Well, That Was Unexpected

To sleep

2011-06-13T21:16:00.001-07:00

Priority 1 this week is to sleep at least 7 hours per night. I have a feeling that I've been too ambitious in my goals for each week, the sneaking suspicion that the goals I inevitably set out for a week are more like the goals for a month or a year...or a life.

A Julie-made to-do list (created over the length of any given plane flight) can variously contain some or all of these elements: eat well; sleep well; pray; read Bible/spiritual guidance; do one sudoku and one crossword a day to stave off Alzheimer's; read all HUD guidance that I've neglected to brush up on for the past 2 years; learn French; learn Spanish; practice Chinese; exercise; write letters to friends; pay bills; buy stuff I've been meaning, for months, to buy online; make a budget; watch movies on Netflix--indie ones, popular ones, foreign ones--especially Chinese ones to help with previous goal; update blog (this is a two-fer today); make more jewelry; sell already-made jewelry on etsy site (figure out way to take non-ghetto etsy pictures...and set up etsy site); take online classes in disaster relief; listen to TED talks; re-read Harry Potter series; read books of classic literature--up next Moby Dick and Pale Fire; practice for the LSAT; read the economist; read wired; plan trips abroad; call grandparents; write stories for Owen; post photos to Facebook...and I know I'm forgetting some that most likely have to do with fixing up my house and trying to get a roommate.

SO, this week I have one goal. sleep. that's it. I tried last night and it was sooo hard. My mind kept racing. funny things i wanted to post or email or text; thoughts like "should i take my vitamins now or in the morning?" but i was strong and stayed in bed. i think i slept for like 7hrs and 15 minutes. and i could tell in class that i was more alert. and by my diminished need for caffeination. i wonder how long it would take to make this a habit. i read an article that said humans have a finite amount of willpower, so if you use it on one thing, you lose the capacity for the next thing you want to be disciplined about. or, in my case, the next 40000 things.

we'll see. I will be deploying The Comfiest Shirt In The World. It's a black shirt so comfortable I prefer it to being naked. And I simply didn't think that was a statement I could utter.

I hope I have good dreams. A few nights ago I dreamt that I was eating pecans. So I bought some at the store roasted with salt. They are delicious. I wonder if pecans are the most flavorful nut. I also love almonds muchly...but mostly the blue diamond ones in salt & vinegar flavor, wasabi & soy sauce, habanero bbq, blazin buffalo wing...aka covered in delicious chemical crap. yummm. well. t-minus 15 minutes.

good night! xo

in transit and Happy year 100, taiwanese calendar!

2010-12-31T00:22:00.000-08:00

I'm only 11 hours into my trip and I'm already blogging about it. I'm pretty sure there's an excellent adage about narcissism that can be applied. I'm hoping it's less that than my being bored to death in Narita on my layover to Taipei. I also have a confession: I just paid 24 dollars for a rainbow roll. I completely and utterly failed to check the exchange rate and it said "New Year's Special, rainbow roll 2011 Yen" so I was thinking, in the US a good price for a rainbow roll would be 8-10 dollars and Japan has been in a recession. Anyway, upon realizing my folly, I spoke to the rainbow roll and said "you better be the best damn rainbow roll ever made, or else!" (I hadn't defined what "else" would be, but you can bet that the lady wearing the surgical mask who cheerfully sold the exorbitant roll to me would be involved.)anyway, luckily for all, it was the best damn rainbow roll ever made. I also bought chocolate covered potato chips made by some company called Royce who claim to "break down old customs and produce consistently original products". I wanted to save them for Ma Hartle, but they expire the day after I return, so I may need to share them with Yasmeen, my foodie soulmate, when we get to the wedding in Jaipur.

I realized when I woke up from my sleepy plane haze and was trying to arrange my Taipei activities, that I have been talking ad nauseum about the wonderful things I will eat in Taipei, but in arranging my days, it was actually catching up with people that I was craving, and I wasn't really hungry for food. And I thought that was quite nice because I would certainly rather be that type of person...And then I realized that apart from a few very close friends, I had really only announced my arrival by facebook. And, funny enough, that really isn't adequate. So now I have been sheepishly emailing people like "heeyy, I'm coming across the ocean today--want to meet up?" just in case they didn't get from my status updates on facebook that i was coming and would really like to catch up on how people have been. classy. cl-ASS-y

Slept through almost the entire 10 hour flight, which was good for my jetlag (I currently have no idea what time it is anywhere) and good because the American guy sitting next to me on the plane was terse and rude as hell (and this discerned just from interactions asking him to get up so I could go to the bathroom. I'm not chatty on planes.) Strangely, though, he kept single white femaling everything I ordered. how many non-Commonwealthers order sparkling water with lime and black tea at the same time? and then get beef and diet coke? only I can do that. Anyway, it was unsurprising that said man was reading a Hemingway book. Not all people who like Hemingway are assholes, but they're a high-risk population. I recently came up with a similar rule about Tom Waits when my friend tried to defend someone heinous just based on the fact that if he loved Tom Waits he couldn't be bad. au contraire, people. It also holds for Sufjan Stevens, whom I enjoy as much as I do Tom Waits. Good taste in music does not make you immune to assholery. That's a lesson. in addition to the greater lesson of this blog: check the exhange rate!

Well, it's New Year's Eve evening ( I just lost 17 hours in time change) and should be stepping out of my cab with just enough time to pour some champagne and witness the fireworks at Taipei 101 from Andrea's rooftop bay windows. I also realized (after Yvonne mentioned it) that this is the 100th anniversary of the Republic of China founded by the Guomindang, 1911 being the year zero on the Taiwan calendar. So the fireworks should be epic!

Happy New Year!

I love anything with a hint of bruslin, politics, or conceptual ketchup.

2010-10-12T23:57:00.000-07:00

Tonight we went to my favorite vegetarian restaurant in San Diego, which is rather nastily named "Spread." yes, ostensibly it's because of the many wonderful peanut and almond spreads that the owners lovingly make by hand (my favorites are the butterscotch peanut and the white chocolate almond espresso) or, sure, it could be like a spread, as in "that's quite a spread you've got for dinner." But really, really, we know what first comes to mind. Anyway, I love these people, they are very warm, their food is crazy delicious, and they are even huggers once they get to know you (i.e. you come in a second time). Today one of the menu offerings was fries with "conceptual ketchup." Dude, wtf. I was laughing so hard at this ridiculousness, but apparently it wasn't as funny to them as it was to me. And apparently this "conceptual ketchup" is all the rage on the Food Network. Man, I'm a foodie, but this to me is like when my bosses started using the word "leverage" and "synergize" too much. I roll my eyes. Anyway, everything was delicious, both conceptually and in reality.

I received a piece of mail from the tax assessors office today that was entitled "your property taxes and you." That sounds dangerously close to the title of a book I had to read in 5th grade sex ed. And this mailer was less titillating, though apparently by sending in their mailer I get 70 bucks off my property taxes. Huzzah. 70 dollars a year closer to paying off my hundreds of thousand of dollars mortgage. Seems miniscule, yet I fear that if I don't send it in my Mom will get enraged like she did once when I was 16 and was cleaning out the perennially overstuffed drawer by the home phone and I dumped a bunch of pennies in the trash. whoa. WHOA. She was like Ben Stiller's character Mr. Furious from Mystery Men, but when his powers actually kick in. I mean, I guess I did literally *throw money away!* Holy crap, what a spoiled American child. Needless to say, I have it stamped and ready to go.

It's election time, which means the time of year when I get agitated and perplexed that my parents are rational, kind human beings who are sincere Christians and yet vote in a manner so diametrically opposed to myself. I've been saying for years now that we are trying to get to the same place (world peace, helping the poor and widows, heaven on earth, etc.) but we have radically different ideas of how to get there. I tend to be much more cynical about people and think the government needs to take care of the poor because I believe I see evidence that the wider population will not. They believe they should keep their hard earned money and give to their church who will help the poor. and I don't believe that enough people who say they want to keep their money to give to the poor actually want to give to the poor. I believe they want to buy video games and boats. This does not stop us from all loving each other tremendously, evidenced both by frequent contact, support, and by them letting me steal their coffee when I run out. Still, as I sent in my mail-in ballot I basically knew I was offsetting the vote of at least my Mom. My Dad can be a wild card. He may watch the O'Reilly Factor, but he also loves Project Runway (and Tim Gunn) and Glee, so he's definitely got a bit of voting maverickness in him.

I asked on Twitter whether there was a word for the flavor of burnt/carmelized raisins because I love it so much. (I have to apologize to my Mom whose bread pudding I destroyed last night by picking out all the carmelized raisins and then puzzling the pudding pieces back together. I'm really to old for that, but...in an Amelie sort of way I may never be old enough.) Anyway, apparently there *isn't* a word for it. SO I decided to make one up. Like Shakespeare. The word for burnt/carmelized raisins is "bruslin." That's right. There was a bruslin Irish pastry I used to get at The Cheese Shop in Wellesley and I still sometimes dream about. See, it works.

Hunger Strike Manifesto, the June Second Hunger Strike Declaration by Liu Xiaobo

2010-10-11T17:35:00.000-07:00

I was trying to find a full online transcript/translation of Liu Xiaobo's Hunger Strike Manifesto and there are no full, free transcriptions. So, I decided to transcribe it myself. Future posts will still be my own little daily thoughts.

Liu Xiaobo, winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, wrote this during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. He wrote it as a manifesto for the hunger strike embarked upon by himself, Hou Dejian, Gao Xin, and Zhou Duo.

Hunger Strike Manifesto by Liu Xiaobo

We are on a hunger strike! We protest! We appeal! We repent!

Death is not what we seek; we are searching for true life.

In the face of the high-handed military violence of the Li Peng government, Chinese intellectuals must dispose of their age-old disease, passed down over centuries, of being spineless, of merely speaking and not acting. By means of action, we protest against military control; by means of action, we call for the birth of a new political culture; and by means of action, we express our repentance for the wrongs that have been the doing of our own age-old weakness. The Chinese nation has fallen behind; for this, each one of us bears his share of responsibility….
Our hunger strike is no longer a petition, but a protest against martial law and military control! We advocate the use of peaceful means to further democratization in China and to oppose any form of violence. Yet we do not fear brute force; through peaceful means, we will demonstrate the resilience of the democratic strength of the people, and smash the undemocratic order held together by bayonets and lies….
The thousands of years of Chinese history have been a story of violence met with violence, of learning to hate and be hated. Entering the modern era, this “enemy consciousness” [where one separates the enemy from the people] has become the legacy of the Chinese. The post-1949 slogan: “Take class struggle as they key link” has pushed to the extreme this traditional mentality of hatred, this enemy consciousness and the practice of meeting violence with violence. This time, the imposition of military control is but another manifestation of the political culture of “class struggle.” It is because of this that we are on a hunger strike; we appeal to the Chinese people that from now on they gradually discard and eradicate enemy consciousness and the mentality of hatred, and completely forsake “ our “class struggle” form of political culture, for hatred generates only violence and autocracy. We must use a democratic spirit of tolerance and cooperation to begin the construction of democracy in China. For democratic politics is a politics without enemies and without a mentality of hatred, a politics of consultation, discussion, and decision by vote based on mutual respect, mutual tolerance, and mutual accommodation. Since, as Premier, Li Peng has made grave mistakes, he should be made to resign according to democratic processes.
However, Li Peng is not our enemy; even if he steps down, he would still enjoy the rights that citizens should have, even the right to adhere to his mistaken beliefs. We appeal to all Chinese, from those in the government down to every ordinary citizen, to give up the old political culture and begin a new one. We ask that the government end martial law at once. We ask that both the students and the government once again turn to peaceful negotiation and consultative dialogue to resolve their differences.
The present student movement has received and unprecedented amount of sympathy, understanding, and support from all sectors of society. The implementation of martial law has turned a student movement into a national democracy movement. Undeniable, however is the fact that many of t hose who have supported the students have acted out of humanitarian sympathy and discontent with the government; they have lacked a citizen’s sense of political responsibility. Because of this, we appeal to all members of Chinese society to gradually drop the attitude of being onlookers and merely expressing sympathy. We appeal to you to acquire a sense of citizen consciousness. First of all, this citizen consciousness is the awareness that all citizens possess political rights. Every citizen must have the self-confidence that one’s own political rights are equal to the rights of the Premier. Next, citizen consciousness is a consciousness of rationalized political involvement—of political responsibility—not just a sense of justice and sympathy. It means that every man or woman cannot only express sympathy and support, but also must become directly involved in the construction of democracy. Finally, citizen consciousness means self-awareness of one’s responsibilities and obligations. In the construction of social politics bound by rationality and law, every one of us must contribute his part; likewise, where social politics are irrational and lawless, each bears his share of responsibility. Voluntary participation in the political life of society and voluntary acceptance of one’s responsibilities are the inescapable duties of every citizen. The Chinese people must see that, in democratized politics, everyone is first and foremost a citizen, and then a student, a professor, a worker, a cadre, or a soldier.
For thousands of years, Chinese society has followed a vicious cycle of overthrowing an old emperor just to put up a new one. History has shown t hat the fall of a leader who has lost the people’s support or the rise of a leader who has the backing of the people cannot solve China’s essential political problem. What we need is not a perfect savior, but a sound democratic system. We this call for the following: 1. All sectors of society should establish lawful, autonomous citizens’ organizations, and gradually develop these organizations into citizens’ political forces that will act to check government policy making, for the quintessence of democracy is the curbing and balancing of power. We would rather have ten monsters that are mutually restrained than one angel of absolute power. 2. by impeaching leaders who have committed serious errors, we should gradually establish a sound system for the impeachment of officials. Whoever rises and whoever falls is not important; what is important is how one ascends to or falls from power. An undemocratic procedure of appointment and dismissal can only result in dictatorship.
In the course of the present movement, both the government and the students have made mistakes. The main mistake of the government was that, conditioned by the outmoded political ideology of “class struggle,” it has chosen to take a stand in opposition to the great majority of students and residents, thus causing continuous intensification of the conflict. The main mistake of the students is that, because the organizing of their own organizations left much to be desired, many undemocratic elements have appeared in the process of striving for democracy. We therefore call on both the government and students to conduct level-headed self-examination. It is our belief that, on the whole, the greater fault for the present situation lies with the government. Actions, such as demonstrations and hunger strikes are democratic ways through which people express their wishes; they are completely legal and reasonable. They are anything but “turmoil.” Yet the government ignored the basic rights of the people granted by the Constitution; on the basis of its autocratic political ideology, it labeled the student movement as “turmoil.” This stand led to a series of wrong decisions, which then led to the growth of the movement and rising antagonism. The real catalyst for the turmoil is therefore the government’s wrong decisions, errors of a gravity no less than those of the “Cultural Revolution.” It was only due to the great restraint shown by the students and people of Beijing and the impassioned appeals from all sectors of society—including the Party, the government, and the military—that wide-scale bloodshed has been avoided. In view of this, the government must admit to and examine these mistakes that it has made. We believe that it is not yet too late to correct the mistakes. The government should draw some painful lessons from this major movement. It should learn to become accustomed to listening to the voice of the people, to allowing people to express their desires through the exercise of constitutionally granted rights, and to governing the country in a democratic way. The nationwide movement for democracy is a lesson for the government in how to govern society by means of democracy and rule of law.
The students’ mistakes are mainly manifested in the internal chaos of their organizations and the lack of efficient and democratic procedures. Although their goal is democracy, their means and procedures for achieving democracy are not democratic. Their theories call for democracy, but their handling of specific problems is not democratic. Their lack of cooperative spirit and sectarianism that has caused their forces to neutralize each other have resulted in all their policies coming to naught. More faults can be named: financial chaos; material waste; an excess of emotion and lack of reason; too much of the attitude that they are privileged and not enough belief in equality; and so on. In the last hundred years, the great majority of Chinese people’s struggles for democracy has remained at the level of ideological battles and slogan shouting. Enlightenment is much talked about, but little is said about the actual running of a democracy. Goals are discussed, but not the means, the procedures, or process through which they will be achieved. We believe that the actual realization of a democratic political system lies in the democratization of the process, means, and procedures of operating such a system. For this, we appeal to the Chinese people to forsake this tradition of “empty democracy,” a democracy of only ideology, slogans, and abstract goals, and begin the construction of the process, means, and procedures for operation of a democracy. We ask you to transform a democratic movement focused on ideological enlightenment into a movement of democracy in action; this must be done by starting with each specific matter. We call for the students to begin a self-examination that should focus on the overhaul and reorganization of the student groups in Tiananmen Square.
The government’s grave mistakes in its approach were also reflected in the use of the term “a handful of persons” to refer to participants in the protests. Through our hunger strike we would like to tell the media, at home and abroad, who this so-called “handful of persons” really are: they are not a bunch of students, but citizens with a sense of political responsibility who have voluntarily participated in the present nationwide democratic movement led by the students. All we have done and all we are doing is lawful and reasonable. In this combat of opposing political cultures, of character cultivation and of moral strength, the hunger strikers intend to use their wisdom and actions to make the government feel shamed, to make it admit and correct its wrongdoings. We also intend to encourage the autonomous student organizations to improve themselves daily in accordance with democratic and legal procedures.
It must also be acknowledged that democratic governance of the country is unfamiliar to every Chinese citizen. And every Chinese citizen, including the highest officials in the Party and the government, must learn it from the bottom up. In this learning process, mistakes by both the government and the people are inevitable. The key is to admit mistakes when they become evident and to correct them after they appear; to learn from our mistakes and turn them into positive lessons; and, during the continuous process of rectifying our mistakes, to learn gradually how to govern the country democratically.
We don’t have enemies!
Don’t let hatred and violence poison wisdom and the process of democratization in China!
We must all carry out self-examination!
Everyone bears a responsibility for the backwardness of China!
We are above all citizens!
We are not seeking death!
We are searching for true life!

--Liu Xiaobo, Ph.D in Literature, Assistant Professor, Chinese Department, Beijing Normal University
--Zhou Dou, former Assistant Professor, Sociology Research Institute, Beijing University, Director, Comprehensive Planning Division, Beijing Stone Corporation Group
--Hou Dejian, well-known composer and song writer
--Gao Xin, former Chief Editor of Normal University Weekly, Party member

Thwarting the feral tampon, the cruncher, and James Bond

2010-09-16T21:28:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm happy to report that New Orleans hasn't been a total shit sandwich.

Speaking of food, actually, apparently, unnoticed by me, one of my trainees eats constantly. As in, so constantly that the woman sitting next to her moved seats because she couldn't pay attention with all that crunching next to her. I didn't know why the first woman had moved; I assumed she was under the AC vent. Anyway, crunching lady didn't know the real reason the first woman had moved was her loud munching, and the next day, she too had moved to the back, to the row in front of her former seatmate. At lunch I was filled in that no one in the back had been able to concentrate because of this woman's deafening crunching. So I started paying attention, and it is absolutely true. Yesterday it was pork rinds and candy, today a huge bag of cookies and cheese puffs. In fact, her book rests on unopened treasures of snacks. This whole saga is providing no end of amusement, most vividly today when I was helping the poor woman who can't escape the cruncher, and the cruncher brushed some cheese puff unawaredly onto my shoe and I was laughing so hard I could barely compose myself. I have to say, I'm kind of in awe of the cruncher. I mean, she is surely rotting from the inside out and we all probably have contact-high cholesterol just from being near her, but girlfriend isn't even plus-sized. and she's like 60, so way to go her.

Speaking of lady stuff and my training class, Monday I was talking to the woman in charge of my band of young recruits and I meant to pull out a pen and instead pulled out a feral tampon! My eyes widened to the size of that crazy dreadlocked guy who got kicked off of Top Chef DC on the 1st episode. Luckily, I think she was looking away. But this led me to round up the rest of them in an attempt to thwart their feralness from embarrassing me again. It's not just that it's unsavory to be grasping tampons in one's purse, but also that those suckers are like gold. They're expensive! They're coveted. Just ask expats in developing countries. So I have a new commitment to herding up and removing tampons as soon as they are unneeded and before they can double thwart me with embarrassment and financial penalty.

In LAX as I was waiting for my plane to come out here to NOLA, the terminal was playing You Only Live Twice, the intrumental version. This reminded me of the many family vacations we took in which the James Bond themes, instrumental and with lyrics, were some of the only CDs we agreed on. James Bond, Roxette, and Rebecca St. James. Classic. Anyway, I feel that my encyclopedic knowledge of James Bond themes should come in handy, as a way to lull intruders, heal infants in intensive care, or at least win some pub trivia. This might be the brainwashing talking (or the minor chords), but I think listening to them more would make my life seem more exciting. Having Daniel Craig come on all my business trips would also make life more exciting. But I digress.

I wonder how James Bond would deal with the massive discrepancy in education standards around the country? I've become frustratedly enraged about this problem again. Because good, competent people with perfectly functioning brains are graduating with diplomas that are worth crap. Example: I have a wonderfully engaging man in my class. He is sweet, articulate, smart, he has a high position, and I may have a teensy weensy crush on him...but we get to the math-related portion of the class and all comprehension is out the window. The sparkle in the eye is gone, fear and hopelessness reign, I feel like he watched me shoot his favorite puppy. The authority he had has vanished. All I'm asking is for him to follow instructions and do some division. Argh, how does one even get in this fight? Law school? I've been thinking of law school. Can I sue the whole country? It's not just that empirically I know my students from the South by-and-large have poorer test scores and comprehension skills. It's the feeling...knowing that they will find the test harder than their coastal counterparts. The discrepancy makes me feel like I'm in India where 5 star hotels are next to people living in slums with no clean water. I know I am asking them to do comprehension tasks that they haven't been prepared to do, but which the laziest dunkin donuts coffee slinger in Vermont could do while texting and taking a nap. and I can't go back and start them from 3rd grade. There's class issues involved, there're racial issues. ugh. I love the idea of the meritocracy of the US and that mythology...maybe I'm a big communist, but I really wish there was a more level playing field to jump off from.

OCD, white nectarines, and New Orleans

2010-09-08T14:53:00.000-07:00

It's a telltale sign that I must be in the office when I suddenly become obsessed with ridding my hair of split ends. Almost every time my office mate has left the room today I have had the scissors in hand, dissecting out the offensive ends of my hair. Question: Is this disgusting? I have a feeling it is. I also feel that somehow my office environment is to blame for this unexpected descent into OCD.

Speaking of psychological issues, I think I must have been hypnotized at some time in my life regarding white nectarines. You know how serial killers have to buy Catcher in the Rye? (or at least Mel Gibson's character did in that movie Conspiracy Theory, which brings me to the frightening question: am I going to evolve into a crazy conspiracy theorist, or worse...Mel Gibson?) I have that same compulsion with white nectarines. If I see them, I have to buy at least one. I may or may not eat it, but it's like I get twitchy if I don't. I don't even really sit and debate it, I just buy it, like it's inevitable. I usually eat them, but sometimes I don't, and that's okay, because I'm just happy they're around. I mean, sweet God, they taste like what good peaches are supposed to taste like, but never do. I've finally just eaten the ones I bought 3 days ago, all is right with the world, sort of.

By "sort of" I refer to the fact that, of course, I will now have to buy more nectarines, natch, and also that yesterday I was given a class in New Orleans for which I have to fly out on Sunday. This coming Sunday. This makes me want to clench my fists and throw a childish tantrum. This is going to take some emotional steeling. Partly because I expected to be home for another week and I know no one in New Orleans, which is a crappy place to not know anyone, and partly because the New Orleans vibe is so forceful and emotionally taxing. Even the ubiquitous drive-thru Daiquiri stands, which make a rather forceful libation, do not soothe enough. I want to crawl in bed and make Brad Pitt go for me.

Oh well, as a parting pep up for the Julie, I will give a gift to bless us all. My friend, Devika, gifted me with two amazing videos I felt needed sharing because they should at least make you laugh, if not feel mindblown. Both feed, in their own special ways, into my Russophilia. The first is Rasputin, by Boney M, which features a man with an Afro and his genie-clad backup singers discoing it up about, who else?, Rasputin

The second is a German song by Dschingis Khan about Moscow, spelled, Moskau, with some crazy awesome outfits and dancing.

I'm a little secret service teapot

2010-09-03T17:05:00.000-07:00

When I was in Taiwan I used to teach English to the Taiwanese equivalent of the secret service. Highly trained professionals who could kill me at any moment. One of my best friends was the woman who led the detail for all wives of visiting world leaders. But, and this really could explain much of Taiwan, they were also some of the sweetest, cutest people ever. And they liked me to teach them songs. One of their favorites was "I'm a little teapot." I guess it has something to do with their love of tea, gestures, and anything we would consider "cute". Anyway, I'm facebook friends with the man who was the leader of the group. And he just posted a video of me performing "I'm a little teapot" at a tea plantation. It's pretty embarrassing, but knowing the audience really makes the thing worthwhile. I perform children's songs for trained killers.

In other news, I've been reading Brain Candy by Garth Sundem, and it really is a wealth of interesting information. Some of my favorite tidbits: 1. July is Mad Pride Month. Mad, as in, insane. So, find your favorite person with a mental disability and go to town next July. The possibilities here are really endless. I just wonder how one would organize a parade for this sort of thing....2. It is possible that cat lovers have actually ingested a parasite, toxoplasma gondii, that lives in cat guts, and if they have, the parasite basically makes them sexually attracted to cats. I really like this explanation because it gives a reason for the madness and I have a newfound pity for my cat loving friends.

Erv's death and buckthorns

2010-08-22T20:14:00.000-07:00

Oh, I generally have the hateful relationship with my body that American women are socialized to have. I wish I was smaller, taller, a baller, all that. But yesterday we were sifting through the remnants of my grandfather's things after he died from cancer, pneumonia, and spite; there were piles of thermometers, Ben Gay, Mucinex, pills, maalox...virtually nothing was functioning correctly at the end of his life and, in addition to feeling sorry for him and his certain confusion at going out so lamely, I have been having moments where I keep thinking "praise Jesus for my wonderfully functioning body." I do all sorts of crap to it: I eat processed fakeness, then organic, I diet, I gorge, I poison it (a lot, but not on purpose) and it still works. It hikes 15 miles, it digests, it has pain when it's supposed to, it responds to painkillers like it should. It just works. So, August 22, 2010. Love and thanks for the body I will surely despise in mere days. Yay corpus!

Dealing with an estate after death is surreal. Things that all had a purpose, maybe a mad, ridiculous purpose, but a purpose nonetheless; you know, it was liked, or it was interesting, or it was smoked, or whittled, or delicious...now it's just useless crap for other people to sift through and decide to sell or throw away. Can I eat a dead man's Cheez-Its?

We're to take all the possessions of my Grandma's that Grandpa had kept. I have come into an incredible amount of costume jewelry. The most valuable thing I have found so far is her wallet that had her IDs and pictures. She died when I was five, of all sorts of shit, but there are many vivid stories, and keepsakes, of how she loved me intensely for those 5 years, so I am always trying to figure her out and grab any clues that remain. New things always come out in the reminiscing. I hope I can hold onto them long enough to write them down and reconstruct them. I wonder if it will just be something that will be deleted once I'm dead. We've also come into some paintings done by her biological mother, one of which is a most hideous painting of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, still hanging on Grandpa's wall (can't have made an already cranky man any happier, could it?). Dad's side is full of all sorts of tangled lineage. Anyway, I've been thinking more about Grams than Gramps, and since the best thing about him was how devoted he was to her, honoring her is sort of like remembering him. Or the best part of him anyway.

Today we went into Glacier National Park to go up the North Fork to visit our beloved Polebridge Mercantile and Gramps' favorite lake, Kintla Lake (aka the only lake he ever said anything positive about). We stopped along the way because we saw the most incredible huckleberry patch. We picked over a gallon of huckleberries marveling at how neither professional pickers nor grizzly bears had found this trove. I was all ready to use Mom's recipe to make pie and go on Punk Domestics to find some tips and recipes for jam. I'm so rarely domestic, but huckleberries are something you can get me really excited about. We got home and tried a few of them...and they tasted like a chemical burn. Like what I imagine napalm in a berry would taste like. Because they weren't huckleberries at all, but buckthorns. which the ethnobotany desk reference online has helpfully informed me are totally poisonous and used as purgatives. Which is why my stomach has been cramping ever since. But, yay corpus for responding correctly to poisonous berries!

To know me is to fly with me

2010-04-19T22:01:00.000-07:00

I'm on week 2 of 6 straight on the road and there is a baby screaming behind me. I am trying to remember, with that sort of practical, survival-of-the-species mentality that I think women can tap into more easily than men, that we do in fact need to transport our children across the country with us and that it really isn’t okay to sedate them and put them in dog carriers with the luggage.

The woman next to me is confidently fatter than I am, and by that I mean that she is splayed all about as if it is perfectly fine to be all up in surrounding passengers’ business. I am both impressed and impaired. I usually try to sort of diminish myself ashamedly and nearly every week when I travel, I think, “I will exercise. I will eat very little this week so that I can melt into my apportioned seat size posthaste.” I feel sort of bad because she is definitely getting the short stick in our mountain of softness. Her velour track suit is like a warm blanket, where I have started wearing only semi-comfortable, stiff, professional clothing on flights ever since my luggage was lost and had to buy clothes at a Super Wal-mart. So now I always travel wearing something in which I could potentially present.

So I enjoy turbulence. I was discussing with a seatmate that despite the statistical safety of flight, I figure if we’re staying up we’re staying up and if we’re going down we’re going down and turbulence is fun, like a rollercoaster. So why not enjoy it.

Connected through Houston to get to Brownsville/South Padre Island. Had my favorite brie, chicken apple crepe and made a long stop in the beauty lounge. Those ladies will rue the day they left the Lancôme area alone like it was my own private anti-aging boudoir. Of course my face is now like a shiny beacon of expensive products. It’s really not attractive. But on flight days I could sort of care less. I also experimented with an unfortunate bouquet of perfumes and I think I smell like rotten alcohol. By the way, what is this whole DNA-related beauty trend about?

the word "daddy" gives me the creeps

2010-01-12T17:03:00.000-08:00

Well, I am sufficiently creeped out by the song on here at the coffee shop: It sounds to be some sort of warbling classic "oh my heart belongs to daddy, yes my heart belongs to daddy, so i just couldn't be bad, because my heart belongs to daddy because he treats it so weeeeeeellllll". Mmm the warbler is Eartha Kitt. Okay, so informing my designation of this song as the pedophilia anthem du jour is the fact that I have been reading this book about awoman who developed 17 personalities in response to the most gruesome abuse I've ever read about, at the hands of her father and grandfather and uncle and their friends and church members. It would seem too horrible to be true if it weren't a memoir of sorts told by her psychotherapist. I can't believe they managed to get more than one grown woman to sing this bag o' inappropriateness.

