Sweet Not Muches

Queridos amigos y familia,

2008-08-27T09:19:00.001-07:00

Hola desde Oaxaca! Our trip is coming to an end and I’ve been lax in my writing. Too many different cities with too little internet access and too much going on are to blame, I suppose! While three weeks or so is a lot to cover in one last letter, I’ll do my best.

Our last week and a bit in Nahuala went by in a whirl. We spent the final weekend on a class trip that took us to a number of different K’iche’ speaking areas – Santa Maria del Quiche, Chichicastenango, Zacualpa, Santa Maria Chiquimula, and Totonicapan, as well as few other stops along the way. Most of the places we visited were former field sites of our professors, and so we were able to participate in some intriguing discussions with their colleagues and friends from years past. Aside from the brief visit I made with a few friends to a hotel that had played a major role in my seminar paper from last year (the Mayan Inn in Chichicastenango, the first hotel in the Highlands), the highlight of the trip for me was the night we spent in a monastery in Zacualpa. While it was not exactly a cheery stay – the monastery had been taken over by the military during the 1980s and used as a torture camp – the tour and talk we were given by the Mother Superior about the church’s efforts to collect stories, identify bodies, and work with the community to recover from the horrors of those years really brought home many of the books I’ve read about Guatemala and the lectures we had previously heard. While the stay ended in us getting an angry phone call from the same Mother Superior for having absconded with the keys to the dormitory and one of our professors having to take a long drive back to return them, it will definitely stay with me as a thought-provoking and heart-wrenching visit.

On our return to Nahuala, we were treated to a week of good bye parties with our families and the community (as well as a final exam, of course). Thursday evening was the big fiesta, with each of us giving a brief thank you speech in K’iche’, accompanied by many longer speeches from teachers and family members, as well as traditional dancing by school children of all ages. While we did not get to see the chicken sacrificing dance that a few people in the course had seen at other times with their families, we did get dragged down to the dance floor to do our best to keep up with the high schoolers and five year olds. As our families had dressed us all up in their finest clothes, we must have been quite a sight! Someone managed to get it all on tape, I believe, so hopefully we’ll all get a copy to remember it by. It was a beautiful (the huipils the women were wearing were incredible works of art) and fun way to say thank you to the community and celebrate the time we’d spent together, even if it was followed the next morning by sad good byes.

As I had a week to spare before my mom arrived, I took some time to unwind and say goodbye to my classmates in Antigua, taking hot showers, doing a bit of shopping, and eating lots of dessert. I then caught a ride with one of my professors up to Coban (not to be confused with Copan, Honduras, where the ruins are – this one is smack in the middle of Guatemala’s cloud forest and coffee country) where I enjoyed a couple days by myself, meeting people in my hostel and visiting the natural pools at Semuc Champey and seeing the bats fly out of the Lanquin Caves at sunset. Of all the places I’ve been on this trip, Semuc Champey, and all of Coban, for that matter, rate as some of the most naturally beautiful. The pools at Semuc Champey are created as a river goes below ground for some 300 meters, resulting in astonishing and terrifying white water at the entrance and exit and gloriously clear water, calm swimming pools on the surface above. I met some very nice people on the tour and we enjoyed our long luxurious swim thoroughly – it was my first chance to get some summer weather (though it still rained a bit) and swimming in since Morocco! I wished my dad had been there for the Lanquin Caves as we managed to make it back to the entrance just as the thousands of bats that live there came swooping out. I’ve been raised to love bats and the experience of standing in the middle of that swarm with the knowledge there was no chance of me getting hit was something I doubt I’ll have again.

I made my way back to Antigua in time to say farewell to another batch of classmates and hello to mom, who arrived so early that she managed to get to meet a few of them before they headed to the airport. After spending a relaxing day and night in Antigua, we traveled up to Xela by shuttle bus on Saturday, where we basically ate, wrapped presents, and crashed in order to be ready to head back to meet my family in Nahuala on Sunday. Both my real mom and my host mom were overjoyed to meet each other and my host family prepared us a lovely lunch of fried chicken and wandered with us through the market before it was time to say goodbye (again). While the language barriers caused some confusion – my real mom’s Spanish is decent but rusty and my host mom’s about the same – we were able to share a nice afternoon together, buy a few huipils, and give my host sisters and mom some fun things from home as thank you presents. I do hope I’ll make it back to see them again and, if nothing else, am extremely grateful for the time I got to spend with them.

From Nahuala/Xela we headed up into Chiapas on an all day shuttle that left us both exhausted but so happy to make it to San Cristobal. For me, it was wonderful to be back in a city I fell in love with two years ago, and the chance to show it to my mom, who had never been there before, made it all the better. We spent our four days there wandering through markets and museums and revisiting a lot of the places that had stuck in my memory. I was happy to find that I had not mis-remembered it and cannot wait to go back in the future for a longer period of time as my studies call for it. Happily for me, I was also able to meet with two historians who are incredibly knowledgeable about the work that has been done on Chiapas and the resources available, and they were both very encouraging and enthusiastic about my areas of interest and potential projects. Hurrah for an academic future!

From there we headed on an overnight bus to Mazunte on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca. Three days of sun-soaked beach time were very much called for, at least for me after a summer of freezing in Nahuala. While we didn’t manage to meet up with a friend of mine who was only a few towns away, we enjoyed our seafood and sea-bathing very much. Mom brought along a book of New York Times Sunday crosswords that we’ve been zooming through and each of us managed to get some good light reading in as well. There is little that feels as good to me as swimming in the ocean and Mazunte was one of the most tranquil and refreshing places I’ve managed to do it (aside from the slight sun burn, mosquito bites, and lack of fans). If anyone has an opportunity to go, I’d definitely encourage it – it’s a little out of the way (extra strength Dramamine is a wonderful thing), but that only makes it more peaceful.

We’re now spending our final days in Oaxaca City, the beautiful capital of Oaxaca State that reminds mom and me of the Mediterranean (without the sea), New Orleans, and La Jolla. It’s a city full of artists old and new, wonderful old churches, gorgeous architecture, quality museums, and a lot of good food. As in Chiapas, the artesanias are of the highest caliber, especially the rugs and pottery here. Today we took a five hour tour to a number of places outside the city – a giant tree (supposedly the widest in the world) called El Tule; a family run rug weaving business where we had the entire process from carding to dying to spinning, pattern making, and weaving demonstrated to us; a mescal (a type of liquor made from the agave cactus and similar to tequila, though stronger) distillery; and the ruins at Mitla, a later Zapotec site where, unlike many other sites, the buildings still standing haven’t had to be reconstructed as the town was never fully abandoned. Over 800 years old, the palaces at Mitla have withstood large earthquakes thanks to the unique architectural techniques that also resulted in intricate decorations on the sides of the buildings, precise geometric patterns that almost look like weaving. While nature has taken its toll on most ancient Mesoamerican cities, at Mitla, the destruction has primarily been caused by humans taking stones to build new structures. Luckily there’s enough left to get an idea of how beautiful the city must have been centuries ago.

We’re headed back to California day after tomorrow and there are so many more things I want to see that I guess I’ll just have to plan a return trip to this part of the world for the coming years. Though I suppose I’d have to any ways, seeing as this is where my school work will be bringing me! Hurrah! Mom and I have managed to fill a few bags with things to decorate my new apartment and the few remaining open spots on our walls at home. It all gets overwhelming after a while, but most of the places we’ve been have had plenty of cafes to kick back in with a beer or a limonada and a book and just take in the world around us. I can’t believe that it’s been two months since I’ve been in the States, but I suppose school and work call us homeward. I hope summer has treated you all well and look forward to seeing you in the coming days, weeks, or months!

Abrazos fuertes,

Loq’alaj iwonojel (dear all y’all),

2008-08-27T09:17:00.000-07:00

Well, it’s been another few weeks and only one week remains of my language program! I can’t believe it’s gone so fast, but here we are a few days from our final exam, and while I still can’t understand everything that’s going on around me, I am able to follow many more conversations, explain basic things to my family, and untangle short stories after a few tries. Of course, the stories have been chosen by our professors because they’re at our level, but the sense of accomplishment after finishing a local folk tale about why all the rivers dried up many years ago is nevertheless quite large. We continue to laugh at ourselves, especially over pronunciation (another student and I spent at least 5 minutes today saying the words “b’aqa tz’i’” (skinny dog) to one of our teachers until she was satisfied that we were getting the q at least close to right), but we spend more time talking with our teachers in K’iche’ than Spanish these days, and, apparently, some of our families have been bragging about how well we speak K’iche’ (that made all of us crack up, but it’s nice to hear nonetheless).

Most days continue to go as I wrote last time, and while they are very full, there really isn’t that much new to report on the Nahuala front. I helped my host family make chuchitos this week and was definitely more successful than my last tortilla attempts. Chuchitos are one of the various Guatemalan forms of tamales and are made with pieces of beef in pepían (a tomato and pumpkin seed sauce), as opposed to tamalitos – the plain masa pillows eaten as an alternative to tortillas – or the chicken filled ones whose name I’ve forgotten. Before we started, my sisters handed me an apron to tie on over my skirt, a very smart first step, though I still managed to get pepían all over myself. Seeing as mom and I make tamales every Christmas, I thought I’d have a better handle on how this process worked, but sadly, my experience served little purpose.

Rather than squishing out a flat bit of masa on a counter, putting filling in the middle, and wrapping the whole thing up with corn husks and string, chuchitos are made by making a larger version of a tortilla (sigh, though my bigger hands helped), placing a single piece of meat and some sauce in the middle, and then quickly folding the circle in half and pinching the edges together. While my tortilla making skills have improved, it was in the folding and not getting sauce everywhere step that I generally failed, resulting in a very messy apron (my host sisters’ remained clean) and chuchitos that often had more sauce on the wrapping than inside. Instead of corn husks, the chuchitos are wrapped in banana leaves or leaves from the corn stalk, folded over many times instead of tied. By my fifth or sixth attempt, I was doing okay, but I probably only made half as many as my sisters and it was definitely possible to tell which chuchitos were mine when we were eating. They all tasted wonderful, but mine were nowhere near as nice to look at. They were still proud of me, though, and the sisters made sure to include me in the “we made a good dinner tonight” comment. As chuchitos aren’t an every day food in my family, it was a special venture overall, and was topped off with chocolate con arroz (hot chocolate with rice), one of my favorite drinks here, making for a wonderful dinner.

Otherwise, I’ve been enjoying my weekend adventures to various parts of the country. After our trip to Xela, I spent the next weekend in Antigua and Guatemala City visiting my friend Amanda, another history PhD student from the University of Chicago. She is beginning to prepare her dissertation proposal and, as always, we had plenty to talk about relating to the history department and our program, and especially to the adventure that is doing historical research in Guatemala. As I have yet to really explore any of the archives here, she was incredibly helpful in orienting me to the basics of how the different places work, how best to approach their curators, and what I might expect to find. As I’ve spent my time in Guatemala thus far surrounded by anthropologists and linguists, it was wonderful to talk to another historian who understands the difficulty of getting at information about the country from before 1960 and who is now going through all the trials and tribulations I’ll be putting myself through in the coming years. We treated ourselves to good food, good showers, and leisurely wanders through Antigua, followed by a slightly less relaxing if perhaps more productive stint in Guatemala City. As we only get Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon free and Nahuala is 3ish hours from either place, I felt rather lucky to get a ride both ways from one of our professors – Sergio - who is originally from Guatemala City and was visiting his parents and doing some work in the city that weekend. Much more comfortable, if slightly less adventurous than taking a chicken bus, the ride also included an obligatory stop for hot chocolate and pie at a place he always always visits on his drive. Well worth it, too.

Last weekend, four of us bummed a ride to Antigua from Sergio (again), and after a nice dinner with another of my friends – Caroline, from Harvard, who is studying Spanish for a few weeks here –, we turned in rather early in order to catch a 4am shuttle to Copán, Honduras. While the shuttle ride was somewhat unpleasant due to the other occupants, more traffic than expected, and numerous delays related to missed bus connections and a too-long breakfast stop at a mediocre resident, we made it to the town of Copán Ruinas by noon. Copán is only 20 minutes or so from the Guatemala-Honduras border, and is one of the better known classical Maya sights, renowned for the incredible quality of its sculpture. Apparently we arrived at the same time as a tropical depression that resulted in torrential rain, but as we only had Saturday to see everything (we had to leave early Sunday in order to get back in time for dinner with our families), we ventured out nonetheless. Us three girls had umbrellas (they only did minimal good), but Derek stuck it out without, at one point resorting to pulling off his t-shirt and wringing it our, as much good as that did. And while us girls had managed to stay damp rather than sopping, our tuk-tuk ride back to the hostel made that irrelevant, and we all looked like we’d just jumped in a swimming pool when we arrived. Hoping to avoid another soaking, we spent the rest of the evening in a restaurant playing Euchre, eating brownies and pasta, and drinking beer.

Copán was worth it, though, as the things that have been uncovered are incredibly beautiful. Luckily for us, the site has as a spectacular museum that contains many of the nicest pieces (originals, and a few replicas) that have been found. Intricate hieroglyphs, wonderful relief sculptures animals – bats, macaws, frogs –, as well as restored facades of buildings complete with representations of kings, queens, scribes, and gods. The detail worked into many of these images is unbelievable and I only hope that the photos I took do it justice. Robin, one of the other students who came, is working on glyphs in school, and Copán especially, and so she was able to elucidate much of what we were looking at much better than any of our guidebooks. The rain let up a bit as we finished the museum, so we headed out into the ruins themselves, only to find ourselves again subject to downpour. Throwing up our hands, we continued on our way, clambering over steep sets of stairs on the sides of partially reconstructed pyramids, splashing through puddles in order to see the dancing jaguars carved into the side of one building, and, according to level of commitment, braving rushing streams to get a better look at stellae.

