Eating Pie Elsewhere

Victory Quiche

2011-04-01T14:52:00.005-03:00

Thanks to my doting father, I recently received a beautiful, custom built maple counter top for my kitchen. And thanks to my doting boyfriend, it is finally installed. I made a quiche to celebrate having twice the counter space to work on. Hooray for dads! Hooray for boyfriends! Hooray for open plan apartments! Hooray for job-quitting!*

For the curious, a Victory Quiche is made with a whole wheat crust, shitake mushrooms sauteed with shallots and butter, bacon and cheddar cheese.

*See how I just snuck that in?

Pi Day:A Candied Bacon is Possible

2011-03-15T19:23:00.008-03:00

I must begin my pie day post with two warnings. The first is: no matter how many pies you have made, you must never be cavalier about how much water you add to your dough. Wet dough won't roll out. It's as simple as that. The second warning is more dire: you might have the means of making candied bacon in your house right now. I know, you're thinking, "Candied bacon is a rare delicacy, reserved for artisan confectioners with booths at flea markets and bespoke neckties." But it is not. It is easy to make. And- unsurprisingly- it's a delicious addition to nearly anything.

I decided late in the game to observe the pun-influenced celebration of pie on March 14. Things have been pretty tough in my professional life lately and it seemed like a good way to blow off steam. And nothing makes a bad week shorter than coming home to a slice of pie every night. I wanted to do something fun and interesting, but I didn't want it to be too experimental. I thought about variations on crust and variations on filling. In the end, I was inspired by two recent desserts I've eaten. One was the promising, but ultimately disappointing Bacon Apple Cheddar Pie at The Blue Stove (it is a peril to my health that this store is so near my house) and the other was a simple but transcendent apple crisp at Dumont.

Over the course of the day I tossed around various apple pie experiments I might try. A part wheat crust. Cheddar cheese. Peanut butter. I remembered reading a recipe recently that described a simple method for making candied bacon. Eager to correct the failed crumble topping from my Pancake Bread Pudding, I began to dream up an apple pie topped with crumbled, salty-sweet bacon bits. Many of you know that I am no stranger to having a piece of bacon or two with a slice of apple pie. I can think of few breakfasts I would rather eat. I had never put bacon into a pie before because it seemed so likely to take a wrong turn (as in the case of the Blue Stove). By candying the bacon I could preserve it's crispy texture and prevent the fat from overpowering the other ingredients. I laughed a bit to myself, imagining crunchy bits of bacon and pecan all over toothsome, sweet apples. How was I the first to think of this??

I was pleased with the plan. A simple apple pie with a crumb topping. I began to make my crust, whirling the ingredients (I do half butter, half shortening) in my Cuisinart. Then I made my big error. My mother, who is my personal pie guru, swears that while the food processor is ideal for mixing your fats with your flour, you can only get a proper texture by adding the water to bind the crust by hand. I have gambled in the past and won, but yesterday I was not so lucky. The crust seemed softer as I put it in the fridge to chill, but I assumed that was because I had used room temperature shortening (oh vain mortal!). When I tried to roll it out the first time it got all over the rolling pin and was impossible to lift. So I added flour and chilled it again. Still the crust was completely impossible. I ended up finger pressing it into the pan, chastened by the experience.

As I mentioned the candied bacon was a total breeze. I took three strips of bacon from the freezer (I freeze bacon in individual servings because I am a lonely spinster) and let them defrost. I covered both sides of each strip with maple syrup and put them under the broiler. I turned them pretty regularly with tongs and took them out before they looked too crispy. Once it had cooled, the bacon was shiny and hard (do not try to drain it, it is very sticky when hot). I chopped it up into little pieces and mixed it with pecans, butter and brown sugar. I tasted the mixture to make sure it wasn't poison. It was not.

I used two apples (one granny smith, one red of some sort) tossed with a couple teaspoons of sugar and cinnamon (I repeated the process of mixing the cinnamon and sugar beforehand). I filled the crust and sprinkled on the topping. I baked the pie for about 25 minutes. The apples still had a bit of crunch. The topping didn't cover the pie tightly so I wanted to be sure that the filling didn't dry out too much. I have to say, this is one to repeat. The crust wasn't pretty, but the flavor was great. I really liked the texture of the apples (gotta slice em real, real thin). And the scant distribution of the topping kept it from getting too rich.

Beta Test: Pancake Bread Pudding

2011-03-09T11:43:00.007-03:00

It seems writing this blog has inspired me to be a bit more creative in my kitchen endeavors. It will also (hopefully) motivate me to cook more methodically: try something out, see what works, try again. I read a lot of recipes. I guess my most recent experiment was inspired by pudding week on Food 52. Puddings are so delicious and, in many cases, you can incorporate leftovers. And I love cooking with leftovers. So there you have it.

Perhaps you have never had the problem of leftover pancakes? I must confess that I really don't like pancakes very much. 19 times out of 20 I will chose a savory breakfast over a sweet one (yesterday's breakfast was braised cabbage!). But on Sunday pancakes seemed like a good idea, mostly because it was rainy and I had all of the ingredients in the house. The simplest way to deal with leftover pancakes is obviously to heat them up and enjoy them for breakfast another day. But my mind was stuck on pudding and so I began to concoct a recipe.

Crust
I started out reading recipes for bread pudding. Mostly I was looking at milk and egg ratios, but I also noticed that Paula Deen (that minx!) puts a crust on hers. Crunchy, buttery edges on a bread pudding? Yes, please! Deen uses butter, pecans and sugar for her crust (a fun game is to start the sentence "Deen uses butter, pecans and sugar for her..." and see how many true statements you can make). That idea swirled around in my head and became a sort of paste of almond flour, melted butter and brown sugar. The forward thinking among you will realize that this is (a) not going to distribute evenly across the top of a pudding and (b) not going to crisp up without burning the shit out of the rest of the pudding. So, pudding crust is half baked idea number one.

Custard
I knew that this bread pudding was not going to rely on the pancakes soaking up eggy custard for its texture. But since pancakes are eggy already, I figured, "no big deal." I kept thinking of components that would create a really rich, heavy dessert. Since this was a Monday night project, I thought it would be best to scale back on richness. So I used whole milk where I might have used cream and decided to forgo the idea of mixing melted butter into the dairy mixture (you read one Paula Deen recipe and you start thinking about pouring melted butter into everything!). I used two eggs and one cup of milk (arbitrarily decided from glancing at the bread pudding recipe currently on my computer screen). I thought about parcooking the custard a bit so it would form up before I layered it with the pancakes, but ultimately made the lazy choice not to. I did have the epiphany that separating the eggs and beating the yolks with the sugar and spices, then adding the milk and finally folding in the beaten whites would produces some sort of alchemical velvety texture. Guys, this was not correct. Or maybe it could have been, had I been using a better ratio. Again, you forward thinkers may have already guessed that two egg yolks beaten with three tablespoons of sugar is not going to retain any of it's thickness when mixed with an entire cup of (pretty cold) milk. Additionally when I attempted to fold in the egg whites, they did not blend so thoroughly and ended up separating out again in the pan. Mistake number two was custard ratio.

Seasoning
I love cardamom. It is, however, quite strong. I used one green cardamom pod in the pudding. I discarded the husk and crushed the seeds with the back of a spoon.* I added a bit of cinnamon and a dash of nutmeg. I mixed these spices with sugar so that the spice oils would bind to the crystals (this is the only advice I really took from the very comprehensive Food 52 pudding coverage). I had about a quarter cup of sugar in the spice bowl but only used two or three scant tablespoons. Mostly I was eyeballing to see that the sugar blended completely with the egg yolks. I did not remember to add vanilla extract, unfortunately. I think this would have rounded out the flavors a bit. The cardamom was pleasantly present in the finished product, but the flavor had an almost tonic quality. In my experience (with eating desserts) cardamom and vanilla show one another's best qualities: cardamom makes vanilla taste exotic and vanilla makes cardamom taste sweet. Next time I won't forget the vanilla.

Assembly and Cooking
I decided that 350 was the correct temperature at which to cook a bread pudding. I decided this not merely based upon the fact that is the default temperature for my oven, but also because it just felt right, you know? I cut all of my pancakes into strips that were about half an inch wide. I greased a small, ceramic casserole with butter and laid the strips along the bottom. I tore them to fit into a more or less even layer. Then I added the custard and pressed another layer of pancake scraps into the fluffy top (recall that the egg white separated out again). Then I sort of gobbed my "crust" on top. I really should have just left it off. It looked a lot like poop before and after baking. Some of the top layer of pancakes stuck out of the custard and created an alarming burning odor during the baking process. This led me to preemptively remove the pudding after less than 20 minutes. After I realized it was still very liquid-y I returned it to the oven until it was set in the middle. I imagine that it was about 35-40 minutes, but it's easy to tell it's done because there is no liquid when you push on the pancake pieces.

Reflection
Some time during the cooking process- maybe after the first bought of baking- I realized that this recipe could as easily be a variation on kugel** as a variation on bread pudding. I decided that in the second round I will try to incorporate more kugel-like methods. Mostly in the custard creation. I have been toying with the idea of substituting one half cup of the whole milk for sour cream (or, let's be honest, Greek yogurt). I don't think am ready for using a cheese product, though I think we can all agree that ricotta would be heavenly. I think that this would solve the issue I had of white and milk separating. Though I might also add another yolk or two (they are, after all, the best part). I could also have benefited from more liquid or less pancake. In addition to the above mentioned addition of vanilla, I have thought that a tiny scrape of citrus zest (orange?) to brighten up the spices. My line of thinking goes something like: "I would totally order any dessert that said it was orange, cardamom, vanilla flavored." It is important to remember that I am not a pastry chef. Maybe this would be taking on too much? Finally, though I think that my flavors are much more suited to almond than pecans, the texture of my crust was woefully wrong. I think in version 2.0 I'll try slivered almonds tossed with some of the sugar-spice mixture. They'll spread evenly over the surface and maybe even toast up while the pudding cooks.

Verdict
I was surprised by how much I liked eating it. It was sort of intensely egg-y warm, but I drizzled on some maple syrup and it was actually pretty nice. I enjoyed a piece cold the next day as well. Generally it is chewy and formed, rather than soft and gushy. Which is stylistically valid, I suppose. I would like it to be a little softer and less formed in future incarnations though. I am particularly interested in any feedback any of you might have.

Less successful than: Paula Deen's Best Bread Pudding

More successful than: Pudding and Yogurt cubes.

*Dear Santa: Please bring me a mortar and pestle.

**It must be noted that everything I know about kugel I learned from my goy of a mother. She's a beautiful, inspirational cook, but I have no idea if her recipe is authentic.

Pantry Pasta

2011-03-04T00:03:00.007-03:00

I was talking to my roommate the other day about how I manage to cook so often. He likes preparing food and likes the idea of cooking for himself, but seems to lack the follow through. While there are basic recipes and methods you can learn to make cooking easier, I realized over the course of our conversation that I really like the process of cooking. I like that it's methodical and creative (and delicious). I even- increasingly- like the process of organizing and cleaning up after myself. I often recline on the sofa after a meal and survey the sparkling kitchen* from my position of satiated repose. But assuming you have that drive to cook and merely lack the will to go to the grocery store (this winter has brought about four day stretches during which I don't leave my apartment), this is a good recipe building on scraps.

The base of the dish was a bundle of chard stems I saved from Saturday. I had eaten braised chard stems before and it seemed they would cook down nicely to accompany pasta. I had a can of chickpeas, a shallot, some garlic and a bit of roasted red pepper (about half a pepper). As you remember (perhaps) I had lemon and parsley from a fish dish earlier in the week and I always have parmesean cheese on hand. I also always have wine around (a professional hazard) but broth or water would work fine.

I started out chopping everything up. I put on some water to boil and heated up a tablespoon or so of olive oil in a pan. I sauteed the shallot and garlic for a minute and then added the chard stems. After they were bright green on the edges I added the chickpeas and red pepper. I think that chopped canned tomatoes would have been even better in this and had a similar aesthetic affect, but I used what I had.

I added salt and black and red pepper (I love my little red pepper mill!), about a quarter cup of white wine and a squeeze of tomato paste. Then I covered the pan and turned down the heat. While the stems were braising themselves into an edible softness, I grated lots of cheese and a bit of lemon zest. I also chopped up some parsley pretty fine.

The trick at this point is to make sure that the veggies cook enough. Really, over cooking is not going to happen. The stems are very tough and have a sort of grassy bitterness to them. The chickpeas will also get softer and break apart a bit as cooking continues. I put (about 3/4 cup dried?) pasta into the salted water once the greens were pretty soft. When it was tender I drained it (saving a bit of the water) and put it right into the pan with the stems and chickpeas. Then I added the grated and chopped things and a bit of the pasta water and mixed it all together. That's all.

This dish made enough for two hungry people (or one hungry person who is happy not to have to make lunch plans for tomorrow). I grated more cheese on at the end, because it's technically a good idea when consuming that much fiber (whole wheat pasta, chickpeas and chard stems? try to contain your colon envy). I was very happy to have the brightness of the lemon zest and the freshness of the parsley to balance the richer braised flavor of the other vegetables. It took about an hour, start to finish, but there was nothing especially complicated. It's a balanced, satisfying (and vegetarian!) meal.

*This is poetic license. I live with three other people. The kitchen is never that clean.

I thought I was your fish cake!**

2011-03-01T12:58:00.007-03:00

Assiduous devotes of my Internet presence will remember that I have a particular fondness for making fritters with leftover fish. Over the weekend S and I cooked some Shad (so delicious! I'd never tried it before). We just broiled it for a couple minutes with butter and lemon. The fish was super tasty, but I just wasn't jazzed about eating a plain fillet leftover. Somehow the texture of reheated fish just doesn't appeal. And so last night I put together this easy dinner of fish cakes and salad.

Fish Cakes a la Rose

This can be done with any leftover fish. I've used sea bass, imitation crab meat and even swordfish. The rice works well as a binding agent and, conveniently, it is often my starch of choice for a fish dinner. You can get crazy with adding veggies, but don't go too over the top or you will ruin your texture.

Some leftover fish (we'll say 8 oz?)
Some leftover rice (we'll say 1/3 cup?)
3 Scallions (diced)
1 Clove garlic (a small one, minced)
Grated zest of half a lemon
2 tbs. chopped parsley
Bread crumbs*
An egg
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil suitable for frying

-Flake the fish so it is in manageable chunks. If you're using something denser it might make sense to dice, but generally all cooked fish can be broken up with a fork.

