After getting Dao to sleep around 10pm last night, I logged in to work on the new Mason Law School site cleaning up a dozen of pages inside MODx. Took a break at midnight to ring in the new year and then went back to work until 2am. I was so tired that I emailed my supervisor to stay home today. I also wanted to celebrate Lunar New Year with my family.

With the cold weather and the icy road, I haven’t stepped out of the house since Friday night. I stayed in and hung out with the boys. The little guy is now having a double chin. I just love holding him and watching him sleep in my arms. He is just so sweet.

To make the older guy not feeling left out, I engaged in some activities with him around the house like playing with trains, puzzles and any toys we could pull out from the basement. Yesterday I went outside trying to break the ice on the driveway. I asked him if he wanted to help me and he said, “no, you go and clean the snow. Go daddy go!” Dao says a lot of things now that I am sure we haven’t taught him yet. He uses phrases like, “Don’t talk to me,” “Don’t touch me” and “go away.” His answer to everything now is “No, thank you.” Do you want to eat? “No, thank you.” Do you want to take a bath? “No, thank you.” Do you want to brush your teeth? “No, thank you.” I feel like just let him dirty and hungry for days and see how he would react.

Dao is an adorable little kid when he decided to. I am sure most two year-olds are like that. I any rate, I am glad to have the couple of days spending with the kids. Happy Lunar New Year to you all. Yes, all three of you, my readers.

I am pleased to announce the new, improved Mason Law web site. This is not a complete redesign, but a realign. All contents are the same, but the layout is simplified. Many drop-shadow elements have been removed in favor of a modern, streamlined look and feel. The logo is now anchored in the center and the menus are reorganized for clearer navigation. The slideshow on the homepage was replaced with FlexSlider for faster, flexible performance.

Markup is rewritten in HTML5 based on the Boilerplate. CSS is rewritten from scratch for optimzation and to take advantages of the new CSS3 features. The site is still running on MODx, an open source Content Management System and Application Framework. Because of MODx’s flexibility, the switchover from previous to new templates was rather smooth.

The most challenging yet fun part about this project is making the design responsive from content out. I had written about my process, approach and reason for making Mobile third and not first. Working on this site has been a rewarding experience for me. I got a chance learn MODx and put my skills to good use. For three months into the new job, this is a great start.

One of the perks of working closed to Eden Center is quite obviously for a food addict like me. For instance, I didn’t feel like having salad with grilled chicken for five days in a row, I drove seven minutes to Eden for a bowl of goat curry goat with noodle and a bottle of Bia 33 at Lacay. Before heading back to the office, I dropped by Song Que to pick up an avocado shake with boba. What can I say? It’s my Friday treat.

Goat curry at Lacay is like hamburger for me. I have to have it once in a while even though I feel extremely bloated and awful afterward and promise myself to have only once a year. Actually one of my New Year resolutions is to eat for one person instead of three. I haven’t been able to do so yet because I am on lunar calender. I have a couple more days to go before starting my resolution.

It seems as if the more I try to cut back on food the more I just wanted to eat and having convenient access to Eden only makes things worse. For example, I take Wilson Boulevard home everyday and everyday I get stuck in traffic right in front of Eden. I stare at the place and I could hear the voice in my head saying, “What the heck are you waiting for? Come one in.” So I bust a right and head straight to Thanh Son for fresh fried tofu. If I lucky I would catch the fresh batch right off the frying pan. The hot, slightly spicy with lemongrass flavor is just heaven sent.

The other day I met up with my wife and her sister for lunch and I suggested that we try out Rice Paper, a fairly new opening. It’s a bit upscale comparing to most joints in Eden, but what caught my attention was one of its appetizers dish: Oc Len Xao Dua (Snails cooked in coconut milk). I haven’t have this dish for so long. When I went back to Viet Nam about a decide ago, I used to take a nap in the afternoon just like everyone else. Around three thirty or four in the afternoon, I would hear a chanting from the street, “Ai an oc len xao dua khong?” (Who want snails cooked in coconut milk?) And every afternoon, I would order a dish. They were so good that I joked with the lady who sells the snails that I’ll have to married someone who can cook this dish for me as good as she does. She blushed.

In the parking lot this morning, Dao said to me, “Daddy, am Dao. Xe dung Dao.” He told me to carry him to class so that cars won’t hit him. It was cold and I was in a rush to get to work so I just picked him up. I think I have to carry him to class until he goes to college.

