and a staff that treats guests like gold. It was the best dining-out experience I've had in my life.

Sadly, I didn't finish much of my summer reading list. This is how far I got:

- I finished about two-thirds of Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, which was as much as I could take. See my previous critique.

- I read all of Horse Sense: The Key to Success is Finding a Horse to Ride, which is a bit dated (1991) but still contains some useful tips. The biggest lesson I took away is that you shouldn't bet just on yourself and your innate talents or ambition, but rather on other people and on good ideas when you're lucky enough to come across them. Planning to Xerox one of the chapters for my little bro, who has a tendency to want to do it all himself.

- I am a few pages into The World is Flat, but it's not as interesting as I thought it would be - perhaps because I am a year or two late in getting to it. A lot of what Friedman talks about regarding the information age and outsourcing has already become commonplace thinking (in part thanks to him, I'm sure), so it's very much like reading a recap.

In other news, Derrick the delivery driver-rapper disappeared a few weeks ago and I have been meaning to write an update on him. He didn't pick up his last paycheck, so we were concerned that something may have happened to him. But then it appeared that he sold his Nextel phone (a pricey one), so that was slightly reassuring as it was at least a sign of life.

I even searched for his name in the Times to see if he turned up in any unfortunate news reports - but I forgot that this isn't Baltimore. We don't have a crime blotter here, and the city's so big that it would be a 1 in 10 million shot that he would turn up in the paper. I thought about suggesting that we report him as a missing person or something, but then again he doesn't seem like the type who would appreciate that.

R.I.P. good Szechuan restaurants

My family has a handful of Chinese restaurants that we always go to. They are

1) Dumpling House, Temple City
Operators: A Northern Chinese family who lived in Korea
Actual Chinese name: The Home Village

2) Szechuan Express, Monterey Park
Operators: A Szechuanese couple and their sons
Actual Chinese name: Little Szechuan

3) Lu's Garden, San Gabriel
Operators: Taiwanese
Actual Chinese name: Little Lu

4) Oriental Pearl, San Gabriel
Operators: Mainlanders
Actual Chinese name: House of Szechuan Flavors

The Oriental Pearl and Szechuan Express tragically closed their doors recently. A little tribute follows:

The Loh family à table

Mom, Dad, Scott and I sit down at the Oriental Pearl.

Dad [opens menu, pretends to read]: Okay, what do we want to eat?

Scott and me [rolling our eyes]: C'mon, Dad.

Dad: Everybody pick one dish.

Me: Okay, how about salt-and-pepper pork chops?

Dad [snorts]: Don't be a fool.

Mama chuckles, shaking her head at us. Dad waves a waitress over and proceeds to order our habitual menu, refined over time and now as good as set in stone:

• A combination cold plate: Fu qi fei pian (thin slices of beef and tendon, spiced with smuggled Szechuan peppercorns and cilantro), marinated slices of pork tongue, and blanched celery salad
• Twice-cooked pork (the true test of a Szechuan restaurant)
• Mapo tofu (the other true test of a Szechuan restaurant)
• Water-boiled beef (water is a misnomer here, unless water is something that is a deep red color and turns your tongue into a mass of numbness)
• Soup of white fish, pickled greens, and hot peppers
• Stir-fried bitter melon (the only non-spicy dish on the table).

Braindeadedness

I'm almost afraid to put this out there because of what people might think. But I think I should, if only to have a formal record of when I began to lose my mind:

I've always been very forgetful, as a lot of people can attest. However, today I reached a new low. I was checking out my credit card statement online and noticed a weird charge dated earlier this month that I didn't for the life of me remember placing: Days Inn, $65.69. Had a minor freakout --not just because I've never stayed at a Days Inn, but also because I didn't recall traveling anywhere recently.

Considered calling my credit card company and asking for an explanation. Instead, I sat myself down and concentrated. Eventually, I noticed that this hotel charge was made on the same day that I charged my membership for the Leggers running group, and -- sleuth that I am! -- suddenly remembered that I had booked the Days Inn because I needed someplace to crash in Long Beach the night before next month's half-marathon.

The next sad development to this story is that I started looking in my Inbox to find a confirmation of this reservation, and couldn't find it. Mildly freaked out again because I didn't remember where this hotel was located, and thought that might be useful information to have. So I googled Days Inn and Long Beach and called the number to the hotel that came up.

