Contentment

It's 78 degrees. I'm wearing a white t-shirt dress. I'm drinking a strawberry daiquiri which, miraculously, I have not yet spilled on the white T-shirt dress.

I have a strawberry daiquiri because I had extra strawberry filling from making 12 strawberry tarts a week ago, which I'll talk more about in a later post. Also being made as I sip my strawberry daiquiri: a strawberry pie, with the extra strawberry filling, and a loaf of gougere, with extra dough from making cheese puffs, also a week ago. The extra ham and cucumber has been made into sandwiches with the extra white bread, the chicken from TWO weeks ago has been picked clean and tossed--with the leftover meat waiting to be a part of another meal--and I am listening to this song:

Into the Fire

I have a new job here at the Lazy B, and so far it most reminds me of a mix of the West Wing and the Devil Wears Prada, except that my boss is totally awesome. It's fast-paced, tons of things happen all at once, things change minute by minute, so I'm behind already, and really I just want to take my boss out for coffee and listen to her talk because she's that cool.

My meals here at work have consisted of peanuts, granola bars, and slices of cheese, because I'm too busy to eat or cook, and last night I came home at 4:30 pm and went to bed an hour later.

Whew.

P.S. Hi, mom. I have eaten some quinoa and yogurt as well. And YES, I am drinking enough water.

Staying Enaged

It's hard.

It's hard to stay focused. It's hard to take the long way around. It's hard to come home after work and devote four hours to your side projects. It's hard to remember how to spell "devote".

It's hard to wake up early in order to bike or take the bus, when it's easier just jump in your car. It's hard to pack a lunch the night before, when it's so easy just to buy pre-made food. It's hard to pre-set your coffeemaker, when you can just buy a latte. It's hard to eat simply, when it's so much easier to buy fancy restaurant food. It's hard to read Shakespeare, when it's so easy to read Agatha Christie. (Or worse, blogs.) It's hard to just walk to J.Crew when you need new clothes, instead of scouring thrift stores.

And now that you've taken the easy and more expensive way out of all your obligations, you find yourself with a lot of free time on your hands, so it's even harder to pare your life down to its basic necessities instead of filling it with things that fill your extra gobs of free time.

It's even harder to bitch about these very, very small concerns in the face of so many REAL problems in the world. That is all.

Overwhelmed by Other People Today

On gray June Gloom Seattle days, it's wonderful to know that other people are creating amazing things, so I can just sit, and drink my coffee, and stare out the window, and enjoy their things instead.



All of this woman's photographs are so amazing.





Oh, just check out her flickr stream.

And a slightly different take on art, aesthetics, and fantasy:





This is a real artist's commune, only not a commune. From the NYT article:

"The woman, J. Morgan Puett, a fashion designer and artist, is also a kind of radical homesteader, having staked a claim here on land stalked by black bears, deer, coyotes and porcupine. Along with her 8-year-old son, Grey Rabbit, and a changing cast of friends and romantic partners, she has built a home that is an ongoing experiment in art, design and aestheticized living, an artist colony conceived in the communal spirit of 20th-century institutions like Roycroft and Black Mountain College, with her own house, just now being finished, at its heart."

People who can do this with their lives make me think I'm wasting my allotment of oxygen.

And finally, it's probably more artistically appropriate that you listen to something like Ratatat or Tom Waits as you look at the above images, but THIS is what's in my head:

Share Ghost In The Machine by B.o.B

Love the amazing, AMAZING, almost-an-afterthought, harmony in this song.

Overheard at Olivar's

A heavier young man in black frame glasses sits with a gray haired lady. It becomes clear that he is, in fact, her son, and they are both from the East Coast and she is here to visit him, as he has apparently just moved here.

(In regards to some work she is doing.) "Well, you can use my computer any time this weekend, Mother...although I don't know how you'll access your files." Black Frame Glasses says loudly.

"I carry them around with me on this flash drive on my key chain," she murmurs.

He gasps. "You DO? That's not safe! Anyone could just pick that up and download all your important information!"

"It's encrypted," she says.

"Oh? OH! Encrypted, eh? Oh, that's good. That's a good thing that you did that. As long as there's no way anyone can break it."

The waiter arrives.

"Now, Mother, you have to let me order for you. Yes, you do, you're a lady!"

He turns to the waiter. "The LADY will have..."

I silently judge behind my coffee. You will not do well in this town of tech-savvy feminists, Black Frame Glasses. Your mother may be used to putting up with your peculiar mix of idiocy and self-importance, but we are not, and furthermore, have no desire to become so. You will do better in the mid-size East Coast town you are undoubtedly from. Please return there.

Also, you shout.

My Friends Are Funny, Too

Chalie: "I heard a TV newscaster say, the other day: 'I'm told they plan on baiting the bear trap with Krispy Kremes & stinky fish.'"

Me: "Oh?"

Chalie: "I figure that trap ensnares just as many middle-school-ers as it does bears."

John: "Maybe they should just bait the trap with middle-school-ers."

Me: "Would that be like killing two birds with one stone?"

Chalie: "No, that would be like killing two stoners with one bear."

Thursday Afternoon Groove

This song's been in my head for weeks.



After that one, definitely watch this one:



Oh, Sam Cooke. MR. SAM COOKE, ladies and gentlemen.

If you have even one second more of free time, you should for sure listen to, "A Change is Gonna Come", "Another Saturday Night", and "Chain Gang". A Change Is Gonna Come, especially, makes my blood run cold every time I hear it.

And, if you've ever listened to a hip hop song and liked it, you are REQUIRED to familiarize yourself with The Clapping Song, just so you can look nobby in front of hip hop nerds.



AND, finally, a more modern blues song:



AND, one of THE most powerful songs from my childhood, and one of the most powerful, emotional songs about school shootings, ever:






(Can you guess what it is? If you're from my generation, you know it for sure...)








(Make sure you have tissue.)

West Coast Versus East Coast

Much has already been said about this, and surely a few more words can’t hurt.

I was with Blond from New Jersey just a few days ago. We were in downtown Seattle, looking for a parking spot in front of Pike Place Market, at 3:30 pm on a Saturday, and anyone reading this who has spent any amount of time here already knows that that is…pretty difficult.

Most of West Coast life is pretty relaxed compared to the huge amounts of effort it takes to even buy a cup of coffee in NYC, for example, but looking for street parking at Seattle’s biggest tourist attraction at prime time can tend to rachett up the heart rate a little bit. Blond from New Jersey and myself were unfazed. I saw a parking spot open up at 1st and Pine, and she cut easily across two lanes of traffic, stopped, reversed—everything you’d need to do to suddenly parallel park on a city street. At rush hour. And everyone just…went around her. There were a few polite honks. We looked at each other.

“This is so…easy!” She said.

“For real,” I said. “On the East Coast, someone would have already insulted your mother.”

Dating Episode # 343

I was on a street corner in Ballard with a date, holding his arm and laughing about something, when he pointed, kitty-corner.

"Hey, look, an interracial couple," he said, totally straight-faced. "THAT'S something you don't see every day."

I looked at my yuppie, real-estate-magnate date--who also happened to be black--and burst out laughing.

"Maybe there's a mirror on that corner that reflects us," I said, still giggling.

He gave that couple the five-second once over before shaking his head and turning away. "Nah," he said. "She's nowhere as cute as you are."

How Gay Marriage is Not Like Plastic Bags

Listen, small governmenters. I understand that the plastic bag tax scares you. I understand why. I understand that you have issues with a big, blowsy government trying to tell you what to do when they obviously can’t take care of themselves, and you especially don’t want a reminder of that every time you choose to use a fucking plastic bag. I get that.

But here’s the thing: a five-cent bag tax is NOT the government telling you what to do.

I’ll repeat that: A FIVE CENT BAG TAX IS NOT THE GOVERNMENT TELLING YOU WHAT TO DO.

It’s an INCENTIVE. Just an incentive to behave in the way that the government wants you to behave. If you drive too fast, the government will issue you a speeding ticket. If you buy cigarettes, the government will take some tax to shore up against your eventual health care costs. Hell, if you DRIVE, the government will take a gas tax to pay for roads, and the faster you drive, the more you’ll pay in gas, because the more gas you’ll burn.