-Mix in the rice, scallions, garlic and lemon zest.

-Adjust seasoning by tasting first, then adding salt and pepper (the fish is already seasoned, so you don't want to go overboard).

-Mix in the egg. The mixture will be wet and uniform.

-Form into balls of about 2 tbs. each. Flatten the balls into patties and drag each side through bread crumbs.

-Chill formed patties in the fridge for about 30 mins. (this step can be skipped, but it does really help the fish cakes stay together in the pan).

-Heat up some olive oil and fry the cakes.

-Serve with salad and maybe hot sauce. I made a little dressing for the cakes with three parts low fat yogurt, one part Dijon mustard, one part mayonnaise and a sprinkle of cayenne pepper.

The recipe made five fish cakes. Though I have to warn you, I measured absolutely nothing.

*I hate setting up my food processor for small tasks, so I made the bread crumbs using the end of a loaf of sandwich bread and a box grater. It was pretty successful.

**You are all so lucky I didn't call this post "Hanging Shad" or "Not Too Shaddy!" Additionally, I am the reigning queen of asterisks.

***This would be very easy to do gluten free by dredging the cakes in a rice (or whatever) flour.

****(Record postscript use!) Shad has tiny bones! Last night when I was flossing (maybe 4 hours after I finished dinner) I found a bone lodged between my teeth. So be careful!

Simple Valentine's Dinner*

2011-02-28T22:02:00.011-03:00

Well, at the risk of being annoyingly food blog-y and annoyingly relationship smug, this is the very simple Valentine's Day meal I prepared with my Special Person. The idea was that the most romantic thing to do on Valentine's Day is spend time together and since SP (oh God, that's really awful) works the very worst shift imaginable (9pm to 6am), our window of time together was somewhat small. Going to a restaurant was out since I am a high-strung, demanding patron on a normal day and Valentine's crowds and menus always breed incidents. We talked about the menu in advance and cooked together and it all just went very smoothly. It's really a great idea for a date night at any time of year.

I began to prep a bit the night before. Dessert was a sort of special surprise. In accordance with our theme, it couldn't be fancy or too rich. Chocolate is the obvious V-Day flavor (though does anyone actually feel erotic stirrings from eating chocolate?). But it couldn't be over the top or S would fall asleep after we ate and miss work and generally ruin his life forever (which would be a terrible thing to inflict on a loved one on Valentine's Day). I saw this recipe and decided that it would be easy enough to be-Valentine it by forming the dough into a heart shaped log before cutting the cookies. It seemed a bit rough at first, but the cookies looked great in the end.

Cookies on the sheet.

They were sort of dry tasting (a bit overcooked- whoops!), so I melted a very small amount of bittersweet chocolate and smeared it across the top of each one. In the end this was delicious, but terribly rich.

During the day I had to work a bit, but I put together a short playlist of songs for our meal. I also got some mustard and ice cream that S particularly likes. I share my apartment with three other people, so it's not exactly the most romantic mise en scene but I spruced it up a bit and even managed to figure out candles and cloth napkins.

I am aware the the pet names written on our glasses only increase the appearance of smugness. Sorry.

S came over in the afternoon and since it was a gloriously warm day we went for a walk to get the chicken and some bread. Our destination was one of those fancy Brooklyn food stores and we impulse bought two kinds of cheese (sign number two that this was not going to be the lightest meal imaginable). The main event of the evening was a simple roast chicken. One of my roommates had alerted me to this very extraordinary recipe a few weeks earlier.** It was divine. And shockingly easy. I decided to risk one very small substitution and switched the thyme for tarragon, (because tarragon is really the sexiest herb, right?) but we basically just salted the bird and stuck her in the oven for an hour.

While our chicken crackled away we broke off pieces of french bread an spread them with our cheeses- a sort of domestic camembert and a very spicy blue. As the sultry scent of crisping skin filled the air, we danced around the kitchen. Sigh. It was really just so much nicer than any Valentine's day has been before. And then we got to eat!

She was so beautiful. I swell up with pride just looking at her.

We decided that side dishes were unnecessary and just had some simple greens to satisfy my manic need for vegetables.

I wouldn't say it's a flaw exactly, but it is sort of sad that S and I both like the legs best. I was eyeing the other one for lunch the next day.

As you might have guessed, bread and cheese followed by delicious, salt-covered chicken left us feeling pretty full. But we managed to squeeze in dessert.

Strawberry ice cream from Van Leeuwen.

We had seltzer water and a bottle the Goose Island Madame Rose (pretty great name!) rather than wine. This was mostly because S couldn't have much wine before working, although the pairing ended up being quite nice. The beer could use a bit more time in the bottle, but it has a really pleasing sourness in the finish. Apparently it is cask aged with sour cherries.

And that's all! I mean, it took a long time to explain, but basically this meal requires about 20 minutes of active time, tastes great and feels special. And if we hadn't bought the cheese the whole thing would have cost about $20 (Brooklyn ice cream is pricey!).

*So I'm gonna write about food here more lately, I think. Not because anyone reads it. And certainly not because the Internet needs another person writing about what they cook (in their Brooklyn apartment- oh gag!). But because it gives me the sense that I am doing something.

**Guys, can I just take a moment to express that, based solely on this recipe, Thomas Keller deserves every bit of praise people give him?

Machu Picchu

2010-04-12T15:57:00.001-04:00

So this is a quick, single media note. I am in Aguas Calientes, Peru. I am still having a fight with my camera (not only is the focus off, the battery is totally wonky... did you get a warantee, Dad?). I did however manage to get a few really lovely snaps. And my friend, Daniela, who I met on Friday got some awesome ones. We walked up to Wayapicchu, which is the sacred mountain overlooking the city. It was about forty straight minutes of steep staircases in high altitude. So I'm exhausted. Fortunately, this town is called Aguas Calientes because there are natural springs here. So we're about to go sit in some geo-thermic tubs for the rest of the day. I am feeling really good right now. Still a bit preoccupied with logistics. But generally I have the feeling that everything is about to become really clear.

Onward, but mostly upward.

2010-04-08T21:46:00.004-04:00

So today I arrived in Arica, my first stop on what is going to be a fairly whirlwind tour of Peru, Bolivia and Argentina. I basically didn't sleep last night because my flight left so early (but thanks again for the ride, Israel!) so my impressions of the city are pretty hazy. I basically fell asleep on the beach and then walked back to my hostel. Fittingly (and extremely annoyingly) the autofocus on my camera seems to be wonky. So while it's technically a malfunction, you should think of this photo as an expressive manifestation of my mental state.

Arica is basically built around this giant, sandstone hill. It sort of just looms out of nowhere and the city hugs the flats around it. It's pretty dramatic looking. To accentuate things there is a giant statue of Jesus on top with outstretched arms. It's hard to know who started the trend of putting giant religious statues on hills overlooking cities, but it's probably time to stop. I mean it's getting a bit hackneyed if you ask me.

I had a very informative conversation with the owner of the hostel and an amateur anthropologist about how I should proceed with my trip. It seems I will have to be pretty choosy about Bolivia. They have also really put the fear of god into me regarding altitude sickness. Because of my time constraints I can't make the recommended stop in Arequipa before going to Cusco. I will therefore be dealing with a fairly sudden altitude change of more than 4,000 meters*. So basically I could be completely incapacitated for my first days in Cusco. Which could potentially ruin my plans involving the salt flats of Uyuni. If I can't make it to the salt flats my back up plan is to spend an entire day swimming in the center of Lake Titicaca. Because I think it would be cool to be able to say I swam across an international border. I will also probably need the exercise after all the hours I'll have spent on buses.

*Originally I wrote this as kilometers. Which would put me very close to the moon, I suppose. Let this be a testament to my exhaustion. And embarrassing lack of comprehension of the metric system.

Arica or bust.

2010-04-07T22:24:00.006-04:00

I will be getting on a bus in seven hours to take me to the Santiago Airport (it will be my seventh time there in 2010!). The plane will take me to Arica, a port city at the northern extreme of the country which was part of Peru until the War of the Pacific. Arica is known as the city of endless spring and I plan to spend the afternoon on the beach, getting into the vacation mode. Not that things have been particularly stressful or busy or non-vacation-like here in Santiago lately. But the weather has been pretty autumnal in the last week, so it will be nice to be back in the warmth. I am considering naming the volume of my memoirs that covers this year and a half period, Actually 500 Days of Summer.

After Arica I will take 18 hours of buses to Cuzco. People say it's a beautiful town and it's the jumping off point for Machu Pichu treks. I will probably be taking the faster, cheaper train option rather than the famed Inca Trail, but I'll consider the options once I'm there. After that I have 1675.33 miles to travel before the 19th when I meet my sister in Buenos Aires. I hoping to see as much of Bolivia as possible. The country's transportation is notoriously bad, so I'm sure that it will be extremely frustrating and uncomfortable at times. Which is great for you guys because frustration and discomfort mixed with loneliness is the recipe for great blogs! I jest, I jest.

I am honestly a bit nervous about being on my own for so long. At the same time, it's really exciting. The experience of living in Chile has been a pretty solitary one. Starting out not knowing many people and speaking almost no Spanish was a pretty significant hurdle to forming meaningful relationships. And while I still feel like I have a ways to go in that regard, my social life has definitely filled out over the last several months. There are many people I'll be sorry to leave. I am hoping to meet many more fellow travelers on the road.

I expect to be extremely glad for my sister's company by the final leg of the trip in Buenos Aires and Mendoza. Originally we were hoping she could come for longer, but the logistics are tough and it was all quite last minute. I am leaving my computer by taking two real books, an audiobook and a very empty journal to pass the time. I'll be in touch soon!

Homecoming

2010-03-31T22:04:00.003-03:00

So it's been five months. And although I have some reservations about it, I have decided to come back to the US at the end of April. Right now my plan is to spend the next four weeks doing as much traveling as possible. I am hoping to see some of Argentina and Bolivia. I guess I got pretty discouraged with the job search. I realized that I really wasn't excited to be doing any of the jobs for which I might be qualified. I also began to see my return (originally scheduled for June) on the horizon. I knew that once I returned I would have to search for work once again. The three months for which I was seeking employment began to seem like a stop-gap. I am getting really excited for my trip. I am going to do very little planning and hope that my staying open lots of exciting possibilities will present themselves. And subsequently, of course, I will present them to you here.

Aftershock

2010-02-27T14:00:00.008-03:00

So my mom and I are safe and together. My cousin Dana is also safe and on the other side of Santiago. We'll try to meet up with her later today. The earthquake was incredibly scary. Many of the buildings in my neighborhood are very old and suffered some serious damages. My mom is staying in a hostel where a wall collapsed and quite a bit of debris fell from the ceiling. Right now we're not sure when she will be able to fly out. I'll keep everyone updated and write more about the situation here soon.

The church across the street from my building.

My street blocked off at both ends by rubble.

The apartment is covered in dust from the street.

Only minor damage in our building.

Thanks for all of the wishes. We're feeling very shocked and very relieved to be safe and together.

Definitive Judgements: Chilean Television

2010-02-27T01:35:00.001-03:00

Every year, for about a week in February, Chile becomes obsessed with this music festival in Viña del Mar. Everyone talks about it. It's on every television screen, every night. Proportionally, it's probably equal to the combined popularity of the Olympics and American Idol in the US (interestingly the Olympics are on and no one seems to care/watch). And from what I've seen (at least one act the last four nights) it's terrible. Allowing for the fact that I didn't grow up with these singers, the majority are just not very good at singing. And don't even get me started on the comedy acts. They may as well be speaking Lao. And yet, everyone watches like it's the most exciting television event of the year. Here's indicative conversation of how very strange this phenomenon is for me:

Me: Did he just say "like a penguin in the bed?"

My Roommate: Yes. (Like it was obvious, like everyone has known that lyric all their lives, like lovers and penguins have clear similarities.)

Unfortunately it is not just the music festival of Viña. All of Chilean television is more or less an enigma. We changed the channel after the festival programingand the current show is a bizarre hybrid of Jeopardy and strip poker.

Mom Dirt

2010-02-11T19:17:00.003-03:00

So my job has come and gone and I am living in Santiago. I know, that's a really lame update, but it is the truth. As with many of the jobs I have had in my life, my first employment experience in Chile taught me several valuable things about what I don't want to do for work. For example, I don't want to work in other people's homes. I don't want to work with nine year old children. I don't want a job with complete personal freedom. (As in: "Here are the books. Teach.") At a certain point I realized that the dread of going to work dominated my mood even when I wasn't working. And that is not why I came to Chile. But it was a valuable experience. And it motivated me to move to Santiago, which I am really enjoying.

Generally things feel like they're going really well. I get along great with my new roommates. In fact my roommate luck in Chile thus far has been exceptionally good. I have even stayed in touch with some of the people I decided not to live with in Santiago and I'm going to a barbecue at one of their houses tonight. I had a really encouraging job interview this morning with a company that wants to put me through a whole week of training and help me straighten out my visa. And my parents are coming this weekend.

Which brings us to this:

Although my new apartment is comfortable and my room has lots of light and a private bathroom, it is an old building. This provides for even more exciting plumbing arrangements (think an inch of water on the floor first thing in the morning my first week here...) Additionally, there is some very old stubborn dirt around. Generally things are quite clean, but certain corners are a bit scary. And one of those corners is my shower. To give you an idea, I thought the shower was clean after the cursory bleach-based cleaner and sponge treatment I gave it before moving in. But yesterday while showering, I absentmindedly nudged the dark grout between the wall tiles with my finger. And it moved in one large brown chunk. This dirt is so hard, so thorough, that I thought someone had regrouted the shower using another color cement.

My parents aren't staying in my apartment (available accommodations here include sharing my twin bed and my yoga mat on the floor) but my mom and I are going to be traveling a bit (Patagonia!) after my dad leaves and it seems possible that she might need to use my shower at some point. While I can blissfully ignore gunky-grout, I have far too much pride to allow my mother to witness such filth. So after kicking off my interview-best, I spent the afternoon scrubbing the walls of my shower. As I write this my right arm aches from the exertion. It is certainly improved, but not perfect. I'll give it a bit more elbow grease tomorrow.

You can all look forward to non-computer photos, since my parents are bringing me a real camera to replace my stolen one. You can also look forward to the tale of my capturing and domesticating a penguin family (but really they'll domesticate me, teaching me to fall down with grace and the value of mating for life). And- I swear- more frequent posts.