Another unique feature of Copán are the archeological tunnels that have been stabilized and opened up to the public, allowing people to see the still intact “Rosalia” temple that was found buried under another, more recent construction. Though there’s a guard at the entrance and the whole thing is relatively well lit and carefully blocked off in sections, it still feels pretty adventurous to go running around inside a pyramid, getting a close up look at what archeologists have been working on for the past decades. Because it was so thoroughly and carefully buried inside another building, the temple is very well preserved and little of the detail in the carvings has been worn away by weather and time. It was also, of course, another way to escape from the rain.

This weekend is a class trip to a number of K’iche’ speaking cities, each with its own dialect, and I’ll be sure to write about the experience some time soon. As this coming week will include a number of good bye parties and the like and once the program is over, I’m spending a week trying to get to Tikal and back, seeing the northeast of the country in the process, I’m not sure when I’ll write again. I should be able to post photos at that point, though, and I’ll be sure to send along links if nothing else (I actually don’t have many photos as taking photos of people without their permission is very culturally inappropriate, but my family has okayed some group portraits and I have weekend shots as well). After that, my mom is going to meet me in
Antigua and join me for the rest of my trip northwards, two weeks we plan to spend seeing some of the places she visited many years ago and exploring Chiapas and Oaxaca. I'm so excited that she'll be traveling with me, as it makes the prospect of traveling for another month much
more inviting!

Chab'ej chik (We'll talk soon)!

Xb’eq’ij! (Good afternoon, literally, the day has come!)

2008-08-27T09:16:00.002-07:00

Well, as many of you have asked for more details of my life here, and as it isn’t as though there are terribly many events to report, this email is going to be a bit more descriptive than the last. Not promising purple prose, but I’ll try to go a bit deeper into what the Western Highlands of Guatemala look like, at least from the Nahualense perspective.

As those of you who tried to find Nahuala on the map may have noticed, my spelling last time is not the only one. Nahualha, Nahuala, and, in K’iche’, Nawalja’ are all apparently acceptable spellings, though I guess Nahuala is the most widely used. It’s not a town you’re going to find in many of the guidebooks – the Rough Guide to Guatemala mentions it in passing as a good market town but not a place to stay, as, according to them but not to us, the locals are hostile to outsiders and the local shamans are known for their black magic (hah). But via googlemaps or some such, look west of Lake Atitlan along the Pan-American Highway just a bit before it forks. Nawalja’ translates to something like “place of the water spirits” and there is a (now trash filled) river that runs through town and, according to some, is still home to the nawals/nahuals.

In the town center, the old adobe homes have been replaced by cement block buildings painted in white and various pastel shades. The market – Thursdays and Sundays – is held in front of the Cathedral and in the surrounding side streets. As it is the largest center for a ways around, the otherwise empty cobblestone and mud streets fill up with blue plastic tarp stalls under which an amazing variety of goods are to be found – beans and corn, shoes new and used, huipils and the blue cloth used to make skirts (cortes or uq’), cds and dvds, all manner of fruit, toiletry, and school supply, and who knows what else. I haven’t yet been here for a Sunday market, but I’m planning on staying at least one weekend to see what I can find. I suppose you’d say it’s much more “authentic” as few tourists come through; this means basically that the arts and crafts are sparser but probably more reasonably priced while the every day goods are much more diverse.

As to everyday Nahuala, most people in town are indigenous K’iche’ speakers; generally only men speak Spanish, though with expanded bilingual education, younger generations are more likely to be fluent as well. Men primarily wear Western style clothing – pants and shirts – though occasionally you’ll see an older man in the traditional koxtar (a vaguely kilt-like affair with small white shorts underneath) and kutin (a long-sleeved shirt in light colors); sometimes you even get a rather amusing mix of the two – koxtar with a brand name t-shirt and baseball cap. Women, except younger girls, continue to wear traditional traje – dark blue corte (skirt) tied with an embroidered faja and a huipil on top. While huipils continue to be identified with particular towns – there are a few styles native to Nahuala, mostly involving red or orange embroidery on a white or navy base – the trend recently has been to wear huipils from other parts of Guatemala, with different towns going in and out of style. As well, among younger women especially, the corte will often be worn with an American style shirt and sweater instead of the huipil. It all makes for a rather dazzling array of dress. My family has offered to dress me up many times, and as soon as I have photos, I’ll send them along. From those girls in our group who have been dressed up in traje, I’m dreading how tight my host sister will wrap my faja, as apparently in addition to keeping the corte up, it’s supposed to accentuate my waist and make me look guapa.

School starts around 8:30 every morning, meaning I leave home around 8, having woken up and eaten an early breakfast with my little “sister” and “niece” before they head to school at 7:30. Breakfast is generally around the wood stove in the kitchen area, where we are joined by the three family cats – Tigre, Q’eq (Black), and Missi Puss – who seem to enjoy a life of sitting together on one chair staring at the fire all day. Mike’l now trusts me to make it to school on my own every day, and as I walk, I greet everyone I pass with “Saqirik” (good morning) or “Jeba’” (roughly goodbye, though it’s also used as a greeting-in-passing). It’s very impolite to not say anything to those people you see, and if the person is older, a respectful “nan” or “tat” is also expected. Occasionally I’m questioned by older women as to where I’m going – this is their right – and one of the first phrases we were taught was “Kinb’e pa tijobal” (I’m going to school), as this is always an acceptable answer guaranteed to dispel any potential gossip.

Gossip is one of the biggest concerns of our professors and families, as “co-resident kin groups” (as they’re called by anthropologists) are very closed with information, and we don’t want to expose any of our host families to slander. Thus, we’re expected to be exceptionally polite, not spend too much time with any person of the opposite sex, and wear loose-fitting, non-revealing clothing. Pants haven’t proven to be a problem (though we were warned to be careful with them), but we’ve all put away any skirts that reveal anything above mid-calf and keep our shoulders well covered. As it’s pretty chilly, this has been relatively easy so far. Fashion has mostly gone out the window – as expected – and we’re all sure to come away from this summer with some amusing photos of very bundled up and mismatched friends.

Nahuala is very hilly, and we all go up and down many slopes on our way to school. We pass numerous churches – the central Cathedral as well as a growing number of evangelical churches –, corn fields with cows and goats grazing on the edges, local schools, and the seemingly never ending expansion projects on the Pan-American Highway. Most people are friendly and encouraging of our K’iche’ greetings, though the smaller kids generally laugh and point and sometimes older folks join in, especially if someone is dressed up in traje. Tuc-tucs – the three-wheeled, vaguely golf cart looking vehicles that have become the taxis of Guatemala – often pass and offer us rides if they’re not already occupied, but I think we’re all determined to conquer the altitude and long steep hills and work off the carbohydrate-loaded meals we eat, and so we decline.

By the time we reach school – as we’re all going at the same time, we usually find each other on the road – we’re all ready for the real coffee we’ve imported from Panajachel, bought from a rather obsessed American who worked as a coffee bean buyer for many years before setting up shop in Panajachel. Guatemalans don’t drink coffee American style, but rather prepare a very weak brew from NesCafe, and so we’re all very grateful to our teachers for having splurged on these excellent beans (organic and free trade, of course). I’m not the biggest coffee drinker at home, but after this summer I think I’ll have joined the ranks as the caffeine deprivation headaches I’m going to have if I try and quit will be hell. Class lasts til about noon, when we break for a long lunch prepared by a local family and carried up to the school in baskets on women’s heads. Then it’s a few hours of homework and one-on-one/two-on-one conversation with our local teachers, occasional lectures, and we head back to town to find the internet, drink something warm in the center, or return home.

Evenings at home mostly center around me practicing what I’ve learned that day, trying to figure out what the family is saying while gathered in the kitchen to make and eat dinner (sometimes we eat in the “dining room,” but everyone seems more comfortable around the kitchen fire), and, if it’s a Tuesday or Thursday, bathing in the tuj. While most of the other host families have a shower, mine has yet to install one, and so I get to clean up in the traditional temascal (Spanish for tuj). Essentially, this is a one-person sauna with one large bucket of very hot water and one of cold water that the bather mixes in a smaller tub before using another, even smaller, bucket to dump the water over him or herself. Generally lit with just a candle, the tuj has a wooden bench to sit on while bathing, and is big enough that, as one of my friends put it, many children are conceived in there. This fact often leads to lots of joking about going in the tuj with another person, but despite much such laughing at my expense, I have yet to be intruded upon. Apparently people occasionally do pass out from the heat, so my sisters will call in to make sure I’m still conscious and have enough water. I’m a big fan of the tuj, especially on the colder days, and knowing that I’ll have showers at hostels on weekends, I have no complaints that it’s my only way to stay clean. My host family doesn’t believe me when I tell them that the U.S. equivalent is rather a luxury or that other students are jealous that I get to tuj on a regular basis while they just have showers. It may not be the easiest way to bathe, but I always come out feeling very clean, relaxed, and ready for bed.

My family must think that gringos are unusually sleepy, as I’m generally in bed by 8:30, directly after dinner, but having to think in three languages all day is exhausting and I’m pretty hopeless for anything but writing in my journal and reading any time past 8, let alone 9. With a large pile of wool blankets and my down sleeping bag, I manage to stay toasty at night, and, despite the chorus of dogs that lasts late into the night, I’m getting much more sleep here than I’m used to and thoroughly enjoying it.

Maybe next time I write I’ll have more travels to report, but for now, chichijij iwib’ (take care of yourselves) and chixki’kotoq (be happy)!

Saqarik friends and family!

2008-08-27T09:16:00.001-07:00

For those of you who don’t know, I’m spending my summer in Guatemala/southern Mexico learning K’iche’ Maya (the most prevalent of the many indigenous languages spoken in Guatemala) and “doing research” for school (essentially looking for a possible project for the coming year). I’ve been here two weeks now and figured it was time I started my travelogue emails up again! If you don’t feel like getting periodic updates from me, just say – I won’t be hurt! My internet access is rather sporadic at this point, so if you write to me, I apologize if it takes a while to get back to you.

In any case, like I said, I’ve been in Guatemala for almost two weeks, having arrived a few days late due to some hiccups during a trip to Morocco to reunite with a number of my college friends. The first week of classes – the K’iche’ (means “many trees”) program is being run jointly through University of Chicago and Vanderbilt – was spent in Panajachel, a rather touristy town about 2.5 hrs outside of Guatemala City on Lake Atitlan. Panajachel is mostly composed of restaurants, hotels, coffee shops, and places to buy any sort of artesanias you might associate with Guatemala. The program put us up at a very nice hotel complete with conference rooms, a pool, and a nice restaurant that fed us breakfast and lunch every day. We spent our days alternating between crash course K’iche’ lessons to prep us for living with families that speak very little Spanish and cultural lectures from our professors to orient us to our surroundings.

There are 12 students in the program and three professors; most people are linguists or anthropologists, and we’ve been split into an intro class (people from all over) and an intermediate class (students mostly from Vanderbilt who have been studying the language for the last year or so). Mostly it’s grad students who have traveled in Latin America before, but there are a couple people who have little experience with rural life and who are discovering all the quirks and delights of living out here for the first time. Everyone brings a different background and different interests to the program, making for a wonderful diversity of knowledge and a great opportunity to share insights and information. It was great to have a first week with relative creature comforts in Panajachel to get to know each other and figure out the basics of the language before heading out to our home stays, but I think we all knew that our language skills weren’t really going to improve until we got to Nahaulha and our temporary families.

We arrived in Nahuala – the 8000 odd person seat of a 15,000 person municipality about an hour up into the highlands from Pana – on a Sunday afternoon in two “minibuses” or shuttles overflowing with too much luggage, supplies for the school, and some rather carsick students. After been greeted by Manuel (or Wel in K’iche’), the coordinator and host of the program in Nahuala, we were sent home with our families to unpack and settle in. I’m living near the center of town with an extended family of mostly daughters, only one of whom speaks much Spanish. My host mom and dad – nan To’n and tat Mikel – are both weavers, though because tat Mikel has been sick since I’ve arrived, I haven’t seen much of either of them. Rather, I spend most of my time with the daughters: Mari’y (Maria) is the oldest and married to Wel (not the same as our coordinator), and they have a daughter named To’n (Antonia) who is 5 or 6; Kla’r (Clara) is the next oldest and she and Mike’l (Michaela) seem to do most of the housework; the youngest is Xe’p (Isabella), who is probably 14 or so and still in school.

Mike’l is the daughter who speaks Spanish and has become my translator/guide to Nahualha and my family. She’s about my age and actually a very good teacher – before she’ll tell me what anything anyone has said means, she makes me repeat it in K’iche’, laughs and helps me with my pronunciation, and then translates for me. In return, I give her some English words and attempt to help around the house a bit. This is mostly futile – my tortillas (the mainstay of all meals) are still pretty pathetic and the sisters mostly relegate me to the corner of the kitchen nearest the fire/stove to stay warm and entertain them. Unlike Chiapas, we get more than beans, tortillas, and weak coffee here, but those still form the basic food groups of my family. Add in eggs, noodles, various kinds of meat (including some small, very bony fish that pretty much silenced everyone at dinner as we tried to extract all the bones before choking on them), bread (kaxlan waj or “Spanish food”) and fruit, and you’ve got my diet at home. We’re fed a pretty big lunch at school everyday, so no one is complaining about lack of food, though some of the other students have had to try some things – cow stomach and other intestines, mostly – that haven’t been terribly appetizing.

Our school is in one of the many buildings constructed with remittances around town that remain mostly empty, waiting for brothers in the States to come home and fill them (this is the case in my family as well – the only brother has been in New York for 12 years now and I’m the only one living in the very well built and very empty part of the family compound built with the money he’s sent home). It’s in one of the cantones (vaguely suburbs or hamlets), about a half hour walk mostly uphill from our homestays. Of course, it’s in the coldest part of Nahualha and none of us really came prepared for the rainy season in highland Guatemala. We spend most of the day in class, half of it with our American professors going over grammar and half of it doing one on one or two on one with local native speakers to practice pronunciation and conversational skills.