Did they have a reservation under my name? Yes, of course. And as the man read my confirmation number to me, it suddenly occurred to me that I might have cut and pasted the details of this reservation into a note in Outlook, where I sometimes keep important little tidbits of info.

Guess what? I had.

This was a small event in the great scheme of things, but still unsettling. I suddenly had a feeling of being dropped into someone else's life and trying to piece together what she does and where she's supposed to be.

Maybe I should check into a place of rest, somewhere.

Sleeping late and books that suck

Finally settling into vacation mode. This morning, I woke up after 10 am. Yesterday, too. That's very unusual. I am usually up and at 'em around 8 am at the latest, because I can't relax.

Besides sleeping in late, I have been chipping away at the old summer reading list. I think that Starbucks book will be my undoing because it's the first on my list and I can't finish it. I keep looking for nuggets of business insight but I am having a hard time getting past the CEO Howard Schultz's self-congratulatory tone. It's really kind of repulsive.

The ends of chapters are especially bad:

"In daily life, you get so much pressure from friends and family and colleagues, urging you to take the easy way, to follow the prevailing wisdom, that it can be difficult not to simply accept the status quo and do what's expected of you. But when you really believe -- in yourself, in your dream -- you just have to do everything you possibly can to take control and make your vision a reality. No great achievement happens by luck."
....

"At thirty-four, I was at the beginning of a great adventure. What would keep me on track was not the size of my holdings but my heartfelt values and my commitment to building long-term value for our shareholders. Every step of the way, I made it a point to underpromise and overdeliver. In the long run, that's the only way to ensure security in any job."

Oh, and the title is Pour Your Heart Into It.

This is the type of book someone writes when they get on top of the world too young too fast, and no one is giving them honest advice anymore. Not even Dori Jones Yang, who helped the big man write the book. It gave me a pang of regret to note that she is one of my countrywomen, yet couldn't do something to salvage things.

Blessed by cloud cover

I've just returned from an 11-mile run along the beach that was wonderfully free of sunshine. I don't much like the sun. I do realize it gives us food and life, and that most Westerners soak it up every chance they get. But for me, as prone to freckling as I am, the sun is an environmental hazard. I tan in about 5 minutes, and these freckles that people deem so cute are PERMANENT.

To combat the freckling and the unwanted tanning, I wear sunblock every day, SPF 45, even in the winter. The only time I relax that rule is when I leave LA, because the sun doesn't seem to shine quite as harshly elsewhere. My three years in Baltimore were an excellent hiatus for my skin. Even in Taiwan, which is closer to the equator, I can spend a summer and come back paler. Over there, people have the right idea. The women carry umbrellas around to shade themselves from the sun.

Sometimes I'll see a picture of myself as a child, and I'll marvel at the freckle-less face and get sad. I've even gone so far as to get some freckles burned off, years ago. Pretty unpleasant, and it didn't do much good.

Wish that more people in the Western world were anti-sun like me, because then there would be a bigger market for sunblocking technologies. Scientists would design these little clouds that could follow you around and provide a nice spot of shade wherever you go. Or they would invent some kind of permanent sunblock that you could tattoo on or something.

Epilogue: Despite the nice cloud cover and cool temps this morning, I still got a freakin' tan. And probably helped along a couple of as-yet unborn freckles.

Can't relax

It's my first week of vacation now that the internship is over. I should be lolling around the house and doing nothing useful. But here is how my morning went:

1. My landlady's bulldog woke me up with its barking. Bad Bella.

2. I turned on the computer and took stock of the crapload of things I have to do from now through Sunday:

• Go to Kinko's and figure out how to print a giant poster I made for a school club.
• Drive home before Friday afternoon traffic to make it to family dinner with grandma, who is returning to Taiwan tomorrow.
• Do research on Chinese businesspeople I can invite to sit on a conference panel about cultural differences.
• Meet a classmate for dinner to discuss this panel.
• Mail out registration for Long Beach Half Marathon.
• Write a letter of thanks for a school fellowship.
• Accept school loans and e-sign promissory note.
• Drive to Koreatown for a bridesmaid dress fitting.
• Have dinner with the soon-to-be bride and groom.
• Run 11 miles with my running group.
• Figure out where to get brochures printed for the school club.
• Go to school to hang up the poster.
• Possibly get together with high school friends.
• Pay a parking ticket.
• Buy groceries.

