Embracing The Awkward

Honing a Philosophy

2010-11-08T19:13:00.000-08:00

I've thought a lot over the years about what it means to "embrace the awkward." After all, if you're going to have a life philosophy, it's good to know what you really mean by it. I think initially, for me and for my friend Sejal (who actually coined the phrase), embracing the awkward often meant being willing to go out of our way to get a good story: to go on the date with the person you knew probably wasn't right for you, to engage with the crazy stranger who sat next to you on public transit, to dance like a fool in public. I have definitely done all of those things--many times.

There will always be a place for that level of awkward-embracing: being willing to go the extra mile to create some craziness in your life is good for you, and it does make for great stories. But as I've gotten a little older and a little calmer, and gotten into a serious relationship (and thus can't end every weekend with an arsenal of crazy bad date stories), I've realized that the wisdom of this philosophy extends deeper than I first thought.

There are other ways to embrace awkwardness. They're more subtle, but I think they still have the ability to make your life better. As an example, I've just moved across the country to a place where I don't have a job, don't know anyone, and don't have any easy, built-in ways to meet new people. It has been a very long time since I've lived anywhere where that was true. But thankfully, what I do have is a commitment to embracing the awkward. In this case, that means trying to network (even though I hate it and feel like I'm bad at it), putting myself out there and following up when I meet new, cool people, and trying to find ways to make this new place feel like a home. All of that feels pretty awkward. It's hard. It's a lot of work. There are lots of times I'd really rather not try. And that's when this "embracing the awkward" philosophy serves me best: it reminds me that if I show up--if I try, even when i don't feel like it--the odds are decent something really good will come from it. And if nothing good comes from it? Well, I've still got a story I can re-tell and laugh at later, and that's always been a pretty good consolation prize.

Too Long

2010-10-29T17:54:00.000-07:00

It's been a very long time since I've written on my blog--nearly two and a half years. I'd like to say that even without writing on this blog, I was regularly embracing awkward situations, but I'm not totally sure that's true.

A lot has happened in the time since then. But between school, and being in a serious relationship, and just generally getting kind of lazy, I've gotten out of the habit of seeking out awkwardness. And the thing about getting out of the habit of something is that it's then really hard to get back INTO the habit. It feels hard. It feels scary. Why would I want to be awkward, when I could just hide comfortably at home?

But choosing not to embrace awkward situations is suddenly no longer an option: for the first time in 8 years, I've moved somewhere where I literally do not know a single person (except the man I moved here with, my fiance Mike), and I don't have a job (in a market and a field where finding a job is going to be tough). So I think it's a good time to re-learn how to embrace awkward situations--indeed, to actively seek them out. I'm pretty sure that embracing the awkwardness is what it's going to take to make this new place really feel like home.

Rudy

2008-05-20T18:59:00.000-07:00

My mom called me yesterday afternoon to tell me that they had to put our 18 year-old dog, Rudy, to sleep. There aren't words to describe how shocked and saddened I was, even though I should have been preparing myself for this day for years. In the past 6 years, there have been several back surgeries and more than a few bouts of sickness bad enough to make me think this might be the end. But he always bounced back better and healthier than before.

I guess part of me assumed he'd just keep doing that.

But this time, it seems, there was no bouncing back.

Being so far away in DC, I feel somewhat buffered from the full impact of this news. But what will happen--and how will it feel--when I go home to Colorado, and Rudy isn't there?

He's been a fixture--a family member--since I begged my parents to buy him from the pet store when I was 10. At the time, we already had two other high-maintenance dogs; the last thing we needed was a new puppy to train. But he was so cute, and it was so heart-breakingly sad that no one else had wanted to buy him: he'd been in the pet store for 8 months--so long that the employees had gone ahead and given him a name.

From the moment we set eyes on Rudy it was love at first sight, and he has been nothing but a wonderful, fun and funny addition to our family. From tipping over trashcans and pulling toilet paper off the roll to being the best looking dog ever to sport an Elmo party hat, Rudy will be missed. By me and my parents, certainly. By our other dogs certainly. But also by just about anyone who ever encountered him: Rudy was the kind of special dog that made even the most wary dog-hater fall in love, and I don't know how exactly we will get along without him.

Rudy with birthday cake on his face

Easter fun, a few weeks late

2008-03-31T10:53:00.000-07:00

I'm back-dating this blog post, because I couldn't bear the thought that I'd actually gone more than a month without posting on my blog. Shameful.

Easter is one of my favorite holidays of the year: I love spring time, I like pastel colors, I like dyeing eggs and I LOVE Peeps. But this year, I was sick to the point of not being able to get out of bed and had to cancel my plans for an Easter dinner with my grad school friends. But Mike--who must have the world's best immune system--could sense my disappointment about scrapping all my Easter plans, and he said he was willing to risk getting sick in order for us to celebrate. And so we did, in a smaller fashion. A little dinner, a little egg dyeing, and some Peep jousting. All in all, a pretty good Easter, despite the illness.

Our dyed Easter eggs

Mike and Claire self-portraits. Medium: eggs, dye, and wax crayon.

Our Peeps, prior to the joust

Our Peeps, after the joust. I think Mike's won.

If you're going to San Francisco. . . .

2008-02-28T13:21:00.000-08:00

I know, I know. I've been a slacker of a blog poster this month. Since grad school started, that seems to be the theme of my life. But to do a little catch up, two weeks ago, Mike and I went to San Francisco for Valentine's Day/President's Day weekend.

I think I told every single person I saw in the month leading up to us going how excited I was.

You know how sometimes you're really excited about something, and then when it actually happens, it's not as good as you thought it would be? Yeah, that definitely DID NOT happen this time. San Francisco/Oakland were so much better than I thought they would be, and I was already expecting them to be awesome.

For starters, we had kick-ass weather. Apparently, it's been very rainy and cold this winter, and this was about the first time since November that the sun had come out. I know this because when we went kayaking on Lake Merritt, the boat rental lady told us we were the first people to rent boats in 2008! Good work Mike and Claire!

Then, we got to go to Drake's, my fabulously sketchy brewery in a parking lot. And even better, I got to go there with Miranda. And even better than that, we ran into George. Seeing as how Miranda and George were both integral parts of the awkward craziness that always was Friday nights at Drakes, I was happy to share it with both of them.

We also got to see more of my dearly missed SF friends: Helen, Jess, and Dina. We hit up some of my favorite dive bars in SF and the East Bay.

Doc's Clock

The Alley

We went to Angel Island. I learned how to play Rummy 500 and now own a set of "how to survive in the wilderness" playing cards.

And we ate oh so much yummy food. This trip was pretty much built around a very rigid plan of all the foods I've missed and can't get in D.C., that we then washed down with cheap dive bar beers. Or bloody marys.

Banana Pudding from Chef Edward's

The only things that could have made it better would have been more time, and getting to see more old friends. But for a short weekend it was awesome, and I think just simply made both of us more sure we want to come back again--very soon!

I'm a Bloody Mess

2008-02-02T10:06:00.000-08:00

And I do mean that literally.
This is what happens when an accident prone person (inevitably) falls off her bike. It's going to be even more gorgeous when it bruises, I think. Oh, and for those who are interested, if you follow the trail of blood down my shin in the picture, you can also see the eye-shaped scar left over from the MRSA/abscess-removal.

I suppose it's never too late to start wrapping myself in bubble wrap?

YAY!!!!

2008-01-26T17:41:00.000-08:00

My friend Miranda sent me a message a few days ago, asking what I was doing for President's Day. Seeing as how I didn't even know when President's Day was, I definitely didn't have plans. And then she suggested meeting in San Francisco, with boyfriends in tow. It took me approximately 4 seconds to decide that come hell or high water, boyfriend or no, I WAS going to be in San Francisco that weekend. So I launched a full-force persuasion campaign to get Mike to agree that it was worth the cost to come.

And 12 hours later, our plane tickets were bought. I AM SO EXCITED! I'm excited to see friends, I'm excited to get to go all the places I miss, and I'm really excited to get to share it with Mike.

Times Square Ain't the Place for a Vegan

2008-01-19T10:07:00.000-08:00

Mike and I were in NYC last weekend to celebrate the birthday of his friend Yuriy. Last Friday evening, after many hours of meat-eating and booze-drinking and general birthday-celebrating, we left Yuriy and the rest of his friends to make our way back to our very swanky Times Square hotel.

En route, we got into a fairly intense discussion. It was intense enough--and we were both so focused on it--that upon arriving in Times Square we continued to stand in the middle of the sidewalk, talking intently to each other and not really paying any mind to what was happening around us.

So here we are, in the middle of Times Square, having the kind of single-minded and emotionally intense conversation you can only have when you're really drunk, when a couple--youngish and fairly well dressed--approach us.

Couple: "Um, excuse us. We're sorry to interrupt you, because you look like you're having a pretty important conversation, but we don't have any money and we're pretty hungry."

Mike and Claire: "Um. . . ." as both of us start fumbling through our pockets for change.

Couple: "No, no. We don't want to take your money, but if you wouldn't mind buying us something to eat, we'd appreciate it."

Mike seemed game for this proposal, so he gestures around Times Square--where there are easily 20 open restaurants within spitting distance of where we are standing--and asks them: "Where did you want to go? How about McDonald's?"--as it was the closest to where we were standing.

Couple: "Um, well, that won't work actually. You see, we're vegans and we don't really eat any of that kind of food. But we know a really good vegan Chinese restaurant about 15 blocks south of here. How about that?"

Even now, a week later, I don't know quite what to make of this. Have people really just gotten that bold? Were they actually trying to pick us up for a foursome? Were we being Punk'd? And did they really not appreciate the truth behind the phrase "beggars can't be choosers?"

Needless to say, Mike and I said that was a bit far for us to go to get them food, wished them luck and bid them adieu as we quickly made our way back into our hotel.

Seen in the NYC Macy's

2008-01-14T13:42:00.000-08:00

A Hassidic Jew toddler--complete with baby yarmulke and long curly sideburns--attached by a leash to his mother.

Good News

2008-01-10T13:31:00.000-08:00

I have lots to blog about from the last few weeks, but I'll share my exciting school/work-related news first:

About a month ago, my friend Alison, who works in the very cool Center for Social Media at school, was asked to recommend any people she knew who might be a good fit for the Center's Fellowship program. She recommended me (as did a couple of my professors), and I was brought in soon after to interview for the program. Destpite interviewing in the middle of my final hell week--when I hadn't slept in two days and I was running around with a painfully throbbing MRSA-filled abscess on my leg--I had felt like the interview went well. It went well enough, anyway, that they offered me some short-term employment over the break, while they were short-staffed.

Cut to today, when in the middle of a conversation with the woman I'd initially interviewed with (about my continuing to do some work this semester for the Center), I asked her when they would be deciding about the Fellowships. Shocked, she replied, "But I thought you knew! No one told you? We're offering the Fellowship to you!"

Needless to say, this is really fantastic news, and I'm very excited. The Fellowship will partly pay for school for the next two years, and I'll get two years of working with the other folks in the Center for Social Media, which is right up my alley!

Celebrate good times, come on!

2007-12-20T16:12:00.000-08:00

It hasn't all been spider bites and MRSA infections here in Washington, D.C. I've actually had a lot of fun this semester.

Case in point: we celebrated my friends Alison and Anthony's 24th birthdays--as well as the end of the semester--with a party at my house last Friday. There was booze. There was cake. There were fun people. And--best of all--there were drunken declarations of (platonic) love, which is always a sign of a good party, in my opinion.

Alison the birthday girl with Claire and Genna

Anthony the birthday boy with Gary

Two Mikes, a Dan and the other Anthony

Mike and Claire

Merry Christmas to Me

2007-12-18T09:53:00.000-08:00

So if I haven't mentioned it, this semester has been kind of . . . eventful. And by eventful, I mostly mean crisis-filled. What with the flooding of my apartment, my development of allergies to something in my apartment, the near-lethal spider bite, and the day when my external hard-drive over-heated and took all of my semester's work with it, this has not been the easiest few months.

But recently, everything had been going much smoother. Classes were fun and I was doing pretty well, I'd made some good friends, and have even ventured into a stable, not-f'ed up relationship. The only slight trouble was that I seemed to have become more clumsy than normal, and often found myself bumping into things or tripping. Hardly a big deal, I thought.

SO NOT TRUE. The weekend after Thanksgiving, I "tripped and fell and scraped my shin." Annoying, but I didn't think it was a big deal. Until it became clear that the scrape wasn't healing. I went to a doctor. She said it was infected. She gave me antibiotics and told me to come back if it didn't get better. It didn't get better. I went back, she informed me that an ABSCESS had formed and I was going to need to have it drained. Yikes. So I go to the surgeon she referred me to who informed me that they didn't drain abscesses--they just cut them out. So she numbed up my leg and cut a quarter-sized chunk out of my shin. When I went back the next day to have it checked out, I fainted and then spent 10 minutes throwing up from how much it hurt and how absolutely disgusting it looks. And now, just as it is starting to heal and hurt less, she has informed me that they got the tissue culture back on the abscess and it seems that I have MRSA. Yes, MRSA.

Merry Christmas to me.

Yuck

2007-11-27T13:38:00.000-08:00

While I was home this past week for Thanksgiving, my mom made tacos one night. Now, I was pretty excited about this because I love tacos. I was even more excited when I was the container of what I assumed was guacamole out on the kitchen counter, along with all the other tacos fixin's. I LOVE guacamole, and I've been in avocado withdrawal since I moved to DC.

So I spoon some of the "guacamole" onto one of my tacos, but there's something kind of off about the texture. It feels really. . . .thick, and almost. . . .gelatinous? This makes me suspicious, so I taste some of the "guacamole" off the spoon. Hmm. Doesn't exactly taste like avocados. So I finally look at the container and discover I'm not eating guacamole at all, but "Guacamole-flavored dip"! And as I look at the list of ingredients, my stomach churns a bit. Because of the 23 ingredients listed on the label, avocados are number 12: well behind water, salt, dried onion powder and several chemicals I cannot pronounce.

I guess I'll be waiting for my next trip to CA before I attempt to feed that craving again.

When your pet surpasses you in popularity

2007-11-12T00:05:00.000-08:00

Many of you know that I come from a family of dog lovers. As long as I can remember, we've always had at least one dog (always a dachshund--or weiner dog), and more often than not, we've had two or three at a time. Right now, we have three dogs, one of whom has made it to the ripe old age of 17 1/2 years old.