K’iche’ is my first non-European language and is rather like a puzzle much of the time. There are some sounds that we don’t have in English and plenty of glottal stops that can make all the difference between saying “youngest child” and “shit” (apparently one of my friend’s host families got a very good laugh out of this while she was trying to do her homework with them one night; she didn’t realize she’d been calling the youngest kid a little shit until a few days later). We’re all having a pretty good time with it, though, and none of us are above laughing at ourselves when we trip over our k’s and q’s. Hearing the language all the time at home is definitely helpful, and though I still don’t understand the majority of what’s being said, I catch more grammatical constructions and vocabulary words every day. I’m still pretty limited to declarative sentences and basic questions, but my family has no problem with these and with giving me more words to expand what I can say. I often know they’re talking about me even if I can’t tell what they’re saying, but I just practice my grammar in my head and nod and smile. I’m sure that in the next few weeks things will just keep getting better!

Right now I’m in Xelaju (also known as Quetzaltenango, but all the cool kids call it Xela) with most of the other beginning students, enjoying our weekend off. We’ve all been filling up on Italian food, French toast, and lattes and buying ourselves warm clothes from the used American clothing stores – I found a giant Old Navy fleece and some new leg warmers that are going to make all the difference in the coming weeks. It’s not hard to get from Nahualha to other places around the highlands – we just stand out on the Pan American highway and hail any of the old school buses (foreigners call them chicken buses) passing by that happen to be going where we’re headed. Most are covered in religious decals and painted bright colors and they blast pop music or evangelical songs as they rush past. It’s an occasionally nauseating and sometimes terrifying but always amusing way to travel. I don’t think there are as many actual chickens on the buses as there used to be, but they’re great for people watching. We’re not sure where we’re headed in the coming weeks, but I’ll send another email when I get the chance!

I hope you’re all enjoying your summers and if you’re going to be anywhere in Guatemala in July or southern Mexico in August, let me know and we can try to meet up! I’ll be flying out from Cancun at the end of August and probably taking a few days beforehand to enjoy the sun and sand on an island called Isla Mujeres off the coast, so if anyone wants to join me, I’d love the company!

Ki’nloq’oj (love you all!)

summer posts in order

2008-08-27T09:13:00.000-07:00

well, i should have done this along the way, but oh well. over the course of the summer i sent out those long obnoxious mass emails to family and friends describing my adventures. imagine that they arrived every two weeks or so. i suppose i could just post date them, but i'm a little too lazy to do that. instead, all at once. and possibly a return to normal blogging.

remiss

2008-06-05T21:00:00.000-07:00

i am the first to admit i have been absent lately. my life is one paper after another and my brain is a bit fried at the moment. i leave for morocco in 5.5 days. i have to bring all my things for guatemala to morocco. i have to write one more 20 page paper and complete a take home exam. i also have to move out of my apartment. my list of things to do is much longer than that, but i've got it written down in so many other places, it doesn't need to be reiterated here.

but since i promised them, here are some photos from home and kinetics. home was a much needed recharge, though that charge, like the battery charge on my computer, seems to drain more quickly than it used to. much more quickly. i just have to remind myself: in one week i will be installed on a beach in morocco with my favorite friends from college. with nothing to worry about.

for more information on kinetics and some context for the photos below, please see here
and here

hippypotomus (mouth opened, ears wiggled, smoke came out of nostrils)

it's marimba filled derriere

one sick mutha' (it spun)

robosnail - very elegant snail (one of three gastropod mollusks competing this year)

not a cop car. rather, not a cop car with its insides intact, but instead the counterfeit bluesmobile powered by pedals.

the lead elephant in melvin's carousel (it played calliope music and spritzed water from its trunk)

mechanical chicken (best posse, photos to come later)

biking vikings (can you spot the muffin tins? pie pans? fridge coils?)

look at that character!

photos of folks to come later.

home

2008-05-24T08:28:00.000-07:00

the week was spent writing (20 p turned into 25) an attempting to do reading for classes. it vaguely worked. the draft is done.

now i am home, in arcata, happy as a clam. kinetics today and through the weekend (expect photos), much good food, and, well, relaxed. may or may not write.

happy long weekend!

paper writing

2008-05-19T13:32:00.000-07:00

rufus wainwright.

bowl of chocolate chips.

igoogle translator

box of kleenex.

mason jar of water

stacks of books and partially opened blinds.

page 12 of 20. thundercats are go!

Hurrah!

2008-05-17T08:10:00.000-07:00

congratulations to the many friends graduating today! all those lucky people on the semester system, who don't go to the big h, and thus have graduation a reasonable amount of time after classes end rather than waiting a few weeks....

anywho

graduation!

grown up!

wahoo!

hope they're having the loveliest of celebratory times!

a spring time walk

2008-05-15T20:50:00.000-07:00

from my window at work, gazing longingly out at the sunshine through the (now flowerless) magnolia

and off i go!

outside the social sciences research building, bikes locked to the flowering trees (i don't know what they are, but these beautiful pink things are everywhere)

not that there aren't plentiful bike racks, but some have decided the pink trees are better, slender as they are

moving away from the ssr building in all its gothic glory. no ivy on this one, but i will take a photo of the broader courtyard, where the unfurling leaves are a glorious shade of green that are slowly overcoming windows and the carved faces of muses and scholars

traipsing past the lab school, with its fragrant rows of lilac bushes that i can only just resist running my hands through or plucking blossoms off of (secret: i pinched a few flowers and held them up to my nose for much of the walk). don't you wish your elementary school had lilac bushes to hide in?

past this effervescent and enthusiastic shared garden on kendall (or dorchester?) - both are overwhelmed with shades of green and flowers at the moment and make me smile

to my new building! as of september, i will be living on the top floor of this lovely old luxury resort, in a wonderfully spacious one bedroom with a view out over the lake. i cannot wait to make it mine.

(inspired more than a little by eurolush)

senses

2008-05-12T20:23:00.000-07:00

so i read this last night.

helps that it came with an intense portrait:

really, though, it's an incredibly intriguing portrait of an artist losing that which drives his art, namely, in this case, a chef losing his sense of taste via tongue cancer.

chefs fascinate me. food fascinates me. the food described in this article is, well, a little too avant garde for my tastes, i believe. i mean, i'd love to try it if someone else was paying for the violet white chocolate and olive coated strawberries. or the four course menu described:

"The meal was almost comically elaborate, involving twenty-four courses and costing three hundred and seventy-five dollars, with wine. The food starts off at the savory end of the spectrum, and slowly turns sweeter, concluding with coffee, in the form of crystallized candy. Most items could be eaten in a bite or two, but the procession took four and a half hours. I had liquefied caramel popcorn in a shot glass, and a bean dish that came on a tray with a pillow full of nutmeg-scented air. The plate of beans was placed atop the pillow, forcing the aroma out. I sampled a “honey bush tea foam cascading over vanilla-scented brioche pudding,” in the words of the young man who brought it. There was also a dish centering on a cranberry that had been puréed and then re-formed into its original shape. The berry was then prepared on a device called the Antigriddle, which Achatz had helped design. The Antigriddle froze the bottom of the berry but left the top soft."

exciting, yes. $375? nah... not for me.

but the photos of the food are beautiful

Gelled sweet potato, brown sugar, and bourbon, tempura-fried on a torched cinnamon stick.

Dehydrated bacon wrapped in apple leather.

A cylinder of honeydew with vinegar, served in mint-infused gelatin.

i guess, go read the article. (and the one about genius which reminds me of the discussions about the difference between historical and scientific objectivity we've been having in my anthro of history class)

but things like this, that emphasize the importance of smell so much, make me wonder what doctors/scientists would make of my mom. or my aunt for that matter. neither of them have a sense of smell. yet they're both incredible cooks. but if, as this article says, apples and onions taste the same, how is that possible? i mean, my mom cannot smell anything - great for changing dirty diapers, not so great when she talks about wanting to have a perfume - but somehow she can make a mole poblano or a carefully spiced jambalaya to die for. and she knows when things taste bad. when the spices are off.

apparently, the sense of smell is tied incredibly strongly to memory. i wonder if this has something to do with my mom's memory problems.

blindness, deafness - not as uncommon as we'd like them to be, but people cope. apparently, lacking a sense of taste makes eating uninteresting and can lead to people starving. and having no sense of touch, well, people experience that in patches, but being completely without? i can't fathom it. comparatively, having no sense of smell is easy, livable. still, it would be good to know why she doesn't have it. she never has. her sister lost it after an illness as a child. i think her mother also didn't have it. not sure though.

yesterday/today

2008-05-09T10:09:00.000-07:00

i didn't realize quite how it would hit me.

i spent yesterday shaky and freezing, exhausted, with stomach pains and an inability to focus. i had to give a presentation, appear knowledgeable about countries i have never studied before and theories i'm only starting to get comfortable with, even if i don't really agree. i almost started crying throughout the day multiple times. i don't like this fear.

i talked to my mom and dad last night. mom talked to jody on the phone yesterday and said she sounds optimistic and in fighting spirits. we're all supposed to start making her hats, as she will not wear a wig. they're flying her to san francisco (ucsf) instead of portland - it's minimally closer to home, she has family there, specialists are the best, etc. she'll pull through. that's all i can think.

it's all knocked out my own immune system, and i've managed to develop a sore throat/cold/feels on the way to a sinus infection over night. going to make this even more fun.

two weeks til i go home. i have to finish at least one paper before i leave, preferably more. one professor (the considerate, young one) has cut down our reading for the remaining weeks and decided to make our final a multiple-day take home rather than an 8-hour take home. i could kiss him.

that's life right now. i watched the past three episodes of brothers & sisters last night as i was in desperate need of a break. i do think that it's one of the best shows on right now.... and sally fields is a remarkable actress. that's that. we're all pushing through.

worry.

2008-05-07T20:43:00.001-07:00

jody has stomach cancer. discovered monday, when she had emergency surgery to remove some masses in the lining of her stomach that were blocking her intestines. up in salem, visiting kirsten (her younger daughter) at college. hours and hours from home, and it's likely they'll head to portland to see specialists before they go back to arcata. glenn (husband) and mariah (older daughter) have both gone up north. while i'd like to say how is it possible that she didn't know?, i can't. she's jody, she pushes herself and ignores obstacles, that's how.

as much as over the years all the gymnastics girls have thanked our stars that we were not her real daughters, jody was a mother to us - we spent at least twelve hours a week with her, usually more, especially during competition season with those six hour drives, fourteen hour meet days, and nights spent in shared beds only to wake it up and do it over. she pushed us all, knew our weaknesses, knew our potential. when we stopped competing, she drew us into coaching and judging, choreographing and being models for the younger girls. she was controlling, she was manipulative, she discouraged us in any pursuits outside of gymnastics and pushed her daughters in impossible ways. but since graduating, we've all come back, stayed connected in some way or another to the team, whether continuing to judge, just dropping into practice, or what have you. and she's sick. so sick. none of us knows how sick. she probably doesn't know how sick.

for me, it's more than gymnastics. she's been a second mom since i was three; in elementary school i feel like i spent as much time at their house as at my own, playing ponies, accompanying jody on errands, listening to her tell me to go for more, that i was an old soul and had so much ahead of me. our families do all our holidays together, random dinners, massive card games. i always complain - i have nothing new to say to them, jody always comments on my weight, they laughed off my academic aspirations long ago and now it's just oh goody you get to travel lots! - but i always go. i can't ever tell how much my mom actually likes jody, but she's one of her only friends at home. and she must be terrified. both of them. all of them.

not knowing is the worst. i can't say they caught it early - i don't think they did - but perhaps the surgery will forestall things. chemo is a definite, but who knows where. they may turn into my family from six years ago - half a week at home, half a week at the hospital on rotating schedules. mariah's about to graduate, kirsten's just finishing her freshman year.

they're a family full of tensions, many centered around jody's pushiness, bossiness, stridency. as much as i've disliked her at times, i've never not admired her. she gets her way. she pushes those other coaches and judges around until they do what is right and what is fair. she started her own business and has made it very successful. she is incredibly strong, incredibly fit, and has the life that she's always wanted. and she's had it for years. she reads, she coaches, she teaches, she gardens, she runs her own life and that of her family. and being out of control of her own body must be hitting her hard. she'll fight it though. her mother fought it off last summer. she's years younger and she can do it now. she has to. as caitlin (another gym girl) said, "for all she is, Jody has been a big part of our lives." i think that is the easiest way to put it. and in our hearts and our heads, we're all giving our biggest pre-competition cheers and whistles and russian high pitched screams for her right now.

deja vu dining

2008-05-04T19:02:00.000-07:00

thanks nytimes dining section critics. thanks for your ridiculously surprised assessment of olive garden, tgi friday's, cheesecake factory, and the like. thanks. thanks for making us plebes feel a little less idiotic for, as you noted, creating long waiting lists at these places on saturday nights. not that i would choose most of these places myself on a saturday night, but still, they have their definite appeal and special place in my memory.

nuestros amigos de los Ivy

2008-05-04T16:39:00.000-07:00

the mellon conference was friday afternoon and saturday evening. i wasn't presenting, just there to listen. all graduate students, presenting everything from dissertation proposals regarding the geography of the americas from wwii onward to almost final versions of chapters about asian slaves in 17th century mexico and land reparations in post violencia colombia. some of it was fascinating, some of it was dull as all hell.

at the talks themselves, commentary from the visiting professors was generally the most entertaining part. always prefaced with very good, or on intriguing project, or so much potential, many of the comments hit at the root of larger issues, sticking points in definition of terms, and especially the boundaries of projects, either temporally or spatially. mauricio was often the cruelest, but that's just him and he softened it with joking asides, but overall the professors actually seemed interested and invested in student projects. perhaps they're just good at faking. i'd like to think not.