In other news, I've been choosing paint colors and it's like excruciating. I was looking at a pleasant orange color and the more and more i thought about it the more I realized that what was cute on a swatch would be positively horrific in person. and frankly I don"t know that the color I have chosen is going to be all that much better. But it feels lighter..in my MIND! The paint guy was like "uh, yeah, that's going to be bright." I'm so thankful for finally having a place of my own, but can I tell you that the most exhausting thing is all the decisions. I can't make decisions to save my life. I mean even in the best of times I am indecisive, but at the worst of times I am positively crippled! Light fixtures, dishes, paint colors, beds, door handles. I think some people would love this. I'm exhausted!

I'm sitting in the most perfectly sized chair right now. It's amazing. This whole new world of furniture and design has opened up to me. I never really paid any attention to it before. Now I am noticing paint colors and wood grains.

anyway, here are the lyrics of the inappropriate song. enjoy!
I used to fall in love with all those boys who maul the young cuties
But now I find I’m more inclined to keep my mind on my duties.

While tearing off a game of golf
I may make a play for the caddy
But when I do, I don’t follow through
‘cause my heart belongs to Daddy.

If I invite a boy some night
To dine on my fine finnan haddie
I just adore his asking for more
But my heart belongs to Daddy

Yes my heart belongs to Daddy
So I simply couldn’t be bad
Yes, my heart belongs to Daddy
Da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da
So I want to warn you, laddie
Though I know you’re perfectly swell
But my heart belongs to Daddy
‘cause my Daddy he treats it so well

There was a dame that a football game
Made long for the strong undergraddie
I never dream of making the team
‘cause my heart belongs to daddy

Yes, my heart belongs to Daddy
So I simply couldn’t be bad
Yes, my heart belongs to Daddy
Da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da
So I want to warn you, laddie
Though I know you’re perfectly swell
That my heart belongs to Daddy
‘cause my Daddy, he treats it so well

i meant to write more and then i didn't! but i still need decorating advice.

2009-12-14T19:11:00.000-08:00

1. I am in escrow. This is super exciting and am totally overwhelmed by decorating needs. I have no furniture and i want to paint before i move in. It's a 2 bedroom on the border of a nice neighborhood and a not so nice neighborhood. I am accepting ideas for colors and advice!

2. I have to clean out my purse almost every other day. and every single time there is at least one unwrapped tampon and i find at least one hair band that i was looking for for like 2 weeks...even though i clean out my purse almost every other day. How can you lose a blistex you bought 5 minutes ago?

3. I have started making crazy amounts of jewelry. almost exclusively earrings. It is extremely therapeutic. I now have even more respect for those chinese miniaturists who wrote the works of confucious on mustard seeds or whatever.

I am in love with John Gruden.

and i'm back and bitterer than ever

2009-10-10T07:56:00.000-07:00

Today I wished death upon a woman for not knowing which airline she was flying on. We boarded the rental car shuttle and the driver asked which airline and she said "i don't know, let me look it up" and i thought clearly in my mind, "i hope you ddiiiiiieeee, moron." and i resented her pastel native american fleece jacket. typically i am not a rageful person. but it was merely 10 am and already was like one of the uber shitty life days that needs a serious re-do. i woke up at 3am to drive from long island to philly to catch my 730 am flight. had been driving along smoothly until we got stopped for a really bad accident on the new jersey turnpike. while we were going 2 miles per hour i saw the man in front of me open his car door to puke. Then after leaving the area of the accident about a mile later the tire that had been low earlier in the week and which a very lovely housing authority inspector had patched up, blew out again. on the new jersey turnpike. i may keep repeating that. because only new jersey turnpike authorized repair people are allowed on the pike and therefore the roadside assistance could not come out and help me. the scary toothless long-haired man named rudy who finally showed up to fix the tire had bad eyesight and couldnt figure out the VW spare tire kit. which forced me to get the car towed. which forced me to miss my flight. not helpful: the man who finally fixed my tire kept pointing out how easy it was to figure out how to change the spare and loudly wondering why toothless rudy couldnt figure it out. *mental note...i know in my mind how to change a flat, but i'm just not confident on dark turnpikes. might need to practice late night in san diego. this is clearly a necessary life skill*

anyway, the whole experience was just a pathetic display of why optimism is so overrated. dancing along at 330 a.m. in my car i was imagining my status updates on various social networks as "drove from LI to PHL, flew to SD and took owen to legoland, all in a day's work." but instead all i am doing today is flying to san diego and being bitter about the new jersey turnpike. i can still take owen to legoland tomorrow. but all other activities that needed to get done this weekend are pretty much moot.

so my first blog in months is full of frustration. maybe it makes sense. i once read a quote from a poet (i think) who said no one would ever write when they were happy because they were too busy being happy. not that i've been super busy being happy and that's why i havent blogged. in fact, this last week i spent most of my days exhausted in my hotel room zoning out on televised sports, online scrabble, and eating various foods, many of which were dips and generally not made of natural ingredients. on two nights i actually swigged some buffalo sauce from the bottle. i looked atrocious nearly every day, had clear pillow streaks as i looked at myself in the hotel elevator mirror, and yet got hit on by two construction men who were part of a larger contingent of massachusetts construction workers stationed in brookhaven to build a budweiser plant. and it made me feel *worse*. at one point i was on an elevator with 6 men all of whom were toting budweiser 12 packs. and even though, due to their genetic east coastness, many of my participants rolled their eyes at other people's questions and were mildly hostile at various points, this was apparently a way of showing appreciation for my instruction and i got some of the best reviews i've had yet. hilarious. i actually had a lot of fun with them (east coasters (northern east coasters) are funnier than any other subset of people in the US). and i again posit that while people on the east coast are internally kind human beings, they just don't show it on the outside.

The night before i checked out i encountered a clearly russian woman who had also clearly learned all the english she knew from someone with a heavy new york accent and that linguistic baby is something i wish someone else had been around to digest aurally.

i hadn't blogged because every time i went to do it i was paralyzed by giving full life updates. but now it has been long enough that i don't think it is necessary. i may at some point get around to posting summaries of my india pics. but maybe not. anyway, time to figure out what to do with myself for 5 hours until my flight. the new jersey turnpike.

The post from a few months ago and my cal ripken spotting

2009-06-21T11:25:00.000-07:00

I think the complexity of me can be explained well in a few incidents that took place on my long walk from concourse B to concourse F of O'Hare airport. The summary is this: I bought a 4 dollar Chicago hot dog for lunch and then 47 dollars worth of gourmet experimental chocolates. The chocolate with bacon is pairing nicely with my daily coffee. And then *and then* the dudes next to me spotted Cal Ripken Jr.! and I was the only one with the guts to make an ass of myself and go over and get this picture and 2 autographs:

And may I say I never would have done that if I hadn't known Andrea Brodesbastke because she is the one who was like, "Oh please, celebrities love that kind of thing" because she is basically a celebrity in Taipei. So as long as you don't like interrupt them in the bathroom or if we arent all mobbing them, you know, they like it. So I go on this. And no one was around him. And the worst that can happen is that either it isn't him, or it's him and he doesnt give autographs. Well, it was him and he gives autographs. The guys next to me were like, taking pics with camera phones, and I was thinking, I would like it better to be directly approached than to know people are capturing me without my permission. I say that having been involuntarily photographed by many a Chinese person at Tiananmen Square and other parts of Asia. So anyway, I inspired the boys. and then maybe they were slightly lined up. whatever. Cal is a pretty nice dude. bluest eyes ever. gave me AND dad an autograph.

whirlwind begins

2009-04-14T09:59:00.000-07:00

we have only been in india for 3 days, but it feels like weeks. i definitely did not schedule us on the quality of life tour. that said, we are having a pretty fun time with lots of adventure. we are in jodhpur and tomorrow are heading off to see teh floating palaces of udaipur.

today we took the last of our animal rides--that would be a camel ride through the desert. sounds romantic and exotic? reminded us a little bit of el centro. i decided that it might be my life calling to open up a camel ride outfit in el centro.

anyway, elephants a few days ago were pretty cool going up to the amber fort which was totally amazing and had lots of incredible inlay work and tunnels and cool passages. sadly a lot of teh cool architecture we have been observing has to do with a long history of keeping women secluded and away from all society. like awesome little windows so they can peek down at the society they cant partake in. so they have these big gorgeous buildings in which they were held virtual prisoner. yeah, this country isnt really magical or anything--there are a lot of free roaming cows, pigs, and trash. but i do not wish to take away from them their hot turbans, fabulous music, and awesome fashion. corinne and i have been taking full advantage of the opportunity to wear as many accessories as possible. anyway, off to see more rajasthan. many many pictures will be albumized and posted.

in a mirror darkly

2009-04-08T17:11:00.000-07:00

I am sitting on a gold couch in the Blackstone hotel in Chicago. Design-wise this hotel is the Singapore airlines of hotels. I am in love with it. Not the pimp gold couch necessarily, but definitely my incredible room and bathroom. if it was just a little larger and had a terry cloth robe it would be nearly taj like.

argh, so i get this email from the International Justice Mission today: Beginning this week, 300 new IJM Freedom Partners will have their first year’s giving matched dollar-for-dollar – enabling IJM to rescue more victims of slavery, sex trafficking, sexual violence and illegal land seizure.

as if i needed to have more shit(aka wonderful, lifegiving organizations) to tithe to. you know what i have realized? i am not cheap. i thought i was cheap, because see, there is something about the matching aspect of this opportunity that really speaks to me. the two-for-oneness of it. but actually, and if you have met me for any length you will recognize this: i am not that concerned about saving money. but i am very concerned with cheating the system. and if there is a chance to do twice the amount of good with my money and cheat this poor matching donor sap out of his/her money, well, i find that VERY compelling. at first i was like, wow, why is it THIS that is pushing me over the edge to reorganize my budget for IJM? and i was thinking, i bet it's because i like a good deal. but not really. it's because i want to steal something that isnt mine.

that reminds me of a story from when i lived in taiwan. melissa needed help with something and since i was virtually taskless, i told her i would help. but i wasnt supposed to. and i told melissa that by pretending this was a highly illicit and secret activity i would be much more excited about it. she indulged me by passing it to me quickly and referring to it in euphemisms. and it was one of the highlights of my work life. well, the intrigue. clearly i cant remember what it was i actually did for her.

corinne and i leave for india on friday. we are so excited. the only non-exciting thing is that we will be away from owen for so long. and trying to explain such things is just futile. for example, he came with corinne to drop me off at the airport. he wanted to come on the plane with me, and i said i wished he could and that i wish i could put him in my suitcase. and when he kept insisting, i told him (because i don't speak 4 year old, okay) "going on plane trips is very special and expensive and would cost a lot of money and i can't take you this time, but i would like to someday, let's plan on it" the concepts of "i wish i could" and someday and plan are totally lost on him. and he kept crying and so corinne gave him a penny at which point he said that now we had money to pay for him. and i said no, honey i can't. at which point he was bawling uncontrollably and i said "i'm sorry owen, i can't...it's not my fault" and he said "yes yes, it IS your fault, it is ALL your fault". which is hilarious but sort of true. i mean, if i REALLY wanted to take him on my trip, i suppose i could have paid for a ticket for him and babysitters while i am training. well, now that i think about it..i probably would have needed ID for him, right? anyway, i love the freedom and honesty of the four year old. yes, it is your fault. it is YOUR fault that i am sad and YOUR fault i cant go on the airplane. it reminded me uncomfortably of some accusations i may or may not have thrown at one God of the universe perhaps in the not so distant past. i'm not sure if i hope God sympathetically laughs at/with me like i laughed at owen. oh, how adorable she is with her limited perspective and understanding, awwwwwwwwww. there is also the question if god tries (like a particular auntie) to forcibly kiss the julie while crying and if, in my way, i am like "noooo kisses, noooo kisses! it is all YOUR FAULT."(like a particular four year old). perhaaaaaaapppppssss?

i would like to present you with a gift: a picture of myself.

2009-04-01T21:11:00.001-07:00

One of my favorite memories to date involves a trip to St. Petersburg. As we were walking through the Hermitage looking at...Van Eyke? Charity recounted a story about Czarina katherine the great in which she managed to convince some idiotic English dignitary to part with 13 Van Eykes (or something) in exchange for one portrait of...HERSELF! it's a story that always make sme chuckle, even if i have the details wrong. it just sounds right. and is so russian. well, queen elizabeth totally pulled a catherine the great when meeting with barack obama. he and michelle gave the queen a personalized ipod with video footage of some nostalgic trip she took through virginia to see the land her predecessors lost, and they also gave her a rare songbook. She in turn gave barack and michelle a signed portrait of HERSELF! and prince philip, the afterthought. hysterical. i've often wished i had the chutzpah to offer such a trade myself. maybe at starbucks: I don't have any funds, but i will trade you an americano for the chance to take a digital photo with me. how bout it?

so speaking of outrageousness. wait. before i say anything else. to my great shame, i forgot to mention the glorious meeting I had with shannon and kim in new hampshire. and it really is remiss after they drove an hour each way and in fact ferried me around godforsaken nashua to find feminine products. in fact, since we lamely forgot to take a picture of the 3 of us, this will have to do until our next meetup:

i love you girls, i love you more than hugo chavez. and shans, i was thinking of you today when the hotel gym was suddenly filled with lanky, crazy junior high or early high school boys from one of the million booker t washington schools in the country. and of course it was the one day since last november where i wore my hillary clinton for president shirt. rats, so much for solidarity.

in other news, today sam and i went out to get dinner. we had seen a brazilian steakhouse we were going to try but it was SO INSANELY COLD outside that we thought we would die if we had to walk another block and that's when we spotted a mortons a block away and decided to go there instead. yeah, we just happened in on the mortons. um, so mortons is really expensive in case you didn't know. we nearly walked out. but then we realized that if we eat really really cheaply the rest of the week, we can probably swing it. God in heaven. yes, it was the best steak i have ever had. or at least as good as the other best steak i have ever had, which i think might be the peppercorn butter steak at chaya. whatever. it was insane and so very awesome. so while i am guessing i don't have an iron deficiency, this did absolutely nothing to help my stupid high cholesterol. in fact i believe i had a case of angina just sitting there.

p.s. my travel agent in india added me on her gmail chat list so she can talk travel without me using my screechy skype. and she always has these uber cheesy inspirational sayings as her status. yesterday was "Believe in yourself" and today's is "consider things from every angle." thank you, my daily fortune cookie. but, if you are going to be a fortune cookie, have the decency to be one that actually predicts stuff. like, "luck will find you next tuesday." or "you will find yourself on an elephant ride on april 18th"

lying on the floor, you found me, you found me

2009-03-30T12:25:00.000-07:00

i am on week 4 of the 8 week travel extravaganza. i am sitting on the floor of the denver airport. i felt so glorious after my flight out of SD had been delayed, and yet i was one of the only people who had enough time to still make their connection. only to arrive at the gate and find that the plane i reached in such a timely manner has some major mechanical failure and now, for snow-unrelated reasons, i find myself sharing the only active outlet near our gate with a man charging his ipod. and me on the floor. on top of this, i ruefully realized that both of my phone chargers are in my checked baggage. and my phone is dead. kaputska!

why are there two amish farmer looking men wearing nehru collared suits at my gate?

other people in colorado are so hilariously active looking. all fleeced out and puffy vested and with utilitarian shoes.

last week in new york was a crazy chaotic mess work-wise, which turned out ok in the end, as so many messes seem to do. there were bright spots though, personally--i ate twice at les halles, the french restaurant at which tony bourdain was head chef for many years, i met up with misha again (who reminded me why i love my friends so dearly, when she requested, instead of going to the palms to indulge in their steak and lobster for 2 for 89.00 special as i suggested as a treat, that we go to applebees and indulge in the quesadilla burger which she had been craving for months.) also met up with moriah, an old friend from high school and we had way too good a conversation, because it lasted for over 6 hours and that meant we drank a detrimental amount of red wine. totally worth it, but just for general friend knowledge, low carb diets and red wine are not an excellent combination in the end. the end meaning the next day.

it was discovered yesterday at a bridal shower that i have been doing the low carb thing wrong (not being intensely low carb enough, and drinking alcohol occasionally, and eating too many stupid tomatoes, which i don't even like that much) and that is why the weight is more like slowly shaving off rather than dramatically melting and falling off. luckily that wasnt totally the point, the point was more to be off sugar for lent, which was done fairly successfully. i definitely notice the effect of any sugar that unexpectedly makes it into my food and everything tastes sweeter. but we are getting to the end of lent and i am about to go to india and so i want to transition on to weight watchers. i feel this is particularly necessary since i recently found out that i have high cholesterol. boo. i turn 30 and thus begins my parade of health problems.

I see your Escort and I raise you an El Camino

2009-03-04T16:40:00.000-08:00

So I was reading yet another crazy article today about some arsonist in Oregon who has a vendetta against Ford Escorts.

My little sister Lauren (whom, in very russian fashion, can also be known amongst our family as: Lol or Lolly, which are short for Lollipop which is the accepted nickname for Lauren, as is the more traditional, Laur)and I wholeheartedly agreed that while we would never choose to drive a Ford Escort, if we were to systematically firebomb a certain type of car in an unquenchable vendetta of flame, that car would definitely be the El Camino.

what a fugly car. now that would be a public service.

I feel something in the air tonight...is it the Alamo?

2009-03-04T08:56:00.001-08:00

So, when I was perusing the morning news, I came across the headline "Collins stops singing to focus on Alamo" and I was wondering what Alamo they were referring to because it did not remotely occur to me that it could be referring to the actual historical American Alamo in Texas. And yet it was. This is the AWESOME article about crazy phil collins. He's going to be like that eccentric old grail obsessor in the Da Vinci Code. Or the American guy in Possession who set up an institute to William Randolph Ash in New Mexico. Look at the group of people he is speaking to this weekend. Hysterical.

I wonder how much clout the International Criminal Court has in arresting and prosecuting the president of Sudan? I mean, it's a great move and highly worthwhile, I hope it isn't just symbolic. I hope whenever he sets foot out of his country they grab the s.o.b., or in his country, I don't care.

In other news, I love the chubby dance that the two msn chat characters do as you are logging in. It's like two fat penguins engaging in an elizabethan dance. circle circle, don't touch!

Oh how do I love my origins ginger perfume? I want to eat myself.

the man with the steel ball

2009-03-03T08:46:00.000-08:00

mmm, for your breakfast enjoyment, a snippet of jim wallis and his moral analysis of the new budget. It isn't very detailed, just an overview of why he thinks the budget is a step in the right direction, morally.

so yesterday my grandpa (Hartle, of fur-lined lingerie fame) broke his hip kind of badly tripping on a piece of rogue carpeting that was upturned in their house. so we went to see him and my quasi grandma in the hospital. gramps was totally out of it, but grams said that he had been in extraordinary pain the whole day. so that was totally vexing, not to mention the whole curse of the broken hip in which an extraordinary amount of people die within 2 years after hips breaking. there are a few things going for grandpa. one is that if he hadnt met my quasi grandma 20 years ago he would surely have already died many many moons ago. so i would say the last 15 years have all been bonus. another is that his unstoppable humor will aid him. yesterday when in severe pain he was still cracking all sorts of lewd jokes about how he now has a steel ball in his body. he also had the capacity to mess with one of the nurses who looked at his wristband and asked "what's your name?" and he said "ivan blesemovitch" and she looked perplexed and said, please say that again, and he repeats "ivan blesemovitch" and then he finally says, ok, ok, dan hartle." and there's my grandma, playing the straight woman. they crack me up. anyway, it's going to be brutal recovery for him trying to walk again.

well, i have to go and force my officemate to listen to me prattle on and on about eligibility and fair housing for the housing choice voucher program.

the mandarin reel and the bbc

2009-02-23T15:16:00.000-08:00

I am listening to my various daily podcasts: right now it is the bbc world news telling me about how these are the worst days in history for the tamil tigers. desperate days! MIA's father is a Tamil tiger. The people in Chennai where Charity is living right now speak Tamil. These are my Tamil ties. It makes me think of Bridget Jones: Chechnya, Chech-NYA..."so what do you think about this situation in chechnya, is it an absolute nightmare?" hugh grant: "oh, i couldn't give a f@$k, Jones."

Now the story is about Army Day in Kathmandu and talking about how to integrate the Maoists in the government and army. Maoists. As if you don't know how I feel about those assholes. Anyway, Charity, Corinne and I are going to Kathmandu in april as a little detour off our india extravaganza. good to know the maoists have been disarmed. i should drop off a bunch of jung chang's scathing mao biography for their perusal. no, actually, i don't care that it is not a balanced portrayal.

i have been trying to listen to the world news mandarin reel. damn my mandarin is slipping. they are talking about making contribution sources for campaigns public, and i seem to understand that some new shit has come to light about chen shuibians daughter and his money. urg. i have to listen like 3 times to put things together poorly. i should just read the bbc page where they tell me things in english about chen shuibian's hunger strike and his totally mafiosa wife. i appreciate her not letting her disabled status get in the way of her money laundering and shopping prowess. one should not underestimate the capacity for evil in the disabled. james bond villains taught me that valuable lesson.

oscars 09

2009-02-22T23:45:00.000-08:00

we had an awesome time at scott and kirstin's oscar party. corinne dressed up as rachel from rachel getting married, i dressed up in a sari as a tribute to slumdog millionaire, and we dressed up owen as the kid from changeling, but we were thinking he could have been benjamin button. this did not go unnoticed and owen won the best costume award, which he was very excited about.

I thought Hugh Jackman was excellent and hilarious. I also watched the Barbara Walters special in which she asked for and was granted by Hugh, a lap dance. wow.
There was no hilarity though in her innterview with Mickey Rourke in which she basically asked him about every painful thing that has ever happened to him. "so mickey, your ex wife was a heroine addict and your divorce left you so alone and disillusioned that you only had your dogs to sleep with for comfort, one of whom just died yesterday." "how do you feel about that? tell us about it." so, everyone keeps talking about how his face was rearranged--did he have plastic surgery, or what?

So, I have two weeks in town before I am out for 8 straight weeks (including my trip to india). eek. what all does one do in 8 weeks that can be done beforehand?

i'm back on to being excited about a potential condo purchase. i have two in mind right now that seem great, both have great upsides. onbe is cheaper and in a slightly less excellent neighborhood--but is in a newer building and has a gym. the other is in a bit nicer neighborhood but is more larger and more expensive and has a garage and might require roommates. any advice?

have good weeks! i have to go to bed.
oh, i am going low carb for lent--anyone have good tips or recipes or restaurant options?

p.s. jessica--i was going to write you and i think i accidentally deleted the comment with your email. can you resend..i couldnt figure out how to comment on your blog

who knew i had so many opinions on the octuplet mom?

2009-02-11T09:39:00.000-08:00

I watched Ann Curry's interview with the mother of the octuplets. Ann Curry kept trying to get the lady to admit that she was irresponsible and unthinking when she had those babies. She also tried to get her to admit that she was getting public assistance. I had a few problems with these aims. 1) the lady is clearly deranged. she didn't have the resources to have two kids, much less the 7 she had planned for or the 7 others she did not anticipate. So, beating her over the head about "didn't you think about your resources" yes, ann, she told you she did think about her circumstances and she thought she was fine and would be able to support them. not only that, but she also thinks that she will be able to easily pay back all her student loans and support 14 kids on a single counselor's salary. because she is DERANGED! Charity has a great saying which is "you have to fight crazy with crazy". you can't fight crazy with sane. so ann curry is asking this lady sane person questions and not getting anywhere. narf. 2) they tried to rip her a new one because she is getting public assistance. what the hell is public assistance for if not for people like this crazy ass lady and the 14 kids she can't support? We already reformed welfare so that you no longer get more welfare the more kids you have. so it's not like she will be living pretty and able to get her nails done on welfare. There's a cap. I think a lot of people who have never been on welfare think welfare should exist but that no one should ever be on it because they themselves went through hard times and never asked for help. well, why not? go ask for some freaking assistance. It isn't shameful to take welfare, it was created for a reason. Now, why SHE herself lied about and thinks getting public assistance is such a bad thing is odd to me. I understand that there is some fraud in welfare and it does seem heinous, but this is what you get in a free society with free will. occasionally people are crazy and mooch off other people. not to mention that there is now a 5 year federal limit on welfare. so even if people are so pissed that other people take handouts, well, they can't do it for more than 5 years. blurg. 3) Ann Curry didn't get into the abortion/pro-life issue when the lady was saying that her existing, not-yet-implanted embryos were children and gifts from God. I mean, the lady clearly has a problem, but the problem isn't that she should have terminated the excess babies when she found out they had ALL attached to the uterus. They were dangerously close to saying life does not in fact start at conception, and that isn't a debate she should be getting into with crazy lady but rather someone who has actually been fighting that fight sanely for years.

Some people were wondering how the doctor could have participated. But really, it isn't his job. Are we expecting doctors to say that poor people shouldn't be able to have kids. Maybe he could have referred her to a mental health professional before allowing her to get the surgery, but there is no reason why, if she had saved the money, that he should refuse her just because of her life circumstances. His job is to tell her the risks, right? Of course they did say that he implanted too many embryos, i guess that is his issue. then again, he's chinese, so what kind of ethical compass were we expecting?

Anyway, i think what really irked me was that they were trying to make someone crazy say something sane, like, yes i am obsessive and was thoughtless because i have no money left to support my children and yes i should give them up for adoption because i am going to drive my poor parents insane. and if she does keep getting her nails done instead of feeding her kids, well, CSS will come in and take them away anyway. pootooweet!

Triumphant ZHU LI

2009-02-05T09:01:00.000-08:00

Yes, this is the broccoli beef and sauteed vegetables and tofu that Jamie LIn helped me make. That is two, count them, TWO homemade dishes this week.

Borderline! I feel like I'm going to lose my mind...

2009-02-04T11:03:00.000-08:00

Something that has been bothering me sporadically for the last few years: In a VH1 documentary, Madonna was discussing her early career and what made her so driven to become a pop legend. and she said "i just really felt that i had something to say and I needed to say it." and for whatever reason, it comes to mind like 2-3 times a year and i think about those first few madonna albums and think, "what was it about holiday, starlight starbright, like a virgin, material girl, la isla bonita...that really *needed* to be sung." "I am desperately in need of a holiday, i think everyone should know!" like, this is not rage against the machine talking about racist police officers or injustice of war. it's about how much this woman likes men and frivolous crap. And who thinks that is important? these are essentially the things that 90% of rappers sing about, but would any of them say that rapping about sex and money is something that the world desperately needs to hear? i'm just flummoxed. In other news, I need everyone to know that I love shiny diamonds, wads of cash, champagne, and driving in flashy cars. i'm so glad i got that out there. phew.

in other news, when i went to get the espresso that is sustaining me right now, there was a rather attractive, scruffy man reading a thick book and i was intrigued like, oh a sexy reading man. then i saw it was an Ayn Rand book. And I rolled my eyes and judged that he was too philosophically immature for the Julie. Even though I myself have read and enjoyed Atlas Shrugged, the Fountainhead, and Anthem. whatever.

wash, rinse, repeat

2009-02-02T10:53:00.000-08:00

Today is the 597 katrillionth day that I have woken up and started or restarted a diet. I invoke sleater-kinney *yet again* when I say that "I think that I sometimes must have wished for something more than to be a size 6." And that's not actually my goal, but I can't help but thinking that if I were a person who gave not a shit about what I looked like and somehow harnessed that energy into something else, I would be like, a proficient violinist, or a person who helps regularly at a soup kitchen, or working on my 10th novel. There is also the off chance that i would have spent all that time watching television. So, who knows? pootooweet!

Speaking of resolutions made and broken, I resolved to restart my new year this week. Ergo, I made tonight's dinner! (that's one meal a week). A spinach, feta, and onion egg white frittata. My mother liked it so much that she wanted me to make more on the spot. And I am now exercising as I blog. The first day of the rest of my life is always full of these little victories. I wonder if I could ever fool myself into thinking every day was the fresh start to my life. The majority of me is an Irish, Scottish, and German red-cheeked santa clause of a genetic optimist, but I think the often jolly, yet, in an instant, also extremely depressed, Irish strain of my blood(i think those are the southerners) can't stomach that kind of cheese.

I am listening to the slumdog millionaire soundtrack. Highly worthwhile--doing Bollywood dances on the elliptical machine. lots of shoulder movement.

This morning I found my Verve CD, Urban Hymns. A CD I have bought 3 times. Football season is over. It called for a playing of Bittersweet Symphony. The Super Bowl this year was fantastic. But I do feel like I have a new lease on Sunday afternoons. Anyone want to walk around Lake Murray?

NYC take 1--oscars and whatnot

2009-01-30T11:51:00.000-08:00

I have apparently snapped up the most desirable place in O'Hare's B terminal. I have seen at least 3 people disappointed that the corner spot by the window is taken. Neither myself nor any of them is actually scheduled for the flight to minneapolis at this gate number. vini vidi vici!

