Seen on the walk to the post office today

Tango

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

(Belated) Weekend Update

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

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

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

Tranny Bar.

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

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

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

Chemistry

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

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

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

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

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

Genius

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

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

Argentina: Favorite Things Part 3

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

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

Me and Rosalinda the Tango Teacher

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

See? I'm not stepping on his feet!

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

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

4 Hot Women and a Tango Teacher

Ridiculous levels of inefficiency

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

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

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

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

Argentina: Favorite Things Part 2

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

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

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

Sejal and the beet tower

Gorgeous

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

Argentina: Favorite Things Part I

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

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

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

The steamed milk and "submarine" chocolate

Submerging the "submarine"

Stirring up the submarino to prepare it for consumption

Argentina: First the ugly

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

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

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

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



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

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

A Small Blog Hiatus

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

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

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

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

The Things We Do For Love

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.

San Francisco, Tourist Style--Part I

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

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


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

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

Filbert St. Stairs, where the parrots live

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

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

Macondray Lane

More phallic structures: the TransAmerica building

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

A Report from the Field

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

Her song of choice?

"I Want to Be Sedated."

A Lazy Blogger

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

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

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

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

Historical Role Playing

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

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

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

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

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

The Mobile Alibi

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

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

God bless that capitalist spirit of innovation.

Justice for UC Workers

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

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

Welcome Back to the Wee Hours

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

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

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

The weekend rundown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It said that for 7 years.

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

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

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

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.

World Tour of Bathrooms

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

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



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

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

Punk Rock. . . in 3/4 Oompa time

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

How on earth could I pass that up?

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

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

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

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

Magical Thinking

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

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

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

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

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

If it ain't Baroque. . .

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

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





























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

Juxtaposition

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

Here goes.

What kind of museum, you ask?

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

Better than Coffee

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

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

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

Beautiful details

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

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

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

St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague.

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

The formal gardens at the Belvedere in Vienna.

The wrought iron over this door in Vienna was beautiful.

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

This one is dedicated to Miranda Hansen

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

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

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

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

Argentina: variations on a theme

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

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

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

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

I'm officially bouncing off walls. . . .

because I'm going to ARGENTINA in November!!! And better yet, I'm going with my very good friend from school, Sejal, who embraces the awkward better than anyone I know, even me. And, on a whim, I jokingly told our friend Brianne (who is currently working on a political campaign and will thus be unemployed come November 7th) that she should come, too. And I think she's going to! Woohoo!

And now that I've used up my 2006 supply of exclamation points, I'll get back to work.

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!)

Yummy

In keeping with the grand old tradition that says that Labor people never actually get Labor Day off, most of my coworkers and I worked yesterday. Part of the day's work involved manning a table at the Central Labor Council's annual Labor Day barbecue. The cooking at the Labor Day barbecue is always done by the Local Firefighter's union, and I have to say: the collective hotness of the firemen was definitely the highlight of my day. This should not come as a surprise to anyone who knew me in college.

Here is a picture of some of the firemen (although it totally does not do their hotness justice). And as a funny side note: the reason the firemen were posing like this is because they were having their picture taken with Phil Angelides, Democratic candidate for governor. Brooke--who took this picture and clearly has her priorities straight--cropped Phil out of the picture so we could just focus on the firemen. Thank you Brooke!

Adventures in Hiking

This post is actually from last weekend, but I couldn't find the cord to download the photos onto my computer and thus it had to wait until now to be posted. Last Saturday, Josh and I, in desperate need of some nature, went for a hike in Tilden Regional Park. I had found a hike I wanted to do and wrote out the directions. However, within 3 minutes of starting out (and that's actually not an exaggeration) we had messed up the directions and got lost.

The upside of getting lost is that we stumbled upon San Pablo Reservoir (after scrambling down a really steep hill that may or may not have been private property. Ooops.), where we had ourselves a fabulous little picnic and rented a kayak for some afternoon paddling. The only downside is that we then had to scramble back up the really steep hill before we treated ourselves with much needed slurpies from the nearest 7-11. Overall, a damn good Saturday in the East Bay. (The rhyming, by the way, is totally intentional.)