3. I took 15 minutes to blog about this, wasting valuable time. Tick tock tick tock

Pumpkins no more

From: Laura Loh
Sent: Fri 9/1/2006 10:20 PM
To: [Company higher-ups]
Subject: No more Smashing Pumpkins

Hi all,

Unfortunately, the band has decided not to continue with our customized meals after this week. Please see the note below. I’ve asked them to give us some honest feedback, so that we can understand what went wrong. Thank you to everyone for a big effort – I know that the kitchen did the best it could on short notice with this unusual request and I am really grateful.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Laura
..........................................
From: Krista [Accountant for the band]
Sent: Friday, September 01, 2006 12:14 PM
To: Laura Loh; Jared

Subject: RE: Smashing Pumpkins menu for Week of Sept. 4

Hi, Laura.

The band has decided not to continue the meal service with [your company]. We thank you for your services/meals thus far and appreciate all that you have done.

Thank you,
Krista
...........................................
From: Laura Loh
Sent: Friday, September 01, 2006 10:36 AM
To: Jared; Krista
Subject: Smashing Pumpkins menu for Week of Sept. 4

Hi Jared and Krista,

Attached please find next week’s menu for the band. I do hope they’ve been enjoying the food. If there is any feedback we should be aware of, please don’t hesitate to let me know. We’d like to do everything possible to make them happy customers!

Please note our new delivery schedule. We will now be delivering a lunch/dinner package every day instead of twice a week.

There were two reasons for this change:

1) We realized the band’s refrigerator is a bit small to accommodate 3 days’ worth of food at a time
2) It is easier for our kitchen to produce a fresh meal each day, rather than several days’ worth of food that must be kept fresh for more than one day.

As the invoices you’ve received show, the pricing we came up with is $35/day per person, or about $15/person for lunch and $20/person for dinner. The delivery charge is $7.95 and is expected to increase companywide to $9.95 sometime soon. If you have an issue with paying for a daily delivery, please let me know and I can try to arrange something with our billing department.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Best regards,

Laura Loh

The high and the low

Today's high:
I went to the Smashing Pumpkins' studio this morning to deliver their meals for the day and bumped into Jimmy Chamberlain in the kitchen as I was making my way to stock the band's refrigerator. He was very nice and said, "Hi. I'm Jimmy," and shook my hand. It was a warm, firm handshake. But that probably goes without saying, since he is the drummer and all. I saw this picture of him on the Internet and his arms are cut (See below.... What! I had to do my research before going out there.)

Today's low:
I ate a bag of Kettle chips that were past their expiration date. The good thing about working at a food company is that there is a lot of food around. The bad thing is that some of it is expired, and that is why it is sitting in boxes around the office. There's also a huge tub of abandoned Honest Teas out back, which don't taste that bad.

The parking ticket gods have it in for me

I've gotten $135 worth of parking tickets in the last three months. The latest incident was today, when I was playing fast and loose with a 1-hour meter in Hollywood. Being a cheapskate, I parked at a meter in front of a Famima store instead of using a pay lot. Made a mental note to add more money at 12:15, sat down to lunch with a friend, and then forgot and blew deadline by 9 minutes. Ran the 25 feet to my car only to be greeted by the familiar sight of a pink slip on my windshield. I love the City of Los Angeles. Or rather, the City of Los Angeles loves me. Who wouldn't love someone who regularly makes out checks to you?

I am pretty sure someone up there doesn't approve of my skirting of parking regulations and is trying to teach me a lesson. Other dumb things I have done in the past few weeks, for which I have mostly been punished:

1. Parked in a UCLA parking lot twice with a parking permit that expired last quarter, to attend a free yoga class (Yes, I am that cheap.)
2. Failed to see a meter that was concealed behind a telephone pole -- at least from my vantage point -- and just assumed I'd found a cool, meter-less parking spot (Earned a ticket for that one.)
3. Misread a sign and thought that I could park without feeding a meter on Wilshire Blvd. after 4 pm (In fact, it was no stopping after 4 pm. That was a $65 ticket. Ouch.)
4. Violated my company parking lot's rule that employees must park on the roof and leave covered spots for visitors, by swiping my key card as though I was going to go on the roof and then backing up and taking a covered spot (The key card got deprogrammed or something as a result of that little maneuver, and I had to go 'fess up at the parking office.)