My trip to New York was splendid after the terrible start on the flight. Let's start with food. My culinary happiness started with Mario Batali and continued unabated. I had some lovely Halal street food: a chicken gyro, assuredly not correct terminology, but delicious nonetheless. surprising in its inclusion of both hot sauce and tzatziki sauce.I finally went to Rice to Riches, the place in the movie Hitch, and I got 5 different kinds of rice pudding to try, which were so rich that I have brought half of them home after 2 days of trying to get through them. They are truly delectable though--the cinnamon with raisin, such a classic, was still my favorite. I also had rum raisin, french toast, pecan pie, and chocolate hazelnut. I am also keeping the awesome spoons and bowls. ahem, anyway, i went with two coworkers to chinatown to have dinner one night and we had Beijing Duck! mmmmmmmmm. it was delicious and crispy skinned and everything. the only thing was the pancakes were bizarrely huge--full 10 inch tortilla size. well, the people who owned the place were clearly cantonese, i suppose they cannot be blamed for this. afterward a very skeptical julie followed her coworker to a "phenomenal chinese ice cream shop" to which I said "chinese ice cream is usually disgusting". luckily this wasnt chinese style ice cream but rather western ice cream with chinese flavor. I had black sesame ice cream with ginger ice cream. extremely delicious! yet another top chef moment. With Misha I got a true new york slice from Delizia Una which I ate while on a late night conference call with work--I had been hoping for a slice or a hot dog, so this was a lovely triumph. Anyway, to round out the whole experience I met Stef, a long unseen but still dearly loved friend from college, at a latin wine bar where i had 3 glasses of delicious argentine and portuguese wines. I had a white wine paired with my arugula salad--a whole bowl of arugula with mango and roasted grapefruit. i thought a whole bowl of arugula might be overwhelming, but negative--it was fantastic. and i got the latin version of mozzarella sticks made with white cheese, and then i also asked for a side of creamy pepper dressing, which was almost a dead ringer for huaincaina sauce, a yellow pepper peruvian sauce that is one of my all time favorites. My face was slightly numb by the end of the night, but in a good way.

Another treat was that after my dinner with coworkers, we went to times square and walked around. still a sensory marvel. we then went and saw benjamin button which was quite good--I was moved at the end, but felt that one scene in particular was untrue to the characters and it marred it slightly. I actually also thought that the way Cate Blanchett spoke was unnatural and distracting...what stole the movie was the guy who got struck by lightning. and of course the ridiculously iconic scenes of brad pitt posing on motorcycles and in various worldly locations. My two male coworkers were like "damn, that brad pitt is a good-looking dude." so I didnt have to say it. The next day I had some unanticipated free time and Misha came and met me and we saw Slumdog Millionaire, which was absolutely fantastic. Looooved it!! The scenes of the chaos of Mumbai and the slum are exactly right. The heartbreaking hardness of it, but the joy that can still exist in those circumstances--excellent.

time to board.

30 year old exercising over ground zero

2009-01-27T19:36:00.000-08:00

Two days post the awesomely saucy 30th birthday extravaganza I find myself in NYC. Just got back from a business dinner. Our business partner picked a Mario Batali restaurant for dinner and it was *fantastic*! I had some red wine and a campari cocktail and, ergo, am now in the fitness center on one of those lovely, new, expensive pieces of exercise equipment that exist in swanky hotel gyms and which make me actually feel like working out is a bona fide treat.

the hotel is called the millenium hilton and is literally across the street from ground zero. and that is the view both from this gym machine and from my room. the expanse is larger than I imagined. all i can think is "bones". incidentally, that is also the thought I often have when staring at the ocean.

the 30th birthday sauceaganza was a pretty incredible fete, marred only by the lack of time to talk with everyone and the absence of a few well-loved friends. Usually i have a smaller, more intimate dinner, or multiple intimate dinners with groups of friends to mark my birthdays. this was big and i commented that it felt a bit bridal (the enormous banner my mom made and had people sign added to this feeling). In the back of my mind, when planning this big shebang, I kept thinking of a Japanese movie I love called "After Life." In the movie, when people die they have to choose one memory to live in forever. Then a crew in heaven reconstructs the memory and the person disappears to live in that memory for eternity. I kept wondering if this would be as close to that memory as I have had. But, like I said, there were enough notable absences to make it fall short. will have to try again either at 40 or at wedding time, whichever comes first. my hope is that once you have made the memory, when you live in it, you get to change it--i would be able, for example, to play games with EVERYONE in attendance. one group at a time. and maybe instead of the game room at the old folks mobile home park it would be in Paris. :)

the journey over here was pretty hilarious. LaGuardia-bound flights clown me every time. Never on time. This one was actually canceled! Luckily, O'Hare has hourly flights to NYC and I was booked on the next one. One of my coworkers coming on this trip was actually on my same flight and we were supposed to be meeting the rest of our group for dinner at 7. we landed at 530 and traffic was so bad that we actually had to drive directly to the restaurant and check our luggage at the coat check at mario batali's restaurant! you can bet we were party faves. but who cares because we had awesome meats and cheeses, wine, and OLIVE OIL gelato. totally a top chef moment for the julie.

new haven, new year, new president

2009-01-20T18:06:00.000-08:00

I am sitting in my hotel room in new haven getting swept away in the revelry and excitement of the Obama Neighborhood Ball. I am simultaneously eating the most enormous greek salad in the history of the world. I had part of it for lunch, part for dinner, and will have more for lunch tomorrow. I have pictures to put up. eek. it's gotten too late. oh what a pitiful start to the new year blog! 20 days late! i have pictures. oh goodness, who knows when those will get up?!

The 3-Day recap. Red wine, success!

2008-11-25T23:10:00.000-08:00

This is the summary I sent to all my supporters, but so many of you are m y supporters I thought I should just post the same thing here:
Thank you all so much for your support for me and for the cause of breast cancer research. My feet are in extraordinary pain and I question the rationality of the endeavor, but, as many of the signs said when we were walking "blisters don't need chemo" and I will heal up and be fine :) I am going to write a summary of the walk here for you, but I also have a link to my photos which tell the story, probably more succinctly than I will :)

http://picasaweb.google.com/julie.hartle/BreastCancer3DaySanDiego2008#

Overall the walk was incredibly long and difficult (probably the most difficult physical endeavor of my life) but also inspirational in both a communal way and a personal way. The San Diego walk raised over 11.2 million dollars for breast cancer research, and by supporting me financially and by walking with me and praying for me, you were all a part of that. Thank you!

Pre-walk:
As always seems to happen, my intentions and well-laid plans were slightly askew as I dealt with my job crisis. I still managed to walk consistently every week, at least 5 miles 3 times a week, and also for the last 2 months at least one 9+ mile walk per week. This, as you might imagine, was woefully insufficient. As were the two 10 mile walks I did back to back. C'est la vie. Ultimately I flew back from a triumphant week at work (yay!) to san diego thursday and packed for the walk on friday.

Day 1:
My mother graciously dropped me and Karina off in Del Mar at 5:30am where we unloaded our stuff and I saw perhaps the best slogan of the day on one of the crew loading luggage in the trucks "breaking our backs to save your racks." And the visual delights started here. As you might imagine there was lots of boob talk. Every euphemism for breast that you can imagine was present in many variations: rack, melons, cans, jugs, titties--the Titty Committee was a favorite team name, Ta-tas (which I had never heard before but was quite popular), hooters, etc. There were also some standard slogans like "save second base" and "stop the war in my rack". Nearly everyone had pink on some part of their body, if not encasing their whole body. There was also a goodly amount of cross-dressing from the 557 men taking part. All of this made for a lot of laughter and good cheer, which was incredibly important as the days went on. Because the crying also started pretty immediately. People had pictures of loved ones who had died on their shirts and backpacks. The one that made me cry the most was just a picture of a girl and her mom and it said "miss you mom, everyday". You had families walking for one or more family members and many teams were walking both for survivors and for people who had passed away. So of course this makes the whole cause very personal, which made me feel very connected to all of these women and men and reinforced the worthiness of the cause. That reinforcement was highly necessary as the miles went on.
The first day we walked 24 miles. Our route safety crew was hysterical--a bunch of male and female harley davidson riders with bras all over their Harley's. and tutus over their leather chaps. We were also escorted along the route by the lovable and slightly smarmy San Jose bike cops who had radios on their bikes and were often shouting something encouraging. The first hill we came up on was Torrey Pines which is 1.5 miles and seemed to never end. We were unlucky, getting out of the opening ceremony in the last group, and therefore hit the Torrey Pines hill right at the heat of midday. If you had asked me to pass a resolution to raze the hill and all its sacred trees I would have signed it immediately. The ocean might be beautiful, but it is not as beautiful as the sight of flat land. They kill you that first day to try and have lighter walks the second and third days. At about mile 19 all Karina and I could think about was laying down. Our tent became our prime motivating factor.
Luckily around this time we were also walking in PB and the community there was good fun in their cheering and in offering lots of interesting treats on the route--breast shaped cheesecake bites, for example. These things distracted me from the thought that kept coming into my head "why did i raise money so that i could do this? this makes no logical sense." I told Karina that if I were to write a paper about the 3-day it would be called "The Breast Cancer 3-day: An Assault on Reason." we already knew our feet were shot. As you will see in the pictures we had blisters galore--both of us had crazy blisters on our pinky toes that looked like aliens who have brains on their exoskeletons. And Karina knew day one that her big toenail was going down.
When we entered camp, we saw thousands and thousands of pink tents all grouped together, a visual I tried unsuccessfully to capture on film. The showers and port-a-potties were far more pleasant than I had expected, which was a nice surprise, and felt luxurious after that first day. Our team captain lived up to our team name (Walk now, Wine later) and greeted us with gourmet chocolates and also provided red wine--a delicious zin-- for whomever should want it (which I did, of course.) We went to sleep at 9 p.m. which, for me, is some kind of record within the last 15 years excepting hospital stays.

Day 2--19 miles:
Waking up was pain. I had no pillow and slept terribly. It was also cold. We were on the ground. The air was thick and everyone seemed to wake up with stuffy noses. Our tent neighbor had laryngitis.
Getting on my feet was far worse pain. My feet were clearly upset. They questioned why I appeared to want to stand on them. The blisters on the sides of my feet and heels were raging. But we got into the groove. We were walking almost exclusively by the waterfront on day 2, which was absolutely gorgeous. We were in so much pain that we couldn't talk much. Actually Karina had a bit more in her, as far as being able to keep up attention around us and conversation. She was also the far more prepared and organized of the 2 of us and without her preparedness and her company I never would have made it.
Every once in a while a cheering vehicle or person by the road would have some tunes that would brighten us up. By mile 3 we were already pining for our tent. By mile 8, which in toto was mile 32, I was not really making coherent sentences. Every time a vehicle passed playing Abba I would say the same thing to Karina--so a good 3 or 4 times, which was "Abba is always a good idea." I believe this was also the day when I came up with the pronouncement "I don't look down enough." this was after hitting a few low-lying things, like cones and barrier poles. Karina says "today?" and i say "no, in general. I don't look down enough." We went up a monster hill, but it wasn't the up that turned out to be devastating, but rather the down. After we came down the hill to our next pit stop Karina was saying that she definitely had a situation with her toes. She was right. One of her blisters had ripped open and her bare new skin was showing. So we were in the med tent at mile 10 until after it closed. They also lanced and bandaged some of my blisters at that station. Then we had to be bussed to lunch.
We walked another 3 miles before Karina was done for and I was feeling bad too. I'm not even kidding that everything seemed bleached out by the sun that day and I really can't remember much, and mostly I was walking in dazed silence. But anyway, we were told that if we were going to finish day either 2 or 3 it had to be day 3, so we ended up not doing about 6 of the miles on day 2 so we could rest and hopefully heal up enough to finish day 3. I passed out on the bus and back at camp. My parents dropped off a pillow, which may, in the end, have been the lifesaver of day 3. Everyone back at camp looked really bad. Lots of limping and looong lines at the med tent.
They had lots of activities in the evening--karaoke competitions, stretching, and dancing for people who could still stand, something I could not fathom. Charity sparked hope and incentive by offering to meet us at one of the cheering stations the next day with starbucks. We were like "well, we will be walking at least as far as cheering station 1! "

Day 3--15 miles:
I woke up with renewed determination to finish no matter what. People did keep saying that the point of course was not to get injured, but to raise money for breast cancer. But I was like "um, I made this irrational decision to ask people to give money to breast cancer on my behalf if I would do something idiotic and dangerous, I sure as heck am going to do it! even if I get injured." you can see the madness had already descended. And I would need every ounce of it.
I think every step was just out of sheer stubbornness and will. Again, not able to do much speaking. Luckily we had cheering station 1 to look forward to. Charity not only brought caffeine drinks but chocolate. She also walked a mile with us and provided some much-needed conversation, as Karina had a few minutes before told me the last story I think we would get out that day. By Day 2 I had exhausted every reserve for conversation and was good for no entertainment whatsoever. We both noted that the Charity-accompanied mile was the fastest mile of the day. Another mile of note was at like mile 49 when we walked with a group of women playing "would you rather." If I ever went nuts and did this again I would be begging for friends to come walk a few miles at various spots. This would be a good point at which to remark on how invaluable the people were who were cheering us on every day. Seriously, when I heard people cheering I was like, okay, okay, I can do a few more steps." There was lots of honking as we crossed streets, random clapping as we all passed by restaurants, and family members cheering us on. We also had daily company: Mr Smile and Little Grin--a man who lost his wife to breast cancer and his young daughter who passed out smiley faced pins; a man who had lost his wife and who wore various costumes--a doctor offering free breast exams and an elephant costume because "he would never forget our sacrifice for breast cancer". We also had Barbies for boobies, the inexplicable statue of liberty ladies with pink wigs, the also inexplicable hookers for hooters van, and a bizarre van full of large women wearing shirts that had silhouettes of skinny women in bikinis. But I did not care how strange they were because they would accompany us on the route and were always cheering and playing some kind of music. Since we weren't allowed to have iPods or anything to obstruct our hearing, those fleeting tunes were very important. Would it be immature that I was upsettedly wondering why exactly there was a whole group of DEAF walkers if I could not have my techno? Not at my classiest, obviously.
Anyway, within the first 3 miles on the last day my mind basically numbed and my feet numbed and I steeled myself to finish. I started making these sweeping analogies in my head about how the walk was like life. You can do the first 15 miles or so no problem, but after that you need people to support you and cheer you on, you need something to look forward to--mom with the pillow, charity with coffee. Or that even when it makes no sense and is difficult and painful you just keep on going because something in you needs to, even if you don't know what that is. Karina and I sang Lean on Me at one point. It was a hot mess.
But we finished. 15 miles that last day. 53 total for me. When we descended into Petco Park and were greeted at the finish line I basically was sobbing for many reasons--because I had finished and because it was so hard, and because it was so touching to be greeted by all these people high fiving you and thanking you for walking and who had all these very personal reasons for doing so. I would be crying again when they gathered the hundreds of breast cancer survivors who had done the walk with us--we had walked behind a 27 year old survivor on day 2-- and they all walked into the closing ceremony together in their pink shirts.

So anyway, there was more to it, but my brain is seizing up even now and that's all I can remember. and my blisters still persist and my feet are too swollen to wear my normal shoes. But my body feels pretty good, thankfully.

anticipation of pain and sisterhood.

2008-11-13T20:32:00.000-08:00

Hello friends.

Am in Nashville for work and as is my wont in these brisk autumn days, I have just overdosed on pumpkin goods. The chill of the season and the warmth inside brings such cheer to my heart that I appear to be ready to forgive Brett Favre for being a traiterous douche to the Green Bay Packers and am just accepting that he is still able to lead an NFL team. Oh fine Brett, be hall of fame with your bad self.

Well, preparations for the 3-Day continue apace. I cannot tell you how disgusting my feet look! they have callouses and blisters and hard flaky skin. sooo gross. but i'm really thrilled. the tougher they are before the 3-Day, the less blisters they will get when I am actually walking. But I had one real doozy of a blister after karina and i walked 15 miles last week still all huge and gnarly. So it is only 4 days until Karina and I begin our 60 mile journey. Friday at 5 AM we begin. oi gevay! one advantage will be the lack of fiery skies that lisa recently ran her 5k in. now she knows what it would be like to run a 5k in beijing or bangkok on any given day. ;) blargh. back to work!
love
jules

Election over, Obama President, Julie happy.

2008-11-07T08:37:00.001-08:00

Well, of course I'm thrilled. Tuesday was an amazing night, people were honking horns, cheering in the streets for Obama. The race was called so early in California that we didnt even get to any of our planned election night game activities like "pin the gun on the palin" where we would try to get the gun as close to her hands in a helicopter as possible, or election bingo, or the wheel of countries to move to if Mccain won. Taiwan would be high on the list of course ;) Oh well, clearly we were too busy being excited. I mean, I voted for Obama because I think his policies are the more Christ-like of the two candidates (except for abortion, of course), and I wouldn't have voted for him otherwise. But I have to say, after just being happy my candidate won, the history of it, the civil rights movement, everything heroes of the civil rights movement endured, all came forcefully to mind and I was crying. I can tell my nieces and nephews, kids, grandkids, that I voted for the first black American president! The civil rights movement was such a Godly movement, grounded in churches, that I feel in a way I am a small part of that glorious part of church history as well, part of the fulfilment of many years of battling for equality. wonderful.

This isn't a great quality picture because I took it with my phone, but it's a picture from when Corinne and I went to the Obama field office in San Diego and did some phone banking, so this is the outside of the SD headquarters, and what you can very faintly see is an ethiopian woman on the left, a white dude in the middle, an Asian woman to the right and then a Latina woman at the far right. It was such a quintessential American moment to have people from all these different backgrounds sitting on their cell phones and trying to get out the vote for Obama and arrange rides to polls for people in Florida.

Newsweek has this totally fascinating behind-the-scenes report on the election. Their reporters got access to a bunch of moments and information, but were sworn not to publish until the elections were over. I gave the link to the highlights, but there are links at the top to the 7 chapters. Looks like the McCain campaign is cutting loose on Sarah Palin. yikes. I have been vocal about how much I disliked her and thought she was a moron, but I'm surprised at how they are just exposing her idiocy intentionally.

And now I have my biannual turn-of-the-season cold. It's a very mild cold, just bad enough to make me feel crummy, but not to significantly limit any life activities or, say, stay home from work. And I ran out of DayQuil, my go-to OTC medicine. Am drinking chamomile tea and trying to gather up enough thoughts to turn them into a work action. we'll see how that goes.

Now that the election is finally over--and as excited as i am about the results, i was so ready to just be done with it--I can turn my attention to the next event of worldwide importance. And that would be the next James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace

This is, needless to say, a Hartle family event. I sometimes feel the Broccoli family produces these movies just for us. We all download and judge the theme song--still evaluating the Alicia Keys/Jack White theme for this year. I don't know how great it is, but I know that Corinne gave us a false alarm and downloaded the wrong song and played it for us, and that song was TERRIBLE! So when we heard the real theme we were comparing it to such crap that we thought it was VERY good. And it may be, but a few more listens will determine this.

Feeling waves of love for ye olde United States,
Julie

Ghouly Julie

2008-10-31T15:52:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween everyone!

Well, in rare Halloween spirit, I actually have two costumes, and luckily, I also have pictures of them both. Also Melissa pointed out that I inadvertently created a comic book flip effect in my facebook album, so you could check that out. Anyway, for adult parties Charity and I are Samron and Lilo in 20 years. For you who have more quality lives than to read tabloids, that would be Lindsey Lohan and her girlfriend Samantha Ronson. I am Samron, please note the many details that go into making it the perfect outfit. For our church party and work party I was the evil queen from Snow White using my trusty 8 year old costume. Somehow I thought that the joke would not only be lost on people at work and church, but also that carrying around a bottle of vodka and a cigarette might not be church or work appropriate. Not that the evil queen is so much better. If you haven't watched Snow White recently I don't recommend you do so with a child. why? because the evil queen asks the Woodsman to cut out Snow White's heart and bring it back to her in a box. And instead he cuts out a pig heart and puts it in a box. Could we be a little more disturbing?

anyway, since we last spoke, I have been to Virginia Beach and Cincinnati and have a 3 week stretch at home before I go to Nashville for my fly or die training session, so please pray that i fly and not die. :)

I missed my chance to deface the elevator atrium on Sarah Palin's hotel room floor with professions of love for Barack Obama because I had to work.

2008-10-12T14:33:00.000-07:00

So my brush with Sarah Palin is over. Yes, we did indeed stay in the same hotel on the same night. I was super bummed because I decided to recon her floor and was surprised that not only did the doors open at her floor, but there was no secret service in the little atrium--i went in the hall and saw the door for her staff office...and then saw secret service men walking my way. but the easy atrium entrance led me to believe that i could easily tape the message i had for her from my many facebook friends to the wall directly in front of where she would take the elevator. after work i was cobbling together said message (a sort of discombobulated thing that said "shout out to barack obama, you betcha, he's a maverick, wink wink, and hey, thanks for giving me an easy halloween costume idea") but then found out that she had already left! grrr. you don't get many chances to be federally immature, and i totally missed mine. because i was working. because of my career. i hate that by being a diligent worker i have played into the mccain/palin supposition that americans are the best, most creative, and hardest working people in the world. this is a complete lie, frankly, but i guess if palin's only foreign experience has been with russia, she has a case in her little world because americans sure as hell are better workers than russians, as we are typically not shitfaced until AFTER work. now i just have this stupid piece of paper. no one has even fingerprinted it. and I only actually got to see a bunch of secret service people. i was warned (not by secret service, but rather by my coworker Becky) not to wear brown as she flew away in her helicopter or she might mistake me for a caribou and shoot me on sight.

in other great hotel news, my room has a balcony that faces the ocean. today i did something very taiwanese and watched the sun rise. it's so fun to be on the east coast and see the sun rise whereas in my normal environ i see the sun set. and yes, for work i have to get up before sunrise. chew on it for a sec. out of necessity, of course, but still.

Last weekend I went to a small part of a Kay Arthur seminar at my mother's church.
And a few noteworthy things happened. First, mom's pastor, David Jeremiah, got up to introduce Kay saying that she is the best Bible teacher in the country and that he was happy that his church didn't believe in women pastors or she would have his job." An excellently offensive start--alienating any participants from, say, Presbyterian, Episcopal, or Methodist denominations, but whatever. At that point I called bullshit in my head, repeatedly, actually, kind of in the manner Kay would repeat her words later, like i couldnt get the word out of my head and couldnt move on with my mental processes until it was fully expressed. BULLSHIT! anyway, my mom and aunt both gave me sideways glances because i think they knew i was mentally vomiting on him. This is one of the great Christian challenges, trying to live with the fact that we do not all interpret the Bible the same, and that those things which don't directly deal with salvation are secondary.

On a lighter note, when the singer who was leading worship came up, she apparently had written her own songs, the first of which had lots of verses that said the same thing twice, like "God is the most loving God, no one loves you more than God" and "God is the most faithful friend, no friend is more faithful than God"...and this kept going and going until my mom and i burst into laughter both thinking of the same thing, which is the movie Mystery Men. In the movie Mystery Men they choose a new leader called the Sphinx who speaks like this "if you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail" and "He who questions training only trains himself at asking questions." So I was like "did the Sphinx secretly write these songs?" My poor aunt couldnt have known the sphinx reference and why my mom and i were laughing at perfectly harmless praise songs.

Kay Arthur's Biblical knowledge is exceptional and she was weaving a very compelling story before I had to leave to convene with my urban family. She is excellent at explaining a potentially cryptic passage by telling you exactly what customs were in Biblical times and the equivalent today and why it was so scandalous at the time. Anyway, one of the purposes of her lecture was to convey that she believed that God's glory and blessing have departed from the United States. I agreed with this, though I question whether the U.S. ever really had such a thing in the first place, and it really is impossible to say for sure since the US is never specifically mentioned in the Bible. I know this fact will specifically vex certain people who confuse patriotism with religion, but whatever. Actually, I had a question for some of you: What do you think of using the old testament to justify God's actions in present times? She was using a ton of OT references to describe why God's glory had left the US--like Amos 3:8 saying God makes alive and God kills and makes victory and defeat and whatnot. My mental argument to that is the tower of Siloam in Luke 13:4 andthe man born blind in John 9. What do you who know and care about such things have to say? Luckily I left before Kay started expounding on when and why God's glory have left us in specific political terms. I believe she thinks Bill Clinton is the devil because of his affair, which had to make me laugh because presidential affairs were a dime a dozen, it's just that transparency of the office wasn't the same as it was, say, when JFK was whoring himself out. Kay is 75 years old, so that explains some things. Kay has also clearly had some serious plastic surgery. I mean, wow. I hope I'm as mobile and active and mentally sharp as she is at 75, but maybe a little less artifical and more able to express emotion with my mouth. This was particularly noticeable when she kept a steady grin on her face when telling us about how her daughter had recently passed away. Eeek. She also kept saying words like 3 times before moving on--i couldn't tell if she had lost her train of thought or if her mouth was so frozen she was unable to pronounce the word she wanted correctly. Despite this she was still an impressive speaker. and i think that really says something.

Oh my gosh, this is a super depressing, priority check from cnn about bangladeshi children--beautiful photo essay.

in anti-world justice related news, the starbucks salted caramel hot chocolate is intensely delicious. wow wow wow. i want one every second.

p.s. i feel sort of bad, thought it was honest, about how loathsome I found The Shack because so many of my friends say they were really moved by it. i hope none of you take it personally. at a certain small group, one of my friends discussed their dislike for the book and another attendee said "yeah, well, when you write your first book, i'll hate it too" as if the shack attack were somehow personal. i am genuinely interested in what moved you about the book. i'm glad so many people are reading a book that raises so many discussion points about Christianity.

Reunion with Camlin! and ...the Shack, but not the love shack, the badly written Shack.

2008-10-10T08:33:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm back in black.

Had a FANTASTIC time with Campbell and Linda and Lamont. I love that we can get back together and be just as easy as if we had seen each other last week. Camlin is a hilarious couple to be around. We got to see the ORTV kids for yummy chinese lunch, and then Campbell chose to go to Medieval Times

for his birthday dinner, and until the end of october it is adults pay kids price, so we took advantage of that. yes, there was lots of eating of roasted chicken with our hands! wearing of paper crowns, cheering for our ultimately beheaded knight, and lots of embarrassed looks by linda who was as mortified to go to medieval times as if she found out the event would be videotaped and re-played on her high school gymnasium wall. you have to embrace your inner dork! i have some priceless photos. if i ever find the connection that links my camera to the computer, you shall see them too. this would require me being home long enough to search for said connection. but that won't be happening for at least the next two weeks when i will be in Virginia Beach and Cincinnati. oh glorious.

So my latest chill obsession is the free Pray As You Go Podcast which is put out by Jesuits in England--I presume, since everyone has English accents. Anyway, my daily devotional life is variously full of monks chanting, rad accents reading le Bible, and gentle, prodding spiritual questions. you can download this conduit of quiet contentment on itunes.

am reading The Shack. am alternately horrified by the terrible quality of the writing and intrigued by certain theological premises--mainly, how can you trust God or believe God is good after something unspeakable has happened to your child. the writer desperately needs an editor. Everytime he uses the word Papa, I want to vomit. The dialogue is so contrived I have sometimes have the urge to fling the book out of my hands in disgust. however, I can see how this could be a revolutionary book if you had very fixed images of how God should be. I have tried for a while to train myself against imagining God a certain way and have tried to let God be as big as possible, transcending any fixed human classifications of gender, race or age, when i pray or conceptualize, so that concept wasn't new, but i can see how it might expand ones mind if they hadnt. but the matrix had a black woman as God too, and more compelling. It's a fictional book, and the story is sort of compelling if poorly and sentimentally written. but i am at a part where he has transitioned into full blown theological dissertation which he puts forth more like a condescending theology class than a novel, issuing forth from the mouths of his characters. i find that nearly intolerable. am (very mildly) offended on multiple fronts, literary and spiritual. this is a way of avoiding real critique of your theological viewpoints by putting them in the form of fiction. "it's just a book, it's not real," but yet he tells it in a way that shows you he assumes you should think the same things and that if you havent you simply are not spiritually evolved enough to be at that place yet. hmm. i feel like i want to call eugene peterson and ask him what he was thinking when he so heartily endorsed this book. i'm perplexed by his comparison to pilgrims progress. anyway, i need to plough through, i hear there will be some surprises at the end, and like i said, i want to see how this dude reconciles victim and crime.

must end on a good note--one of the most wonderful stories in my vicariously lived life. My mom and Lauren went to the Fluevog store to get my mom's first pair of Fluevogs (mom was visiting little Lauren for a fun weekend.) And JOHN FLUEVOG himself was in the store and he signed my mom's shoes. and since they were also picking up a pair i had requested...he signed mine too! oh happiness. he also threw in some free adorable bags that will be great for grocery shopping and have some words about grooviness on them. anyway, i will also take a pic and upload it. and while ironic that i, who am celibate with fluevogs, have never seen john fluevog and my novice mom and sister got to see him, is not mattering. it was a great story, there was much squealing and excitement when they told me. and i have autographed fluevogs. so exciting.

my love for you is 4 Real

2008-09-30T22:15:00.000-07:00

allright allright, the natives have gotten restless and have pointed out that i left off on a layover and for all anyone knows, i am still stuck in some hellish airport. luckily, i managed to escape airports for a time (this will not be true next week when i fly to virginia beach, return to SD friday evening, then turn around and fly to cincinnati sunday. the horror, the horror.) anyway, there is much to report so this will be loooooong.