Josh and Claire (Disclaimer: Josh wants to point out that everytime he has been photographically represented on my blog, it has been misleading. He does not generally sport the mountain man facial hair seen here. Nor does he usually sport the too-tight purple tank top we saw him in at the beginning of the summer.)

Oh, que mess!

So I mentioned in my blog post from yesterday that I am sad, tired, confused, overwhelmed and furstrated. All of those things are still true. Except for tired. 11 hours of sleep and at least I'm no longer tired. I just wish I could scratch those other adjectives off the list as easily.

My life is a royal mess at the moment. And I don't really know what to do about it. I have so many decisions that I have to make, and I have absolutely no idea where or how to start.

I'm leaving my job on October 20th. That much is certain. But other than that? I need to decide what I'm doing and where I'm doing it after that. Do I want to keep organizing? I love organizing. Should I go back to working at my old job with the union? Should I take them up on this short-term job in Hawaii? I also hate organizing. I love and hate organizing. So that's helpful.

Am I serious about this going to law school business? Where? When? What happens if I don't take the LSAT until December and I fuck it up? Can I even register for the December LSAT since I don't know where the hell I'm going to be? If I'm serious about law school does it really make sense to move now--with the all the expenses of moving and the fact that I'd be giving up my California state residency? And if I am serious about law school then what the hell am I going to do between now and then?

And what if it's not law school and it's not organizing? What do I want to do? And where? I do not do not DO NOT want to be in California any longer. I have no friends here anymore, no relationship, no prospects, no job. I'm tired of the lefter than thous. I'm tired of everything being so expensive. Apparently, I am still tired after all.

FABULOUS!

I just had a drunk coversation with my Dutch friend, Sophie. By which I mean that she was drunk and I was . . . .tired? Sad? Confused and overwhelmed and frustrated? Yes to all of those, but more on that later. Mostly I was just entertained, because it is not often that I get to talk to Sophie when she is drunk (or really at all, given the time difference).

Sophie pointed out that she doesn't feel she has gotten equal representation on my blog. This is mostly because she doesn't have a blog I can link to, and because she's not here to do crazy stuff with (but I know there would be no end to the crazy stuff if she were here), but it's a fair point, nonetheless.

So I decided that I would dedicate the blog entry to talking about why Sophie is fabulous. Here are 5 reasons that Sophie is fabulous and fantastic and many other good things, too:

5) Give her a bottle of windex and she can kill ants with the best of them.
4) She's better at rallying the troops for big, social fun than anyone else I know
3) She's a fantastic wingwoman. But she really should tone down the match-making. :-)
2) She has this great "leg-humping" dance she does when she's excited and trying to embarass me that I find very endearing (and yes, embarassing, too).
1) Her relentless insistence that I move to Holland, get a job as a union organizer, marry a tall Dutch man (because she tells me they're all tall) and eat a lot of bread and cheese. Because even though it's not going to happen, I appreciate that she continues to push for it.

Oh, and one last reason Sophie is fabulous: her opinions on gender roles in professional soccer.

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.

Nicknames

I've always been a proponent of using nicknames for the people I date/am interested in. (As, apparently, are many of my friends. Check out Becky and Miranda's blogs for proof.) When I was younger, it was a way to disguise who my friends and I were talking about, so that crushes wouldn't find out you liked them. Yes, I know. Very mature. The nicknames Father Z Man (cute boy turned priest), Croutons (his last name was Bacon, but we thought calling him Bacon Bits would be too obvious) and Cheeto (I have no idea why--but somehow it stuck) were among the highlights of this nickname phase.

Then there was the period where I only seemed to be into people named Steve. We call it the Steve Period (or, more aptly, the Dark Age). Those guys were referred to as Steves 1-7. I kid you not. There really were 7 Steves. And it really was way too much trouble to come up with creative, individualized nicknames for all of them. Thus, a numbering system.

As I got older and more mature (and in a self-imposed Steve-free zone), my reasons for nicknaming changed. As Becky says, the nicknames became a way to distance myself so I wouldn't get hurt. After all, it is hard to get emotionally attached to someone you refer to as the Downsizer.

More often anymore, the nicknames are how I ID people--crushes, new acquaintances, and people I'm dating--to my friends: they might be confused on the real names, but they remember who the Friendster Friend, the Quoter, the Tall Texan, and the Online Dater/Dumper/UnDumper are. (Sorry, A--I'll either come up with a new nickname or just start calling you by your real name now.)