I think my problem stems from the fact that I think parking should be treated like a public good, like oxygen or sidewalk space. Or at least not be so restrictive and expensive. Like parking signs should be worded in a more friendly and understandable way (Example: Try not to stop here between the hours of 4 and 6 pm, as many commuters are trying to get home) and meters should give you at least a half-hour for every 25 cents, not just 7 and 1/2 freakin' minutes.

But I am resigned. Today, to appease the gods, I put a quarter in someone else's expired meter. Hopefully, that will improve my parking karma or at least buy me some extra time before my inevitable next violation.

There is a cloud inside my head

I went out last night and got hammered. Which hasn't happened in a very, very long time. What started out as a nice, innocent dinner with people from work -- a treat from two very fun VPs who are in town this week -- somehow evolved into a 6-hour food- and drinkfest. My first taste of a kamikaze was also my last in a long line of drinks (These food people and their wine pairings! Plus cocktails before the meal and an aperitif after, and shots downed first thing after entering a bar). It was at that point that my boss tried to put me in a cab. Even though I knew I was pretty far gone, I valiantly resisted. He finally let me leave when a coworker invited me to crash at her place, which was nearby. But I told her thanks and goodbye, and headed to my car. I shut my eyes for 10 dizzy minutes, then pushed off slowly and carefully.

The idea of leaving my car behind, even though my boss offered to park it at his hotel, was really unappealing. I am so car-dependent. A new adjective: cardependent.

Definitely not promoting this kind of behavior. In the future, I promise to switch to water well before the end of the evening, like a responsible adult. In any case, I'm being punished for overindulging because I woke up at 4:30 this morning and was unable to fall back asleep. So I made myself a bowl of noodles, which did not turn out that well. (Sorry, noodles.) I'm gonna be a zombie today. This is not good, because I have a meeting to negotiate a pay raise in a couple of hours.

Food for Pumpkins

The personal assistant of the Smashing Pumpkins called me today to say the band wanted to try our food. So I drove over to a discreet old building in Santa Monica that currently serves as their recording studio with some food samples -- sandwiches, wraps, salads, and soup. Also a bunch of snacks and some organic teas and sodas in non-plastic bottles. They don't like to drink out of plastic.

Dave Matthews was recording in another studio upstairs, the assistant told me. I didn't get to meet the band members, Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlain, but I think saw them in session through an open doorway. I'm not really sure. I set up the food real nice in their lounge and took off. The assistant was very sweet and grateful, because we were promo'ing the food. How funny that I got to pick what they ate today. And if they like it, we may be feeding them all the time! They are into healthy food these days.

Recipe of the Day

Slightly Dirty Vodka Martini

Take chilled vodka out of the freezer and pour into a shaker over ice. Add a small splash of olive brine and a smaller splash of dry vermouth. Shake it up until your hands hurt from the cold metal. Pour into martini glass garnished with 3 olives.

Smoking is bad, but good

This is the third place I've worked at now where there are other smokers. And here, as before, I find that I am way more plugged into office gossip once people know I smoke.

It seems like the majority of restaurant-industry types, in particular, have this habit. They emerge from the kitchen or whatever, all stressed and angry from some mishap, and light up in a corner or against a wall. Huddled together, they find relief in a soothing circle of smoke and friends. They exchange news -- who's getting fired, who got promoted, what the health inspector said -- commiserate about a bad boss or an incompetent co-worker. Then they go back to work, lungs a bit heavier but with lighter hearts.

So, yes. Smoking is bad. But it's good for some things.

I shoulda been a copy editor

So today, my company asked me to go over our new menu with a "fine-toothed comb." I think they are going to live to regret it. I'm sorry, but regular people -- civilians -- people who have not worked inside a newspaper -- just don't have the same eye for "clean copy."

OMG. This menu that has supposedly been worked-over for months is riddled with errors. Mind you, it is meant to go to the printers tomorrow and my boss just asked me off-hand this afternoon if I would take a look. This thing has missing hyphens and willy-nilly capitalization. Little phrases that pop out of nowhere into the food descriptions and are supposed to sound spontaneous and fun, but really just sound dumb. Wrong spellings like "arrugula." Argh! If my anal self didn't get so much warped satisfaction out of correcting this disaster of a menu, I might actually be angry.