Welcome to the Working Week

2010-01-16T12:32:00.002-03:00

So it's been a bit of time since I wrote, but fortunately that's because I have a new job! That's right, after three months without working, I am finally back at it. Although my new position is basically the opposite of serving food and wine at Aroma. I responded to a job ad on Craig's List a couple of days after New Year's and about two hours later someone called to see if I could start the next week. It seems I am the only person in Chile using Craig's List. So far both of the inquiries I've made (my apartment and now my job) worked out pretty much immediately.

So the thing about this job is that it is in Santiago. And yes, that is a completely different city. But I felt like I was getting nowhere in Valparaiso and part of me has been longing for a bit more city life. Valpo is lovely, but in a city of 500,000 you tend to see the same faces and go to the same places every day. So for the last week I have been commuting two and a half hours each way to work about three hours a day. It's totally ridiculous and totally exhausting.

The job is "curriculum manager" for a tutoring company based in the Las Condes neighborhood of Santiago. So it's teaching, or more precisely tutoring. The company currently works exclusively with clients of Korean descent. So it's definitely a niche market. Right now there is no office, so I am making house calls. Like I said, it is completely different. I don't know if I like the job yet. It has certainly given my days some much needed structure. But I am often gone for ten or twelve hours at a time. And so, I have decided to move to Santiago.

The idea of moving again makes me vaguely nauseous. Even though I don't have too much stuff here, the process of finding a new place and getting to know new roommates seems particularly exhausting. So if any of you out there on the Internet have some great tips on affordable shared apartments in Santiago (preferably on or near the Linea 1 metro) please share!

Resolutions: Dancing

2010-01-05T17:59:00.004-03:00

I do not usually find myself making broad generalizations about Latin culture. I find Chilean culture with its particular eccentricities generally more notable, interesting and, at times, infuriating. However, I am prepared to say that Latin culture on the whole is much more enthusiastic about dancing than my own (that is, Irish-American from the northeast United States). While "going out" and "partying" in New York often involved some bopping around to music, here dancing is the goal, the focus of many evenings. And I'm not talking about goofy gyrations to Mary J. Blige or interpretive arm flailings to Tina Turner. This is the kind of dancing that requires a partner. And everyone seems to be able to do it but me.

I'm not going to outright blame my parents for this. They read this blog, for one thing. And for another, it is simply not within our cultural norm to rear children to know the difference between salsa, merengue and cumbia. That said, I have vowed to myself several times on the dance floors of Valparaiso that my children will not suffer the same fate. How do I get my hips to do that? And where exactly do I put my weight? How can one even begin at the ripe age of twenty-six to learn the whole system of dancing?

On New Year's Day I found myself once again surrounded by people eager to dance. And despite my pleas of being tired (I had only slept between the hours of 9am and 1:30pm) and hungover (I drank rum!), I was peer pressured into participating. Though I suspect that after seeing me dance, they would have let me stay home had there been more girls for partners. And although I think my dancing might have suffered a bit due to the extreme inebriation of my partner, the whole experience was enough to sign me up for a salsa lesson on the spot. Not that there are salsa lessons at this bar. Or even, anywhere else in the city as far as I know. But I couldn't help but look around and notice all the places other people's bodies were moving that mine wasn't.

This scenario has become such a source of distress and discomfort in my life that I have vowed that 2010 will be the year of the dance. That is, the year I learn to dance. No more to hover in the corner! No more to claim fatigue! Ask for me in December and they'll just shrug and gesture towards the dance floor. And there you'll see me shaking all the right parts at all the right times and twirling like a dervish. It is resolved.

Salt in Your Pocket

2009-12-31T15:27:00.009-03:00

Año Nuevo is huge here. Right now the number of people in the city is in the process of doubling, creating traffic scenes that look daunting even to a native Bostonian. They say that the fireworks display at midnight (or apparently somewhere around then, Chileans aren't so bothered by punctuality) is one of the biggest and most impressive in the world. Although I can stay out pretty late by New York standards (I'm no stranger to six am), the party here apparently goes until eight or nine. When Maca and Caro told me this I nearly moved to show them the gray hair I found this summer. I feel old and tired just thinking about it.

In addition to fireworks and dancing and drinking on the crowded streets, the celebration of New Years here involves lots of traditions. As Nike pointed out it seems to be the opposite of what we're used to, Christmas is no big deal and New Year's has lots of significance. All of the traditions have to do with luck in the New Year. They range from familiar to deeply strange.

Yellow Underpants No one has mentioned why exactly, but it appears to be very important to wear yellow underpants on New Years. The street vendors have had stacks of them laid out on blankets all week. Judging by the styles I saw for sale, it seems that the tradition applies mostly to women. Although perhaps gents also don lacy thongs to celebrate.

Eat Lentils You're supposed to eat lentils without salt before midnight. Apparently this will bring wealth in the New Year. Conveniently lentils are one the foods I can afford, so it couldn't hurt to try... Do you think cooking them with sausage would be cheating?

Walk Around the Block With a Suitcase This is supposed to make all your travel dreams come true. It seems like it could be sort of goofy looking.

Eat Twelve Grapes Apparently this tradition originated in Spain. No one seems to be sure why, but it might have started with a royal proclamation intended to help the grape industry. Sounds a bit hard to believe, but ultimately pretty simple.

Put Salt in Your Pocket In your left, front pocket to be exact. I didn't quite understand why. But no other pocket will do.

Hug Someone of the Opposite Sex at Midnight This seems similar to kissing someone you want to be with for the rest of the year at midnight. It doesn't seem to have the same romantic connotations. For example, I am hoping to hug a six month old baby at midnight. I really like babies.

So I'll be sure to let you know how it goes. I'm going to nap now. It looks like I have a long night ahead of me. Happy New Year, everyone!

Emergency Update!

2009-12-30T15:43:00.002-03:00

Another mailman just came to my building (without the package)! It wasn't Soto, the guy I met this morning! Have I been lead astray? Was this all an elaborate hoax to steal the hooded sweatshirt and tampons my mother sent me?? Does anyone know anything about the Chilean mail system?

Complaints: International Mail Infrastructure

2009-12-30T10:51:00.004-03:00

Yesterday Nike and I went to inquire after packages we had been expecting for some time. My mother told me the USPS records show a delivery attempt was made on the 23rd. The gentleman working told us there was absolutely nothing he could do and that only a postman could answer delivery questions. It seems like the postman is individually responsible for all mail items. It makes me wonder what qualifies someone for such tremendous responsibilities. People send really important things in the mail. Like contracts and birth certificates and tax returns and bridesmaid dresses (I'm working on it Leila!). My postman is available for inquires between 8 and 10 am.

So this morning I woke up bright and early to see him. I went with the tracking number for the package and the information listed on the USPS website. According to them, two attempts were made, at 2:50pm and 11:16pm. The idea that someone in any country would deliver mail so late at night is suspect. But everyone at the post office assured me it was absolutely impossible in Chile. There must be some mistake. Furthermore, there is no record of a package with that tracking number ever arriving in the Chilean mail system. A gentleman carefully explained that as soon as customs clears a package it is scanned into the system. So if they had it, the computer would show it. He very kindly told me that anything so important to me was important to them too. And then he gave me his phone number, you know, in case I had any questions. Or whatever.

So I went home feeling reassured that at least thieves and villains weren't absconding with my mail. And then I dialed the customer service number for the USPS. After ten minutes of muzak (which is not improved by the poor sound quality of Skype, btw) I finally got through to a person. She proceeded to read me the information from the website. When I asked if they might have used another service, she said it is the US Postal Service policy to use local post offices. Her computer said the delivery attempts were made and so the package must be here. Nothing more to be done.

I'm sure that computerizing systems has made mail delivery exceptionally more reliable, fast and inexpensive. But I do feel that this experience highlights a shortcoming of automated services. The computer is always right. Even if there are two computer systems and they don't say the same thing. Obviously one computer is wrong. But policy does not allow for such a possibility. And all I can do is sit in South America and wait. But when it comes, I'm totally going to bake my mailman a cake. And I'll tell him not to share it with the lady at USPS.

Things I Don't Understand About Christmas in Chile

2009-12-24T13:24:00.002-03:00

1) The weather- Ok. I understand this intellectually. That the earth is on an axis that moves and sometimes the bottom of the planet is closer to the sun and the top is farther away. But today is December 24. I woke up this morning and put on jeans, a t-shirt and sunscreen. And the strangest thing is that they don't even try to adapt it. There are machines that blow fake snow in the department stores. If you get this message in time, please send snow and mistletoe.

2) Pascua- According to sources as varied as my high school Spanish text book and Wikipedia, Pascua means Easter. But apparently it also means Christmas. Santa Claus is Viejo Pascuero. I've asked lots of people how and why they came to call Christmas Easter, and I've never received a satisfying response. It just is. Nothing about the etymology of the word or the history of the celebration seems to justify using Pascua to refer to the birth of Christ. If someone could shed some light on this mystery I'd be much obliged.

3)Bagpipes- Maybe it's a strange coincidence but some guy around the corner has been playing "Amazing Grace" on a bagpipe the whole damn day. I don't know what holiday that is appropriate for (Veteran's Day?) but it's certainly not Christmas. Quit it, dude. You're only making things more confusing.

Anyway, I hope you all have very merry christmases or at least happy days today and tomorrow. And that you're warm and with people you love. I'm going to go make ceviche and a peach tart. One nice thing is that I don't have to eat ham.

Disturbing Trends: Juvenile Public Urination

2009-12-15T16:27:00.002-03:00

Cultural differences are always hard to understand. That's what makes them interesting. That's also sort of what makes this blog interesting. But I feel like there is a universal expectation of parents that they are instilling positive habits in their children. Toothbrushing. Vegetable consumption. Respect for the law and basic public hygiene. But sometimes that just doesn't seem to be the case. No fewer than four times now I have seen mothers helping their young children pee against walls. None of the children were more than six years old. Everyone can understand that bladder control is newer and more difficult at that age. But urinating against the wall of a business hardly seems like a responsible solution. I witnessed these events not in tucked-away alleys or side-streets, but in plazas, pedestrian malls and major thoroughfares. Just today I saw the most recent example at 2:30 in the afternoon in the middle of the financial district of the city. No one expects these children to have perfect control of their bladders, but really? Public urination is illegal is not just because of puritanical expectations of modesty. It just isn't hygienic to have human waste on the sidewalks. I am hoping I have just noticed a large number of aberrations. That this isn't a commonly accepted phenomenon. Though if it is perhaps it explains the drunk man who continued to cat-call at me while urinating on the building next door to mine last week.

Chilean Election Primer

2009-12-11T12:44:00.004-03:00

So this Sunday is election day in Chile. Officials at all levels of government from municipal to federal will be selected. Of course, the presidential contest is the most closely watched of these races. This round of voting has four major front runners. If no one wins a majority there will be a run-off between the two candidates with the highest percentages. Most people seem to expect a run-off. This election is particularly interesting because for the first time since the military dictatorship ended in 1990, a candidate from the right is likely to win. The incumbent, Michelle Bachelet, is pretty popular right now but has decided not to seek another term. Neither of the candidates from her party have been able to parlay her popularity into real momentum. In ascending order of polling numbers the four major candidates are:

Arrate: Jorge Arrate is the candidate for the communist party. He held a position (economic adviser of some sort) in the government of Salvador Allende. He seems to have the most interesting, liberal policies. Pretty much everyone I know who plans to vote plans to vote for him. They also all seem confident that he will only take about 12%. Since most of what I know about candidates I infer from the campaign signs that litter EVERY intersection in the city, Arrate has an appealing, Mark Twain-like style. I dig him.

Enríquez-Ominami: As far as I can tell, Marco Enríquez-Ominami's most distinctive qualification is that he is sort of a babe. He's thirty-six years old and has very little experience to recommend him, except that his dad was a popular figure in leftist politics. I get the feeling that a candidate like Ominami would get a lot of flack in the US for being a spoiler. He's not going to win, and it seems like he's only splitting the centrist vote. Because technically there is a coalition system in Chile rather than a strict bipartisan system this isn't exactly true. Ominami has the endorsement of four parties. Practically speaking, this run seems more like an attempt to set a foundation for future national campaigns. But for now, we can all enjoy his super-shiny hair and dazzlingly white smile.

Frei: Eduardo Frei seems like sort of a wet blanket. I mean, dude is never smiling in his campaign photos. What's more, he has already been president and ran into some problems with corruption. It's a bit puzzling that he would win the candidacy at all. But he too is the progeny of a figure in the Chilean left. His father was president before Allende in the late 60's. He's become something of a martyr since it was recently proved that Pinochet had him slowly poisoned to death. The major problem with Frei the second is that everyone thinks his government will simply perpetuate the status quo. People are pretty concerned about the state of health care and education here (public schools were closed for more than a month due to a strike this year). Many people care more about change than they do about the potential policies that will be implemented. You could see it as a twisted turn in the world-wide, Obama-ist change movement.

Piñera: Is currently leading all polls. Sadly because he's a total neoliberal. Additionally he is the richest man in the country. Which is always sort of suspect (remember how Steve Forbes always seemed vaguely unreliable?). The final creep-factor for Piñera is that he is highly involved with Opus Dei. Opus Dei seems to have quite a lot of power in Chile and often comes up when discussing right-wing politics. Generally I nod knowingly during such conversations, when in reality everything I know about Opus Dei I learned from The da Vinci Code. So if (and, it sadly seems, when) he wins he'll probably move to privatize health care further and implement even more voucher programs for schools (or the Chilean equivalent of vouchers which seem to subsidize private schools with public money). And we all know how great those ideas work.... Sigh.

Election Policy: Certainly every democratic system has its short-comings. There are two particularly strange policies concerning elections in Chile.

-First of all, if you are registered to vote, it is illegal not to. Unless you can prove to the police that you were sick or more than 300kms from your poling place you must pay a fine. People have told me this discourages them from registering. While I understand that the idea is to underscore the importance of the democratic process, this just seems a little backwards. If I'm not mistaken, this law has been overturned and this is the last affected election.

-Secondly, it is illegal to drink the night before the election. Apparently all the bars are closed. This sort of cramps my style since I unwittingly planned a margarita-soaked, Mexican dinner party for tomorrow night. I hope I don't get arrested.

I'm sure I'm grossly over-simplifying and over-editorializing here. Even after two months it's hard to fully understand the structure and history of politics in Chile. Anyhow, it will be interesting to watch how things go. I don't think Piñera has enough votes to avoid a run-off, but people seem more and more certain of his eventual success. I'll be sure to keep you all posted.

Thanksgiving!

