To Do List

My to do list for the weekend:

Teach a white guy how to salsa. Check.

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

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

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

Make my obligatory Irish friend of the week. Check.

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

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

Blogging as procrastination

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Argentina: Favorite Things Part 2

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

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

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

Sejal and the beet tower

Argentina: Favorite Things Part I

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

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

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

The steamed milk and "submarine" chocolate

Submerging the "submarine"

Stirring up the submarino to prepare it for consumption