And while I do think of coming up with a catchy and appropriate nickname as a fun challenge, I'm looking forward to the day when all the nicknaming falls away: there are no longer secret crushes, dates I have to distinguish from a pile of other prospects, or relationships I'm trying to keep at arm's length. I'm looking forward to the day when all the fronts and barriers fall away and what's left is me, him, and what's being built between us. I look at Becky, whose list of "homeboys" and "mainmen" has been culled down to one, and I think that looks pretty good, too.

A good blog to check out

Taking the skills he learned at Media Bootcamp, my tall Texan friend Ash has recently launched a blog for his organization, Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid. Believing my blog to be highly trafficked (because he doesn't realize that at least half the time, it's my parents and a couple of friends who get really bored at work checking my blog repeatedly), he has asked that I put a link from my blog to TRLA's. I'm going to do him one better and actually say that I think people should check out the work that TRLA is doing in Southwestern Texas to provide education and defend the legal rights of low-income people, particularly Latino immigrants. (You can link to the main website here.)

Seriously, I know the folks at TRLA are good people (and by good people, I mean the best kind of trouble-makers) when they have the following quote on their main page:

"I think [TRLA] is to blame because they're supplying these people with the information and they're telling them all about the Federal laws and everything." Deaf Smith County Sheriff Travis McPherson, quoted in Howard Gaull Co. vs. Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid, 615 F Supp. 916 at 925 (N.D. Tex-Amarillo Div. 1985)

Giving people information and telling them about laws? How dare they?

David and Goliath, Animal-Style

My co-worker Brooke is pet-sitting a friend's Gecko, Tyrone. The problem with pet-sitting a gecko is that you have to take care of an entire eco-system: the gecko as well as the crickets the gecko eats (which Brooke has to shake in vitamin powder before she can feed them to Tyrone). This is especially problematic for Brooke since she's a vegan and generally doesn't support eating anything that's alive. I guess she tried to convert the gecko (and the crickets) to veggie burgers, but that didn't go over so well.

Anyway, as we were sharing pet-sitting/pet feeding stories, my co-worker Sarah chimed in with what has to be the best (and craziest) feeding story I've ever heard.

Sarah explained how she used to go to a camp where they kept a pet rattle-snake in a cage. Every day the snake had to be fed mice, but it liked to hunt for them--not just be fed them. So they would stick the mouse in the cage at night, and in the morning: no more mouse. Maybe some mouse parts, but definitely no mouse.

Until the morning where the came to check and found a mouse sitting calmly, next to the decaptitated snake. Apparently the cold-blooded snake had already gone into its nightly deep freeze when they dropped this particular mouse in the cage. And the mouse, instead of just hanging around, waiting to be snake bait the next morning, had taken the opportunity to chew the snake's head off.

Thus endeth the snake feeding.

We only hope nothing like that happens with Tyrone, the crickets and Brooke's dog, Paisley. There'd be a lot of explaining to do.

The Challenges of Moving

I talked to my parents last night, who just completed the move into a house that's 110 years old. (From their former house, which was only 100 or so years old.) It seems like a pretty cool house: big yard, balconies, a guest house over a 3.5 car garage. This last thing is very important, seeing as how between my mom and dad, they have three cars. And a lot of tools and other garage-y stuff.

But when I asked how the move-in was going, my dad informed me that they had run into a few problems. Even though they had someone come and set up internet in the house, it wasn't working. Neither was the cable. The washing machine overflowed on its first load, and the dryer doesn't have the right number of prongs to fit into the outlet. And despite the fact that nearly every room in the house has a phone jack, only the one in their bedroom is actually working.

So basically, my parents have no access to the outside world and they're needing to use a washboard and a clothes lines for their clothes. It's almost like living in the 19th century. Given my parents' long-time fascination with old houses and the show "The 1900 House"--some PBS reality show where a family is forced to dress, eat and live as if it were 1900--I find this to be very appropriate. And quite funny.

God Hates Shrimp

You can thank Dan Savage (of the sex advice column Savage Love) for finding this treat:

God Hates Shrimp.

