I heart Seattle

Have you ever been to Seattle? Let me tell you something: You need to go to Seattle. Now. I’ll wait. (Okay, I keep seeing that on other blogs. I suppose it works better when you’re sending someone off to another website, rather than an entire city.)

I went to Seattle for work last week. Why did no one tell me how wonderful Seattle is in the summer? Nobody ever mentioned to me this business of warm, sunny, non-humid days in the Pacific Northwest. No wonder Washington and Oregon are being invaded by Californians. Where else are Californians supposed to go? Washington, DC? Let me tell you something: Californians don’t necessarily cope with DC summers. (I promise to stop whining about DC summer in October.) Seattle seems like a much better option.

On Wednesday my boss and I finished work around 3 and headed down to Pike Place Market. As we approached, I admired the view of Puget Sound beyond the buildings. But then I was caught up in the market itself—the rows and rows of flowers, the brightly colored produce, the stink of the fish counters. My boss tried to show me the fish stand where the guys throw the fish, but no one was buying, so there was no need to throw any fish. My favorite thing to look at was a large fish lying on the ice with a sign that said, “Hello! I’m a sturgeon.” My favorite thing to do was taste the free samples—peach-chipotle jam, cherry butter, blueberry syrup, a sweet blackberry. We wandered through the market, looking at the arts and crafts, until it was time to go back and get ready for dinner.

I went back to the market the next morning. I was meeting my coworkers for breakfast at 7:30. I woke up at 5:30 easily, thanks to the time change. After I got ready, I headed down to the market. There was still no one throwing any fish. I stood for awhile and watched the men shovel ice and lay crabs and fish out on it. They smiled and said hello to me, and went about their work. I wandered through the nearly deserted market, watching people open their produce stands and unload flowers from trucks. When I reached the end of the market, I walked into the original Starbucks and ordered a cup of the thick hot chocolate that reminds me of the month The Husband and I spent traveling in Spain. I took it out to the same place I had been the day before, looking out over the water, and called The Husband at home to tell him what I was up to. A few years before, I called him from San Diego to brag that I was at the beach having fish tacos and margaritas for lunch while he was working. This wasn’t too different.

I went back to the market every day. On Friday we finished work early again. I found a sandwich place at the market for lunch, bought some treats to take home, and went back to my hotel to drop off my purchases and ask how far to Pioneer Square. The concierge gave me a map and assured me that I ought to take a cab. “It’s much too far to walk—at least half an hour.” So, I set out on foot, looking into cute restaurants and shops on my way, and was at Pioneer Square in about 20 minutes. I wandered through Elliott Bay Book Company, enjoying being around books and out of the sun for a few minutes. I bought a lemonade and sat at a shady table on the square reading my book (one I had with me—I was good and didn’t purchase anything new) for awhile before heading back to meet everyone for dinner.

On Saturday my friend Rachel arrived, and we continued to do tourist things. I think she was startled by how early I woke up. I should have prepared her for my East Coast time schedule. We ate lunch at a bagel shop down near the market, then walked to Seattle Center to go to the Experience Music Project. I enjoyed the EMP, although I’m not sure it was worth the $20 cost of admission (I am apparently used to all the free museums in Washington). The Bob Dylan exhibit was excellent—lots of music to listen to, with some context. It was sort of amusing to see letters from Joan Baez and Dylan’s high school yearbook. An old guitar and harmonica belonging to Dylan were displayed, and I thought briefly that it was sad for an instrument to be locked up and not played—probably one of my sillier thoughts for the day. A lot of the exhibit was made up of brief videos, which were fun to watch—I learned a thing or two, heard some good music, and got to see other folk singers that I like. The other exhibits—hip-hop and songwriting—didn’t draw me in in the same way, although some of the interactive stuff in the Sound Lab was fun. I should had here that I was almost disappointed in the ugliness of the building itself. My friend Sara, a native of Washingtonstate, had declared it the ugliest building ever. While it’s certainly not the most attractive building ever, I didn’t find it astoundingly ugly. It was shiny and weirdly shaped and brightly colored. It was not an attractive building, but it was just bizarre. I think there are lots uglier sky scrapers. Here is a view of the EMP from above, taken from the Space Needle, and a close up of one side of the building.