2009-11-30T14:05:00.011-03:00

So even though it's pretty much always sunny with highs in the seventies, Thanksgiving was last week. The Southern Hemisphere continues to confuse me. To celebrate I cooked the traditional meal for pretty much everyone I know here. I was expecting seven and ended up with ten (eleven for dessert). I also feel an overwhelming sense of accomplishment at having done it all by myself. The hardest part was tracking down all the necessary components. For example, although there are Chilean cranberry farms, there are virtually no cranberry products for sale. Also, fresh herbs (besides parsley) apparently won't be available until around Christmas time. Needless to say finding a whole turkey was not possible. But! I documented the whole process and, at the risk of boring all of you, this is how I did it:

I was going to need chicken broth for the stuffing and the gravy. The grocery store had condensed cans of Campbell's soup and cubes of mono-sodium-ized bullion. So I had to make my own stock. The kitchen is not equipped with many storage containers so I ended up pouring the stock into an empty bottle that once held a grapefruit flavored seltzer drink. I think the twinge of citrus the broth leeched from the plastic really added to the complexity of flavor.

So after searching high and low, I was only able to find dried cranberries and a bottle of the most expensive cranberry juice cocktail of all time. I decided to cook these down with frozen raspberries, some red wine and apple chunks. In the end I added quite a bit of orange zest to accomplish tartness. It wasn't cranberry sauce. But it was pretty tasty.

I have been so spoiled having a Cuisinart for the last two years. Cutting together pie dough by hand is tedious and tiring. I was glad that shortening is readily available here though. And it's made with animal fat rather than just vegetable oil so it's extra delicious.

I did a sort of loose conversion of my mother's ratios for crust into metric. And then I realized that I don't even have metric measuring cups and eye-balled the whole thing. I might have skimped on the flour a little, but ultimately it's hard to complain about a crust being too buttery.

I guess I've made more gorgeous pies. I'll have to practice more.

So it's a chicken, not a turkey. And I trussed it with dental floss (for a hint of mint). But there wasn't a single bit left. So I must have done something right.

We didn't have knives for people to cut the meat. Wine was mostly drunk from mugs. We even had to improvise a seat with the propane tank from the stove and a board... But it fits nicely with the spirit of the holiday to have people from six different countries come together over a meal.

Film Festival Fail

2009-11-18T23:20:00.004-03:00

So I led you all on. I told you there would be theater and film reviews all week and all I gave you was silence. I'm so sorry. But, in my defense, I have had some pretty bad luck with the Film Festival. Infrastructure seems to be an issue for festival facilities as well. Every single thing I have tried to see has been thwarted in some way. There have been bad tapes, bad projections, cancellation due to electricity issues (that would be the container festival) and tonight just a lame, unspecific explanation that they didn't have the film. The gentleman who explained the film's absence (at length without saying anything exactly) kindly showed his own film instead. I do not exaggerate when I say that it was the worst film of all time. Aesthetically on par with films from the Fast Forward Teen Program I was in during tenth grade. The sound of each fork scraping a plate rang out like a bell, but the dialogue might as well have been delivered through a pillow. And the plot. Well it was about a family and business and probably lots of things. But mostly the director seemed interested in the incest aspects of the story. The plot line seemed to surface without any particular explanation and was so graphically depicted that I think it would be more accurate to just call it sister fucking. Pardon. We stayed for about thirty minutes and then just had to leave. In an effort to make sure that the director knew how awful his work was, my friend tried to make as much noise leaving as possible.

Theater and Film Week!

2009-11-15T22:51:00.003-03:00

So I totally missed writing yesterday. Sigh. I guess I won't win the chocolate covered MacBook, or whatever they were giving as a prize (a chocolate covered MacBook, for those in the generous mood this gift-giving season, would be sublime).

But as an update of sorts, yesterday was the first day of the Festival Theatro de Containers. My roommates and I went to see a Catalonian aerial dance troupe perform in the middle of the largest square in the city on four giant shipping containers stacked one on top of the other. It was pretty rad. Unfortunately the non-aerial aspect of the performance was a half-hearted clowning gestault. As a caveat, I am completely unable to see theatrical performances without being incredibly critical (this also applies to movies, fashion and architecture, improbably).

In addition to the Container Festival, there is also an international film festival in Viña del Mar this weekend (Viña is Valparaíso's sister city). So I am going try to see at least (!) one performance or film every day. I have several willing accomplices in this effort, so I think it shouldn't be hard. And! You lucky readers will get to hear all of my very strong opinions! Think of it as an early Christmas gift.

2009-11-14T01:23:00.004-03:00

I am not really sure if this counts as not forgetting to blog. Since it is technically Saturday now. It's sort of a weird arbitrary thing. Dates start at midnight. Years too. A minute and you're a year older. I feel sort of attached to dates. I sometimes test my memory and try to remember really specific details of what I was doing on a certain date in years past. What I was wearing or what I ate. Usually I can only remember specific days. If I'm playing the memory game with March 3, for instance, I will probably do better because that's my very first best friend's birthday. And the date still tends to protrude a bit even though I haven't seen her in years. And of course some days stick out so much that they sort of loom in the distance beforehand. And sometimes one significant date is replaced by another thing that happens on that day.

I've been thinking a lot about this time a year ago lately. And how much it changed the direction in which I was headed. I feel certain that I made the right decisions, took the signs to mean the right things. But I often wonder what if things had happened differently. Right now I would probably be in Law School, thinking about things in past Novembers like going to the Cloisters with Ryan and Alex or that time I accidentally burnt a mouse in the toaster oven. And I'd probably read some friend's blog about moving to a completely different place and feel jealous and maybe a little trapped. It's strange to have moments where you can see your decisions stacked up behind you. Piled around the giant, immobile facts of events beyond your control.

Complaints: Plumbing Infrastructure

2009-11-12T23:05:00.004-03:00

All things considered I am feeling pretty good about where I am so far with this crazy project. I am learning tons of Spanish. I have an apartment. I'm making friends. There are some things that just drive me insane about life here. Plumbing is very high on that list.

1) It is unheard of, as far as I can tell, to have hot water in bathroom sinks. Public restrooms and private homes alike. Not to be a typical American germophobe, but they do serve a purpose. My wasteful expectations of boundless hot water aside, it seems a fairly simple pleasure: splashing warm water on one's face, rinsing off the grime of the city. In terms of hand washing, I rely much more on soap, which is drying out my skin. Because I'm a pampered princess, basically.

2) The hot water that is available in my apartment (in the kitchen and the shower) is extremely limited. If I were the kind of person who used Gilbert and Sullivan patter songs as measuring units for her life, I would say that the Lord Chancellor would not reach the description of his dream in the duration of a hot shower here. 90 seconds. Max. It's deeply demoralizing.

3) This is going to come as a shock to all of you, but you are cannot flush toilet paper here. At all. There are small wastebaskets next to each toilet for used tissues. For the first week it was distressing and vaguely mortifying. I am mostly used to it now, but each time the basket is full and I have to bring it down to the street I experience a wave of physical revulsion. It adds dimension of desperation to the sanitation worker's strike which has been ongoing for the last two weeks.

4) My toilet might be older than my father. The age of the plumbing is apparently responsible for the above mentioned general infrastructure problem, but my particular device is truly a relic. Water never completely stops running into the tank. In order to avoid exorbitant water bills and quite a bit of noise I have to turn the water on and off waiting for the tank to fill each time I want to flush. It's really only a problem when I need to be somewhere and can't take the two minutes. I often find myself using the bathroom immediately upon arriving at places.

Lost and Found

2009-11-11T22:09:00.004-03:00

I have been reading this book since I left the States. It's a series of essays with a heavy emphasis on memoir and art and cultural history, all about the concept of being lost. I have found it almost viscerally poignant to my current experience at times. I haven't picked it up in over a week now. Partially because I find it difficult to read in English when I am concentrating on learning Spanish so much. Partially because I hate the sadness of finishing books I really like.

Today I used an ATM on my way to the grocery store and thought that the cash that I withdrew fell out of my pocket somewhere on my way home. I looked in every pocket, the bathroom, my shopping bags. I was so annoyed/frustrated/upset about what amounted to carelessness on my part. But then my roommate found the cash on the kitchen floor. The relief of finding something I though was lost was such a wonderful sensation. Even something unemotional like money (an amount that will have very little long term consequence, anyway). It was like a really nice surprise. There may even be something about the feeling that's similar to falling in love. Or at least a fraction of it. Finding something that really belongs to you that you had been living without.

I constructed an inventory of things I have lost over the years that I really miss. About seventy-five percent of them are winter outerwear (that blue hat from tenth grade, a pair of my grandmother's gloves, the perfect street-pashmina, etc) and the rest are single earrings. None of them is worth nearly as much as the cash I misplaced today. Probably not even all of them collectively. But if, through some strange tidal flow of the universe, any of those things were to come back to me the elation I'd feel would be exponentially greater. I even have a box full of mate-less, former favorite earrings awaiting that unlikely turn of events.

Maybe the lesson here is that I care far too much about material things. That objects shouldn't hold such emotional worth for me. Everything should be dispensable. But it could also mean that, despite all evidence to the contrary, I might want to fall in love again.

Night at the Cinema

2009-11-10T23:19:00.004-03:00

This evening Nike and I went to a film club screening. The movie, The Grin Without a Cat, was in French and the subtitles were in Spanish so I spent much of the time confused. Especially since we both thought we were going to see this visually rich, surrealist Czech film (which I had already seen, but thought would be fun to see again). Anyway, besides an extended exercise in comprehension, it was a sort of fascinating look at a subculture here. Well, subculture might be to strong a word for six middle-aged, leftist film buffs. Since I understood approximately every seventh word, I was relying heavily on audience reaction, gesture and tone to follow the post film chat. But I was definitely picking up some, "Oh no he didn't say that about Chris Marker!" kind of facial expressions. The film itself (which I have since learned is something of a classic, in the scope of documentaries dealing with the failures of the left in the late sixties) relied more on voice over than a non-fluent viewer would hope. But I really enjoyed the spectacle of the event itself: in a basement screening room of a university building, the strange blend of men with graying hair and film students, the guy sitting next to me with a Che Guevara pin and a paperback copy of a Balzac book... It was familiar but completely different.

Currying Flavor

2009-11-09T22:34:00.001-03:00

So the Chilean diet has some quirks. Or maybe it has absolutely no quirks at all. The food here is definitely not bad. But it's certainly different and not in a particularly exciting way. I like the two national street foods: giant, calzone-like empanadas and completos, which are hot dogs covered in avocado, tomato and mayonnaise. But generally the intensity of flavor around here is pretty low. Culinarily, the most exciting thing is being able to buy a kilogram of strawberries and two perfect avocados for about two dollars. Many can attest to my abiding love for strawberry-avocado salads, but like anything, one gets sick of them after a while. Especially when one is consuming strawberries by the kilo to avoid spoilage.

So today I decided to branch out a bit and make a curry. I wouldn't say that curry is a staple of my repertoire, but I feel comfortable making it. The nice thing about curry is you can make it with anything as long as you can find curry powder (or paste, but they don't even have milk in the refrigerated section of the grocery store here). When I began my adventure I wasn't sure I'd be able to find the powder. But sure enough, it was on the shelf in the international section of the grocery store, tucked behind some soy sauce. I also bought the brownest looking rice (it was not actually brown rice), some chicken legs (easy) and a can of what I thought was coconut milk. It was actually coconut cream, unfortunately. Which turned out to be really delicious and I ate some spread on a piece of bread as dessert.

Veggies were of course no problem. Cauliflower, strangely awesome potatoes, carrots, peppers... my roommate even had a ginger root stashed in the freezer she let me use (thanks, Nike!). So the curry was coming along nicely. My other roommate demonstrated the completely foreign can opener (thanks, Rodrigo!- It actually seems to just be a blade you use to cut open cans). I sort of just added gobs of coconut cream and lots of water where I would normally use coconut milk. And honestly it wasn't bad. The curry powder had a nice kick. It was definitely better than the curry powder I bought from the bodega on fourth avenue in Park Slope. All in all, I think I'll be able to figure out how to approximate all the varieties of foods I have been missing. Maybe next I'll try chili. Because puns make things more delicious.

Jitters

2009-11-08T23:16:00.006-03:00

So in case you haven't picked up on this, I am making a go at National Blog Posting Month. I am sort of challenging myself to write more substantive things here and use my tumblr for my one-offs... But after a full day of bike riding yesterday and a full day of walking in the sun today, I'm afraid I don't have a ton of energy. And tomorrow my super-expensive Spanish classes begin at nine am so I need to get to bed pretty much now. According to the rules of the school there will not be more than five people in my class tomorrow. Which is a pretty small first impression to make. But the standard first day of school anxiety is still creeping in. Will I make friends? Will everyone else be muchmuch better at Spanish than me? What if I make some crazy pronunciation faux pas (like the time I tried to ask the dishwasher at Aroma for the "vasos" but said something more like "besos")? The "what to wear?" questions are not so pressing since wearing anything other than jeans and a t-shirt here garners far more unwanted attention than its worth. But, you know, which t-shirt??

Life on Mars

2009-11-07T23:14:00.007-03:00

Today my friend Jaime took me to Reñaca* to teach me how to rock climb. We walked down a rocky gulch into a sort of chasm by the sea. Even about twenty feet away from the opening, I could see dots of sea spray on my sunglasses. I'm not a geologist, but the rocks were completely fascinating. Boulders in a standard grayish color (limestone? granite?) were interspersed with deep black ones. Like a lava had flown between the rocks and cooled as it reached the sea. Even though we didn't get there until after five the sun was incredibly bright. The glaring difference between shadow and sun gives the afternoons here an almost extra-terrestrial intensity. Like how you hear about temperature differences on the surface of the moon. The sun, the wind, the ocean, the ache in my arms and legs from the exertion... it was just a completely singular experience.

*According to Google Maps, the route we took today was 18.3 km each way. We went on bike, so I am pretty much ready to collapse right now.

Call Me

2009-11-06T17:56:00.004-03:00

I have a Chilean cell phone. I bought it solely based on price and ended up with a package intended for children. It came with a tiny t-shirt, stickers, a bracelet, a notebook and a lanyard. It also came with 50 text messages and about $20 in credit. So that should last me a while. Especially considering that I simply don't have anyone to call. Coupled with the fact that I signed up for a Spanish class today, I am feeling pretty productive.