I'd never really stopped to think about how amazing it is to have a nearly 18 year old dog, until a friend of my parents called the local paper and suggested that they write a story about it. The paper jumped at the opportunity, and early last week, an article profiling my parents and Rudy--our dog--and talking about the challenges more people are facing in having older pets appeared in the paper. And mind you, this was no small, single column newspaper story. There was a small picture of Rudy on the front page of the paper. There was a HUGE picture of Rudy on the front page of the Lifestyle section. And then there was the actual article--complete with more pictures of Rudy and our other two dogs on an inner page of the Lifestyle section.

A good month

2007-11-11T10:38:00.000-08:00

I realize it's been a long time since I blogged. This last month or so has been really fun, but sadly, I have virtually no pictures to prove it. So what have I been up to?

In the last month, I:

Went apple picking twice. Once we went in the pouring down rain, but we got lots of yummy apples. And a pumpkin. And some cider. The second time we went when it was sunny and beautiful, but didn't actually come home with any apples. (This is partly because I already had plenty and partly because there really weren't many left on the trees.)

Carved pumpkins for Halloween. My pumpkin was a landscape of Colorado. My friend carved his to represent the way that capitalism--like a boiling cauldron--consumes us.

Got lost in a corn maze (or maize maze, as I like to call it) and watched people shoot pumpkins out of a cannon.

Mike and Claire try valiantly to find their way out of the maze

Dressed up as a "Smarty Pants" for Halloween, while my friend Brianne dressed as a "Fancy Pants."

Brianne has the bling and ruffles to make her pants fancy, and I've got the Smarties

Finished my first short film--an autobiography.

Went to my dear friend Abby's beautiful wedding.

Becky, Abby and Claire at Abby's wedding

In addition, I have not been bitten by any small animals (or large ones), and there has been no more flooding, so that's been good. All in all, not a bad month.

Datey-dates

2007-10-03T10:41:00.000-07:00

So I'm going on a very "datey-date" on Saturday night. It occurs to me that I can't remember the last time I went on a "datey-date." It has definitely been a couple of years.

Now don't get me wrong--I've been on plenty of dates. But they've tended to be lower-key dates. "I'll meet you there" dates (or even more common--given how many people I've dated who didn't have a car--"I guess I'll pick you up" dates). "Play it by ear" dates. Or sometimes, "I have a general idea of the plan" dates. And as a general rule, the content of the dates I've been on has been pretty low key and non-datey also. We'd go hiking, or have a picnic, or go for a motorcycle ride, or just kind of wonder around and see what happened. Hanging out as dating.

And really, non-datey's been good with me. The formality and planned-ness of datey-dates makes me nervous. I feel like staring at each other from across the table of a fancy restaurant isn't a very natural or organic way to really get to know someone. And it's certainly not representative of how I really like to spend my time.

And yet, this datey-date's got me intrigued. There is something to be said for a guy with a very clear plan. Who's going to pick me up in a car. And take me out on a Saturday night (not a Thursday night or Sunday afternoon). I don't even know what to make of it. But given my penchant for new experiences (particularly if they're awkward), I'm looking forward to it.

Here's to hoping we don't decide we hate each other mid-way through the appetizer, because it would be a really long night after that!

The Upside

2007-09-30T15:49:00.001-07:00

So I've spent a lot of time on this blog lately complaining about things that are bad, but very little time talking about school or the stuff that's going well.

And I promise, there ARE things that are going well. School--for the most part--has been great. It's really challenging, and I spend at least half of my time feeling like I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm still really enjoying what I'm learning. I'm taking a writing class where we're writing scripts for fiction and non-fiction films. I'm taking a production class where we're making short films. And I'm taking a design class (for reasons I still don't quite understand) where I'm learning all about Photoshop. I will soon be sticking my head on all sorts of other people's bodies.

On top of that, I've made friends. I've learned my way around DC well enough that I can give directions to people who have lived here longer than I have. I've reconnected to Abby and Becky's DC-based parents. I've got an in for what I think will be a great internship, AND the weather here has not been as bad as I expected.

See? All good things.

There is hope for me and DC yet.

Washington, D.C.: 4, Claire: 0

2007-09-22T08:59:00.000-07:00

A month and half ago, when I was (fairly calmly) dealing with the flood that put good chunks of my apartment underwater, I rationalized that everyone needed something bad to happen to them upon moving to a new place, and it was better to get it out of the way. After all, the damage from the flood was minimal, and if that was the worst thing that befell me while living in D.C., that wouldn't be so bad at all!

Foolish, foolish Claire. What on earth made me think that would be THE ONLY bad thing? What on earth made me think that would be the worst thing? Now, I know better. I will now wait in calm dread for the next ridiculous, bad thing that is going to happen. I'm very sure the bad luck is not over.

Why so sure, you ask? Why so pessimistic? Here's why:

I have had what I presumed was a cold pretty much since I moved to D.C. This past week it occurred to me that 6 weeks was kind of a long time to not be getting better from a cold, and that my symptoms (stuffy nose, sneezing, sore throat) improved drastically when I was away from the apartment for long stretches of time, only to return with a vengeance when I walked back in the door. My friend Brianne--who would know a thing or two about this--has pointed out that it probably means I am allergic to something. Yes, that's right. I'm ALLERGIC to my apartment.

And, all the nose blowing I've been doing has triggered yet another problem: nosebleeds. Yup. All throughout the week, my nose has spontaneously erupted blood at the most inopportune moments, forcing me to walk around (although thankfully not in public yet) with a twisted up Kleenex shoved up my nose, as I try to staunch the blood. This makes me feel like the geeky loser I was when I was eight and had to stop taking swimming lessons because the chlorine made my nose bleed. There is nothing sadder than being the 8 year old who has to sit with the teachers while all your friends splash away in the pool.

But I digress. As if the allergies and the nosebleeds weren't enough, there's been another problem. It seems that earlier this week, a brown recluse spider bit me. For those of you not up on your spider hierarchies, the brown recluse bite is extremely dangerous, second only to a black widow. In worst case scenarios, the bite gets infected and all of the surrounding skin rots off. I'm not even joking. It's really disgusting.

Now, I've been bit by a spider before, and it was annoying and it kind of hurt for a few days, but then it faded away and left me with this stupid lumpy scar. Not a huge deal. So I didn't worry too much when I noticed the bite. I didn't worry too much when it still hurt several days after I first noticed it. I started to worry yesterday, when I realized that the redness and swelling looked worse than when I first noticed it and that my entire leg was throbbing with pain.

The advice nurse at Suburban Hospital was pretty worried, too, when I described it, and she ordered me to haul my ass ASAP to the emergency room, which I did with the help of said friend Brianne. There we proceeded to wait for 4 hours until I finally got seen. They loaded me up with antibiotics and painkillers, took blood, gave me a tetanus shot and told me that if the swelling and redness hadn't gone down substantially in the next few days, I'd have to come back in and they would need to carve out the chunk of infected skin to keep it from spreading. I'm hoping they just said that to scare me into taking all the antibiotics.

So yeah, that's been my week. Allergies, nosebleeds and spider bites, oh my. And I don't even get to enjoy the tiny silver lining of having a spider bite that hurts like a motherf---er: They offered to prescribe me percocet for the pain, and I had to turn them down. Even extra strength Tylenol makes me feel like I'm on a tilt-a-whirl and about to throw up, so I definitely can't handle big-time painkillers.

I feel like these experiences have made me wiser, more prepared for whatever other bad things will come my way. I am completely expecting to find out that mutant killer crickets live in the laundry room of my apartment, and it would not surprise me at all to find that a school of pirhanas has taken up residence in my toilet bowl. Bring it--nothing would surprise me now!

D.C. is Finally Looking Up

2007-08-27T20:55:00.000-07:00

Since I last wrote, things in Washington, D.C. are going much better. We never did discover the cause of the crazy flood waters that overtook my apartment (and my mom, the neighbor, the plumber, the contractor working on the house where I live, the landlords and I all made a valiant effort to figure out where the water could have come from, to no avail), but we did tear out the old, wet carpet and go crazy with a couple of fans and a dehumidifier. (Note: I have never seen a device that sucks water OUT of the air before. Being a nose-bleed prone child from an arid state, I had no need to be taking any more water out of the air. Ordinarily, we were looking for ways to put moisture back INTO the air.)

But anyway, right around the time the apartment dried out, the movers showed up with the rest of my stuff, the carpet guys came to lay down new (and much prettier) carpet, and I finally got to unpack, put together my bed and stop sleeping on a mattress in the kitchen. And somehow--luckily--the only things that suffered any damage from the flooding were my cable box (ironically, I'd been really hesitant to get cable, fearing it would suck up too much of my valuable time) and the biography of Richard Nixon, which promptly started to mold. HA. Karma's a bitch. (And no, I don't really want to explain why I have a copy of Nixon's biography. It's a long story.)

So now, relatively settled, I'm getting into the process of making new friends, reconnecting with old ones, and poaching other people's D.C. friends. Orientation for my graduate school program was Friday, and so far I've managed to stay more excited than scared. I'm not a) the only person who doesn't have film experience or b) the oldest person in the program, although I'm not that far from it.

I realized how old I am, and just how long I've been out of college, when this librarian came to orientation and started talking about appropriate research methods. She said: "I know when you all were undergrads, it was OK to just do all your research for a paper on Google, but now you should be using different methods to research." She says this, and it suddenly occurs to me that I'm not completely sure Google even existed when I was an undergrad. And so my slow descent into old age begins, at the ripe old age of 27!

I guess that's about it for now. I start both class and work tomorrow. I hope it goes well. I hope I don't discover that I'm in over my head. Or really, I guess I'm OK with being in over my head. Everything I've ever really learned from, grew from or been challenged by involved me feeling like I was in WAY over my head. I hope I learn, grow and am challenged by this!

I'm Living in a Swamp

2007-08-15T19:38:00.000-07:00

And at the moment, I mean that quite literally.

So my mom and I got to DC on Monday night, and we've been staying at a hotel, and running around trying to get some of that move-in stuff done (e.g., visits to the DMV, buying groceries, multiple trips to the hardware store and the Bed Bath and Beyond, etc.) Last night--despite the fact that none of my furniture is arriving for about a week and they hadn't delivered my new bed yet, we decided to stay in the apartment on an inflatable mattress I'd brought along.

One small problem: while I can inflate the bed no problem, the cap that keeps the air IN the mattress is missing. So we slept on the very hard floor on top of a deflated air mattress with no pillows. Awesome. (Mental note to me: DO NOT travel without your thermarest camping sleep pad and sleeping bag.)

After a very sleepless night, I got up early, spent about 4 hours at the DMV and car inspection place and ran some more errands. With those out of the way, my mom and I headed out to actually do something fun, like be tourists.

So here comes the swamp part. On returning to my apartment 5 hours later, we found that something, somewhere had flooded, leaving the carpet soaked, everything that had been on the floor drenched (and I do mean DRENCHED--I was wringing water out of clothes I'd left in a suitcase on the floor), and a good half inch of water on the floor in the bathroom (which we had to clean up using a dustpan, because we don't have a mop, buckets, or towels to use yet). That's bad enough, but the amount of heat in the air coupled with all the water in this apartment has given this place the feeling of being a swamp--thick, muggy and utterly disgusting. Add to that a bunch of slugs bigger than my index and middle finger combined and the 30 or so mosquitos who have bitten me in the 3 days that we've been here (leaving behind huge red welts, because I'm incapable of not scratching), and I feel like I've landed in the Everglades. And it's just made me miss California all the more.

I'm hoping that, with the really bad thing out of the way, Washington D.C. can only get better. Seriously, I'm looking for something--anything really--to like about this city.

The Free Lunch? It Really Doesn't Exist.

2007-08-08T22:28:00.001-07:00

I've been home in Colorado for about a month. That's been nice, but kind of. . . well, boring. As a way to alleviate some of said boredom, I went with my parents a couple weeks ago to volunteer with their service group--The Lions Club--at a sporting event for blind athletes. At the event, I got to talking to another member of the club--Jim--about my future plans and why I was interested in pursuing documentary filmmaking.

A few days later, my mom asked if I wanted to come to the bi-monthly Lions Club meeting that day. I wasn't really interested, but she said there'd be free lunch, and who passes that up?

So I went, ate my free lunch and politely listened to the club members discuss the orders of business, one of which was a proposal to start inviting non-club members to come and talk about whatever it was they did. At this very moment, Jim-the-guy-from-the-other-night pipes up and says he'd really like it if I could talk more about what I was doing and why.

Suddenly, every head in the room swiveled to stare at me. The president of the club announced that HE thought it was a great idea (with my dad very thoughtfully seconding him) and asked if I'd be willing to come back and present at the next meeting. Before I could try to back out, my dad had assured them I'd be happy to do it.

So much for free lunch.

So yesterday, I came back to the meeting, got up in front of this club of mostly old, slightly cranky Republican men and talked about how JVC and the union had turned me into a crazy lefty commie who believes in obscene things like empowerment and equal rights for all and how I was going to take all of those beliefs and use them as the basis for propaganda. Ahem, I mean documentaries. (Or at least this is how I am sure what I said--which I really tried to make as neutral and non-partisan as possible--was perceived. Seriously, when I mentioned--JUST MENTIONED--Michael Moore in passing, eyes narrowed, lips curled, and I thought at least one guy might attempt to jump me and shake those liberal values right out of me.) Needless to say, it felt like a tough crowd. I definitely earned that damn lunch.

Who Needs Kevin Bacon?

2007-07-27T13:32:00.001-07:00

So I was in D.C. last weekend, searching frantically for an apartment that I can move into when I get to D.C. in the middle of August. After looking at what felt like a million apartments and trying to navigate the many flaming hoops that apartment management companies feel are necessary to determine whether or not you're worthy of living in their apartment (you want the application fee as a money order and the deposit as a cashier's check? You need to see my 3 most recent pay stubs and my W-2s? You need to know the balance of all of my bank accounts and you need to see my actual social security card as well as my passport and my driver's license? Um. . . Ok), I found a place that I'm excited about. (And didn't require any flaming hoops at all!)

I also managed to find time to take in a Nationals game. I went with my friend Brianne, who brought her friend Rachel, who brought her friend Fred, who brought his friend Alex. Alex, like me, happens to be a former HERE union organizer, so we bonded over that. After the game the group of us headed out to a dive bar on U Street that soon got overrun by a bunch of drunk rugby players who'd just won the Mid-Atlantic Rugby championship in their division, or so they drunkenly told us. Repeatedly.

Anyway, Alex and I continued to chat, and in the process of talking, discovered that his dad grew up next door to the mom of my very dear friend, Miss Abby Levine. Wow. Kind of random. And yet, somehow, I am not surprised at all. And neither was Abby, when I told her about it.