the older students all seemed to know each other, and while i did talk to some people from both schools, i mostly stuck with my chicago folks. i contributed minimally, but because there was so little time for questions/comments after each presentation, i didn't feel like pushing it. one of my ta's from the big h was there and i talked with him, as well as the two other guys i'd had classes with, but the yalies were rather asocial in general (as we'd been warned) and we had plenty of fun ourselves.

dinner on friday night was fabulous. good food, good wine, and incredibly entertaining company. dain and mauricio sang duets for quite a while - emilio refused to join. some of the students got rather tipsy. dain made numerous ridiculous and somewhat inappropriate comments about pot, getting hit on in bars, and just wanting to have one disco hit, touring for a year, and then going back to teaching. and just watching katz, meyer, and womack in their booth, with their glasses of scotch/wine/whiskey whatever, three of the grandfathers of mexican history - amazing. of course, once most of the profs had headed home, womack was surrounded by admiring young women (there was actually a pretty even split, maybe even favoring women amongst the students) before wandering down michigan ave with his glass in his hand on our way to a bar.

all in all, it makes me tremendously sad that this is probably my only time attending as the funding has run out. perhaps they will manage to find new funding somewhere. i sincerely hope so.

swim time

2008-05-01T14:55:00.000-07:00

morocco is only 6 weeks away and i will need a swimsuit. a new one. because last year's, well, it's a bust. partly because it's a tankini, partly because my boobs fall out of it.

so here are some thoughts. thoughts that involve boobs. because, really, that's where problems happen.

from anthropologie, about $100 more than i want to spend, but so cute! probably also would not hold my boobs.

from llbean, home of the well constructed, very wide selection of suits for many body types. comes in my cup size, and i like the way that a halter looked last year. definite possibility. also comes in black checks.

the rest of these are jcrew, which i have also heard good things about.

i think this first one would look better with bigger boobs (me), but it's still a little odd.

pretty sweet, and comes in a brighter blue, but i think the polka dots might be a bit too big.

this is a lot like the llbean one, just in a solid color. i've been fantasizing about a kelly green suit, so this might be it.

and if i was slender enough to wear a bikini, this is the one i would get. it's from anthropologie and is the cutest thing i've seen in a while. couldn't tell you exactly what it is that i love so much, but i just do.

a commercial

2008-04-30T21:11:00.000-07:00

rp and i are a bit obsessed with this commercial. then bunnyshop posted it and i couldn't resist

it's the look that the kid gives after meat loaf starts singing. the lip biting head nodding look. it's brilliant.

spring

2008-04-30T11:25:00.000-07:00

there's a huge magnolia outside my window at work that's been blooming for the past few weeks and is only now starting to shed it's petals. the window itself is lovely - tall and deep silled with small panes of leaded glass that frame the flowers perfectly. the sky is blue, and the small green leaves have just begun to unfurl, and it makes sitting at a computer bored bored bored and avoiding reading for a few hours perfectly bearable. today, two blackbirds have taken up a conversation in the magnolia, kicking out the usual squirrel and setting up a bit of a racket. the preening blackbird on the tan branch with the pink, white, and pale green tree, all framed by the leading of the windows

new things

2008-04-29T20:42:00.000-07:00

instead of reading for the conference - the papers are incredibly interesting, i'm just exhausted - i added a list of the places i regularly visit. i'm rather horrible at actually committing to and sticking with blogs, but i'm sure others will be added as time goes on.

shoes, feet, and things...

2008-04-29T18:14:00.000-07:00

a pain in the foot. apparently caused by shoes. all shoes. i suppose learning to walk through my feet in ballet helped, and the amount of time i spend barefoot helps, but it's not enough. no wonder when drunk i tend to take off my shoes in unreasonable places (i.e. downtown boston) - it's instinctual! (that shoe is painted on, by the way)

of course, completely ignoring the advice of the article, i'm buying a pair of very supportive sandals, having given up on anything wonderfully stylish, since my feet are completely flat and just look squished and silly in those skinny strap elegant things with no arch support (ballet flats are a very different story). thus, these:

speaking of ballet, i haven't made it back since that first class two weeks ago. despite being so much fun and so invigorating and feeling so right, the studio is forever away and i've just had too much going on (see below). but having the ballet slippers, the leotard, the tights just sitting and staring at me in my room. i need to need to need to get back. maybe tomorrow. maybe this weekend. i keep saying that.

so what do i do all day? i read, lots. for classes, for the conference this weekend, and for the paper still due for last quarter as soon i'll have to start writing papers for this quarter. insomnia's kicking in again, sadly, but perhaps it'll go away again. hah.

sorry for the dull post. life is just not terribly interesting.

must

2008-04-23T17:05:00.000-07:00

i bought a bright green bike. and promptly fell off. due to overly packed purse, a too-high seat, and ballet flats. this will be resolved soon and i will relearn to ride.

the remote is missing. people will be over for top chef and rice pudding and mojitos in 2 hours. this must be resolved!

the rice pudding is too milky. first attempts are rarely perfect.

i have only one lime. this also must be resolved.

one white sox ticket purchased for monday. must pick up tomorrow.

ambiguities of domination, a hybrid political science and anthropological text, must be read in the coming hours. i don't particularly care about the cult around the president of syria, but professor slater deems it a must.

something i do care about and find hilarious: the purported marriage of alina kabaeva (most famously flexible of rhythmic gymnasts, model, and member of the Duma) and vladimir putin. bwahahahahahahaha. rumors here denial here. check it out for the pictures at the least. i never liked her. she always beat the girls who were marginally less flexible but far more graceful and talented with apparatus because the russians had the code of points changed in her favor. hell, her hoop went off the floor in the 2000 olympics and she still placed third. corrupt judges. that said, she has had an incredibly long career and managed to maintain a rather astonishing level of skill....

i will make this someday soon

2008-04-23T10:29:00.000-07:00

The Pope's Risotto

By KIM SEVERSON

Published: April 23, 2008

Adapted from Lidia Bastianich

Time: 45 minutes

FOR THE RAMP “PESTO”:

1/2 cup (packed) ramp leaves or young leeks or chives

1 1/2 cups (packed) spinach or Swiss chard leaves

1/3 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil, more if needed.

For the risotto:

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1/2 cup minced scallions (about 6 scallions)

1 tablespoon minced shallots

2 1/2 cups Arborio rice

1/2 cup dry white wine

6 1/2 cups hot vegetable or chicken stock

1 teaspoon salt, or to taste

1/2 cup fresh shelled peas, or frozen

1/2 cup asparagus, sliced on bias in 1/2-inch chunks and blanched for two minutes

1 cup fava beans, shelled, blanched, skins removed (or use one extra half cup each of peas and asparagus)

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into bits

1 cup grated grana padano or parmesan

Ground black pepper to taste.

1. For pesto: Put vegetables and salt in a blender or small food processor. With machine running, add oil slowly. Process into a rough paste. Pour into a bowl and set aside.

2. For risotto: In a heavy, wide, 3- to 4-quart casserole or pot over medium heat, heat olive oil. Cook scallions and shallots together until translucent, stirring often, about 4 minutes. Add rice, stir to coat and cook until edges become translucent, 1 to 2 minutes.

3. Pour wine into pot and stir well until absorbed. Add 1/2 cup hot stock and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Cook, stirring constantly, until stock is absorbed into rice. Add another half cup stock and stir so rice remains moist. Stir in peas, asparagus and favas. Keep adding small amounts of stock, stirring constantly so rice slowly absorbs liquid. Rice should simmer very gently and become creamy but al dente. This will take a total of about 18 minutes.

4. Remove pot from heat and quickly stir in ramp pesto. Add butter and continue to stir quickly until melted; then mix in 1/2 cup cheese. Taste and add remaining salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately, ladled into warm shallow bowls. Top with remaining cheese.

Yield: 6 servings.

Apparently this was served to the Pope during his visit. The problem with cooking for one is that I come across so many recipes like this that I desperately want to make but are really dishes to share. I'll just have to have more dinner parties. Of course, I'll have to try it out for myself first!

the science guy

2008-04-20T09:51:00.000-07:00

this is not quite what i remember bill nye, the science guy looking like, but hey. he's still really cool! and the green issue of the nytimes magazine has an interview with him, about how much he loves swing dancing, chard, his bikes, and solar energy. go bill! go happy memories of 8th grade science class!

well, I'm definitely a democrat...

2008-04-16T07:50:00.000-07:00

but i follow trends in both the obama and clinton lists.... but then, i shop at safeway and like my cookies crunchy. what an odd way to categorize voters.

2008-04-13T14:23:00.001-07:00

night terrors

2008-04-12T22:19:00.001-07:00

i'm reading the emperor's children now, my new nighttime book, after the space between us and a piece of imitation jane austen fifties froth called the grand sophie (yes, this blog has become my booklist, like that i kept from kindergarten through fifth, sixth grade, and dutifully handed to the principal at each additional hundred books - a tshirt, a pin, a gift certificate, a mug, eventually she had to start making up special prizes for me as the hundred books club didnt generally go that high)

smart, lovely, well-educated, seemingly well-adjusted thirty year olds, sixty year olds, who cannot hold their lives together. whose small worlds collapse into each other and suffocate. who, each in his or her own bubble, bounces off, occasionally sticks to, but cannot hold onto those of the others. it's become a dominant theme - people living their own lives and unable to really find each other. each on our own track, so closely parallel at times but never truly merging. last night it was "smart people" - very much the same thing, despite the trite, implicitly syrupy ending. am i just noticing this more? the growing anonymity of a society ever more obsessed with purging its guts into shared space (see this blog). obviously, not saying anything new here, it's just become more urgent, somehow.

i feel i'm losing the people i had and not replacing them. isolated. my world shrinks in concordance with my studies - ever smaller circles of people who might be interested. ever smaller circles of things to discuss. ever smaller circles of thoughts.

for now i'm blaming sleet in april and a day spent transcribing. combined with a brilliantly brittle, uncompromising and unromantic novel.

etc.

2008-04-12T14:30:00.000-07:00

the amaryllis t&t sent me for christmas finally bloomed...

my new mugs showed up. and are everything i wanted.

my dad is a silly man who has instilled a love of silly postcards in me as well.

new orleans

2008-04-01T21:00:00.000-07:00

vacation was wonderful. and is now over. a few photos to commemorate the wonderful food, beautiful homes, and utter relaxation that was last week, before i get back to the grind.

this is a library. that is being closed for lack of money for upkeep. but it is a beautiful building, inside and out and i would love to have had this around the corner as a child.

this is my mom and a beignet. the new orleans version of a donut. divine.

this is an alligator.

as is this. apparently, the zoo used to have (still has?) a number of white alligators, though the only one we saw was a life-size model in a tank. and this handsome fellow, of course.

the cornstalk fence. there are only two in the city, one a few blocks from my aunt's home, and this one, at what is now a bed and breakfast.

i wish i had photos of my aunt's home, but sadly, i forgot. this is her dog, though. Gizmo. who liked to eat my feet.

ps the guatemala project is done and turned in and not to be talked about any more.

springtime....

2008-03-20T08:40:00.000-07:00

i have my morning routine. it's not terribly unusual - shower, put the tea kettle on, move my computer to the kitchen table and turn on npr, steep the tea, find some cereal/granola, consume all together while catching up on news/blogs. rita's not generally here when i get up, or she's still asleep. it's lovely.

is it strange that the messing up of this schedule in my dream last night upset me so much? that i found myself sitting on the curb outside because it didn't work? the dream was odd enough as it was - rita and i were sharing two apartments in arcata, one that only had one bedroom, so i was sleeping at another apartment where we only had use of the bedroom. that was what messed up the morning schedule. all my things were at the shared apartment on the hsu side of the freeway, but waking up at the other, which was near the plaza, sent me for a loop. and then nancy diamond showed up to ask me about dorae's harp lessons and jody showed up to get me to help corral the children in teh back yard to avoid the floating surfboards and keep them away from the giant strawberries. overall, terribly disconcerting. and, throughout the dream, i kept thinking that had i had my tea, granola, and npr, it would have all been fine.

speaking of npr, i still listen to my hometown station rather than the chicago station, whenever possible. obviously, morning edition happens two hours later there than here, meaning when i wake up at 9, i can still catch most of the show. it's perfect. i also get to hear the community calendar and long for my small town joys... annual plant sale, concerts, craft fairs... somehow i'll find that community sense wherever i end up. i hope.

Happy Spring!

not much of one for video games

2008-03-19T09:55:00.000-07:00

but this looks amazingly cool! see slate magazine article

caricature

2008-03-18T11:04:00.000-07:00

loving this today

consuming

2008-03-17T09:15:00.001-07:00

well, if insomnia does one thing, it is let me read more. let's review the highlights of the past few months...

a wonderful twist on the boarding school bildungsroman/mystery. Blue's father is a wandering professor who agrees that for her final year of high school, perhaps they should stay in one town for the entire year. Blue finds herself in the sway of the film teacher, Hannah Schnieder, and the clique of startling misfits she has gathered around her... only to have Hannah mysteriously commit suicide, opening up a whole new perspective on Blue's life. Liberally sprinkled with quotations for authors real and fictional, illustrated by Blue, and deliciously quirky and twisted.

A very pretty webpage for the book...

A few things by Ann Patchett

An attempt to kidnap the president of a poor, unnamed Andean country from a birthday party for a prospective Japanese investor goes awry when the president is not in attendance, home instead with his soap opera. Forced into quick decisions, the rebels/terrorists take the entire party, including the opera star who drew them all there, hostage. Romance blooms across languages and backgrounds as they all tumble into a prolonged period of suspended animation. I had read this before and been disappointed by the ending... still was, to a degree, but less so. Maybe it just required knowing the characters a little better.

and

this time we're in boston, following the lives of an ex-mayor, his run-away biological son and the two brothers he later adopted, and the family they never knew they had. wound through with politics, science, history, and poetry - father had wanted them all to be president and had them memorize important speeches as children - Run is about race and passions and responsibility. it's also a wonderful portrait of boston, which i miss.

