Vote for Pedro

This picture has made my life better in so many ways.

The Return of the Cat General

This is the type of cat that I am:

If you were to buy a car from me, and the car turned out not work, I would say fu** you . . . in the a**.

A study in buses around the world

It still amazes me how striking cultural disparities between places can be. For example, this morning I was at the bus stop, prepping myself for the fight to get on the bus. When the 7:20 slowed in front of those waiting and opened its doors, everyone stood back to let someone else, anyone else, go ahead of them. No one there was elderly, or disabled, or carrying six shopping bags, but no one wanted to be the one to charge ahead – me first – and run up the steps, taking two at a time. Usually I find that I’ve somehow edged me way to the front of the line. Months of fighting for a space on buses in other countries has created an anxiety in me, much like a sprinter feels before the gun goes off at the start of a race. In Kyrgyzstan, getting on the bus was like fighting your way through a crowd of citizens in the bread line. There was no mercy and nothing spared for those not willing to lay it all down. In Spain, my roommate used to joke: “No one in this country is in a hurry until it’s time to get on the bus.” Elbows were thrown, people were shoved aside, and heated words exchanged. It’s almost a let-down when here, in the United States, where life moves at a rapid pace and the mentality is to achieve, achieve, ACHIEVE, there is absolutely no rush to get on the bus. Have we become a culture of bus-wusses? Maybe Americans (or perhaps softy Seattlites?) have lost their basic need for minor confrontations. We have espresso and Hollywood to keep us sharp. In the end, though, riding the bus here is MUCH less stressful. And you walk away with fewer bruises.

Practicing to be a Pirate

In order to prepare for my New Years sailing trip around Antigua, I will start honing my pirate-ness for several hours every day. This will include saying a gravely 'YAAaargh' over and over again, as well as running people through with a wooden dagger.

I'll also be wearing an eyepatch.

Me duele mi espalda

Well, my bad back and I have finally moved out of our parents' house! That's right, for the last two nights I've been packing, heaving, lifting, and sorting, much to the chagrin of my aching espalda (that's Spanish for lower-back, in case you're a complete idiot, or a French speaker. Wait, is that redundant?). It's been a long time since I've been out on my own. After graduation, I moved in with a family as a live-in nanny for several months. When I arrived in Kyrgyzstan for my Peace Corps service, I was placed with a HUGE family (they all lived in one room while I had two to myself - does that seem a little unbalanced to anyone else?) for training and then a different family when I arrived at my permanent site. After I returned, I stayed with my parents. It's been . . . cough . . . five months now and I've finally found a job, bought a car, and moved out. Oh sweet freedom! Oh sweet back-pain! Who needs a back when you have the freedom to do whatever you want - as long as your roommates approve, of course.

Why Ryan Adams sucks

Yes, that's right, I said that Ryan Adams sucks. Our love affair is over. Ever since he cancelled BOTH concerts in Seattle I see him for what he really is - a hope stealing, cigarette smoking (heroine shooting?)musician that produces too many CDs and not enough love for me. I was so ready for the concert last night. I had my outfit ready so that he would be overwhelmed by my effortless beauty and hence invite me backstage. Once there, he would realize our overwhelming compatability - how can one deny destiny - and ask me to be his bride, or at least to bear his love child. But now all of that is ruined and I don't even care. You know what, Ryan Adams? I didn't even buy your last album! What do you think about that?! Sucker.

Allow me to share with you my constitution

I am the sort of cat that not only says 'F*** you,' but says, 'F*** you . . . in the ass.'








This post is dedicated to Sean and Andy.

Kyrgyzstan Story

My host-grandmother was kidnapped by my host-grandfather. Their eldest son kidnapped his bride. Their middle son, my host-father, went about it in the more widely accepted, western way - by asking.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0507240351jul24,1,1130165.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

This link provides a really interesting story on Kyrgyzstan, where I served as a Peace Corps volunteer for seven months.

'So this is a rave.'

