Times Square Ain't the Place for a Vegan

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.

Argentina: Favorite Things Part 3

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

The Things We Do For Love

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

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.

The Mobile Alibi

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.

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

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. . .

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.

Punk Rock. . . in 3/4 Oompa time

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!

If it ain't Baroque. . .

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?

Axtlan Taqueria: where everybody knows your name. . . .

Or in this case, your meat preference.

So I don't eat out that often, certainly much less than most of my co-workers. And I would say of the times that I do go out to eat, I go to the taqueria down the street--Axtlan Taqueria--maybe once every 3 or 4 weeks.

Apparently, however, in the year that I've been working at EBASE, I've gone there enough that I've become a familiar face, and a familiar order.

This became clear yesterday when I walked in and began contemplating my order.

I said, "Hi, I'd like the--"

"Axtlan plate with Carnitas, right?" the guy behind the counter finished for me. He had already begun chopping up the meat as he spoke.

I have to admit: I was a little taken aback. That was, in fact, what I was going to order. I had briefly flirted with ordering something else. Maybe chili verde in a burrito. But their carnitas is just so good, and the Axtlan plate is perfect when you're hungry.

I can't decide if I'm horrified at my own predictability, or happy to have become enough of a rgeular that they know what I want. It's probably a little bit of both.

Priceless

Finally back from vacation in Vienna/Prague/Salzburg, etc--with lots of stories and pictures to share. I am, however, running on more than 24 hours without sleep, and must overcome nasty nasty jetlag before the catch-up blogging can begin. But in the meantime, here's a little something to laugh about:

Traditional Czech dinner in a restaurant on the Old Town Square in Prague: 350 Czech crowns.

Famously strong Turkish coffee after dinner: 30 Czech crowns.

Watching a random tourist suddenly decide to strip down and interpretive dance in the square until the police arrested her: priceless.

(I really tried to take pictures of this, but unfortunately the crowd around her got too thick, and it was way too dark for the pictures to turn out well. So you'll just have to take my word for it--or the word of the hundreds of other locals and tourists who witnessed it as well!)

Only at Berkeley

I was out at UC Berkeley's club sign-up day yesterday, trying to recruit potential activtists for a union organizing campaign we're supporting at work. Here's the thing that makes UC Berkeley's club sign-up day different from anywhere else I've ever been or heard of:

There were protesters.

Yup. People with picket signs, protesting club sign-up day. Or more specifically, protesting the amount of paper being wasted by all the flyers clubs were giving out at club sign-up day. And these protesters were serious--they were screaming at people not to take the flyers, and demanding that people recycle them when they were done reading them.

I'm all for recycling, reducing waste, and protests, but seriously kids? If you are concerned about the environment, seems like you could have thought a little harder and dug a little deeper to find an environmental campaign with a bit more impact than what's going to be accomplished by heckling a bunch of freshman out of accepting a flyer about joining the newspaper staff.

I'm just saying.

Overheard in the office

You can thank my Dutch friend Sophie for finding "Overheard in the Office," a great site where people submit stupid or funny things they've overheard.

My favorite so far (just from the first page, anyway)?

Lawyer: Put your John Hancock on these documents, please.
Daughter: You sure this is legal? I mean, with me being your kid and all?
Lawyer: It is very legal. Far more legal than any of the drugs you have experimented with on my credit card.

Post-traumatic pet disorder

As a favor to my friend Abby, I am pet-sitting her Beta fish, Alpha. When she initially asked me to watch the fish, I thought this sounded like a pretty easy gig--a pinch of food every other day. Even easier than watering plants and having to worry about them getting too much water or too little, or too much sun, or not enough. (I am not good with plants. She knows this. I suspect that's why she didn't ask me to take care of them.) But a pinch of food? Surely I could handle that without killing anything.

But when I went to pick up my water-loving roommate of the next week and half, I started to remember. Traumatic, horrible memories of dead fish--fish I had killed--as a child. (And I'm not talking your standard "cheapo fish from the carnival goes belly-up in the bowl a week later" kind of stories.) I started to worry that Abby would return to find that I had failed her in the one simple task she had charged me with: to keep her fish from croaking. I started to worry that I was unfit to watch this fish. History has pretty much already proven that.

