Eating every meal at a Chinese Buffet for a year

I like challenges. So my new challenge for 2012 is to eat every dinner at a Chinese buffet.

Mini mini Bagels

The room was hot. We were sitting in the living room, looking up at Ryan Seacrest as he announced the next contestant on American Idol, and I was sweating, I felt flustered, and things were starting to look blurry.
"Do you feel okay?" I asked my husband. He was lying peacefully on the couch, empty bowl of popcorn resting on his chest. He was the imagine of someone content. And he raised his eyebrow at me.
"Do you feel okay?" He responded. A question with a question. Is that a good thing? I don't know. I was confused, and it had nothing to do with the song selection by the contestant (note: why do they always make that mistake? Have they never seen the show before?).
"Nooooooooo." I am a horrible sick person. I had work to do, I have a conference to plan, I wanted to exercise, lunches to make, I had paperwork that needed to be done...what? Sick. Nooooooooooo.
That's when the husband gets to work. He somehow tricks me into walking past the exercise bike and into the bathroom where I am somehow brushing my teeth. My mind starts wandering. I think about the laundry, about the conference this weekend, about how hard it is to predict what people will want to eat at 7:00am. If only bagels weren't so big and ugly and hard to handle because you can't really eat a bagel all lady-like and shake hands with a CEO that wants to hire you...
"Honey, you know what would be a good idea? How about if they made bagels really tiny, like a Tim Bit (from Tim Hortons) or like a munchkin? Just a little something that you could still smear some cream cheese on, and pop in your mouth. I think people would like that."
My husband takes the toothbrush out of my hand.
"This is what you're thinking of? Bagels?"
Yes, yes I was. As the world was getting more blurry, and even though I was sweating like a sheep in wolf's clothing (is that the expression, because that's what I was thinking), I knew that the mini-bagel bit was a good idea, and that someday soon I would see it at a conference. Would I be organizing that conference? Maybe. And when I see that I have the option of including on my menu tiny little bagel bits, yes I will order them. Because I dream, yes I dream, of being able to put a perfect bit of bagel with a tiny smear of cream cheese into my mouth while the guest speaker is giving his lecture, and still look professional.

GTL, Baby?

This isn't my idea. Far from it. It's the idea that resulted from a good idea in Montreal that could have resulted from another good idea. Because that's how good ideas work, like ivy on a old brick wall, it keeps growing and growing and growing...
I'll start from the good idea number one, which came from a teacher of early education in Montreal. The task she gave the students was to create their own daycare, with lesson plans and activities that meet the general requirements of the province (i.e.: plan a variety of activities that meet all the needs of the children, like physical, motor, etc).
Then she told them that they had to market it to a certain target audience. Now in a world of straight-A, hit-the-books, toe the rope sort of class, the students might have thoughts, "Um, okay, I guess my target market is the neighborhood I live in, and we live near a park, soo...".
Boring, right? Because most likely, that is what the students will do. Open daycares in their neighborhoods, and lead pretty amazing lives as educators of our youth.
No, the teacher wanted them to think big.
"Think...daycare for rap stars. Think daycare for Donald Trump's kids. Think daycare for urber trendy parents that jet-set around the world, and want their kids to be jetsetters, too."
My friend, who is in the class, told me that everyone's eyes just lite up.
"So we can create a counting activity with 1000 bills?"
"Yup."
"And we can have dress-up with Prada and Guchi?"
"If you have a lesson plan as to why you're playing dress-up, then yes."
"And we can teach the kids to play drums if we open a punk rock daycare?"
"Yea, pretty much you can do whatever you want, whatever you can think of."

And that's how the GTL Daycare, for babies of the Jersey Shore, came about. My good friend who is an excellent child carer, and who has brilliantly aced the courses and is setting a whole new standard of what it means to be a good student, decided she wanted to have a daycare where the children went to the gym, tanned, and looked good.
"For a fine motor skills activity, I'm going to teach them how to put on fake eyelashes."

In some ways, I'm a little nervous, because I'm sure that some parents would love it if their kid was raised to be just like them. Tanned babies in three inch heels and drawn-on abs? But on the other hand, it makes me laugh so much at all the crazy and well-thought out ideas that are coming from this class, that, yea, I'm just happy that the world has more new ideas.