Here is a pdf of my report back to my boss listing the mistakes I found in the 6 pages of this menu, just so one can appreciate the magnitude of the problems without actually having to read the gory details.

Summer resolution

I hereby resolve to do something useful with September, since I won't be working anymore or going back to school yet. Now that I'm putting myself out there, hopefully I'll be more likely to actually do it.

Read some books:
That Starbucks book
The World is Flat
The Great Game
Horse Sense
and also my advertising textbook which I never even cracked open last year.

I'd also like to find some good introductory text on Western philosophy, and I want to go through a couple of Chinese/English books that my mom brought me back from Taiwan, to brush up on my miserable Chinese.

That's about it, at least for summer reading. I'll report back on my progress at the end of next month.

Auto interactions

These car-related incidents took place in the last two days, and are so typical of Los Angeles. Out here, people don't really chat each other up on the street because nobody walks anywhere. So these types of things are about all the interaction I have with strangers, now that I am back in this car-crazed town.

Rush hour, yesterday: I'm waiting to turn left at a busy intersection, and this guy in a Mercedes drives up behind me, honks and starts waving his arms in a forward motion, mouthing "Go!" He means that I should pull forward further into the intersection, like I'm some little old lady who doesn't know better. In reality, I know plenty, and I sometimes even pull out further than I'd like, just so the next car can get his nose out also. But in this case, I don't budge. It's a small and crowded intersection, and I don't want to intimidate the car opposite me that is also waiting to turn left. So I give the guy a crazy wave in the rear view mirror, one of these overly enthusiastic waves you might give an old friend you haven't seen in a while. And the guy starts cracking up.

On the way to work, this morning: I'm waiting at a red light at the freeway off-ramp. An Acura * turns onto the ramp and the driver's eyes connect with mine. He gives me a nod. One of those cool-guy nods.

After work, today: I'm at the coin-operated self-serve car wash, and a short, older guy with a wrinkled, sun-baked face is hustling me for change. For food for his boy, he says. I tell him I can buy him some food, if he can wait until I'm done wiping my car dry. He says fine and goes to sit down. Then I accidentally pluck off one of my windshield wipers and he comes back over to try to help me. He's really trying, but is even less effective than I am. After a couple of awkward minutes, an Australian guy who's been polishing his Porsche nearby walks over and tells my guy to cut it out, to stop bothering me. I can see my guy feels slightly threatened, but is also genuinely kind of offended. He looks at me for help, but all I say is it's all right, it's all right, to both of them. I take the wiper back and manage to reattach it. Before I leave, I give my guy two organic power bars that I swiped from work and a slight smile to the Porsche man as I pull out of the lot.

* Don't ask my why I notice the make of every car all of a sudden. Oh wait, I live in LA.

Soft-boiled eggs

Today's topic: Soft-boiled eggs! The best way, in my opinion, to enjoy one of nature's most delicious foods. I have one of these for breakfast a couple of times a week, and it always makes me happy.



To prepare:

• Take a nice, fresh egg and cover it with cold water in a small pot.
• Turn the heat on high, until the water boils.
• Turn off the burner, leaving the lid on. Wait 3 minutes and rinse the egg in cold water.
• Place your soft-boiled egg in an egg cup (or if you don't have one, a shot glass also works).
• Using a small spoon, crack the top of the eggshell and peel off a large enough section for your spoon to enter.
• Sprinkle with a bit of salt and scoop out small spoonfuls of egg, taking care not to make the yolk overflow. (Hint: Scoop from the inside out, not along the inside of the shell)

Bonus tip: Dips small strips of buttered bread in the yolk.

You can adjust the cooking time to your taste. Some people wait 5 minutes to remove the egg from its hot bath, for a slightly firmer egg. As for me, I sometimes like to undercut the 3 minutes so that part of the egg white is still a little runny, but warm and delicious.

For a close runner-up, I love an egg that has been gently coddled in soup noodles such as ramen. Just before the noodles are done, I crack a raw egg into them and continue cooking on medium heat for 3-4 minutes. The great thing about softly cooked eggs is that they don't become rubbery, and so you can really savor them.