Theft and loss

2009-11-05T17:21:00.005-03:00

When I was about five my mother's purse was stolen. It was carelessness, as I remember it. She left it on the front seat of the car which was parked next to the soccer field where I was playing. I might have forgotten to lock the door. They found the purse a day or so later, dumped in a mailbox without any money in it. I remember a conversation between my parents about canceling a Mastercard.

Later that year the family station wagon was stolen. It was parked outside our elementary school. Something about the way the story was told made me imagine that it was used as a getaway car in a bank heist. In retrospect it probably was not a bank heist (in Roxbury, in the late '80s). But it was gone and along with it a particularly special blanket with trucks on it. The blanket was of course irreplaceable. The hassle of replacing a car that my parents experienced (insurance, police) did not affect me in any way. Only the new smelling, silver Ford Taurus that replaced it held any interest at all. In the end, the car theft was no great blight on my childhood.

During my first year in New York, my credit card and bank card were stolen from my wallet. I realized the theft the next morning when I received a call from my credit card company about a strange number of purchases made in Jersey City the day before. Nothing was really lost though. It was the sort of fictitious money that exists in banks and gets spent with checks and swipes. I filed reports with the police, the bank, the credit card company. I made statements. I talked to officers. I identified the likely time of the theft. The money was back in its virtual place before it was missed. Someone got $125 in socks from my credit card company, but all it cost me was a temporary annoyance.

When I moved to Valparaíso I had read a lot about petty crime here. One day last week two men stopped me on the street unprovoked and told me to be careful. I think I must have been looking particularly gringa-ish that day, wearing a skirt and boots. People around here talk about theft all the time. The people living at the hostel all had stories or stories of friends- cameras ripped from hands, cell phones taken at knife point. It's an expectation. A sort of mistrust everyone has of everyone else. It's hard to explain really. It's not a hostile feeling. Just sort of sad.

I guess I was bound to see it eventually. Today my roommate was robbed while we were walking down the street together. A kid, who looked about eleven, grabbed her bag and ran down the hill. She yelled and threw a coffee cup at him and ran after. And then eventually, I yelled and ran after. But my shoe came off and I had to make my way more slowly. The police came. And witnesses said various things. A report was filed. Ultimately not so much was lost. Money. Things of personal significance. And I think she feels those losses now in ways that won't be as important in time. I am surprised really at how much it affected me. That invasion of personal space. The almost violent moment when he grabbed the bag. The paralyzed feeling right after. There are worse things. Many many worse things. Knives or guns could have been involved. It could have been a group of people rather than one kid. In time it will just be a small trauma. A little reminder that even in the glaring sun, it's not always safe.

Teach Yourself Spanish

2009-11-04T21:24:00.003-03:00

So despite the fact that I took Spanish classes for four years during high school, my language skills now (in a Spanish speaking country, nine years later) are pretty inadequate. For the last two weeks I have been getting by on my patented method of simple words and phrases accompanied by gestures and lots of smiling. To give you an idea of how much language this really involves, I am also able to communicate this way in French and German speaking countries. And I did not study those languages, even at a high school level. With patient collaborators, I have had several real conversations (with verbs and predicates and occasional subjunctives) in Spanish. Meals, drinks, a card game... But generally improving my level of language proficiency is the goal of my life right now.

I am strongly considering taking some intensive classes starting next week to get my grammar into shape, but I have also created a rigorous course of personal study:

-Write out the entire conjugations of two irregular verbs each day. It's easy to chose these verbs because whenever I am speaking in Spanish I have to stop to conjugate them.

-Write down every word looked up each day (at least ten). I never actually write down all of them. It's rarely convenient to pull out a notebook and take a minute to write something down in the middle of a conversation.

-Speak in Spanish whenever possible. Obviously. But sometimes it feels so much easier, knowing that the person I'm speaking with also speaks English, to resort back. No. That is totally against the rules. (This is a rule I break every day)

-Read something, at least one entire thing, in Spanish everyday. Sometimes it's an article or internet news story. Sometimes it's a poem. This just focuses me on comprehension.

-Reread all notes everyday. Usually in bed before I go to sleep I look through the conjugation tables and the vocab lists and try to find them in my brain again. So far they're usually there somewhere.

Valparaíso en la Tarde

2009-11-03T22:17:00.009-03:00

I went for a walk in the late afternoon today. The sun was brighter than it ever gets in New York or Boston. But when walking on the shady streets my hands were stiff from the cold. At the top of the hill the added persistence of the wind made it impossible to stand still on most of the narrow, shadowy streets. But every so often I found a perfect spot, exposed to the sun but sheltered from the wind, where I could feel that it was almost summer.

The Truth About Food/Love

2009-11-02T22:45:00.004-03:00

So honestly, I think I haven't been eating enough. It's not conscious or purposeful it's just that eating is sort of depressing alone. And cooking is even more so. My mother might fly down to Chile on the wings of concern when she reads this, but I am just sort of always hungry and never want to eat.

I think most of you can attest to the fact that I have a pretty good appetite. I love food and always have. But even though I have been cooking for myself for years now, I really hate cooking for one. And the pleasure of a meal- a glass of wine, the fruits of an hour's labor, the beginning/end/pause of a day that meals represent- are just lacking on ones own. It's slightly better to eat alone in a restaurant. There's a formality that's comforting. There are people at least. Waiters, a cook definitely. But honestly I am not on the kind of budget that can afford restaurant meals often. So it looks like I'll have to find a boyfriend.

I guess it's sort of awful. I feel like generally I am in a very single state of mind. Woe-betide the man who I'll ensnare in my macaroni and cheese net, for surely I am far too selfish at this point in my life to regard another's feelings gently. But at least he'll be well fed. We both will.

New Digs

2009-11-01T12:12:00.005-03:00

Yesterday I moved into my first real apartment in Valparaíso. And eventhough I was anticipating feeling lonely after leaving the hostel, I really have no idea what to do with so much time to myself. The apartment does not have working internet yet, so I am writing from a cafe. My room is about five feet by fourteen feet with its own tiny bathroom at one end. One of my roommates described it as "austere" (she's German...) which sort of gives you an idea. Fitting with the general level of color saturation, the walls of my bedroom are a robin's egg blue, the kitchen is yellow (the best color for kitchen, probably) and the dining room/common area is a sort of orangey-terra cotta color. Currently it is Sunday and a religious holiday so most stores aren't open. Which is sort of annoying since I am missing some key elements in my living space (a mirror of any kind, for example). The cold, grey-ish weather we've been having this weekend has been a little tough on my moods.

So this week I am going to begin the search for a job in earnest. Which will probably look something like me walking into places and stammering fragments of sentences in Spanish, smiling, leaving my resume and never hearing from anyone. I think I'll have to get a cell phone here in order to effectively find work. Especially if my lack of Internet continues. It's been sort of nice to be without one these two weeks. I also really only know about six people in this entire country, so I really don't need to call people very often. But maybe it would make me feel more connected...

This blog post has been a sort of fascinating exploration of the Chilean keyboard for me. I don't think of myself as being the greatest typist, but move things around and I am completely hopeless. Additionally there is no "undo typing" option on the edit menu, so when I accidentally erased the whole post with an unknown key command, I had to start from scratch. I wonder if there is some sort of universal keyboard that people in multi-lingual countries use (can you imagine what a South African or Indian keyboard would look like? They have so many official languages!)...

So I hope everyone had a very happy Halloween. Yesterday when I was grocery shopping I saw a couple of older ladies wearing brightly colored witch hats, but that was about the extent of the celebration here. There was also a drunk fruit vendor heckling all such women and calling them natural witches. Which was funny and sort of surreal.

Fashion Questions: Blue Glasses

2009-10-28T18:48:00.004-03:00

So, inevitably, each country has its own fashion sense. In Chile I have noticed that women rarely wear skirts and that men tend to have longer hair. While I like to wear skirts and often find ponytails on men vaguely disgusting, I accept that I will have to adjust to these new terms. What I find most puzzling, however is the apparent trend of bright blue plastic eyeglass frames. On men. Both my potential new roommate and the owner of the hostel wear them. And I have seen several other pairs in passing on the street. This isn't your typical geek-chic, giant, coke-bottle type frame either. The small rectangular design implies that the guiding fashion principal is not irony, but a belief that it looks cool. I wonder if some super-hot, intellectual character in a Chilean film sported azure frames? For me it is a style most reminiscent of my sixth grade teacher Ms. Cohen who had reading glasses to match each of her brightly printed tunic tops. Glasses which she readily admitted to purchasing at Building 19. And though ultimately I'm sure I'll adapt to this fashion like any other at the moment I can't help but feel a bit disappointed that vision trends here is are not more on the cutting edge.

Rose Reviews: Diet Leche Culturada, Sabor Ciruela

2009-10-26T18:40:00.005-03:00

So fans of this blog's archives (or long time readers) might remember my reviews of Dutch food stuffs from my time in the Netherlands. Good news! My trip to the grocery store today yielded my first Chilean food product for review. It is worth noting that Chile gets sort of a bad wrap for its cuisine. As far as I can tell that is because it lacks the intensity of flavor of it's neighbors (mostly in terms of spiciness of seasoning). But when compared to Dutch cuisine, the culinary living is easy down in this hemisphere. I mean there is just so much affordable, fresh seafood and produce. Desserts and drinks tend to be a bit sweeter than I like them, but really there's very little to complain about.

Unfortunately that assessment does not extent to packaged and processed foods. When deciding to make the purchase in question I knew I was being adventurous. It seems that yogurt here tends to come in pourable jug form more often than spoonable container form. So rather than the Yogurt Batida Sabor Fresa I had tried earlier this week, I decided to branch out a bit and try this fat free, plum flavored, cultured milk. They were right next to one another. The bottles are the same shape. But on the inside... Basically it Leche Culturada has the consistency of milk. But with a vaguely coating, grainy sort of texture. And the flavor! Maybe there was an element of plum there somewhere... but as a person who has been known to consume upwards of twenty stone fruits in the height of the season, this tasted more like prunes mixed with maple syrup. Ugh.

Visting vs. Staying

2009-10-24T12:24:00.004-03:00

The first group of friends I made at the hostel left this morning. Although staying in hostels is a great way to meet interesting people, watching them strap on backpacks and head for the bus station made me realize how unusual what I am doing is. Tomorrow I am going to see a room in a student apartment which I am hoping to move into by the end of the week. The excitement of being in a new, unfamiliar place has made me forget that my intention is to make a home of sorts here. Spending time with people traveling around the continent and around the world is fascinating but the focus is always on sights and activities. For me this trip is much more about my personal experience of places and events. I know that when I move out of the hostel there will be fewer people and I will feel lonelier. But that loneliness seems like it will be a necessary step in trip.

Street Art

2009-10-22T18:49:00.012-03:00

So Valparaíso has insane street art. It's already one of the most colorful places I have ever seen, but the murals and stencils and graffiti are so vivid and abundant. It's awesome. Here are some photos of my first full day exploring:

¡Estoy Aquí!

2009-10-21T17:07:00.003-03:00

Valparaiso is really so beautiful. The hills put San Francisco to shame. Going down one with a fifty pound suitcase takes a particular skill I have not yet mastered... But the views! And the houses! And those crazy elevators! I've only explored a bit, but it's really beautiful and feels totally different from anywhere else I've ever been.

The voyage really wore me out. It's like jet lag, except my time change is only one hour. So it's just the relief of stress and the exhaustion from traveling and the un-rested feeling one gets from sleeping on airplanes. But all in all I was pretty lucky with my traveling. There were open seats next to me on both of my flights yesterday (especially nice because one was eight and a half hours long). And everyone has been really helpful so far, pointing or repeating things slowly when I look confused. I hope that after a solid night's sleep I'll be prepared to speak Spanish to strangers and write lots of emails introducing myself. For now I am wondering what is the earliest time it is socially acceptable to go to be in a hostel?

I leave you with some photos of my lovely hostel:

Ghost

2009-09-28T16:34:00.005-04:00

I wasn't feeling particularly well that day to begin with. Tuesdays tend to be extremely slow at work and I hadn't slept well the night before. When Rebecca walked in my immediate reaction was panic. I guess that's typically how I feel when separate worlds collide like that. I felt strangely exposed with this girl who I mostly knew from parties years ago standing in the restaurant. Which is especially strange in light of how brutally exposed she always seemed to me. So pale and small. So unabashedly in love with boys who clearly didn't care about her. So uncomfortably idolatrous of our lives. We talked and she still seemed bizarrely overexposed, immediately volunteering how unhappy she was with her job and where she lived. She went on to recall how cool she thought we were four years ago. We ("your crew," she said) had seemed like everything she wanted to be at the time. I feel something close to vertigo trying to imagine how we looked to her, even all this time later. Smoking cigarettes on the windowsills, playing cards, drinking constantly, always dressed deliberately strangely. Four years ago I felt like I knew this city, I had a place, a community maybe.

I felt ashamed. Like I had let her down or something. By becoming this mid-twenties waitress without direction. Who always meant to keep in better touch with that electrically close group of friends. Who hadn't done anything at all cool lately. Who was dressed in black and wearing cheap, conservative stud earrings.

It's weird to be moving away. I am sort of afraid that I have stayed here too long. That a particularly New York brand of cynicism has seeped into my perspective. Looking back on those first two years I can hardly retrace how I ended up here. In Queens, twenty-six, perhaps permanently single. And when I get on that plane, how will all of this New York-ness subside? In what pockets and corners will it store itself? And once I have done it, have realized my purpose, my desires, my self, will I call you all and tell you about it? And we'll laugh and understand each other based on all that time together, all those years ago?

2009-08-17T05:16:00.001-04:00

So I was gonna update my blog layout the other day and renew my commitment to writing and probably run a mile or whatever. But instead I made a tumbler. Did anyone notice? It's really lame. And I'm not just not linking. Cause I do know how.

2009-08-14T04:35:00.007-04:00

*

Tonight I went with Jeff to a birthday party on 46th St. and 9th Ave. When we were walking up 8th Avenue from the subway I noticed the glow of the lights from Times Square against the buildings one avenue over. It gave me that sort of strange swell that you get sometimes in places that are so "quintessentially" New York but don't hold any particular meaning. No one experience in the five years I have lived here has been especially connected with the lights in Times Square from one avenue block away. How it's sort of strangely silent for all its activity. In the middle of everything. And part of me started thinking about the strangeness of the idea of the Perseids that might be falling just above the cloud cover that was reflecting all that light back, like a giant stadium canopy. Sometimes I think about the idea that I could have been an amateur astronomer if I hadn't moved to New York. It's one of the stranger things I hold against the city. But I always have a fantasy of packing a picnic and renting a car and driving until the roads are dark and there's a field where I can watch the stars falling from the heavens and think about how human it is to do that. How long people have been amazed at the beauty and spectacle and uncertainty, even now, of having the sky fall.