You see, Abby, was the link that led me to meet nearly everyone I know in San Francisco. So of course she would somehow be connected to the friend of a friend of a friend that I meet at a baseball game. Also, Abby was my introduction to San Francisco's progressive Jewish circle, so it seems fitting that she would manage, inadvertantly and without even needing to be there, to be my introduction to that exact same circle in D.C.!

With friends like that, who needs Kevin Bacon to play the "6 degrees" game?

Heard on the streets of D.C.

2007-07-26T13:26:00.000-07:00

While walking down a street in Washington, D.C. last weekend, I heard this little piece of a coversation:

A 30ish woman talking to her family: "I mean, I don't know. When I have the baby, I'm gonna have to sell it for more than it's cost me."

Wait, what?

It took me a good 5 minutes more of eavesdropping to realize she was actually talking about selling her mustang convertible, not her baby. That's what I get for not listening to the conversation from the beginning!

Missing California

2007-07-17T20:22:00.000-07:00

When I first made the decision to move to Oakland (was it really 5 years ago?), my friend Erin made me a mix CD of songs about California. It is a testament to Erin's spectacular taste in music that the CD wasn't overly campy or kitschy (as theme mixes often are), and that I still listen to it occasionally even now. In fact, I listened to it the other day. It, along with a number of experiences I've had in the past two weeks at home in CO, has made me miss California even more.

So I thought I'd write up a little list of some of the (non-people) things I miss most about California--it should go without saying (although I suppose I'm saying it right now) that I miss the people I left behind in California.

Alright. With no further ado, here's what I'm missing most about California at present:

1) Falafel. There is one--I repeat ONE--place that sells falafel in the greater Colorado Springs metro area. What I wouldn't give for some falafel, fresh pita and minty lemonade from Holy Land right about now.
2) Produce that actually tastes like something. I had forgotten that produce, by the time it makes its way to the middle of the country, has lost both its flavor and texture, and thus everything tastes. . . .sort of mealy and watered down. I didn't really appreciate tomatoes (or most vegetables, for that matter) until I moved to California.
3) Recycling. In fact, I miss the whole Reduce/Reuse/Recycle concept. It hasn't quite made it here yet. I went to an ice cream place the other day where they gave me my scoop in a styrofoam cup. I couldn't even enjoy the ice cream because I felt so guilty about the damn cup. This is what happens when you get used to cups (and spoons) being made out of recycled materials, and knowing that if you throw it away, it WILL biodegrade.
4) Independent movie theatres and "arty" movies. Landmark cinemas, how I miss thee. And the Parkway: I miss you too. I'd pretty much kill to see something with subtitles right now. Or that starred Parker Posey. I still read the SF Chronicle's movie reviews every Friday. It's really just an exercise in masochism, because all it accomplishes is to remind me of all the movies I wish I was watching but that will never make it to Colorado, much less Colorado Springs.
5) The ocean. Water in general, I suppose. Colorado doesn't have much in the way of water. Even though I'm not a big beachy person, I miss the smell of the ocean, the sound of waves. Hell, I even miss the crazy seagulls who try to shit all over you.

But just because I don't want to sound like an ungrateful wretch, I'm gonna add one thing I've missed about Colorado that I'm happy to be near again: mountains. Big-ass, craggy, timberline-sporting mountains. Because if it doesn't have a timberline, kids, it's just not a mountain; it's a really big hill. I suspect that being born and raised at the foot of a mountain that shoots up more than 8,000 feet has made me into a mountain snob, but so it goes. For the next few weeks, I'll be trying to get my fill of mountains, while I hope and pray that in Washington D.C., it's possible to find a tomato that actually tastes like tomato, and that someone, somewhere, might be willing to compost the part that I don't manage to eat.

Port of Oakland, deconstructed

2007-07-10T18:41:00.000-07:00

When I decided that I was leaving the Bay Area, I made a list of things I wanted to make sure to do before I left. Some of the items on the list involved re-visiting old favorites; some were new things I'd always meant to do but hadn't ever gotten around to. High up on the list was taking a boat tour of the Port of Oakland. I have a deep and slightly obsessive fascination with the Port and had always wanted to go on the tour, but the part where they only run the tours during the summer on weekdays at ten in the morning made it challenging, given that whole job thing.

But with a departure date set and a more flexible work schedule made possible by temping (and my temp placement's complete adoration of me--heehee!), I was determined to go. I called for reservations, argued my way off of a waiting list, told the movers that I was sorry, but they just could not show up for my stuff on that particular morning, and cleared my work schedule--nothing was getting between me and the Port of Oakland.

You know how sometimes, you build things up in your head until there is no way they could possibly meet your inflated expectations?

Definitely not the case with the Port of Oakland boat tour.

It was fascinating and informative and beautiful and great. So great, in fact, that I found myself rejecting the advances of a very charming Romanian man (the only other person on the boat even close to my age--be warned: this is a tour that is overrun by 6 year olds in day care and 85 year old retirees) because he was trying to flirt with me while the tour guide was talking: "So, beautiful lady," he said to me, "what brings you here on this lovely day?" "I'm sorry," I replied, "I'm sure you're very nice, but I really just want to learn about the Port."

And learn I did. I learned that if you stacked the containers on a ship end to end, they would stretch 17 miles. I learned that enough containers come through the port every year to reach from Oakland to South Korea. I learned they had to deepen the estuary leading into the Port by 35 feet to be able to fit the newer Panamex container ships (and I learned that a Panamex container ship was designed to be exactly as large as possible to fit through the Panama canal). I learned that Alameda wasn't always an island, and that they dug the channel between Alameda and Oakland in the 19th century. I learned that Alameda used to be the headquarters for Skippy peanut butter and cornnuts. I learned that there is a gigantic gun hidden in one of the pylons of the Bay Bridge, in case enemy combatants in WWII ever attacked the Bay Area. And my awe and obsession with the Port is more intense than ever.

People often ask me why I'm so interested in the Port. There's a two part answer: 1) I think the Port is beautiful and enthralling. It's definitely not pretty, but there is something striking and yes, beautiful--in an urban, industrial way--about the bold lines of the cranes, the way the light catches them at sunset, the way they glow eerily amber after dark. They look like post-modern trojan horses, and it's easy for me to see how they could inspire creative flights of fancy (just ask George Lucas!) 2) Shipping has existed in a relatively unchanged way for thousands of years. We live in such a modern, fast-paced, technologically-advanced world, and yet we still depend on boats--ON BOATS--to move our goods around the world. When you think about the amount of stuff that we sell and consume every year--every day--and it all comes into and out of a Port somewhere . This amazes and humbles me every time I think about it. My only regret is that it took so long to learn more about it. For all of you left in the Bay Area, I highly HIGHLY recommend going on the boat tour. If you don't come to share my obsession, you'll at least be better situated to make fun of it, no?

Closure

2007-06-30T19:18:00.001-07:00

Honestly, the last thing I wanted to do today was blog. It's hot, I'm running on two hours of sleep and I've spent the last 13 hours cleaning, packing and moving. (Moving definitely sucks, but moving by yourself is SO much worse.) But I couldn't bear the thought that a whole month would pass without me writing anything, especially when I have tons of things I want to/should blog about: the Port of Oakland boat tour I went on last week, my run-in with a psychotic seagull earlier this week, the insanity (mostly in a good way) that has been my last week in the Bay Area, and most especially, my thoughts on leaving.

Because as soon as I finish writing this blog, I'll pack up my computer, stick it in the car with all the rest of my crap, and head out. Crazy. And sad. And still completely unfathomable. Even though I am sitting in an apartment with literally nothing in it, even though I have met the woman who is moving into my apartment tomorrow, even though I've been saying goodbye to old friends and sadly admitting the impossibility of maintaining relationships with people I just met, I still don't think my head really gets that I'm leaving Oakland--the place I've called home for 5 years--and probably won't be back as anything but a visitor for a long, long time.

I think it will probably hurt like hell when I finally realize that truth.

And then the stupid

2007-05-30T22:31:00.000-07:00

So here's the dumbest thing I've been asked to remove from the website since I started working there:

Why, you ask? Because--and this is a direct quote from the email--"he has no clothes on and thats my bad report." It's a cat. It's a FUCKING cat. And you're a 35 year old man who should really have something better to be concerned with.

Grrr. Have I mentioned how this job is making me hate people? Because it kind of is.

First the Bizarre

2007-05-29T18:20:00.001-07:00

I'm really coming to hate this job I have where I remove inappropriate content from a website. More on that in my next post. For now, I'm just gonna post this link to one of the stranger things I've been asked to remove lately. I can't help but think that the person who came up with this is well on their way to being a sociopath.

Goal-Setting

2007-05-18T21:13:00.000-07:00

I'm about to leave the Bay Area and start a new life, so it seems like as good a time as any to make some goals. So far, I just have one:

The next guy I get involved with will be physically and emotionally available. I think it will be a nice change of pace.

Drumroll Please

2007-05-01T07:53:00.000-07:00

Last summer, while suffering through the first pains of my quarterlife crisis, I complained to a friend that I felt really overwhelmed by the number of options I had to pick from to determine what I wanted my life to look like: What to do? where to live? I said that making a decision felt really scary, because by deciding you had to turn your back on all the other options, and what if I chose poorly?

He said I needed to change my perspective on decision making. He said he thought about it like swimming. When you're out in the open water trying to swim, it can be really hard to get anywhere, because you have nothing to push off of. But once you had a limit--made a decision, if you will--like a wall in a swimming pool, you could push off it and get so much further.

He's right. As much pondering and deliberating as I've done in the past few months, once I made the big decision everything else seems to be falling--easily and not at all scarily--into place.

So with no further ado, as of August of 2007, I will be starting my MFA in Film and Electronic Media at American University in Washington, D.C. They have a great documentary program, really accomplished faculty, and they threw quite a bit of money at me--so all really good things. I'm excited. I'm nervous. I'm sad to be leaving. But we can talk more about those some other time. For now, I'm just excited to finally be pushing off the side of the pool!

Who needs a drink? I do. Yes, I definitely do.

2007-04-29T16:24:00.000-07:00

After a week of worrying about falling down an open drain, my third bad thing finally happened. While driving to the REI this afternoon, I got into a car accident when a woman ran a red light and I smashed into the side of her car. The impact of the collision literally tore the whole front end off my car, and took a good chunk off the back end of hers (including her tire). I think we're both really lucky that the accident wasn't any worse, and that neither of us was injured.

The other (very small) bright side of this wretched day is that the first responder to the accident was a ridiculously hot fireman from the station around the corner. Have we discussed that I have a thing for firemen? I think if I hadn't been in complete shock, I definitely would have tried to flirt with him. My friend Abby thinks I should drop by the fire station with some baked goods and say thank you. I think this would be a good idea if 1) I owned the ingredients to make baked goods, 2) I was actually capable of making baked goods, and 3) I weren't sure that I would feel like a complete jackass doing something like that.

Oh well. Like I said, at least he was a small bright side to what has otherwise been a kind of traumatic afternoon.

I don't know what to do

2007-04-27T15:12:00.000-07:00

Large life decisions MUST be made this weekend. And I really don't know what to do.

That's really all I have to say about that.

Inappropriate?

2007-04-26T20:06:00.000-07:00

More often than not, when users of this social networking website email me and tell me that a photo is inappropriate, it is clearly, completely and indisputably inappropriate (i.e., it's a picture of a naked woman, or people having sex, or someone flipping the bird). But sometimes, the images marked inappropriate look something like this:

This one included the caption "Jesus stays at the _____."

Also in threes

2007-04-21T16:41:00.000-07:00

So I never did fall down an open drain or anything else bad, but something else has happened in threes which has left me with quite the (good kind of) dilemma:

1) Received acceptance letter from Emerson College in Boston
2) Received acceptance letter from American University in Washington, D.C.
3) Received acceptance e-mail (that I almost deleted because it was in my spam box) from Westminster University in London.

And now the part where I have to figure out where I'm going and what, exactly I'm doing. (Followed shortly be figuring out how, exactly, I'm paying for it.)

In threes

2007-04-19T17:55:00.000-07:00

My friend Jess reminded me today that things--both good and bad--tend to happen in threes. This has me a little on edge. Why, you ask?

Last night, as my friend Emily and I were driving to our weekly America's Next Top Model party, she ran out of gas right as we crested this hill. I got out of the car and pushed and she steered us into a not-so-crowded intersection where we "parked" the car while she went to go find a gas station.

Then, this afternoon at work, I accidentally got myself locked in a bathroom stall. The lock fell apart when I went to open the door, leaving me stuck in the stall. After a few minutes of frantically trying to put it back together, I started pondering whether I would rather try to climb over the top of the stall door or crawl under the bottom. (I had forgotten that I had a third option--to karate kick that door open!). Thankfully, before I was reduced to actually crawling on a nasty bathroom floor, someone came into the bathroom and helped me unlock the door.

But yeah, what with the gas and the bathroom door, I'm now a little nervous about what accident #3 will be. I've been keeping my eyes open for drains with the manhole covers missing and I'm being extra-especially careful on stairs, but you never know when bad luck is gonna getcha!

Paradox

2007-04-19T17:46:00.000-07:00

This website job is wacky, and just keeps getting wackier. Yesterday, I responded to a 13 year old user and explained that she had been flagged for telling someone to go "suck some d--k" and for calling another user a "f---ing c--t,". Then when I went to look at her profile page, I found a profile covered with cuddly pictures of puppies, kittens and other baby animals, and a self-professed love for the Disney Channel staples "Hannah Montana" and "High School Musical." How is it that someone who is--according to her tastes in movies and her interests--still a little girl be the same person who's talking about sex and calling other people words that I won't even print? Crazy. I'm thanking the heavens for not making me a teenager today--I think it must be really hard.

Say What?

2007-04-17T17:26:00.002-07:00

This is an actual message I received from a user of the website that I monitor. And yes, he is a native English speaker (from England), although you probably wouldn't guess it:

"ello erm can u or who every owns dis site plz rise the amount of friends u can have because i got max n i got ldz of other ppl who wnt 2 ad me"

I actually got an even more incoherent and cryptic message back when I replied to the above, but silly me--I forgot to save it. So much for the Queen's English--I doubt she'd understand a damn word these fools say.

Happy Birthday to Rudy

2007-04-15T18:41:00.000-07:00

Today was our dog Rudy's 17th birthday, which is pretty amazing. Even for a small dog, that's impressive, and considering he's had multiple back surgeries it's amazing he's lasted as long as he has.

To celebrate such longevity, my parents went all out. (Actually, that's not true. They really went all out last year--with a party, gifts, guests, and a cake with Rudy's picture airbrushed on to the top. This year was much more moderate.) Along with the giant birthday card, birthday treats and a new collar, the whole family--Mom, Dad, and three dogs--made a trip to the local Sonic drive through, where all the pups got to partake of their very favorite "people food" treat: Tater Tots. Yum.