After the museum, Rachel and I rode the monorail back to the hotel, and learned that the concierge at the hotel is not particularly good at knowing useful information about buses. She was interesting to look at though, with her wrinkly face, dyed blonde hair, animal print glasses frames, and lots of hot pink clothing, lipstick, and nail polish. We figured out the buses ourselves and headed off to see the troll under the bridge and the statue of Lenin. We bought gelato and sorbet and ate on a bench to Lenin’s left.

For our last activity of the afternoon, we took advantage of the beautiful, clear day to see the view from the top of the Space Needle. We had beautiful views of Puget Sound and Mt. Rainier. You sort of have to squint at the second photo below to see Mt. Rainier. It was much clearer in real life. I wish I had been able to go up on Thursday, which was even clearer—as we drove along the freeway from interview to interview, I had drooled over the sparkling, sapphire blue of the water. Still, I think we were pretty lucky with the views we got.

I am so totally going back.

Name that panda!

You can vote on the name for the National Zoo's baby panda here.

But I prefer this poll. I hope it works and that we get to name it Butterstick. Does anyone know the Chinese word for butter?

Bookworms like me can ramble about books forever

I like books. Not only do I like books, I like to buy books. Part of me feels guilty, thinks that I should save my money, go to the library more often. But I like to own books, to read them, keep them, put them on my own bookshelf so I can reread them later—I do read most novels at least twice. My love of book shopping can be something of a problem. When The Husband and I moved across the country we boxed up our books and mailed them to our new address, so they wouldn’t take up room in the trailer we had hitched to the back of the car. Eight Kinko’s boxes (my sister worked there at the time) arrived at the new apartment a couple of days after we did. Since then, we have bought two more six-foot book cases. I bought a lot of books during grad school, most of which I didn’t sell back at the end of each semester, and once I graduated I began spending money on novels. Mostly I would spend time browsing around used bookstores, where I always seem to spend $20, no matter how many books I buy. But I also purchase from Amazon. Spend $9.48 more and get free shipping? Sure, why not. So during our most recent move, we packed up even more boxes of books, and moved them down the street to our new apartment.

On Sunday, I bought a new book. I was in the Seattle airport, browsing around Borders even though I had two unread books in my bag, because I had a lot of time to kill before my flight, because I knew I would be sitting long enough during the course of the day, and because I can’t resist even an airport bookstore. As I had wandered through Elliott Bay Book Company on Friday afternoon, I had resisted the impulse to buy several interesting books, telling myself that I didn’t need the extra weight in my backpack, that I could easily get the books when I returned to Washington. But now, with the prospect of 8 hours of travel ahead of me, my defenses were down. I tried to recall the books I’d been interested in. The last name of one of the authors had started Ch, I thought, and wandered down to the Cs.

I didn’t find the book, but one name jumped out at me on the third shelf from the floor: Justin Cronin. I knew his name. I had read something by him before. I picked up the book, The Summer Guest. The cover declared him the author of Mary and O’Neill. I looked back down at the shelf, but that book wasn’t there. But that was the book I’d read. I had seen it recommended somewhere, probably the Booksense newsletter, back when I lived in California. I had checked in out of the UCSC library, read it, loved it, and forgotten the name. But I hadn’t forgotten the book. It is a novel told in stories that could stand alone. I remember some of the stories clearly, and I remember a description of snow that seemed perfect to me. I’ve thought about the book several times in the four years or so since I read it, but I always got stuck trying to remember the title or the author.

And so I bought the book and headed back to my gate. I stood in line to board the plane, reading the first few pages, totally hooked. I read the book all the way from Seattle to Phoenix. I read as my second flight took off from Phoenix and as the pilot turned the plane around half an hour later due to mechanical difficulties that were sending us back to the airport to board a different plane. I finished the book sometime just after we passed over Kansas City. I teared up a little, as I often due at the end of books, sad or not, and hoped the man beside me wouldn’t notice.