2009-07-27T20:11:00.005-04:00

All you ever brought me was heartache and traffic.

Moving Forward

2009-07-16T12:04:00.002-04:00

Am I right in saying that a denim mini-skirt is no longer a wardrobe staple? Both because it's 2009 and because I am about to be 26 and don't really rock the short-short skirt look anymore. Really, what do you think? And do you want it? Or anything else of mine, really?

2009-07-12T09:11:00.002-04:00

I am sorry for asking you what your address was. I am sure you thought I was going to send a postcard. I almost definitely won't. I wrote one postcard to my grandmother but I doubt that I'll even get it together to find a stamp to put on it. Berlin is really fantastic. I have found it profoundly relaxing. There's nothing I feel compelled to do. The weather could be better, but being inside isn't so bad anyway. There are lots of nice people here and fun things to do if you want to have fun. I am sorry I am not even really making an effort with this blog post. I'll tell you all about it when I'm back in New York.

Wilcommen, Bienvenue...

2009-07-05T05:31:00.002-04:00

So I am in Berlin. I have been here for less than 24 hours and I'm not jet lagged! Yesterday was probably the longest day of my life. It began around 12:30am when they started serving breakfast on the flight into Zurich. I had about four hours to kill there so I walked around the historic downtown area, took some photos and ate some birchenmuseli (super delicious yogurt/fruit/granola combo) and got on another plane to Berlin. Honestly it is so different from what I was expecting so far. Kendra and I mostly walked around Kreuzberg which is the neighborhood next to hers in East Berlin. It's really lovely with lush greenery and lots of old buildings. We lit off sparklers for the fourth of July. And now I slept a pretty normal night and we're going to eat some breakfast and take care of a bike errand and go on a canal tour of the city. Honestly it all seems pretty Dutch to me. Which makes sense, but you know. I'll check in again soon.

Pushing Through

2009-06-16T14:39:00.004-04:00

So I am working on an essay for a job application. I sort of thought essays were just for school applications, but apparently I was lucky enough to select a job that also requires essays. Some of you may recall from my attempts at law school applications that I am not very motivated about writing essays. In fact, it might be said that I am not very motivated about writing at all (if you were to judge by, for instance, how often I update this blog). It's sort of a mystery to me. Because I really do love to words and writing and reading. I don't know if it's just like exercise (something I'm also unmotivated to do) and all one needs to do is get into the practice of doing it. Maybe I just need to push through the awkward sentences that don't lie flat on the page like they do in my head just like I should push through those uphill steps on a run when my legs feel like they're forty pounds heavier than when I started and my lungs tighten up in my chest so my shoulders touch my ears. And if I can't push through this two page essay how am I ever going to write the things I secretly hope to say?

2009-06-05T11:50:00.003-04:00

I don't remember this, but is it possible that I don't need as much sleep in the summer time? It was really late when I went to bed last night (like birds singing, gray skies). And yet, I awoke a ten and haven't felt like going back to sleep.

In the Morning....

2009-06-01T10:38:00.002-04:00

... I get out of bed and putter through my email, news and Facebook until my eyes and body are awake enough for tasks like washing every single glass in my apartment (thanks for coming to Richard's birthday everyone!). Sometimes there is just so much jarringly dramatic news on the Times homepage that I just don't know how to process it so early. Today, for example:

1) General Motors went bankrupt.

2) A plan carrying 228 people abruptly went missing.

3) An doctor who performs abortions was shot in Kansas (what is this, the early 90's?).

The world can just be so large and scary. And so much less-preferable than bed.

2009-05-17T14:48:00.001-04:00

I just deleted my MySpace and Friendster profiles. If that's how you've been keeping in touch with me, I am very sorry. Please don't take it personally. But we haven't been in touch for a while anyhow. That is all.

Recipes: Fage

2009-05-15T13:01:00.004-04:00

So for a little while now I have been using 2% fat Fage (the Greek yogurt) as a substitute for creamy fatty things that would turn a normal meal into a serious undertaking of cholesterol (mayo, sour cream, ice cream, creme fraiche, etc.). It's great in dips and dressings especially, I find. I have recently developed two delicious new applications for Fage:

Berry "Sundae"

The other night I really wanted ice cream, but really didn't want to put on pants and shoes and a jacket to walk to 7-11 in the rain. I was working with things I had in the kitchen.

1 cup strawberries
3/4 cup Fage 2%
1/4 cup walnuts
1/2 tsp. lemon zest
Squeeze bottle of agave nectar (to taste)

Dice the strawberries and put them in a bowl. Grate lemon zest directly onto the strawberries (make sure you spread it out, it's powerful stuff). Top with Fage. Toast the walnuts in a dry skillet for a couple minutes and dice (you can dice then toast and it might be easier). Squeeze agave nectar directly onto berries and yogurt (this is the "fudge" or "caramel" or "strawberry syrup" element, so don't be stingy). Top the whole thing with toasted nuts.

This was sort of a small meal-sized portion. You could play with ratios but I liked that there were chunks of berry and nut in every bite. Richard and I shared by passing the bowl back and forth, but if you find it's more civilized to split it into two portions that could be nice too. I would be very interested to try variations on the type of nut and berry used.

BATS

I have long felt that adding avocado is a sure way to turn any sandwich into a luxury (this might not be true of a fluffernutter which is already sort of a luxury). When applied to the already scrumptious BLT, this fatty fruit has a sort of transcendent affect. It can, however, compound the already complicated structural challenges of this sandwich. But no longer. In this application the yogurt allows the avocado to act as an adhesive. It also replaces the mayonnaise (though you could certainly add mayo if you like).

2 pieces of your favorite sandwich bread, toasted
3 or 4 pieces of bacon, fried to desired crispiness
1/2 tomato, sliced thin
several leaves of baby spinach
1/4+ of a ripe avocado, diced
1/4 cup of Fage 2%
salt

Mash the avocado into the yogurt with a fork. Chunks are not a problem, but you don't want them to be too big. Add salt and mix in to taste. Spread on one side of each slice of bread. Assemble sandwich with remaining ingredients (I will not presume to prescribe whether your bacon touches your tomato, spinach or both). Enjoy!

Nadir

2009-05-10T03:46:00.002-04:00

"Dowd: Put Aside Logic

Can we Kling On to our newspapers in the galactic age?"

This was the tag for Maureen Dowd's column today. It appeared next to a photo of Barack Obama, the president of the United States, photoshopped to look like a Vulcan. On The New York Times homepage.

Sixteen Years Later, A Shout-out to the Klutz Braids and Bows Book*...

2009-05-07T12:23:00.004-04:00

This is actually how I'm wearing my hair today.

*Remember when every girl got that book for her ninth birthday? (Eight birthday? It's sort of a blur)

If I Had a Twitter Account...

2009-05-03T20:08:00.003-04:00

... it would probably constantly say things like, "is Donald Sutherland really the father in Pride and Prejudice?* So be thankful.

*Yes.

Update

2009-04-28T10:58:00.004-04:00

If you're reading this you probably know that I am not very consistent with posting on this blog lately. The truth is my life is somewhat sedate (or at least static) right now. However! There are a couple things on the horizon which you can look forward to reading about on EPE. Should everything go as planned, this blog will resume its initial function as a mechanism of keeping in touch around September. I will once again set off for distant lands. It's likely that I don't do a very good job keeping in touch with you now, but while abroad I expect to feel lonely and isolated at least some of the time at the beginning and I'm sure I'll be eager to reach out to all of you.

What (you may be asking) is the occasion for this adventure? Well, I guess I'm just feeling sort of bored (see above comments about sedation and stasis). So I have enrolled in a course to become certified to teach English as a foreign language. Hopefully I will find a job by the end of the summer in time to jet of to some Latin American location. I really don't know what country I'll be going to or how long I'll be there. Like I said, it's an adventure.

Prior to that I'll be taking a short trip to Berlin at the beginning of July. If anyone in Europe is reading this and wants to plan a meeting, let me know! I will be planning to update while there to practice for my longer adventure at the end of the summer.

SO while this is a pretty lame, perfunctory post, the not-so-distant future holds oodles of posts employing my signature observational wit and knack for unflattering photography.

Night Hunters

2009-04-08T12:41:00.006-04:00

Around September my building got a new Super. Generally it's been a seamless transition. The most notable change has been that notes posted on the front door regarding proper recycling procedures are typed rather than sharpied onto yellow post-its. Until Saturday. On Saturday I awoke (far, far too early) and looked out the window next to my bed to see this:

EEK!! There is a huge, menacing owl on my fire escape! In the daylight! Surely it's a portent of doom!

No. After rubbing my eyes a bit and allowing rational thought to seep through the visceral fear, I saw that the owl was made of a plaster-like substance. It seems that in an effort to frighten the gaggle of pigeons (do pigeons flock? roost?) which lives on the telephone line behind my apartment building (and subsequently shits on every imaginable surface along the back of the property), my Super has installed a parliament (thanks!) of owls on the fire escapes and fences overlooking the offending cable. Which should be fine. I don't like the shit or the menacing sound of wings flapping against my window panes. But these are really scary-looking bird effigies. Let's take a closer look:

It's not so much that they are realistic facsimiles of actual owls. It's more that they are truly evil looking. If I were a pigeon, I would head for the hills. The actual pigeons are not so smart. They titter away on the phone line in spite of the dozen or so predators peering down at them. I am not so peaceful. Mostly I keep the curtains drawn tight to avoid the sight of them. But when falling asleep at night I sometimes imagine the hunkered silhouette of that stoic bird of prey illuminated against the curtain. Wild visions of those orange plastic eyes, lit by some internal, diabolical light play on the backs of my eyelids. I sometimes wonder whether this isn't some manifestation of a personal vendetta the super has for me. Were those Christmas cookies I baked dry? Does he think I am not separating my paper recycling properly?

The only thing to do is carry on with drawn shades. Hoping that when he sees the pigeons have remained he'll remove those monstrous forms. And my dreams will once again be my own.

On the Off-Chance I Didn't Send You This on G-Chat...

2009-03-11T14:52:00.004-03:00

Baby flamingo:

And baby flamingo:

Sign of the Times

2009-03-10T02:28:00.007-03:00

So my dad has a tendency to give some very random gifts. It's almost like he gets flustered in the middle of shopping by how many girl-y things he is expected to buy (for my mother, sister, me...) and just grabs at jewelry and small electronic items (flash drives really are excellent stocking stuffers though!). Anyhow, this year he got me this bottle of champagne:

Which is actually really nice, not because of my love for the Dutch designers Viktor and Rolf, but because I really love champagne and feel an intrinsic connection with rose (imagine the accent, please) especially due to my name* (which my father also gave me, so it's sort of all just a big circle). The point is that my dad, of all people, fell for the bizarre marketing of a bottle held upside-down in a plexi-glass box. To add more confusion to the matter, the box is not even a perfect rectangle! It tapers at the bottleneck end, making it impossible to wrap! And my father is obsessed with gift wrapping!** All of this brings me to the point: although I have had this bottle of champagne in my fridge since christmas, I have never felt like there was reason enough to drink it. Clearly, when I am not able to find a reason to drink champagne in nearly two and a half months, I (and the world at large, perhaps) suffer from a general malaise.

*Contrary to common wisdom, there are many rose-like things that I enjoy and don't find at all cliche (accent, again) as gifts. Rose champagne, roses themselves, these are all great gifts!

** My father has pieces of paper he uses to wrap christmas gifts that are fourteen years old. One year he challenged himself to use as few pieces of scotch tape as possible. He actually wrapped a fairly large gift using only the adhesive from a stick-on bow!

Haiku for the Season

2009-03-08T06:01:00.003-03:00

daylight savings time
at four it feels like it's three
at five it is five

2009-03-02T21:24:00.003-03:00

Is my inability to form meaningful goals the cause or merely a symptom of the fact that I am currently flipping between reruns of How I Met Your Mother and Star Trek: The Next Generation? And maybe also the fact that this sort of thing happens often.

2009-02-25T04:06:00.003-03:00

"At this point, male readers may want to go outside and toss a ball around for a while. No matter how sympathetic, how curious or how deeply interested in life’s little yuck factors* you are, this collection is unlikely to hold more than the mildest intellectual appeal for you. But it is hard to imagine any woman, from the most straitlaced and body-denying to the most uninhibited and body-embracing, who will not read right through it with pure enjoyment, small flashes of recognition and the urge to buy it for every female preteen in sight."

-some lame NYT book review.

Seriously, it's about fucking time everyone- man, women, kids on the playground (well they're ok, I guess)- to just stop being so damn squeamish about menstruation. It's part of everyone's life in one way or another. And there is no better reason than naive fear that no one will admit that it's sort of fascinating. That it is a biological mechanism that essentially allows women three-quarters of the time of their fertile lives having sex for pleasure. We are fascinating beings!

*That's a female reviewer referring to the subject of menstruation as a "yuck factor." In my opinion, rotting feces left un-flushed in a toilet for days is a "yuck factor." Menstruation is something that is CONSTANTLY HAPPENING EVERYWHERE.

It's possible that my vampire obsession has gone too far...

2008-12-31T16:06:00.005-03:00

Among other things, 2008 has brought a resurgence of my young adult fascination with vampires. Blame Twilight or True Blood or the new series Vamps (Gossip Girl meets Twilight, I am not made of stone, you know)... Whatever the reason, yesterday marked the culmination of this fad when I incurred this wound while at work:

*

Although it was a incident of freak glassware breakage and not the undead that caused the incisions near my jugular, I am going to take it as a sign that I should close the book (or books) on vampires with the close of the year. And move on to werewolves.

*Um, yes I am wearing the t-shirt from the 2001 Project Shakespeare production of Richard III.

Dear Baby Animals,

2008-11-19T15:31:00.001-03:00

Please stop being so cute so I can finish my essay.

Rose

2008-11-18T17:12:00.003-03:00

So it's really a good thing that no one has to hear all of my thoughts. Not merely because it would be very invasive of my privacy, but also because some part of my brain is singing November Rain for the ENTIRE month of November. It actually started around October 29 this year. And honestly I don't think anyone has the patience to withstand so many guitar solos in wheat fields and wedding cakes falling off tables in slow motion. If you had to think about that stuff as often as I do, you'd certainly go crazy. And December is only slightly better because I am not intimately acquainted with the video for Long December by Counting Crows. So it's just the lyrics on loop. All month long. Happy holidays, mind readers!