But you know what? You CAN PAY THE FIVE CENTS. The government isn’t telling you that you CAN’T use a plastic bag. (That WOULD be telling you what to do.) The government is laying out the consequences of your actions so that you can make an informed decision. That is, in fact, one of the governments’ JOBS—to get its citizens to think globally. To remind its citizens that hey, you may not ever see the increased cost of your health care, smoker, or you may not understand why you can’t just go five miles over the speed limit, but we have seen the data on the deaths of young people under the age of 18 and we’ve seen the 100 years of data on smokers’ lungs and we’re telling you, you are incurring a cost on society and we are going to make you pay it.

So when the plastic bag tax failed here in WA, I couldn’t understand why the heck people bucked against THAT tax when they hadn’t bucked much against, say, sin tax. But pretty soon I realized that hey, taxes—and incentives—are easier to ignore when they don’t personally apply to you, EVEN IF they go against your own personal value system. A small governmenter, in my mind, should be equally screaming about the cigarette tax and the plastic bag tax, but it turns out they’re not, because humans don’t think rationally. A small governmenter can look at the sin tax and think to himself, “Well, that’s not really in line with my beliefs, but I’m not going to fight too hard for it because I don’t smoke. Yeah, it sucks that my neighbor is paying two dollars extra a pack, but I don’t PERSONALLY pay it, plus I can kind of get behind where the government is coming from.”

And yet a five-cent bag tax fills people with ire. Why? For the first time, an incentive like this affects everyone.

Affects. Everyone.

EVERYONE. Black, white, old, young, female, male. Everyone. Everyone would pay this tax. CHILDREN would be paying this tax. Anyone who can put money on a counter and get candy in return. And so people rose up in arms like never before, because this is the first time such an incentive has applied to them. It’s obviously not the AMOUNT—five cents is almost nothing. It’s not that the tax is difficult to pay—it’s just added to your bill. It’s not even that the tax is hurting the environment, if indeed anyone actually cared about that. It may be partly the smallness of the action—the average consumer can’t really believe that plastic bags are so harmful that they should have to pay five cents. But people pay speeding tickets, and people will eventually pay the plastic bag tax, too.

Because despite what I just said a few sentences ago, this is not actually the first time such a tax has been applied to them, even small governmenters. They still pay speeding tickets, and parking tickets. But the newness of this kind of tax confused them, and so people complained about the government telling them what to do.

But let me repeat myself, if I may: a five cent tax is not telling you what to do. You can just pay the tax and use your goddamned plastic bag, right? Right. Now let’s imagine that the government is telling you that you CAN’T, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, MARRY YOUR SAME-SEX LOVER.

THAT is a good example of the government actually telling you what, in fact, you may or may not do, with your private life.

Let’s now imagine that the government went ahead and said, “Okay. You CAN actually marry your same-sex partner—legally, with all the rights and privileges of any hetero couple, and the law and the health care companies will not be able to tell you any differently. But for this privilege, you will have to pay us, say, $4,000 dollars.”

That’s right. Let’s put an incentive on our gay marriage thought experiment. The homosexual tax. Would people pay it?



















Of course not. Why?






















Because MARRIAGE SHOULD BE FREE. Because no American in their right mind would pay for an inalienable right.

This argument falls apart, of course, if you don’t believe that plastic bags harm the environment and that the Gay infect everyone around them with their perversion, and the beauty of America is that you are totally allowed to believe that. But it doesn’t change the FACTS: a five cent bag tax is an incentive. Inability to marry the love of your life is living in a police state. If anyone should be complaining about the size of the government, it’s people who love the same damn sex.

Style Note

I bought these boots about three days before I left for Washington, because I am a planner like that. Suddenly I realized that I needed boots. And I needed them NOW. And I spent about twenty minutes looking at Zappos before I found these, and I paid for the overnight shipping, and they arrived Tuesday afternoon while I wasn't there and the driver wouldn't leave them--because UPS/FedEx/DHL packages that require signatures is SUCH a good way to ship things--and I chased them down that evening to the big UPS building in SODO (and not to be a huge chick stereotype about it, but industrial SODO after dark is kind of creepy) and it was cold and I took the big box directly to T's house, and I put them on for her and we both moaned.

Yes, it was like that.

I got on the plane with them. I SLEPT in them. I wore them all day at the National Mall, and came back with dry feet. I plan on giving away all my other boots. They're that good.

(Side note: I got on the plane in a cashmere shirt dress, boots, and coat. How fabulous am I?)

I Can't Hide It

I like to think of myself as a gypsy. A world traveler. Someone who is familiar with both coasts of this great nation and decently familiar with a handful of more exotic destinations. (My renewed passport was waiting for me on my return from DC! Hooray!) The world is my oyster! I am at home everywhere!

But apparently my roots really show. And it's not because I haven't been to my stylist recently. (WAH-WAAAAAH.) On this aforementioned trip to DC, I was getting a Dark Cherry Mocha to accompany me on my four-hour trip to BWI--because apparently I thought I needed enough sugar to kill an elephant just to make it to the airport--and I was talking to the barista. He spent about three seconds talking to me before he said,

"So...are you from the West Coast?"

And I'm not even that blonde anymore. Apparently my speech pattern gives me away.

It's not the first time I've heard this, either. Shout-out to LT, who was the the first person to mention to me, in his nasal East Texas accent, that I had "the accent" of the West Coast. (Ten effing years ago.) It's not really an accent, per se--it's more of a speech pattern. Quick, quick, slow, says LT. I hear it in my friends, especially after a weekend like this one, in which I was without it, listening instead to the intellectual, measured accents of my sorority sisters. (Not a joke. Those ladies ARE intellectual and measured.) Last night I was in Philly, talking to a bunch of boys from Rhode Island with the thickest East Coast accents I'd heard in some time. They sounded like they came from another planet, especially compared to the firefighter from Charlotte, his drawl thick but soft, unlike the hard percussiveness of the RI accents, like a drumstick hitting a pad. And all Southern drawls are not created equal. My friend from Kentucky has an accent that is totally different all over again, way softer than the firefighter's, and lighter, too. More like smoked clover honey than the slow-moving BBQ sauce rhythm of the Carolinas. My friend Ray-Ray, mentioned here, has a Memphis accent like the twang of a banjo string. You can hear the hills of Tennessee when she talks.

Okay, where's my passport? I have itchy feet already.

No Caulk Was Harmed

I was not ACTUALLY learning Ancient Hebrew, or, in fact, re-caulking the bathroom, at the time of the last post. My bathtub was in fact re-caulked last week, but not by me. And the closest I come to Ancient Hebrew is the King James Bible. The verse of the day, by the way, is Mark 6:4, World English Translation. "Jesus said to them, 'A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country, and among his own relatives, and in his own house.'"

What? It was quoted recently in the gangsta rap I was listening to. (Not 4 Sale, Kardnial Offishall.)

My Own Grandmother Prefers Scotch Anyway

A buddy walked into my apartment not long ago, picking me up on our way to a movie, and ended up waiting for me to finish learning ancient Hebrew and re-grouting the bathroom, like girls always do when we have to go somewhere, and went straight to the liquor cabinet to pour himself and myself a drink. I heard the clank, clank, clank.

And then he appeared in the bathroom doorway, holding a plastic gallon. "WHAT," he said, with all possible snottiness, "are you DRINKING?"

I paused with the caulk gun still in my hand. "Canadian Club whiskey," I said, perhaps a trifle defensively. "I like it. So?"

He shot me a withering glance and turned around, heading back to the cabinet. "I knew I was coming to your place, I figured you'd have some good alcohol, I KNOW you have taste," he muttered, in a stage whisper. "CANADIAN CLUB. Seriously. And that's all you have?"

"I have vodka in the freezer, asshole," I called. "And I actually have mixers for that, namely, the OJ in the fridge. And I even have ice."

He re-appeared with a screwdriver on ice for himself and a whiskey on ice for me. He took a swig of mine in front of me, just so I could see the look on his face. "Wow, Grandma," he said, looking down at the glass. "Is that you?"

Okay, so Canadian Club is a little on the sweet side, I get it. I like bourbon and that shows in my whiskey tastes. But I also like Scotch, and my tastes change depending on my mood, which is probably why I drank some Canadian Club today and then poured the glass down the drain, wishing I still had my Speyburn. I've been cutting back on my alcohol storage for some time, so my liquor cabinet is down to the bare bones, but I guess I can't get away with just one whiskey from the entire spectrum--and if I do, it certainly can't be CC. If I, uh, want people to willingly show up at my house.

I Don't Care What Your Major Is, STAY OFF MY COMPUTER

CMU Princesses*, can I get a shout-out here?