I have yet to address the happenings in Albany, which were truly fantastical.
The most eventful night was actually the last night when Misha, my college rommate,

who was my friend from the very first minute we met in our summer program, came up to visit me from NYC. we had a few precious hours and decided to go somewhere to eat and talk as long as possible. we ended up at a place called the Envy Lounge that thought it was very swanky and made a big to-do about whether we would be able to get in seeing as we had no reservations...luckily there were plenty of envious seats available. Now, when you name yourself after one of the 7 deadly sins, i expect a sinfully delicious dining experience...this it was not. the roasted pumpkin soup was super sweet and tasted like goupy pumpkin pie filling...i could go on about the meal (it was dining week in albany so it was a set course for 20.09 at various city restaurants) but the real story is not the crappy food.

the REAL story is how at 9p.m. they cleared the chairs from the main floor and decided to hold a dance exhibition that played out like a high school talent show. First up was a ballerina from the local dance school who was trying to dance en pointe but kept SLIPPING to our horror--we were sure she was going to die, but she valiantly kept trying to save herself and then just danced flat-footed. next up--an anticlimactic white belly dancer. she was neither here nor there really. but next and most awesomely, was SHOCKWAVE the robot:

please note the silver underwear. The contrast of being in a restaurant with people dressed to the nines and who thought this was *the place* to be and the fabulously down-home talent show entertainment was just hysterical. it was like being inside a christopher guest movie. After Shockwave the Robot, whose popping and locking skills were frankly debatable, but who was fun to watch nonetheless, there was a pussycat dolls wannabe group called the Limited edition dancers. at this point mishes and i decided not only could we not talk, but we had gotten the full gist of the evening's entertainment.

so mishes was still hungry after not eating much of the crap gourmet food. we decide to try to find a place for dessert and coffee. but albany actually shuts down at 9:30 pm. it was horrific. so we see this mcdonalds and decide, okay we can get apple pie and ice cream (a favorite of mine from when i lived in beijing actually.) and this produced another wondrous experience. the mcdonalds was closed except for the drive-thru. so i ask misha how much she wants this apple pie. and she is pretty committed. so we wait in line at the drive-thru. behind cars!! when we get to the drive-thru and come face to face with the man who had come to the door to tell us that the mcdonalds was closed, he tells us that the ice cream machine has been closed up for cleaning and there is no apple pie. we stand indecisive for a minute. he then rolls his eyes and says, well, apple pies would take 12 minutes to cook. we both shrug and decide we have nowhere else to be and it's a nice 65 degree evening. he also says we can have milkshakes. we decide this sounds lovely. we decide to wait on the curb by the door rather than in the drive-thru. this leads to a colorful encounter with a crazy/homeless/crazyhomeless man with a little dog. he doesnt respond to the wary small talk we are making, but instead goes on a tirade about how his dog is famous and known by hundreds of thousands of people because it was dognapped and he got onto 4 radio stations asking for it back. it was a well-trained little dog, i must admit, so who knows if we were in the presence of true animal fame. but a surreal experience all the same. so anyway, after that we have no visitors except a cleaning woman leaving the mcdonalds and wearing an obama shirt--we try to helpfully tell her that depending on the local rules she might not want to wear the shirt to the polls in case they have something against passive electioneering--she's like "whatever". then we get our apple pies and shakes. one sip into the shake and i feel violated--the dude put the unfrozen unprocessed shake mix into the cups. it tastes like a vat of chemicals. (just in case you ever thought mcdonalds milkshakes were made of any real ingredients. no they are not--but when properly prepared they are still delicious chemicals.) so we are spitting the foulness out of our mouths the rest of the way back to the hotel, past the crack den bus station.

so it was an eventful evening, another classic in the story of our friendship.

speaking of long friendships, the Sunday after arriving back home from Albany, Charity and I, 6 months late, treated our high school friend Lisa to a very belated birthday present. we had said that we would treat her to a concert (with us in tow, naturally) and she hadnt gotten around to choosing one. but as fate would have it, one of the very weekends she was coming down to visit was the same weekend the So You Think You Can Dance tour was in San Diego. yes. oh yes. so we got our 15 y.o. selves in gear and went to scream our heads off with a bunch of other, much younger, dance fanatics. note the presence of multiple pictures of Will--so hot right now!

yes, we were all totally game for the experience, but i think we all shuddered when the contestants explained that a particular gesture they do involving 4 fingers sort of pulling on their shoulders stood for "4 Real" which alludes to them being the season 4 contestants and that their experience and love for each other was...so real. i was like "oh yeah, i'm too old for this."

anyway, of course there is more to say, but this is enough for now. should have lots of more airport time coming up for bloggage. :)

en route to albany

2008-09-15T12:21:00.001-07:00

am on my layover in the philadelphia airport on my way to albany. a few things to discuss. 1. US Airways--TERRIBLE. will never fly them again if possible to avoid doing so. they charge even for your first checked bag? oh wait, american does that too. assholes. so, get on the plane and the air conditioning is off and it is a packed flight. i am sweating as we wait on the tarmac. sweating. and very close to the man next to me, who is also...sweating. sweating with strangers is a great way to start a morning. also, they CHARGE for sodas and juice! 2 dollars for a bottle of water. luckily i asked for non-bottled water which is still free because hopefully someone has made them aware of the potential for deep-vein thrombosis on a FOUR HOUR FLIGHT. yuck. also, when i pulled down the tray table.they had sold the tray table top as ad space--it was an ad for fedex and kinkos. barf! i felt not only much like mooing cattle, but also like i was just some automatonic vessel to be marketed to. like one of those people in the movie Wall-E! argh! i have swiftly fallen in love with southwest airlines, because, bafflingly, their commercials are true. they do not charge for you to check bags. they do not charge for nonalcoholic drinks on the plane. sheesh. 2. the philadelphia is much nicer than one might imagine. 3. i have these crazy loud talkers here in the waiting area on their cell phones. i don't really want to be all up in strangers' business. i don't need to know that the girl behind me is having drama and telling someone on the phone to "don't listen to her or trust her, ever" or the lady next to me "oh my gosh that was probably the funnest party i have EVER been to." really? can i go?
4. the lady across from me has a hot pink ipod that matches her shirt. very cute.

oh my gosh, john stewart interviewed tony blair on the daily show the other day. i think stewart got a little crazy in his desire for answers about the war and how a sensible, brilliant, articulate person could authorize it. towards the end of the interview i think he realized it and was like "oh crap, i got a chance to interview tony blair and i basically tried to shred him to bits." luckily tony blair is pretty game, and while i guess i commend him personally for not selling out george bush as a war-mongering ubermoron, it would have been good to hear some regret over the war. i am still so in love with tony blair. he is teaching a class on faith and globalism at yale and if i were one of his students i can assure you i would be trying to take advantage of him.

in strange health news, i was having some intestinal issues, so i am now doing a fleet prep 1 which is basically a colon blow. dear God in heaven. tomorrow i am getting my intestines scanned after drinking something to make them glow. oh life doesnt get more horrific than this (i'm just thinking locally--i.e. my ass, folks, not globally). i absolutely would never wish this on you. terrible. (update) everything is fine. berium enema's are pretty heinous, almost as heinous as what you have to do to prepare for them. again, not wishing it on you guys. but i'm glad everything is supposedly fine. my doctor called and said "eat more fiber". i wish we didn't have to go through all that for me to be prescribed all-bran.

politics:
Under Sarah Palin's watch, her town billed rape victims for the kits used to gather evidence.

that's the last i want to crap on sarah palin. we're all pretty clear on what i think of her intellect, qualifications, and ability to be a competent vice president. this doesnt mean i wouldnt drink a latte with her when she watches hockey with her lipstick on. but i've decided that i need to refocus on crapping on john mccain who has many terrible policies worthy of critique while he is still alive.

i'm a walkin, yessiree and i'm a payin

2008-09-07T15:38:00.000-07:00

Oh, my pastor's message today was excellent, funny and also thought provoking. It was about evangelism in postmodernity. and he addresses the hilarity of the term postmodern as well :) you can find it here: http://www.fhpc.org/pages/page.asp?page_id=15456 it's called The Postmodern Path. anyway, i'm looking forward to the series. small groups are starting again this week which is wonderful because my small group is truly fantastic; it's always a spiritually refreshing time. i'm grateful to find people with whom i can be so honest and get feedback i can trust.

speaking of church, today i walked the 6 miles to church up this huuuge hill. and then i walked down said big hill and at the bottom the sole of my right shoe came entirely off. this might not seem like a time for spiritual reflection, but may I say that either the Lord or great coincidence made it so that my father and i happened to be going to Road Runner to buy shoes and the plan was that he would pick me up somewhere on my return route. he picked me up 10 minutes after my shoes went kaput. and we went to road runner where they analyzed the pressure i put on my foot, my arches, and my walk so that i could get the right shoes and inserts. i absolutely could not decide between a pair of sauconys and a pair of nikes, both turquoise, so i got them both since i was supposed to get two pairs of shoes anyway so i can alternate on the walk. the guy who did my foot analysis is also walking the three day with his mom and aunt and has done so for the past two years, so he had some good advice. for instance, thin socks. i thought for sure you would want cushiony socks, but no--you want thin, non cotton, blister-preventing socks that keep moisture away from your foot. those are some special (read: expensive) socks, my friends. let's just say i spent a pretty penny to raise a pretty penny.

i am absolutely thrilled about the start of football season. i am not thrilled about the chargers losing in the last few seconds of the game. i do not need a freaking heart attack courtesy of the carolina panthers. as a charger fan you get used to disappointment. i've learned to consider every win a surprise. i was glad to see that michael turner had a good game for atlanta. i was irked to see brett favre win for new york. such a douche move. he has now retired and unretired TWICE. sigh.

jane is in labor and we should have word on our new friendphew soon. so exciting!

Leezza, Leezza, Leezza. ... I love her very much

2008-09-05T08:37:00.000-07:00

i never thought i would quote Ghadafi on my blog, but this...this is just too good. He is commenting on Condoleezza Rice who is making a historic visit to Libya: "I support my darling black African woman," he said. "I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders ... Leezza, Leezza, Leezza. ... I love her very much. I admire her, and I'm proud of her, because she's a black woman of African origin."

Who knew Ghadafi was like the Arab Hugh Hefner? He has an all female bodyguard force. i wonder what condie thinks of him. i told my mom i think of her as such a badass that i sort of forget she is a woman, i just think of her as a world leader, so to read ghadafi being all smarmy about her is so hilariously inappropriate. My friend Beth who got her masters in arab studies from harvard and now works at the state department and to whom i therefore defer in all middle eastern matters said "there are not enough strong words in the english language to describe how insane Ghadafi is. he is a total nutjob." i said i felt the same way about mao zedong and how creepy it was to keep seeing his portrait during the olympics.

so i've totally gotten my father addicted to Project Runway. it's pretty hysterical. he will even rewatch it with me when i watch it from DVR. he always gives away the end, he'll say things like "that dude's toast" and "i cant believe that girl wins because the african chick's dress was so much better." speaking of which, i am a big korto fan, and i am upset that now that leann has won two challenges she has gone super bitch and is criticizing joe and kenley. if you're going to be drab and mousey with stringy hair you could at least be a nice person. suede should have been kicked off instead of stella, though. that outfit was so fugly i couldnt even handle it.

my heart was truly warmed last week when i found out that this little boy i loved in the orphanage back in taiwan, whom i dubbed yoda because of his crazy ears and because his name was yo-chen, was adopted with his sister by a local family in taipei. and rachel sees him in the nursery with her son. puh-recious.

this is some awesome political hypocrisy brought to you by the daily show: http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=184086&title=sarah-palin-gender-card

obama and palin

2008-08-30T00:13:00.000-07:00

so john mccain chooses sarah palin as a strategic ploy to take attention off of obama's awesome speech. cool--smart call. but somehow i don't think the general male sentiment of "she's so hot, i'd do her" will be enough to offset the active fear of what happens if mccain drops dead and a hot governor of 1 and a half years with a downs syndrome baby to attend to suddenly becomes president of the united states. julia says palin is a poor man's hillary. i say she smells like a conservative geraldine ferraro. aka, never the vice president.

obama's speech was pretty great though, and if you don't know his platform, he did a good job of summing it up in the speech, so you should read through it so you know what he is about.

"America, we cannot turn back. Not with so much work to be done. Not with so many children to educate, and so many veterans to care for. Not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save. Not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend. America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. We must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise - that American promise - and in the words of Scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.

Thank you, God Bless you, and God Bless the United States of America."--Barack Obama

some more of my favorite parts:

I will end this war in Iraq responsibly, and finish the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. I will rebuild our military to meet future conflicts. But I will also renew the tough, direct diplomacy that can prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and curb Russian aggression. I will build new partnerships to defeat the threats of the 21st century: terrorism and nuclear proliferation; poverty and genocide; climate change and disease. And I will restore our moral standing, so that America is once again that last, best hope for all who are called to the cause of freedom, who long for lives of peace, and who yearn for a better future.

We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country. The reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than for those plagued by gang-violence in Cleveland, but don’t tell me we can’t uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals. I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in the hospital and to live lives free of discrimination. Passions fly on immigration, but I don’t know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers. This too is part of America’s promise - the promise of a democracy where we can find the strength and grace to bridge divides and unite in common effort.

I know there are those who dismiss such beliefs as happy talk. They claim that our insistence on something larger, something firmer and more honest in our public life is just a Trojan Horse for higher taxes and the abandonment of traditional values. And that’s to be expected. Because if you don’t have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things.

This country of ours has more wealth than any nation, but that’s not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military on Earth, but that’s not what makes us strong. Our universities and our culture are the envy of the world, but that’s not what keeps the world coming to our shores.

Instead, it is that American spirit - that American promise - that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend.

That promise is our greatest inheritance. It’s a promise I make to my daughters when I tuck them in at night, and a promise that you make to yours - a promise that has led immigrants to cross oceans and pioneers to travel west; a promise that led workers to picket lines, and women to reach for the ballot.

And it is that promise that forty five years ago today, brought Americans from every corner of this land to stand together on a Mall in Washington, before Lincoln’s Memorial, and hear a young preacher from Georgia speak of his dream.

The men and women who gathered there could’ve heard many things. They could’ve heard words of anger and discord. They could’ve been told to succumb to the fear and frustration of so many dreams deferred.

But what the people heard instead - people of every creed and color, from every walk of life - is that in America, our destiny is inextricably linked. That together, our dreams can be one.

"We cannot walk alone," the preacher cried. "And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back."

moments of what? clarity?

2008-08-27T09:47:00.000-07:00

i noticed this morning that i have a disproportionate number of songs in my ipod playlist with the word dancing in the title. it is particularly funny consdering how little real dancing i do, unless you consider wiggling in my seat at work a form of dance, which i believe in some norwegian cultures is actually the most outrageous form of dance currently known.

melissa, jessie, charity, and i got back from our california road trip last week. i hope to post some awesome pictures soon. my camera charger was lost somewhere in my move. it was an epic trip, and i have to say that in 6 and a half days we saw a monumental amount of california and though we did get sick of the car, it was really not that bad. and it was, of course, tons of fun.

today i was making a list of errands i need to run and i nearly started crying as the weight of my unfullfillment and unknown destiny crashed down on me. do you ever have moments like that? i wonder what it was about writing down that i need to buy more breakfast sandwiches that made me just feel a moment of complete dissatisfaction, helplessness, and mediocrity. i'm pretty sure it had nothing to do with the Jimmy Dean de-light sandwiches which i actually find quite tasty with their lowcal egg white, cheese, and turkey sausage goodness. but it's like, ugh, i don't want to deal with feeding myself, making lists and buying things, making money, i don't want to get my car worked on, i don't want to mail my bills, i can't believe i have like 60 more years of this crap. but don't worry. i quickly recovered.
i don't know if these are moments of clarity and insight into the human condition, are they moments of despair, opportunities for change? i guess it could be any of those things. i think the actual line that ran through my head was "God, what am I DOING?"

anyway, the verve has a new album out--it reminds me a little bit of urban hymns, but more of the album before that. as always, sweeping echoing instrumentals. and a chill, somewhat gloomy vibe. i found a fun album called ode to sunshine by a San Diego group called Delta Spirit, it reminds me a little of the cold war kids, whom i also adore.

training in missoula; seeing the Frys and the coz

2008-07-21T21:34:00.000-07:00

We're training in Missoula, Montana, a place very familiar to me as a stop on all 20 of our road trips up to Glacier in my youth. The air smells better here, fresher; it's a very homey and comforting smell to me. And people are generally very friendly. The lady at the front desk faxed something for me, free of charge and very happily when their fax machine didnt work. And people who ran and biked by us on our walk all said hello as they passed. very sweet.

not quite as sweet were the girls being interviewed to work at hooters running around our hotel which appeared to be ground zero for their hiring fair. i roll my eyes.

My cousin Garrett took Becky and I out on Tuesday night to give us a real taste of Missoula, which both Becky and I find extremely lovable. We went to 5 bars and a bluegrass hoedown. Not kidding. the people were young and deodorant challenged and danced like you would imagine they do in local productions of 7 brides for 7 brothers. becky met a mountain man with a foot fetish and as we were feeling quite charitable at night's end, we did in fact take our feet out of our heels for his perusal and i'm sure he was over the moon about it.

so this hotel has been rad. i have been soaked in starbucks' verona coffee and Tazo tea every day, they've provided breakfast and lunch, and have neutrogena toiletries. it's like the northwestern land of plenty. i, of course, have been pilfering all of said amenities whenever possible--i.e. when our snack was clif bars and at the end of the day there were like 10 left and no one wanted them. i am totally taking them on our california road trip.

there's an adorable assistant manager here who has taken chinese lessons and we have been chatting in mandarin at regular intervals. he didn't know who chiang kai shek was and iw as scared for him, as was becky the history teacher. i coudl see he was itching to get himself abroad and experience adventure. he asked why i left and it was impossible to tell him that someday you might actually want to move back home and stabilize. i just said he needed to do it for himself. i cant believe it has been almost 2 years since i lived in taiwan. crazy. i still want to know what part the whole chinese thing will play in my life. seems so closed now.

i managed to see the Frys on this trip. crazily enough they are holing up planning their next strategic move from Helena Montana. as God would have it, they were planning on being in Missoula in the same time frame as myself. they experienced what we later found out was the infamous montana summer construction delay. so they were cooped up in the car for hours. this will explain why the pictures have so much outside in them. we went to starbucks after dinner which sort of completes the circle of life as we were devotees of taiwan's starbucks as well. note that izzy has already taken to drink to ease life's frustrations.

awesome name alert: UNC wrestler

jet set

2008-07-18T19:01:00.000-07:00

I just love Bill Nye the science guy. he's talking on larry king about UFOs and some government coverup conspiracy with some film crew who caught a UFO on camera. I mean, Bill Nye started out as a comicc. But he just looks nerdy so i think we should trust him implicitly.

i am in DFW--holla to your home, shannon. you know, this airport is really more like a sprawling minicity. gate D is truly adorable and modern, but even the less cool rest of it has quality drinks and snacks. I believe this is because dallas offers just the right blend of people who can appreciate expensive gourmet snobbery yet also appreciate the fine art of lard. speaking of which, i did in fact get pictures of the piggly wiggly and the drive-thru daiquiri in Marksville, so now i think I can leave there in peace without feeling a strong urge to return. The guy who was in charge of booking us for the training was such a sweetheart. he kept apologizing that it wasnt in a more exciting location. I hate to think anyone feels bad about where they are from. I'm like, I want you to love where you're from, baby. speaking of which, i just love the love in the South. They called me miss julie, or baby, or honey, or dear. I love that stuff. makes you feel related. our participants were really friendly, though by the 5th day they got super restless and we had to cut off like 2 hours of the presentations because everyone wanted to get home to their families.

oh but lets talk about the poverty in louisiana. katrina is not just a one lacation phenomenon, let's put it that way. we had to drive 100 miles to baton rouge and we passed through some truly destitute places.

oh, have to board--will post pics when i figure out how to get them on this computer--doesnt have the spot for my memory card like my sony did.

tomorrow is literally the busiest day of my life, ever, i believe. i have 5 engagements. wow. then to montana sunday. oi gevai!

from el cajon to el cajun country...Auf wiedersehen!

2008-07-14T20:09:00.000-07:00

yes, I have arrived in marksville Louisiana. Thus named because someone named mark's wagon broke down here. i'm not kidding. if you hate yourself, go and look up the city history on the internet. it's already been an awesome trip only 36 hours in though. Observe:

one of the students in our training today came up to me, and said that on her certificate she would like her full name not her nickname which is Weda. i say "okay, sure, what's your full name?" she says let me spell it for you "A-U-F-W-I-E-D-E-R-S-E-H-E-N". i really thought she was effing with me. turns out her mother's college roomate was named Aufwiedersehen and that's who she was named after. not remotely kidding. made my whole damn day.

i am staying in what is probably one of the nicer rooms at the paragon casino and resort here in marksville. it is a room in "the atrium". The atrium has lovely little wrought iron balconies all of which have a beautiful view of...the inside of the hotel. particularly appreciated by Julie Inc is that directly below is a pool/pit full of alligators. not joking. they are small, but yes, they are real!pictures soon to follow (right now my internet connection even with my aircard is woefully comparable to various 2nd and 3rd world countries 10 years ago.)

we went and bought some groceries for breakfast and lunch from Wal-Mart, which we were told is the biggest and best grocery store in town. and yeah it looked like a moderately ransacked vons, allright--these "super wal marts" are super crazy. I desperately wanted to go to the Piggly Wiggly just to say..I had been in a Piggly Wiggly (much like i wanted to be able to say "i have been to Vladivistock!", but cheaper.) but John wanted to go someplace he trusted, and frankly, would teh piggly wiggly have had the light silk soy milk i so enjoy? it was risky. I vow I will get a picture of me at the piggly wiggly! ahem.

so for dinner John and I went to Big Daddy E's cajun cooking restaurant in the casino. we were wondering what their gumbo was like, and so we asked our waitress to describe gumbo to us because we were from california, and humor us, we didnt know what it was. see, we do know what gumbo is, we just didnt know what THEIR gumbo was like. Well, she is trying to explain and she is looking at us like sad lost children: it's like gravy, but not gravy, it is soup, just thick and brown, like gravy, but not..., john and i were thinking maybe the equivalent would be someone asking a californian what a california roll was, or maybe carne asada? anyway, she brought us a small cup of the gumbo to peruse. it was really not bad--chicken, sausage, rice. then i said i wanted a cajun martini. it was the first martini on the list, it looked intriguing and spicy, and was only 5 bucks. said waitress--very sweet and adorable (carded us and then apologized for thinking we were young looking, for which we gave her a large tip)comes back looking ever so worried: her manager doesn't think i will like the cajun martini. she says "just the flavors arent usually liked by...outsider yankee foreigners (she used the euphemism "people" in reality, but it couldnt really be disliked by "people" if it was the first martini on the menu, am i right?). the gumbo incident had surely already reached the marksville evening news and the manager was really just looking out for me...not knowing that my mexican-trained palate laughs at their spices. seriously, i eat tobasco for breakfast. anyway, i assured her that i just wanted to try it and was happy to pay for it even if i didnt like it. and it was sort of tasty. what it needed was salt, but it can hardly be blamed for that. the experience reminded me vividly of when i ordered my first chocolate hazelnut mocha in taiwan and the workers behind the counter kept whispering and i was like wondering if maybe they didnt understand me, or maybe they didnthave hazelnut, or maybe taiwan coffee was actually dragon spit with powdered bull horns for virility--you know, not "good for women"...but instead they were like "miss, we don't think you will like this drink...it will be too SWEET!" hilarious. and it took me 10 minutes to persuade them to let me live with my insanity and have the drink for better or worse. apparently in louisiana and taiwan i am a foreigner. nanu.

alakazaam!

2008-07-08T16:46:00.000-07:00

Today my fearless counterpart, becky, and I had to present for one of our most senior people. We take notes for each other on what suggestions are given since obviously we cant take notes when we are standing up training. After a brutal morning, I was setting up and using the clicker for the PowerPoints, which forwards through slides using a "trigger" button on the bottom of the remote. so i set up and point the remote at my presentation and say "BAM" at which the whole screen goes blue. Shit. I spend like 15 minutes getting it back up. Later in my notes i see that becky has written this: Julie broke the projector because she does not yet have control over her magical powers and uses improper word choice when casting spells. In the future Julie should wield her abilities with more restraint and propriety and a non-regional accent.

anyway, it made me laugh and laugh.

what did you guys do for the 4th? i said a sad goodbye to lauren who paid us an unexpected 2 week visit. then i sat around and was indecisive with my family, notably my horrifically sick father whom i infected with my cold from last week. the highlight was having owen and watching the fireworks shows. fireworks have gotten an upgrade in SD county i must say. 3d, glittery ones that keep going and going, smiley faces. very impressive. as for the rest of the weekend i went to a lovely wedding and walked over 12 miles. we did join the wino group. we were disappointed to find that the winos rarely actually drink wine after training. they sound scandalous but are really just very friendly and proactive motherly types. we love em.

speaking of my illness, i know airborne is scientifically proven to do absolutely jack to prevent colds, but my cold seemed to get better far more speedily than normal after taking it.

so becky and i are getting sent out into the big big world for training observation. First up--I get to go to Marksville Louisiana for a week july 13-18. weehee. a week at a casino resort that sports an aligator pit and a bbq restaurant and a steakhouse. carnivore city, baby. i anticipate some good updates from the crazy places we get sent, though i will not be venturing outside of my hotel for that week as i may have mentioned that it is in LOUISIANA in JULY. i am flying in to alexandria. i was like "alexandria, virginia?" nope, there is an alexandria louisiana. the week after that we get to go together, thankfully, to missoula, MT--old hartle vacation stomping grounds. hopefully meeting up with the Frys of Taiwan fame.

well, i have to go meet jill. hope you all had a lovely holiday.

buddies or red wine circles on boobs...vote!

2008-06-27T23:03:00.000-07:00

Argh, every time i watch The Lives of Others I fall in love with it again. It moved me to tears, good tears, even before my surgery, and now of course it's twice as moving in my new emotional state. actually a lot of things move me to tears now: The liberty mutual commercials with terrible music where the people all "do the right thing" by looking out for their neighbors. also spontaneously moving are performances by gymnasts, dancers, and any athlete who does better than they thought or looks shocked when they've done something extraordinary. at this rate the olympics will be like a 3 kleenex box affair, a real blubberfest. might as well watch An affair to remember and get it over with. or life is beautiful, which has the record of the longest cry ever for the julie--i cried sporadically for a full 8 hours after that movie. oh and recently i cried at august rush which i am positive would have been far too cheesy and contrived to induce tears pre-surgery. but anyway, there's something so calming and refreshing about simple, quality movies. i watch so much trash that i forget what it's like to watch something really good.
oh, but in all seriousness, does anyone medical know if having someone cut into your ovaries makes you more emotional...or like, does surgery make people more emotional, some post anesthesia effect?

the job is going well, and i am so grateful, thanks to everyone who's asked. what we do is really socially beneficial. and my long awaited counterpart with whom i share an office is totally smart and hilarious. and she keeps me on track with training being possibly more..diligent than myself. :)

the ice skating is going...fiiine. i feel about as graceful as the stay puffed marshmallow man, and there is one move where we do backward swizzles and i am positive that our coach does it out of sheer cruelty so that the people watching their kids' lessons can feel good about themselves as we adults slowly wiggle our (enormous) asses awkwardly and very slowly backwards. i need to relax. thus far i am so terrified of falling that every muscle in my body is tense and i am totally sore the day after lessons. having medical insurance would likely add to that sense of relaxation. come august first i will be a terror!

so karina and i are definitely doing the 3 day walk for breast cancer. 60 miles in 3 days. the biggest task we have now is choosing which team to join (we definitely want some training buddies and some fundraising help). we have two teams we've narrowed it to. one is the team of a local radio station--8's buddies for life. the other is a group called Walk Now WIne Later. the number one major attraction of this group is that on their t shirt they have red wine circles over their boobs. this is, however, also their major detractor, because i have so many evangelical friends who are wine phobes that it might offend a major fundraising group in my life. as the chinese would say "how to do?". and i don't know that gently pointing out that Jesus' first miracle was to make some super-duper-vintage-kickass-wine will lessen said stigma. of course nearly all 3 day team names are scandalous. samples: my two breast friends, 4 boobs and 2 nuts, twin peaks, our cups runneth over, etc. so funny.

have a great weekend! we're going to the del mar fair. but the newsboys won't be there of course--they are visiting amy.

it's hot out here kids.

2008-06-18T13:34:00.000-07:00

sometimes i have bad ideas. like my idea to walk during my lunch break--which is technically 30 minutes--too short to do anything but eat and take a 10 minute walk. and then i remembered i no longer work on the coast, but rather in scorching el cajon. i get outside and desert heat attacks me. i'm like, hmm...maybe i'll go to starbucks instead. that was definitely the right call for my sanity. there will be no walking in el cajon until the month of october.

speaking of el cajon though, can i spread some love to a new find in my underestimated hood? so they have renovated downtown el cajon, which was formerly a total beige cesspool so lame that not even criminals visited--everything was just sort of boarded up, and mom and i went there a few days ago to a place called the New York Bakery. (in el cajon, i know, i know, hilarious). but anyway, it was *REALLY* good. they have this one thing that is basically a piece of soft focaccia with ricotta and mozzarella on it, like a cheese pizza with no tomato sauce...only sooooo much better. it was like a piece of puffy buttery cheese and even a little crisp on the edge. totally mouthwatering. karina can attest to its amazingness; she ended up eating like half of the piece i had when she was already full. also purchased and eaten on a different occasion was a sfogliatelle (pronounced: sofol-j'ah-TEL-e). it is a flaky shell pastry with a sweet ricotta/semolina filling that has some hints of orange rind or lemon rind. mamma mia! with coffee it was perfecto. and in el cajon no less. blissful. soon i will not need to leave a 5 mile radius and my 180 degree transformation from world traveler to modern hermit will be complete.

I have had to impose a moratorium on looking at houses. there are just some truly amazing deals right now, and i get all anxious that by the time i am ready to get into the market, they will be gone. i am convinced that everyone else on earth wants the same houses i do.

50, 50 years old.

2008-06-12T15:56:00.000-07:00

Happy 50th Birthday to my Mom today. The youngest and fairest of all mothers of 29 year olds ;) Lots of goods and wellwishes are in store for her, but i won't spoil it just in case she reads this before she leaves work. anyway, now she can do that molly shannon imitation with pride.

So this year's So You Think You Can Dance has started out *awesome*. the dancers are great. we wanted to vote for almost all couples, except ironically for the tango couple who nigel or mary said was the couple to beat. hmm. the couples seem to be arranged by height, which is a good thing because most good dancers are really really short and the two amazons got paired together, lucky them. but i cry if the guy gets kicked off and some 5'5" guy has to partner the 5'9" girl.

anyway, speaking of girlie things, you can go to the NBC olympics site and see all of the crucial highlights from the US National Gymnastics championships. lots of great routines. i feel bad for nastia liukin, mostly because her name is NASTIA. crazy russianamericans. but since she, the number 2, ironically has all the endorsement deals, she will cry in a pile of money. charity and karina were surprised that i keep up with gymnastics. but there are a lot of things you don't know about me. things even less scandalous than my secret love for gymnastics. ;)

Sometimes people aren't good.