2008-11-12T15:19:00.004-03:00

So I am REALLY trying to write this personal statement but while writing I started listening to Ys for the first time in a little while. It's just so lovely. And though I probably listened to this song enough times while I was in Amsterdam to add up to a week of my life, I still think it's the best. Also it's really amazing to watch people play the harp. The amount of sound that one instrument can make! It's fantastic. I am particularly partial to the passage that repeats, "Why the long face?" Back to work now.

Sad Truth

2008-11-07T04:02:00.007-03:00

So this is what The New York Times homepage looks like right now. So maybe this makes me totally un-international (or whatever) but I found it very confusing to have a picture of a peach stand next to a story about Georgia the country and not Georgia the state. Counter-intuitive if you ask me.

Also I am deeply disappointed in all of you for not sitting me down and forcing me to watch Slings and Arrows. Really what were you thinking?

2008-11-04T22:17:00.004-03:00

Somehow I've become so nervous about these election results that I'm acting like I'm going on a first date. So not only am I compulsively changing my clothes (I was wearing a red shirt!! Now it's blue...) but I'm also making lots of really bad jokes. Mostly asking things like, "When will we kno-bama?" or thinking that when Mary says, "Back to you, Wolf" they should hilariously have Wolf the American Gladiator on screen. You know to break the ice a little. The tension is killing me!

Thanks Stef!

2008-11-03T03:15:00.004-03:00

Stef got me the number one best hoodie of all time. Here it is:

Not only is it in hipster-as-what, awesome red and black watch, it is also lined in this super soft and furry faux sheerling. And to top it all off there's a secret pocket!!!!!!

On an unrelated note the late night electric guitarist on the F train (you know with the hat and the amplifier?) has learned "Baby Can I Hold You." And it's definitely more appropriate in terms of tone for the quiet, late-night ride, but it's kind of awkward to be listening to this song and accidentally make eye contact with strangers. Also I forgot how affective the song is. That's all.

2008-10-17T01:21:00.001-03:00

Still in it!!!!!!!!

2008-10-14T01:33:00.003-03:00

Between the Twilight saga and Tru Blood I think it is safe to say that all contemporary vampire themed cultural output is terrible. Alas for the good old days:

Ruminations on the Bolt Bus

2008-10-02T16:21:00.004-04:00

As I type these words a young man is nodding in and out of sleep over his MacBook Pro to my left as vistas of scenic Yonkers speed by on my right. Yes, through the wonders of modern technology I am connected to the Internet and traveling to Boston at the same time. I really have no concept of the mechanism that makes this possible. Am I getting service via a cell phone signal? Is there some giant satellite dish on top of the bus (I checked as I was getting on but it could be in the middle, out of view. Buses are tall)? Regardless, this magical manifestation of modernity allows me to bore you with these observations:

The Bolt Bus stops at the corner of eighth avenue on thirty-fourth street. There's a plaque commissioned by the Ukrainian American Society on the building there which recognizes the location as the site of Nikola Tesla's death. I briefly wondered at the possibility of deliberate symbolism in deciding to have a giant red bus with a lightning bolt on the side stopping in front of Tesla's death place.

Hell's Kitchen seems like a sort of adorable neighborhood. After four years in New York I'd never seen it before today.

Initially none of the power outlets were working on the bus. This created a sort of mini-hysteria. The tensions ran so high that the bus driver pulled over at ninth avenue and fifty-first street to fix the problem. We had been moving for seven minutes and the repair took at least ten.

According to their website, Bolt Bus stops at 34th and 8th when going to Boston and Philly and 36th and 7th when going to DC. Wouldn't it make more sense to have the Philly and DC buses stopping in the same place on the West side with easy access to the Lincoln tunnel and have the Boston bus stop somewhere further east with easy access to the Tri-Borough bridge or at least FDR drive? It took us forty-five minutes to get out of Manhattan today.

I saw a giant beautiful rainbow ahead to the east as we turned on to 287. A prodigious sign, to be sure.

The dude in front of me is totally watching Reality Bites.

At five-thirty we passed the last exit in Norwalk, CT. This was two and a half hours into our supposedly four hour and fifteen minute trip. I might reach the end of the internet.

I uesd to not be able to sleep on any moving vehicle, but somehow in the last year or so the opposite has become true and I have started nodding off without even meaning to. I am worried that this is the first sign of an early-onset dementia. Also, since I unwittingly napped today, what if I'm not tired enough tonight to go to sleep early to wake up early tomorrow to go to sleep early tomorrow to wake up early on Saturday for the LSAT????? Seriously. I am not very good at sleeping.

In addition to mid-90's melodrama, the dude in front of me is assiduously tracking our progress forward on Google maps. He should clearly be traveling by plane.

This has essentially devolved into a Twitter. I'm going to go watch funny stuff on Hulu.

2008-10-01T11:17:00.000-04:00

7:30 is an inhuman hour at which to wake. Damn test.

Fall Outerwear

2008-09-26T19:01:00.008-04:00

So I'm really trying to be good about studying and prep for the LSAT (7 days!), but tonight I am going to a birthday party and it's rainy and I have to wear a jacket. Choosing a jacket is of course an epic decision and because Richard has already left for the evening it falls to you, dear internet, to be my second eyes.

Mostly my fall weight outerwear has been acquired through various forms of "free." In fact the only thing I bought I have had since I was 20 (at a adorable thrift store in Hungary). So there's something a little bit weird about all the options (ordering from least to most weird):

This is the one I bought. It's cute but the arms fit kind of funny, right? Also the zipper doesn't completely work anymore.

So Kendra gave me this vest when we were living together. Prior to my wearing it, we had tacked it to the wall for decoration. It's also pretty short. In like a 1993, cropped-tops-are-hot kind of way.

This jacket also has some early 90's appeal. I got it at a clothing swap (thanks Ella!). It seems like a normal-ish choice, but then you realize that the collar and cuffs are lined with faux fur instead of wooly sheerling. It's challenging.

I honestly love wearing this coat. But it's actually a little bit longer than your standard trench. And the bottom is more of a full skirt than an a-line. It can look sort of intensely dramatic. Yeah, it used to be my mom's.

Can I ever wear this in public? Is any outfit plain enough to balance the oversized shoulder pads and the mid-80's pleating details? This one comes courtesy of my aunt Sukins and was the inspiration for my first request for a leather jacket.

Helpful Hints: How Italian Men Can Improve Their Game

2008-09-08T23:56:00.005-04:00

So I went to a wine tasting today. Generally they're sort of crowded affairs in conference rooms or ballrooms of hotels. Tables ring the room and there's a bunch of cheese and bread and bottled water in the middle. I sort of dress up for these things. I guess the rule is to look professional, but my motivation is generally to look older and more serious. It's hard enough to get men to take me seriously about wine without looking like the kind of girl they try to pick up in bars. Today that involved the shoes pictured to the right (with slacks because the skirt was just too shiny). Nonetheless I managed to be the youngest woman in the room. A charming, older (let's say late 70's) gentleman took a particular shine to me and followed me around to a few tables. Although he had many complimentary things to say, my personal favorite was when he called me a "mountain of glory." It's important to picture this man, standing about 5'4'', fumbling through his Sicilian accent, doing his best to channel Martin Scorsese in his tie-less black suit. I would like to take this opportunity to tell all you Italian men reading this blog that words like "great" (as in "great tower of beauty") and "mountain" might best be left out of your courtship routine.

2008-08-28T02:13:00.004-04:00

Tonight I was on the R train (taking the longest route home possible) and when passing through the Courtlandt Street subway station and I started to think about the newspapers on the platform and whether they were from seven years ago. And then I started to think about how that was seven years ago. And then I realized today is the four year anniversary of my move to New York City.

Right after that I thought about the perfect poem to describe that feeling of how the general history reminded me of my particular history and how it was all sort of uncertain and nostalgic. But I just spent about twenty minutes looking through Google for this poem and I don't think it exists after all. Which makes me wish I had a photographic memory so I would always be able to quote exactly what poem I was thinking of. Or maybe I should just write my own poems. Or go to bed.

What Not To Do: Late Night Messaging

2008-08-23T14:12:00.003-04:00

As many of you dear readers have experienced, I have a penchant for late night, less-than-sober, text-based communications. It's something I am certainly not proud of, but it's who I am and I don't know what I can do about it short of developing breathalizer software for my phone and computer (hear me Steve Jobs?). Normally message recipients are good friends and occasionally *cringe* former lovers. Last night, however, I managed to send the following message to a Facebook friend who I went to KINDERGARTEN with (and haven't seen since I was fifteen, probably):

I noticed that you're currently employed by Legal Seafood. My sister has been gainfully employed at the Park Square location of that same chain for the last three years... I was thinking you might be unwittingly working side by side for the last several weeks without even knowing your connection! But, basically, if you're working with a girl named Molly who looks uncannily like me, you should say hi, cause she's my sister.....
Late'
Rose

My concern is not really that I said something stupid. The content isn't particularly damning. I just think about how it must look to recieve such a random and syntactically quirky message with a 3:47am date stamp. Not good. Not good.

Hardly a Post

2008-08-19T02:12:00.005-04:00

So I'm a jerk and I never update. Noted. Mea culpa. But here's what's news lately:

1) My new sunglasses are so fly:

Sometimes I'm wearing them and it's like, "Damn, New York. Can you stop sweating me for a little? Cause I have to walk here."

2) You should all try the 2007 Muga Rose. It's not super cheap but it's well under $20 and it's easily the best rose I've had in over a year. So delicious.

3) It seems likely that I'm looking for a new job. I want to keep working with wine and I feel pretty open to what's available. Hit me up if you know something.

2008-07-17T03:12:00.001-04:00

I just had to tell myself, "Rose, it's 3:15 am and you are going to publish a blog post about dating? Get your mind right and go to bed."

Teenaged

2008-07-09T12:14:00.003-04:00

So there's this girl who has been sitting on my stoop all day. I am pretty sure she lives in the building cause I've seen her before. And I don't know for certain that she's been there all day, but let's say it's been an hour or two. I would guess she's fifteen. All she's doing is scrolling through her cell phone and flipping it open and closed. I mean, I haven't been watching her continuously, but as far as I can tell. It's important to note that I don't have one of those grand, Brooklyn, Do The Right Thing kind of stoops. The stoop is an inch and a half higher than the sidewalk. The point is, she's almost certainly just sitting out there cause she has nothing else too do and doesn't want to sit her apartment because of family or heat or whatever, but mostly boredom. At least things might change a little on the street. You know cars drive by. Occasionally there are bicycles. The point is, do you remember how boring it was to be a teenager?

Thinking back, I have no idea what I did to pass the time when I was fifteen. Except Shakespeare summer camp, of course. Leila and I took the T to places like the Cambridgeside Galleria because were so used to the Copley and Prudential malls that they were boring. Malls are categorically boring of course, so it seems like we must have been bored once we got there too. And I guess I listened to the radio alot then as well. Which means that I must have spent alot of time at home near the radio. Jeez. So much time just passed in my life without anything happening.

So far this summer has been incredibly boring. No offense to anyone I have had a great time with in the last month. The days are just full of pointless scrolling through internet pages and long walks and magazines. I feel like I am waiting for my life to happen which is how I remember feeling when I was a teenager. And it's really dumb because I'm obviously old enough to know that you have to make things happen and that sitting around drinking coffee like a dullard is not how to do it. Which is unfortunate because lately that's all I've wanted to do.

Melons

2008-07-01T13:36:00.003-04:00

Recently one of my coworkers told me that pure watermelon juice has an almost immediate laxative effect if consumed in large enough quantities. I haven't remembered to test this claim with research or experimentation, but it would be a sort of weird thing to fabricate, so I believe it. Then today I read this about the arousing effects of watermelons. Which leaves all of us (or so I imagine) wondering about the intersection of these two unexpected properties of this refreshing summer fruit. Which is sort of a gross image and generally involves too many seeds.

Failure of the Algorithm?

2008-06-29T23:21:00.005-04:00

According to IMDB, if I like How She Move I might also like Porky's and The Notebook.

Like Wearing a Hat of Someone Else's Haircut Over The Haircut I Asked For

2008-06-18T03:45:00.004-04:00

Dearest Readers,
Do not get student haircuts. My "long layers" vary between three inches and a foot and a half. I think I might have to pay real money to get this monstrosity fixed. On a side note, if you get an obvious haircut, will anyone who notices tell you it's awful?

Announcement: Growing Up

2008-06-17T00:26:00.007-04:00

I'm alone in the apartment for the week. Which is mostly sad and lonely. Especially because without Richard I always forget how to watch TV and just spend hours on end watching TLC. And really how many makeovers can you watch before they loose that magic?

But about five minutes ago I had this sort of epiphany. I was putting my dinner leftovers in the fridge and all of a sudden I was overwhelmed by how grown up I am. Like the beginning of a Meg Ryan film, I was sitting on the couch sipping wine thinking about my life. I refrigerate leftovers and do my dishes after I finish eating. I am fastidious about my fiber intake. I carry band-aids in my wallet. I even remembered to buy dental floss today cause I'd run out.

And I'm turning twenty-five. In five weeks. I've been obsessing about it for the last couple months and I'm finally comfortable with being a quarter-century old. I know it's silly to get hung up on a number, but everyone has to face the stigmas attached to growing up at some point. And I'm ready to grow up a little.

So here's the announcement: I'm gonna be a lawyer. I took my first practice LSAT today. Helen is kindly lending me her prep books. Logic game practice isn't going to be the funnest summer activity I've ever undertaken, but there's a sort of thrilling challenge to them from a certain perspective.

Top Seven Songs

2008-06-11T13:40:00.005-04:00

So I've been tagged. In my opinion this is one (very small) step up from sending along chain letters or involving friends in pyramid schemes (though I only know about those in so far as they played a role an unusually boring episode of Mad About You), but I am going to respond. I am not, however, going to tag afterward. Mostly because I don't really know anyone who writes a blog who would actually respond to a tag. Except maybe Tommy. So go ahead if you like, Tommy.

I am supposed to list my top seven (why seven?) songs at the moment with explanations for each. If I were to be completely honest this list would consist entirely of songs by Mary J. Blige, but since the explanations would all be "She's so awesome," I thought it would be too boring even for this blog. So here it is. Seven songs I like a lot right now. Keep in mind that I exist in a strange musical bubble.