The ridiculously difficult engineering school--recently repped in SNL--that I went to is especially famous for its Computer Science program, which is so eponymous that it has its own entire college. Subsequently, I dated a lot--a LOT--of computer science majors, or electrical engineers, or information systems majors, and the first thing they did, when coming to my dorm room, would inevitably be to sit down at my computer to look something up real quick, or download a song on Napster (ah, you remember) and not ten seconds would go by before I heard this:

"...WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT?"

Me: (Sighing.) "Is there a problem, babe?"

Him: (Exasperatedly moving my mouse.) "I can't find a damn thing on your desktop. How do you WORK with all of these icons everywhere? I'm moving them all into [some folder named something that is meaningful to him but that I will never be able to find]. Also, you're running the outdated version of Internet Explorer. Let me upgrade that for you. Jesus, who runs Window 98 anymore? You really need XP--but not the home version, the Pro version. I have a buddy who has a bunch of registered copies. And what the FUCK are you doing with your security settings open on your shared folders like that? This is RIDICULOUS. Let me also download [fifteen applications designed to make my life easier] and install them [all over the place on top of the applications you already know and love]."**

Me: (Opens four beers.)

Eventually I learned that, much like the army, in which you don't volunteer for anything, even if they say, "We need someone to drink, alcohol, large quantities of, and entertain, women, sexy, young, at least nights per week, four..." that I could no longer allow a man NEAR my computer, even if he said, "I have a program that will, complete sets of, problems, download songs, clean, automatically, deliver to, doorstep, your, beer, cases of" there'd always be a catch and I'd spend the next three weeks looking for the problem sets that were due and the chat program I loved and call the guy and yell at him and wake up for class late three weeks in row, and it was ALL BECAUSE I LET SOME GUY SIT DOWN AT MY COMPUTER.

*Princesses: if you are a man or a woman, this applies to you. Did you date a man (or even, possibly, a woman) that routinely played the masculine role in your relationship? And by "played the masculine role" I mean, "walked into your room and moved all your shit around to more comfortably accommodate him/her"? You did? Wasn't that ANNOYING?

**I've taken a lot of the cuss words out. Believe me.

All Bike Commuting Put On Hold

Because it SNOWED TODAY. Yes, it did.

Also all motorcycle work is being put on hold, since my fingers freeze outside.

Uh, in case you were wondering.

Nice Rack

And will you check out those mudflaps?

Let's get on this commuting by bike thing. You shiny steed, you.

Not mentioned: motorcycle battery sitting in the window.

Change

It was December of 2008. I had just gotten a new position at Large Corporate Company, I had just taken on a second job as a server, it was the holidays, it was The Seattle Ice Storm That Ousted Greg Nickels, I was driving back and forth a lot between Tacoma and Seattle, and on one of those trips...

...BOOM. My sleek black Jeep Wrangler Unlimited, the only new car I've ever owned, and the FIRST car I've ever owned, slipped on a patch of ice and died.

It wasn't a problem at that moment--Large Corporate Company was on winter holidays and I didn't need to drive anywhere. But January of 2009 would come, and with it would come a regular 7:30-4 business schedule...in my new position, 30 miles away from my house. Had the crash happened in my old job which was in South Seattle, I could have...worked from home. Taken the bus. Hitchhiked. ANYTHING. Now I had a new job, 30 miles away, that I had to be physically at EVERY SINGLE DAY, and I had a second new job that I had to leave the FIRST new job early for, some days, and work longer hours, other days. And suddenly I had no car. I had no way to drive the 30 miles to work OR leave early to make my second job OR work the longer hours on the days I didn't have to work both jobs AND I WAS TOAST. Should I...buy another car, used? Buy a new car? Quit my second job?

I called my mother, always an ever-present help in times of trouble. "...and so how is it possible that I got hired for two new jobs and crashed my car all in the SAME THREE WEEKS?" I ended, frustrated.

And then the clouds parted and the heavens opened and she gave me this excellent piece of advice: "Miss Dear, often when you change one thing, dozens of other little things will be affected, and you end up with a lot more change than you bargained for."

"Really? Why?"

"When your father and I decided to leave Chicago and move to Kansas City with you, he took the new job...and then, suddenly, several things happened to us all at once. We both got some traffic citations. Other unusual things happened. I remember it well. He--we--didn't take the new job SOLELY to change things up--we wanted to leave Chicago and the new job in Kansas City looked promising. But that change, somehow, affected a number of other things in our lives. Changing energies? Changing wants and desires that are somehow communicated to the universe? Who knows. It happened to us, and I'm not surprised it happened to you."

So true. You're going along in a groove, living your life the same way every day, and pretty darn content in its ways, and all of a sudden you explore some interesting side path and WHOA, hold the phone, your apartment goes to condos and some idiot runs into your car and your favorite clothing store closes up shop, all in the same week. You make some realization about your job. You decide to delete your Facebook account. WHATEVER. The point is, pursuing an interesting side path--for the side path's sake--takes us off the main path we were on and often, we can't get on it again.

Hypothetically speaking, of course. Be forewarned.

Georgetown Sunshine

It was the day after Carnival. The sunlight stabbed through my blinds. The kids next door--yes, I live in Capitol Hill, and somehow moved onto the only neighborhood that has small kids in it--were screaming outside at the top of their lungs. I had forgotten, through the winter months, that good weather meant Kids Playing. I had forgotten that they were allowed to do that. Stupid active, happy kids.

I was hungover and had to be mobile. I sent several texts that said, "Hold off on the plans until I can move without throwing up." I waited and chugged some Pedialyte. And then, somehow, with enough drugs--ibuprofen and free coffee from C-- and enough motivation--the promise of excellent brunch at Calamity Jane's with Chalie--I ended up in Georgetown, soaking up the midday sunshine like a volcanic lizard who possibly only blinks once a century.

Me with the shades.

Charger and Calamity Jane's. So. Delicious. Made me happy to be alive. Quite a feat on that particular morning.

Mother Nature LOVES Seattle: Saturday Morning Musings

Our ski season may be shite this year (see: every newspaper in the world covering the LACK of snow at Whistler for the 2010 Olympics) but it is freakin' beautiful, I will tell you what.

I took this with my Storm in an undisclosed location. Sweatshirt by Target. Lashes and nose by DNA. Hair by The Wind.

I'm eating homemade scones with hand-churned honey-orange butter in the gorgeous Seattle sunshine. Tonight I get to get dressed up in a super fancy dress with a super-fancy mask and go to the fanciest damn party Seattle has ever seen. You won't even believe the pictures from last year but--they look like screen caps from a Baz Luhrman movie--but I'll give you the link anyway. Somewhere, someone, is having a really rough morning just so my morning can be this good. Thanks, Someone.

AND, finally, Tom Mother Fucking Waits:

The ocean doesn't want me today
But I'll be back tomorrow to play
And the strangles will take me
Down deep in their brine
The mischievous braingels
Down into the endless blue wine
I'll open my head and let out
All of my time
I'd love to go drowning
And to stay and to stay
But the ocean doesn't want me today
I'll go in up to here
It can't possibly hurt
All they will find is my beer
And my shirt
A rip tide is raging
And the life guard is away
But the ocean doesn't want me today
The ocean doesn't want me today

Oh, Tom. Marry me.

Spring Already?

These daffodils are very confused:





It makes me want to start up my garden again, which is in a sad state.

Breakfast

Poor Design

Or perhaps more like an absence of any appearance of common sense whatsoever. I was at my local salon* when this blight upon the eyes and brain just sprang out of nowhere to assault human decency:

THE FOLLOWING SERIES OF PICTURES MAY DISTURB YOU.

Hook and shelf. So far, everything appears normal.

I hang my coat on the hook, and...wait a second, where did the shelf go?

Oh, THERE it is.

Are you not supposed to use the hook and the shelf at the same time? Who in their right mind would stack a hook and a shelf that close together? Is the hook only for purses? And no, there is NOT a hook on the other side of the changing booth. I checked.

Fight against poor design, everyone. It makes me stabby.

*Get it together, Gary Manuel.

Reason # 37 Why I Need To Stop Buying Breakfast At Starbucks

It's not that Starbucks is a bad company, or even that it's overpriced. It makes great coffee and great food for a reasonable price and most of the time, I love it.

But. Still. I spent something like 18 dollars on food today and the DAY IS ONLY HALF OVER. And this still happened:



Yes, that's a trashed breakfast sandwich. I branched out from my normal artisan Bacon/Gouda/Parmesan Egg love and got a classic sausage. It was terrible and I couldn't finish it. But I would have never been in this situation had I taken the time to MAKE my breakfast.