How bad could it be, you ask? Let me tell you. When I was 9, I had a small tank of neon tetra fish on the nightstand in my bedroom. Now as a child, I was a fitful sleeper. One night, I woke in the wee hours of the morning to discover that the floor next to my bed was wet and my fish tank was missing. Upon turning on the light, I discovered that my flailing, sleeping arms had knocked the tank off the nightstand. To my horror, there, flopping on the floor--amidst the broken, jagged shards of my former fish tank--were my 8 neon tetras, their little mouths opening and closing in waterless gasps as their eyes started to bulge. One by one, they died on the floor. I screamed and screamed, horrified by the sight. (What can I say? I was a highly strung child.)

After that, my parents passed a rule that I could no longer keep fish in my room. As a consolation, however, my dad did superglue the tank back together, printed out some fish on neon paper and stuck them--on toothpicks--back into my tank. He said they would have to do until I learned how to lie still and sleep like a normal person.

Time passed. Eventually, my parents bought me a new fish, a goldfish named Fred. Now I know it's silly to become attached to fish, but I was attached to Fred. I'd had him for almost a year when Christmas rolled around, and I felt like he deserved a stocking and presents, just like our other pets had. (What can I say? We're a weird family.) For presents, I had bought him some new plants and tiny plastic castle to put in his bowl.

"Aren't you excited, Fred?" I asked, as I scooped him out of his bowl and put him in a cup so I could wash out his bowl and put in his new accessories. He wagged his little fish tail at me; I like to think that he was, in fact, excited about the plants and castle.

In my haste to get him back into his bowl, however, I didn't think to check the temperature of the water. I poured him back into the bowl, and watched, horrified, as he died on the spot--boiled alive in hot water. His little limp body drifted in and out of the strands of his new plants and finally collided with the side of his new castle.

I was a certified fish killer.

I feel like fish usually die in a sort of vague, "no one's really to blame" kind of way. But this was clearly my fault. And I took it pretty hard. I immediately started crying and proceeded to lock myself in the bathroom for more than a hour. Needless to say, it kind of put a damper on that year's Christmas festivities.

There were no more fish after that. It was too hard, too painful.

Until now.

Now, I live in fear that I will come home and find Alpha dead and floating in his bowl. I am terrified that I will trip and accidentally knock his bowl off my dining room table, where he is currently stationed. I worry that my neighbor's cat, who likes to come visit, will think Alpha could make a good after-dinner snack. I fret that sunlight streaming through my windows will bounce off a particularly reflective surface and create some sort of heat-seaking laser beam that kills him dead, like ants under a magnifying glass. I am sure I couldn't handle the trauma of killing off yet another fish.

I am counting the days until Abby comes back.

I just hope I still have a fish to give her when she gets here.

The Occupational Hazards of Ironing

I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that I am not, and will never be, a domestic goddess. The three weeks where dinner consisted of microwave popcorn 5 times and peanut butter and crackers 3 times was the first clue.

Then there's the fact where I have managed to kill nearly every plant I have owned in the last 4 years. Even with regular watering and trying to figure out the right amount of sun exposure, they all still died.

But here's the kicker:

When I went to iron clothes tonight--the first time I had attempted to iron in at least 4 months, I am sure--I managed to give myself what might be a first degree burn from scalding hot water dripping out of the bottom of the iron. While I really blame this more on a crappy iron than anything inherently deficient about my ironing skills, I do still think I should take it as a sign that Martha Stewart will not be calling to recruit me as her second-in-command anytime soon.

Yeah. I'm off to find some ice. And some microwave popcorn.

Weekend updates

Had a really fabulous, laid-back weekend. Here are some of the lessons I learned:

1) Don't order french fries at an ice cream parlor. Unless, that is, you're prepared to gnaw your arm off while you wait for them, while simultaneously silently cursing your friends who are plowing into their ice cream sundaes.