Ann Patchett's writing leaves me breathless. occasionally crossing into magical realism, she is poignant and fast paced, and i can never put her books down. She has such an obvious love of the world around her and an amazing eye/ear/touch for sensory and emotional detail...

also, this, which i enjoyed so much more than the movie

various children's books (robin mckinley, harry potter)

and

which i did not like so much, though i pushed through and finished it... her V.I. Warshawski mysteries are fun, but this was just a little too strange, polarized and upsetting... there were no shades of gray in this book, which i always find unsettling. despite taking me to parts of chicago i have yet to explore, i was not terribly fond of it...

now reading

which i'm enjoying tremendously, though i don't know that it will be the best pre-bedtime book....

and looking forward to spring break when i can spend much time curled up in my aunt's home/on the plane/in my bed with new ones... recommendations welcome!

2008-03-14T07:47:00.000-07:00

Happy 20th Annual Pi Day!

I just love that it happens to coincide with Albert Einstein's birthday.... how convenient! For a very silly way to calculate pi: hotdogs!

Magnetic Fields tonight!

up and down, round and round

2008-03-13T12:24:00.000-07:00

the bag finally showed up yesterday!

it is wonderfully pocketful and sturdy and covered in birds. large enough that this morning i piled all my gym stuff (shoes included) into one of the side zip pockets, my computer in the center pocket, all my normal stuff in teh other side pocket, and still had room for a yogurt, a book, and my water bottle. then decided it looked very much like a diaper bag with all that crap in it and that i'd want to come home and eat something before going to the gym, so dumped gym goodies on the couch, went to the library, and filled it with books instead. hurrah! twill be perfect for planes. less than two weeks til new orleans!

horrendous dream last night... it's one i've had before involving demon rollercoaster thing combined with threatening/mocking/occasionally sympathetic banshees and life and death decisions that require immense amounts of energy and soul sucking/body decay when the wrong choice is made/not enough umph is put into the choice. really, that's the best i can describe it. my life and the lives of my friends are in my hands and i have to get a rollercoaster through the some sort of hell pit with sheer willpower. it's an incredibly draining dream and probably at least partially responsible for exhaustion today.

you my love, you my friend

2008-03-12T21:27:00.001-07:00

totally late on this one but still must mention.... lily allen. big fan. being the soundtrack to the paper that is eating my life.

so the first one's a little creepy....

and just skip the intro bit... i do like the music more than the videos... anyways, adorable quirky upbeat and snarky enough to keep me sane

want to know how cool and important my paper is? tarzan went to guatemala in the 1930s. my thesis is totally legitimate. if tarzan did it, everyone did it.

and dain said i'm on my way to "a very fine paper." only comments were that my conclusion was a bit weak and that i might consider looking at this other angle on things in the future... because i might find it interesting but no need to put it here. i am cool and very relieved, though i would have appreciated a bit more guidance.

if i had a boyfriend like jackie's i would be ginormously overweight. incredible chowder tonight pre-top chef accompanied by half a bottle of red wine. jackie drank the other half. i'm glad she's here. otherwise, i would be a sad chickadee.

2008-03-12T21:17:00.000-07:00

becasue i saw it on jezebel and think it's hilarious

enjoy!

baguette quiver

2008-03-04T21:00:00.001-08:00

yours for only $16.

giggles and struggles

2008-03-04T19:45:00.000-08:00

can't quite remember where i found these, probably at agirlandaboy though things have been popping up simultaneously on the blogs i read and in my inbox these past few days (most recently garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com)

barack obama is your new bicycle

and

hillary is mom jeans

just brilliant.

aside from that, insomnia continues, followed by unintentional napping. today the napping was so necessary that after inadvertently falling asleep on my couch, i had a dream about inadvertently falling asleep on my couch. go subconscious. we're so in sync.

mauricio was not quite as terrifying this morning as expected. i was better prepared, he gave me a ton of stuff, but i was able to sort out what was relevant and what was not and thus come out less depressed than last time. i feel bad ignoring half of what he said, especially as he's one of my graders, but he hasn't read anything i have and doesn't totally get my project. so hopefully it'll be fine.

rooting for obama on this end of things. come on texas. msnbc makes good background noise while i finish up some of my reading. gobama. obamanation. obamaniac. its just so much more fun to pun with!

recapalooza

2008-03-03T08:56:00.000-08:00

to steal from bloggingprojectrungay's terminology.... figuring i should probably commemorate my move into what one of my friends termed "my real twenties" last thursday.

23! wahoo! marks me a probably out of college, might have a real job, no questions about still being excited to be 21... i don't know, i'd been accidentally telling people i was 23 for a couple months now, wishfully trying to push myself beyond the feelings of inexperience and unpreparedness that were overwhelming me. actually turning 23 has only helped marginally.

to celebrate we went to aria, a delicious, mod, american fusion restaurant right downtown with wonderful drinks, decent service, and a lovely naan starter. despite some bill confusion that we're still trying to work out - we all came home to an additional 20% deducted from our accounts - it was all in all an incredibly pleasing evening out, which we will repeat soon, if perhaps somewhere a little less expensive. we are grad students.

see all that modishness?

beautiful beet and goat cheese salad and a cucumber pomegranate mojito

the frenchest arroz con pollo any of us had ever seen

and the best birthday present ever:

from my college friends, an edible arrangement! rp and i reveled in the strawberries and pineapple kookiness all weekend before finally admitting it wasn't all going to be consumed before it died and sticking the remaining fruit in the freezer for another day. mid-winter strawberries. amazing.

it's a slow night...

2008-02-21T21:47:00.000-08:00

and rp just found this:

hehehehehehehhehehe

oh, and....

2008-02-21T21:23:00.000-08:00

decided i needed a big girl bag. and after perusing sites and sites and sites, consulting friends, realizing leather is not for me and that i want something poppier than the beautiful but sedate bag here, i bought this bag:

in this fabric:

i am very happy with my decision. not too grown up, but more grown up than anything i have now without looking like a diaper bag or something twee. happy. and waiting for it to show up. happy birthday me! (a week in advance)

churning it out

2008-02-21T21:07:00.001-08:00

apologies for the proliferation of amusing article posts...

the first draft of my seminar paper was due on weds morning, as our prof is leaving for oaxaca for three weeks, only arriving back here a week before the final draft is due. jealously for the fact that he's going somewhere warm and more than a bit of frustration with the fact that the person who knows my project best is leaving.

i'm a first year grad student. this is more than a little frightening. writing my thesis last year my advisor held my hand, read every draft, met with me once, twice, three times a week, gave me her home phone number and responded to midnight emails by the next morning. i'm just not sure how to do this all by myself. i guess that's what grad school is for!

i think js and i at least will read each other's papers... and i should really go talk to mauricio considering he's my second reader, but after the horrible experience i had with him last meeting, somehow i'm dreading doing so.

getting the draft done was a big first step. only moments of panic and stopped working on it at 8pm tuesday night. it's something i'm not ashamed to have read as a first draft, despite the bits and pieces missing, the disjunctures, the question marks instead of citations.

now i'm taking a day or two off from even looking at it... my brain was too much in the middle of it to have any perspective. i'll pick it back up sunday or monday and go from there.

in the meantime, here's to restaurant week, oscars, and an upcoming birthday! many excuses to celebrate with good food and friends!

2008-02-19T17:24:00.000-08:00

i love me some good punctuation.

meet cute

2008-02-17T08:31:00.000-08:00

i had the loveliest meet cute dream last night. other than that it later involved an adorable date, i don't remember much. we met at a party, where he was insistent and i was coy, though eventually surrendered my number. via facebook wall later that night. i think the party was on a lake. and i had trouble remembering his name.

it's left me feeling warm and fuzzy inside.

though i'd be happier if it had actually happened.

2008-02-14T10:39:00.001-08:00

snarky

2008-02-14T07:58:00.000-08:00

i quote: "“Dream Angels,” according to Victoria’s propaganda, is America’s No. 1 fragrance, which makes sense in an obese nation with no self-control: it smells like an alcoholic Twinkie."

click on the image to read. i think there are some nytimes fashion writers with some angry feelings towards valentine's day.

some dreamy day

2008-02-13T17:27:00.000-08:00

maybe a valentine's day when i have someone to do it for, i'll make these.

Recipe: Pomegranate-Rose Cream Meringues

2 extra-large egg whites

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons rose water (sold in specialty shops and some supermarkets)

Dried or candied rose petals (see note), optional

1 cup heavy cream

2 tablespoons crème de cassis

1 tablespoon seedless raspberry jam

Pomegranate seeds or fresh raspberries, for garnish.

1. Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment or wax paper.

2. In an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat egg whites until white and frothy. Gradually beat in granulated sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, until whites are stiff and glossy. Sift confectioners’ sugar over egg whites, and gently fold in with a rubber spatula. Fold in rose water.

3. Spoon 2 1/2-inch mounds of meringue onto prepared baking sheets. (You should have about 12 meringues.) If using rose petals, crush between fingers, and sprinkle over meringues. Bake 1 1/2 hours. Turn off heat, and place a wooden spoon in oven door to keep it slightly ajar; let meringues cool in oven 2 hours.

4. Just before serving, in an electric mixer beat heavy cream until it thickens. With mixer running, beat in crème de cassis. Beat until soft peaks form.

5. In a bowl, whisk jam to break it up. Fold in a small amount of whipped cream to lighten jam; then fold jam mixture into remaining whipped cream. Serve meringues with a dollop of whipped cream and a sprinkling of pomegranate seeds or raspberries.

Yield: 6 servings.

get His attention

2008-02-12T08:33:00.000-08:00

gotta love npr. and singapore....

A Singapore retailer has pulled a line of Jesus cosmetics after receiving complaints about the American-made products branded "Lookin' Good for Jesus." They included a "virtuous vanilla" lip balm, as well as hand and body cream. Their slogan was "Get His Attention."

listen here

down by the schoolyard

2008-02-12T08:00:00.000-08:00

my relationship with rp, care of phdcomics. there are many days when i just go huh and nod my head. i'm sure she does the same with me. but i do love living with a science-y person.

and because

2008-02-09T11:25:00.000-08:00

this just showed up in my inbox. it's a workshop being held by the campus activities board. damn it we're lame.....

but you gotta love that graffic

2008-02-09T09:33:00.000-08:00

and the cutest new dress.

function[saturday]

2008-02-09T09:20:00.000-08:00

getting my head to work on saturday mornings is always a bit of a struggle.

the temptation cartalk and wait, wait, don't tell me, whether at 9 and 10 chicago time or 9 and 10 arcata time (meaning i've slept too late)

the looming necessity of laundry complicated by a paucity of quarters

the empty fridge - 1/4" left in the milk jug, no bread, no cereal. i couldn't eat eggs.

the nytimes magazine published online.

the daunting blank page, taking back up where i stopped off on tuesday, wednesday, with a reminder from dain to not be condescending toward my sources.

11 days to finish this draft.

must find valentines cards for family.

should i send parents an anniversary card at the same time or wait til the next week so that they receive it and enclosed dinner money on the correct day?

slight headache from bizarreness of last night's outing, inadvertently ending up in a club full of lesbian couples dancing only with each other with rp and new friend kp. sometimes crashing the gay bars does not entail the fun dancing boys and upbeat music one expected.

i did drag myself out of bed and make tea, move my things to the kitchen table, and wash my face. all starts. i'm not setting lofty goals for today though. what with groceries, bowling tonight, etc., work is doubtful.

but tomorrow's another day.

bragging...

2008-02-07T12:32:00.000-08:00

cause i'm super cool (and super obsessed):

if you can't read that, i'm ranked #9 (tied for 8th) in the fantasyrunway high score thing right now. i'm also #9 (tied for 8th) in the BPR league and #6 (or tied for 4th) in the Project Rungay league. haha! i don't know that this really means anything, but hey, i'm in the top 10 on all three. and i havent even been doing all that well (til last night when the only thing I missed was best hair).

just thought i'd mention it. now back to chiapas....

yes we can.

2008-02-05T08:04:00.001-08:00

an appropriate 101st post, i feel. go vote.

foggy winter day

2008-02-04T18:10:00.001-08:00

campus on a drippy, foggy, beautiful day

awwwwwww

2008-02-02T12:52:00.001-08:00

because it has to be the most adorable thing i've heard of in a long time. and for someone who hasn't seen the superbowl but maybe once or twice in her life, this provides an appealing alternative!

an attempt

2008-02-01T21:52:00.001-08:00

i shall attempt to be a better blogger!

today was still incredibly snowy. but my new boots helped.

i gave up on the multiple attempts at knee high boots. apparently my calves are giant and my ankles are oddly shaped, because none of the beautiful boots that i carefully oggled, selected, waited for, and carefully unwrapped when they finally showed up fit well enough for me to invest the amount of money they cost me. so, i gave up and bought a pair of sorels from sierratradingpost.com and while they are more than slightly boatish, they keep my feet warm and i can go tromping. so, snow is beautiful, if still inconvenient, again.

other than that, lovely evening out with first years as mb's boyfriend is in town for the weekend. deliciously huge mediterranean meal at cedars - hummus, pita, lamb, cauliflower, baba ganooj, veggie curry, and divine rice pudding and baklava for desert. still full. still so happy.

seeing mb with the bf made me wish for friends to visit again... having ap and fchm here a couple weekends ago was so lovely. i enjoy my friends here, but big h people still know me better. and ap is the best of make bfs i've had.... default date, whatever. we go on wonderful outings and snuggle and can hang out for simply ever. and i think we've never had any hang ups in sexual tension or contemplating anything more, at least not from this side. i do hope that we stay friends forever.

in any case.... it is late, i am contemplating splurging at anthropologie sale site on some beautiful things i'll post later. i think it's time to invest in some good quality clothes that won't just lose their sparkle with wear.

the snow

2008-01-31T09:50:00.000-08:00

is making me grumble.

i'm just generally exhausted these days (no i don't know why, yes i've been sleeping relatively well) and i'm going to blame it on the cold. it inspires absolutely no action. going outside is a chore. staying inside is easy. but staying inside often leads to naps, procrastination, staring into space rather than getting work done.

somehow the procrastination has not led to any more blogging, nor any interesting thinking. well, very little interesting thinking.

this is not to say that i haven't had my productive days, but in general, i find myself sinking into my couch and not moving. i need to pick up the pace on my paper as i'd really rather not write it last minute. meaning this weekend i will finish this section and start the research on the next. i'm writing my paper backwards, so hopefully this won't pose too much of a problem.

perhaps getting to the gym, which rp and i have sworn we will do this weekend, will help. i think i just need to get my blood circulating again.

also must remember to hold my wine cork in my teeth as i've definitely been clenching in my sleep. waking up with a headache hasn't really been helping my bleh situation.

woops...