It's an important balance: in general, I am all about food on the go. This is one of the many reasons to live in a city--there's food everywhere, and they know you're in a hurry and they serve it to you quickly. But sometimes you get failures, on the same day that you forget to bring your lunch to work, and you end up paying enough money for a damn manicure to be mediocrely fed for the day, and you end up cursing the clouds and wishing you had just cooked.

You know, hypothetically speaking.

Had a Magical Moment at Trader Joe's

I'm walking along the aisle, looking at vitamins, and The Beatles' Hello, Goodbye comes on, and as I'm walking and humming along in my head, a woman walks past me.

She's early-fifties, I would say, although I revise that estimate upwards when I see her shopping companion, who I would peg at sixty, not like it matters. I noticed her because she was mouthing the lyrics, in perfect time with the song, unconsciously and very naturally, with a complete lack of realization as to what she was doing, and as I looked at her doing that it hit me like a tidal wave: When she first heard that song, she was twelve.

Assuming she's fifty-five, she first heard Hello, Goodbye when she was twelve. TWELVE.

She stood there, in her baggy Gap jeans and her grandmother pixie cut and her yellow cardigan and her respectable shoes, the picture of a casual Seattle grandmother, mouthing along to a song from an act that shocked the world, an act her parents probably detested and wouldn't have in the house. Suddenly I saw her as she would have been, the grandmother pixie cut grown out to her waist, strawberry blonde hair tied back with a bandanna headband, big sunglasses on, in hip huggers, maybe singing along to the song at home with her big sister who saved up her money and bought the record to play on the phonograph at home, one of the big sets with the speakers that took up a whole wall like a buffet. The Beatles were just a sign of huge things to come for society, for the world, for women's rights, for free love and too many drugs and things changing faster than anyone could possibly keep up with, and now here they were, being played in a grocery store.

We can't really understand today how SHOCKING acts like the Beatles were to our parents' parents, since oldies is now easy listening music played at grocery stores and in elevators and over phone lines, but it was: it was shocking. It was strange, it didn't sound like music, it had weird lyrics that didn't mean anything, and worse, it made you want to shake your hips. I asked a mid-forties co-worker not too long ago what some of his most memorable albums were from his youth, and he said, "Boston. Kansas. The Scorpions. Poison."

I'm not sure I could name one Scorpions song without prompting. And Boston? BOSTON? Aren't they...you know...terrible?

And I'd consider myself fairly well-versed in music, not the kind of snob who thinks anything made before Nirvana is only fit for the old folks' home. (I mean, come on, that would leave out Guns N' Roses, arguably some of the sexiest music EVER.)

I followed the woman around Trader Joe's for a second or two, trying to see more glimpses of the past. No such luck--the moment was over. And then I realized that I didn't need to follow her, because in another 25 years, in 2035, the Trader Joe's--if there is such a thing--will be playing Nirvana's Polly. And I will be there, in my short practical haircut and tennis shoes, and I will know all the words, and I will remember when that song was demonized as a Sign of the Decline of Youth Today, banned on the radio and at my school, and we had to listen to it on CDs, which were new, and scribble it on the inside of our notebook covers.

Update to Tucker Max Can Bite Me

Calm down, everyone. (I got a few concerned emails yesterday.) I write mainly about the bad dates because they're the only ones that generate real material for the blog. They're a small percentage, but they're overrepresented because otherwise, my dating posts would look like this:

"Had a great date with someone I really dig. Woo-hoo!"

See? You yawned already, didn't you? I thought so. I AM making a concerted effort to record the good moments as well as the bad, due to this woman's research on the negativity bias. I wouldn't want to look back on this blog and remember my dating life as a series of mishaps and dates with jagoffs. This is unlikely, as I actually like dating (ducks) and even a date with a Tucker Max knockoff can provide hours of entertainment for me and everyone around me--but you never know.

Moving on.

For future reference, please keep in mind that:

1. Stories are out of order, chronologically.

2. Stories are small glimpses of what actually happened.

Tucker Max Can Bite Me

WARNING: PARENTS! Don't read this. Or if you do, don't say you weren't warned.

Hi Tucker! Sorry for the hate. It's not about you--really, it's not. You seem genuinely happy doing what you do, and I'm impressed that you've found a way to make a living at it. Many of us could take lessons from you. And I'm pretty sure you're not reading this anyway--you're a busy man, and from all reports, pretty freaking smart, so for all I know this blog actually falls below your standards. (Putting you in the same category as China.)

The point is, though, that no one else can do what you do--well, as well as you do it--that's what she said, heh, heh--MOVING ON.

No one can do what you do, but other men don't realize that. And so I end up going out on dates with guys that will say one unbelievable thing after another because they think I'll find it...sexy? Amusing? Attractive?

"I'm not really a breast man," one might say. "You could whip yours out right here at the bar and I would just be like, 'meh'. In fact, maybe you should do that. Come on--it's Cap Hill, no one's going to care. I just want to prove it to you."

Check, please.

"I don't really like your perfume," another one might say at the conclusion of a long involved routine about how he likes to rape donkeys on weekends. (Also: Dane Cook, you can bite me too.) "I'm just telling you this because I think you'd want to know."

Yeah? Well, I don't really like you while you're speaking. Maybe you should wear a ball gag--in fact, you'd probably get a lot more play if you did because girls wouldn't have to hear your ridiculous patter like we're on the Dane Cook/Tucker Max LIVE! AFTERDINNER! SPECIAL! Apparently this is the new trend in dating? The girl has to prove she's "cool" and "unshockable" and has ears of iron?

I appreciate a good swear-word-laden joke, but the key word is GOOD. Just trying to shock me or see what I'll put up with--or go straight for the Tucker Max insults without the humor--is not the same thing as having a real sense of humor or actual confidence. Are you funny? SWEET. Lay it on me. Are you just another red-bull-fueled knockoff that sees the existence of famous assholes as an excuse to BE an asshole? Please shred my number. THANK YOU.

Banned. (Also: A Serious Post.)

And it happens, oh yes it happens, because it happened to me:



And if that hasn't scared you enough, there's this:

"You know how people were offering flowers up at the alter of Google in Beijing? That's not allowed anymore - security officers at Tsinghua University (right next to Google's offices) are asking you why you're buying flowers and demanding that it not be for the Big G. That's apparently propelled "Illegal flower donations" (非法獻花) to the first big internet meme of China 2010." via Shanghaist.

I'm not sure I think that Google/MS should actually refuse to play with China. But it's worth remembering that we have A LOT of freedoms that we take for granted, here. For example:

OBAMA IS A JERK AND A BAD PRESIDENT!*

Whew. That felt great.

*Not really.

Brought to my attention by a friend who reads The Breda Fallacy.

Haiti

Listen to this song:

Share Blackout (Haiti In The Dark) by Boukan


And read the Wikipedia article about Haiti at the same time.

Warning: you will bawl.

Happy Birthday, Dr. King.

"We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to humanity.

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Even a superficial look at history reveals that no social advance rolls on the wheels of inevitability. Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concerns of dedicated individuals. Without persistent effort, time itself becomes an ally of the insurgent and primitive forces of irrational emotionalism and social destruction. This is no time for complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.

Many people fear nothing more terribly than to take a position which stands out sharply and clearly from the prevailing opinion… Not a few men who cherish lofty and noble ideals hide them under a bushel for fear of becoming different."

I'll be listening to Dr. King's speech later today at home. I can't do it at work because I start to cry--which, although understandable, is inappropriate for work. I'd recommend that you all do the same. (Uh, listen to the speech, not cry.) You might think you know it, but it's a sensory shock to me, every time, and I bet it will be for you, too. There's a ton of original versions on YouTube, but the version below is adorable.



And what has been called President Obama's "Race" Speech, although it's actually called "A More Perfect Union", framing race in the broader terms of America's history.



And, although my doings are pretty small compared to the two men above, I wrote a recent post on race too.

All A Matter Of Perspective

C and I are are up at Crystal Mountain, enjoying a leisurely day of spring skiing--all the more unusual because it is, in fact, early January--and we stop for a long lunch. C is attempting a No-Alcohol-In-January Rule (HA!) but I'm not going to let that stop me. I walk up to the cashier with my water, taco plate, and can of beer. The cashier is a very cute blonde 6'2" male of indeterminate age with a nice smile and a friendly, if relaxed, personality. He rings up C and then turns to me.

"May I see your ID?" he says.