1. "No More Drama"- Mary J. Blige
I picked this as the representative song of my Mary J. obsession in part because it awesomely uses the theme song to The Young and the Restless (which Mary J. awesomely name checks in the lyrics). But most importantly, I think it's a lesson we can all stand to learn, no matter how many times we've heard it since 2001, "No more drama in my life." Yes.

2. "Happiness is a Warm Gun"- The Beatles
According to my iTunes (which knows nothing of what I listen to away from my computer) this is my most played song. Which makes sense because I sort of rediscovered it a month or two ago and ever since then, it will just pop into my head and I'll need to hear it. Mostly I get stuck in the beginning, "She's not a girl who misses much..." It has a great build and a great chorus as a pay off.

3. "Everybody Knows This is Nowhere"- Neil Young
So for about three weeks in April I listened to this album constantly. It started out when I heard a live version of "Cowgirl in the Sand" during a yoga class and the line "It's the woman in you that makes you want to play this game..." repeated in my head so many times that I went out and bought a used copy of the CD (because my dad's copy was in Boston, which is too far away to steal. Or borrow). So the title track is my favorite right now because it has those light hearted "nah-nah-nah, nah-nah, nah-nah"s on the chorus and I think that's appropriate for the season.

4. "Are You That Somebody?"- Aaliyah
Full disclosure? I downloaded this playlist of the "Top 100 R&B Songs of the 1990's." Treasures untold.

5. "Warrior"- the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs
So when I'm at the gym and I'm feeling more aggressive or angry or something, I listen to the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs instead of Mary J. Blige. It's not often, but it happens.

6."A Case of You"- Joni Mitchell
... is probably my favorite song of all time.

7. "Try a Little Tenderness"- Otis Redding
This song will forever be attached to that scene in Pretty in Pink when Ducky spazzes out in the record shop and does those crazy pelvic thrusts. But I've been listening to lots of Otis all spring. He's wonderful.

So yeah. Nothing on this list is particularly current or interesting, but that's just the kind of music I listen to. No apologies.

Book Discussion Group: On imagery and nostalgia

2008-06-11T01:34:00.004-04:00

On my way home from work tonight I had this strong bout of nostalgia for a college I never attended. It was a longer wait for the F train than usual and I was reading to pass the time. I started Americana by Don DeLillo earlier this week, mostly because it seems like everyone is always talking about how great he is, and even though I don't feel like I'm really into it (like I won't read another chapter instead of going to sleep at night), I like it. Anyhow, between the wait and the train ride I was probably reading for almost an hour. And I was thinking about this conversation I had with my friend Jean last night about descriptions of place and how important they are to stories and, at least so far, Americana takes place in New York City, so the descriptions are vivid in this way that they are not only so obviously and brilliantly concocted out of images from the mid-twentieth century cultural zeitgeist, but they are also images and places I live among everyday (or at least to the extent that I am in Manhattan, which is often enough).

So my nostalgia had to do with this fantasy I have about what life in "normal college" dorm is like. In this nostalgic reverie I pictured myself returning to the dorms at one-thirty in the morning and going down to the second floor (because my nostalgia is specific enough to place me on the fourth) to knock on the door of some dreamy English major I knew would be up (probably reading Proust or something awful like that). Anyhow, we would sit on his bed at a perpendicular angle to one another, with my back against the wall at the head of the bed and his against the wall against the length of the bed, and eventually, after dissecting imagery and the power of the ego in literature or whatever words we were using to mean "It's really fucking good the way he says that," I would tuck my feet under his thighs and we would feel really close but probably not even kiss because those situations always feel too heavy and cliche anyhow.

This fantasy is fraught for several reasons, starting with my cynical disdain for English majors and Proust. But also because it reveals the ways that my college experience was purposefully a-typical in a way that highlights how my late teens were to a large degree shaped by a desire to be "a-typical" and how it's strange but I sometimes regret that. But really only because lately my life is full of times like now when it's after three in the morning and I can't think of a single person who it would be appropriate to call in order to discuss literature. Maybe I'm just too old for that.

But when I came home I was glad to find Richard awake and we drank beers and watched the season finale of Greek, which is really a fantastically sincere show, but maybe feeds my college nostalgia-regret fantasies a little too much.

2008-05-31T14:33:00.003-04:00

One summer I did this writer's workshop at UMASS Boston. I was turning fifteen and my parents didn't really know how to handle the too old for camp, too young to let loose balance. I didn't produce anything so fantastic (except perhaps that poem about bathrobes that I might be able to recite to this day), but I wrote this one essay that was published in the magazine at the end of the course about writer's block, pasta salad and my toes. This post is basically a rehash of that story, ten years later (oh god, I am so old. Pour me a metamucil). Also an excuse to mention my fantastic sneakers.

Sometimes it seems like social interactions are comprised of exposition ("I have done x, y and z things since we spoke last"), debate ("Obsessive attention to capitalization is NOT a valid reason for disliking e.e. cummings as a poet") and advice. I think I might be really into advice. Both giving and receiving. I don't know that I'm good at it, but there's something rewarding about the exercise of figuring things out through conversation. Lately whenever I am giving advice, even to myself when sitting on the couch wearing one shoe, the word perspective comes to mind. I feel like I use it so often that it is becoming meaningless. But when I look at things objectively it becomes clear that the only reason I feel a certain way so strongly is because of the circumstances around me. Give it a try. Is there really any problem you have, like something that's bugging you or unsatisfying, that couldn't be changed with a shift in perspective?

When I was talking to my mom the other day I came to realize that it's probably impossible for a single person not think about her love life. Even if you aren't really wanting to date or meet people, if you aren't with someone part of you is probably looking. It's a strange cycle and it makes things sort of annoying. I don't want a boyfriend but being single is kind of a chore. I wonder if people who have taken religious vows of celibacy are really completely free of this. Or if it's more an exercise in pushing away thoughts of sex and romance. I actually can't remotely comprehend the cloistered lifestyle. It's awful but my life is completely selfish in ways. And selflessness on that scale is... something other than what experience as life.

To be frank (because who really reads this anyway?) I feel a little bit funny about what I write on this blog and how personal I get and what the real purpose is. That last paragraph is probably the most I've ever written about my love life. Sometimes I have ideas for posts that would betray a specific event or feeling I'm having and I get nervous because I think that someone else will feel betrayed or that my exboyfriend will read it or blah, blah, blah. But I was thinking about the last few months and from my usual perspective (visualized as a stick figure on a director's chair in my brain) I haven't been doing much. But when I looked back at an old email I wrote in March (and never sent) I realized that there are a lot of things that are pretty different now. I was fatalistically perceiving time since I broke up with Josh as a flat line of events (work, walks and whiskey). But actually I'm in a totally different place now. And if reading something I wrote could make me realize that, could alter my perspective if you will, then it really is important to keep writing regularly and hope that the self-involvedness will dissolve eventually. Phew.

FIN

On Love

2008-05-30T03:29:00.003-04:00

Tonight I was in a public bathroom reading the graffiti on the stall door (as is my wont) when I realized that the common symbol for love (a heart or <3), when paired with an "s" to make it grammatically correct, looks a lot like the common abbreviation for versus (that is vs). Although an amorous woman may have written Deidre "loves" Shaun (intending <3), it's easy to imagine how their time at the Irish pub might have ended in more of a Deidre "versus" Shaun kind of way. Which is just another way that our symbolic language is working much harder than we think.

Sunshine and an Announcement

2008-05-27T13:08:00.005-04:00

Perhaps the best way to approach weather.com is as a silly diversionary activity. For example the hour-by-hour forecast is currently showing little thunder clouds every hour until five but my window looks like this:

The glare of sunshine obscures the fact that there isn't a single cloud in the sky. So I am going to open more windows and pull back the curtains and drink coffee and listen to Rubber Soul for a little longer then get dressed and walk to work. Screw you, weather.com.

But I have exciting news for you all (if anyone even reads this anymore). I am going away. Not permanently or tomorrow, but definitely going, going, gone. So for the months of September and October this blog may return to its original mission statement. I'll be subletting my room in Park Slope (anyone who's interested should enjoy television, wine and Samuel Beckett) and heading below the equator for the first time in my life! Right now I am thinking about buying a one way ticket and making my way back north with many stops along the way. So are you in South or Central America? Will you be in the early fall? Do you think there's somewhere I absolutely must see? Let me know!

Finally, I promise that I'll think about trying to be better at this blog. I am honestly in a very strange place in my life right now and sometimes it's impossible to put what I'm thinking into typed words that others might read. Mostly because it would read something like a kitten mewling at the door when it's starting to rain.

"In My Life" has just started to play and I can see the bottom of my coffee cup so I should sign off now, but I miss you all.

What I Should Be Doing With My Time

2008-05-16T03:43:00.003-04:00

1) Flying.

2) Getting a good night's sleep.

3) Planning for the future.

4) Blogging?

Slate, Apartment Clean

2008-03-24T17:04:00.004-03:00

Yesterday I managed to have a pretty low-stress (for me) dinner party. I made super easy comfortable stuff and we drank a ton of wine and it really wasn't a big deal that no one really knew anyone else. Anyhow, it made me realize how very much I love my apartment. There were only six of us here yesterday, but the room felt so full. Not uncomfortably so (it does when there are eight...) but just happy full. The yellow on the walls and the brown lap shade made it soft and warm feeling. Sure the chairs aren't that comfortable and the legs seems to be coming off one of them, but I love the way everything has been found, acquired, bought for a couple dollars and the overall effect is so unified and personal and feels reflective of me and of Richard. So it's really great to have people that I've met in various places all sit in this space and drink out of these cups that I found in a shoebox on the street.

I am feeling excited actually. Not because I am really doing anything special. But because I know that I am about to. I think it's a sort of thing with spring time. Right now it's still pretty chilly most days but the sun has been consistently brilliant. It's great because I have all this time and the stupid-big sunglasses so I can just walk where ever seems sunniest and soak in all the vitamins (or just D, really). I am thinking and planning and having ideas and throwing them out. It's like exercising a muscle. The change muscle. Feels good.

Not by way of explaination exactly....

2008-03-15T13:51:00.001-03:00

but when you're crying lying down, the skin behind your ears gets wet. It tickles in an infuriating way.

Welcome Home, Indeed!

2008-02-11T20:38:00.000-03:00

Yesterday, as our plane was taxi-ing into the gate at JFK the pilot announced that it was 15 degrees Farenheit outside with winds of up to 25 miles per hour. If it were relevant or customary, upon take-off earlier that day he would have announced that the outside temperature was hovering between 78 and 80 degrees farenheit with nary a cloud in the blue, smog-streaked California sky. Yes, I am home. California was just about perfect. The weather, sights, friends all wonderful. Like an early Spring now cruely plucked from my too easily fooled finger tips.

When I finally ventured out of my apartment this evening to buy some lentils (friend to the broke and irregular) I wore the following clothing:

(underwear and bra, given)
1. tights
2. boxer shorts
3. jeans (in that order, yes)
4. wool knee socks
5. other wool socks
6. hiking boots
7. t-shirt
8. hoodie
9. wool sweater
10. wool coat w/ lining
11. wool hat (under pulled up hood)
12. wool scarf
13. glittens

Recommended: Other People's Blogs

2008-01-30T15:31:00.000-03:00

I know it's annoying to read posts that are all about not posting, so we'll leave it at this: I have no excuse. I am just not that good at it...

Ok, but here's the thing. I have some friends who really are. Leila, who has been my friend since sixth grade and lives quite near me now (might be moving closer! fingers crossed!), writes a blog about Boston restaurants as her job. In addition she has a personal blog and a tumblr (I don't really understand that phenomenon but it's fun!). For those keeping score that's three blogs she updates exponentially more frequently than I update this one blog. Additionally she is funny and informative while she does it. Were we not such good friends it might be intimidating.

Tommy, another old friend, though one who lives a little farther away, is also a very consistent blogger. He really posts everyday. And not because he's participating in some contest like me in November. His blog is basically about whatever he wants to talk about but he is always very earnest. It's striking how much he sounds like himself when he writes (or in his videos, but that's not the point). It's very charming.

Finally my room mate, Richard also makes his living writing blog post (and making advertising work right). In addition he has a personal blog that is also much more frequently updated than mine. While the subject matter is somewhat random he certainly has me beat for late-night, inebriated content. Whereas most of the posts I write after a bottle of wine are little more than a mess of misspelled words* and non-sequiturs, his are filled with a poetic self-deprecation that is both apt and hilarious. That's probably why he posts his and mine remain in the draft folder.

So if you're here and wondering why I haven't posted in a while (though it's probably because I'm on vacation... three days!!!!) you should try any of these trusted recommendations. Also if anyone knows how I can make one of those fancy link bars in the margin I'll include them there.

*Richard is my personal spell check (notably in the tags and titles where my general spell check doesn't work).

Haiku for Tonight

2008-01-25T05:23:00.000-03:00

I have spilled lots
Of things in my purse but cough
Syrup is the worst

Un-Endorsed: Cuervo Black and Cola

2008-01-24T02:52:00.000-03:00

So I just saw an advertisement (which played after midnight sandwiched between ads for gentlemen's clubs) which instructed me how to order a "Cuervo Black" and cola. Ok, so from what I can tell Cuervo Black is different from normal Cuervo because it's aged in charred barrels for longer. And according to sources* it is meant to appeal to an older, more discerning tequila drinker. And sure, the dudes in the commercial looked like the thirty-somethings in shiny shirts who hit on girls in bars who got in with fake ids. And to me Jose Cuervo is pretty much for eighteen year-olds bribing hobos in front of the liquor store (I hear). The thing is, you order Cuervo and cola the normal way but when your drunk bartender only hears the word "Cuervo" you just remind them not to reach for those shot glasses. Let me tell you about drinking tequila with coke. It's yucky. It tastes like coke until the end when it has that terrible tequila raw egg yolk essence. Truly, you can age your tequila in candy coated cola barrels and it won't taste good with coke. Let's get real.

*I actually don't intend to list my sources here.

[insert song lyric here..]

2008-01-21T15:14:00.000-03:00

So on February 2 I am boarding a plane and leaving this cold mess of a city behind for a week. Josh and I am going to land in San Francisco and drive down to LA. It's actually a totally thrilling, glamorous vacation to be going on. We're going to see lots of friends and some giant trees and the Pacific Coast in all it's mid-winter splendor. If you are a secret reader of this blog and you live in California let me know if you want to hang out. Or if you have a suggestion of something we totally must not miss (especially in the Santa Barbara area where we are planning to spend a night to drink some wine and break up the driving a bit). Let me know!