2008-01-21T15:41:00.000-08:00

fabulous weekend, incredibly relaxing and filled with friends. details/photos later.

for now, what happened in the shower this morning:

of course, seeing as how its MLK, Jr. day, this is not getting looked at til tomorrow morning. Luckily it happened just after i turned off the water. Because who knows when my next shower in my own bathroom will be. *sniffle*

now off to babysit. despite being rather exhausted and needing to write five pages so that i can spend tomorrow at the art institute for one final day with visiting friend. sigh.

lovely

2008-01-19T18:52:00.000-08:00

the favorite grocery store

2008-01-12T16:38:00.001-08:00

no work done today, just much unpacking, organizing, and shopping.

to share, the produce section at our favorite market.

look at that incredible arrangement

it just goes on forever

hispanic fathers and sons

peppers of all sorts

and an avalanche of tomatillos

ordered.

2008-01-11T21:39:00.000-08:00

yeah yeah... i'm horrible at posting from home. i'm back in chicago now and probably back to more frequent writing. we'll see...

without pre-posting, without too much consulting, but plenty of thought, i just ordered two pairs of boots. unless i fall in love with both of them, one is going back. piperlime free shipping both ways, thank you very much.

one very much on sale:

and one very much not:

oohhh i'm excited about them showing up!

Whatever Lola Wants...

2008-01-09T11:50:00.000-08:00

recovery

2007-12-26T10:34:00.000-08:00

merry christmas everyone!

or heppy christmas as the queen would say

and i suppose today is actually boxing day, so happy boxing day as well. i imagine dad the post man will come home with a few more things from those people who still give their postmen thank you gifts the day after christmas. we do already have a lovely bunch of cookies and chocolates and honey and such, but can you ever have too much food at the holidays?

holidays were mostly wonderful. christmas eve party was preceded by massive amounts of tamale and mole making in the caset home

tamale mama

steamy pot of tamales

an armful of tamales

don't they make the perfect holiday food all wrapped up like presents? so yummy... so pretty...

what else.... lots of kitchen gadgetry and movies and books for christmas, everyone loved the things i gave... i now have at least 3 sets of canisters, probably the loveliest being from krb - vintage nesting tins in sage that say coffee, sugar, and flour

i love cooking implements.

what else..... oh plenty... ill try to take a picture of the outside of hte house all lit up at some point before we stop turning on the lights. the roof says POE. can you figure it out?

holidays at home

2007-12-21T17:10:00.000-08:00

holidays at home mean

people in the co-op talking about solstice plans
the npr station advertising its pagan dance music hour
days when i'm in a skirt, tights, and a sweater and the rest of the town is wearing big coats
decorating everything inside. and plugging in the lights that my dad has hung outside.
constant rain. or drizzle. or fog.
screeches from the highway at least twice a day
spending evenings curled up with friends, board games, and movies
reading somewhat trashy fiction while drinking many mugs of tea and hot chocolate
cooking for hours with mom - today was mole and chicken, tomorrow is tamales

home this time also means taking care of mom with a bad cold. making tea and toast, trying to keep her in bed, keep her from shouting, keep her from going to work so that she can be healthy for christmas. also means that i didn't get the house to myself for my first days home as i was expecting. she's very frustrating when she's sick, because she doesnt let herself get better. i mean, i understand to a degree - bed gets boring and things need doing, but i'm here, my dad had at least one day off this week and we can get things done. i made dinner almost by myself, i vacuumed, i decorated, i helped dad move things out of the living room so that it actually looks livable. she still sounds like marlena dietricht on a very smoky day, but doesn't feel quite as shitty. hopefully even better by the big party on monday.

shocking similarities

2007-12-19T09:09:00.000-08:00

is it just me, or does she look like addison shepherd from grey's? i guess private practice now.

but still. shocking similarity. i think it's just in that photo though.

no way kate walsh is making that face.

(thanks prungay boys for prunway photos)

these are a few of my favorite things....

2007-12-17T17:21:00.000-08:00

Borrowed from blackbird....

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags?

wrapping paper, most assuredly. generally recycled from whatever we received last year. occasionally cloth bags.

2. Real tree or artificial?
real. so long as i can convince my parents and find one that's not sprayed (my mom is allergic)

3. When do you put up the tree?
well, now that i dont live at home, as soon as i get there and convince the fam that we still need one.

4. When do you take the tree down?
sometime around new years. i believe these questions are better applied to christmas lights, as my family does that with or without me. christmas lights go on on St. Nick's day (dec. 6) and go off bit by bit starting on new years.

5. Do you like eggnog?
i love eggnog. real, store bought, fat free, whatever. eggnog icecream.... mmmmmm

6. Favorite gift received as a child?
hmmm.... i believe that would be a tie between my addy doll (which i helped pay for and received at the same time as a faaabuuulous black and silver sparkly dress that i still wear for dress up parties) and my doll house with all its little tiny pieces of furniture.

7. Do you have a nativity scene?
we have a mexican tin one, tiny and wrapped in tissue paper, that i always put up because it's beautiful. christmas is not a religious holiday in my household.

8. Hardest person to buy for?
dad and brother, about equally. dad this year. i don't want to buy any more fishing lures or ties.

9. Easiest person to buy for?
krb. i always find a million things for her.

10. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?
some of the aunts have been known to send awful clothing.

11. Mail or email Christmas cards?
mail. not very many - mostly i send thank you notes that serve the same updating people on my life purpose.

12. Favorite Christmas Movie?
oh, i don't know.... the claymation christmas special, i believe.

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas?
depends. whenever i starts seeing things that are perfect. i love buying presents, but they have to jump out at me as the perfect gift for a person, which means that i still end up doing much shopping in the days before christmas for those people who haven't yet been found.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?
maybe as a white elephant....

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?
cranberry orange relish. and satsumas. and the tamales i make with my mom.

16. Clear lights or colored on the tree?
colored. many of them.

17. Favorite Christmas song?
the holly and the ivy, silent night, i like a lot of them....

18. Travel for Christmas or stay home?
the only time i've spent christmas away from home was when n was in the hopsital. it was the first night he got to spend outside of his hospital bed. we all stayed at the family house across the street and my dad made him laugh by blowing raspberries on his stomach.

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeers?
yes. i might have to sing it though.

20. Angel on the tree top or a star?
we actually having a shepherdess. she's vaguely witchlike and has a sparkly purple skirt... i believe my mom traded from her back when she still did craft fairs.

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning?
christmas eve is generally uncle tim's box, everything else christmas morning.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of year?
decorations/sales/songs before thanksgiving. crushing crowds. twelve days of christmas at the family/friends christmas eve party. and having to explain what i'm doing to every adult there.

23. What I love most about Christmas?
Finding the perfect present for someone. Decorating. Christmas carols. Going to krb's on christmas afternoon for quiddler and small children. family christmas walk at the beach. making tamales. too many things. i love the holidays.

clean and clear

2007-12-17T16:41:00.000-08:00

home state. california. apologies for neglecting while touring, but 6 "beds" (read couches/futons/air mattresses) in 13 nights across 3 metropolitan areas (5 cities, i believe) does not make for the best posting conditions. tonight will mark the last stop before home, and as it is my god parents' home, which is essentially home, i do not mind. warm hugs, showers i'm used to, and an actual bed that i have slept in dozens of times make this almost the real thing.

in any case, brief highlights from caset's tour across the northeast, in which she managed to stay one step ahead of the major grossness that is now hitting it full force. so ha. nary a delayed flight or missed bus.

much of boston has already been highlighted.
the final day/evening was spent with:
> frustrated academic searches (i shall never understand archives that won't let me take photos of their images if they won't scan/copy them for me)
>a divine tapas dinner with the lovely anna, my thesis advisor from last year
>trivia night with em and her law school friends - i contributed sambuca and basalt
>followed by a highly entertaining chat with gregorio, one of the most amusing people i have ever met. "you're looking for a donor, right?" "ooohhh so that's why you were so insistent on seeing me." (very loudly to the bar at large) "i use my high speed internet to watch porn. so does she. she's also looking for a donor. anyone interested?"

next day greyhound dash to queens and rs's lovely apt (which she shares with mdm and at) for baking and a long desired reunion. we realized that the majority of our friendship has been conducted long distance, as we only got close last march or so. wonderful to see her face to face. spent the next couple days shuttling around the city to see various friends, often accompanied by the fabulous miss ebk. plenty of good eats and shopping and the moma:

martin puryear's exhibit at moma is soaring and glorious. the sculptures feel completely liberating and joyous. i don't know how interwoven wood strips and huge magnifications of farming equipment (amongst many) can emote so, but if you're anywhere near ny, do go.

giant paper masala dosa for a much belated bday for rs. eat my dosa. enjoy the humor in the amount of food inside the dosa.

and for my father, from their shop at the union square gift market:
because he fosters a tender spot in his heart for teddy. and how could i resist that jolly look? visit the unemployed philosopher's guild for more silliness.

to dc on friday morning. reunion with the other third of frammey (ebk and myself being the other 2/3), miss fchm at her office in dupont circle. where someone has established the dream bookstore/coffeehouse/bar that krb, lsl, and i had planned. later, reunion with friends from cty, adventures with first year lawyers, a fancy dinner at an overly snooty and completely white (marble, hanging flowers/leaves, lights, tables, dishes, oddness) restaurant, a visit to the wonderful national portrait gallery/museum of american art. i like dc. i like free museums. and good public transportation.

i do not like taxis without meters and wintry mix. nor do i like feeling poor. but i believe i managed my money at least decently this trip, while still finishing my christmas shopping and buying myself a few key items of clothing. and seeing juno. more on that later, but everyone should see it.

now to help pack the rv for the trip all the way homeward tomorrow.

sleepytime

2007-12-09T18:23:00.000-08:00

so traveling is not terribly conducive to posting. nor to sleeping, apparently. i'd forgotten how late my big h friends stay up.

anyways. being here has been enormously fun thus far - i've seen many many people, visited all my favorite haunts, and generally had a glorious, if exhausting time. kong three times in as many nights - it's been completely redecorated and looks a swanky now, though the food is still as greasy and groan inducing as ever. tealuxe makes me happy, as does curry chicken soup from le's and mojitos at casablanca.

the show was glorious - i'm so proud of hrgsp and its production values, even if the board is apparently falling apart at the seams. all japaned out - gorgeous kimonos, beautiful set, lovely voices - it was so odd to sit down and realize i'd had nothing at all to do with it. for the first time in four years, my name was no where in the program. actually, that's not quite true, as i donated enough to be listed as a patron. but still, that's only on an insert.

ball afterwards was quite fun, and though i forgot to take any pictures, plenty have been posted on facebook. they remind me that i need to start going to the gym and eating only cucumbers or something. but oh well. we danced and sang and drank lots of champagne, then danced and drank some more, and finally ended up with only grads (plus apope) at the kong before finally heading to bed. the last two nights have been 4am bedtimes.... such ridiculousness.

apope decided mid ball that we were each other's default date, so, as with last year's qball, we danced and held hands, followed each other around, and generally behaved as though we were on a date. which is always fun, though i don't think i would ever actually date that boy, despite his sweetness. i don't know that he'd actually date me, either. mel g and i crashed in his room, which, in my overly champagned and vodka'd state, i had rather hoped i'd be crashing in by myself, so that if nothing else, i could get a nice cuddle out of him. in the long run, it's of course better that that didn't happen. but still.

i apologize for no photos ... oh well, i'll remember to pull out my camera in ny and dc. tomorrow is library day and tonight i am retiring early as my throat hurts and i can barely keep my eyes open.

accomplished!