C and I smile at each other. "I love being carded," I say, and she rolls her eyes.

"YOU ARE NOT THAT OLD," she says. "Jeez."

The cashier scans it and hands it back to me. "No, you're not," he says, smiling, sincerely trying to put me at my ease. "You're only six years older than me!"

SHOT THROUGH THE HEART, AND YOU'RE TO BLAME! You give loooove, a ...oh, you know the rest.

That Mouth Gets Me In Trouble Again

I had said it, and now I had to do it. And now inspiration had left me and I was sitting alone at my computer, polishing off my Scotch.

"I'm thinking about cooking dinner," I had said lightly, just an hour ago. "Would you be interested?"

"Sure," he said. "I'm eating now but I'll be hungry at 8 or so."

So I had a little time, but suddenly it wasn't enough. I had been advising my friend T on this very topic just a few days ago, and I knew what she had made and I knew I could make that easily, and I knew I liked it. And I was going to be resorting to that--not that it was a bad dish at all, simply seemed too easy--if I couldn't think fast enough.

I looked at the contents of my cupboards. I flipped through a cookbook or two. Amanda Hesser says, describing her anxiety on cooking for her then-boyfriend, "The first meal you cook for someone is intimate. Not just if it's for a date. And not just because no one cooks anymore--it really has nothing to do with whether you are a good cook or not. It's an entry into the way you think, what you've seen and know, the way you treat others, how you perceive pleasure."

So true. It's not the food quality that's at stake: It's you, as the cook. This is why people are loathe to let on that they, say, actually like Kraft cheese singles wrapped in plastic, or Spaghetti-Os. You can like it and eat it in secret all you want, but you don't want OTHER people to know your low-brow tastes. Similar story here. Dishes that seemed perfectly tasty to me were suddenly, no longer good enough--what if he didn't like them? What if he started questioning not only my cooking skills but my tastebuds, and then my very palate? My opinion on what made life bearable? What if he and I clashed so directly on cooking that this would be our LAST DATE?

Possible disaster was looming. Suddenly I was apathetic towards cooking and food in general. My Pandora station annoyed me. The next station was no better. I had to pee. The Cooks Illustrated website stopped working. I drank some more Scotch and decided to go with what I had advised T on and made, several times before. After all: it was pleasurable. And it involved bacon.

2009 Is Not Leaving Fast Enough

Just this morning I got locked out of my apartment in my PJs with NO BRA, BAREFOOT, WEARING ABOUT TWO OUNCES OF CLOTHING, completely locked out, in the Freezing Rain, while Titan threw up the Chinese lead-infused candy he was too dumb NOT to eat into the grass and the Man Who Brings Lawsuits (aka the Postman) walked inexorably towards us.

Please hurry up, 2010. THANK YOU.

Neighborly

Christmas Eve, about noon, and I'm lazing around the house, putting my gifts together. My tree is decorated all in tasteful gold, my presents from Korea are carefully wrapped, my pretty Roccoco boxes of French lavender drawer liners and fancy soap sit on my sunlit white cafe table. There is some confusion of wrapping paper, looking lovely in the sunlight. James Galway's flute strains, backed by the Royal Philharmonic BBC Choir, serenade me from the computer. I'm emptying out some trash when my next-door neighbor opens his door.

"Hey, why aren't you singing right now?" he says, smiling at me. I smile back.

"You didn't put your request in," I said, and he laughs and turns his attention to my roommate, who is wagging his tail and giving Paul the big begging eyes. "Hey, Titan! Come here, big fella."

Titan runs in and I follow into...Bachelor Pad Craziness.

Eminem BLARES from the laptop, brown leather coats and shoes lay flung about everywhere, and the kitchen has two burners going at once as Paul makes onion jam for Christmas presents. He shoves the pan at me. "You need to have some of this," he says. "Just stick your finger in it. Usually I make it with red onion, but this is milder--good with all kinds of cheeses, although my favorite is blue. Oh, and have a cookie. They're good. Homemade frosting, too."

"Mm-hmm," I say, following instructions.

"Did I tell you about the BLAH BLAH BLAH," he says, adding to the noise level, dumping onion jam into a glass jar and getting some on the counter, which he wipes up faster than I can blink. He breaks off his stream to say, "...huh. Not a very pretty color."

"I have ribbon," I said, and left to get it. My light, white and blue apartment, accessorized with light flute music, of course has a specifically designated wrapping paper box, which I utilized.

Back to the brown leather and loud and gangsta rap I go, four ribbon spools in hand. Paul fusses with the ribbon, shirtless, wearing cap, leather cuff, jeans, and sneakers. He finally glues it in place. "Martha Stewart would be proud," he says, turning up the 2Pac.

It's been a while since I lived with boys, or next to boys, and it's a lot of fun, to see them at home, to see what they do and don't do. Not all boys cook like Paul, obviously, but all of them do something fascinating. And today is a moment which, like all moments, might not be repeated. My apartment is hardly ever this clean or this peaceful; I don't often sit by the window, pensive, with a cup of coffee. (Okay, so I do that on a regular basis.) But I don't THINK of myself as having a peaceful, girly space. I play Xzibit on a regular basis. I turn my music up LOUD. I have people over.

Just in a different way.

Merry Christmas, everyone. Say hi to your neighbor for me.

Better Love Letter, to a Different City

I've seen a lot of really good love letters to New York City, but this one has to be among the top five in history.



Alicia Key's soaring vocals SLAY me.

Love Letter

Tonight is one of those nights that make living in the Pacific Northwest seem worth the other 364 nights of the year. It must be 50 degrees out there, and softly humid with kissing mist. Titan and I walked a long way, sniffing things, looking at things. Broadway is pretty quiet tonight so far, which either means we're in for a quiet night--possible--or this will turn out to be one of those nights in which sirens are still going at 3 in the morning. Could go either way.

On the way to the park we passed a group of hipsters making fun of the urban cowboy in front of them--oh, sweet irony. Right in front of us a drug deal happened, two guys touching hands for a brief moment. I counted five separate people walking home--or wherever they were headed--with full Dick's bags, sipping on milkshakes. And then, while eyeing Roy Street Coffee House as I walked by, thinking about taking my laptop there later, I heard the words "airshow" behind me.

I made Titan slow down, trying to catch the snippets of conversation the couple was having. "They just rolled it out because they'd promised the airlines," one guy said. "Just for the show!" And that was all I could get, even though I tried to follow them--the wind shifted and I couldn't walk closely enough to overhear without stepping on their heels.

It's a misty city, dark 16 hours a day in the winter, with coffee and internet and drug deals and classic hamburger drive-ins, and it's still a company town. And it's MINE.

More Milestones!

Woman! Woe, man. Whoa-ho-ho-ho-ho man.

My birthday was celebrated by friends, food, and wine, and my applications are done and submitted and I have nothing to do tonight and really, life could not be better. Now if the Tank just gets fixed, I will be UNSTOPPABLE. I haven't yet iced my fingers, but that might happen tonight after I rearrange my apartment.

Yes, I planned on rearranging my apartment this evening. I know. I'm not holding my breath, either.

Milestone

Ladies and Gentlemen: As of TODAY, I am twenty-nine years old. Hooray!

What am I doing about it, you ask? At midnight this morning I was salsa-dancing, and now I'm busting my rear trying to get my grad school applications done. I'd post, but I've typed so much in the past week that my fingers are going to fall off. And I've been at work for nine hours and I have another hour to go.

So if you need me, I'll be over here, drinking a glass of wine and putting my fingers on ice. Thanks.

Winter Hates My Skin, But I Love Products

Wow, a lot of "hate" posts today. Whatever. I like things, I swear--there's good things around me. I'll list some of those, too. Yes, I said List. Because from time to time it's nice to do one of these round-up type of posts about what products I use. (The men in my audience have already left. Hey, come back here! I swear I will talk about Jay-Z later.)