Is this site serious? Is it a parody? You'll have to check it out to find out. . . .

Blog Fans

In the past few months on my blog, something very exciting has happened: I've gained new readers. This, I believe, is every blogger's dream. It's certainly my dream, anyway.

For those of you who didn't already know this, I have a site meter, which lets me see how many people are reading my blog and where they're reading it from (and other, not so helpful stuff like whether it was from a Mac or a PC and who their Internet Service Provider is).

I don't normally bother to check the site meter, but out of curiosity today, I looked. And there are all these new readers in fun locations! Some of the locations I recognize: The Netherlands, London, Boise, Austin--I know who you are. But other locations have me intrigued: who's reading me in Denver; McAllen, TX; Little Rock, AR; and Long Beach, Mississippi? (Actually, given that apparently Long Beach is just outside of New Orleans, maybe I do know who's reading. In which case, I'm sorry--I know I owe you a phone call!)

For a long time, I had "sneaky fans" in Raleigh-Durham and Laurel, NJ. I never had any idea who they were. And as fun as the speculation on their possible identities was, I always wished I'd just known.

So if you're reading my blog, and you're not sure that I already know that, you should tell me. It's always nice to be reminded that you're not writing into a big, black void of nothingness.

The Tally So Far:

So since my announcement that I think I'm ready to leave the Bay Area, I've gotten a fair amount of feedback from (admittedly self-interested) friends and co-workers. The results so far are as follows:

Boise--1 Loud Vote
Boston--Nothing
Seattle: 2 Votes
Portland: 3 Votes
Austin: 1 Vote
Chicago: 1 Vote
Denver: No votes (come on people, Denver is great, even if I'm not ready to live there yet.)
Buenos Aires: Nada

There was also a suggestion that I should consider other places in the South. That's not going to happen, I can tell you right now. Dry heat's bad enough, but humidity makes me feel like I'm suffocating. I can't even handle 5 minutes of the wet steam room at the gym.

What I really need is a panel of people to show me pictures and defend what's great about these cities. But since that's not going to happen, I might be stuck road-tripping to find out for myself, or just pinning up a map and throwing darts at it to determine my next location.

Here's some spin for ya

We spent a bunch of time at Media Bootcamp this past weekend talking about framing and messaging. The short definition of "framing" is getting the pieces of an issue that you want to highlight (and nothing else) in the picture. "Messaging" is just what you say about the issue--within your frame. There's a specific order in which you should say things: first articulate a problem, them give a vision or solution to the problem and then put out an action, or an ask, of your audience.

As it happens, I have been given a golden opportunity to practice this whole framing/messaging thing. And as is often the case in real life, I get to practice positively framing something that I do not feel positive about at all. (At least not yet.) This, by the way, is often called "spin:" the euphemisms you use and the way you give things a happy tint, even when you're not feeling that positive about them.

So here's the issue: my last two long-term friends both told me today that they are definitely leaving the Bay Area to be with their significant others.

The frame: This presents a great opportunity to go somewhere new and experience new things.

Message: In the last 3 months, many (you could even say most) of my friends have left the Bay Area--some for grad school, some for love, and some for family. This has left a void in my social circle that I've been slow to fill. Plus, after 4 years in the Bay Area, I'm honestly getting a little bored. The same scene, the same people: maybe it's time for something new? I'll be leaving my job in two months, I don't have as many people to cut ties with, and there's a whole big world that needs exploring, while I'm still young enough and obligation-free enough to do it. I'm ready to find a new place to fall in love with, a new place to build community, a new place to call home. Do you have thoughts on where I should go? Please let me know them.

So like I said, this is a bunch of spin. Am I really ready to cut my ties with the Bay Area? i don't know, but I think I could be, if given another suggestion that sounded appealing enough. And I am open to suggestions--Portland, Seattle, Boise, Denver, Austin, Chicago, Boston, and Buenos Aires have all already been thrown into the ring. It just can't be humid and I'd really prefer a place that had good public transit and was close to nature (mountains get more points than the ocean).