2008-06-11T15:00:00.000-07:00

Story about people getting arrested for feeding the homeless in a park in Orlando.
Not the happiest place on earth after all.

This reminds me (in yet more 401k news, i know, you snore) of how i had to vote a few weeks ago on a fund for my previous 401k and the board or whatever for the fund had a recommended vote AGAINST scrutinizing funds to see if they contributed to genocide. assholes. and they default those votes to their recommendation, so anyone going through the motions has just voted to turn a blind eye to sudan investment. heinous. so make sure you look at what you are voting for!

in what i hope is better news, i went at lunch and signed up for my awkward adult ice skating lessons. in fact, i could go ice skating right now. i don't because i am wearing short sleeves and a dress. but i could, because i get free public skating. i'm glad i am finally doing this. they say that if you write down your goals you are like 90% more likely to achieve them. i also read about a foundation that fulfills the dreams of people in nursing homes and that a lot of times those dreams cost less than 50 bucks to fulfill, and voila suddenly granny isn't so cranky. i'm trying to fulfill as many of mine as possible. either so i will be a content old person, or so that fulfilling my dreams will be really really expensive.

that last paragraph reminded me of one of my favorite typos: public without the L.
bwahahahaha.

P.S. Nomes, that umbrella song is totally addictive. as far as the postcard...i'm amazing, right?! last week i mailed one to my sister lauren that i found going through stuff in storage as i prepare to move into my new place...it was from when i was in college. it was a free postcard from a cafe in boston. totally written, but not sent. i also once mailed a package 4 years after someone gave it to me to send. i need to work on my reliability. the only thing i have going for me is that i DO eventually get it done.the WHEN is just a sort of magical undetermined thing. hope you won pub trivia!

vanguard how i love thee.

2008-06-10T08:31:00.000-07:00

can i disseminate my love for Vanguard, new holder of my 401k? yes, i can. so i am all about divesting in sudan, you know this. and so i'm like, "great, i have to freaking pick around and see which funds have divested, again." and with fidelity it was a real pain in my ass. i was about to go to my sudan divestment site which i love but which is not actually that easy to use. blargh. so i decide i should at least call to see if they have any idea of which funds have divested and which ones havent. a year ago the people at fidelity had *no idea* what i was talking about. anyway, the dude at vanguard is like "yep, there's only one fund, the energy fund, the rest are clear." sweet relief. it took 1 minute. i'm so lazy, i think i overappreciate when people make things easy for me. i'm like, please don't make me put any effort into my activism. anyway, i can now happily invest in their 2045 fund for people retiring in roughly...2045 (why do all the years in the millenium seem very far and futuristic? i'm like "2045--when we will all be driving spaceships?!") anyway. yes. 2045. the aggressive fund. be aggressive, be be aggressive.

so yesterday i used my two hours to take a 6 mile walk "around" lake murray. and i do love lake murray, though i must concur with a woman in my bunco group who said there isn't enough shade and it sure would be nice to be able to walk AROUND the lake. for every step you take on the lake murray path you have to know that you are committed to taking it OUT as well. because when you get to mile 3 you run into a sweet chain link protected dead end. i cry for anyone who doesnt know that. anyway, i listened to viva la vida for the first 3 miles. yes, almost an hour. maybe you think that is excessive or obsessive. you probably think that having seen casino royale 10 times is a bit much too, but i posit that it is not!

i just realized that i had a tomato on my sandwich today. and there is a huuuge tomato e coli scare going on. apaprently the office park deli hasnt savvied up to this. luckily i can still elect cobra before i die.

kung fu new job

2008-06-09T09:42:00.000-07:00

First week at new job report: Things look promising. we haven't gotten into full gear because we are waiting for my fearless counterpart to arrive to start training in tandem. apparently the training process takes a full 8 months or so, though we start with certain classes after about 3 months. i love the activist sort of feel thus far--emails are going around about housing lawsuits and new regulations and news among the 3000 PHAs (public housing authorities) we work with. petitions to senators for more funding, etc. and, my commute and daily schedule are everything i dreamed they would be. we get off at 430, so i am generally home by 4:50. yes. the 4 o clock hour. i am dazzled by the prospects for my newfound hours. i'm thinking of trying to learn to ice skate. not that i want to be a star or anything, but it's getting hot outside and ice rinks are cool, and there is one about 15 minutes away. and i've always wanted to learn how to skate backwards. that's my goal. i have another goal which is, by the end of the year, to be able to bike to work. that is a much more ambitious goal actually. not because it is so far, but because i am not great on a bicycle and am terrified of traffic, going over cracks, bumps, passing people, trying to stop, etc. yes, virtually everything.

so, like the rest of the nation, apparently, i am addicted to the new coldplay song viva la vida. it does speak to that part of me that has been crushed and humbled, but in a rather orchestral hopeful sort of way.

so the other day i went to a birthday party and my friend's cousin was there and she is tall and incredibly thin. and she doesnt even have the decency to be awkward about it. she fully struts it like a model. she's very sweet and friendly and adorable. and this is my problem, God. if people are allowed to be that skinny shouldnt it be because they eat so little that they cant even really function? i want developmental disability and cognitive malfunction. men will still drool on them. i want them to be like "i am so hungry that my synapses cant fire." i do not want to be able to see them eat cake and talk. it's cruel. there's my disenfranchised woman complaint of the day.

we took owen to see kung fu panda yesterday, and he loved it. he started doing his 3 year old approximation of kung fu moves right after we left the theater. i highly recommend it if you have a toddler to bring. he also yelled at the screen at various points. like "stop hitting him!" when the villain was fighting the panda, Po. not as witty as a pixar movie, but definitely entertaining enough.

geeking out for the first day.

2008-06-03T23:53:00.000-07:00

so tomorrow is my first day at work. i am pretty excited/nervous. feels like the first day of school again. i ran a bunch of errands, planned an outfit, got a french manicure. tried to upgrade my laptop and discovered that the reason my laptop is so light and small is because the ram is built in and therefore has no slot to be upgraded...this discovery had me spending some quality time, seriously--i bought flight of the conchords and lock stock and two smoking barrels while waiting, with the geek squad at the santee best buy, who were totally adorable and talked a lot of amusing trash about the el cajon best buy. the geek squad uniform of white shirt with thin black tie and black dickies is totally nerd hot, btw. i also bought some stuff at the huge bath and body works sale. do i want to smell like tuberose, magnolia, or citrus on my first day?

apparently one of my most challenging new tasks will be juggling all of my lunch dates with friends and family in the area. i have at least 6 potential daily lunch dates. not to mention, i could meet my father at subway every day (today, btw, i met my mom and some of her coworkers for lunch at our ghetto fabulous local cocos and some ladies waiting to be seated looked at my mother and said "i can't believe you arent at subway!") yes, my father is a local legend, and he has dragged my poor mother into it. he could probably run for local office as the guy who always eats at the los coches subway and talks about running marathons...for a while he had a scheme that subway should replace jarod with himself. seeing as he is an el cajon celebrity, this may be less farfetched than i once thought, but only very marginally so.

other incredibly ambitious and exciting news is that i am thinking of saving up to buy a condo or house in a year or so. obviously it's a long way off, but i had to totally restructure my budget starting now to make it a possibility. it's probably just because i want to do everything charity does, and seeing as she is a new homeowner, i'm like "i want to be a new homeowner too, daddy...NOOOOOOWWWWW!!"

yes, of course i have been watching So You Think You Can Dance. but i cant wait for it to get out of this mass tryout phase. you can only see so many really delusional people get berated by the judges and see so many petite, flexible blondes get told "you just have this amazing quality about you...you bring joy to people" much like i exoect pamela anderson brings joy. as jessie said, "that amazing quality is hair dye".

more news after the first day. wish me luck!

one little piglet ate the cheesecake

2008-05-29T18:56:00.000-07:00

today i woke up and i'm moving around and i realize nonplussedly that my stomach muscles are sore. i did elliptical yesterday but no abs. then i remembered that last night owen and i spent a good 20 minutes throwing mini basketballs as high in the sky as possible. this involves a certain bending and launching motion from the stomach. i also picked him up--2 basketballs in hand, and power carried him over to the basketball hoop so he could do his signature quadruple dunk where he hangs, assisted, onto the rim. am i teaching him showboating? anyway. i'm pretty sure that's what worked my abs. and it was so much fun. he had fun, i had fun. just grab a 3 year old and go!

speaking of sporting excellence, i played tennis and golf on the Wii at Julia's last weekend and it was incredibly fun. my american consumer-oriented mind wants one *right now*! julia's husband was impressed that i kept acing the tennis game even though julia told him multiple times that i played in high school and college. despite that, i still totally lost. the golf program is hilarious whether you like golf or not because it perfectly mimics that soporific PGA music and screen layout. i guess it's no surprise that the japanese would make a kickass golf game. all i remember about flying over japan are mt fuji and hundreds upon hundreds of golf courses. the game probably also includes an unsexy but highly reliable, long-lasting, and efficient golf cart.

great story from my next to last day at work. we have the monthly birthday party where we gather for news, repeated unenthusiastic clapping, and snacks. said snacks included a strawberry cheesecake. well, i didnt have any because of you know, my loose attempt at improved healthfulness. so i go in hours later to get my effing broccoli and yogurt and i see one little pice of cheesecake in the fridge. and assuming it is a leftover from the party, i abandon self-control and decide to eat off the graham cracker crust, because..i love graham cracker crust. so i'm makin some chai, eatin some crust, and i hear the door open. and because i feel like a cow, i stash the cheesecake behind the coffee machine. good thing, because the lady who comes in opens the fridge and starts harumphing and then says "well, i can't believe this, someone took the last piece of cheesecake!" now, do i have strawberry gel on my mouth?, i don't know, but i am HORRIFIED! i'm like..."oh...they probably thought it was leftovers from the party," and she says "but it was in a bowl with celophane"...and i'm thinking "how the hell else does one wrap up leftovers?" anyway she says "i guess i shouldn't have had it anyway." i laugh, "yeah, i understand". i'm like 5 times her size. i do not understand. what i understand is that i am real glad i have a highly developed sense of guilt that makes me hide things. phew!

back to julia's 30th birthday celebration last weekend. julia totally spoils the foodie in me. we went to this incredible restaurant called Chaya in beverly hills. it is a japanese/european fusion restaurant. it sounds pretentious (probably is) but seriously had amazing food including: the best steak i have ever had--a peppercorn butter ribeye; seared scallop with truffle oil and mashed potatoes, wild alaskan salmon sashimi with lemon and capers, halibut with olive oil and herbs over a kale and cherry tomato salad with vinaigrette, steamed chicken salad with ginger sesame asian dressing, sirloin with horseradish steak sauce and mini zucchini, and for dessert--baked chocolate croissant bread pudding with dulce de leche rum ice cream. dear God in heaven. and of course julia's husband is building this wine expert web site, so we get awesome wine. ah. a true feast, but totally in line with what julia deserves.

5-7 and more!

2008-05-21T12:02:00.000-07:00

To recap the points i didn't get to yesterday:

5. started a weird protein shake diet that i am not sticking to.
6. i advise against the jalapeno hot dog at AMPM, but not from my own personal experience, but being in the room with someone with firsthand experience.
7. went to JMAs funeral--general observations are 1) party funerals are no fun for the living and 2) people in the general populace need lessons in death etiquette.

5. so i have this french coworker who recently has gained some weight and decided to do this protein shake diet. how did i get involved in this health fiasco? well, she tells me that i am looking like i have lost some weight (which is true, but not actually an amount that i believe would be discernible to the naked eye, kind of like a mountain rising 5 inches in a year). anyway, i say yes, i'm trying to eat less, blah blah. so she says "i yam go-hink to do zees prhhoghtein shek di-het, i bought zee metrhhex shek wees fhorty-seex grhhams of prhhoghtein, eet ees vehry chip and trhhaader zhoes" or (she is doing a protein shake diet using the Met-RX shake stuff with 46 grams of protein, which is cheap at trader joes). and i had been thinking recently that maybe to jump start some dietary discipline i would do like the "eat two bowls of cereal for breakfast and lunch and have a sensible dinner" kind of diet regime. so i was like, what the hell. it'll be fun to do this with someone. got through 2 days. protein shakes are barftein shakes. even after i realized you should use milk and not water, and they became exponentially more tasty, i realized...i like food. even in small portions. even in the form of lean cuisine and weird low calorie hot pockets. now, because i feel bad about buying the protein stuff, i am using it sporadically--like today for lunch. but what has basically happened is that i am doing defacto Weight watchers. I have taken the calories i would have had on protein shake diet and translated them into real food. to me, that means i am not cheating. i.e. if an egg white and cheese breakfast sandwich has the same calories as a protein shake, i go for it, same for a starbucks scone (btw, the apricot rasberry thumbprint scone is most reasonable). the hilarious thing is that i do this for...almost every meal.

now my major diet dilemma for the day is whether i want to get one double double protein style in-n-out burger for dinner, or two single cheeseburgers protein style in order to have more lettuce. you might think: this sounds undietarily wise, julie, how many protein shakes, exactly, were you having per day? but you'd be very surprised how reasonable the caloric intake of in-n-out is, specially if you sub mustard and ketchup and get it with lettuce instead of bun.

the main thing to take away from this whole unnecessarily long saga, by the way, is that i am hungry. large parts of my day are filled with incredible hunger. are planned around avoiding hunger. meals are planned in the future in reaction to cravings during hunger. (i.e. the pancakes i will eat when i get together with Jon...on friday)

6. AM/PM is advertising their jalapeno cheese sausage dog again. i was shocked they had revived it...and i advise against consuming it even though i havent had one, and i'll tell you why: i had a friend in college who ate one and then came to a movie viewing in my room and after most people had left, i exclaimed "who was farting that whole time? it was totally nasty!" and my friend said "uh, it was me, and i wasnt farting, i was burping...i ate a jalapeno sausage and cheese hot dog at AM/PM before i came here" mmmhmm. burp should NEVER ever be confused with fart. that is why i advise avoiding said hot dog.

7. i don't want you to think that i want to tell people how to react to death and grief, because i do think it is too personal and people are so weird that most things should be forgiven. but here's my take: people need to have lessons in death etiquette. the day i found out about JMA i was like so uber sad. and if anyone asked what was wrong, i was honest, and told them my friend had died. and the appropriate response to that would be "i'm sorry." just fyi. not appropriate is trying to cheer me up or make me smile. i appreciate the good intentions, but can you raise the dead? then no, you cant cheer me up. and also, i think that a day or two of sadness is appropriate for mourning a friend, it's emotionally healthy, and should not try to be remedied after an hour or two. another thing that should not be said to a mourner "don't think of it as a memorial, think of it as a celebration of life." nooooo. don't tell me how to think of it! also inappropriate: a sermon on how christians who die can be happy and celebrate. this is wrong even when a christian dies, but is particularly heinous when my friend was NOT a christian. guess what, asshole? jesus wept, and so do i. i miss my friend, and i think that's ok. some people want to share their own experiences, and i feel like jennifer had a good handle on the way to approach that, she was like "i have a story when you are ready". ahh. yes. i feel that when it is too soon you just don't want to hear about other people. you want to think of your own loss.

Jennifer accompanied me to John-Mark's funeral last saturday. it was a pretty cool setup, beautiful outdoor area. And there were some great memorials written by friends, and a slideshow with scenes throughout his life. and people were sort of milling. we were supposed to be having a good time b/c that is what john-mark wanted, but like, what do you say to people? the only people i knew were old coworkers, and i didnt really feel like catching up at the moment. they had a very nice eulogy, short and funny and very John-Markish. then they had an open mic, but no one who significantly knew JMA could unchoke-up long enough to say anything. and no one wants to hear from someone who is like "i met him at a 7-11 and he was real cool." they kept telling everyone to go to this big afterparty, but these were the same people who couldnt even speak. so like, how fun is that really? my conclusion: party funerals are only good in theory. unless you are pol pot, people will miss you and be sad, so you shouldnt try to force them to be happy without you.

someone did say that one could have a more festive time when the person had had a long pre-death, during which everyone said goodbyes and perhaps that is true.

Totally fascinating article on icelandic culture and how their high birth rate and divorce rate somehow work out for success! Personally, living near bjork would make me happy too!

Notice, Narnia, and other Ns.

2008-05-19T10:38:00.000-07:00

A whole lot has happened in the last few weeks, kids.

summary of sections:
1. got a new job
2. paid off my last credit card bill
3. saw narnia and ironman (they don't have a section. that's all i'm putting in. i realized i don't have anything spectacular to say about them. they were both good.)
4. went to a crazy concert and stayed out late as if i were in college
5. started a weird protein shake diet that i am not sticking to.
6. i advise against the jalapeno hot dog at AMPM, but not from my own personal experience, but being in the room with someone with firsthand experience.
7. went to JMAs funeral--general observations are 1) party funerals are no fun for the living and 2) people in the general populace need lessons in death etiquette.

1. I GAVE MY NOTICE LAST FRIDAY! Weeheeeee! I got new job! I start June 4th and am excited. the job is basically training for HUD programs. and let me tell you the story of how it all came about, because the spiritual among you are going to be pretty impressed. i'm going to cut parts of it from chats with Linda and Andrea.

so, i had seen the posting for this position on monster and had quickly submitted an application, but per usual was over my head in the work i have here so didnt have time to do a proper cover letter and whatnot, so anyway, i hadnt heard back. so then a week or two later i was talking to Misha who is in New York and she was asking about jobs i had liked--she knew i liked the social aspect of starbucks but it wasnt challenging enough (we got on that topic because of the lawsuit i am a part of by default). and she asked what i was applying for--and i had applied for like 20 jobs, but i was like "well, there is this one job that i don't think i am being considered for, but sounds like what i would like to do: training, so meeting and talking to people, and for housing, so beneficial and very complex"
and she goes...training for housing?
and i said "yeah, i think that could blend the two aspects i want well"
and she says "is the company called XYZ?"
and i say "yeah, how in the world did you know that?"
and she says "one of my best friends from law school works there and she loves it and she is just like you"
and so she emailed her friend
and her friend emailed the lady in charge of hiring
and that's how it came about
so misha in new york got me a job in san diego
a job that is TEN MINUTES FROM MY HOUSE and has a better promotion ladder than my current job, and also has fulfilling social aspects that my current job lacks.

no one can ever predict how things will work out, but it does all seem sort of "orchestrated", doesnt it? or for the non-religious, a super crazy coincidence. the only job i mention wanting is the one had by the only other person misha knows in san diego. doo-doo-doo-doo (that's supposed to be the creepy twilight zone kind of doo)

2. I paid off my last credit card bill last week! i feel so free. monkey off my back. i was thinking of having an In The Black celebration where we all wear black and feel good for me being nearly debt free. the only debt in my life is my car loan...so i think that if i like sold every single possession i have, my life value might be somewhere around breaking even. pretty thrilling. this job has done what it was meant to do, and it is amazing that right as it has accomplished that, i have found a new job that is a better fit in a different direction. loving the timing.

4. Last night Charity and I went and saw the Kills at the Casbah. As you would imagine, it was a super hipster scene: skinny jeans, black everything, girls with sleek black hair, or messy long black hair, purposeful quirkiness, trying to look like audrey hepburn, etc. the tickets said the show started at 8:30. now, if any of you have seen the Cougars episode of 30 Rock, and if you havent you are crying for yourself right now, you will recognize the woe of this tale. so anyway, chares and i hang with karina for a while, catching up, and i'm thinking i'm being pretty risky because i say we should get to the casbah at like 9:15...eek, don't want to miss them. yeah. casbah is a ghost town at 9:15. The Kills take the stage at roughly ELEVEN THIRTY. i mean their set was really good, i liked the songs, lots of good energy, didnt sound like complete shit, until the encore, which did, and was a cacophony of flashinglights and raunchy guitar that i think was supposed to be impressive, but to me was annoying--especially because poor charity and i are leaving at 12:45am and like, we have to work. anyway, after getting home at 1 and waking up at 715, i felt like "i'm way too old for this, please don't make me do it." so it kind of sucks, because i enjoy concerts a lot, but i appear to have a bedtime. i'm such an old fogey complaining about it going too late. but i seriously was thinking of those lupe fiasco lyrics "the crowd aint gonna clap and they aint gonna praise, they want everything back that they paid, cuz they've been waiting since ten for the lights to go down". i was like a total sourpuss, like "hmph, these people better be good, they got some nerve coming on here at 1130 pm, i should be in my pjs."

5-7 on tomorrow's blog :)

It's a jam for the ladies and the superstars

2008-05-15T09:24:00.000-07:00

Had another little mourning moment yesterday when I went to find someone in my Contacts and realized John-Mark is the first contact in my list. It was an Amelie moment...do i delete it? My friend Antonia suggested leaving it for a year in memoriam. I like that idea. Any other suggestions?

I will return to funny blogs in the near future i feel. i have a travel coffee mug i want to evangelize about. but for now, something really important:

Recently three articles have been sent to me profiling blatant cases of sexism. if didnt think sexism was alive and well, men and women, OPEN YOUR EYES! standing up for women's rights and equal treatment doesnt mean being against men or hating men. no no no. in fact men need to fight with women. working to fight degradation of women. working toward equality. equal pay for equal work. women's rights are human rights. seems so obvious. this bias against women isn't christlike at all. i'm posting the articles sen to me. one is from a mailing from amnesty international about crimes against women. One is about the blatant way Hillary's gender has been abused--and whether you like or hate her for her POLICIES and stances, cuz i cant help but love me some republicans, the implications for all women should disgust you. The other is about pay gaps. We have to raise our boys and girls to break this cycle! Righteous anger!

Misogyny I Won't Miss

How Dumb Are We?
How long will women shoulder the blame for the pay gap?

recent mailing from Amnesty international:
Honorata Barinjibanwa was just 18 years old when she was kidnapped from her village in the Democratic Republic of Congo by Rwandan outlaw fighters last April. She spent five long months tied to a tree - her captors untied her only to gang rape her. She survived to tell her story, but remains deeply wounded by the attacks.

Rape is a weapon of war in so many countries around the world, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia and Sudan. And one thing is clear - the problem of violence against women vastly exceeds the resources currently devoted to stopping it.

Through our Stop Violence Against Women campaign, Amnesty International is leading an effort to end this systematic violation of women's basic human rights. But we have a long road ahead of us to ensure that our work brings real changes for women.

Amnesty and its coalition partners were the driving force behind the International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA) introduced in Congress last October. This bill would authorize nearly $700 million for local programs and services to help end the most brutal forms of violence against women, including honor killings, bride burnings, genital mutilation, mass rapes in war and domestic violence. Its passage is a critical first step in improving the lives of millions of women and girls around the world - women just like Honorata Barinjibanwa.

RIP JMA. So Unexpected.

2008-05-13T11:12:00.000-07:00

This has been a bad week.

Today I found out that my friend and old coworker, John-Mark Arechiga, died in an accident. here is the announcement from he and his wife's racing site http://www.littlebigracing.com/

Saturday, May 10, 11am, Buttonwillow raceway: John-Mark went out for a second practise session of the day on his GSXR 1000. He was extremely excited about and confident in this bike. After a year and a half of not getting along with a 2006 ZX-10, he felt he could really be fast on this bike, get back to some of his old times on it at the racetrack. He worked in preparation for this race weekend for days on end, even after the bike was essentially race ready he fiddle with every little thing on it to make it exactly how he wanted it. He didn't always pay such close attention to his bikes, only the ones he loved, like his Centauro Moto Guzzi, and this bike. After 4 or 5 laps he hit the first rumble strip coming through the esses, upsetting the bike. He tried riding through it but by the time the second rumble strip came it, it was likely too hard to keep it under control after hitting the first and it threw him off. When the ambulance arrived he was unconcious but breathing on his own, with a steady pulse. Evidently his pupils were dialated and unresponsive to light. No one who was not with the ambulance was told this. He stopped breathing on his own in the ambulance and was put on a respirator. His heart stopped and was started more than one time in the ambulance ride. When he arrived at the hospital, he had no pulse.They tried for 45 minutes to revive him but were not successful. The cause is suspected neck injury but as of yet unconfirmed. John-Mark always said he did not want a fuss over his death - all he wanted was for everyone to have a party and have a good time.

Cocktails and a memorial service will be held on Saturday, May 17th at the Sheraton in downtown San Diego (1380 Harbor Island Drive, San Diego, 92101) 6:30PM to 8:30PM, with an after party to continue at a large house very nearby Point Loma (address to be provided soon, it's right near the airport). For those attending the various races over the weekend not able to make Saturday, please join many friends and family at a party Friday, May 16th at a the same Point Loma home. Or at any time during the weekend for that matter.

I need someone to come with me to this funeral thing. I know we're supposed to have a good time but i've been crying and choking up all morning. i'm thinking this whole party funeral idea needs to be rethunk. then again, maybe a few dirty martinis will take the edge off the grief. i guess it's good that he died doing what he loved. Ugh, he was such a funny, intelligent, passionate person. you just assume people will be around for as long as you can imagine in the future. nicole kidman's quote from days of thunder holds true "Control is an illusion. Nobody knows what's gonna happen next: not on a freeway, not in an airplane, not inside our own bodies and certainly not on a racetrack." The only control is knowing there is no control.

I spent most of Sunday at the hospital where my grandma was being treated for what is most likely shingles. if you google neuralgia or shingles you will see that the pain associated with it is acknowledged as some of the worst pain anyone can feel. and this is what is happening to my poor grandma. and it will take weeks to get better. she had gone to the ER and they sent her home but the pain was so bad she went back and they had her stay overnight for tests.

those personal tragedies in combination with global tragedies like the earthquake in china and 120,000 people dying of disease and oppressive regime in Myanmar qualify this as a REALLY BAD WEEK!

mmmm donuts

2008-05-09T10:00:00.001-07:00

argh. my coworker brought in donuts. don't you think it should be somehow physically difficult to pound, oh, like 900 calories in 10 minutes? that one should feel, you know, a sense of fullness. a sense of wow, after eating enough calories to sustain a supermodel for two days, i have a certain satisfaction in my belly. but NO. after having my compulsory chocolate and maple selections i am now fighting off the desire to go in for a glazed or jelly filled. fie on you donuts. my only consolation is that while they are yummy, they are not that particular type of donut--found fresh in *certain* special asian-owned donut dive bars that inevitably involve the words happy, lucky, shiny, or rainbow in their store names--that are dense and doughy and and utterly what i imagine crack cocaine must be like. i mean, once you start, just give up the ghost. you ARE eating five pounds of donuts that day. luckily the very best of said purveyors is on the PCH, far away from me. (i'm having visions of some weight watchers or jenny craig staff finding this entry and using it to describe the sad sad control and addictive property food has over people like me. posting it in 80 point on a projector in a meeting...people ooohing and aaaahing, shaking heads, sympathizing.)

so, i have this weird obsession with cleaning my laptop keyboard. probably because, in a sad and telling analogy, it's like a lover's body--the thing i am most intimate with, the thing i stare at and touch the most. 9 hours a day at least. let's sing some mariah carey "touch my body, roll me on the floor, wrestle me around, play with me some more, you sexy sony vaio...this is an andy samberg skit on SNL, i feel it. anyway, i just want you to know that you should NOT pry the keys off when trying to lovingly clean the keyboards naughty bits. they arent like normal keyboard keys that you can snap off and snap on--they have crazy little apparatuses underneath them. i come from a place of knowing. the better way is to coax out pieces of bran muffin, donut, and ethan-hawke-in-gattaca-exposing eyebrow and eyelash hairs that have been eaten or shed kinkily over the sensitive keys, using a paper clip and some compressed air. heed my warning. My H key will never be the same.

the spaces between the stalls in the women's bathroom at my work are TOOO wide. i should not be able to see anatomy when i just try to discern if the stall is being used. in some magical places, certain public restrooms, these spaces are so small that you have to push the doors to know if people are in them. in my work's case you not only can see immediately, you can see definite colors, styles, body composition, sometimes even identify the coworker. heinous.

i keep listening to this mandarin radio station. it's great for my chinese. but man, karen mok's songs:yawn. sap. or dao lang. i am going to use the space beneath here as a repository for links to songs that i kind of like though. pay no mind--unless youw ant to listen in which case, go for it.

Vivian Hsu--hen hen ai;
Angela Chang --Wo lian ai le;
S.H.E.--Watch Me shine (chinese version of the song from legally blonde);
Angela Chang--Neng Bu Neng yong gan shuo ai;
Chris Lee--wo de wang guo

colbert vs rain

2008-05-05T11:09:00.000-07:00

So i want to share something with you that made my week. seriously. all happiness for a week because of this tv clip of stephen colbert having a dance-off with Rain (Korean hip-hop *sensation*)

that clip also produced my quote of the week: hey Rain, let me know when korea lifts the embargo on balls.

alert! More fabulousness in the form of the Chinese version of the Numa Numa song! Found on the itunes (live 365) mandarin pop station.

Today is my first day back at work. I have been working from home for the past two weeks,so it's not like i haven't been working. But today I am back on site. and guess what happened? middle of the day, things have been going great. suddenly excruciating pain. it is almost exactly one month since my surgery. and what happened 2 days after surgery...that's right. and as if to prove my ovaries are a-ok, it is happening again just like clockwork. i feel like shards of glass are ripping through my uterus. i have taken a positively overdosish amount of tylenol TWICE--not my preferred painkiller, but the only one on tap here at work--and if you know what's good for you, you won't say word one about it. because you don't feel it.

i'm online with one of my chinese coworkers who has nothing to do until he can connect with our office in an hour so we are discussing breakfast (this should show you a certain amount of my deft chineseness. he asks me how am i and i ask him "have you eaten breakfast yet?" (not the general greeting i use for most american, fyi) since "have you eaten yet?" is common code for "how's it going?". anyway i am now completely yenning for a fantuan. i wonder what it would take to fly fantuan lady here and force her to make me fatty fantuans every day!!! oh awesome, he just informed me that pure soy milk is good for women. good for women. hell yeah. lots of chinese stuff is "good for women" or men(i.e. powders made from bull penis or elephant tusk. i can hear tim allen making a grunting sound now...). i do give them props for distinguishing, though.

yesterday was cinco de mayo--a celebration of some utterly non-applicable-to-americans mexican victory over the french. an excuse for people to drink margaritas. i went to a friend's party where we had awesome carne asada and guacamole and drank said margaritas. Viva Mexico!

i'm listening to mandarin radio here at work. for those of you with access to chinese music, there was a very fun song by someone named angela chang called "wo lian ai le". i am trying to stick through the sappy crappy songs to get to decent stuff. man, i've heard this faye wong song Passenger before. it must be a classic..to me.