On Friday night, I had my eyes opened. Much to my shock and surprise, techno is not only admired by e-bombed kids wearing white pants and waving glow sticks, but by Seattle yuppies as well! I went to my first techno show with friends to see Deep Dish who, I am told, is ‘pretty old-school’ when it comes to Progressive House. Huh? In my ignorance, I didn’t even know that techno had sub-forms! I made my first blunder of the night by attempting to wear flip-flops into the club. When I had located some appropriate footwear and was admitted by the bouncer, I made another mistake by saying, “So this is a rave.” My friends were peeved, to say the least. “This is NOT a rave!” They yelled. Oops. I guess I just have a hard time understanding the difference. Here’s what I’ve gleaned over the past couple of days: a)Rave – takes place in a warehouse with flashing lights, kids on party drugs, thumping beats, and crazy outfits, b)Show – takes place at a club (this is apparently a key difference) with good DJs, flashing lights, and kids on party drugs. The only thing missing is the crazy outfits, as the downtown Seattle crowd tends to dress a little more to impress. I’m not going to lie, though, it was a great time. I haven’t been so sweaty on a dance floor since 80’s Night at the 3B in Bellingham. I wish that I could post some pictures of my gnarly blisters and torn-up toes. I’m excited – now I will feel more at home in my future travels! I will no longer be intimidated by Euro trash clubs and pulsing beats. But don’t worry; I’ll leave my glow sticks at home.

Rain, rain, go away!

Above is a picture of my friend, Quinn, peeing into the abyss on Kendall's Katwalk. Note the fog and rain. Welcome to a Seattle summer! Don't blink, or you'll miss it. We have two weeks of absolutely beautiful weather, a couple days of it's-not-raining-but-it's-still-kind-of-dismal weather, and the rest is just rain, rain, and more rain. It's the same as a Seattle winter, only slightly warmer. I love Seattle, but I have begun to feel bitterness toward the incessant rain. True, the grass is always green. True, our trees always have leaves (okay, needles). Yes, you can play outside all year, as long as you don't mind a decent soaking. Are these positives a fair trade for the constant gray? I am especially upset because all week long the weather was hot and sunny, but now that it's Friday everything goes to crap. I guess I'll be wearing a poncho to my friends' barbeque and the festival tomorrow afternoon. One really good thing about Seattle weather is that, wherever you go, you are always appreciative. Blazing heat? Hey, at least its not rain! Blizzards? Still not rain! Tornadoes? Don't even talk to me about it . . .

Innocence Lost

I have no idea how technology functions. Television, for example. How do they get those pictures on a screen in my house? I'm curious as to how television works, just as I'm curious as to how the book I'm reading right now ends. Maybe I'll skip to the end and read the last page, but I know that if I do I'll lose most of my interest in the plot. It's like eating desert before dinner or finding out who won the Superbowl before you watch it (granted, you are in Kyrgyzstan and you have to wait two months for the tape to arrive, but still . . .). Yesterday, I drove down to Portland to pick up Noah the Dog where he was patiently waiting for me at the news station. My brother-in-law decided to show me around 'the compound' so that I could see what a real TV station looks like. Oh bliss! Oh lucky day! But when we got inside, it looked a lot like my office, only less nice and with lots of televisions on everywhere. Where did the magic go? I don't want to know that my local anchorman is cracking jokes to himself because no one is operating the camera. I don't want to know that on the other side of my television screen is a disgruntled, unshaved tech-guy who sits in front of hundreds of switches for hours on end, choosing which images to display. It's just too weird. I do, however, like to know that my brother-in-law sat outside some guy's house in Idaho for three hours in a van with tinted windows, waiting to get a story - now that is magical. From now on I want to know as little about TV as possible. In fact, I don't really want to watch it at all, unless it's the Laguna Beach marathon or Queer Eye for the Straight Guy extravaganza. For those I will make an exception, but I definitely don't want to visit the set and find out that Carson is actually manly and straight and making jokes about hitting-it. Ignorance is bliss.

Come and Take It!

This weekend my family celebrated not only my mother's graduation from college, but my Dad's fiftieth birthday. My aunts flew in from Texas, friends from Arizona, cousins from wherever they were in the US, and my sister and her husband drove up from Portland. It was a great party and so much fun, until the family togetherness began to wear a few of us down - namely myself and my older brother who are easily sparked.