Jesuit Values

So I generally choose not to read the alumni magazine from my school, Boston College, when it comes in the mail. (Ditto--times two--the special alumni newsletter for former Boston College Presidential Scholars.) This is because I always end up with a crazily intense inferiority complex about all the prestigious awards and high-powered jobs my classmates have won since graduation. Given that I will never make any money and will probably never do anything that Boston College--the institution, anyway--would deem worthy of highlighting, I figure I'm never going to end up in the alumni magazine and don't really want to compare myself to those who have.

But this time, the alumni magazine kind of sneaked up on me. Bored and needing something to read, I started to flip through it, and I came across an article about this year's commencement ceremony. The commencement ceremony where Condoleeza Rice had been invited to speak and would be receiving an honorary degree from the university, as it happens.

What the article was really about was the faculty-led protest of Rice as the choice for commencement speaker. Now here's where I get really proud of my Jesuit education:

• Nearly a quarter of tenured staff at BC signed onto a petition saying they were against having Rice speak at commencement
• The petition was authored and moved by Fathers Himes and Hollenbach. Father Hollenbach taught my Human Rights class, which dramatically shaped my politics and the direction my life since college has taken. Father Himes taught the religion class that first opened me up to the concept of radical spirituality and Christianity. He also said the noon Wednesday Mass at St. Mary's that was always so profound and so perfectly germane to what I was dealing with that I literally shaped my school and work schedule around it.
• The decision to move the petition was defended on the O'Reilly factor by Charles Derber, a sociology professor who taught me about globalization and solidified all of the social/economic justice leanings that had started with Father Hollenbach.

Many other professors and students took a stand against Rice (and more specifically, the administration she represents and the insidious war they continue to wage in Iraq), invoking the Jesuit-honored traditions of peace and justice.

I am proud to have gone to a school that not only says it is committed to the Jesuit values of social justice, but whose faculty is unafraid to stand up for them and act upon them. I am proud to call these people my teachers, and I hope that the work I do always upholds the values they have taught me.

An addition to the lexicon

One of my new Spin Academy friends has coined what I think is a really fabulous phrase to describe self-righteous and judgmental "progressive" people:

Lefter than thou.

I love this phrase. It's perfect. It really sums up my feelings about the Bay Area at times. I think it also nails on the head the whole problem with the left: you can't really sway people's politics and opinions if they feel judged and belittled.

Media Bootcamp: the good, the better and the best

Anyone who has talked to me in the last week or so has probably heard some grumbling about having to attend "Media Bootcamp" (i.e., the Spin Academy) for work. Despite all of my certainty that it wouldn't be fun and I wouldn't make any friends, I had a really good time.

Bootcamp was held at Walker Creek Ranch outside of Petaluma--far, far away from the land of cell phone service. We stayed in dorms, ate (and ate and ate--they were trying to feed us every two hours. No exaggeration.) in a cafeteria, and kept it all pretty low key. It's been a long time since I've been any place quite this rural; the main activties for free time were hiking and swimming in the pond, and everywhere you looked there was wildlife: rabbits, foxes, deer, turkeys (lots of turkeys) and crickets almost as big as my fist.

And I did learn a lot about communications and media. Some of it I already knew (and it was just nice to have it reiterated that I was doing it right) and a lot of it I didn't. Maybe the best thing I got out of all the training is that it is completely stupid for an organization as large as ours (and doing so much program work) not to have at least one full-time, dedicated communication staff person. 50% of my time (and by 50%, I really mean 15% on a good week) isn't going to cut it when it comes down to what I think we as an organization want to achieve, communications wise. And going "Quick! We have an action next week--go get some media" is not actually a viable or reasonable communications plan. I guess what the Spin Academy really did for me is verified that I am not, in fact, a fuck-up as a communications person. I might end up being one, but there hasn't really been a fair and thorough opportunity to find out yet, because what's been functioning as "communications" in our office is so far (and so much narrower) than what it should be.

I was also reminded that activists and organizers are great people. It's really inspiring and energizing to be around people who are passionate about what they do, and more specifically, are passionate about trying to make the world a better place. And if they also happen to be cute, funny and from Texas, well that's just icing on the activist cake.

Anyway, overall it was a good week/weekend: Beautiful scenery, new skills, movement people and a lot of beer thrown in for good measure and I really have no complaints.

Except that I'm tired as hell and have to go to work tomorrow.