O, Star Wars, I need an Armenian bracelet! FAIL!

2008-04-27T23:49:00.000-07:00

so i'm watching this Star Wars themed episode of deal or no deal. and carrie fisher is there to support the contestant. and the cigarette-ravaged man voice and plastic surgery and delusional pink lipstick is making it really weird to watch her as she totally cougars it up, rubbing on the contestant's husband and man-friend. very creeptacular. per usual on deal or no deal, they gave this awesome sob story about how the contestant was a vietnam war refugee child and how princess leia, also a war refugee, gave her the strength to go on and be strong because she was such a strong gun-wielding woman (probably like her own lethal commie-general grandma, frankly. i'm imagining that scene in the joy luck club where the woman hears her mom's story and discovers her own hidden strength...only in this vietnamese version the girl see leia in Star Wars pick up the gun and suddenly decides to join her badass gun-wielding female forbears...you know how they said the female generals were crueler than the males in vietnam...you don't? i lost you, didnt i? i digress. back to deal or no deal). so the girl is all crying because she is *so* moved by carriefisher/ leia and the star wars theme and how inspirational it was to her. yeah, really she should have been crying cuz she left with nothing. nada.

in other news. I am such an effing hippy. i drive a prius. and i'm buying fair trade gifts. i decided that when i need to buy gifts that i will try to be socially conscious, and i really have like a hundred to buy in the next few months --could more of you have milestone birthdays, babies, and marriages in the next 6 months? no really, i might be able to get a deal from a village in BFE Bali on papooses and jewelry. so here's a run down of websites i've found--please add your faves if you know good ones:

Global Exchange ;
10,000 Villages ;
No Sweat Apparel

this all started because i got very concerned for the little girl i support in kenya after reading an article in O magazine about Umoja village, this all-female village where women refuge when their rights are violated and they are forced to be 4th wife to some nastacular 60 year old in exchange for some cows and/or are severely beaten and/or forced to undergo **circumcision!!**. and some of these girls are incredibly young. 9 years old. 12 years old. and they get raped on their way to school if the walk is too long. and my sharon is like 10. anyway, the village makes money by creating jewelry. and O magazine found them and they of course had only had a pair of plastic scissors and their bravery and supernatural joy to make said jewelry with, but O got a grant for some shiny tools and had them make bracelets that they now sell on macys.com. and i'm like oh my gosh, first, i have to write world vision and hope sharon doesnt get totally violated. and second, i should buy a bracelet and then maybe the umoja village will take sharon and protect her. and why am i buying anything that doesnt benefit the oppressed?!, i mean damn if these little junior high girl scouts can boycott girl scout cookies to save orangutans, and i freakin hate orangutans and monkeys and gorillas, then i can at least check out my socially conscious options. that said, i have to buy tickets for my grandmother to see phantom of the opera for her 75th birthday and there is really nothing i can do to make that more enviro or socially friendly.

am i being braggy about my charitableness? if so, let me brag a little more and tell you how i got a card from my other little girl, Astghik, in armenia and she's so effing cute and she was writing because she was soooo excited about the birthday party i sponsored for her (back in january--guess the despot wouldnt let the card out the country, eh?--we have the same birthday...that's actually how i choose my little war-torn and/or screwed-by-the-soviets-and-then-by-our-own-oppressive-regime charity cases.) and she wants to know why i chose her. anyway i got all misty eyed because she is getting excellent grades in math and languages (i always choose girls who like math--i want to build an international army of rocket scientists) and she's happy and wants to see pictures of my family, and the card had a little sunshine and was two sided in armenian. i am already formulating a response. i will definitely tell her that her love for math was a deciding factor. and her curly hair. i will likely not tell her that another deciding factor was that I had just done a final paper on former soviet republics and that armenia was one of the most screwed, and that it's outrageous that anyone questions the genocide perpetrated by the turks. that would not return the heart hug, i'm thinking.

armenian writing, by the way, is very cool looking.

supposedly that says: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood(or sisterhood).
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) (that is not what astghik wrote...just in case you wondered. she just turned 9.)

nonsequitur to end: thanks to jon for finding an awesome site to make me/you laugh and laugh and laugh: http://failblog.wordpress.com/ it's a blog with pictures of things that FAIL. and it does not fail at being hilarious. much like my personal favorite for time wastage: www.despair.com.

Soyrizo hello.

2008-04-23T09:54:00.000-07:00

Last week's episode of The Office almost made me cry. but i don't think it's just because my ovaries were manipulated like silly putty and then put back together. i think it was genuinely sweet. so anyway, the episode is called The Chairmodel and you can watch it on hulu.com which, if you have not discovered it, is totally awesome. full episodes of tons of shows and excellent video quality. i've been watching 30 Rock which is absolutely hilarious.

so tonight my mom is coming to steal me for a night and she is making soyrizo. have i ever waxed poetic about soyrizo? it is like CHOrizo only made with tofu. and it tastes EXACTLY THE SAME. do you know what this means? all the wonderful deliciousness of chorizo but with none of the uber super scariness of actual what-parts-of-the-pig-did-they-use-what-was-that-hard-thing--oh-now-i-am-going-to-vomit sausage chorizo. if you inserted soyrizo into green eggs and ham i would sing about it: i would eat it in a boat or in a house or on a goat, i would eat it in a plane or on a lake or in the rain, ad nauseum.

yesterday Tom and Beth came over with a gift of Sam Woo chinese food and game playing. Tom says "so do we get to see the scar?!" I was like "well, you did bring me chinese food...so i'm willing to show you if that's the trade off." upon realizing where the scar is, he declined and Beth laughed and laughed. it'd be like asking a new mom after her c-section to see the scar. not a pre-dinner activity or an anytime activity really. though i did sort of freely show it to my better girlfriends because you know, it's like a battle wound.

speaking of chinese things, did i tell you i had the weirdest taiwan deja vu the other day? my aunt and uncle were in from pennsylvania and we were discussing potential afternoon activities and somehow the new bubble tea stand at the ghetto fabulous parkway plaza came up. and my aunt decided that this would be a really fun cultural experience. so we actually met up there later in the afternoon and all 6 of us got bubble tea --classic black milk tea bubble tea. so we were cruising the mall and we ended up at the Body Shop where my aunt legitimately looked for night cream and i covertly anti-aged--does one really need three different types of eye creams on at once? probably not. anyway--drinking bubble tea and covertly anti-aging at the body shop are two totally classic taiwan activities! i had a little moment of missing taiwan pengyous. of course the asian salespeople are way more on you than the americans. the americans are like "try it, go for it!" the asians are like "i am suspicious of you, gaijin". and they should be.i am trying to rip them off.

so something coming up a lot these days is the topic of the marriage proposal that loads of christians in california have been trying to force onto the ballot to say that marriage is between a man and a woman. and i actually ended up talking with my parents, who support it, about why i don't. and here are a few reasons why i don't: britney spears. are you really telling me that britney spears' two marriages, one of 55 hours, and one of 2 years are holy just because they were gender appropriate? no. are they both holier than a longterm comitted gay relationship? what i think these christians are really saying is that marriage should be holy. but half of marriages between straight people end in divorce, so i think the institution of marriage has been sullied more than enough. but if renewing the holiness of the term marriage is the rub, then go further, petition that the term marriage can only be used for people who get wed in churches and have made a statement of faith (oh, but what faith, you might ask...). that way all the heathens can have civil unions, gay or straight. but that isnt going to happen. so why are some christians wasting all this time when we could be rallying over some far more unifying cause like poverty reduction or healthcare or human rights and instead are alienating a whole group of people. do you think alienating people from the term marriage will drive them to the Lord? i doubt it. anyway, those are a few very basic opinions on it and why i won't sign it. also, i mean, the secular law and holiness and holiness and gayness are also interesting debates, but for another time.

Bleeding Love

2008-04-17T21:20:00.001-07:00

men,look away. i am about to objectify one of your xy compatriots. okay, so we're watching the padre game and trevor hoffman is dangerously close to allowing the go-ahead run, and me and grams and gramps are chating away while an outfielder makes an acrobatic catch and suddenly they focus on the outfielder and grams and i stop conversing and, in unison, say "whoa, he's CUTE!" that would be Justin Huber. terrible last name, totally made up for in catch-you-offguard hotness. googled him. AUSTRALIAN baseball player for the padres. hello. accent? dear God.

speaking of sports, could LaDainian Tomlinson's Easy Turf commercial be any cuter--"no water, no maintenance, no woarries" it's even cuter that the kids are clinging to his leg because he and his wife have had trouble conceiving. awww.

anyway, tonight mom and dad decided i was having senior park cabin fever and took me away to seaport village. it was the most amazing san diego night. 68 degrees and clear and lovely. we went to the Upstart Crow, arguably Lauren's and my favorite coffee/book shop. i bought some of their fabulous, quirky little gifts. lots of those snarky ann taintoresque cards. they also have cards that are cutouts of such snobtacular luminaries as james joyce, mark twain, dorothy parker, virginia woolf, etc and their quotes, which you can stick all over the card. very 16+years-of-education-adorable. and i bought charity a coffee quote magnet that i have to remember to actually give her. if anyone has a favorite highbrow figure (author or philosopher) you shoudl tell me and i will try to hook you up with a card or a finger puppet magnet of said person. che guevarra anyone?

i'm still bleeding. i do like naomi's take on this whole ordeal. that in my obituary or whatever they will refer to a short health problem that helped crystallize my thinking and form my future path, rather than my death knell. i sure hope so. completely undiscernable at this point. but i have decided that my new theme song can be that leona lewis song Bleeding Love "i keep bleeding, i keep keep bleeding".
shannonicus, as far as stigmata--i totally feel it. in fact, one of my favorite B movies is the patricia arquette Movie "stigmata" with billy corgan soundtrack. an irreverent woman with a crazy faith? i think i fit the bill.

There Will Be Blood

2008-04-16T09:52:00.000-07:00

Just when you thought I would be talking about cinema, discussing the depressing yet piquant symbolism in what Scott calls a modern masterpiece by PTA that will be studied for years, NO! Oh yes, there will be blood, but that blood would be issuing like old faithful, from my body! i will not only talk post op discoveries, though. i have a few awesome books i just read and need to address. and obama's "gaffe" (do you think the whole nation has somehow upped their vocab by a word?).

But for the now, more post laparotomy adventures. okay, so first of all, pathology came back and everything was benign! yay. no cancer for julie. that's the yay. the not so yay is that I have started bleeding like a sieve. but this isnt the blood that makes men uncomfortable, issuing from, as chelsea handler would say, my pikachu. rather, this was issuing from my incision. it started sunday as far as i can tell and i thought it was just healing fluid (i know, am i a druid?). we found it bizarre and called the on-call doc who said we needed to come in the next day. so went to the doc and saw the PA who competently re-dressed my wound and told me i had a clot working its way out. my PA, by the way is gorgeous. she sort of looks like eliot from scrubs just in case you ever found it unthinkable for a doctor to be all blonde and smart and lovely. (digression: i actually have two very beautiful wellesley friends who became doctors as well, so this should not be so hard to believe, but whatever. i just love scrubs.) we somehow thought that after she did her work, the bleeding would stop or go down. no, it got much much worse. another trip to the doctor was required the next day. the beautiful PA was correct about my blood clot (pool morelike), hanging out in my belly. but clots are not always small...sometimes they are like the hoover dam. i guess sometimes they reabsorb, but this one has decided, for reasons that seemed totally unconcerning to my doctor, to want to seep out. and now that it is doing so, it has to drain entirely or i will be a walking infection. you have no idea how disconcerting it is to have maxi pads soaked every 2 hours with my stomach blood. (yeah, they put maxi pads over wounds to soak up "healing fluid" and blood or whatever after surgery, still not talking about the pikachu. rest easy)

anyway, part of my directive is to engage in this very victorian exercise of heating washcloths 4 times a day and putting them on my lower tummy to release the blood more quickly. i bet picasso's lolita wife did this very thing during her female suffering days before she died of unknown causes. i also read the passage in Mark where the hemmorhaging lady touches Jesus' cloak and stops her sievelike bleeding of 12 years. Where is Jesus' cloak when you need it?

anyway the doc says that i am now to be a "lady of leisure" for the next few weeks. no bending, pulling, lifting--we're talking no laundry, dishes, picking up books off teh floor, etc. and it is driving me a little crazy. as happens often, apparently, i thought i had healed enough in 10 days to take like a 30 minute walk, or go shopping, or whatever. apparently when they said i shoudl walk they meant around the house. and after 10 days maybe walk around the block. but they said walk. and my idea of walking is like 5 miles around lake murray, i thought i was even slacking only doing 40 minutes a day on the greenbelt. the 2 hours of slow walking we did while shopping yesterday at the navy commissary and exchange was like shockingly out of line, apparently. i am now back to doing nothing but bleeding.

okay, health update completed. let's discuss books. i am reading a phenomenal book called Where the Girls Are, provided by the lovely Charity. It is an absolutely hysterical but scathing look at female messages and images in the mass media from the 40s onward. if i were the head of education in america i would make every high schooler read it (God knows it would have been better (more applicable and entertaining) than half the crap we read--Far from the madding crowd, I am talking to you. and carson mccullers.) it has seriously given me insight into my grandmother and mother. and myself, of course. and made me laugh painfully. exposed are the schizophrenic messages sent out in magazines and tv (i.e. the WWII era: support your man; your man is at war so go build an aircraft carrier, you can do anything, Rosie!; your man is back home, get back in the house. working mothers are neglectful and horrible...but do secretly work to make money so you can help the economy by buying things to make all your housework easier, and don't expect to get paid as much as men for it. and smile, overworked basketcase, smile.)

also fabulous reading was Ender's Game. read it in a day. incredibly fun sci fi adventure. excellent for a total mental getaway. will be even more entertaining if you believe that we have never harvested the true potential of child labor in wartime. and if you secretly think video games are real and that you are in fact saving the world when you play them. because you are.

so bitter people cling to guns and religion, barack obama? that is one of the best political quotes in a long time. i can only hope this is his howard dean moment. yeeehooo! crumble crumble. i don't hate barack obama. i just don't trust him. he is like an aaron sorkin movie, you know, inspirational but totally unreal and ineffective. slate did a comparison of his record and hillary's record. he gets less legislation passed. period. i'm sort of amazed so many people have fallen for his shtick. *sigh* i did enjoy the campaign pics of hillary at a local bar in indiana doing shots or crown royal and drinking a pint. bwahahaha. i wonder if roger clinton had anything to do with that appearance.

still bleeding. argh!!

female problems

2008-04-11T10:39:00.000-07:00

So I guess I forgot to tell you the tale of two ovaries. well, now they are two half ovaries, or together make one whole ovary. summary: they saved the ovaries, YAY! my crazy doctor ensures me that this is enough to create the hormones i need (if i start growing a beard i will be sooo pissed) and enough for me to get pregnant if i should so choose. but it seems to me like it must somehow limit me, like shouldn't i now only have half the childbearing years left that i had before i went in? he is a suspicious man. he also says that the fact that these things freakishly developed in no way indicates that i will get more cysts in the future or that i will have other "female" problems. i asked him if there was anything i could eat or not eat to prevent them from growing. no, he says. i don't know, see, i read this thing about picasso's lolita-esque russian wife who was in and out of hospitals becuase of her "female problems" and then she died from them. You read about this in Victorian biographies and such. like once they start they never stop. I also read The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion and her husband like knew when he started having heart problems that that was what he would die from. He just knew. (fabulous book by the way--totally made me, Miss HalfHormones, cry and cry because it's not sentimental, just real and heartbreaking)

anyway, ignorance should be bliss. now that one of our former colleagues, who i feel i can say with full confidence we NEVER ever thought would find love, (but are super happy she did) has married her very own mountain man, i feel inspired that if i hang out at my local "walmart store" i could probably find a toothless wonder to call my own. and if i find him in the next 5 years maybe we could spawn a mountainkind.

The new Office episode was fabulous. The show Step It Up and Dance is craptacular. no dance, all drama. So You Think You Can Dance is so much better. and kid friendly for the most part.

apaprently blogger still thinks I am in India because it keeps telling me that I could blog in my "native Indic script." depending on the location of the cradle of humanity, i *suppose* that could be true...

Laparotomy part II

2008-04-08T23:21:00.000-07:00

morning alert: MY STOMACH IS DEFORMED. and I am actually not referring to the shark-biteesque 10 inch scar across my "bikini" (they call it that, i am just using *their* technical term) I am referring to my stomach profile which, no matter how big or small has always sort of sloped from my waist into a little hill and leisurelyily( not a word) rounded down using length rather than width. now it is like...a little shelf. a thick, rounded shelf. it JUTS out from my waist and pelvis. it is like a cartoon, which julia has always accused me of being anyway. oh the humanity! ok, people in sudan, brothel kids in india. i'm fine. shelf-stomach is fine. deep breath.

so yeah. farting. recovery from a laparotomy is all about farting, okay, "passing gas". your entire diet, mode of pill and fluid intake (IV vs. Oral), and discharge depend on you passing gas. it's like a little chain reaction that isnt activated until gas is passed. and they don't tell you why, but i will. it is because, when you have traumatic surgery on your abdomen, your bowels sort of paralyze and peristalsis stops and passing gas is the first sign that things are moving. and if they give you food when things arent moving, it could just pile up and you could barf or have complications. and no, burping doesn't count as passing gas. example: they would like to take my IV out and give me the "stronger" pain medication, but...have i farted yet? no? oh,sorry. here's your clear liquid diet. i became very fond of chicken and beef broth and *certain* flavors of jello--no they are not all equal. why did i get orange like 80 times? it is the bastard child of lemon yellow and cherry red, both superior flavors. finally when my candy striper came around and asked if i needed anything i said "yes, i NEED red jello" and she diligently gave me some. but you can't force the fart. especially because your abdominal muscles are dead. so what could you even use?

i had a kickass room. i cannot tell you how i pity anyone who has to share a room while recovering. i however had my own little room in the pediatrics ward with 2 big windows that let in lots of light and occasionally delighted viewers with a picture of my ass where the gown didnt cover, as i hobbled to the bathroom. i also had Get Well tv which has lots of channels and lots of first rate on-demand movies. not that i could stay awake long enough for a whole movie. i fell asleep in the middle of just scrolling through the list the first time. had a little bathroom, a little sink area where i could painfully bathe myself, a completely nonsequitur goethe quote about piety, a window seat i could not bear to sit on, and lots of gorgeous flowers provided my friends. i'll have pics soon.

speaking of which, my friends have been awesome. i've been feeling very loved. charity and karina have come over and lounged with me and given me wacky news of the day and played games and just been all-around there for me in every way. jennifer came twice and brought me some blueberry pomegranate juice that i am now totally addicted to. and many others of you have sent very sweet cards and flowers all of which make me feel very loved. my family also stepped up, my mom/dad and gma/gpa were there multiple times a day. my aunt barb and mark came every day too and were totally cool with me passing out midsentence.

I am now in the capable care of my grandmother and grandfather who have red jello and comfort food like cream of rice and who have made me mustard greens (though let's just say they weren't as *gentle* on my recovering digestive system as other things I have eaten) I have a little room o'healing. they also don't wake me up every two hours in the night to take my vitals or check my scar or inject me with anti-clotting crap. still, I have come into a few interesting challenges now that I am in more familiar surroundings:

You forget that you cant sleep on your stomach after abdominal surgery. It seems pretty obvious, but i keep automatically trying to flip onto my belly/side with knee out as i have done for decades and then am hit with excruciating pain. and the thing is that i have incredibly vivid dreams/nightmares when i sleep on my back. and in the hospital you are in this molded bed and so hopped up on meds that you drift off immediately and know you cant flip over because your whole body is like grooved into the bed. not so at home.

you cant lift things. they tell you this, but you don't get it until you try it.

well, i've gotta go take my walk and my nap.

laparotomy surgery part I

2008-04-08T14:05:00.000-07:00

Let’s talk surgery.

To sum up how I feel: Ow.

Okay, so I get there and do the whole pre-op which you know involves them putting in the IV (this would be literally a recurring pain as I am “a hard stick") and then putting on white nylons which are apparently for increasing circulation and which kept rolling down and cutting off the circulation in my legs. Would it reveal how cranky I was through this whole process if I told you that I was immediately annoyed at the nurse whose SOLE task it was to put on said nylons when she couldn’t figure out the belting process that would secure said nylons and keep them from rolling? She needs to rethink her life.

So anyway, get in to where the doctor talks to me before the procedure and he says that he believed at my final check-up (like small children believe in santa) that my cysts have ruptured and probably dissolved and he can go through my belly and remove some tissue and voila, done. i’m sitting there wondering what the hell I’ve been feeling protruding from my stomach the last 4 months and which have not changed in my mind, if this is the case. maybe i should have been less comic about my condition, maybe i should have made the sort of bloating sometimes painful pressure i felt for 4 months more evident, like saying after all interactions "i may have looked fine while we were just talking but i coudl feel my cysts pressing on my bowels and bladder". Anyway, this "belief" explains why he says he will be trying laparoscopy before laparotomy. Fine. Yeah well I wake up and it’s like “Julie, I did a pre-op check and felt that there was something large there and couldn’t go in laproscopally…and thank goodness I didn’t because those were two of the largest cysts I’ve ever seen.” which you know, is what the MRI, CAT scan and 4 ultrasounds had all said before, but who am i and who is multimillion dollar technology for that matter? I love my doctor but where he came up with that is a total mystery. maybe it was in a dream. They saved most of my ovaries, which I am sort of happy about especially since right before going in for surgery I saw some baby coming out of a c-section and it was all adorable.

Okay, so then comes post surgery. I mostly ache. I have to cough sometimes and it feels like shards of glass running through my stomach. I am completely hopped up on anaesthesia and pain meds, cant stay awake for a whole sentence. Laughing makes me almost cry, it’s like a bad lyric.

Then begins the tale of the incompetent nurses. I was put into the pediatric ward (the only patient at the time) which is the overflow for OB/GYN. They get slough off nurses from other wards to watch me. Nurses who don’t know what a laparotomy feels like. Nurses who ask me why I am wincing when they make me stand up. I don’t know, maybe because every one of my abdominal muscles has been cut and sewn back together and is being strained by this action, asshole? Nurses from physical therapy who “believe you will be off your IV by the time I end my shift” (the fact that I cant stay awake long enough to drink enough to offset the IV or that I haven’t passed gas (the main event of recovery really) seeming to be nothing to her in 8 hours) i appreciate that much confidence in ones own self efficacy, really.
things that do not imbue confidence in the patient: when the nurse you have had for the last 8 hours and the incoming nurse you will have for the next 8 hours poke and prod the machine next to you turning it on and off and asking how to find the patient history and how to make it stop beeping...like...that. and that machine holds your IV fluid and pain medication and indicates errors that occur in dispersing those items.

Argh, I’m falling asleep as I write this, so I cant even finish. Anyway. I’m in pain, every time I move my body,pain. And guess what? My body has started menstruating! Yes! I thought it was surgery blood. Oh no. the surgery made my body think it needed to menstruate. My body needs to stop thinking, I say. My body decided to make mini-mes. It is officially not responsible with its abilities.

when i wake up i will write more about the perils of sugery (no solid food until you pass gas!) and very good things like all the wonderful friends and family who came to visit and sent flowers and all that.

a brave new world

2008-03-30T01:59:00.000-07:00

I went in for my pre-op appointment for the cysts. a moment of note was when i asked my doctor "if you have to remove my ovaries, can we harvest my eggs?" to which he responded that if the ovary is bad then the eggs are bad too. he said "but you will still be able to get pregnant because you will have your uterus." to which i responded (apparently not abreast of the sensitivity of modern fertility mores) "but they wouldnt be my babies, they'd be some other woman's babies?" the doctor says "well, you'd be carrying them, they would be yours" and i say "but genetically not mine?" and he says "well, no" to which i respond "well then, hell no, we can adopt." i guess that should go out as fair warning to anyone who potentially wants to mate with the julie: i am not willing to incubate your child just for the sake of your genetics. if it isnt our 1/2 and 1/2 lovechild, it doesnt gain admittance into my womb.

you know i'm going to eat my words on that later. but whatever. in fact, if the ovaries go, i wonder if i should start selling off my baby carrying capacity as a surrogate mother. start popping out other ladies' kids. that could add a whole new twist to the isaiah 54 passage that i keep reading as spiritual consolation..."the children of the barren woman will more than her who has kids...spread out your stakes and enlarge your tent"...i'm envisioning it "yeah, so i'm pretty booked with 5 births until 2013 but i might be able to squeeze you in in may 2012." i wonder how many kids it would take to pay off my car. i'll be my own personal brave new world.

so my new music discovery is the Kills. i love their album, midnight boom (discovered on woxy, naturally) and already have tickets to the show in may. i need someone to go with. i feel bad for dragging charity my hetero lifemate to everything (but i mean, i still WILL, of course). so if, perchance, anyone develops a love for The Kills in the next two months, you should let me know and let charity off the hook.

i guess that's about it for now. T minus 6 days to surgery. i'm going to put together an email list of people to update after it's done. if you are reading this, you will probably be on it. maybe it should just consist of a graphic thumbs up or down. that does rob the result of the complexity i feel in my heart though. on the one hand i feel like, yes, i want my ovaries saved and potential julie jrs roaming the earth (thumbs up)...on the other hand...no more periods ever again?! (also thumbs up!) i'm torn.

Spread, how i love thee, let me count the ways.

2008-03-20T10:25:00.000-07:00

Song of the day:
Los campesinos: you! Me! Dancing!

Spread: So Kim has been asking me for months if I have gone to this restaurant called Spread (i know, i know, the name is ripe with entendre.) it is entirely vegetarian and organic--all vegetables are picked the same day you eat them. the owners are these former attorneys who eschewed corporate life for the organic life and they cook and serve everything themselves. we had a spinach salad with fuji apples, berries, avocado vinaigrette and maple croutons; pomegranate sangria, thai pizza (which impressed me most by including broccoli, but pureed and mixed with aged cheddar or whatever, in such a way that you could not tell it was broccoli at all); pesto grits with grilled vegetables, and fresh fruit fondue with a white chocolate pretzel peanut spread and dark chocolate peanut spread (these are the "spreads" for which they are apparently internationally renowned: www.spreadtherestaurant.com). the whole experience was, frankly, orgasmic. it gave me a foodgasm. which was only heightened by the wonderful sense of well-being had by knowing that everything we ate was natural and helpful to our bodies. it is pretty pricey (well, especially the all natural sangria happiness) but was the perfect meal to send me off into my cyst surgery, after which my digestive system is likely to be a bit off kilter. it also seemed like the perfect meal to bolster my resolve to eat naturally post-surgery. i guess i probably agree with julia that there must be something terribly unnatural in our modern diet that spawns these cysts (btw, try talking cysts to some women in yoru life. suddenly everyone you know has had them or has moms, sisters, friends who have)

this experience brings to mind the joke i havent gotten out of my head for the past few weeks, relayed to me by corinne, (by ralphie may): people think salads are the enemy of fat people. that's completely untrue. fat people love salads: they're delicious.

sausage and the law.

2008-03-14T11:51:00.000-07:00

Quote of yesterday from my Neil Gaiman book Fragile things: There are two things you shoudl never watch get made: sausage and the law.

my high schoool biology teacher's 18 year old son died of a random and freakish aggressive brain tumor last week. this let me to a thought: i wonder if they have punching bags in hospice wards.

an interesting article about the findamental difference in communication between males and females:
http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/bassr/githens/tannen.htm

#1 must have

2008-03-11T10:05:00.000-07:00

Music for the day:
The Kills: Last day of magic
Tilly and the Wall: Beat Control

I was really feeling the lyrics of this Sleater-Kinney song, #1 Must Have today:

Bearer of the flag from the beginning
Now who would have believed this riot grrrl's a cynic
But they took our ideas to their marketing stars
and now i'm spending all my days at girlpower.com
Trying to buy back a little piece of me
(Everywhere you go they say "Hello,
weren't you the one that sold your soul?"
Every time you leave the say "Oh no,
why did you ever let us go?")

And i think that I sometimes might have wished
for something more than to be a size six
But now my inspiration rests
in-between my beauty magazines and my
credit card bills

I've been crawling up so long on your
stairway to heaven
And now i no longer believe that i wanna get in
And will there always be concerts where
women are raped
watch me make up my mind instead
of my face

The number one must have is
that we are safe
(Everywhere you go teenage
is the rage
inside your pants
and on the front page
EVerywhere you go it's die or be born
if you can't decide then
it's your own war)

No more
and for the ladies out there i wish
we could write more than the next
marketing bid
Culture is what we make it
yes it is
now is the time
to invent

weirdest story of the week:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20080313-0342-womaninbathroom.html

WOXY love, surgery dates, etc.

2008-03-07T13:42:00.000-08:00

Well, the big news for this week is that my surgery date is set: April 4th. Linda Way pointed out that this is tomb sweeping day in taiwan (4/4 4=DEATH double 4 =super death) but for me it will be WOMB sweeping day, the day of the year when my new OBGYN sweeps out the grapefruits attached to my ovaries and restores them to their rightful shape (well, or takes them out altogether, which is admittedly sort of scary and leaves me questioning my assumed view of reality, one of the assumptions being that if i ever wanted to have children, it would be my choice, my family being generally very fertile and whatnot. and you know what does it mean to be able to pass ones genes on and despite knowing that millions of kids need loving homes and i would love to adopt, what is that nagging anchor in worldly thought that makes me want to have my blood go on for time immemorial and what significance do i attach to that hope?)