2007-12-05T21:12:00.000-08:00

remember that list i posted this morning? check check check! almost all of it. still have to pack. and write cards (which can totally happen on the plane) and buy a book to read on the plane. and clean up the kitchen a bit. but the papers are both done and turned in. i am done with my first quarter of graduate school!

pictures of my productivity and holiday spirit:

so many cookies! so tiny! and not sure what to do with all of them as the prunway party i was going to bring them to fell through.... i'll find people to give them to.

christmas lights! reflected in the kitchen window....

and the newly decorated wall. hurrah for sticky tack!

and actually did start packing.... i love the setting out of clothes before packing.

now have to decide which suitcase to use. always feel cooler with my backpack, but with the gifts and the number of shoes i want to bring, etc.... i might just have to go with the normal suitcase. oh well...

off i go tomorrow morningQ

hot mess and a half

2007-12-05T06:32:00.000-08:00

life is both terribly dull and really really exciting right now. mostly just busy though.

namely, this is because i leave for boston tomorrow! waaaaah - so excited. But, of course, i have a bazillion things to do today, which is why i woke myself up too early and am now giving my brain a couple more minutes to adjust before i start.

most importantly, i have to edit and conclude my paper for dain. it's a rather boring paper, being a lit review and all, but in drafting i put in a few rather horrid puns that i need to go find now and remove. because, somehow, i don't think he'll appreciate them. the paper is long enough, has 50-odd sources (I know! when did i even skim 50 sources!?!?!?), and i think does what it's supposed to. if not, well, i'm screwed. and don't care.

if that gets done at a decent hour (i.e. before 1, which should be very possible), part of the afternoon will also be spent attempting to finish (not just conclude, but actually write the last section) my colonialisms paper. which i wrote 8 pages of yesterday sitting in the library, something i generally hate. but i did NOT want to haul even more books home. so i randomly decided to look at A Passage to India as an imperial/anti-imperial novel (i know, i'm a historian, but i'm also a lit person and the prof seems okay with that. hopefully.). and have now skimmed and summarized too much criticism. i hate that that's all i do as a grad student.

other things that need doing today:
laundry, returning various books, writing a few more holiday cards, turning in my financial aid papers, buying gifts for my girls here, baking cookies, finding something for rp, oh, and packing. i know that list is actually longer. but if i'm to make it through and still get to watch prunway tonight, i need to start now.

dull post. like my life. but by the end of day, i should have all sorts of reasons to celebrate how exciting my life is!

page 7

2007-12-02T19:11:00.001-08:00

slowly working through this paper. slowly slowly slowly. writing literary reviews is not fun. there's little original thought; it's just going over what other people have said and showing how it's applicable or not to what i'm going to say someday. i don't get to go into any of my cool primary material - i.e. no pretty pictures or flowery descriptions. sigh. but about halfway to my page goal and maybe a third of the way through my material. blerg.

other than that, today was really great. brunch with ks, mb, and js - my girls - at medicci. i love love love breakfast food and this omelette - bacon, spinach, and cream cheese - was divine. as were the potatoes. as was having girl talk that, even though our papers came up every once in a while, was generally just silliness about tv and goign home and birthdays.

and then tonight rita and i took a massive target trip.

i got these:

to go with my dress and because they're pretty and shiny....

this because i need more comfy shirts that aren't cardigans:

these to frame the prints i bought for people the holidays

these, powdered sugar and food coloring so that i can make cookies at some point this week

these because they were soooo cheap and i've been wanting something different to eat

and shampoo. since when i thought i bought a bottle of shampoo and a bottle of conditioner the other day, it was actually two bottles of conditioner. dumb. dumb. dumb me.

isn't it amazing what target has to offer? gotta love it.

mmmmmm hott

2007-11-30T22:34:00.001-08:00

i want me one of these please! of course, i'd have nothing to talk to him about.... would need much much much brushing up on my classical music first. but really. gorgeous, venezuelan, and extremely talented! hott. with two ts.

last day of nablopomo

2007-11-30T10:39:00.000-08:00

i've actually been meaning to do this since the first day....

whenever i say nablopomo it makes me think of a place i visited last summer, casa na bolom in san cristobal in chiapas, mexico. sounds similar, right? it's a beautiful place, and if i go back, i may splurge and spend at least a couple nights staying there instead of in a hostel.

na bolom was the home of danish anthropologist and archaeologist frans blom and his swiss wife gertrude, herself a conservationist, journalist, sociologist, and photographer. it's filled with images of their life exploring the lacandon jungle, objects they collected, and books they read. in the back is a native plants garden, with wonderful little benches where i sat and read anna karenina and wrote postcards. completely peaceful. and all profits go to conserving the jungle they cared so much about.

wonderful library, too. i didn't spend enough time in it to figure out how it's organized, but again, if chiapas becomes my focal point in the future, and especially if anthropological history stays central to my studies, this will become a necessary resource.

i can't believe i only have this one photo of it, and it's just of the garden, but look at the website for more!

i love peter sagal!

2007-11-29T10:05:00.001-08:00

and i love facebook. and when peter sagal talks about facebook, i love it even more.

oh balding middle aged men and being your own other drummer.

implicated.

2007-11-29T00:51:00.000-08:00

a graduate student, 29, who had just defended his dissertation and was set to receive his degree a week from now, was shot and killed here the week before thanksgiving. the same night, three other students were held up and a fourth fled before the robbers reached him. the student who was killed had no money on him and the others only a few dollars and credit cards.

today the police arrested a 16 year old for the murder and robberies, to which he has admitted complicity. he claims that he was not the one who shot the graduate student, but has said that it was his idea to set out on a robbery spree in the first place, rounding up friends to accompany him along the way.

16. how clearly this brings into perspective where i live. 16. his home is probably no more than 20 minutes away. 16. african american. single mother. sophomore in high school.

am i happy that he's in custody? that he's off the streets? that he won't be shooting any of my friends? that justice will be served and the graduate student's killer punished? is this what they call white guilt?

i hate that he is 16. i hate that he lives so close to our gargoyled and gothic towers. the monstrosity of a library full of books that explain who he is and how he came to shoot a graduate student. from senegal. on scholarship. about to go home and do good, change his world.

prunway night!

2007-11-28T20:55:00.000-08:00

i love prunway i love prunway i love prunway!

and i totally guessed tonight's winner and loser on fantasy runway! i'm sooooo good.

spoilers below - sorry krb!

Not that I agreed with the winner - none of them did remarkably well, but i would have chosen kevin, i think. In fact, i agree that this is the hardest challenge they've had so far and i think they all failed rather miserably at doing anything original. but, you know what, making men's wear is very very very difficult - there's no room for forgiveness. in women's wear, if something doesn't fit right, take off the sleeve, add a belt, drape a little, and you can make it work. you don't have to be able to fit a crotch or set a sleeve. but men's wear requires all of that. so for the fact that no one went down that runway without pants or topless, cheers to them! especially considering that they had to do something dressy - a knit shirt wouldn't have been so difficult to whip together (see eliza), but dress shirts and sports coats .... well, they take time. especially if you havent done them before, dont have a mannequin with arms.

anyways, carmen was too ambitions and just failed. had either of those pieces worked, she might have saved herself. but both were ridiculously sad. jack - not so exciting and far too many stripes for my taste, but congratulations on the nice bias pockets and button placket!

don't really remember many in the middle, but i'm very happy that sweet pea stayed and i think that there were a couple others that should have been out there for bottom three, had things been otherwise....

little things to avoid doing work

2007-11-27T21:15:00.000-08:00

i passed my language exam! so long as i can get my paper turned in in march, i'll get my masters in june! wahoo!

also, my new down coat showed up today and it's wonderful and lighter than a feather and perfect and i'm keeping it.

i bought fresh mozzerella at the grocery store tonight and it is a wonderful thing.

i have watched four episodes of alias tonight instead of doing reading. i did get some done this afternoon, but not enough. papers due a week from tomorrow. i'm a dumb ass procrastinator. who will not be prepared for class tomorrow. i'll be nauseous anyways, so ill just huddle and not talk.

bc is making me nauseous. and head achey. and i don't like it.

i very much enjoyed this article today.

read this book yesterday and very much recommend it. wish i'd read it over a longer period of time, but i really think it provides some of the best summaries of european and american philosophy i've read. much clearer than profs, than friends (sorry xwn), and whatever attempts i've made to understand it through reading the stuff itself.

enjoy!

dress debates

2007-11-26T19:39:00.000-08:00

as have much much to do in the next 9 days before i leave for boston, decided to get one out of the way today that would just stress me out more later - finding a dress for the ball. thus, instead of going to the library after work, i went downtown to filene's basement (such a disappointment compared to the boston one!), nordstrom rack, and macy's. 4 hour shopping trip. utterly exhausting. but did find a dress, even if i'm not 100% in love with it and spent a little more than i had planned, especially for a dress that i'm not passionate about.

anyways. here it is:

it was more on sale at the store than it is on the web, but still $100 (which is a lot for me, especially seeing as how the best dress ever only cost $50). it has pockets, a cute print, is actually a brighter purple and floofier than in the picture, and screams for shiny black patent leather heels and big jewelry, which i shall have to find. buttons, cute skinny sash, and flattering cut on me (despite being much much bustier than the model), but the neckline is a little off and, of course, my arms look wretchedly flabby. but oh well. that's going to happen with any dress.

the plan is this: i will take the dress, with tags still attached and receipt safely guarded in my wallet, to boston with me. i will contemplate it. i will take it shopping with me at the boston filene's and macy's, wherein i will decide if it should be returned and replaced. i will be vaguely sorry to be mean to such a pretty dress, which would be perfect for many a winter party, but may just not have the stuff to make it at the ball. either way, i will not style my hair the way this model has.

in the next ten days i have to:

contemplate this dress some more
read 3 books for class discussion
write a 15 p historiography paper for my guatemala project
write a 10 p paper on as yet unknown subject for colonialism/poco
get my hair cut
digitize all the primary sources i have to avoid carting 20lbs of books home
find presents for my dad and friends i'm visiting
continue going to work/maybe finish cataloguing the library
not get sick. really.
not get sick

amusing things for sunday nights

2007-11-25T19:15:00.000-08:00

back in chicago after fabulous long weekend in minnesota. ill write more about it later - right now i need to catch up on some reading. but something to amuse

(thanks projectrungay!)

The Eyre Affair

2007-11-24T11:47:00.000-08:00

Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair:

Fforde's first book in the Thursday Next series, welcome to an alternate England where there's a division of the local police dedicated to making sure that people don't publish erroneous copies of classic literature, charlotte bronte's home is a major tourist attraction, and the major debate in society is over who wrote shakespeare's plays (as opposed to religion, politics, etc). Thursday's father is in the Chronoguard and no one ever knows when he's going to show up or how old he'll be. Her uncle is a famous inventor named Mycroft who develops a machine that lets people travel inside books and Thursday's job gets much more interesting. Someone uses the machine to get inside the original manuscript of Jane Eyre and kidnaps, well, Jane! Thursday has to get her back, battling psychopaths and evil corporations in the meantime, before Bronte's masterpiece is destroyed forever.

I love Fforde's writing. he's hilarious and makes the reader feel like she's in on the joke - the books are full of references to literature of all sorts and Thursday's full of snarky comments. the sequels are great fun as well, though i think this first is still my favorite. and cricket is the most popular competitive sport. of course. shoot em up action adventure with austen and dickens references. and rocky horror style renditions of king lear.

The Time Traveler's Wife

2007-11-23T13:34:00.000-08:00

for today: Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife. Beautiful romance that KRB adores and i enjoyed thoroughly, even if it's not quite as high on my list as hers. it is a gorgeous piece of writing and a highly original tale of enduring love, despite a rather odd situation. Henry De Tamble is a librarian at the Newberry in Chicago who finds himself jumping in and out of time, without any say in the matter. He meets and falls in love with Clare, and while she continues forward in normal time, he is often out of sync and thus with extra knowledge or lack of information about what is going on. i don't remember why it was that i didn't adore this book as much as i'd hoped - probably expectations set too early - but it is a wonderful lazy afternoon read. despite the premise, don't worry about it being all sci-fi - Henry and Clare are too wonderful to worry about that.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2007-11-22T11:30:00.000-08:00

well, i don't know of any thanksgiving books... instead, my favorite cranberry recipes, one of which i am having this tday, the other of which i'll have to wait for til i get home. why do we only eat cranberries at the holidays? they're wonderful and such a pretty color!

Pumpkin Cranberry Bread (recipe care of KRB and what i made for KS's family as a thank you)

In one bowl, mix 2 1/2 cups flour, 2tsp baking powder, 1tbs pumpkin pie spice, and 1/2tsp salt.
In another bowl, mix 2 eggs, 2 cups flour, 1/2 cup oil, 15oz can pumpkin. Mix the two together and fold in 1 cup cranberries. Pour into two loaf pans and bake at 350 for 60 minutes.

Resist if you can! having to wrap the loaves up instead of eating them right away was terribly difficult...

Orange Cranberry Relish

1 bag cranberries, 1 orange (peel and all), 1 cup sugar. put through food processor. enjoy. So much better than the canned stuff. so gorgeous. so tart and sunny in your mouth. add more sugar if necessary.

hope everyone is warm and cozy and full of good food and love, or will be soon

posts for the holidays...

2007-11-21T12:00:00.000-08:00

alright. so hopefully this works. i'm heading up to MN for the holidays and am planning ahead by putting some posts in draft form. i will do my best to post them each day, but if it doesn't happen, i apologize. but the book thing should be conducive to this, right?

so for the first one:

Gail Carson Levine's Ella Enchanted

this is another of the books that sits by my bed. well, it did til it got lost in the mail somewhere to my great chagrin. another cinderella story - Ella's under a curse to be obedient, a curse that only her fairy godmother Mandy knows about, as Ella's mother made her promise never to tell anyone before she passed away. therefore, the wicked step mother and stepsisters, off to finishing school, adventures in trying to find the fairy who cursed her and, of course, falling in love with the prince.

someone made a horrible movie of this with Anne Hathaway (whom i love) a few years ago that has very little to do with the book. the book is all about Ella learning about herself, finding the courage within herself to break the curse, growing through the challenges she faces and being a very smart young woman who refuses to give up but always has the help of a friend or two along the way, despite her neglectful father and dead mom. the movie tries to make it all political by turning cary elwes into the evil prince regent who is enslaving the elves etc.

another good girl empowerment book (guess i read a lot of these, don't i?) with enough romance and adventure to keep you going, but definitely appropriate for younger girls. just dont see the movie.

first comes love, then comes....

2007-11-21T05:59:00.000-08:00

"A Political Marriage that Never Quite Fit"

isn't that just the perfect headline for that image? i haven't read the article yet, but i just love the photo.

this will not be me

2007-11-20T12:01:00.001-08:00

i will find a tenure track position. i will not be teaching at 5 different schools. i will succeed.

nytimes scares me sometimes....

if i had a million dollars...