SERIOUSLY, people. We're a nation of consumers and even though I'm trying not to be, these days, there's a few things that are making my life a lot easier right now and I wanted to give credit where credit was due. And the first item I even discovered because I ran out of lotion and refused to by more, so it's RECESSION-CHIC, and that item is:

1. Coconut oil. No fancy brand names here, no sirree. I got the big black tub at Whole Foods back in my vegan days; look for any brand that says "virgin" and "organic". Coconut oil, if you're not vegan and have never heard of it, is solid at room temperature and looks a little like lard; it's white and sort of translucent. It's used in place of butter in most vegan baking and cooking, and it's the BOMB, is what it is. There's a lot of websites that praise coconut oil in near-religious accolades, but you don't have to believe all that hype. I dug my two-year-old jar out of my fridge because I ran out of lotion and since it's barely 35 degrees, my skin will not--NOT--survive without moisturizer. I break off chunks of the oil and rub it on like an ice cube--it melts just fine, and it really works, soaking in evenly and not dripping oil spots on my clothes, and yes, I even put it on my face. But I am a) obsessed with finding single-ingredient things to put on my skin, and b) unafraid to use things like solid oil. I dug my deodorant out of a jar and rubbed it on my underarms with my fingertips for a whole year. I put arrowroot flour in my hair. (Works great as a dry shampoo! Doesn't count as a "liquid" when you travel!) I'm weird.

2. Soy Eggnong. (Silk makes the best one.) Want to drink eggnog but don't want to consume three days worth of saturated fat? Silk has your back. And it's so tasty. Good in coffee.

3. V-8 juice and powdered green mix. Speaking of weird things, I'm also one of those people that likes green smoothies with the weird textures, and powdered green mixes are no exception. I have one from Madison Market, here in Seattle, right now. I'm sure Whole Foods has an equally good house brand. I mix into orange juice along with Vitamin D drops, and I feel actually better after just a day or two of regular use. It MAKES A DIFFERENCE. And V-8 juice just because, hey, veggies are good for you and they're hard to eat raw in the winter. Eating right is one of those things that has to be done EVERY DAY to make a difference, but when you manage to do it for a couple weeks in a row, you wonder why your hair and nails and skin look so great and why you're sleeping better at night, and then you stop eating healthy and sink into a coffee-fueled downward spiral and you wonder what happened. Don't do that.

4. Silk long underwear from REI. A lot better than the stuff from Eddie Bauer, I think. And it raises my core temperature by at least a crucial three degrees.

5. Hats. I LOVE a good hat, and even a bad hat. I wear hats every day that I can possibly get away with them. (All weekend. And I'm thinking of starting to wear them at work.) One of the best things about it being cold is that I can wear hats EVEN MORE.

6. Cashmere. Yes, I know, this is such a SATC-girl thing to put down, it's SO worth the money. Even so, I only have a little bit and I got all my pieces on huge extreme sale. I took a navy cashmere hoodie to Thailand and it weighed about as much as a sneeze and instantly elevated every outfit I wore, and I never overheated. I wore a cashmere SHORT-SLEEVED T-shirt dress out last night over a pair of jeans and I was plenty warm, just sitting in the restaurant. It has some sort of magical heat-sensing addition or something. Cashmere is worth every penny, and you will never take off whatever you put on. I want socks and gloves and armwarmers and legwarmers of this magical stuff.

7. Fresh skin care. Everything I've tried from this line, I've loved. It's super expensive--like, gaspingly expensive, and I don't care. It's amazing.

8. Rose Salve lip balm. Best chapstick ever, and in fact, the only one that works. And it has a bit of shine.

9. Gangster rap. (See? Jay-Z!) Actually I have Kardinal Offishall Not4Sale on repeat right now, and it raises my whole apartment temperature by at least two degrees. Lots of energy.

Things I'm Over:

1. Zeno. This never made a difference for me, ever. It might now that I have less bumpy skin and only have a few concentrated spots, but I've already given up and sold mine.

2. Clarisonic. I might dig out my "sensitive skin" brush and give this another try, but...so far, not impressed.

3. The Furminator. This has to be wielded in expert hands to make much of a difference. I have a great big teardrop-shaped serrated comb that works just as well and covers more area. (And was probably a tenth of the price.) And like I said, Titan mainly gets groomed by pros anyway.

4. All other forms of chapstick besides Rose Salve. I swear every other kind--even a Neutrogena kind I brought back from FRANCE--just dries my lips up more and makes my skin fall off in flakes. Gross.

Wishlist:

1. Wool socks. My cotton ones are useless; my toes are going numb.
2. Wool gloves.
3. ANOTHER coat. My Mom is about to kill me--she just found me an awesome coat and I love it, but it's too formal for walking around the city in sneakers and a baseball hat. It looks weird. For more Titan-walking-appropriate occasions, I want a puffy waist-length one with a big hood and a fur trim around the hood.

Not much, right? Anyone else have wish-list items or product recommendations?

Check It. And I Hate on Nickels.

When you check out magazines from the library, they give you an awesome bag!

See?

And yes, I took this picture on the bus. The bus is warmer than the Tank. Plus the Tank was downtown, chilling (HA!) on Western, recovering from carrying a great deal of food and luggage down to C's place over the weekend. I was on my way to GET the Tank and I missed a bus, and I burned fifteen minutes in the Library, which was thankfully open because the City Council added $863,000 dollars back to the library budget.

Also, when you read that article, note two things: 1. Seattle's libraries are USED, people, and 2. Nickels is a douchebag.

We Interrupt This Broadcast

Hello. It is freezing here. Seriously, it was 29 degrees this morning. I am frozen to the bone. And the blower on the Tank is out, so the heat just...drifts...out of the vents. And that car is not particularly airtight in the first place. (My mother is composing a worried email right now. I'M FINE, MOM.)

But put "Gloves" on the Christmas list, will you? Nice wool (NOT COTTON) ones with a leather palm and maybe some leather pads on the inner fingers, and if isn't too much trouble, could they be the fingerless kind with the mitten top that buttons over? Because those are AWESOME.

I'm not particular as to color.

On to the home life: Titan has recently been to the groomer. This is one of those very small things in my life that I totally struggle with because I apparently don't have enough things to think about. (Not true. But it is one of the quirks of the human brain that we focus on, say, laundry, and not on, say, the human rights violations in Burma.) Anyway. Titan's hair situation is beyond even the imaginings of most pet owners. He is part German Shepherd and part Husky, and one of the banes of his existence is that he doesn't live somewhere like the North Pole, where he could fall asleep in a nice comfortable snow storm. Instead I insist at keeping my house at 70 at least. I keep trying to brush him out myself--and yes, I have the Furminator--but without getting the hair wet and then blow-drying it out, you just can't get at the really deep undercoat. I could Furminate him once a week, if I was that kind of girl. (I'm not.) So the POINT is that yes, I pay someone else to brush him out, and I'M OKAY WITH IT, DAMMIT.

And maybe I should sell my grooming equipment.

Seoul Relief

I left Hell--and I mean that in the best possible way--early Wednesday morning. Six hours later I was back on Planet Earth, getting some Seoul, and I was freezing. Hell may be Hell, but at least it's warm. Seoul was relieving in every possible way--it was a first world country, it was calm, and it was so cold it was like plunging into an ice water bath--which, after Hell, was necessary in many respects.

C was filling out her her health card in Seoul this morning and she turned to me. "Is it the 25th?" she asked.

"All day," I replied, and sure enough, 24 hours later it was STILL the 25th.

And now I'm back in God's country. The Cascades rise up like a knife of judgment. "I lift my eyes up to the hills; from where does my help come?"

I don't believe in heaven and hell as externalities to our own reality, but Bangkok turned out to be exactly what I think of as Hell, and again I mean that in the best possible way. There is serious beauty in Thailand, and even right in Bangkok, and there are also more soul-twisting opportunities than I've ever seen. Filthy street dogs laid out, begging, as farangs negotiated with prostitutes. Taxi drivers never turn their meters on, instead attempting to get you to pay three times the price a ride is worth--or take you on a "tour" of restaurant, jewelery shops, and whore-houses. The farang streets are lined with pirated electronics, and the streets themselves are teeming with voracious bugs and bacteria. Every transaction is a negotiation, you can't drink the water, and you have to bargain just for the air you breathe. The culture clash hovers over the city like a black cloud. Almost everything you hear is a lie, even from guides who seem to be on your side--they'll just tell you whatever they think you want to hear. The Western idea of Truth is non-existent. You're struggling between constant frustration and constant amazement, which leads to constant Singha. The native Thais hate you and desperately need you simultaneously, and they know it.

It's a weird town.