In other lighter news, I found a fabulous new radio station to listen to through itunes or online: woxy at www.woxy.com. i love discovering music and with my commute i have been able to attest to how even the best of commercial radio repeats itself painfully. i actually had no idea that soundgarden, stone temple pilots, and nirvana were still so popular and so stale when played ad nauseum. I mean some people like music, and some people use it as a tool for self-definition, and for better or worse i think i am one of the latter. so i need new music. my great new finds for last week were:

1. Hallelujah by The Helio Sequence
2. One Day Like This by Elbow
3. Did I step on your trumpet? by Danielson
4. Stateless (that's the band name. some kind of electronica/hiphop/instrumental)
5. not due to woxy but to lisa's myspace; fleur blanche by orsten.

I am a heavy drinker. Right now for instance there are three drinks sitting on my desk, and every single one of them is caffeinated. this after watching a special by some very cheesy but well-meaning man named Dr. Amen (heh) on PBS about how you can heal and hurt your brain. and caffeine hurts your brain by restricting its blood flow. there are things like alcohol, smoking, and heroin that hurt it a lot worse. but still. turkey is good for your brain. i wonder if my turkey sandwich balances out the green tea, coffee, and diet coke on my desk. green tea is also supposed to be good for your brain. as is exercise, prayer, learning, and community groups (churches, hobby groups, etc.)basically things that are good for your body are good for your brain. i cant believe i am not eating more salmon and avocado since they are apparently superfoods and i love them dearly. he did have some interesting things to say about argumentative people, someone say to whom if you wanted them to come to the store you would actually say "i'm going to the store, but you probably don't want to come so i'm going to head out" and then they do come. for these people he said to make sure they have a carb-rich diet because carbs are mood food. if, of course you happen to be in charge of feeding such a person, that is. hopefully you can just see the error of your ways and abandon ship.

Eharmony response by Elizabeth

2008-03-05T00:48:00.000-08:00

scarlett johansson is auctioning off a date with her hot self, which leads me to the sad wasteland of thought that includes how much a date with ME would auction off for. (i.e. can one auction into negative numbers)

in any case, in the vein of posting other people's thoughts on my blog--please do see the hillary clinton piece by jim wallis below--everything below this paragraph was written as a response by my friend elizabeth to an email sent out by eharmony. the parenthetical comments are hers and are hilarious. i hope you enjoy them as much as i did.

Oh my God! A woman flirting with a single man? We MUST alert the church elders!A friend of mine who is currently doing the eHarmony thing jokingly forwarded me this awesome advice column on how to flirt. It was extremely useful, so I thought I would share it with all of you in case you needed some guidance.

Flirting 101 for the Ladies ("the" "Ladies"? This article was so written by a dude)

Welcome to Flirting 101, your guide to charming any prince in 2008. Whether you're a natural-born lash-batter (Ouch. Sounds dangerous.) interested in brushing up on your skills or a novice looking to cultivate your come-hither credentials, this is the year to embrace the fine art of flirting. (Shoot. And here I was all ready to waste time graduating law school and passing the bar. Thanks, article, for helping me dodge that bullet!) Ready to get your flirt on? (Geez. Only if I can raise the roof and let the dogs out at the same time. Got flirt? This article is so cutting edge.) Let's get started!

First, it's important to acknowledge that flirting can happen anywhere, at any time, with anyone. (Disclaimer: Except, of course, with minors, the elderly, married folks, people of the same gender -- this is eHarmony, after all.) From picking out produce (while picking up guys) (or picking your nose or picking some flowers) at the grocery store to making casual conversation while standing in line for your latte to exchanging flirty glances at the dog park (hopefully with other people, but he did say "anyone"), you can-and should-flirt daily! (No need to focus on living your life: focus instead on catching your man!) After all, practice makes perfect, and to become a seasoned flirting pro you should practice often.

Second, it's equally important to know that flirting doesn't have to lead anywhere. You can routinely flirt with cute strangers and never give them your name or number. By flirting regularly, you allow yourself to hone your flirting style so that when you do meet someone you're interested in, you'll have all the right moves. (Thank God for that. I've been up nights worrying.) The result? He'll ask for your number in no time. Score! (And joy poured forth from the heavens. My every wish granted – a penis-waver to call my very own.)

Now that you're down with the importance of flirting daily, here are some tips to help cultivate your individual flirting style: (and by "individual," we of course mean, "just like every other woman reading this article.")

Be yourself (and always be prepared) (As long as "yourself" is always centered around how best to make strangers find you attractive at every moment in the day)

To flirt with confidence, you don't need to channel Marilyn Monroe. Instead, it's important to be yourself-your smart, sweet, sexy self, that is! And because flirting can happen anytime and anywhere, a seasoned flirter takes her cue from the Boy Scouts (What about the Girl Scouts? Asshole.) and is always prepared, not to mention looking her best. That doesn't mean wearing tons of makeup to the gym or stilettos to the supermarket. No, to be the best version of yourself, you should follow this simple rule: Always leave the house with the appropriate amount of makeup, hair styling, and cute and comfortable clothing for the day ahead of you. (Um, the appropriate amount of makeup for the gym is zero. Zero makeup.) That way, if you happen to spot a cute stranger while running your Saturday errands or on the way home from work in the evening, you're armed and ready to get your fabulous flirt on! (Wow, so he likes that catch phrase a lot. Do you think he uses this in other areas of his life too? Like, in the evening, he gets his floss on prior to getting his sleep on?)

Make the most of your flirting moves

When you do find someone you'd like to flirt with, it's time to use your best flirting moves. These include making eye contact and then looking away, offering a shy inviting smile, and playing with your hair. (These tips are particularly helpful if you find yourself flirting in 1934.) If the object of your flirtation approaches, let him do the initial talking and respond with subtle enthusiasm and confidence. Continue to make eye contact and smile. If he says something funny, be sure to laugh. (Well, shit. Now I see where my problem has been.) That's a definite ego boost for any guy who's brave enough to approach a cute girl! (And Lord knows what most guys need is more ego.) Be sure to give him the occasional compliment to encourage him. (For instance, "I hear you were born with a penis! Well done you!") Finally, if you're enjoying the flirt fest and would like him to continue and/or ask for your number, find a reason to touch your guy. (Not there, pervy . . .) If you're talking and want to emphasize a point, squeeze his arm. (And squeal, "Jinkies! Is that your bicep?") If he says something particularly amusing, laugh and lightly touch his hand or leg. (If it's *really* amusing, just give his crotch a good firm squeeze.) These simple flirting moves tell the object of your flirtation that you're interested, giving him the green light to ask for your number.

Don't try too hard (Other than wearing makeup to the gym and practicing your "shy inviting smile" in the mirror every night)

Flirting is a subtle sport, and one that should not be played too aggressively. (Oh. Well, scratch that last crotch-squeezing thing, then.) That begins with your appearance. Don't wear something too provocative (low cut, too tight, too short, too revealing) (It's important to remember that nice Christian guys are repulsed by the female body, and would prefer no reminders that you have icky girl bits like breasts hanging off you.) It sends the wrong message that you're not so much flirty as you are, well, easy. (Unless you actually are easy. In which case, go away, whores. Find your own article.) That's actually an important distinction to make-the difference between flirting and being overtly sexual. (Try not to give off the impression that you are interested in, or have even ever considered the concept of, having sex someday.) Flirting should be light, fun, and casual, whereas being overtly sexual entails using overly suggestive words and aggressive body language. Don't make the mistake of trying too hard and being overtly sexual. (Or, alternatively, of using the phrase "overtly sexual" three times in three consecutive sentences.) Instead, relax, have fun, and be fabulously flirty! (While simultaneously being both sexless and nonthreatening. Guys dig chicks without any depth or complexity whatsoever.)

Play the game (and play to win!) (I think we can all agree that if we're using these tips, "winner" is not exactly the term that should be applied to us.)

Flirting is a game of cat and mouse. Just as you shouldn't try too hard, you should also NOT do all of the work. Let the object of your flirtation pursue you, too. Make him work a little to get that pat on the arm and/or giggle. (Personally, I request one-armed pushups from all potential suitors.) If your attention and affection come too easily, he'll quickly lose interest. Remember, you're a catch. Play the game by letting him try and catch you. (Sort of like how hyenas pursue prey until it seems like it's begging for death. Be the prey!)

Leave him wanting more

Even if you're having the time of your life, always, always, always, leave him wanting more. Cut the conversation or date short, using a variety of vague excuses that'll make him wish he had just a few more minutes of your fabulous time. (Better yet, kick him in the balls and run the other direction. That really gets 'em going.) Excuse examples include:
"This has been fun, but I really have to go."
"Look at the time. I should get going."
"It's been great talking to you, but I can't stay any longer."
(Other excuse examples: "I'm sorry, I have to go practice how to more perfectly mold myself to every man's fantasy of a vapid penis-worshipper," or "I have to leave so I can pretend to be more fabulous than you while really calculating my every move in a desperate attempt to make you like me.")

By being just a little bit mysterious, your guy will go out of his way to try and see you again. If he hasn't already, he'll definitely ask for your number now that he feels you slipping away. And then it's up to you whether or not you hand him your digits. (Which of course you will. He's a man, and having a man is always better than not having one.)

In 2008, the key to flirting lies in being yourself, practicing regularly, and making the most of your finely honed flirting moves. By becoming a seasoned pro, you greatly increase your chances of dating success because you've mastered the art of not only getting a guy's attention but playing the game and leaving him wanting more. Soon you'll be able to charm any prince who strikes your fancy. (Especially once he finds out that all that charm was lifted directly from a lame dating website article.) And in the meantime? Flirt away! (No. GET YOUR FLIRT ON. Haven't you been listening at all?)

I think we all learned a little something, don't you?

Denouncing the Hillary Haters (by Jim Wallis)

2008-03-04T23:16:00.000-08:00

This is from Jim Wallis' blog.

Last week I wrote about unfair attacks on Sen. Barack Obama's faith. And though it hasn't been in the headlines as recently, Sen. Hillary Clinton has also faced a steady stream of criticism of her faith. Christianity Today summarizes in sad detail and rightly debunks these "baseless blows to the former first lady" in a recent editorial, which I recommend reading:

The talk-show host, Robert Mangino, responded in a way that epitomizes many evangelicals' reaction to Hillary: "I know it sounds judgmental, but I just can't believe she's a Christian. I think all of her talk of faith is pure politics."

From all sides of the political spectrum, evangelicals respond with a surprising amount of disgust upon hearing Hillary's name. ...

Some prominent conservative Christians, although toned down in their language, have nonetheless relied on cheap shots to join in the fun. At a 2004 Republican convention, a Family Research Council spokesman passed out fortune cookies with the following message: #1 reason to ban human cloning: Hillary Clinton. The late Jerry Falwell, though not noted for his tactful public statements, announced at a 2006 Values Voter Summit his wishes for this year's election: "I certainly hope that Hillary is the candidate. Because nothing would energize my [constituency] like Hillary Clinton. If Lucifer ran, he wouldn't."

The editorial points to a higher ground from which Christians should discuss politics - both for the sake of the person in question, and relationships inside and outside of the church:

While the loudest political voices this election season will keep only a loose rein on their tongues, evangelicals do well to ponder the Bible's insights into the mysterious yet profound connection between a person's heart and mouth: "The things that come out of the mouth," says Jesus, "come from the heart." Which is why Paul says, "Now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips" (Col. 3:8). Biblical psychology assumes not only that the words of our mouths reveal the state of our hearts, but that words have power to shape the heart—for better or worse.

What's more, vitriolic language directed at political figures does not, to use the Pauline metaphor, attract others with "the aroma of Christ." It just creates a stench, making it more difficult to nurture relationships with those who want to meet Christ and who happen to support Clinton. Such talk easily slides into denigrating those on the other side of the political spectrum—who may just be on the other side of the aisle on Sunday mornings.

None of this precludes vigorous and pointed disagreement in the public square. Neither John the Baptist nor Jesus nor Paul was always meek and mild when they challenged the principalities and powers. But when vigorous political discourse turns into bashing of public figures, it perpetuates a great lie: that they are merely the ideologies and symbols attached to them. When a candidate's ideology is mistaken for his or her personhood, it masks a crucial truth: that each person, no matter their political views, bears God's image and matters deeply to him.

While pundits see candidates as punching bags, evangelicals are supposed to see candidates as, well, people.

I can't count the number of times that reporters have asked me about Hillary's religion, just assuming she must be pandering. One asked, "when was the first time Hilary talked to you about her faith?" I said that it was the first time I met her - after she came to Washington in 1992. The reporter didn't seem to believe me. I explained, as I have to many reporters, how Hillary Clinton was a Methodist youth group kid in Chicago, where her youth pastor took teenagers on "urban plunges" to the inner city and to hear Martin Luther King Jr. speak. Her Methodism is apparent in her longtime advocacy for children, as well as other issues. Agree or disagree with her politics, it's clear that Hillary Clinton is a committed Christian laywoman.

jojo mocha

2008-02-27T11:06:00.000-08:00

if there is one thing i can say for certain, it is that i have no certain idea of when i will update my blog. vexing. but for today, here are some notes:

1. guilty pleasure for the day: the song Too Little Too Late by Jojo. I found the album for free at the library, sparing me the guiltful pleasure of buying it on itunes. i dramatically told charity that the find was priceless, but actually its price is 99 cents.

2. New book discovery: Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things. I'm actually pretty picky about my audio books, and authors reading their own material can be frightening. but neil gaiman is pretty fabulous. he has a great voice and his stories are engaging and well written enough to be poignant at times, but not too bogged down in description that makes me zone out.

3. The Starbucks Skinny Mocha: Nonfat milk, sugarless mocha sauce, terrible.

Dance, Dance

2008-01-10T16:20:00.000-08:00

Corinne, Owen, and Luke spent the night at our house last night. When I woke up, Owen was in full swing watching the Backyardigans. And because he is three and my place in his reality is very specific and special, he summoned me at various times of my frantic preparing for work, to ask me to come dance. And he was confused when i didn't come each time he called to me. Because my special place is being the auntie who dances on command, and even sometimes spontaneously without command. I dance because when i dance, Owen dances. and that is just precious. He does not know me as the auntie who has to get ready for work.

I believe that cookies that have wafer-like qualities (you know, like kit-kats) have less calories than regular dense things. why? because they have so much air. This is a fallacy and yet I cant help myself from believing that something you can eat so quickly and that feels so airy in your mouth can have so many calories. I believe in many fallacies like this, apparently, which is why i have to wear such large pants.

Inja, you spice up my life

2007-12-20T22:31:00.000-08:00

So one thing I will miss about India is being able to get phenomenal chai at any time. This morning I happened to make the clearly unaware-of-my-surroundings request for them to make it spicier than normal. and now it has the same searing hotness of a shot of whiskey or something. but no matter. it is still spicy and fabulous in its peppery gingerness. my tongue is numb.

today is Eid, a huge Muslim holiday. It is a bank holiday in India. No one in our office happened tell this to our project manager because we assumed the office was still open and ready for us. not so much. locked. I refer to my previous post where i predict that hell for the Dutch will turn out to be India. I think there is probably a whole village full of dutch people somewhere in the middle of india being confounded at every turn. Not that i love it when things don't go as expected. but my usual response it to laugh and laugh.

India

2007-12-18T08:39:00.000-08:00

HBO in India keeps playing cheesy Blockbuster action films. Last night was Mission Impossible III and tonight is The Island, a movie that no one but me apparently loved.

I would tell you what India is like, but all I can really tell you about is my commute to and from the office, the 3 restaurants downstairs, and what it is actually like inside the office. WHat I can tell you is that there are likie 100 men and 3 women. That we were stared at like aliens, hostile aliens, may i add, for the first few days.

Work here starts for most people around 930/10. But my project manager and senior coworker are Dutch, so we leave for the office at 8:15 and arrive around 8:35. We have scheduled a few meetings for 9am, and have never actually started a meeting before 930/10. This frustrates my Dutch coworkers. a lot. Cabs who don't know the location of our building but say they do and insist on asking directions from people on the street also frustrate the Dutch. a lot. Actually I believe that hell for Dutch people will be India.

A few weeks ago my friend Devika from Wellesley happened to be in Mumbai with her mom and they took me to lunch at this sort of adorable restaurant with an owner who LOOOOVVVVEEESSSSS George W. Bush. He could not stop telling us about how much he loves George Bush. How he wants to invite Bush over here. How he would build him a white house here that he could live in forever. I told him that he might be the only person in the world who felt that way about George Bush and that Bush might seriously have to consider taking him up on it. He said GWB is about freedom, democracy, and wealth and that the only things India can create are poverty, corruption and more babies. Apparently, GWB is also associated with keeping Muslims in line or something to that effect. Call me cycnical, but i'm inclined to believe the latter more than the former. Although, he was right about the poverty. It's pretty much unbelievable. one of the boat tours you can take will bring you by a palce where 5000 women wash their clothes in the river...the river that infects everyone and takes like 30 expected life years from them. water we arent even supposed to shower or brush our teeth with. hmmm.

sarees are still gorgeous and bright and drapey.

medical care is good and cheap. i have these two enormous cysts that i have to get removed and i got a sonography for 30 dollars. xrays and everything. it's pretty incredible.

the food is excellent. what Indians can do with spices is phenomenal. They can make mashed vegetables taste like a delicacy. We need to leanr. because our mashed vegetables are bland as crap. if vegetables always tasted like this. well. mwah.

climbing the domes from firenze to orvieto to rome

2007-11-28T14:33:00.000-08:00

passport fiasco ended in true fiasco. didn't get it and had to miss my flight to italy. then had to reschedule through san francisco basically taking a risk that i would get it before my flight took off at 2. a russian man in a gold mini cooper dropped it off, and i managed to get here. we had to miss the amalfi coast, which was really sad. but anyway.

we are now in firenze *oh how i cant resist using the italian spellings* and we love it. charity was a real trooper climbing up the 500 steps to the top of the duomo dome--well, she climbed it far more easily than myself, but then discovered she had vertigo, and since i was the one who wanted to go up because i read that stupid book about its architectural genius, i felt it was my doing. after reascending like 50-100 steps to get various different aspects of the architecture, we decided my new motto is: i like to climb shit. i pay to climb shit. i.e. the 101 and the santa maria del fiore dome. though if i really liked to climb shit regularly i would be a hell of a lot thinner.

the food has been fabulous, but expensive, of course. we are walking my ass off. rome was incredible. everywhere you turn there are ruins. it is surreal and gorgeous and cool. i saw the Pantheon! (which i kept awesome calling the parthenon because...well, i know more about chinese history than western it seems.) and the colosseum. there were little kids on field trips at different places. i cant imagine going on a field trip to the Forum where julius caesar gave speeches. so neat. also went to st. peter's and the vatican museum. st peter's is ENORMOUS (but i like st paul's better :). there is an awesome tim burtonesque sculpture with a skeleton holding an hourglass emerging from under some people. the sistine chapel really is impressive, the characters actually sort of look like they are climbing out of the ceiling. and you can't swing a dead cat around without hitting some form of catholic clergy of all races and sizes. we actually took a picture of a store that outfits priests. i noted today, while looking at a mosaic on a baptistery of the devil eating people (yes, eating, like a half eaten person falling out of his mouth) being thrown into hell, that i used to think the buddhist/taoist folk religion was incredibly vioent, but thatthe many asian tourists might feel right at home in italian religious institutions. eek. Orvieto is where i would really want to be for the long haul if it were to come to pass, though :) Lauren really chose the most wonderful and charming town to stay in. it is exactly what you would think of in an italian movie where people know each other and there is a little chocolatier and adorable cafes and old churches and cobblestone streets and wineries. for now, i am drinking cappuccinos, taking illicit pictures of the David(10 euros??) and getting into the swing of things. I am really looking forward to when Lauren comes to meet us tomorrow. we are going to go to the uffizi and then tromp around town--hopefully making illadvised leather and stationery purchases for which firenze is known. more whenever possible,julie.

italy and india prep. drama

2007-11-21T10:27:00.000-08:00

The Indian consulate is holding my passport hostage in San Francisco. Our visa service failed to realize that I would need my passport for my thanksgiving travels--on the one hand i guess not many people go abroad for thanksgiving, on the other hand it IS an international visa service-- and so didnt give it much thought, believing they could overnight it to me wherever i was in the country. so i am in scary limbo. yesterday i thought i would have to hop a flight to SF. Then we realized it would be easier, and cheaper, for the passport to hop a flight. hopefully that comes to fruition.

and vaccines are a no go for this leg of the india stint. i guess i'll be using mosquito repellent and prayers. we'll see how that works for avoiding malaria.

prep part one

2007-11-15T15:04:00.000-08:00

India and Italy prep.

When preparing for grandiose trips, and the addition of india to my life melee definitely qualifies, you have to wrap up as many loose ends as you think you would possibly have to wrap up in the duration of the trip (5 months.) i need to give my old car to charity, for instance. There are things i need to return that i keep forgetting--shitty target shirt, for instance. also, i desperately needed a haircut for which i went to supercuts and did not wear my glasses and was therefore not able to see that she cut my hair about 3 inches shorter than i had asked. and when that difference means your chin or THREE INCHES ABOVE YOUR CHIN, it is damn noticeable. and frankly, stupid looking. but whatever. i never like new haircuts as much as i may have despised the old one. also needed to use magic mountain tickets before tehy expire at the end of year.

tangent: magic mountain. i love rollercoasters. and what they have done with rollercoasters these days is amazing. rollercoasters where you stand up while you go on corkscrew turns, rollercoasters where they lift you on your belly and make it seem like you are flying as you are upside down and all around. big drops, little drops. ahhh.

the list of things i need to take with me. there are many things you can get abroad that are just fine and add unnecessary extra weight to your luggage if you bring them from home. tampons are not one of those things. they are to be lovingly packed and admired as something that the USA does really well.

i don't have a digital camera. i almost bought one at a too-good-to-be-true price when, feeling sort of scorched by my car purchasing experiences, i checked the site out and sure enough there were lots of complaints about it being a scam--reminds me of my first temp job after college... so now i am going to go buy a digital camera. things i don't need to do are spend a lot of time thinking about which one to buy. and yet, for at least a half hour yesterday...yeah.

i got together a few days ago with a former student from taiwan who lied to her mother about going to study in LA and instead shacked up with a childhood friend and got married. when she told me she was married i thought it was green card thing, but actually they totally work. they're sweet and yet edgy, you know, wong kar wai lovers. and despite the fact that she is by far one of the hottest chinese women ever (someone i would expect to see in mean girls, for instance) she's totally sweet and makes some rad chinese food. i momentarily missed taiwan, and then i thought "even better, taiwan in america".

Travel Plans

2007-11-13T15:44:00.000-08:00

So I'm taking a vacation to Italy on Thanksgiving Day. And then i'm going to Mumbai, India for 5 months to work on a software implementation. And this is the very feeble start of my recording of the whole experience. so far it has been full of visa frenzy because it was sort of last minute. more details to come! but if anyone has travel tips, experiunce, friends in mumbai--please share!

fire and night

2007-10-25T10:05:00.000-07:00

so san diego has been on fire. and all we have been doing the last few days is sitting at home and watching the fire news. and calling friends and family to see if they are okay. and calling them again. and figuring out new friends to call, and watching fire news. yesterday was the first night that any normal tv programming was on. it was 7pm and susan taylor of nbc miraculously cut to Wheel of Fortune, which, as jennifer recently pointed out, is a staple, a symbol of comfort and alls-wellness in the Hartle household.

today is thursday and is the first day i have been able to come into work. and frankly, it's sort of a nice change from having been cooped up in the house. and my insane natural optimism even made me enumerate all the positive things about going in to work. like the fact that the fires are being contained, i get to see my coworkers and return to normalcy, and the air at the office would probably be better than at home. i was shockingly wrong on that last score and i actually ended up having a total coughing attack on the stairs.

so, i'm listening to Night by Elie Wiesel. question: if you were forced to work in the crematorium, do you kill yourself, or do you throw people in the kiln and commit whatever atrocities you have to do to try to live and testify to what happened?

yay, hygienic modernity!

2007-10-09T14:04:00.000-07:00

Maybe some of you are like me; you aren't actively appreciating on a daily basis that you don't live in the middle ages or early 14th century. But I've been listening to this book (oh yes, my whole life is books on CD) Brunelleschi's dome by ross king, about the dome on the santa maria del fiore in florence (preparation for our trip to Italy) and i have to say, I am very aware of how craptacular life was then. Let's discuss the black plague. don't want it, killed 4/5 of the florentine population. glad it's mostly eradicated. let's discuss water: wasn't clean, had to drink wine instead...which might not be so bad if you didnt get tanked after 3 glasses(that might just be me). let's discuss work hours. do you actively appreciate the Socialists who helped bring you the 8 hour work day? well, take a moment to do so, because apparently back then you worked sun up to sun down...and in the summer that meant 14 hour days in scorching heat. and on days when the weather was bad you just didnt get paid.

So artists have always been known for being a little "off". Ross King has been telling me that artists were known for being extremely ugly and smelly in italy in the 1400s. In fact, apparently people marveled that Raphael could be so talented because he was moderately handsome. And Michelangelo who would go for months without changing his dogskin undies. YES. FOUL!!!

Hey speaking of having a sucky life, here's Stephen Colbert and a few little friends helping explain why our Christian president vetoed a children's health care bill overwhelmingly passed by Congress.

holy God, do all the Argentinians have to smell so fabulously mantastic? their cologne is distracting me. i work in a veritable UN, and may i say that i wish other cultures would learn from the argentine example...because contrary to popular belief, b.o. is NOT like perfume, and yes everyone is susceptible to b.o., even Asians.

if i were ethan hawk in gattaca and i had bought jude law's identity but was trying to keep it secret from the oppressive genetic hierarchy of the day, i would fail parlessly. yesterday i cleaned up a veritable treasure trove of genetic ID in the form of my eyelashes, eyebrow hairs, and lustrous red hair from my computer area. all i could think was that they would have no trouble whatsoever identifying that, i, indeed, am not jude law, but very much julie hartle.

The pumpkin precious

2007-10-04T10:59:00.000-07:00

I need someone to stage an intervention. I honestly believe that if my last shred of self control and health concern left me, I would eat Starbucks pumpkin scones for every meal for the rest of my life. I have been eating them for breakfast nearly every day for two weeks. I thought I would get sick of them. I have not. Much like, I suspect, crack addicts don't get sick of crack. I arrange my daily caloric intake AROUND the pumpkin scone. What's worse is that today's pumpkin scone was the best one yet. They are INCREASING in deliciousness.

so, sometimes....i scrapbook. i know, it's an identity crisis. i not only scrapbook, but i have even done so with others, as in with many others (30), some of whom were coworkers (secretly hoping that in some alternate universe there are men who are thinking of taking up scrapbooking to impress their female bosses--i.e. the golf of the future). In a room for 6 hours, with prizes. i know. i know, do you even know me anymore? do i know myself? well, i can tell you that i know a hell of a lot more about how much memorabilia crap i have laying around that needs to either be 86ed or somehow lovingly preserved. apparently they should be preserved in some acid-free way. as opposed to the many comments i heard last night on top chef on which the judges kept commenting on the need for acid in the food. apparently they werent high enough off the wine, was my conclusion.

so, i was also coerced into joining myspace and facebook, so if you would like to contact me through either of those mediums, you just let me know. I felt like i was losing part of my soul, though i do fit in better at my new kiddy smallgroup now.

where have i been? working. that is the answer to all your questions. and when not working? shamelessly indulging in watching So You Think You Can Dance before going to sleep and starting it all over again...okay that's not entirely true. i did actually start attending a new small group in which i am depressingly older than EVERYONE in the group. I'm trying to let their naive optimism rub off on me rather than letting my jaded, world-worn perspective rub off on them. They seem to be able to utter sentences and be confident that what they say is true, right, not subject to change or difference after years of life. This is something I have not been able to do for a great while.

speaking of which, wanna be depressed and ashamed of the american government (if you werent already)? Go see No End In Sight or rent it on video. It's a documentary on the iraq war and transition government setup. horrific. explain to me why i shouldn't get nauseated every time i think of it.

other rappers dis me, say my rhymes are sissy...why? why? why exactly?

2007-08-21T13:41:00.001-07:00

so basically i have been drowning in a sea of stress and drama trauma at work. that is where i have been. nowhere good. like tahiti. no.

