bonnie & jason

Alissa sandwich

Someone stole my bike

I’ve been riding my new fixed gear to BART to go to work and locking it up outside the station. Today, I got off the BART and no bike. Gone. Poof. Just like that. Grr!!! If you see it around, let me know.

Aidan and Alissa, sittin’ in a tree…

We did some studio pictures with Aidan and Alissa this weekend… this is one of the cuter ones.

Fun with baby hair

Alissa’s hair is getting longer and longer. So far it’s only long enough to do “the unicorn” but hopefully, pig tails are just around the corner!

Lexus IS300 timing belt and water pump change

The Lexus was due for a new timing belt and water pump so I decided to tackle it on my own and save the $400 or so that I would have paid for labor at one of the local independent shops. (I’m a total DIY’er geek too.) There was a pretty good post about how to do it over at my.is and I just wanted to add a couple comments based on my experiences here.

1. The crank bolt is hard to get off, but all you need is a 22mm deep socket and a big cheater bar if you have a manual transmission. Just put it in 5th gear, pull the emergency brake, and pull really hard. One tip is to wrap a pillow in a garbage bag and put it where your cheater bar might hit the fender in case you aren’t able to stop pulling in time.

2. The timing belt tensioner can be compressed with a bench vise, but make sure you put the pin and rubber seal on the right way. I had it backwards the first time which isn’t apparent until you try to put it back in the car.

3. I marked the old timing belt so I knew how many teeth were between the camshaft gears and the crankshaft gear. That helped me put the new one on correctly the first time. (The second time I wasn’t so lucky… see number nine below.)

4. A standard harmonic balancer puller works great to pull the crankshaft pulley. Just make sure you have metric bolts.

5. The PCV valve in my car is threaded on. The replacement one I bought has a grommet instead. Make sure you get the right one for your car.

6. You don’t need to pull the power steering pump like it says in the service manual. You just need to remove the power steering pump bracket out of the way so you can access one of the timing belt cover bolts.

7. I bought the Toyota Extra Long Life coolant. It was friggin’ $23 compared to the Prestone universal kind at $12. I didn’t think it was going to be that much more but oh well… I guess it’s not a big deal if you just change it once every 100,000 miles. (Tip: the parts guys said the “super” long life coolant is the same as the long life, just pre-mixed with water so you don’t have to dilute it yourself.)

8. Make sure you engage the number 2 water bypass pipe when you install the water pump. I missed it the first time and didn’t realize it until I was almost done buttoning it up and realized I had 2 extra nuts that didn’t have a home. Doh! That really sucked as I had to tear everything apart to fix the problem.

9. Make sure your timing belt position stays true after you release the tensioner. (I would release the tensioner before you put anything back on and count the teeth between pulleys again.) I had thought everything was fine until I put the crank pulley back on and found out that I was off by a tooth. Doh! Had to take a few steps back (again) as a result.

Some more pics from Wangsgiving

Happy Wangsgiving!

Yes, the title is a shameless ripoff of Dennis’ Yangsgiving, but share and share alike I say. Besides, I gave him some top secret charcoal for his turkey, so we’re square.

Anywho, we hosted a bunch of Bonnie’s family as well as our friends Jeff and Xiao-Yi today. We actually started cooking Tuesday but today was the real busy day.

I made two turkeys, one on the grill and one in the oven. The one on the grill was brined with a concoction of apple juice, oranges, brown sugar, bay leaves, garlic, and salt. I actually messed it up a little… too much charcoal I think. The meat itself turned out very nicely… but the skin was a bit crispier than I would have liked (ie burnt.) Even with the outside “seared”, the inside was still moist and quite tasty as the combination of the brine and hickory smoking did their thing.

The one in the oven was just salted and oiled a little before going in the roasting pan. It was pretty much your standard turkey except that I cooked the turkey upside down with the breast side on the bottom. That way, all the juices run through that notoriously hard to keep moist area of the turkey. As it turns out, the technique worked quite well. That side didn’t brown much, but we carved the turkey before serving anyway, so it didn’t really matter. In retrospect, I should have brined both turkeys, but I didn’t have enough room in the fridge to do both. That being said, I still think the grilled turkey would have been tastier… nothing like cooking with charcoal!

In addition to the turkey, I made most of the traditional sides.