And now you're saying, "Sounds like you hated it." Well, it's not that simple. Bangkok is a 24-hour party. (And I dearly love to party.) You can walk around a grocery store with an open beer in your hand at 9 am, and many people do--and not just farangs. Everything is made easy for you, provided you do exactly what the Thais want you to do--there's no cover for any of the hottest clubs and you can feed yourself on street food for three dollars a day. A pedicure and manicure costs ten dollars together. You can outfit yourself in the latest fashions for four dollars, buying yourself a new outfit, WITH SHOES, daily. Hotel rooms right on the river, with decks, are 10 bucks a night. Some of the most beautiful and famous Buddhist temples in the world are within a 10-cent, five-minute boat ride. The food is fantastic and there's a lot of really pretty people. You CAN party all the time because you can pay someone barely a dollar a day to do all your chores and clean your house. The temperature never drops below 80. And the Thais themselves don't hate you as a person, and in fact, are super-friendly. Although that can be problematic--see above--it's a real pleasure to smile at someone with whom you share nothing in common and getting a big smile in return.

So: it's too simple to just assign qualities of good or bad. It's another world, on another planet, and they do things very differently. Fascinating.

Moment of Truth

I'm in Khuraburi. It's 6 pm. I'm late for dinner. C and I are on our way to a remote jungle for two days in the morning.

And what happens?

It's moon time.

There's no TRASH in this village we're about to go to. I'll have to pack everything out.

Everything.

And there's no soap.

C has some pills that her doctor gave her, just for this eventuality. They may make me crazy. They may not work at all. They may EXACERBATE the problem. C and I confer. It's the moment of truth. I roll the dice and start the pill again.

And there I am in the bathroom, hunting down a bottle of water that I can take pills with, pills I swore I'd never take again, on my way to a wooden hut in the jungle.

Me: "Dear Lord, what have I done to deserve this?"

C stands there for a moment, shocked. "Really? What HAVEN'T you done??"

Forget Everything I Said About Not Yet Being Sick

It's 11:37 pm, Monday night, here in Bangkok. Twenty-four hours from now, C and I will be catching a plane home.

I have spent so much time on boats today that the floor of the hotel here at the computer is swaying, and I haven't been drinking--much.

At least, not tonight. But a few nights ago...

5 AM, Sunday morning. I'm at an after-hours club on Khaosan Road with C and two other girls, drinking bottle service whiskey for something like 30 bucks, with a guy from Portland who loves the Huskies, who's hanging with a bunch of messed up Brits, and I decide to visit the club bathroom. (Western style toilets! Hooray!) And then, all of a sudden at the club, I'm sick, and it's not from the alcohol. I'm kneeling, miserable, wishing I hadn't gotten a drink with ice, in a foreign country where I can't drink the water with a bunch of Brits who are basically only here teaching English because they're too messed up to return to their own country, and there's tiny Thai working girls--and half of them aren't girls--throwing up in the club sinks and I am thinking, "What the hell am I doing here?"

And then this afternoon I climbed Wat Arun at sunset and almost cried, it was so beautiful.

So to say I have mixed feelings about leaving would be an understatement, but there's no better words. (And I generally know A LOT of words.) A lot of really amazing, once-in-a-lifetime experiences have happened--you tell me the last time YOU sang Amazing Grace to a village of former sea gypsies in a town so remote that you have to take a boat and then ride a tractor to get there--and nothing bad has happened at all, but Bangkok is...a beautiful mess. And did I mention it was dirty?

It's dirty and smelly and people are CONSTANTLY trying to sell you something, and they will not take no for an answer. And then there are ALSO places like Wat Arun, (Temple of the Dawn) which is one of the most...visually arresting...things I have ever seen. So it's a mixed bag of incredible beauty and incredible eyesores. And I would really like some cheese. I would like to take a BATH in melted cheese. And I want potatoes--and bread--more than I ever thought possible.

Yesterday, C and I browsed the weekend market at the far north end of Bangkok's skytrain, in which we could buy everything from pets (the animals here are worth a whole separate post) to paintings. Two days ago, I was on the remotest possible village in the middle of the night singing to gypsies. Uh huh. I sang. A lot. And then our hostess sang. I got about four seconds into the gypsy song, taping it with my camera, and I started to cry and couldn't focus the camera anymore. Two days from now I'll be holding my eyes open with toothpicks in Seoul as C and I try to navigate our twelve-hour layover, and three days from now I'll be eating turkey.

I plan to recover my sanity some time in February. Everyone should travel this way.

IN WHICH: My Skin Freaks Out and I Mention the Word Nipple.

It's now Wednesday evening here in Kuraburi (we can't decide quite how to spell it) and between bug bites, heat and humidity, and general bacteria level (although most things are quite clean, and we certainly don't have digestion problems) my skin is rashing out like crazy. My allergic reaction to my bug bites has abated, thanks to DEET, which by the way I plan to build a shrine to when I get home, but my face, legs, and arms are taking the brunt of the new air. There were some great skin creams available over the counter in Bangkok, including excellent drugs like Differin and Retin-A that a girl would need a prescription for back at home, but I'm flying several more times before returning to Bangkok and I didn't want to check a bag yet.

Finally, in rural Thailand, here in a coastal fishing village, I realized I needed to address this growing problem and went to the local pharmacy. Here, of course, none of the labels are written in English like they are in the big Boots in Bangkok--say that three times fast--and C and I spent several amusing minutes trying to figure out which cream is good for what. We decided that most of the anti-fungal creams were actually meant for athlete's foot--in fact it was C who figured that out--and we ALSO discovered that a pharmacy in a small fishing village in rural Thailand doesn't have the best product turnover; namely, most of their stock expired in 2002. I finally bought a new-looking cream, even though the expiration date read '53--C and I hope that means 2053, or some random Thai date--that contained salicyclic acid and benzoic acid. Who knew a chemical engineering degree and a lifetime of reading skin cream labels would come in so handy? And then our world view was shaken to the core. The old man watching me buy it proceeded to make the most obscene gesture to me and C that I've ever seen. He pointed to me and rubbed his nipples.

Yes, he did.

But he didn't seem to be really leering about it--he kept gesturing to the cream. C and I finally decided that the cream was meant for nipple chafing or sore nipples, maybe for running or breastfeeding, but the ingredient list seemed so appropriate that I bought it anyway.

If I decide to use it somewhere besides my face, I will report back.

HI, MOM AND DAD! I mean, on my arms or legs or something. OBVIOUSLY.

In Which: Rural Thailand Treats Us Well

A lady on the trip with us, N, has written a really great email, so I am going to copy and paste hers below because everyone is waiting for the computer, with some edits by me. (Note: as I'm editing this, it is in fact 8:00 am, Wednesday morning.)

N SAYS: It's 4:30 on Tuesday afternoon as I'm beginning this story and we just finished our second exhausting but rewarding day of work.

We are staying in a small fishing village called Khuraburi. It is 3 hours north of Phuket and it was a very, very, long bus ride from the airport in Phuket to this place, Sunday afternoon.We began today, Tuesday, by walking around the weekly market. The 10 of us negotiated over gifts to give the children at the Burmese school we have been working at, sometimes haggling as much as 25 baht. (Less than a whole dollar.)

We moved on to a delicious breakfast in the local market--we eat there every morning--with hot thai tea and coffee, savory rice porridge with pork or shrimp, and what you might call patties of sticky rice made with coconut milk, wrapped in palm or banana leaves. AARWENN SAYS: This is real Thai cooking, and I am GAINING WEIGHT. It's all delicious, and dinner meals are spicy as heck. Our guide, and a few of us in the party, (including me) consider ourselves to be real spicy food connoisseurs, and our mouths are on fire. And it's absolutely wonderful. I wish I knew the names of the dishes so I knew what to ask for in the states at Thai restaurants, although I don't think most of them are even available. (Hi, parents and grandparents! C and I are not starving!)

Back to N: Next was our long bumpy ride on benches in the back of a "bus"--read: glorified truck--for 45 minutes. When we arrived at the school it wasn't long before the first of the children rushed out to join us in our painting, cleaning, and before long - picture taking. Three little girls took off with our camera and fashion-victim-style sunglasses and took photos of us, themselves, and their friends for the next hour or so. Those photos are priceless and I can't wait to share them.

The work is hard. It's hot. We sweat out the water faster than we can drink it. AARWENN SAYS: Which is good, because the latrines are...latrines. Holes in the ground, although they DO have ceramic or plastic "standing spots". There are about 6 of them at the school, and they vary widely in cleanliness--some are cleaner than most bar/club bathrooms back home, and some are...best left avoided. Thailand in general has a waste management problem, and the Burmese school is in the slums, so there is trash everywhere, huge piles of it out back of all the huts. It's depressing. HOWEVER. In ONE of the latrines, one of the feral dogs has had a litter of puppies! They were born just a day or two before we arrived, if not ON our first day--they don't even have their eyes open yet. It's the little things that make the slums bearable.