Now, I want to precede this story with a anecdote that my father tells me every time we are driving through south-central Texas. It is the story of a small town called Gonzalez which, during the Texas war for independence, made a big name for itself. This town of a few hundred people (maybe less) was harboring a cannon owned by the Mexican army. When the war began, the Mexicans demanded the cannon back. The townspeople refused. The Mexicans again asked for their cannon, flexing their muscles and threatening attack if the cannon was not relinquished. In response, the hardy people of Gonzalez hung up a banner at the entrance to their town which read, clearly and proudly, "Come and take it!" The Mexicans came, but never got their cannon back because the Texans fought long and hard.


This little piece of history is a reflection of an argument my brother and I got into this weekend. My father has a bike. "A classic!" the REI people yell every time I bring it in for tune-ups. This bike is only ten years old, but it is vintage in the bike world and generally awesome. I love this bike. When I ride to the park, I sleep with arm across it. Sometimes I even talk to The Bike. As it happens, when I was still living in Kyrgyzstan, my father told my older brother that he could take the bike. He didn't pick it up while I was gone, but once I had returned and already replaced the seat, rewrapped the handlebars, and had it tuned-up, he demanded The Bike. I refused. Again he demanded The Bike. Again, I refused. "Fine," he said, "I'm just going to take it then," and began preparing to load the bike onto his girlfriend's truck. I felt like a fire had been lit inside of me. This is how women who lift cars off of children feel! I ran outside in my bare feet and t-shirt and jumped on The Bike. "Come and take it!" I screamed and pedaled away.


After riding around the block, I realized that I couldn't go back home with The Bike while my brother was still there, so I stashed it in a neighbor's garage and walked home. "Why don't you have your shoes on?" my Dad asked when I walked in the door. "I don't really want to talk about it," I said. But I was vibrant from my victory. Come and take it.

Me and My Swollen Eye

Something extremely mysterious is going on here in Sammamish and it has to do with my swollen eye. The mystery is, how did I get this swollen eye? Why does my swollen eye hurt so badly? Most importantly, will my swollen eye reduce in size before I leave for Las Vegas on Friday? I'm curious as to why I have only one swollen eye and not two, but I guess I should be thankful. Apparently it's not that noticeable, but I feel like Quasimodo and think that everyone is constantly looking at my eye. I hope that this is not permanent. In yoga this morning while doing the Downward Dog, I could feel the blood pumping in my swollen eye and it felt like someone punching me repeatedly. Then, while drinking a capuccino and reading at Victor's Coffee, I had to hold the book directly in front of my left eye because the other was too swollen and blurry to use. I hate my swollen eye.

Summarizing

In an attempt to more accurately focus my forward-thrusting efforts, I want to take a moment to step back and look at some things that I have accomplished in the past two years. These follow no particular pattern.


Schools graduated from: 1
Schools attended: 2
Languages learned: 2.33333337
Countries travelled to: 5-8
Time spent abroad: 1 year
Books read: Infinite
Houses lived in: 6
Boys been dumped by: 2
Boys I have dumped: 1
Been in love: 1.25
New sports attempted: 3
Car crashes: 0
Flights taken: ~34
Letters written: ~50
Classes taught: 92
Pounds of plov consumed: 110
Horses ridden: 1
Donkeys ridden: 0
Turkeys slaughtered: 2
Official government buildings viewed: 9
Jobs worked: 5
Smallest salary ever: 100$/month
Marathons trained for: 1
Marathons completed: 0
Training related injuries: 2


Hmmmm, very interesting. I wonder if achievement levels dwindle post-college?