1. Wild rice stuffing with celery, cranberries, onion, tossed with crispy bacon and toasted pecans.
2. Traditional style stuffing with oatmeal toast and roasted apples
3. Garlic mashed potatoes
4. Creamed corn
5. Homemade gravy from giblet broth and turkey pan drippings

Bonnie also made a pumpkin cake, pumpkin spice popcorn, and buttermilk biscuits. And of course, everyone who came brought food. Needless to say, there was a ton of food left over but thankfully, everyone took some home so our fridge isn’t overflowing.

I’m so full… Xiao-Yi’s pumpkin cheesecake made from scratch did me in. So good! I’m pretty tired from all the cooking and cleaning plus the couple glasses of wine and turkey tryptophan (apparently an urban legend). But it is Thanksgiving, and given our family, friends, and good health… I would be remiss if I didn’t end this post saying that we are absolutely thankful for what we have!

What else has Alissa been up to?

It’s been a while since I did any sort of update on Alissa’s developmental progress (other than the standing thing.) So here are some things that we’ve noticed lately (developmental or not).

1. She loves the bathroom. I’m not sure why as it isn’t the first place I would choose to spend my time. Regardless, she makes a beeline for it whenever she notices the door open. Once inside, she either goes for the toilet (ewww), or the sliding shower doors. The shower doors are amusing because they are clear and make a noise when you bang on them (I guess?) The toilet is amusing because it’s disgusting (I guess?) It’s to the point that she’ll stand outside, whine, and bang on the door if you’re inside. (See picture above.)

2. Alissa has developed a new habit where she makes a quick exhale sound and flexes the rest of her body at the same time. It totally reminds me of a kung-fu person getting ready to get punched in the stomach.

3. The raspberry blowing had gone away for a couple weeks but is now back in full force.

4. Alissa is a tease. She’ll make a move indicating she wants you to hold her but as soon as you get close, she turns away back toward the person she’s already in the arms of. She’ll do this multiple times… as if to say “sucker!”

5. She loves her Cheerios, banana puffs, and Veggie Crunchies! I think she would eat them for each of her eight meals of the day. (6:00am breastfeeding, 8:30am solids, 10:00am bottle, noon solids, 1:00 bottle, 4:00 breastfeeding, 6:30 solids, 7:30 bottle.)

6. She has stinky feet… for some reason, it seems the left is stinkier than the right.

7. She doesn’t really play with toys as much as just toss them around the house.

8. She loves bath time but hates getting water in her face.

9. She does not like putting her clothes on.

10. She is entranced by our automatic espresso machine.

11. She’s starting to be able to anticipate things. For example, the other day she was watching me wash the car from the living room window. When she saw I had gone into the garage to grab a towel, Bonnie said she immediately looked expectantly at the door that leads downstairs, thinking I would soon appear.

12. She likes to chew on her sippy cup but does not drink from it.

13. She is becoming very vocal and seems to want to express herself. We think she says, “mama” with a true understanding of the word but can’t be quite sure. It happens most reliably when she’s mad about something and it seems as if she’s calling out for her mama.

14. Her hair is long enough that it actually gets in her eyes a bit. She has the same part to the side that I do and no longer has the bald spot from when she was a newborn.

15. Her two front bottom teeth have come out nicely. Still waiting on those two front upper teeth.

16. She crawls around the house looking for dust balls to chew on. We’ve had to be particularly diligent about Swiffering lately.

17. She loves playing around the open dishwasher.

18. She seems to like to point at things that amuse her.

19. She can do Hi-Five… most of the time.

20. She seems to be a happy and healthy baby. What else can you ask for?

Alissa can stand!

Alissa can stand by herself for fractions of a minute at a time! She looks so “advanced” when she does it but I think that’s just because she’s so small. She’ll probably attempt her first step sometime in the next couple weeks. It’s hard to imagine her walking, again, probably because she’s so small for her age. Oh well, be sure to check in often as I’m sure I’ll have first steps video posted soon!

Alissa standing from Jason Wang on Vimeo.

Aidan’s Red Egg & Ginger party

Another red egg & ginger party, another Moonstar buffet meal. Mmm… buffet. It’s amazing how many of our friends and family have young kids now. We’ve been living through a kid explosion over the last few years. And there are no signs of it abating quite yet.

Anyway, here are some pictures from the party as well as from Alissa’s escapades this past week.
(Full set here)

(Alissa is not happy that her pumpkin ‘purse’ is not an LV.)