Yesterday he helped me changed diaper for his little brother so he pulled up the stool to stand next to me and said, “I am too small,” and glanced around the room and went on, “smaller than the light.” I smiled and replied in Vietnamese, “I don’t think I’ll ever be as tall as the light either.”

I witnessed little Dan smiled at me for the first time yesterday as I tried to communicate to him with the five words babies use. He seems to use “neh” very often. The little guy is hungry all the time. He doesn’t seem to use “eair” (lower gas) though. He just drops a few loud farts to make sure that we heard him. That’s his secret language for “change me now.”

First few listens of Gretchen Parlato’s The Lost and Found didn’t quite sink in. Parlato has a tiny, breathy, whispery, slurry voice and the music is all over the place ranging from r&b to pop to post-bop. Paying closed attention, however, the album is a rare gem. Parlato isn’t just a singer. She uses her voice as an instrument to engage with her vigorous rhythm section, which made up of pianist Taylor Eigsti, bassist Derrick Hodge and drummer Kendrick Scott. On the hypnotic reinterpretation of Wayne Shorter’s “Juju,” her voice floats like ghost passing through glass alongside tenor saxaphonist Dayna Stephens. On Lauryn Hill’s “All That I Can Say,” she rides the groovy r&b beat with grace and effortlessness. With poetic lyrics, beautiful melody and sleek beat, her original “Still,” co-written and duet with guitarist Alan Hampton, is no less impressive. The Lost and Found showcases not only Parlato’s stylistic versatility, but also her ethearal sensibility.

I drove home from work yesterday with a bit of a migraine. Fortunately Dao’s good behave helped clear my head. He turned off TV and asked me to play with him on the table train he received for Christmas. He brought the stool so I could sit on while holding his baby brother. He helped me changed Dan’s diaper twice within five minutes. He was happy to take a bath and coorperated when we brushed his teeth. I let him watched some Charlie Brown on my iPod and sent him to sleep.

In the past couple of weeks, Dao had behaved mischievously and rebelliously. He even started getting rough with his little brother. Now every time I sense that he’s about to do something to the poor kid, I distract his attention and move him away to something else. That method works better than trying to talk some sense to him. On my days off, I spend as much time as I could with him. I usually take him out of the house. We were at Chuck E. Cheese’s on Monday and he played $5 worth of Skeeball games. He finally got the ball over the hump. Some he’ll be able to make some points.

I took him to one of his classmates’ birthday party at a little gym for kids. Once again he didn’t want to participate in any of the activities. He just wanted to shoot basketball with me. A couple of weeks ago, I took him to another one of his friends at daycare and he didn’t join the kids either. I am hopeful that he’ll grown out of it later.

As for the little one, I don’t get to spend time with him much; therefore, it seems like every time I pick him up he gets bigger. He’s only a month a a half, but already outgrow his three-month clothes. He’s getting rolls on his thighs and his cheeks all puffed up. He’s still getting unlimited access to mommy’s breasts for another month before she returning to work.

Andrew Sullivan:

What liberals have never understood about Obama is that he practices a show-don’t-tell, long-game form of domestic politics. What matters to him is what he can get done, not what he can immediately take credit for… Not for the first time, I realized that to understand Obama, you have to take the long view. Because he does.

Worth reading.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life’s difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph. This is triumphant music.

“Confessions to My Daughter,” an opening track on When the Heart Emerges Glistening, kicks off with Ambrose Akinmusire’s mesmerizing, naked trumpet intro then teamed up with tenor saxophonist Walter Smith III for a hypnotic dual backing up by pianist Gerald Clayton, bassist Harish Raghavan and drummer Justin Brown. On “The Walls of Lechuguilla,” Akinmusire once again plays a very intriquing unaccompanied intro switching between high and low notes and speeding into a post-bop thrills. As the apt title suggested, Akinmusire’s heart emerges glistening on all but one of his original compositions. With a promising debut, Akinmusire is the up and coming new trumpeter to keep an ear on.

By now, fourth album into their career, the Puppini Sisters are no longer an act of novelty, but that’s not a problem at all. They still have a few tricks under their sleeves. They swing the hell out of “I Got Rhythm” and get real hoedown on “Get Happy.” Hollywood opens with the sisters’ up-tempo original title track, then take listeners back to good old show-stopping hits (and a few misses) and then closes out with “Parle Plus Bas,” a playful French version of the theme from The Godfather.