Long Time

It's been a pretty long time since my last post, mainly because I have very little to write about. I'm back in the greater-Seattle area, living with my parents, and out of work. I've only been home for four days and have been filling my time with riding bikes and seeing old friends. I feel like I could ride my bike all day, every day, if only I were in better shape. As it is now, my legs feel like noodles every time I step off the damn thing and try to walk. Gone are the days when I was athletic and trim, though I have a feeling they are on the come-back. As to the old friends, I had totally and completely forgotten what it was like to have a social life. After seven months of spending my nights with my best friend (a heater) and our companion (a book), it seems a little exhausting to hang out with people every night. Perhaps I'm over-doing it. My social arena in The Stan consisted of Sean and Umut and a bottle of wine. After Lamar sent Sean the You Don't Know Jack computer game, we felt like our wild college days had returned - an entire hour of trivia! You have to be kidding me! After a night of You Don't Know Jack, I would go home exhausted and then sleep until 11am the next morning. Maybe sometimes I even had a trivia-induced hangover. Anyway, I'm readjusting to life here, or at least trying to, and sometimes its really hard. It's kind of like that old Kyrgyz banya when you step out of the sauna and then jump into the icy pool. Eventually it's refreshing, but for those first few moments you feel like your heart will stop beating. That's me right now, still in those first few moments.

Re-entry and isn't it hilarious to be alive?

Well, it's Saturday night and I am lame. I think that I have begun to experience reverse culture-shock, which is the term for how freaked-out you get when you come back to the United States after living in the third-world for seven months. This is why the US is freaking me out right now: This afternoon, at around 1pm, I decided to hop on the metro and head to the Smithsonian to see the Holocaust Museum. For some reason, possibly because it was Saturday, possibly because the Cherry Blossom Festival was going on (beautiful, truly), the metro was absolutely packed. I mean, Tokyo at rush hour packed. This was not a big deal. I have sat in circa 1980 mini-vans (marshukas) for hours at a time over roads paved with boulders. I have sat in mini-vans so incredibly crowded that unknown women set their babies, or chickens, on my lap. I have had drunk Kyrgyz men grope my ass. Crowded metro cars in Washington, DC where people are freshly showered and afraid of causing offence to anyone are no problem Or, at least, I thought this was the case until today. The car was so packed that I was joking about the packedness of the car with strangers. It was funny until we came to the Foggy Bottom stop - this was when The Woman decided to snap. "You are standing in the DAMN DOORWAY!" she yelled at the people clinging desperately to poles and seat-backs, unable to move because other people were standing behind them, to the left of them, breathing down their necks. This was when she started pushing the Other Woman, the innocent one, and yelling again, "Will you move out of the F-ing doorway!" The Other Woman, being normal, didn't respond. I said, audibly (snapping in my own, particular way), "Are you freaking kidding me?" People looked away. What causes people to snap like this? Obviously we have all been in frustrating situations, but this is what they are - situations. They are not life. Usually they don't last longer than ten minutes, which is enough time to remember to breathe into your abdomen and use that breath to laugh at how ridiculous things have gotten. I hope that this tendency to snap and forget the hilarity of life, the waste of this hilarity on anger, is a trait of The Woman and not of America in general. Anyway, I made it to the Holocaust Museum. I saw pictures of the children who were euthanized for being imperfect (aren't we all?). I read about women and men who risked their lives to resist imprisonment and enslavement. I listened to the story of two starving men who, after years of starvation, ran to embrace each other because they were both alive and wasn't it something to be joyful about? After seeing this shadow of tragedy, I want to say to The Woman (at the risk of sounding condescending and preachy) - suck it up, you wuss. Suck it up. You know nothing of frustration.

I get my news from Wolf Blitzer.