Rudy puts up with the indignity of the Elmo party hat.

How can you not think this is the cutest dog ever?

Holy Crap!

2007-04-11T16:59:00.000-07:00

I returned home from my fun (if chilly) Easter vacation to find a very large white envelope—not a small, skinny envelope—with Emerson College’s logo waiting for me. Even before I opened it, I knew what it was: an acceptance letter.

Holy Crap! An acceptance letter!

It’s a crazy thing. 6 months ago, I was getting ready to leave EBASE and searching for the next job in what I presumed would be my ongoing career in the progressive non-profit world. Thank God for the woman who—in the middle of an interview—challenged me on whether that line of work was really making me happy.
Upon reflection, I had to admit that it wasn’t, that it never had, and that I’d better figure out what would.

I’m generally not much for making spur-of-the-moment decisions and acting on them. I’m more of a deliberator, and I can ponder a course of action for weeks, months (hell, even years) before I’ll feel ready to act on it.

So it was somewhat out of character that less than a week after that interview, I had decided to ignore 5 years of non-profit work experience, a year of career counseling, and possibly even my basic common sense to pursue something I’d always loved: movies. And I decided that if I was going to pursue something I loved, I wasn’t just going to be a “professional appreciator” of movies; I was going to try making them. Because I firmly believe if you’re going to take leave of common sense and un-do 5 years of work experience, you should go for the big dream, and not half-ass it.

So in a matter of weeks, I memorized 4000 vocab words, re-learned 9 years of math, took the GREs, cranked out grad school applications and harassed my former co-workers and professors to speed-write letters of recommendation. And then I waited. I talked about “if” I got into grad school, what I would do.

And now suddenly, the “if” is a “when.” Something that was only a crazy pipedream two months ago is now much more real. And now I have to face the scary tough questions: will I be good at it? Will I succeed at it? Is this the right route—the best route—to get where I want to go?

But as scary as all of those questions seem, I’m excited to get to answer them. Scary is definitely better than safe, if safe means not ever being happy in what I’m doing.

I'm dreaming of a white. . . Easter?

2007-04-10T20:13:00.000-07:00

I went home for Easter this year, to spend some time with my parents, celebrate my dog Rudy's 17th birthday, and to hang out with my uncle and his new "lady friend" who were coming to town. Behind Valentine's Day, Easter is my favorite holiday of the year (because I interpret it solely as a holiday celebrating the coming of spring--my favorite season), and I was really looking forward to spending some time in the Colorado sunshine.

One small problem with this plan: in the 9 years since I've lived at home, I had forgotten that the front range of Colorado is infamous for its dastardly shoulder season weather. While you could go practically all winter enjoying sunshine, mild temperatures and barely a flake of snow,
October and April are inevitably freezing cold and marked by blizzards.

Somewhere in the time away from home, I had forgotten how I never got to trick-or-treat without the protection of a ski jacket and hat. I had forgotten that we got more snow days in April than all the other months combined. And I had forgotten that Colorado does not, in fact, have a springtime. It goes straight from winter to summer, almost literally overnight.

A case in point: this year, it snowed all Easter weekend. When we finished Easter dinner on Sunday, it was 25 degrees outside and there was probably about an inch of snow on the grass in our yard. The following morning when I woke up--less than 24 hours later--all of the snow had melted and the temperature was creeping into the 70's.

Not exactly what I was expecting for my Easter vacation, but we still managed to have a good time.

My uncle and his "lady friend," enjoying Easter in Colorado

Our house, just prior to the heaviest of the snowfall.

This Poor Dog

2007-04-09T22:04:00.000-07:00

I think I've probably mentioned that my parents have a relatively new dog named Sammy. He's kind of a weird dog--he's completely afraid of the dark and he does this slightly creepy staring thing where he doesn't move his head, but his eyes still follow you all around the room. Jokingly, my parents always refer to him as being "a poor, pathetic thing." And there is something slightly sad about him. But overall, he's a good dog and we all love him.

I think, however, that our love could be called into question by a recent purchase my mom made. There have been some pretty cold days in the last month or two, and so my mom bought sweaters for the dogs. I always think clothes on dogs look a little goofy, but the sweater she bought for poor Sammy takes goofy to a whole new level:

This sweater my mom bought must have been made for a 1970's dog--it's all burnt sienna and brown and puke-y green colored stripes--but I doubt it would have looked good even then. It makes Sammy look like a gigantic pyschedelic caterpillar, and if people didn't think he was pathetic before, they definitely will now. I hope the weather stays nice until I have a chance to burn this horrible sweater and get him a better one.

The Upside

2007-04-03T19:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my cranky rant about the things that I really hate about job #3. So I thought today, for the sake of balance, I'd try to share some of the things I like. Actually, there's not really anything I LIKE about this job, but there are definitely things that are funny. So here are my two favorite funny things:

1) If people think an image is inappropriate, they can click on this link to report bad content and explain why they think it's inappropriate. Usually the messages we get are pretty straightforward: "You can see her boobs," "this looks like porn," "my children use this site and I don't want them seeing things like this." You get the idea. But there is a whole genre of messages I get that aren't reporting inappropriate content at all. It's people asking inane questions who apparently didn't know where else to direct the question. And so I have to weed through emails that say things like "who is this?" "Is she married?" "Do you think he'd go out with me?" and "can you please tell him that I love him!" I never respond to these emails--I just read them and laugh.

2) So here's the even funnier thing. The other kind of messages that get sent as reports of inappropriate content are people who somehow think they are actually writing to the person in the picture. I get lots of shady dudes writing messages that they presumably think are going to Pamela Anderson and Carmen Electra. They write things like: "wow u r so sexy," and "wuld u like to meet me?" But the best ever came today. It is from a woman named Wendy who apparently lives in Peru, and it was addressed to this photo of Brad Pitt.

Her message to Brad--in Spanish--follows:

"Hola brad me gustaria que vengas a peru seria bueno que tu y angelina vinieran por vacaciones es muy bonito mi pais especialmente cusco-machupichu es un paradiso te lo aseguro que si vienes no te vas a repentir cualquien informacion avisame bueno si desease este es me correo: xxxxxx@xxxxx.com ok bye y saludos a tu familia :)"

For those of you who read Spanish, you will note that, like many of the messages I receive, the spelling and punctuation leave a bit to be desired. For those of you who don't read Spanish, here's my poor attempt at translating:

Hi Brad. I'd really like for you to come to Peru, it would be great for you and Angelina to come for vacation my country is really pretty especially cusco-Machupichu it's a paradise I assure you that if you come you are not going to regret anything for information let me know if it's desired here is my email address: blah blah I pulled out her real address. Ok bye and greetings to your family.

So awesome. And yet so sad that Brad and Angelina and the whole crew won't be showing up to hang out with Wendy any time soon.

Lessons Learned

2007-04-02T20:20:00.000-07:00

Here's what I've learned so far from my job dealing with inappropriate content on the social networking website:

1) Inevitably, when men older than 30 are flagged for inappropriate behavior, it's because they're spamming. And specifically, because they're telling all the sweet young things on the site how hot they are, and asking if they'd like to be friends. (Although about half the time, what they're asking is much, much worse than that.)

2) Just like you can guarantee that the people you'll see at a nude beach are the ones you'd least like to see naked, you can also guarantee that the men who feel the need to post pictures of their penises have the least to be showing off. (Not that I condone anyone posting pictures of their penis. Or any other body parts that are regularly covered with clothing, for that matter.)

3) You really can do amazing things with Photoshop these days. In the past two days, I've seen fairly convincing "naked" shots of Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Aniston, and Angelina Jolie.

4) There are more naked pictures of Carmen Electra and Pamela Anderson than there are stars in the sky.

5) Disney's "High School Musical" is quite possible THE most annoying TV movie ever made. (And considering it's up against every TV movie that's ever been shown on Lifetime, I'd say that's quite an accomplishment.)

6) There are more people out there upset about a video of two hipster boys making out to emo music than there are people upset about the naked photos of Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie. (I personally choose to be upset by the emo music--not the making out. I can't stand all these whiny hipsters crying about their feelings.)

7) I really need to think about a different job. This one makes me cranky.

If Children Really Are Our Future, Then We're Completely F***ed

2007-03-25T18:42:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know. It's a pessimistic title. But in the last two weeks, my faith in humanity (especially that portion of humanity that is younger than me) has been severely eroded.

You see, I just recently started yet another random part time job, to complement the work with the bitchy blond girls (who now seem more dumb and annoying than actually bitchy) and the occasional temp gig I pick up. My new part-time job is working for a social networking website, kind of like MySpace but not. I'm not going to name names.

My job is two-fold. First, I remove images and videos that are inappropriate (i.e., pornographic, or containing nudity, excessive violence, or foul language). Secondly, I respond to users who want to know why they've been flagged for inappropriate behavior. So basically, I look up all the things they've been flagged for and summarize for them why they were flagged.

I've only been doing this for two weeks, and I am already completely appalled and horrified. These kids (because I'm sure the average age of the site can't be more than 15 or 16) are so mean to each other. They gang up on each other. They say horrible, nasty things to each other. I've never seen so much swearing, and sexually explicit (and often violent) language, and racial slurs, and straight out hate speech.

And then there's the spelling and grammar. If the above weren't appalling enough, then I'm also faced with the fact that apparently, no one under the age of 20 knows how to spell, or how to use a comma or a period, or voice a thought that is even remotely coherent. And here I had hoped that the education system wasn't as defunct as I feared. . . .

When I was in school, we studied political philosophy. I don't remember much about it, honestly, but I remember having to read Thomas Hobbes. I always thought that Thomas Hobbes seemed like such a gloomy pessimist--the premise of his book The Leviathan is, after all, that men are inherently brutish and bent on destroying one another. That seemed kind of bleak when I was 20 years old.

But now, after only 2 weeks of managing inappropriate user content, I think Thomas Hobbes nailed it on the head. If the kids on this website are any indication, then the life of man (and woman) is indeed "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

Violent Tendencies, Manifesting as Dreams

2007-03-13T19:31:00.000-07:00

I had a dream last night about getting into a full-on bitch fight with one of the blond girls from my office. There was slapping and hair-pulling (and she was doing a lot of crying) and then I got her into a headlock. Oh, and we were in an airport and Lindsay Lohan (pre-needing rehab LiLo, with red hair and a little bit of meat on her bones) was there too.

I'm pretty clear on what this all means. The blond girl in the dream is the queen bitch blond girl from my office. All of the rest of them I have decided are really nothing more than benignly annoying but mostly nice, but this one is trouble. She gives me this fakey-fake smile while simultaneously shooting daggers with her eyes, and she always has some sort of passive-agressively snotty comment for me. Who knows what I ever did that's got her panties all up in a twist, but it ever came down to an actual fight, I would definitely win. And it wouldn't be because I was pulling her hair.

Angel Island

2007-03-12T22:16:00.000-07:00

Because it would be completely criminal not to take advantage of the kind of weather we're having here in the Bay Area, I convinced my friend Helen that we were both in need of a little day trip to my favorite (not so touristy) tourist spot in the whole area: Angel Island.

The island has had quite a history, serving as the "Ellis Island of the West" for incoming Chinese immigrants in the early 1900's, holding people while immigration officials determined whether they had a legitimate right to enter the country. Later it was used as a processing center of German and Japanese prisoners of war during World War II.

Besides being historically interesting, the island is also just plain gorgeous! If you hike to the top of the island's Mt. Livermore on a clear day (as we did), you have an amazing 360 degree view of the Bay Area. While at the top, Helen and I took the time to enjoy a fantastic picnic lunch, complete with a bottle of red wine. We felt a little sheepish about boozing it up in the middle of a hike until the guys sitting next to us busted out their own bottle of wine. And a bottle tequila which they had already mixed with Margarita mix. And 4 boxes of girl Scout cookies. No water, and no real food of any kind, but they were definitely ready to drink. At least Helen and I managed to cover all of the food groups and brought water!

Enduring Love for the Bay Area, or Why Global Warming's Not So Bad

2007-03-09T18:18:00.000-08:00

I know I shouldn't say that. Global warming is terrible, but let's just discuss for a moment, the following:

1) It is March 9th.
2) If I look out my window, I can see (and smell) cherry blossom trees, daffodils and tulips in bloom.
3) The temperature for the next 7 days will be 67, 72, 75, 72, 76, 78 and 75. With no rain. (And for anyone who suffered through the two straight months of rain last year, you know why I think this is awesome.)

I can't tell you how happy I am not to be stuck in ice storms or blizzards or in places where the windchill might still drop the temperature below zero. I can't tell you how happy I am that I live in a place that is already in the middle of spring. When it's June and it's unusually hot and we haven't gotten enough water and everything's setting on fire, I will be sad. But for right now, all I want to do (and all I plan to do) is spend as much time outside in it as is humanly possible. Seriously. I might start camping out on my balcony.

Holy Crap

2007-03-02T12:12:00.000-08:00

Last night, something not that unusual for the Bay Area happened: we had an earthquake. We live on a fault line, so that's really not that unexpected. Apparently, there are earthquakes practically every day; it's just rare (every few months or so) that one is big enough that you actually feel it.

So here's why last night's earthquake freaks me out:

A) It's the second one I've felt in a little more than a week.

B) It was pretty big.

Now, it wasn't huge. No one was injured, and there was no major property damage reported. But it lasted longer than any earthquake I've felt yet--a good 15 seconds, while most just last a second or two--and it was strong enough that it actually knocked a picture off my wall.

I know earthquakes aren't like hurricanes or blizzards. It's not like you can see them coming. It's not like there are signs that one is approaching. I know that more frequent small earthquakes does not necessarily mean that a big one is coming. But it still gave me pause. Because a big one is coming, eventually. We all know that. And I just hope to hell I'm either not here, or ready, when it does.

I had a friend who was the earthquake safety manager (or some such title--I don't quite remember) for her floor at work. She had a big checklist of necessary supplies that she had to make sure they had in case the big one hit. One of the supplies was giant-sized industrial strength garbage bags. When I asked her what those were for, she told me they were for wrapping up dead bodies so they wouldn't rot in the open and contaminate the air. Shit. I'm not even kidding about that.

Hey Carrie, want to send me that list of earthquake supplies? Might be time to stock up. And I can't tell you how much I'm kicking myself for never watching the earthquake safety video that was a permanent part of my first apartment in Oakland--it was the only video in the whole apartment and had been for years. And not a single one of us watched the damn thing.

What's dorkier?