Back to N: The children are overwhelming in their enthusiasm. I showed them on a map today where Seattle is, and where Thailand is. Their eyes lit up as they drew their finger across the map and saw how far we had come before showing up to help at their school and entertain them.

We have another day and a half at their school. The last day we will do a skit to teach them about recycling, and oral hygene, and then we give them their gifts of tooth brushes and toothpaste. AARWENN SAYS: Thai food is very sweet, surprisingly so, and the children do not know how to brush, so their baby teeth are rotting out faster than their permanent teeth are coming in. THAT is depressing. However, the older kids, with their permanent teeth, seem to be fine. C and I aren't sure if that's because permanent teeth have better enamel or what. In general, actually, it's obvious throughout the entire area, with both the Burmese and the Thai, that the influence of Western culture has generally had a tremendous positive influence on the health of the citizens in the area. There's a huge difference between Thais our own age, who look exactly like us, and their parents or grandparents, who look much more...rural. Like they just left their hill tribes. On the negative side, the Western culture of consummation of pre-packaged things--sodas and pre-wrapped sweets and things--has TRASHED the area, see the Waste Management problem, above. That's a much longer conversation that I won't subject all of you to right this second--this note is long enough as it is.

Back to N: Then we move on to our home stay in Tung Dap where we will be staying with former people who come from a history of Sea Gypsys who lived aboard their boats. They will be much more modest, but it will be our first time to spend at the beach. They will do a traditional dance for us on the first night we are there--we are all looking forward to this.

AARWENN SAYS: It is hot, for sure, but surprisingly bearable, or maybe we're just getting used to it. And we are fairly covered up--capri pants and short-sleeved shirts--for modesty and to not stand out too much, but again, it is bearable. There is exotic wildlife everywhere, including geckos and the loudest cicadas I have ever met, but nothing invasive. None of us are sick, we are all working very hard, and in general, stepping outside of our comfort zones. I had no idea I would be working with kids this much, but I'm rolling with it, and our accommodations are WONDERFUL! Luxurious little huts with granite floors and gorgeous dark wood fixtures. C and I love and miss all of you. Stay tuned for the next update.

Made it!

We made it! We caught a taxi from the airport and arrived at our hotel with zero wrong turns or communication difficulties, in spite of it being only the second DAY of our taxi driver's career. (That was a fun exercise in translation, trying to figure that out. C rose well to the challenge, while I stared blankly.) It is very hot, no exaggeration; it was 2:40 am here when we arrived and it was at least 80 degrees, with 100% humidity. Customs at the airport took us very little time, in spite of my passport being four months from expired, and we are meeting our tour group tomorrow at breakfast at 8:00 am. There are little buglets everywhere, but they are shy--so far only C, who will attract the only mosquito in hundreds of miles, has a bite. Our hotel is very modern and the room is very large, with all the amenities, right on the river. Things are very, very cheap; a 25 minute taxi ride from the airport to our hotel was 15 dollars for both of us together (and we got RIPPED OFF) and bottles of beer are 1 dollar. (Roughly.) (I feel like we got our money's worth, though, since our cab had a bumper sticker of the Playboy bunny.)

We have not drunk the water--hence the beer--and we are looking forward to our day of rest tomorrow before starting our volunteer work on Sunday. Hello, from Thailand, to everyone.

Thailand in 2.5 Days!

My trip to Thailand is so close that I can start counting, accurately, in HALF days. Life is good.

There's just a few things I have to do before I leave, like, decide my entire academic future.

Dating Post! (Short and Non-Scandalous)

That's right. It's happening. And it's BORING, sorry.

Hi! I'm single. You may have noticed. Or maybe you haven't? I was dating AZ for a short time there, but I didn't really make a formal announcement, which saved me the trouble of making a formal announcement when we broke up. He's a great guy. (Hi, AZ!) But not for me.

Anyway. For those of you who read this blog mainly to catch up with my life and not for my witty commentary on Current Events, now you know what's up in my dating life. No, I'm not sitting at home alone o'nights. Yes, there's men in my life. Yes, I AM currently late for my next appointment, what makes you ask? Oh, you expected as much? Hmm. Eff you too then.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

It was daylight when Titan and I went into the Rite-Aid. Ten minutes later we stepped out into the pitch black of a murder mystery.

I ducked under the Chase awning to pull up my hood and arrange my coffee and plastic Rite Aid bag; Titan shook his head in a futile attempt to keep water from running into his eyes. The rain was going sideways, hard enough to drown out almost everything but the collective reaction of the hundreds of people on the street, all struck dumb by the sudden downpour. It was almost too late before I could aurally distinguish the thumpa-thumpa-thumpa of the Ferrari motor, the navy blue supercar just idling down the street, from the shouts and distinctive tap-tap-tap sound of the heavy rain, and just as I turned to look at the gorgeous rear end as it passed, a giant glass splinter of lightning stabbed down from the heavens.

It was like a strobe light times a thousand and it seemed to go on forever--everyone on the street frozen, cars in the middle of parallel parking, passers-by in the middle of shouting, mouths open, and then the night darkened again and the Ferrari engine growls were forcefully woven into the cracka-BOOM of the instantaneous thunder. Apparently the storm was right on top of us, as if that wasn't already apparent with the sideways rain. Titan and I braved it home, snot running down my face from my stuffy nose and me babying my cut finger and trying to ward off hacking coughing fits and Titan taking his sweet time sniffing things, me pulling at his leash, trying to get him to just HURRY IT UP ALREADY. All around us, lightning flashed and thunder boomed and car alarms went off. By comparison, contracting swine flu eight days before I have to leave for Southeast Asia seems kind of tame.

On Writing

I've been accused, often--maybe not so much "accused" as I have been "laughably charged", as no one's really mad--that I distort the truth in these blog posts of mine. Friends who are present for an episode and then read about the episode later are always bemused. "That's not exactly what happened," they sometimes say, or else they say, "That's not ONLY what happened."

Hey: I haven't taken any oaths to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing BUT the truth (although I swear I don't make things up) and if I did, I wouldn't be writing.

Because writing by its very nature is a lie.

Or at least, it has only a passing resemblance to the truth. To what actually happened.

It's impossible, at least by amateurs like me, to really capture the wholeness of any scene taking place in Real Life. For one thing, Real Life doesn't stop or start--it's always going, always, and hundreds of back stories, side stories, and hell, cover stories are bubbling away at all times, informing every participant in the scene but totally impossible to capture in the written word. Blog posts, or novels, or newspaper columns, or whatever, have to start somewhere and end somewhere, and they have to make some kind of point. They have to illuminate a lesson or sharpen a moral truth, take 1000 words and create an etching in your mind of Real Life. A good column or blog post is 3-D; if you turn the page sideways you can almost see the image that the writer is trying to convey crystallizing over the page. A good writer sees a scene and cuts away everything that is not, in fact, the point, allowing the dimly lit kernel, the basis of human interaction, glimmer darkly from the page of newsprint.

And that is impossible to do while trying to capture every angle of every conversation said during the half an hour conversation that the writer caught and wrote down.

The best way to capture Real Life is not, in fact, to record every second of it, but instead to pull at a glowing thread, tracing it backwards, following its twists and turns and recording every second of that journey. If Life is a tapestry, good writing is about three inches of embroidery thread. Trying to describe the whole tapestry in words does not invoke images of Real Life in your audience; instead, it makes them think you can't write. Character development in novels is the same: a real 3-D character is almost too much, seems too unrealistic. It's better instead to shine a spotlight on certain characteristics at certain times and leave out most characteristics altogether.

And keeping this in mind is helpful as I try to paint a picture of Capitol Hill on this very stormy night.

SWINED!

Hello. My muscles ache. Like, a lot, a lot. I have a fever. I am fatigued as hell. It tires me to go up and down the stairs. I voted anyway, even though it took a lot of damn energy to walk to the mailbox. Fortunately my friends are effing AMAZING and have already brought me care packages! Seriously, you guys. My friends ROCK.

Now I just need to: a) kick the virus before I leave for Thailand, as they might not let me into the country with an elevated temperature, and b) not develop pneumonia afterwards, as I hear from anecdotal evidence is common. Popping more vitamins now.

A Good Reminder

Mom, by email, Friday afternoon: "I know you had a very exciting weekend, dear. But try to remember to take your phone charger HOME with you today."

Me: "Yes, ma'am."

And in spite of that I ALMOST FORGOT IT AGAIN--but I didn't! Thanks, mom. You rock.