2) Root beer floats are really two receptacle projects. And if you don't have two glasses/bowls, you'd better have a glass and a tub. Otherwise, you're gonna wish you had an umbrella, some goggles, a raincoat and a lot of handiwipes.

3) Soccer is addicting.

4) There is such a thing as embracing the awkward too much. If you're talking about beer bottles and the cap/no cap discussion comes up, you've gone too far.

5) If you're not going to come prepared to do the gourmet picnic at Stern Grove, then you'd better end up sitting next to a guy named Nico who has french bread, cheese, truffles, vegan cookies and a lot of wine to share.

6) Bonus points if he immediately points out that he's straight and single and then picks up your friend.

7) When matching opening bands with headliners, it is important to put the mellower act first and build up to exciting dance music. Otherwise people use up all their energy and fall asleep during the main act.

8) The trick to making the girls' bathroom line go faster than the men's is apparently to have 8 women's stalls for every one men's stall.

9) Club waziema is closed on Sundays. But fortunately, Fly Bar was doing a $10 "all you can drink from the Full Sail keg" special so it all worked out OK.

10) $10 All you can drink does not, in fact, mean that you should try to drink a whole keg by yourself.

11) If you ignore lesson 10, you should make sure you don't let drunk guys you don't actually know make crank calls with your phone. For all you know, he might be telling people that he's your parole officer.

12) Drinking on a Sunday afternoon is only a good idea if you stop before Monday morning.

Short and Sweet

Just two words: Dirty McFlirty.

Shenanigans at the "brewery"

The "brewery"

I think I may have met my match--someone who is as willing to push the envelope of awkward as I am. He might even be a little more willing, frankly. Let's recap what happens when three funny people--one of whom loves mediocrity and two who embrace awkwardness--get together and get drunk.

So Miranda's friend Darren came down from Sacramento to hang out with us on Friday afternoon. Now I've met Darren once before and my general impression was that he was a funny, fun guy. (He claims that I trash talked him during a game of Phase Ten, but I think that is highly unlikely--although not improbable--because I know for a fact that I wasn't actually playing Phase Ten that night.) But I had no idea how funny Darren was until Friday.

But here's the deal. I'm way too lazy--and it's now too far removed--to bother with an entire write up of the craziness that was two Friday's ago experience of the "brewery." If you want the long (and I do mean LONG) version of the night, check out Darren's blog account of it. (But take it with a grain of salt--I was not anywhere near as much the instigator, and he was not anywhere near as much the helpless victim who played along as he makes it seem. I promise. Oh. And I'm definitely not quirky.)

Here are the quick and dirty highlights of my night with Darren and Miranda:
--George (as always). As soon as he saw me, he made a beeline, pulled out his best (and by best I mean ridiculous) "smooth" manner, and when I commented on how I could see two of myself in his aviator glasses, he replied "you must be enjoying that very much."

(On a side note, when I recounted that moment to a friend the next day while waiting at a stop light, some middle-aged guy with his toddler turned around and said "wow. That's a dumb line. I would have said 'well I wish I could see two of you right now.'")

This is Darren's best impersonation of George's smoothness

--George asking me to invite my friends to his party because "they were hella cool." Get your own hella cool friends.

--George calling me "quirky." That's like the pot calling the kettle black, son. Actually it's not like that at all, because I'm not "quirky." And if I hadn't been holding a really good Belgian beer in my hand at that moment, I might have started a street fight with George right there to prove it.

--Darren lying to a homeless guy about how he and I were married and then causing a big fake scene while we waited for a table at some restaurant.

Good times at the "brewery." Good times.

Would the Real Team Awesome Please Stand Up?

It was questionable whether I was going to make it off that plane without going postal on some hyped-up happy marathon runner. But I made it safely--and without further incident--to my hotel room, where I promptly barricaded the door to ward off any further interaction with Team Awesome.