Is anyone else addicted to flight of the conchords on hbo? not to sound like a complete advertisement, but it makes me sooo happy. i steal away youtube moments during the day and watch hiphopopatomus or Boom King and things seem like they will be okay.

my work husband, Pablo, left last week to return to argentina. we had a huge korean bbq send off for him during which our vastly multicultural crowd of coworkers drifted in in waves every 15 minutes over an hour and a half. i had reserved a room for 15 and at 7:30 (half hour after our planned meeting time, we only had 9...at 8:45 the last of 18 drifted in and tucked in to some leftover meat.) do any of you remember when i was the first to arrive at a function--and the first by a long shot...it was like a weird alterna universe. anyway, Pablo had asked to go to eat somewhere really unique for his last meal. korean was the most delicious, yet safe, unique food i could think of--and luckily i have the all-asian access pass so, through tom chee, i totally hooked us up with an awesome place called Buga Buga, which disconcertingly looks like a defunct Cocos full of koreans. anyway, Pablo loved the korean place, but don't get the idea that Pablito was too adventurous: for every other meal (almost literally), he went to macaroni grill. he fiiiiinally got sick of macaroni grill the last week of his 2 month stay. anyway, as a sidenote, he had adopted one of our company's squishy stress balls as his friend while he was exiled here in the US of A. he called it Wilson after the volleyball in Castaway. so, as a parting gift, i went and bought him a wilson castaway volleyball at big 5. it's been a week and he still hasnt stopped thanking me. best 15 dollar investment ever. just fyi. in case you know someone else who feels shipwrecked away from home...

so, our other argentinian coworker has been trying to replace him--saying i can practice my spanish with him and wear his sweaterwhen i get cold, but it comes off more like forced spousery, like we were in an office wide catastrophe and now awkwardly have to move on together for the sake of the species...yes, i did watch the battlestar galactica series opener a few weeks ago with charity.

speaking of charity. she deserves some serious friend points after what i did to her last weekend. we had just made plans to go swimming and then go to dinner at il fornaio (my albatross as you will soon see) when we got a distress call from the aforementioned tom chee saying that my old bosss--we're talking like 6 years ago boss, needs help moving out of some toxic place he and his fam had unsuspectedly rented. so i call chare and ask if she will come and help these strangers move. bon, so we swim, we help move, it's 830 pm and charity is like "uh, will fornaio be open when we are done here.?"..and here's where i turn into a fat food addicted monster. i'm like "oh yeah!" normally, i hope, i would pass up eating at that point in the eve, but i had this il forniao veneto menu up in my cube and had been staring at this "ginger custard with crunchy sugar coating and green apple ice cream" entry for like a month. and the menu ended that day. so, even though the Christian thing would have been to thank charity profusely for coming to help move and then hightail it back home to sleep assuming God will let me have the dessert i've missed someday in heaven, i drag her to del mar to il fornaio. now, il fornaio, even in such circumstances would usually be a treat. but it was super busy and our waiter was an uber asshole. we hurriedly order appetizers and dessert, trying to taste greatness and jet out. my hallowed dessert comes, and it is total shat. now, i was expecting a sort of ginger flan/creme brulee with crunchy sugar top--but actually what we get is deep fried ginger custard with pieces of ginger inside...looked like tempura, totally greasy, smelled like it was fried in fish oil. the green apple ice cream was sorbet and had no green apple crisp to it, but rather tasted like frozen apple sauce. chares got a choco mousse/brulee thing that she likened to store bought pudding. so, instead of a treat, we were sort of stressed, felt dissed by shit waiter and having to tackle servers to get help, and paid too much money for mediocre food. THEN i lose the parking ticket. we had a validated card from il forniao so thought it shouldnt be a problem...until the ethiopian bitcwhore devil who womans the parking booth says that it isnt good enough and that we have to pay 20 dollars for parking if we cant find the ticket. so she asks the people behind us to back up so we can reverse and go back to find the ticket. so we retrace all of our steps all over, go back to try and get out--she literally will not let us out of the garage, and I literally will not pay 20 dollars for having parked for an hour of mediocrity. our wills clash, ultimately i am not willing to ram the gate thing, so we force people behind us to back up and let us return to the confines of the pkg garage AGAIN. we go back to il fornaio where the only shining spot of the il fornaio debacle occurs in the form of their greeter, who doesn't shrug off the 20 dollar charge and missing parking ticket but instead calls the asst GM who is also sympathetic and writes us a note saying they accidentally threw the pkg ticket away. he also advises us to go to the other parking guy at the other end of the structure. the other pkg nazi still gives us crap, but when i show him the receipt and note he lets us leave with a warning. that would be 30 minutes of pkg hell that charity endured past her begrudging trip to il fornaio. for this she is my star of the week.

in Crazy China Today news: the whole country apparently has lead poisoning.

thank you east county SUV on hwy 52

2007-07-26T13:00:00.000-07:00

besides being nearly inconsolable about the death of jake, the 9/11 and katrina rescue dog, how is everyone otherwise?

i'd like to thank the white SUV in front of me this morning as i crawled at 2 miles per hour on the 52 for having a large and anatomically correct penis drawn in sharp relief in the dust on it's rear windshield. thank you east county.

do we have any peter bjorn and john fans? i need to know if they are worth seeing live.

Harry Potter 7

2007-07-23T12:17:00.000-07:00

Yes I have finished the book. And it was fantastic. and Yes, you may email me if you want to discuss or want spoilers.

heavy metal and colonoscopy

2007-07-20T09:39:00.000-07:00

so the breaking news on MSNBC is that G-dubya Bush is getting a colonoscopy. now, if someone had bribed the doc to take a wrong turn and do some damage, i might care. as it is, the last thing i want to know about is his colonoscopy. for 2 hours dick "laws are for the poor" cheney will be the commander in chief. maybe he will change laws on gay marriage for his daughter.

so i think my transformation into a taiwanese teenage girl with lots of latent anger and a cheesy soft spot is complete. why? because i find myself listening over and over to the new linkin park songs i downloaded--of which, Bleed it Out is the best and i listen to it at least 5 times in row-- and because my recent downloading obsessions have been rage against the machine, renegades of funk, and system of a down, Hypnotize ("i'm just sitting in my car and waiting for my giiiiirrrrrllll", and finally because the anticipation of the new harry potter book has got me totally distracted this morning when i need to be very seriously focusing on my adult job.

The Fray Concert, Gomez, and CCT

2007-07-19T18:18:00.000-07:00

Today's Crazy China Today submission comes from one Mrs. Linda Way Chang. Click here to see how China is ensuring perfect weather for the 2008 olympics. Because even if it means that millions of northern chinese people will either starve to death because of famine or die from bizarre chemical complications from *altering the weather=playing God* at least they will have saved face during the 2008 olympics. good to know that we havent matured or learned anything from our past, china. shut up, japan, you suck too. for that matter, and particularly as it concerns us firebombing all of japan during wwII, we also suck. we may suck, but as far as i know we don't fire rockets into the clouds to dry them up just so we can have a nice olympics. no one would blame them for a rainstorm. no one thinks rain reflects poorly on the nation. sometimes i feel like i am taking crazy pills. but then i realize, it's just china.

so i went to the Fray concert with one of my coworkers the other day and they put on a great show, actually--chiller than i expected. oh, but they did a hysterical rendition of shakira's "hips don't lie" in which their drummer (whose bizarre facial expressions during the whole concert were funny, disconcerting, worrisome, and reminiscent of the No Doubt drummer all at the same time) stoically recited the lyrics as shakira. they also inserted a bridge from oasis' wonderwall into their last encore song. their own songs were good too, of course. we were in the pit and it was highly worthwhile--like the equivalent of 8 rows back. the whole band was super cute. we found out the lead singer had spent the whole day reading harry potter at seaport village (one ofmy favorite locales, and somewhere i take visitors) . he intro'd How to Save a Life by saying "this is a song for everyone who thinks harry is going to die" speaking of which, he better not die, and yes i am getting the book saturday.

Gomez and Eisley were the two opening acts--Eisley sounded good but we didnt really get to see them, just heard from outside in line. Gomez, for their part, rotated lead singers, put on a fully entertaining, musically coherent and solid show, seemed amused and yet perplexed at the apathy of the Socal crowd, and were generally hilarious. they have a cute, chubby, long haired leader who kept saying "for those of you who've just arrived, we are gomez" before each song. apparently they have one hit song that should get them laid for the whole of the decade and so when they played that at the end of their set everyone in the crowd seemed to go "oooh, that's who these guys are." maybe they should have played it at the beginning, middle, and end just for effect. brie and i determined that they probably have a more mature, thoughtful(intelligent) and loyal(smaller) following. we only determined this, however, because they seemed intelligent and because there were two ladies in their 30s singing all the words. not a scientific conclusion, per se.

whenever i can get my tookus out of work in a timely before dark manner and when i don't have anything to rush off to, i always go to the beach and walk and watch the sunset. and may i say that few people are as smug and mutually congratulatory as we who go to the beach to be active and watch the sunset. it's like some quality of life club.

in random news: my fingernails are really strong. thank you, omega 3.

CCT and various addictions

2007-07-12T16:26:00.001-07:00

CCt-Crazy China Today
i'd like to thank Julia for her contribution to my new blog feature "crazy china today" in the form of this link to an article about some chinese vendors using cardboard *picked up off the ground*--not even fresh cardboard, are you kidding me?-- in their baozi, which are big juicy buns filled with fatty meat... and cardboard. this is frickin aaaaawwwweeesoooommmeee.

new musical finds for the week: Peter Bjorn & John--especially the songs "young folks" and "objects of my affection" ; the Cold War Kids with their songs "hospital beds" and "pass around the hat" (couldn't find a youtube link).

So if any of you were thinking of going trekking, or merely vacationing, in Bhutan, one of my friends there has opened up a travel agency called Bhutan Millenium Tours and Treks. i'm pretty sure Lhatru's wife did something like stand in the snow outside the business office for 3 weeks to get it, so I hope they get some business. it's right among the Himalayas, hello K2, hello everest...and the sad thing is that when i entertain the thought of going there the first thing i think of is eating the bhutanese specialty dish that has cheese and hot chilies in it. i should tour the world trying the various cheese dishes of each country. then maybe i could reach my (and my coworker jill's) goal of having people cut me out of my house--we've both been morbidly sucked into the show about the brookhaven obesity hospital. not regularly, of course (she says, backpedaling and justifying herself)

the other day my sweet coworker wajeeh (why the h? i don't think it adds anything, but hey, he's adorable soo he can have as many Hs as he wants) asked me how many cups of coffee i have every day. i lowballed it and said "4-5?" and he looked shocked and, frankly, like he pitied me. i said "i know, but it's just that now that i've started, i don't know how else to go on."

in other george bush veto power news: Hi, I'm George Bush and my heroes are Mussolini and the government in Myanmar.

posh and becks are getting all sexy naked for a W magazine photo shoot. yawn. as if we havent seen people in the last stages of starvation before. soon they won't have the energy to speak and will be apathetic towards flies.

babies, cereal killers, wedding, farm bills and girls' education

2007-07-11T12:47:00.000-07:00

I thought i would have nothing to rival last post's gloriousness of an article about chinese people grinding up dino bones, that they actually thought were mystical dragon bones, for medicinal purposes. but then china executed their food and drug chief. they want people to know they are taking corruption and their reputation for craptacular goods seriously. BY KILLING SOMEONE. call me a life, liberty, and justice loving sentimental food, but i don't think that's exactly what the international community was thinking.

so another reason i love being home is that we are all breathlessly awaiting the birth of my best friend/quasi sister jennifer's baby, landon. in taiwan i missed 3 important births. and now, 2 of the 3 are actually pregnant again, and this time i'm here for the play-by-play. this is what home is all about, baby! i know, i know, so cheesy. i couldnt help myself. speaking of which, it's time for my mother's most recent bad joke: referring to lauren's supernatural ability to eat lots of cereal, "that girl, she's just a cereal killer" groan. but in a loving way, of course.

the bad thing about being at home of course is when friends who live far away have special times, like my friend andrea who just got engaged to daniel (who gets the julie inc seal of approval, by the way.) he asked her on his birthday. adooorable!
speaking of engagements, corinne is engaged (if i didnt mention it before) and very excitingly to a guy we and owen love. his name is luke owens. and owen's name is owen lucas. which means that eventually my nephew would be owen lucas owens. owen owens. while we see it as a sign, we also cry for him. anyway, corinne is planning her wedding already, even though they are aiming for 2009, and she has some great ideas. one of them: dresses that have an overlayer revealing a different tulle dress for dancing at the reception. not as cool: she may ask us, the bridal party, to do a choreographed dance. i shudder.

****social justice interlude******
so, now i will provide us all with some information that will help us help others quickly, you know, in case you ever get a sharp pain from feeling overprivileged or lazy about helping others. this is my rx for existential crises. go here http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?State=CA
to find your senators or here http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW_by_State.shtml to find your representatives and write them about things like the unfair 2002 farm bill, which you can read about at http://go.sojo.net/campaign/farm_bill From there you can copy the form letter and send it to your various representatives and senators above. in like 5 minutes.

or you could go to http://www.ikat.org/ and read about Three Cups of Tea or to donate money to build schools for girls' education in places like pakistan and afghanistan. i heard the founder speak on a radio program when i was driving down from julia's and i was totaly impressed by him and his passion for educating girls and for building schools and helping them become self-sustaining. the http://www.threecupsoftea.com/Intro.php website is a bit cheesetastic, ie his 9 year old daughter's "hit single" but hey.

****************

i know i'm a flaming christian liberal and everything, so i am predisposed to dislike bush and his administration, but i think even republicans will find this scary: http://news.aol.com/story/_a/ex-surgeon-general-says-he-was-muzzled/20070711111609990001

i find it scary how much time i devote daily to my traffic-fighting routine. how much pleasure i get from choosing the combination of lanes to get me through the golden triangle fastest. how good my math skills have become as i feverishly try to calculate how many miles per gallon i am getting. the high of potentially getting 30, the low of sitting in traffic and watching it dwindle to 24. the sense of failure as i watch cars in other lanes cruise by because i am fated to be in the one mysteriously non-moving lane. office space seems more relevant to my life than ever.

fred doug

2007-07-05T09:36:00.001-07:00

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.
- Frederick Douglass

startin' off the blog with an inspirational quote that convicts my lazy ass quite deeply.

making me laugh this day after july 4th is this article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19606626/?GT1=10150

damn, i love crazy chinese people!

supergeek, supergeek, she's supergeeking out

2007-06-29T15:50:00.000-07:00

i'm having a slight identity crisis here because i just posted to an adobe online forum to ask for help. there are 33 people in the online forum...an online forum for help with adobe products. the full force of my nerdiness is hitting me in the face and making my lips flap in its breeze. i'll be one of those people who comes up in an online search and you'll be like "who the hell actually finds and signs up and posts to those forums?" and now that is me. beyond that, it was super helpful. i'd like to thank my fellow geek on a leash, rick. salute!

So, pasted above is my new car. except mine is a 2005. but it is the same color (blizzard pearl--it does indeed sparkle like a pearl, you know i'm such a sucker for sparkles). it does crazily unnecessary, but advanced, things, like immediately unlock my doors when i shift into park. and lock them when i shift into drive. i can control my radio from my steering wheel. it drives so smoothly that on nice surfaces i feel like i am floating. and it's a toyota. and even though i think i got scheisted on the price a bit, supposedly i will be able to drive it forever and ever, amen. we had an adorable car salesman names afonso (that's right, alfonso without the l). he was from zimbabwe, and i was excited to give him a sale. not so excited to give his sleezetacious manager any credit after he sort of snowballed me into believing my warranty was better than it was and after he said that the solara was a great choice because it was 'more mature'. has he not been living in the same youth-obsessed society i have for the last 28 years? referring to the scion i was also considering he said, "no one who drives it is over 40." and frankly, that's what i want to hear. i don't want to be reminded that julia's fatalistic musings might be right and that time is passing ever more quickly and our metabolisms are slowing and that soon we will have a telltale smell and won't be sleeping more than 6 hours a night as our bodies prepare for that final sleep in the sky. (although, maybe i don't care so much about life. i wasnt very thankful for being alive when my car died--sadly, no airlifting, but the towtruck drivers' deft manoeuvering onto the traingle o' death was pretty impressive-- but was instead just pissed that it died and wouldnt hold out until i paid off my debts. effing daewooooo!) but as far as toyota is concerned, the youth-directed people have something going for them because scions are a flat price. no negotiating. because negotiating with car salesmen is as fun a root canal and less hygienic. apparently more "mature" people enjoy being dicked around. julia and i did concur, however, that this is my first real car. much like a child's first dance or something. a car i am buying entirely on my own, and, well, a "mature" car.

ahem, in other news. my tony blair has stepped down. if only, like steffi graf, he had stepped down in his prime. instead he has a dirty war on his head. but i still love him. quasi-socialist christians, i love you! my whole team at work are raging democrats, despite their tax brackets. we get along famously. so how would it feel to be chelsea clinton? like, hey chelse, what do your parents do? having two parents who were presidents of the united states? she's like "well, i've earned employee of the quarter twice now, and i'm thinking of transferring into sales..." right.

we should all now send out prayers and good vibes to sonya who is job searching and will eventually be kicking ass and taking names in the male-dominated world of architecture. i hope that she will use her extensive scifi knowledge to design something crazy--since that is the recipe of the day in dubai, i hear. charity and i are both pulling for a realization of anything from neil stephenson, particularly the weird floating pirate city in snow crash.

highlights from taiwan

2007-06-06T09:38:00.000-07:00

taiwan highlight:

meeting with rebecca chao:

rebecca is one of the funniest people in any language, and i highly recommend seeking her out if you havent had your fill of crazy recently. soon after i got in the car with her and her fiancee, weber, i asked her how their respective trips to vancouver to study english had gone. she says "oohhhhh, i loved it sooo much, i want to move to canada, and i have a plan, and maybe this is ..."(feifa, what is feifa, she asks weber, "illegal" he says) she resumes "maybe this is illegal, but i think i will get pregnant and fly to canada and have the baby so the baby will be canadian and can help me move" and of course i am like "wow, what a great plan!" because i am always an advocate of bringing life into the world to selfishly help one achieve one's goals. anyway, later, after we had picked up jade and were relating this car convo to her, rebecca comes up with a better plan: "andrea! she is canadian! i will just marry her and then divorce her and bring weber over to canada, julie, do you think andrea would be willing to marry me?" "oh. abosultekly, who wouldn't?" i say. to which weber says "you cant marry a woman" and rebecca says "yeah, in canada same sex can get married...right, julie?" "yes, that's true," i say..."and it's not even illegal like the baby plan." needless to say, when i returned home to andrea's apartment i informed her that rebecca had some big plans for andrea's life. rebecca is also pressuring weber to go to new zealand for a year of working vacation, which you can do if you are under 30 apparently, and is life changing. i need to do more research but if it's just a year of farming, i don't know.

local news:
my car totally died on thursday in spectatcular fashion as i was cruising in the fast lane down the 805. when i finally managed to get to the right hand side to pull off i was on a patch of triangular ground between the 805 and the 52, two large highways. even the AAA roadside assistance guy was scared for me. "ma'am, the cars I hear in the background don't seem to be slowing down..." anyway, i had been hoping the daewoo would hold up for another 6 months so i could get my debt paid off before, you know, acquiring lots more debt, but alas, the woo is not to be driven...actually in super ghetto fashion, i wanted to just deal with it and drive it until it really stops running and is a pile of molten metal, but my family appears to be willing to go to extreme measures to make sure i don't do that...it just has a leaking heater core, it cant be that bad, right? i just need to drive it 100 miles a day for the next 6 months...ahem. anyway. so that is a pile of sadness. i mean, it shouldn't be a surprise that the woo died. the company is defunct and really i probably should have used the 3 grand i spent 5 years ago to buy a used toyota. but still, i had a completely illogical optimism that hoped the stupid thing would defy the odds. my little underdog daewoo. so i cry for myself. i'm trying to look at the bright side, which is the fact that i am getting a new car. a car with a working radio and air conditioning. so that's awesome.

i`m big in japan--on the way back from taiwan

2007-06-03T22:06:00.000-07:00

blogging from nagoya international airport at the free computer station in the free business terminal in the boarding area. sweet! a whole bunch of free computers and cables for those with laptops. can i brag a little and say that my minimal knowledge of traditional chinese characters has been maximally helpful here in japan.

nagoya is kind of a nifty airport--it`s in the middle of a bay and so i keep wondering if it is the entirely floating airport i once heard about many years ago before i ever started traveling, but it may also have been hong kong or tokyo. on my way over i decided to spontaneously ditch duty free and go into japan and walk around the welcome garden, and it may have actually been my 20th country. eek!! i meant to plan for my 20th, but hey--a spontaneous run through japanese customs to walk around a weird garden with lots of stone piles sort of artfully (like crop circles) arranged might be exactly right for me. anyway, there are dozens of cargo ships laden with goods floating in and out of the bay. flying in we saw lots of pretty japanese hill/mountains with foliage that looks from the sky as if it is sort of rough and fuzzy deep green moss. the most distinctive feature i saw though were literally hundreds of golf courses. seriously. one place must have had like 10 courses to choose from. the japanese love them some golf. they also love them some din tai feng as melissa and i found out. speaking of which, i have determined that the din tai feng xiaolongbao followed by dessert at chocoholic is one of the worlds best culinary one two punches. seriously.

right now i am celebrating my victory of ordering an iced americano with white mocha sauce from starbucks workers with whome the only common language was a picture menu and some convenient coffee words that have just been transliterated into japanese *whitu mocha sowsu* and may i just say that for those of you who have been wishing starbucks made vietnamese coffee, the iced americano with white mocha sauce is the fulfillment of your/my wishes.

some of you may be wondering why i have just spent valuable time describing an airport in an industrial japanese city and coffee when i have just been back to taiwan for 10 full days which included the wedding of two of my favorite people, linda and campbell?!?!?! the answer is that i am sleep deprived and am pacing myself. there is no way i will be able to finish writing about the 10 days in taiwan before i go and moisturize and use up duty-free expensive anti-aging products before i board my flight.

in short: i had a very wonderful and warm time in taiwan meeting up with old friends and coworkers and helping campbell and linda. the wedding was gorgeous and oh my gosh, even made me cry multiple tears at the sappiest part when campbell surprised almost everyone by singing linda a song he wrote himself and arranged with someone from his church, and which was so good that i basically thought he had just found an existing song and used it, but no, and you could tell because he choked up and he was singing it straight to her and it was so personal and how he was so glad she sticks by him through everything even though they are the most dramatic couple in the world and they know it and they are still best friends and i was like "oh shit" and i was suddenly really glad i had stolen a kleenex from andrea earlier just in case...and really glad we had bought some waterproof mascara. in vain news, i am still unsure of my decision to wear red lipstick, everyone kept saying it was very "me", but i was sort of hoping to transcend me and be more gorgeous than "me" usually is. i think the red makes me look very white which defeats the purpose of using self-tanner. i will try to remember to post pictures when i receive them as long as i look tolerable in some of them.

ahem. there is ever so much more, but i have to go to duty free and get to my gate. hope everyone is well.

going to taipei

2007-05-23T10:07:00.000-07:00

so i am on my way to taipei for campbell and linda's wedding. i love blogging or journaling at airports--and on trips in general.

here's a bit of running commentary:

there's the man who bought two bottles of guiness for himself and drank them in less than half an hour

theres a bunch of asian men dressed in cowboy outfits, i wonder if they are going en masse to disnelyland to reinterpret toy story on stage, oh no, wait, the red stickers squarely placed on their chests tell me that they are japanese (oh, shocker there) students from toyota technical college. well, domo arregato my vibrant friends, i hope there is enough gel in duty free to keep your hair spiked to the heavens for however long you are in the sweet USA.

here's me at duty free: wow, these suckers have la mer and lancome openly available for trials! lancome has some crazy new stuff that has scar repair stuff along with "extremely powerful tensers" to tighten your skin immediately, yeah your basic immediate botox. eek! i thought it sounded scary so i tried something else, ut i think it had tensers too--my face feels oddly tingly. i definitely tried on like 4 types of lip balm and 2 types of eye stuff and two types of moisturizing anti-aging crap. mainly it's my passive aggressive way of lashing out at high-end corporations. SFO--while lacking in many areas, i.e. the depressing lack of a single starbucks, ye olde company that has lured me in with their ability to replicate exact deliciousness around the world, which is obviously not a big deal, just totally surprising since it's not like they have eschewed all other corporate oppression--the good thing is that they have all their expensive cosmetics in easy to access places where i don't run into ladies to whom i have to justify why exactly i would need to put on two separate hundred-dollar-a-bottle creams.

so i found out last night that i am on the same flight as campbell's parents. i cry for them because they are coming in from new york, and i have no idea why in the world they would send them ny-sf-nagoya-taipei. sounds like super suck to me. i thought they would just fly them directly over the ice cap. no matter, it will be fun to know someone on the flight--not to mention some serious taiwanese plane cred for being like "oh my gosh, pastor chang and mrs. chang, how surprising to run into you on the plane like this"

well, hello japanese man wearing tight white pants! wow.

i tried to upgrade my seat...and even though i didnt tell them how little i was actually willing to pay to do so, i was denied before i could even lie--apparently people who buy the ultra deluxe super cheap seats are put there with dunce caps and not allowed to move our poor asses up a class. "we're sorry, the fare you purchased means no upgrades are available to you. the business and first class passengers would prefer not to see your faces." thanks, united.

so i got my renewed passport back the day before i left. wasnt nerve-wracking or anything.

i've said it before, and i'll say it again. japanese old people are crazy cute.

well, i need to go and anti-age myhands now. so, until taipei, au revoir!

ch-ch-ch-changes

2007-04-25T14:18:00.000-07:00

i'd like us all to revisit one of my favorite Onion articles: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/38827 , the reason for this is that i went on a date last night and have therefore been thinking about relationshipal things, and this is one of my favorite faux articles. *sigh* if you want details you have to email me, but i have promised to get my stats homework done before i divulge any details to anyone. so, don't hold your breath.

as for work, i will be developing training content and then i will be traveling around the world and training people using the content i and my cohorts have produced. i will definitely be keeping all of your various locales in mind when i get assigned my travel dates. sooo excited!

i'd also like to announce--and i don't want to be a corporate whore, here--but i LOVE my ultrabland cleanser from lush. it cleanses my skin amazingly while keeping it soft and moisturized.

blargh. back to stats. i also have a bunch of papers due for political economy and may i say that that class has been one of the most stimulating and yet frustrating of my whole life? yes, i may say that.

gainfully employed!

2007-04-24T01:39:00.000-07:00

so, without further ado: I got a job, a kickbutt amazing job with awesome benefits, 4 weeks of vacation and lots o' travel!! yay!! now i have to send out the vibes to sonya. and sonya, i have to say i think you have a bright future designing a new island chain for dubai. we have a palm, we have the world...all you need is a great gimmick that looks good from a satellite.

entertainment update--blades of glory: hysterical!! planet earth: the most amazing nature documentary ever. special on 1200 pound man who hasnt been able to move off his bed in 5 years: didn't eat much today and exercised for 90 minutes.

back from lenten vortex. it was fun, chilly but sunny.

2007-04-09T11:32:00.000-07:00

Indeed, I have now been vomited back up from the lenten vortex. it was a crazy ride. and while i did gain some wonderful spiritual insights about the relevance of the resurrection to modern daily life, i have some other more superficial discoveries to proffer:

1. alanis morrissette covers the Black eyed Peas song My humps. find it on youtube and laugh and love it.

2. katie couric on the colbert report. this might only be funny and aweinspiring if you know exactly how awkward most guests are on the colbert report. of all the guests to hold their own, the out-of-favor-with-the-christian-right-for-trashing-james-dobson katie couric? i wouldn't have thunk it.

3. it helps to have a nice bathroom within reach when you decide to drink your daily recommended amount of water.

4. There is very litle that is more superfically traumatizing than unexpectedly seeing a picture of yourself from behind.

i believe it has been a month since i applied for the job that i am waiting to hear back from. in the meantime i have been a disaster. but i think i may have settled on trying to sell all of my possessions on ebay. actually some really awesome things have transpired in teh last month--seeing linda and jane...ill write about that when i'm in a better mood. i'm getting a haircut today. that could really go either way, couldn't it?

a lenten vortex has sucked me in

2007-03-13T11:50:00.000-07:00

okay, so my hours were scaled back at work which is why i have been frantically retooling my resume and job hunting and not blogging! our huge contract didn't come through and may be delayed until november. eek!

well, truth be told, *last week* i was frantically job searching. This week I have an interview and have sort of gone on autopilot and figure that i will reengage afterward. in a case of coincidental hilarity, in my international political economy(IPE) class, we have been discussing labor practices the world over and how some countries, like asian ones, might provide more longterm security in exchange for you having to be completely obeisant. american companies might make it seem like you are a part of their family by choice, but they can fire you at will. not that i've been fired, i should be getting more hours next week, but still.

in the meantime i've been selling stuff on ebay--and of course the only frickin thing that won't sell is this horrible sandalwood scented wooden fan i got as a gift from my national security students in taiwan. that frickin fan and my old boss are like two of the only things that make me vomit in my mouth just at the thought of them. that smell, that god-forsaken smell of sandalwood incense stinking up the stairwells and sidewalks of taiwan. ohhh, hey i think someone has just bid on it! woohoo! one cent! yes!

in juxtaposition, something adding greatly to the quality of life of the julie and her family is the tradition of saturday breakfast at einstein's bagels. lauren and mom started it when laur was the only one living at home and she and mom would get bagels every saturday. when our bagel place mysteriously, and without any warning whatsoever, transformed into an ice cream shop, we had to find a new place. and now any number of hartle family and friends can be spied at 8:45 at the einstein bagels. last weekend we had corinne+luke+owen, Lauren+michelle, gpa+gma smith, gpa+gmakathy hartle, mom and me. it felt warm. you know, like steel magnoliasish. conversations all around and baby being passed from person to person. jennifer+zach+carson can also be found joining us from time to time. i'm soooo lucky.

i have also been able to shuttle my father to and from the airport as he goes around the country training honda personnel how to be cool. speaking of cool, im now in my living room staring at the ceiling fan that our alcoholic electrician has failed to show up and install for two days, to our chagrin since global warming has given us temps in the 80s and 90s this past week. i got a nasty nasty sunburn out hiking last weekend.

in better news, i found a kickass trivia night downtown which charity and i and a bunch of my coworkers are attending tonight for the second time. this is a special st patrick's day edition. it isnt as flashy as our previous pub trivia in taiwan, but just as fun, and you don't pay to be in it, they just give you free gift certificates if you win 1st, 2nd or 3rd place. pub trivia is just fabulous. if you ever need to bond with people you don't know very well, i highly suggest you seek it out. i'm pretty sure that they must exist at english and irish pubs in every big city.

well, adieu until next time, which will be God only knows when. happy Lenten season and Easter. what are you guys doing for lent? i've started attending my church's lent bible study and sunday school. i'm really loving getting to know the people at my church better, we've got some really stellar people that i have never met before. my pastor's wife is such a fabulous sass; an excellent mix of sarcasm and sincerity; a woman who installs car seats and helps with child safety, a bilingual 2nd grade teacher, etc. we are all very different which makes it interesting because our conceptions of God aren't the same, except in a few critical areas, natch. i was going to do some sort of self-flagellation, you know, denying myself something i love. i was very close to trying to abstain from all unnecessary spending until i realized that i couldnt tell the difference. so i really need to meet with someone to draw some kind of budget...and, you know, boundaries! eek. this saturday i will be found at a celtic prayer retreat and in the evning i will be found eating corned beef and cabbage with the family hartle. happy st patrick's day!