2007-02-24T18:46:00.000-08:00

In an effort to own my inner dork, I offer this story:

From 8th grade through 12th grade, I annually attended the Colorado Mathematical Olympiad. Math geeks from all over the state showed up to sit in a room for 4 hours and attempt to answer 6 ridiculously hard math problems. They were so hard that if you managed to get even one right, or you showed your work and they thought you were on the right track to an answer, it was possible that you could swing an honorable mention in the awards ceremony.

I admit that going to the Math Olympiad is dorky. But how's this for dorkier? In all the years I attended, I never even came close to being able to answer any of the questions. I would play at answering them, but really, I didn't know what the hell I was doing. So my senior year, after brief attempts to work out answers to the questions, I decided instead to while away the rest of the test time constructing poems about how hard the math problems were, and why.

Happily, this labor of artistic love was recognized and rewarded by the Olympiad judges when they awarded me the 1997 prize for best literary achievement on the math test.

And just to show how little these die-hard math geeks value artistic vision and inspiration, while the winners of the math test received really nice graphing calculators and scholarships, I won a cheapo pen and a notepad of paper. No wonder the expression is starving artists, not starving mathematicians.

A Public Service Announcement

2007-02-16T22:49:00.000-08:00

I hope I'm not the only one who didn't already know this, but apparently starting this year, Daylight Savings Time is going to be about a month longer. It seems that two years ago, Congress passed a law (a measure? a decree? a something.) that says we'll be springing ahead on the second Sunday of March and springing back the first Sunday in November, instead of springing in April and falling in October.

I am very excited about this, as it means it'll be getting lighter sooner and staying light longer. I don't understand why Congress didn't do this years ago, and as long as we're on it, I don't understand why we ever go off Daylight savings at all. What is the point of ever being in a period of time that should rightfully be called Daylight wastings?

But this springing forward thing is not all fun and games and light and joy, I'll have you know. According to the IT people at my new job's headquarters, this could be the Y2K problem of 2007--except, you know, that maybe this time it won't just be a bunch of hype about computers exploding because they can't deal with rolling over from 99 to 00. The IT people are worried, and I would say rightfully so, because computer programs are set to spring and fall automatically in April and October, not March and November!

They are especially fearful of the havoc that will be wrought by the Calendar function in Microsoft Outlook. There is apparently a distinct possibility that if people aren't careful, for those three weeks everyone in America could be showing up for all of their previously scheduled appointments and conference calls an hour late. Or early. Or something. This could destroy our economy. It is not to be taken lightly. You must be prepared. Make sure to double check the time of your appointments. Or better yet, start writing them down. On paper. With a pen. It's crazy, but it just might save us all.

Weirdest. Valentine's Day. Ever.

2007-02-14T22:49:00.000-08:00

Have no fear kids. Despite the rough start my Valentine's Day got off to (damn blond girls and their damn flower-sending boyfriends), as always, it turned out to be a great day.

So what exactly did I get up to that made my Valentine's Day so great?

I went to a MASS PILLOWFIGHT.

Yeah, you read that right. Josh and his friends Jessica, Dina and Emily and I went to a mass pillowfight in downtown San Francisco last night, with at least 500 other people. As I drank coffee and waited for my friends in the hour leading up to the fight, I watched as hipsters bearing pillows streamed into the Financial District--and investment bankers wearing suits eyed them with fear and moved quickly away.

And rightfully so, because at 6:00 on the nose, the take-no-prisoners pillowfighting began in earnest. Everywhere you looked, people were swinging pillows. Some wore costumes. Some wore helmets. Some wore their pajamas. One guy with Braveheart-style facepaint let out a large growl everytime he tried to hit me with his pillow.

Cheers of delight went out as one-by-one, pillows exploded and released their feathers into the night air, for it was surely the closest San Francisco will ever get to anything that looks like a blizzard.

The fight went on for more than hour. We, however, did not last that long. After 30 minutes of whacking people with pillows, we were tired, dizzy and in need of food. So you know what's almost as awesome as having a pillow fight in public? Leaving the pillow fight and trying to look like a group of respectable adults while covered in feathers and toting pillows around under your arms. I've gotta say: it kind of undermines any attempts you make to be perceived as mature.

So we trudged through the Financial District to Chinatown, in search of Chinese food from the brightest, most fluorescent and tacky-looking restaurant we could find. Once there, we ordered salt and pepper squid (yum) and something called "bean sprouts with salty fish." Now, you know you've ordered well when they waitress feels the need to say "Are you sure? Do you even know what salty fish is?" Apparently she didn't think the white kids could take it, but after a moment of uncertainty, we went ahead with the salty fish, and lived to tell the tale. (It was actually very good. And, not so surprisngly, rather salty.)

We rounded out the night with gelato (from a store that had at least 15 different flavors of chocolate gelato. That's my kind of store). Overall, it was a pretty good night. In fact, the only thing I can think of that would have made it better would have been a mass nap before the pillow fight. We were, after all, already carrying pillows.

Oh, and one last thing. My parents know I love Valentine's Day, and they support my love for the holiday. My parents have also always been known for the wierd and random things they like to send me in the mail. (Does anyone else remember the dancing Snoopy doll wearing the sorcerer's outfit?) These two things came together perfectly this year, when the UPS man delivered an enormous box to me from my parents. I opened it to find that they had sent me a 3 and a half foot long stuffed dog, with "I love you this much!" embroidered on his side.

If the only Valentine you're gonna get is going to be from your parents, then at least it should be a really good one. Good work, mom and dad!

The pictures of the pillowfight are courtesy of Scott Beale/Laughing Squid.

Also, here's a link to the little blurb in the Chronicle about the pillowfight.

That's Disgusting

2007-02-14T22:46:00.000-08:00

What was the first thing I read on MSNBC this morning?

This article about how a pregnancy counseling center asked students to share a piece of chewed gum to demonstrate how STDs are spread.

Dude--don't they know that they might have just given an entire sex-ed class mono?

My Valentine's Day Post

2007-02-13T22:40:00.000-08:00

Normally, I love Valentine's Day. But I'm just generally kind of grumpy this week and not yet in the mood to love Valentine's Day (26 years of being single and without a Valentine other than your parents will eventually wear you down), so you'll have to forgive my lack of enthusiasm about a holiday so steadfastly focused (whether it needs to be or not) on romantic love. It's early still, though, so I'm hoping I'll warm up to it.

Here's what I've got: my friend Sophie sent me the link to a blog called Post Secret, which has a bunch of postcards people have sent in about Valentine's Day. Some of them are funny. Some of them are sad. Most of them I could totally relate to, so I'm sharing it with you.

New Job

2007-02-12T20:05:00.000-08:00

Today was my first day at my new, long-term temp gig. (It's keeping me relatively gainfully employed until the end of May.) I'm not going to name names, but I'm helping a large health-oriented non-profit plan a big fundraising event. Here are a few observations about my new place of employment.

1) Because this is a health-oriented organization, there is a chart on one wall where people are supposed to keep track of how much exercise they get. Does the person who fills their line of the chart first get a prize? I haven't discovered yet. If they do, and they allow temps to play, I'm gonna kick some serious butt.

2) Again, because this is a health-oriented organization, there are signs up everywhere about healthy snack choices you can make, ways to beat fatigue without turning to caffeine, and positive ways to deal with stress. I find this a little odd. Whose job was it, I wonder, to find these signs and post them? Do they switch them up, or have these same signs been up for years?

3) In an effort to promote health and wellness amongst the staff, someone keeps a supply of healthy snacks on hand, like fresh fruit and air-popped popcorn. This may be the only office job I ever have where I don't end up worrying that I'll gain weight from all the candy, donuts and birthday cake. A dollar says that when these people have breakfast meetings, someone brings in whole-grain cereal and low-fat milk, not muffins and croissants.

4) Of the staff of 15 people or so, ALL of them are women. I know that there is a disproportionately high number of women who end up in the non-profit field, but I still find this a bit strange. Not a single guy? In any position?

5) Of the women on staff, about half are older women who are clearly married (or partnered up) with kids. And then the other half are all hot, skinny, blond girls. And then one angry-looking hipster girl with an asymetrical haircut and hot pink "highlights." I can't help but wonder how she feels about working in an office of Barbie dolls, because I personally find it a bit disconcerting. They all seem nice but a little too peppy for me. (I wonder if they did Team in Training?) And I can't tell any of them apart. Oh, and they're bringing up all sorts of feelings of inadequacy in me. I suspect that working around a million skinny hot blond chicks will do that to you.

So that's Day 1. Will I unravel the mysteries of the office? Who has a secret stash of M & Ms? What's the prize for getting the most exercise, and how many people on staff are lying about it? And most importantly, where are they hiding all the men and normal-looking brunettes and red-heads?

So Cute

2007-02-11T21:23:00.000-08:00

I normally don't post blogs about things I think are cute. But my mom just sent me this picture of our puppies, and they're way, way too adorable not to want to show off.

This is Casey, Sammy and Rudy (who's turning 17 in April--I can't imagine what kind of party will top last year!)

For men: some guidelines for being a good lead

2007-02-08T17:29:00.000-08:00

I have been taking tango classes fairly regulary for several months now. And from those several months' experience, I have a few observations:

Gentlemen: I understand that having to lead kind of sucks. Ultimately, you are responsible for whether or not we look like crap on the dance floor, and I am really just following along. I can see that there's some pressure in constantly having to figure out what we're going to do next.

But here's the thing. If I were to compare the thousands of years of oppression and second-class citizen status that women have suffered to you having to decide what we're doing on the dance floor, it's obvious who got the worse end of the deal.

So suck it up and learn how to lead already. Take a cue from our president and be a "decider." Your hand is strategically located on my back so you can push me around a little bit, and let me know what it is you want me to do. Because I'm not a mind reader. I don't just magically know what step you want to do next, and I'm really tired of apologizing for the times I don't do what you're doing because I had absolutely no idea what it was you were going to do.

Also, remember that you're the one who's supposed to be steering. Generally, I'm the one going backwards, and I can't see what we may or may not be about to run into. So it's your job to keep us both from running into anything--please don't just plow ahead into that other couple because they happen to be where you were planning on leading me. Just lead me somewhere else instead.

And while I am sure you find it fun to sway back and forth and then spin me around, doing that isn't teaching either of us a damn thing about floorcraft or the actual tango steps. I got my fill of swaying and spinning at my prom. Now, I am actually trying to learn something and I would appreciate if you could at least attempt some tango steps, even if they're very basic ones.

One last thing. I know that I am tall. And I realize that often means I'm taller than you, and we're dancing in a fairly close embrace. That still does not make it acceptable for you to stare at my chest while we dance. If you do it again, I will slap you.

Now, with those guidelines, I know we'll have a lovely time dancing the tango.

To Do List

2007-02-04T22:14:00.000-08:00

My to do list for the weekend:

Teach a white guy how to salsa. Check.

Play tourguide to my friend Sejal who very spontaneously showed up in town. Check.

Enjoy the unseasonably warm and dry and sunshine-y weather. Check.

Get ignored by Seamus O'Malley, the taciturn bartender at Johnny Foleys. Check. (Yeah. I totally made up that name for him.)

Make my obligatory Irish friend of the week. Check.

Kick ass on the GRE's. Check and Double Check.

All around, I'd say it was a very productive weekend.

I always knew clowns were scary. . .

2007-02-01T14:16:00.000-08:00

I'm taking the GRE on Saturday, and I've been very methodically working my way through one of those GRE prep books so that I don't mess it up completely. Near the end of the book, they have a list of the 300 words that most often end up on the GRE, along with definitions and a sentence using the word, so you have the context. Here is my personal favorite:

ENGENDER: To Produce, cause, or bring about

His fear and hatred of clowns was ENGENDERED when he witnessed the death of his father at the hands of a clown.

WHAT? What the hell kind of circus has this GRE sentence-writer been going to?

Blogging as procrastination

2007-01-28T20:51:00.000-08:00

I know, I know. It's been too long. When even my parents start complaining about having to look at the same craigslist blog post for almost a month, I know it's time to stop being lazy and start blogging. And it helps that I have tons of other things that I should be doing. So of course I'd rather blog.

And it's not like I haven't had things to blog about. There's been lots to blog about: funny, strange people I've met, crazy unfoldings in my life path, major life decisions, etc.

So with no further ado, some highlights of the last month:

1) My friends Darren and Miranda took me to the Alley, got me super drunk and managed to get me to sing, by myself, in public. Twice. Anyone who knows me well can tell you that at the top of the list of things I am terrified to do is sing in public by myself. So the fact that I did it twice is an indication of just how drunk I was. And you know how they say that the anticipation of the scary thing is worse than the actual thing? It's a load of crap. The singing was scary, and not just for the people who had to listen. That will not be happening ever again.

2) Met a guy in a bar named Sean (from now on, he'll be referenced as Crazy Sean). Crazy Sean knows every bartender and every bar regular in every dive bar in Oakland, he has nothing but beer and cat food in his kitchen (literally. Not even condiments), and he thinks it'll be fun for us to go hang-gliding and then get grills from the Gold Teeth Master on Broadway in downtown Oakland. I'm looking forward to it.

3) I've decided that I'm done with the progressive non-profit/activist world (at least as a profession), because frankly, I've never really enjoyed it and I think I got into it for the wrong reasons. Some people take jobs they hate because they feel they have to make money. I think I've been taking jobs I hate because of white guilt and a misguided notion that I could and should save the world. The outcome is the same though--being stuck and miserable in a job I don't enjoy, unable and unwilling to envision a future that I could be happy with. And that's really no good--life is too short not to enjoy it.

4) So now that I've sunk 5 years into progressive activist work, what do I see myself doing? Um, not entirely sure yet. But it will involve pursuing something I love--writing, movies, travel--or some combination thereof. Maybe I'll make movies. Maybe I'll write about other people's movies. Maybe I'll take videos of other people traveling. I don't know. But I'm already excited about it. And that's something I haven't been able to say about work in a very long time.

5) Started doing temp work this past week. Wow. Being a receptionist is BO-RING. But heck, it pays the bills while I figure out what's next, so it'll do.

6) Met an Irishman named Peter at a football-watching party last weekend. He was visiting SF for a few days before continuing his world travels. As I was not yet working, I convinced him to let me show him my perfect SF day: the Exploratorium (this has been on my agenda with every guy I've dated and friend I've made in the last two years, and finally it got fulfilled!), the Golden Gate Bridge, Baker Beach at sunset, the Mission for burritos, a movie and a bar. Perfect. And I think Peter had a good time too. :-)

7) I've seen something like 7 movies in the theatre in the last 3 weeks. (It's Oscar time and I've got to get caught up!) Most of them have been fantastic, but also extremely violent. Seriously, I wish I'd been keeping a body count. What have I seen, you ask?
--Pan's Labyrinth
--Letters from Iwo Jima
--Children of Men
--The Last King of Scotland
--Volver
--The Good Shepherd
--Little Children

While I could rave about almost all of them (with the exception of The Good Shepherd, which I just wasn't in to), I'm giving a big thumbs up to Volver and Pan's Labyrinth. See them. They were amazing: resonant and beautifully made.

