Clean Scan & Light the Night!

So we had my bi-annual Cancer screening results last Friday, and the scan came back clean! :) This time round, instead of the usual PET/CT, which personally I think is really uncomfortable, my oncologist and us decided to go with just a CT instead. So, in place of having to sit perfectly still for more than 1 hour, I only needed to get injected with a CT dye! Still, the contrast dye does have an interesting side effect of having a laxative included with it to make sure that the dye exits the body in a quick manner. So, I think of it as a free colon-cleansing session complimentary with the cancer screening! Eh! other people pay good money for this kind of thing! Anyways, the results were boring medically, which is how we want it to be, and we were in and out of the doctor's office after a brief chit-chat with my onco...

That same night, we went to see the fruits of our labor @ the 2007 Light-The-Night event in Corporate Woods. Weather was a little on the Chilly side (low 60's), but we felt really good seeing the kits that we put together from the previous week going to a good cause! Generally, it was a good party like atmosphere with kids everywhere, and enough pop and sugar to sustain them for most of the night! The Lighting of the balloons was particularly beautiful as the blinking red balloons and white balloons lit up the night sky.... There was a pang of sadness as it reminded us of the tough time that we had a few years ago, and for us, putting our lives now in better perspective. We hung around until the crowd started to make their walk, leaving the event feeling really good that we could do a little to help everyone out that night!

Here's a little video of us that night!

Have you ever seen so many batteries?

We've never seen so many AA batteries in one place before yesterday evening! We stopped by the local Lymphoma and Leukemia society Chapter to pick up a Light the Night volunteer package earlier in the afternoon. Basically the task is to pre-assemble a Light-the-Night balloons in preparation from the local walk on September 14th.

For the unfamiliar Light-the-Night is an annual charity event where people basically take battery lighted balloons and walk relay-style to raise money to fight blood cancers. So anyway, back to the hundreds of batteries.... The batteries go into a little red holder, then the light fixture goes into the balloons stacked up on the picture on the right. How many of these will we work on? Lets see, each battery box has 630 each, and I've got 2 boxes.. So I'm guessing about 600+ depending on how many defects we find in the assembly process.

The final product? This is what it looks like.

Basically the balloons will get inflated during the night's event. So anyway on this Labor Day weekend, we'll probably be busy working on these... Still, its a great feeling to be able to give back after what we've been through a few years ago. Hopefully our work goes to helping more people out!

You gotta be kidding me ??!!

So, its been a while since I last posted. Today's short piece is about Credit Card Fraud. Unfortunately, someone decided to use my AMEX to make a few small purchases on the internet in the last week! I'm not sure how they got a hold of my credit card number but they apparently had a method to their madness!

Beginning on 8/12, looks like they charged small $1-$5 charges on internet sites, mainly membership fees to see if anyone would notice. Then came a few an order of Stamps.com software, probably so they can print stamps from the comfort of their own home... So, at least I know this thief is internet and semi-technology savvy.

Probably the one that puzzled me the most was an order on Columbiahouse DVD for like 6 DVD's. The puzzling part is they shipped the order to my place! Certainly not very savvy in that department! I do know that this person has varied interests in his/her movie watching though - Among the DVDs were Pursuit of Happyness, Freedom Writers, Happy Feet, Bobby, Norbit and Good Shepard. So, if I were to venture a guess, like dramas & has a family. Definitely NOT the movies that I would buy. I probably would fall asleep like 5 minutes into Freedom Writers...

So anyways, 1 week and multiple calls to AMEX and these online places later, i think I'm finally done with cleaning up the credit card mess that this person made! I'm still mad a this fella for making go through all this hassle of disputing his/her charges!!!

Brain Food

Saturday morning was mainly a long dreary downpour of rain, and yet more rain. We decided to cook up a storm at home! After that bad experience at that Singapore place in LA farmers market, Yeesin wanted to show me how Otak-Otak (Brain-Brain) was properly made.

Unlike it's name suggests, no brains go into the recipe, yet i'm still boggled how it can be called literally "lots-of-brains"!

Anyway, i don't have the exact recipe, and i was in charge of the blending and cleanup, but it sure tasted GOOD! Best part was adding otak-otak into rice, and mixing them throughly together.... HMMMHMM... Here's a couple of before and after pictures!

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels @ Starlight

Spent Friday night at the Starlight Theater @ Swope Park watching the Touring version of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Its been pratically ages since we saw any musicals at all, probably none in the last 2-3 years, so we bought tickets to this event a few weeks back. Starlight's an outdoor theater where they will do touring musicals, rock concert and private events too, so we were expecting a nice nice watching this under the stars (hence the name!)

Basically, DRS a play/musical version of the movie with same title with Michael Caine and Steve Martin that came out a while back in 1988 i think, where these 2 con-men try to trick the women of the French Rivirera out of their cash...

All in all, a pretty entertaining night, I was skeptical on how the can convert a feature length movie into a musical, even when I knew the ending already, but I was pleasantly surprised with the plot, the singing/dancing and the ending! Yeesin's never watched the movie before, so I think she liked it even better than i did!

Weather was kind of iffy that night. With rain predicted off and on the the evening. Raining was probably the part that I couldn't arrange for the evening 4 weeks in advance when i bought tickets! In early June, you'd expect the nights to be in the low 80's and dry right? It felt more like early fall weather @ the low 60's, with clouds looming overhead ominously. So for that night, I'd either be a genius for picking a nice night, or the opposite for picking a bad weather night. Anyway, rain held out in just time time for the final bows, with the heavy drops picking up just when everyone was leaving for the night... I guess the weather listened to my instructions then!