I was getting my hair cut today in DC when the stylist, David, who is French and utterly fabulous, leaned down and whispered that Wolf Blitzer had just come in. Apparently he had been doing work in Iraq. "Oh, was he reporting?" I asked from underneath my hair. "Non," David replied, "he is no reporter. He is anchorman (imagine the statement being made with a French accent)." Then I felt like an asshole for not knowing what exactly is was that Wolf Blitzer did for a living. To make up for my ignorance, I watched this man with the famous name very carefully. Wolf Blitzer sat down and read a magazine. Wolf Blitzer stood up and went to the bathroom. Wolf Blitzer came back and announced that the Pope had passed. "When did it happen?" David asked. "About two minutes ago," Wolf Blitzer replied. Of course, being Wolf Blitzer, he would know. What I'm curious about is, why did he wait to announce this? Was he letting the tension build by sitting to read his magazine, by going to the bathroom? Maybe Wolf Blitzer always announces world-changing breaking news when he goes in to get his beard touched-up and he was just kidding around with the stylists by making them wait. Maybe, because he is Wolf Blitzer, he does not have to honor the important information code, which is that you announce really important information as soon as you enter a room. I don't know. What I do know is, nobody questioned Wolf Blitzer when he made his statement. This was not true for me. When I got back to the hotel, I announced to the room at large, "I saw Wolf Blitzer at the hair salon and he told me that the Pope died." Nobody believed me, especially the part about Wolf Blitzer being at the hair salon. Hopefully Wolf Blitzer was not playing a late April Fool's Day joke about the Pope. First of all, because it wouldn't be funny and, second of all, because it would make me look like a total fool. But isn't that the kind of power that Wolf Blitzer has?

America is boring

Welcome to the United States. Now that I've been here for a couple days and have settled in (by this I mean: have taken several showers, washed clothes in a washing machine, and retrained myself to NOT throw toilet paper in the trash can after use) I've come to the conclusion that America is boring. I haven't seen any ass-carts since I've been here. No random drunk men have tried to fight me on the street over the state of our country's foreign policy. I haven't sat on the floor to eat in a week. Maybe it's boring in a good way, but today when someone asked me what the most interesting thing that happened to me yesterday was, I had to respond, "I saw a cute guy on the subway." If this is the most stimulating thing in my daily life then things have really gone downhill. Mostly its my own fault since I am still captivated by the readily available book stores and English television programs. Tomorrow I am determined to go see some stuff. Oh wait! Something interesting DID happen to me today! Not only did I eat at Baja Fresh, but I hypnotized myself. Yes, that's right, I hypnotized myself. Is that too weird? Is it even possible? Well, that sums up things for now. I'll update when I see George W.

So this is our nation's capitol.

I arrived in Washington, DC the day before yesterday. When I stepped off the plane, I almost cried with the wonder and joy of being in America again. Unfortunately, the customs agents didn't share my joy and demanded my passport and tickets when I said, "Can you believe it? It's America!" No one understands. Since I've been here I've gone shopping, had a massage, eaten at a deli, shopped at Safeway, and spoken English to everyone. The English part is a little bit weird. I'm not used to understanding other peoples' conversations in the bathroom and on the subway and, honestly, I find it a little disconcerting. In-country, when people would speak in Russian I always imagined they that were discussing something incredibly interesting. Now I realize that they were probably just saying, "Could you pass me some toilet paper? My stall is out." or "Did you hear about the newest recipe for plov? I can't wait to try it at our sheep slaughtering this weekend." Plus, it is exhausting to process information about other peoples' lives. Of course I always listen in and make mental notes - this one's neurotic, this one's an insomniac, this one's life is driven by work, and so on and so on. They're probably thinking: This one has a bad haircut. I have a lot of free time here and am trying to think of ways to fill it. Its an entirely different problem than the one that confronted me in Kyrgyzstan. There my options were either read a book or watch television in Russian. Oh, or sit in my room for an hour straight mechanically putting chocolates into my mouth (not that it ever happened). Here I can go to a museum, see a movie, get a coffee and read the paper - so many things to do that it makes decision making difficult. Alright, I'm going to go try and sleep again. I woke up, as usual at 5am and was wide-awake. Thank you jet-lag! Bye for now.

Still in Germany

I lied, I'm updating from Germany again because I have HUGE news - I saw a Starbucks!!! It was closed so I couldn't go in, but I saw one. I recognized the green table-tents from afar and my heart started pounding. Just seeing it was enough to convince me that I'm back in the western world. I walked around this morning looking at old buildings and eating German pastries. It is cold here right now. There is a park along the Rhine river and the entire area was covered in chilly fog, but it was nice to walk through anyway. Since last night I have met people from Malta, India, America, and, of course, Germany. Travelling is always so interesting. Alright, back to my hotel to pack up and catch the subway back to the airport. Goodbye, Frankfurt! You were amazing.