Et c'est tout, je crois. That's all I've got for the month of January. Sorry for the long delay, and I'll try to be better in the future.

Seen on "Best of. . . Craigslist"

2007-01-04T14:05:00.000-08:00

This is why I love the Bay Area, Love BART, love craigslist and have a blog about awkward and funny things:

BART 24th-W. Oakland. You threw up on my dog. - w4m
Date: 2006-11-26, 4:35PM PST

I was hiding my new mutt puppy (Sam) in a very large bag. You got on at 24th/Mission reeking of stale booze. You sat next to me. You suddenly grabbed the bag containing Sam and vomited into it. Kudos on not dirtying the train, but I just spent the last hour desanitizing my dog with doggy shampoo. Thanks for the best BART ride of my life.

Search words

2006-12-26T18:09:00.000-08:00

I have a site meter on my blog, which lets me keep track of how many people are looking at my blog. It also tracks all sorts of other information, like where the people who looked at my blog are, whether they use a Mac or a PC, and who their Internet Service Provider is. But one of the best things the site meter keeps track of is how people found my blog--whether they just typed in the address or if they found it through some sort of search, and if so, what words they used for the search.

This has been very educational. The blogs I wrote about IPod Dater and Mobile Alibi have apparently brought in quite a few blog readers who searched for those terms. But there have been some more unusual search terms that have somehow brought people to my blog:

"Claire in the Big City"

"Covered in Tumbleweeds"

And, my personal favorite search so far: "I hate hanging out with middle aged people"

I have no recollection of trashing middle aged people in my blog, so I'm a little puzzled how exactly searching for that would lead you to me, but there it is. I hope this middle-aged person hater enjoyed my blog, or at the very least, is now writing a blog of his or her own called "I Hate Hanging Out With People Who Are Either Middle Aged Or Embrace the Awkward." That would be pretty sweet.

Tumblin' Along With the Tumblin' Tumbleweed

2006-12-22T20:26:00.000-08:00

As bad as the blizzard that hit Colorado on Wednesday was, the worst--or at least strangest--aspect of the storm was in Pueblo, CO, where people's homes and cars were completely covered by tumbleweeds. Some folks were literally trapped inside their homes because of the massive accumulation of tumbleweeds outside their doors.

Now don't get me wrong. In Pueblo, people were also struggling with snow and ice, but there were also the flying tumbleweeds to contend with. Apparently, when the blizzard's wind picked up, it was launching tumbleweeds all over the place and they were blocking roads, accumulating against fences and cars and buildings and gnereally making a big pain in the ass for the good people of Pueblo.

Fortunately, now that it has stopped snowing, the tumbleweed problem is fairly easy to handle. According to the news, people are just setting them on fire and watching them burn.

And just because I know this sounds odd enough that I have to think you might not believe me, I found some pictures to prove it:

Welcome Home

2006-12-21T16:28:00.000-08:00

So I'm home in Colorado for the holidays right now. Within 12 hours of my arrival in the state, nearly a foot of snow was dumped on Colorado Springs (with even more in Denver and other parts of the state) in what has been called one of the 5 worst blizzards of all time. It was so bad that Denver International Airport is SHUT DOWN, both the North-South and East-West freeways in the state have been completely closed, and Governor Owens has declared a state of emergency and called in the National Guard to help rescue and evacuate people stuck in their cars.

While it'll be nice to have a white CHristmas (assuming, that is, that any of it lasts until Monday) it has reinforced for me how much I don't really care for snow. I certainly don't care for snow enough to need to have some in the winter. I definitely don't care for snow enough to want to move back to a place like Colorado (or Boston) just to see it. Rainy and (semi-)cold is crappy, but I can accept it as a substitute for snow any day.

Also, I just want to note that my bad flight karma has finally (apparently--knock on some serious wood) broken. For the first time in years, I am not the person stranded in the airport without a flight home. And while I really feel terrible for all the people who are stranded and might not make it home for the holidays, I am grateful that for once, I--along with my luggage--safely made it home. And on time, no less.

Also, just a side note: my parents adopted yet another dog last year. His name is Sammy. He's cute enough, I guess, although kind of lacking in personality. The only thing of note about him is that he is afraid of the dark. He will literally not go outside into the yard after the sun sets. If the rest of the family goes out into the guest house (yeah, there's a guest house. I know it sounds pretentious) to watch movies, he will not follow. If he has to pee, he just won't. He'll hold it until daylight. Apparently, the dog has quite the capacity for holding it.

A pre-holiday weekend rundown

2006-12-18T10:53:00.000-08:00

1) Always check the name of the bar before you go in and buy yourself a drink. This way, if you're not actually at the bar where you said you'd meet your friend, you don't have to either abandon a perfectly good beer when you leave to go to the correct bar, or pound down a Fat Tire in 30 seconds flat. That's kind of rough.

2) Red Velour Pants Suit? (On a man, no less.) Never a good going-out option, even if it is December.

3) Even if you suck at pool, it's still possible to win. Just hope the person you're playing scratches when they try to sink the 8-ball. Then talk shit the rest of the night like you really schooled them, despite the fact that 5 of your balls were still on the table when he scratched.

4) Chicken and Waffles? Always good. Chicken and Waffles at 3 in the morning? A gift from god.

5) If you're going to hang out in Jack London Square at 3 in the morning, be prepared to be the worst dressed people there.

6) The holiday tradition continues: get really dressed up, pretend to be swanky, then go to a posh bar and try to fit in. (While making fun of the midwestern tourists who clearly don't fit in!)

7) Even better: go to some really sketchy hole-in-the-wall place for dinner and watch people stare at you. (This year we went to Shalimar--an Indian joint in the 'Loin, and yeah, it was sketchy. Really good food, though. I highly recommend the eggplant.)

8) The Redwood Room: Where apparently it's acceptable for unattractive middle-aged people to make out and grope each other on a couch in the middle of the lobby.

9) If your waitress who looks like Natalie Maines doesn't want to get you "berry juice," don't push it. She'll hate you so much she actually trades you to a different waitress.

10) $600 on New Year's Eve at the Redwood Room will get you "a table for up to 5 people, a bottle of champagne, and admission to the party. It's a really good deal."

11) If you're looking for a good time, bring along the guy who's willing to bust out the greatest hits of the white man's dance repertoire (despite the fact that he was not white himself). He was using moves I've never even seen before, like one I'll call "the jump-rope."

12) Finally, tye-dyed pants are never never never acceptable. Especially in a place as pretentious as the Redwood room.

Seen on the walk to the post office today

2006-12-15T22:00:00.000-08:00

Tango

2006-12-13T22:08:00.000-08:00

I just came back from my first post-Argentina tango lesson. I learned a fun new fact: while being in Buenos Aires definitely makes learning tango fun, tango is still fun even when you are no longer in Buenos Aires. It was really great; I wanted to keep dancing and learning new steps all night. And I actually remembered what I had learned in BA, still managed not to step on toes or full-out trip and fall on my face, and I'm slowly but surely learning how to let the guy lead. When one of my tango partners started mixing up the steps a little, I actually was able to roll with it. I think we even had moments where we almost looked graceful and like we knew what we were doing. Awesome. I will definitely be keeping this up. If anyone else is interested in joining me, it's 7:00 pm on Wednesdays, at the Lake Merritt Dance Center .

(Belated) Weekend Update

2006-12-10T21:30:00.000-08:00

Sorry kids--this post isn't actually about this weekend, but rather, about last weekend. I meant to get around to blogging it, but laziness and busy-ness kept me away. Still, it was random and strange enough that it deserves to be blogged. So here goes:

My friend Marcos was celebrating his 26th birthday (oh. . . .they grow up so fast!) last weekend, and since I've bailed on the last few throw-down shindigs he's had, I knew I needed to do more than just make an appearance. I needed to bring my game face. And boy did I pick the night to do it!

Things started with dinner, and cryptic whisperings between Marcos' other roommates about the rest of the evening's plans. We then walked to a club a few blocks away called Asia SF, which is best known for being a. . . wait for it. . . .

Tranny Bar.

Yup. Men dressed up as really hot women putting on quite the dance show. We spent most of our time on the lower level, dancing with a combination of transvestites and bachelorettes. (Seems Asia SF is also the place for bachelorette parties.)

After Asia SF, we got in a cab and hit our next stop of the night: a tranny Karaoke bar called Divas. This is where the night got interesting. The sight of a 6'6" man wearing platform heels and a leopard print evening gown, belting out "Total Eclipse of the Heart"--in Spanish, no less--is one that's gonna stick with you for a while. I think my life might be changed forever.

Anyway, the party rolled on into the wee hours (as it has a tendency to do when Marcos is involved. Witness my 8 hour long house-warming party in March as proof) and I think the birthday boy had a pretty good time. I know I definitely did.

Chemistry

2006-12-09T10:35:00.000-08:00

Recently, some friends and I were discussing our worst first dates. It occurred to me that I don't actually have a worst first date story--I've never been on a really bad first date. Now don't get me wrong, they haven't all been fantastic, but the worst I can say is that the guy was nice but we didn't really connect. No horror stories. Nothing more awkward than running out of things to say and neither of us being that interested in what the other person wanted to talk about.

In fact, as I expand the pool to consider all the dates I've ever been on, very few of them have been bad. I can actually only think of two, and both of those were totally my fault.

This is not to say that every date I've been on has led to happily-ever-after. That's not true--certainly not in the long-term, and not even in the stort-term. (Obviously, or I wouldn't still be going on damn dates.) It's just to say that chemistry and attraction are funny things. It's funny and strange and a little mysterious how you can go on a date, and have it be a perfectly good date, with someone who is smart and funny and attractive, and not feel even remotely inclined to hang out with them again. And the fact that possessing good qualities like being smart and funny and attractive doesn't necessarily equal attraction and chemistry makes it even more mysterious when it suddenly does.

I once dated a guy who was getting his PhD by studying online dating. More specifically, he was studying how (or really, if. Or why) online attraction translated into real life attraction. We met online, and the chemistry we had in real life was both immediate and intense. But that was a total crapshoot--who the hell knows why? He was trying to discover if there was a way to determine a couple's real-life success based on how they had interacted online, or what had intially attracted them to each other online. I often wonder if he realizes that that's the 10 million dollar question of dating--is there a way to know that this other person and I are going to hit it off and work out in the long-run?

For now, there's no way to know. For now, we're left with the mystery of why we sometimes don't work with the smart, attractive guy but totally hit it off with the one who's clearly a trainwreck. For now, it's a little bit like trying on jeans. The number on the tag says that the jeans should work, but you still have to try on a hell of a lot of pairs to find one that really fits.

Genius

2006-12-05T23:23:00.000-08:00

The link to the site Instructables was left in a comment on my blog recently. It's basically a site where people document how they made something. There was also a special link to this project, a cosahedron made out of pecan pie.
As you can see, it's pretty awesome. But what is even more awesome is the amount of work--and mechanical know-how and precision--that went into making it.

I don't know whether to be admiring or horrified that there are people out there with this much time they're willing to dedicate to building structures out of pie.

Argentina: Favorite Things Part 3

2006-12-04T23:21:00.000-08:00

I definitely need to blog about my weekend (which was truly bizarre), but first, one more post about Argentina. The one thing my friend Sejal was insistent that we do before we could leave the country was take tango lessons. We were we all pretty excited about doing that when we were still in the States and it was just a funny idea; however, everyone's enthusiasm (except Sejal's) had severely waned by the time we actually got around to taking the lessons.

Nevertheless, Sejal dragged us all to the Academy of Tango where Rosalinda the Tango Teacher tried to teach us the basics. We all did pretty well, and I think we were even feeling like pretty hot shit until we looked up and saw the students in the advanced class, spinning and dipping and wrapping their legs around each other like they were playing a serious game of Twister.

Me and Rosalinda the Tango Teacher

I don't know that I'll ever get to that level (although I'm thinking about keeping up the lessons here in the Bay Area), but I felt pretty good that I managed to let the guy lead, didn't step on anyone's toes and never once was at risk of tripping and falling on my face. I think that's about as good as it gets.

See? I'm not stepping on his feet!

And it helps that we all looked hot, too. A little overdressed (OK--a lot) compared to our tango classmates, but I like to think it helped my dancing skills.

This is Jeff, the middle-aged close talker from Mill Valley.

4 Hot Women and a Tango Teacher

Ridiculous levels of inefficiency

2006-11-30T16:51:00.000-08:00

Today I experienced something that made me (if only for a moment) re-think my opposition to privatization. I attempted to pick up my mail from the post office.

You see, I've been on vacation, so I had the post office hold my mail for me. And knowing that I have a pretty small mailbox and that my postman already has a disposition to mangle my magazines, bills and Netflix envelopes when he attempts to squash them into said very small mailbox, I elected to just pick up my two weeks of mail, instead of having it all delivered to me when I got back.

I did not realize when I made this decision to pick up my mail that it would take me nearly 3 hours, and trips to 4--yes 4--different post offices. I started with the post office nearest my house. (It seemed like a logical place for them to hold my mail.) They said they didn't hold mail there, and that I needed to go to the main office in West Oakland. When I arrived at the main office, they told me they didn't handle mail from my zip code and I needed to go to the Downtown Oakland office. After waiting in three separate lines at that office, I was told that they didn't handle my zip code either and that I should go back to the one in my neighborhood. When I pointed out that that was, in fact, where I had started out, the clerk looked confused, fumbled through two handbooks of postal regulations before she suggested--suggested, because very clearly she had no idea where my mail should have gone--that I try another, smaller post office in West Oakland.

Thankfully, after only 20 minutes of listening to one postal clerk patiently explain to a customer why they didn't sell 37 cent stamps anymore, I was able to explain my situation and finally get my mail. I know it's sacrilege, but I couldn't help but think that if Bill Gates or even Rupert Murdoch were running the US Postal Service, they probably would have known where my mail was and would have found it much much quicker. As it is, I'm thinking I'm gonna forgo holiday cards this year. I'd hate to stand in line for stamps only to find out that they don't actually sell them at that branch.

Argentina: Favorite Things Part 2

2006-11-29T21:33:00.000-08:00

So I want to talk more about yummy food. And yummy wine also. Seriously, the food and wine were so good that they merit multiple blog posts.