Shortly thereafter, Becky arrived, looking traumatized. She had survived her flight from San Francisco with the Team as well. (*A word about Becky's team: while I've been putting up with Team Awesome, Becky's been dealing with the San Francisco equivalent, Team Sucks a Lot. They really do. It's mostly rich-bitch Marina girls who've cornered the market on being unfriendly. And at least one of them--we're pretty sure--has really botched-up butt implants. So while they're not quite as peppy, they're still pretty awful. Becky was grateful to have survived.) So we hugged and swore never to leave the other person alone with the Team again.

And then we devised a plan. We weren't going to let the Team drag us down. We weren't going to drown in a sea of pep without a fight. We would fight cheesy with . . .irony. We would reclaim Team Awesome.

And so we did. We took our Barney-purple Team in Training jerseys and we wrote TEAM AWESOME on the back. And then we wrote it on our arms. And then we made a pact: anytime a Team in Training person yelled "Go Team" at us during the race, we would respond with "TEAM AWESOME!!!" (Pronounced TEAM AWE-SOME!)


And then, as our coup d'etat, we convinced (and by convinced I really mean insisted) our friend Josh to wear my extra Team in Training jersey (which was too small on me, and thus WAY too small for him) while cheering us on. Not only did he wear it, but he ran the last four miles with Becky in it. Now that's a good friend, and a deserving member of the real Team Awesome. And so, Becky and Claire managed to avoid the pep, bring the irony, and overall have an awesome marathon experience. (What kind of awesome, you ask? Team Awesome!)

Team Awesome members Claire and Josh post-race. He carries off the jersey with aplomb, don't you think? I've been told he has quite the thing for purple!

Team Awesome Goes Bad-Ass.

Team Awesome does San Diego

So I ran this marathon on Sunday. But before I really get into it, here's a little back story on how this came to pass:

My friend Becky and I decided back in February that we would raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and train for this marathon with their program, Team in Training. At the time it seemed like a brilliant plan: raise money for a good cause and have a structured group setting to make sure you're doing all the training to get you ready to run 26.2 miles. There was, however, one thing that we could not have expected about Team in Training that made it kind of scary (and in my book akin to Chinese Water Torture):

The pep factor.

I've never met so many happy, peppy people in my life. Like abnormally happy and peppy. "Should-have-been-hired-to-work-at-Disneyland" kind of happy. "Got-kicked-off-the-cheerleading-squad-for-being-over-the-top" kind of peppy.

And let me just be clear. I do not do peppy. I was a cheerleader in high school, and I am very sure I used up an entire lifetime's worth of peppy cheer in those three and a half years. There is literally none left. I CANNOT handle peppy. Or cheesy. Or any type of "too sincere for its own good" sacharine sweetness. This is why I hate musicals, and a cappela groups and movement songs. And it is also why I HATE Team In Training.

So we show up for Team in Training and it's all chanting and cheering and clapping and "GOOOOOO TEAM!" all over the place. This is bad enough for me. But then they tell us that we're going to have to come up with a team name. I can feel myself starting to cringe as I look desperately for an exit from this cornball filled hell. After a brief flirtation with the name Team Outstanding (and I hope you don't think I'm kidding) we finally settle on Team Balance. I quietly retch in the corner. Privately, to Becky and to my other friends, I decide to refer to the crazies as Team Awesome. (This is, of course, ironic.)

Becky and I start going to the team workouts. I don't last long with this. Every time I go, I can feel the "Go Team" and "East Bay ROCKS" chanting, the Team Balance name, the super-excited, happy and energized people who just can't wait to bust out some jazz hands eating away at the core of my very cynical soul. This is not acceptable. I decide to train on my own. Because really, when given a choice between revolting peppiness and running 20 miles by myself--hell, given the choice between peppy and just about anything else--peppy is going to lose.

I stayed aloof and removed up to the day that we all flew down to San Diego. And then something terrible happened. I got trapped on a plane with Team Awesome. And they were in prime form. Most of them were wearing their Team gear, and as soon as the flight attendant had finished the flight safety speech, the chanting began. And then singing: "We are the Champions." "We Will Rock You." God knows what else because by then I was curled in the fetal position in my seat, rocking and covering my ears while screaming "I can't hear you, I can't hear you."

Ok that's a lie.

But the chanting and the singing is not.