New hobbies

I was going to write a blog entry detailing my weekend. After all, it was a pretty good weekend: went to the "brewery" with Matt and Abby, attended a "Golf Pros and Tennis Hos" party with Josh, accidentally went for an 8.5 mile hike in Redwood Regional Park the next day (while hungover--yikes!) and saw Little Miss Sunshine (which was really funny). But I haven't been in a very funny, light-hearted mood lately. What with Miranda (and Carrie and Becky and John) all gone, there's been a lack of people to embrace the awkward with, and my head's been going in a more pensive, thoughtful direction than a funny one.

Miranda told me today that she's decided to take up golf. When I stopped laughing at how ridiculous that statement was, she explained. Games of golf, she says, are prime time for business deals, and she doesn't want to be left out of that. Also, she figures that playing golf would be a great way to meet new people now that she's back in Boise and a little lonely. She figures it would especially be a good way to meet men.

She might have a point.

If I weren't completely devoid of coordination, I might consider taking up golf. Or tennis. (Afterall, I already have the skirt.) I could probably stand to get a new hobby that would allow me to meet new people. And men. But only if they're emotionally available. Because wouldn't that be a pleasant change of pace?

Lessons learned

This weekend had been full of lessons that I thought I should share:

1) When it seems like way too much salt is being called for in a recipe, you're probably right. And if you don't go with your gut, then you deserve to eat a dinner of salty shrimp with a side of salt. And approximately a liter of water.

2) There's no such thing as a fool-proof plan. You should never underestimate the wily creativity and determination of a really committed fool.

3) It's not always a bad thing to risk being a jackass. Sometimes it's the best thing you could have done.

4) It's also not a bad thing to admit that you're a mess and that maybe--just maybe--you need other people sometimes.

5) Sometimes you get a second opportunity to say things you should have said. But not always. So don't count on it.

6) Tom Cruise has been creepy for a long time--check out Magnolia (ca. 1999) if you don't believe me. A lesson for Ms. Homes: Katie, it's important to watch more than just Top Gun before you decide you want to marry the guy.

Word.

And another friend bites the dust

This has been a pretty shit week. Let's start out with that part where "IhatemyjobIhatemyjobIhatemyjob." That problem's not going away anytime soon, or at least not for the next two months.

On top of that, I got dumped yesterday. If you're saying to youself "But Claire is fabulous; who'd be stupid enough to dump her?" you get a gold star and a thumbs up for that correct assessment. The answer would be people not over their ex-girlfriends, which I suppose I have to accept as an excuse, even though I don't really understand it. You get with new people so as to get over your ex-girlfriends. But whatever. Since this was the nicest and most respectful break-up I've ever had to endure, I'm going to try really hard not to talk too much shit. But if other people want to talk shit, they should by all means feel free.

In worse news, I'm down to one full-time friend in the Bay Area: Josh. I said my goodbyes to Miranda tonight, as she makes her way (via Santa Cruz and Merced and Scramento and Portland and Spokane) to Boise--at least for grad school, but hopefully not for good? For someone who claims to not do goodbyes, it was a pretty sad one, complete with watery eyes and name-calling. I'm going to miss her a lot. Who on earth am I going to fry stuff with, and who's going to be my co-reviewer of all the dive bars in the Bay Area? Dive bars are only really fun with a friend who knows how to bring out the shady--by yourself, you're just a sad sack in a sketchy bar.

But in classic fashion, we ended her Bay Area residency on a good note: we met a crazy, militant union pipe fitter at the brewery. And, in good T.O.O. fashion, she's going to keep me from behaving like a jackass with regards to the most recent Dumper--she is now the keeper of his phone number. He's been deleted from my phone.

So no, Dumper--if you're reading this (or I should really say when you read this, because I know that you will)--I won't be calling you. Or text messaging you. Not unless Miranda says it's OK. And currently, she doesn't think it's OK.

Even though I'm wishing that I had fought with you about this--I'm an organizer for Christ's sake and I should have done some more probing and pushing about this decision, if for no other reason than to understand it--that won't be happening. I'm going to just have to take a cue from Josh and do my best to get back out there and, as Josh puts it: "own this town." And I will own this town.

Oh bravado, how I love thee.

On the up side of all of this, I'll have plenty of time to go to the gym. Thank god for silver linings.