Argentina is known for its beef, and rightfully so. I took it upon myself to eat beef at least once a day (and sometimes twice!) while we were there, in search of the perfect steak. I discovered it, paired with a nice 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon, at the Ruca Malen vineyard in Mendoza.

This is a picture of me with the best steak I've ever had in my life. See how happy I look! While eating at the vineyard, I also got to experience a tower made of chopped beets and covered with a dusting of parmesan cheese (actually kind of gross, but paired with a really amazing 2004 Malbec--I brought a bottle back that's just begging to be opened) and some sort of flan made of dulce de leche. Now I don't like dulce de leche because it's too sweet. And I have the sweet tooth of champions, so I feel like that's really saying something. I also don't like flan (because the texture is yucky), but I would happily continue to eat this flan for every dessert for the rest of my life if they would let me. It was that good.

Sejal and the beet tower

Gorgeous

2006-11-27T21:28:00.000-08:00

While my friends were most excited about going to Buenos Aires (from here on known as BA), I was more excited about Bariloche, a Northern Patagonia town in the lake district of Argentina, and Mendoza, in the wine country of Argentina, located at the foot of the Argentine side of the Andes.

Neither disappointed. Mendoza looked and felt remarkably like home, with its dry climate, craggy mountains, and lack of vegetation (other than grape vines, of course).

We took the opportunity to go white water rafting on the Rio Mendoza while we were there. And by white water rafting, I really mean brown water. Because the water was moving so fast, it was stirring up all the sediment washed off the slopes of nearby mountains, making the water brown. And we're talking about a lot of sediment in this water--I was wiping brown grit off my face for the rest of the day. But it was totally worth it to get a fast river with non-stop rapids.

Bariloche was pretty awesome also. Cold and super windy, but gorgeous nonetheless. This photo was taken from the top of Cerro Otto, one of many "mountain" peaks in the region. (Mountain goes in quotes because as anyone who knows me well could tell you, I have pretty stringent standards for what I think should technically be considered a mountain, and Cerro Otto definitely falls short. It was still pretty though.)

I should point out that we actually went to the top of Cerro Otto twice. The first day we climbed to the top (because the gondola to the top wasn't running yet), but it was overcast and yes, snowing, so none of my pictures turned out that well. We had no intentions of going again, but when we awoke the next morning and found that the gondola had suddenly decided to run, we thought we'd try again to get some decent photos (and also to witness from above how ridiculously steep the previous day's trail to the top had been).

Forget switchbacks--this trail went straight up the side of the mountain!

Oh. One more thing about Bariloche. I'm convinced it's the hippy new-age capital of Patagonia. The Berkeley of Argentina, if you will. We saw Pilates studios and incense burners everywhere. And then we saw this guy, juggling/interpretive dancing in the street.

It reminds of me the first time I drove through Berkeley, and as I stopped at a red light at the corner of Ashby and College, a guy on a unicycle carrying rainbow streamers wheeled out into the intersection and did a little streamer/cycle dance until the light changed.

It's good to see that some things are universal.

It's a sock. It's a Flip-flop. No, It's a Sock-Flop!

2006-11-27T12:49:00.000-08:00

One more example of a horrifying fashion trend that seems to be taking Argentina by storm. . . . the Sock-Flop.

And, here's a photo to prove that you can even wear your Hammer Pants on the hottest of days, because they come in shorts too!

Argentina: Favorite Things Part I

2006-11-24T21:36:00.000-08:00

So now that I've gotten the ugly out of the way, I can focus on the fun, fantastic, hillarious, and yummy. Let's start with yummy. Argentines are big on the concept of afternoon tea (even though they don't actually drink tea at tea--mostly they drink coffee). I think this may be the best concept ever. Especially considering that they don't eat dinner until 10 or 11 at night--a late afternoon snack and some caffeine is definitely in order.

In our extensive study of afternoon tea, we came across several options that were always big winners: Medialunas and submarinos. Medialunas are little baby croissants, most often glazed ever-so-lightly with some sugary stuff, but I guess they can be savory with cheese and ham also. We liked the sweets ones. This is my friend Brianne, expressing her feelings about medialunas (with, coincidentally, a medialuna).

Now submarinos (yup--Spanish for submarine) are the perfect beverage pairing with sweet medialunas. The basic deal is that a submarino consists of steamed milk that comes with a small bar of chocolate, that you then dunk in the milk and stir up until it's melted, giving you a slightly less rich, less sweet (but still fantastic) version of do-it-yourself hot chocolate. And while that's already a pretty awesome beverage concept, what makes it even better is that normally, the little bars of chocolate are actually shaped like submarines. (Get it? You're submerging your submarine into the liquid, just like you would with a real one! So smart!) Below, Sejal and I demonstrate the appropriate submarino submerging/mixing technique.

The steamed milk and "submarine" chocolate

Submerging the "submarine"

Stirring up the submarino to prepare it for consumption

Argentina: First the ugly

2006-11-24T21:07:00.000-08:00

I'm back from Argentina. It was a fabulous, hillarious and all-together too short vacation with friends I love dearly, and I have tons of great fun stories to tell. But since I'm still feeling a little lazy after all the turkey consumption yesterday, I thought I'd start with something short and fast: the ugly parts of Argentina.

In no particular order, here were the things about Argentina (and Buenos Aires in particular) that I found less than appealing:

1) The men. Actually, that's not quite true. The men were fine; it was the hair that was the problem. It seems that faux hawks, mullets and yes, rat-tails are the hip and trendy look in Argentina right now. It was a little like being trapped in a bad 80's movie starring Billy Ray Cyrus. (And here's some even worse news for other mullet/rat-tail hating women of the world: my hairstylist just got back from some big hair conference and she tells me that mullets are the next big thing in men's hair styles here in the States. I'm shuddering in horror just thinking about it.)

2) Hammer pants. Yes, not only are mullets and rat-tails staging a comeback, but Hammer pants for women are also coming back. (For those of you who were asleep--or not yet alive--in the late 80's and early 90's, Hammer pants were made popular by one Mr. MC Hammer, and consist of baggy pants with a very roomy crotch and tightly bound ankles. They were often found in garish colors, or in gold and silver. And I'm sorry, I know MC has gone on to be a pastor at some church in the South Bay, but there is no number of souls he could save that would un-do the fashion travesty that was--and apparently still is--Hammer pants.)

This is my friend Sejal trying to rock the full-length hammer pants, but even more horrifying were the Hammer shorts that we found on sale all throughout BA.

3) This is probably the worst. According to my new BA-inhabiting friend Angie (and TimeOut Argentina Magazine) the thing to do when you're short on cash but still looking to get something waxed (because apparently Argentines are very big on waxing away body hair--at least on women) is to go for second-hand wax. That's right. That means that they re-heat the wax that has already been used to yank out god knows which hairs from some other woman before they apply it to you. I'm all for saving a buck, but that's seriously disgusting.

A Small Blog Hiatus

2006-11-09T22:37:00.000-08:00

I am leaving for Argentina in T-minus 9 hours. Wooohoo! And in remarkably un-Claire-like fashion, I am already totally packed. No crazy drunken packing. No scrambling to throw stuff in a bag at the last minute.

But alas, the downside of going to Argentina is that my blog will be taking a hiatus. But just a baby one. Hardly noticeable even. Certainly shorter than the ones that network television stations take right smack in the middle of the season so you're left wondering if Meredith Grey got blown up by a bomb in the OR. (Or fill in the blank with whatever television show you are embarassingly and unreasonably addicted to.)

I'll be back in the country on Thanksgiving Eve, and the first thing I'll be doing (after consuming ungodly amounts of turkey and pie) will be blogging. I'm planning on having great adventures, doing ridiculous things and taking good notes while I'm gone, so I'm sure there will be plenty to blog about.

See you on the flip side of November. . . .

The Things We Do For Love

2006-11-07T01:58:00.000-08:00

My gym is currently being renovated, so they've squeezed all the cardio machines into the back of the weights area, next to the classroom where they hold step aerobics classes. This means that all the cardio machine do-ers have a prime view of the people in the classes.

Now normally, even with my Ipod going, I am somewhat bored while I run at the gym. But not tonight. Because tonight I watched the advanced step class. And more specifically, I watched the one young guy in the class, clearly there with his girlfriend, as he tried to keep up. Mostly he just stood on the top of his step and looked confused. When he actually did the stepping part, he was often facing the wrong direction, or lifting the wrong leg. I felt kind of bad for him. But finally, he seemed to be getting the steps down and was really getting into it.

Until he tripped on his step and wiped out on the floor.

A Pick Up Line to Avoid

2006-11-06T12:20:00.000-08:00

The following conversation took place in Van Cleef's, a bar in downtown Oakland, last night while I was trying to get drinks for me and the friend I met up with there.

I walk up to the bar. To my right, about a foot and half away, is a slightly shady-looking guy. The bartender is busy with someone else, and so I'm waiting patiently. Then, out of nowhere:

Slighly shady-looking guy: Hey! Are you wearing perfume?

Me, slightly weirded out: Um, yes.

SS-LG: Well it smells really good.

Me, more weirded out: Wow. I didn't realize it was that strong.

SS-LG: Oh, it's not. I just have a really good olfactory sense.

Me, really creeped out as I slide a few more feet down the bar, away from this guy: Yeah. I'm going to order my drinks now.

San Francisco, Tourist Style--Part I

2006-11-04T16:54:00.000-08:00

It occured to me recently that I have lived in the Bay Area for more than 4 years, but there are still tons of areas I've never seen or explored. Maybe it's that the odds are about 50/50 that I'll be leaving by the end of the year, and maybe it's just that I recently got VIA Magazine (the travel magazine put out by AAA) and it got me inspired, but I decided it was time to do a little more wandering around San Francisco this weekend.

I broke out a book I bought a couple years ago, called Stairway Walks of San Francisco, and chose an area to explore. Today, I chose Telegraph Hill, Russian Hill, North Beach and Chinatown. This was my route:

The highlights of my day included the Filbert St. stairs: a crazy, wild garden; the wooden plank "streets"; and the parrots. I remember when that movie The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill came out last year. I never really considered that there were actually tropical parrots hanging out in the middle of San Francisco. Or at least I didn't consider that there might be hundreds of them. But there are. And they all live right here, in and around the garden on Filbert Street. They're all bright green and really loud and pretty much awesome. I tried to take a picture but I couldn't get close enough for you to tell that they were parrots.

Darrell "Street" in the middle of the Filbert St. Stairs

Filbert St. Stairs, where the parrots live

Coit Tower. Because every great city needs a phallic object for tourists to visit.

Other highlights? Macondray Lane. An ex-whatever we want to call him of mine claimed this as his favorite street in San Francisco, and I think it's worthy of a run for that title. On Russian hill, Macondray Lane is this little windy pedestrian-only path that cuts between rows of townhouses and it's all jungly and dark and mysterious. Very cool.

Macondray Lane

More phallic structures: the TransAmerica building

Oh, and I also tried Durian gelato in Chinatown. For those not familiar with durian, I'm told that it is a nasty, NASTY-smelling fruit very popular in Thailand. I've never had or even smelled durian, but given that my durian gelato smelled and tasted like sugary poo, I'm gonna guess that plain-old durain probably smells and tastes like. . . well, plain-old poo.

A Report from the Field

2006-11-04T12:01:00.000-08:00

Seen this morning: a pink haired hipster playing the accordion at the Farmer's Market.

Her song of choice?

"I Want to Be Sedated."

A Lazy Blogger

2006-11-03T23:08:00.000-08:00

First off, I'm sorry for the lapse in blogging. It's actually NOT that I haven't had anything worth blogging about--every time I hang out with Josh something shady and ridiculous happens (thus one of the appeals of the friendship). I've just been lazy. And crazy busy. And stressed.

You know for someone who is very technically unemployed, I think I've actually had more going on in the last two weeks than I did for much of the time I was working at EBASE. I'm planning the victory party for the Claremont Hotel workers for my old union. I'm planning all the logistics of our upcoming trip to Argentina. And I'm crafting work-of-art cover letters for jobs that will make these employers beg me to come work for them. At least that's the plan.

The irony of all this busy-ness is that I don't like doing any of it. I don't like writing cover letters. And anyone who knows me well knows I HATE planning. I'm a go with the flow, spur of the moment kind of girl. I don't do logistics. It stresses me out. Even easy planning like trying to figure out what to take my parents to do when they come visit stresses me out. And yet, I'm now juggling airfare and lodging for four, talking to caterers about how many cocktail tables I think we'll need for 400 people (like I have any idea), and trying to figure out what's the cheapest way to get to hang out with some Argentinian cowboys.

Anyway, enough of the blah blah blah complaining. I'm going to ARGENTINA in less than a week, I get to plan a party for workers I love on a campaign that I played a major role in winning, I've finally figured out what I want to do with my life (or at least the next few years) and I'm actually finding jobs that fill the bill. That's not too bad at all. Now if the winter rain could just hold off a little longer, I'd be a really happy girl. . . .

Historical Role Playing

2006-10-23T12:09:00.000-07:00

So the Denver craigslist--particularly the groups section--has become my new favorite daily reading addiction. For reasons I don't completely understand, it's just way more entertaining than the Bay Area craigslist. Need proof? See the Mobile Alibi post below.

Here's my second example: The Denver Fjellborg Viking Meetup Group

The text reads: "We are one of many groups forming in the USA and Canada promoting Viking age reenacting based on the precepts of "Living History" (LH). We wish to attain historical accuracy where ever possible. Also, following the guide lines of "The Vikings" international groups, we utilize blunted steel weapons and historically accurate armor. This may be referred to as "live steel, sports competitive" combat. See our home website at http://www.fjellborg.org

The Denver Fjellborg Viking Meetup Saturday, October 28, 2006 at 12:00PM
This is a crafting and steel combat training meetup, with Viking age skills and weapons as the core interest."

Viking groups? That's like those civil war enactment clubs, but so so much better, because you get to run around wearing metal hats with horns. Sweet.

The Mobile Alibi

2006-10-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

I've had a long-standing joke with some of my friends about the importance of having someone ready to do the fake-out "emergency" call for those times when you find yourself on the date from hell and need a way out.

It just never occurred to me that someone had already figured out how to make a buck off it. But apparently, the folks at www.mobilealibi.com have done just that. With their services, you can schedule calls--complete with fake names to show up in your caller ID and a fake voice at the other end--that can help you get out of any and all awkward or boring situations.

God bless that capitalist spirit of innovation.

Justice for UC Workers

2006-10-18T20:57:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, 7 of my co-workers and I went to a rally to demand that UC Berkeley (and the rest of the UC system) pay its janitors and other university workers the money it owes them. Despite the fact that UC Berkeley is one of the most prestigious universities in the country, its janitors make anywhere from $5-10 less than an hour than janitors at other local community colleges. After a year of fighting with the University--including rallies, a strike and lobbying state senators, assemblymembers and Gov. Shwarzenegger--the state of California earmarked $8.5 million dollars of the state budget specifically to pay low-wage UC workers. But the University still refuses to spend it on raising wages and reducing workloads for its workers.