2007-11-20T10:54:00.001-08:00

when i next have money to burn on making my apartment feel like a home/when i move into a smaller, one person apartment next year and really decorate, i will fill it with the following:

and

which would go wonderfully on my love seats

for my walls, a series of prints from here, framed.

dishes from here:

lanterns like this:

and carry an umbrella like that:

and just because, i'll put this on my toilet:

or maybe not....

etsy is a very dangerous thing.

oooops

2007-11-19T22:04:00.000-08:00

well, i haven't gone to sleep yet, so it still counts as today. right?
sorry. no book today... i can't get a book out tonight. i've spent the last four hours going through new york times ads from the 1930s looking for travel advertisements for guatemala.... a few of my favorite finds....

and, though it's not to do with travel, it does have the word guatemala in it!

ch-ch-ch-changes

2007-11-18T22:52:00.000-08:00

i'm staring birth control pills for the first time ever today. nothing fancy, orthotricyclene low - the ones they'll sell students for $10 a pack to keep us from getting preggers. have decided that 8pm is as good a time as any to take them and have set my cell phone to remind me at least for the next couple days.

i'm a bit worried about this actually. ive just had so many friends for whom birth control has been horrible - weight gain (apparently it's cause the meds increase appetite), break outs, awful mood swings/depression, etc - and i really can't deal with any of those. my doctor told me that i should stay on them for at least 3 months before trying to change, as that's how long my body might take to get used to them, but if i start freaking out, i'm going to go see my friends at the clinic over christmas.

mostly this worry comes from the fact that i'm taking these not so much because i'm having sex - which i'm not and am not likely to anytime soon, though i do want to be safe in case it does happen (please?) - but because of the wretched ups and downs i've been having along with pms (remember those posts from earlier this week?). i'd rather just take one pill that'll keep me from getting preggers to boot than start taking something for my anxiety, too. i know it's a long shot, but if it doesn't help or makes things worse, i'm going to keep trying other brands until something does. i'd ask for recommendations, but apparently everyone's body reacts differently. sigh. dumb hormones.

so we'll see! here goes nothing!

Cold Comfort Farm

2007-11-18T18:14:00.000-08:00

Stella Gibbon's Cold Comfort Farm (1932) -

Cold Comfort Farm is set in the 1920s countryside, where Miss Flora Poste has gone to live with distant relatives, chosen for their eccentricity, after the death of her cultured and aristocratic parents. A bit of an Austen tale - Flora wants to write a modern version of Persuasion when she's 53 and intends to spend her life til then collecting material - she takes on the Starkadder family of Cold Comfort Farm as a project to keep her occupied until a husband shows up.

Witty, bubbly, and somewhat in the vein of a feminine Evelyn Waugh without the alcoholism, it's a cheery romp that plays off of all sorts of romantic cliches - eccentric aunt who refuses to leave her room and holds the family in an iron grip, the wil o' the wisp daughter in love with a local gentleman, the hunky talkie loving son, and the awful sex obsessed wannabe novelist who insists on pursuing Flora. Kate Beckinsale is perfect in the part and the aesthetic of the movie is so wonderfully eclectic, romantic, and just silly. as the amazon summary says, the cows are named Feckless, Aimless, Pointless, and Graceless. how much better than that can you get?

upcoming adventures

2007-11-18T10:47:00.000-08:00

if i haven't mentioned how excited i am about my upcoming trips lately, whoops. cause it's all i think about these days.

for thanksgiving i'm heading north to minnesota with ks and two first year guys she's also adopted for the holiday. we're leaving weds after i finish up seminar and driving to winona - five to six hours - for a weekend that will include, according to ks, "a trip there includes taking a hunting boat across the river to some bars on the Wisconsin side in the middle of the night;" "the Turkey Bowl, which is a football (the American kind) contest held annually by my extended family on Thanksgiving Day. You do not need to be good at football or even know how to play the game to participate. Also, if someone passes the ball to anyone under the age of 8, it is an unspoken rule that you will pretend to run very hard after them but let them score the touchdown anyway;" and any/all of the following: "bowling, drinking, spending time with my cousins, drinking with my cousins, drinking with people from my high school, sleeping, and eating the best doughnuts you've ever had." sounds like a good time to me! food, drink, family, games, more food and drink....

then, in a little less than three weeks now, i'm heading back east to see all sorts of friends before going back to california for the holidays. stops to include: cambridge, maybe new haven, new york, and dc. three to four days in each place (not including new haven - that'll just be a night if i do stop), many many people to see, a ball!, either the rockettes or the nutcracker, more drinking, more eating, and all the people i love. i talk to someone i'm going to see most days online and each one makes me more excited.

it's not that i don't love being here (i do and more so each day, despite desperate posts), it's just that the people i'm going to see were my life for four years and just know me so much better than people here. mostly of course, its theater people - boardlove! -, but i'm also going to see my cty crowd for the first time in one place since 2004 - somehow they've all ended up in the dc area, aside from me of course -, and rs. rs! who i talk to pretty much every day on gchat, but who i'm going to get to see! and stay with! rs! hurrah!

something else i've been thinking about lately: i talk a lot more here than i have ever before in my life. in class, with friends, i'm chatty. i'm sometimes clever, sometimes snarky - "like the surveyors she was writing about, she didn't venture more than a mile from the border they were drawing." but mostly, i just pipe up more frequently. which, i think, more than anything, shows that this is a good place for me. everywhere else in my life, i've been the listener, the nodder, the ear to unburden to, and it's not that i don't have quiet moments, that there aren't places where i have nothing to say, but that i'm much more willing to interject now. and i love it. who knows what'll happen when i'm back amongst my boisterous friends who are used to quiet me. have i actually changed, or is it just that people here don't like to hear their own voices as much as my friends elsewhere?

Tamora Pierce

2007-11-17T19:18:00.000-08:00

alright, confession. this is what i wish i was reading tonight. and i reread them all over the summer... heh. anyways. Tamora Pierce's Tortall series... well, four of them at this point that i've read....

start with the song of the lioness quartet, then the wild magic quartet, then protector of the small, and the daughter of the lioness books. i guess that's the chronological order of them... girl power books set in magical land of tortall... all starts when alanna switches places with her twin brother thom so that she can learn to be aknight shile he learns to be a sorcerer. she disguises herself as a boy, befriends the prince and his great friends, and works harder than anyone else at the palace to earn her place. the other series are all in the same vein - girls/women doing something new, proving their place in male dominated worlds, and changing things for the better. fast paced stories, great friendships, magical creatures, good and evil, conniving enemies, and tons of fun. she has another set of books for younger books - the circle of magic - which i don't like quite as well, but these ones are well worn and have a well-deserved place on my shelves. great for your 5th-7th grade niece/daughter/friend or good to get out of the library for a fun afternoon's indulgence. really, though, well worth the time for some brainless reading for adults, good empowerment reading for girls.

plus, look at the cool covers for the protector of the small series:

It's Noah!!!

2007-11-17T09:16:00.001-08:00

This guy is the sweetest, funniest, most talented person i've met in a long time. and he's huge. making costumes for this guy was ridiculous. he's got a 50" chest. but he sings like a nightingale both in tenor and soprano ranges. he was our ralph rackstraw last year in pinafore and when he descended from the sky on a ladder singing and swinging, everyone went crazy. he also sweats like a pig and requires lots of laundry, but he's so willing to help out that it didn't really matter.

if you can't guess which one he is, well.... and listen to the little clip on the article - ignore the dumb harvard jocks - and remember that this is him after playing a football game. there's also a better bit at the end with an orchestra (not so hot) and all. sadly, i don't think he's in mikado this year.... oh well... i hope he gets to sing from here on out.

men who love sidney bristow

2007-11-16T19:54:00.000-08:00

am i horribly lame for really enjoying the fact that i'm spending my friday night at home with indian take out, a big glass of wine, and men who love sydney bristow (aka alias)? cause it's highly enjoyable. rp started rewatching the first season a couple weeks in and i jumped in maybe 5 episodes in, so now that she's gone, i've gone back to the very beginning. so much fun. so much better than united fruit and even the pretty photo album style guide books i checked out today.

and boy do i love the men who love sydney bristow. oh vaughn.... oh will.... come love me!

and while i'll never understand why sydney always has her hair down (this is a problem i have with most female super hero/super spy types - doesn't it get in the way!?!?), she does get to wear some pretty cool get ups and use some awesome gadgets. and i really want her house and her wine glasses.

also, bought the black patagonia coat. should be on its way soon. very excited. and looked at myself in a window the other day in passing and i actually looked grown up. it was weird.

lazy bum says good night

2007-11-16T17:33:00.001-08:00

that's me tonight. i have stacks of books on the floor next to me. and i have not touched them. i have been watching tv and eating indian take out in my pjs for the past 4 hours. dumb. dumb. dumb. i have so much that i should get done this weekend, especially if i want to enjoy my thanksgiving break and not bring a dozen books with me. so, as usual on friday's (sorry if you're getting sick of it), i'm writing about how i'm planning to do lots of work this weekend. if possible, i'd like to at least write a couple paragraphs.... what i have to turn in in a little less than three weeks is fifteen pages of secondary research. i can throw in some primary stuff if i'd like to, but i think i'll probably just stick with secondary, as there are so many facets of the project i need to work through there, first.

yesterday was n's birthday. i called him twice - once before school and once after dinner. i'm so proud of him... he's such an amazing kid. really. i told js about him, about the accident while she was driving me home after dinner with a visiting prof last night. it felt right - i was more excited about his birthday than is maybe normal for an older sister - and she's the first person here who i've felt comfortable enough with to open up about that. she didn't over react, she just let me tell the story, and understood why his birthday is such a big deal. because it is. he's nineteen. and he's going to be twenty nine. and thirty nine. and it might not have happened. so happy birthday wonder brother.

Dingley Falls

2007-11-16T16:53:00.001-08:00

i think this was the best book i read this summer. Michael Malone's Dingley Falls:

it's a quirky small town portrait wrapped up in a mystery... patrician connecticut is shaken up when violently hateful letters start appearing in people's mail boxes and perfectly healthy people of all ages begin dying mysteriously. an amazing cast of characters, all wonderfully complicated and conflicted who, without ever seeming saccharine, get their just desserts. it's a hilarious book, but not a comedy, and a sad book, but not a tragedy. and Malone's writing is just dazzling. i just inhaled this book because his prose skips across the page and i just couldn't stop.

the book is set in 1976 and dingley falls is a cross section of old and young, straight laced, hippy, avant garde and precocious, not necessarily where you expect to find it. a wonderful quartet of society matrons finds themselves in an uproar when one runs off with a visiting beat poet. girls on the edge of becoming teens, experimenting, wanting to jump in the convertible but also depending on the advice of the local priest and very close with their fathers. a batty old woman, last in the line of the dingley founding family, who swears she's seeing strange flashes in the forest.

npr has an excerpt here

jutting breasts

2007-11-15T22:41:00.000-08:00

"You don’t even have to wait for the flying spears and airborne bodies that — if you watch the movie in one of the hundreds of theaters equipped with 3-D projection — will look as if they’re hurtling directly at your head. You could poke your eye out with one of those things! Which is precisely what I thought when I first saw Ms. Jolie’s jutting breasts too."

“Beowulf” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Gory violence and a naked Angelina Jolie avatar.

rp and i have committed to not seeing this movie (apparently the giggles i post are for movies i don't want to see). but we are cracking up over this review. thank you nytimes.

The Egypt Game

2007-11-15T19:07:00.000-08:00

another childhood favorite, that i actually hadn't thought about in a long time...

Zipha Keatley Snyder's wonderful story about a game of pretend that goes too far. i loved all things egypt as a child, still do in a very romanticized way, and this book was the perfect manifestation of all that fascination. a wonderful play of characters - children from diverse families and backgrounds who come together because of their love of egyptian mythology. together, they make their own imaginary world in an empty lot. it's a reminder of the wonders that can be achieved with an empty shed, some junk antiques, and a lot of pretend. i still love playing pretend, and this book adds that great bit of mystery and investigative digging that made any imagination game so much better.

great book for 3rd - 6th graders, at least as far as i remember it. wonderful adventure story of collaboration and making the most of what you have.

Austenland

2007-11-14T21:01:00.000-08:00

here's something i'll probably try to find for my next plane ride/during winter break (when i let myself indulge in chick lit)

30 something girl's aunt leaves her a trip to Pembrook Place, a resort where everything and everyone looks and lives like an Austen novel. sounds like perfect escapism to me.

i'm not always the biggest fan of austen sequels or the like, but sometimes, when i go in without any expectations and just want a distraction, i'm pleasantly surprised. At the end of the summer, my mom gave me Linda Berdoll's Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife, an utterly delightful, rather raunchy sequel to p&p. more than rather raunchy. very sexy. seems that people either loved it or hated it on amazon. if you're not expecting it, it's more than a little startling, but hey, sometimes a good romance novel sex scene is great, especially when stuck in a fun story.

how i've missed you

2007-11-14T20:26:00.000-08:00

it's everything i remembered, everything that has been missing! well, okay, not quite everything, but so goooooooooooood.

i'll comment later, for those wonderful west coast people who haven't seen it yet/my friends who i know won't get a chance to watch for a couple days. but i can safely say that the skill level this season is incredible, even if the design aesthetic isn't all that exciting yet. but from past experience, people get more creative when they're forced to, and since i can only imagine what sort of wacky ideas the magic elves are coming up with this season, i'm hoping that happens soon! heidi is adorable, tim is my favorite, and ninagarcia/orangeman are their usual semi entertaining selves. i do think that watching the judges faces is one of the best parts of the show.

plenty of characters, and i totally predicted (earlier today on the tressemme fantasy runway site) who was going to get kicked off. so hah. didn't get the winner though.... second choice.

anyways. happy place!