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!