To put pressure on UC President Dynes, the UC workers union, AFSCME, staged a march and civil disobedience this afternoon. Here are some pictures from what was a fantastic, high energy action, with 40 people getting arrested after blocking the intersection of Telegraph and Bancroft. (For those of you who know the area near the campus, try to imagine Telegraph and Bancroft without car or foot traffic. It was seriously creepy, like being in a ghost town.)

Welcome Back to the Wee Hours

2006-10-17T23:22:00.000-07:00

I have three days left before I leave my job. I have mixed feelings about the leaving--I definitely don't want to be doing grant stuff, and I'm still ambivalent on the communications part, but I'll miss my co-workers and there were things I was just starting to get excited about doing: supervising other staff, developing our collateral materials (that means website, newsletter, blog, brochure, etc), tinkering with the website and all our fun new e-activism toys.

The thing that's got me really excited about being unemployed, however is this: No more pre-midnight bedtimes.

I used to be the chronic night owl. You could pretty much guarantee that I would be awake until at least 3 in the morning. Even when I was working for the union, it was a safe bet that I was awake until 1 or 1:30 at least. But this past year, I've been the 10:30 or 11:00 girl. Maybe 11:30. (Unless I had big plans, and then I was up for staying out as late as necessary.) But seriously, I miss seeing the flip side of midnight on a weekday. I'm looking forward to it.

The weekend rundown

2006-10-17T22:27:00.000-07:00

Because I'm a lazy re-capper, this is actually a rundown of highlights from last weekend. I'll get to this weekend eventually.

Finally feeling at least mostly human after being so sick, I decided to hang out with Josh on Friday night.

We started out with yummy Italian dinner at a place near Josh's apartment--it's a perk of living in North Beach, if you can put up with the strip clubs and all the frat boys. We had a drunken (but fairly well behaved) bachelorette party on one side of us, and a really dysfunctional couple on the other side. I've never seen two people look so miserable and bored with each other in my life. The couple said all of twenty words to each other the whole night, and at least the woman spent the rest of the evening eavesdropping on our conversation.

I saw this as the perfect opportunity to begin talking about things that I might have otherwise deemed inappropriate for public conversation, such as recounting for Josh an assignment a theatre professor gave us that involved me reading Fetish magazine and writing a play about people who got turned on by watching other people blow up and pop balloons.

Anyway. The couple was dysfunctional and we were highly entertained by that. Made me think maybe it's good to be single afterall.

Then we made the rounds of the bars in North Beach. We're talking extensive tour of duty rounds, here. And for all of our troubles, neither of us saw anyone we thought was even remotely worth trying to pick up.

After realizing that the North Beach bar scene was lame, I decided to make my way home on the Night Owl Bus. I found myself squashed between a guy having hot flashes who was on the verge of throwing up all over himself and me, and a white woman who talked the whole way back to the East Bay about how she had grown up in Saudi Arabia and thus didn't know how to pronounce words like "pedestrian" and how she felt that had really hindered her ability to get ahead in this country.

I silently prayed that they would both get off the bus soon. My prayer was answered, and an alcoholic (by his own admission) Kenyan immigrant construction worker who lived with his two kids and his 'baby mama' sat down next to me and tried to get my phone number.

I've never been so happy to get off a bus.

Finally entering the 20th century, a few years too late. . . .

2006-10-16T17:01:00.000-07:00

When I started at EBASE a year ago, I had one really big goal: get them a decent website. For anyone who never saw the old website, it was one page: black background, a couple of links to some PDF documents, and the EBASE logo, taken straight off our letterhead. It also said something like "Our website is under construction! We will be launching a new site soon, so check back often."

It said that for 7 years.

When I undertook to make the new website happen, I didn't realize how much work it would actually take. Writing the content, editing the content, finding a designer, working through many (I repeat MANY) rounds of design proposals, learning how to use the content management system and uploading everything: these all took a lot of work.

And now, a year later--and with only a week to spare before I leave EBASE--I can proudly send you to a new, beautifully designed, brilliantly written website where you can sign up for updates, give us money and find out what EBASE has been up to. I encourage you to do all of those things. Daily. :-)

The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Music. Bad, Cheesy Music.

2006-10-13T21:18:00.000-07:00

Stop #3 on the European Vacation with my mom was Salzburg. For those of you who aren't up on your movie musical trivia, Salzburg is where The Sound of Music was set and filmed. This is a city that's really into that fact--there's a whole tourist industry that's popped up around it.

Our hotel had a whole station devoted to playing The Sound of Music, over and over and over. First, they played it all the way through, and then they did a "Best of" version, that only had the musical numbers. Then they did a little interview with some of the still-alive cast members, and repeated the whole process. This hotel also had The Sound of Music theme rooms--decorated with pictures from the movie and the same furnishings as rooms in the movie.

The keystone of the tourist industry, however, is The Sound of Music bus tour. They drive you around the city, pointing out all the places from the movie. And then you sing. When a random Australian tourist told us about it, I swore up and down we weren't getting anywhere near it. The Sound of Music is cheesy; I do not do cheesy. And I definitely don't do singing in public. Especially if it's going to be cheesy singing. That sounds like hell to me.

And yet, what could be more ridiculous than something called The Sound of Music Bus Tour? I may not like cheesy or singing, but I do like ridiculous. And so we went. And it was, in fact, ridiculous. A greyhound bus filled with The Sound of Music-loving women and the men they had dragged along. A corny joke-filled tour guide named Peter and a bus driver named Markus who sounded like a muppet. 100 tourists trying to re-enact the "dancing in a gazebo" scene from the movie. A song about a marionette goatherd falling in love. Lots of singing.

(Above) The "Do-Re-Mi" song was filmed in the Mirabelle Gardens. The Von Trapp children skip around the Unicorn Fountain you can see in the picture, and then they do some sort of skippy dance to the top of the flight of stairs that this picture was taken from.
(Below) Our tour guide Peter making bad puns as we admire the lake house where The SOund of Music was filmed.

Thankfully, there was also a bar on the bus.

Blood on the walls. . .

2006-10-11T10:37:00.000-07:00

Literally. I just checked Janna's blog, and it reminded me that I forgot a kind of key component of last night's experience at Mama Buzz Cafe. There were paintings on the wall that had been created using, among other things, human blood.

Hence all the red and pink tones, I suppose. Now I've heard of artists using wine as paint. And tea. But blood? That's a little creepy, and it leads me to wonder exactly how much blood it takes to paint these paintings (they were rather large) and how one goes about getting that much blood.

World Tour of Bathrooms

2006-10-10T23:25:00.000-07:00

So besides making funny faces in Europe, my mom and I also took a lot of pictures of bathrooms. I guess it's one of the places where travel in Europe seems the most different from traveling in the states, and we wanted to capture some of that uniqueness.

Unfortunately, my mom was responsible for taking the bathroom photos, and her digital camera ate most of them. This is the only one that escaped.

My mom actually took this photo squashed inside the world's smallest shower in our hotel room in Vienna, to try to demonstrate just how ridiculously small this bathroom was. If I'd been sitting on the toilet with my feet on the ground, my knees would have been squashed against the underneath of the sink, and when I bent over to wash my face or brush my teeth at the sink, my butt pushed the door open.

This is what happens when demanding American tourists expect a bathroom in every hotel room--you get a full bathroom. . . . for midgets.

Punk Rock. . . in 3/4 Oompa time

2006-10-10T22:20:00.000-07:00

On a whim, I met up with my friend Janna tonight at Mama Buzz Cafe, the place where all the grungy hipsters hang out. She was doing work there and noticed on the schedule of events that tonight was the bi-monthly Punk Rock Accordion Workshop, and asked if I wanted to check it out.

How on earth could I pass that up?

In short order, Henri--the teacher--and 4 students showed up, with accordions in hand. And me and Janna, the two accordion "interlopers" and "voyeurs," as we were introduced to the rest of the group.

Henri procededed to teach them the basic tune of a song, which, when played on an accordion, didn't sound the least bit punk rock to me. I will admit to being a bit skeptical about the punk rock-iness of this accordion lesson. But then Henri busted out some teaching points about the composition of punk rock songs and the music theory behind them, and he broke down a Ramones song as an example. That made me feel it was a bit more legit. And then we listened to the CD, and it was indeed angry, angsty--if a little bit instrumental--punk rock.

All in all, it was pretty awesome. We watched as the 5 accordion players gradually drove all of the paying customers out, and Henri even took a moment to refresh my memory on some basic music theory stuff about chord structure, which I appreciated. They had a pretty rockin' harmony going by the time the lesson finished, and I'm starting to seriously think about trying to find myself an accordion, so next time I could join in!

Janna--always prepared, it seems, for absurdity and wonder--had her camera, so pictures are to come!

Magical Thinking

2006-10-09T19:33:00.000-07:00

So I've been on a bit of an Augusten Burroughs kick lately. As someone who desperately hopes to wake up one day and be funny, I really enjoy reading other writers that I think already are funny (the hope is that if I read enough of them, it will wear off on me). In the humor writing class I took a few months back, everyone chose David Sedaris and Anne LaMotte as the writers they thought were funny, (I personally think this is because that's who the teacher liked. Suck ups.) but I'm sticking with Augusten.

He's warped, twisted, completely self-centered and horrible. And he totally knows it. And that's what makes him funny--he does and says all the things semi-nice, semi-appropriate people would never do but want to. And while the hip thing to do right now is read Running With Scissors--since the movie's about to come out and all--I actually preferred Magical Thinking, his collection of short memoir pieces about being an adult, working and falling in love. There's something about the fact that he is such a mess, and so flawed, and so human, that makes me really want to root for him.

And then there's the central idea of the book: the magical thinking. It seems that Mr. Burroughs believes he has the power to will things to happen. A horrible boss that he wished would get hit by a bus drops dead. The guy he loves who's had a pattern of dating only big black men suddenly makes an exception for him, a skinny white guy. He becomes a New York Times bestselling author just by deciding that it will happen.

I like this idea of magical thinking. Who hasn't at some point wished for the ability to will things to happen? I've been feeling this desire a lot lately: the ability to will relationships to work out. To will the perfect job for me into existence. (Or perhaps it's to will myself to be perfect for a certain job?) To will people I miss into calling me.

But alas, the ability to exercise magical thinking seems to be limited to Augusten Burroughs and, strangely, his editor. The rest of us are left to work with whatever the Fates see fit to deal out.

If it ain't Baroque. . .

2006-10-05T18:54:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry. That title was the lead in to a terrible joke that I just don't have the heart to finish. I'm just not that cheesy.

I am, however, cheesy enough that after discovering the work of Franz Xaver Messershmidt--a Viennese Baroque sculptor who was really into faces of ugly-looking people--I felt the need to try to imitate the faces on my own, with my mom helping out. Here are our best efforts:

While I couldn't find the translated names of these specific scultpures (which, if you're interested are "Ein Erhangtee" and "Der Schaafkapf"), from the English translations of other works, I'm gonna say that our Mr. Messerschmidt was quite a character, and probably would have embraced the awkward with the best of them. Examples of English names for his work include "Constipated Man" and "Laughing, Goofy Man." That's awesome. Where have you been hiding these 26 years, Franz Xaver Messershmidt?

Juxtaposition

2006-10-05T18:39:00.000-07:00

I really like the word 'juxtaposition.' It makes me feel smart. And I found a perfect example of an ironic juxtaposition of cultures in Prague that I wanted to share, in a conscious effort to lighten up the tone of this here blog.

Here goes.

What kind of museum, you ask?

The Museum of Communism, located immediately above the McDonald's, and right next door to a casino. God I hope they did that on purpose.

Better than Coffee

2006-10-02T15:03:00.000-07:00

I inadvertantly discovered something even better than Diet Coke--or even coffee--for keeping you wide awake and alert: Non-drowsy cold medication.

It's just too bad that the reason I know this is because I was awake until almost 3 am this morning (despite getting virtually no sleep the night before), after having popped some in a desperate attempt to stop being so stuffed up.

Interestingly, the cold medication did pretty much nothing to keep me from being stuffed up, so I found myself roaming my apartment at 3 in the morning, looking for things to do while breathing out of my mouth. Good times.

Beautiful details

2006-10-01T12:51:00.000-07:00

I don't really have a story to go with these pictures: they're a combination of photos from Vienna, Salzburg and Prague. I guess the theme here is that I really love craftsmanship, and I love finding the details that make cities unique.

I saw a bunch of doors like this in old parts of Salzburg.

Salzburg was famous for its hand wrought, ornate over-the-door signs indicating what kind of business resided there.

St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague.

Nearly all of the sidewalks in the older parts of Prague are patterned; this was just one of many different designs I noticed while I was there.

The formal gardens at the Belvedere in Vienna.

The wrought iron over this door in Vienna was beautiful.

If Beverly Hills, 90210 had taken place in Prague. . .

2006-09-30T11:57:00.000-07:00

This one is dedicated to Miranda Hansen

2006-09-30T11:44:00.000-07:00

So I'm finally ready to start blogging about the adventures my mom and I had in Europe. Sorry for the delay, but work got crazy and I had other stuff that was a bit more pressing.

While in Vienna, my mom and I took the opportunity to visit some Heurigen, Viennese wine gardens. Now, I'd like to start off by saying there is definitely a reason that Viennese wine has not made a big splash on the international wine market: it's not particularly good. It seems to be mostly really sour white wine, and apparently has been likened to the experience of drinking straight vinegar. I didn't personally think it was that bad, but I could see why you would.

(Note: I should make a distinction between Viennese wine and Austrian wine. As a country, I'd say the Austrians have a pretty good handle on wine making, particularly their dry white, Vetliner. That's a really good wine. The knowledge just didn't make the trip into the big city, apparently.)

Anyway, we went to the Heurigen, ate some unidentifiable meat products from the buffet and drank some vinegar wine, where I happily served myself a good solid "two fingers" of wine with dinner.

Argentina: variations on a theme

2006-09-26T19:23:00.000-07:00

So here's the difference between Sejal's work friends and my work friends when it comes to planning vacations.

Sejal's work friends are suggesting that we go to the wine country of Argentina and check out some vineyards.

My work friends are suggesting I go to Bolivia (because there are more people organized into unions than anywhere else in the world) and check out one of the factories that's been taken over by workers and made into a collective.

And on a different note, Brianne bought her ticket for Buenos Aires this morning. Anyone else interested?