Update

Derrick hasn't been fired yet, which is good. I really hope it doesn't happen. If I was his employer, I don't know what I would do in his case.

I've been thinking lately -- and this is by no means an original thought -- about how owning a business really means having stewardship over a lot of people's well-being. And that's a responsibility of some consequence. It doesn't make me shrink wanting to run my own company. In fact, it makes me want to even more.

I just hope it's not vanity that is motivating me. There's a blurry line between doing good for the sake of doing good, and doing it for vanity's sake.

Raw words

I'm listening to a rap CD created by a delivery driver at the catering company where I'm interning. His name is Derrick, he's 32, and he grew up in Inglewood and dealt drugs and eventually ended up in prison. A few times. His last felony conviction was 8 years ago, though, and that's how he was able to get this job. The company only looks back 5 years into a person's history.

So the music is about messing up in life, being in prison, getting out, the girl who didn't wait, turning things around, "polishing vowels," searching for salvation through flow. It's called Influents.

This is real life
This is not rap
This ain't rap
This is just a lesson of real life
Peaceful days turned into stressed-out nights

Derrick lives in an apartment on Skid Row. He's started a record label, incorporated it and everything, and is saving up to buy a computer so he can produce music. He spent $700 recently to buy a keyboard worth $3,000, put up for sale on Craigslist by a pastor who didn't need it anymore. Derrick converted to Islam in 2000 and has thought a lot about religion, society and politics.

He doesn't know it yet, but he is about to be fired. Today, according to his furious supervisor, he was late to a couple of deliveries in Santa Monica and unreachable by cell phone. Apparently his last day will be Friday.

Things I suck at

1. Keeping houseplants healthy
Witness this drooping orchid, a gift from a friend. I discovered it in this sorry state after returning today from a weekend in Phoenix, where it is monsoon season. This orchid looks like it's been through a monsoon.

2. Computer-related things
Why my new $20 HP inkjet printer won't work is beyond me. Maybe it's because it was $20 and I bought it off Walmart.com. But I still think it should work more than just the one time.

3. Thinking on my feet
When I was at the airport trying to leave Phoenix, a lovely overzealous TSA agent stopped my carry-on luggage and extracted a small red, Swiss Army knife that I have had since I was 16. I bought it at the end of a summer in Paris in remembrance of a brief romance with a 30-year-old (gasp!) German guy who had used his own, larger Swiss Army knife to prepare us a picnic during a forest hike. This TSA agent sent me back to the Southwest ticket counter, where I surrendered the item after learning that it was too late for my bag, if checked, to make it on the plane.

Later, of course, I realized I could have either (a) Kept the knife and attempted to make it through another, less nitpicky, security line (hey, my knife and I made it from LAX to Phoenix without being hassled), or (b) Given the Southwest ticket lady 10 bucks to mail it to me (Americans are good about stuff like that; consider the cold, hard cash the Nielsen people mail out to households across the country, trusting that everyone will fill out and return those little TV diaries).

Unfortunately for me, I can't think very fast on my feet. I am a brilliant strategist, however, after the fact.

Line dancing and two-stepping

I witnessed a lot of this kind of dancing last night. It was at a country bar in Thousand Oaks that Joey wanted to go to for her 30th birthday, with a mostly white crowd and a sprinkling of cowboy hats among that crowd. I hadn't heard of most of the songs, but everyone was singing along like they were old favorites. It reminded me of the many parts of this country-- and even LA -- I've just never been exposed to.

Was most impressed by a tall, skinny guy in a plaid shirt (pictured here with Joey) who was two-stepping up a storm with every partner he could get his hands on. He was a very good leader, twirling those girls around and moving them real smoothly around an imaginary circle on the dance floor. We called him Opie. There were also these two very hardcore cowgirls who knew a line dance for any song that the DJ could throw at them. Joey (an Oklahoma native and fan of all things country) was very brave and out on the floor for every line dance, trying to mimic their moves -- but the cowgirls were not very helpful. Hardcore, as I said, and too cool for this crowd.

I found myself tapping my toes a lot, but too intimidated to get out there. I would totally consider taking a class. The nice thing about line dancing is you don't have to depend on a partner and yet there's quite an art to it, unlike the solo butt-shaking I usually see in clubs.