It was the perfect way to read a book. Well almost—I could have done without the mechanical difficulties, the turbulence that left my tummy upset, the leg cramps, and the lousy customer service of the airline I had chosen. The perfect way would have been to spend an entire day snuggled up with my cat, with good orange juice or ice cream available when I needed a snack, reading the book straight through (which is actually how I read the most recent Harry Potter book). Still, to sit down and read a book all at once, even on a plane, is one of my favorite things. Most of my reading is done on public transit as I travel to and from work. I am happy for the time to read, but the reading isn’t as pleasurable that way—too much stopping and starting, too many distractions. Sometimes I want to stretch a book out, put off finishing it so that I can enjoy it longer, but patience is not one of my virtues, and I find it much more satisfying to read a book from cover to cover. To finish it in a public place isn’t ideal, but it was an airplane at least. I hate reaching the last pages of a book on the bus or train on my way home from work is so much less fun, and I try to race through the pages so I can finish before I read my stop, or interrupt myself every paragraph to glance up to see where I am, which takes away from the pleasure of reading.

I started Isabel Allende’s Portrait in Sepia on Monday, and I haven’t gotten very far at all, because I’ve been reading on public transit, and since it’s cooled off a bit here in DC, I’ve been walking from the metro to the office, rather than taking the bus. I gain exercise, but lose some valuable reading time.

The pattern

Ann wrote something interesting about destiny and fate that got me thinking.

I don't know if I believe in destiny. Sometimes, when something is distressing me I will try to tell myself that if something is meant to be it will happen. But then I worry about what that does to my beliefs about free will. I do believe that I am free to make my own choices.

In Madeleine L'Engle's A Ring of Endless Light, one of my favorite books, a character wonders about this very thing and the wise grandfather, who says that "the pattern is closely woven," tells him that "Any one of us can cause changes in the pattern by our responses of love or acceptance or resentment."

I find the response soothing, and so long as I don't wonder about whether my responses are predestined, I can keep my head from spinning too much.

I suppose I do believe there is a pattern, or at least I want to.

Excuses, excuses....

I did not melt.

It's just that work was eating my brain. And then I went to California, where it was a little hot, but not humid unless you're from Utah, in which case, fine, complain about the humidity in Contra Costa County, but remember that you live in Utah, so you probably have more issues than just humidity. But I was in California, and it was lovely and not humid, and I saw my friend Lynn get married, and she was incredibly beautiful and so was the wedding and I cried because I was so happy. Everyone was happy, and many people were drunk and happy and it also WAS NOT HUMID.

Now I am back in Washington, and it's not too hot, and it's kind of humid, but only because it's raining, because for some reason it insists on raining here in the summer. Note to Californians: if you move to DC and your umbrella breaks in April, don't tell yourself, "Oh, spring is almost over, so I don't need to bother replacing this, because the rainy season is coming to a close, and I can just get a new one in the winter." Because, Californians, the rainy season here NEVER ENDS. But I am adjusting.

Anyhow, I am back, and work is eating my brain once again. Frankly, if work stays like this, I'm going to end up back in grad school, because a disseration would be less stressful. Tomorrow I leave for Iowa, where it will be hot and humid, but this time it's for work, which means I have to wear my grown-up clothes, which will not be at all comfortable in the heat, but I'm not even allowed to whine, because I have to act like a grown up while in my grown up clothes. After Iowa, I get to come home for a few days to complain about the heat and humidity here, and then it's off to Seattle to rejoice in decent, non-muggy weather for almost a week.

So, no, I have not melted. And someday I will come write a real post that is perhaps interesting and has good sentence structure and isn't all whiny.

Repentance

O Weather Gods,
I apologize for all the times I complained that summers in Santa Cruz (and Berkeley and San Francisco) aren't warm enough. I have sinned, but now I realize the the error of my ways. Thank you for using soaring temperatures and high humidity* to show me where I strayed from the path of righteousness.

Now cut it out. I get it already. Amen.


*It is almost 10 pm, and according to weather.com, it's 89 degrees with 80% humidity--putting the heat index at 100 degrees. That's just wrong.

Minnesota is so ghetto

For the past two and a half weeks, the bus I take after work from my office to the Metro has been full of teenage ballerinas, here for a summer program with the Washington Ballet. They are very thin, usually wearing shorts and t-shirts over pink tights, with their hair up in buns. For the most part, they are less obnoxious than most groups of teens on the bus.

The dancers come from around the country, and I’ve found their conversations amusing to overhear. I heard one talking about Kansas, and one day a girl who was obviously from New Jersey was teasing a girl from Atlanta about her accent. Last Friday, most were trying to reach their parents by cell phone in an attempt to get permission slips faxed to Washington so that they could attend a Harry Potter midnight release party.

It took willpower to not giggle out loud at the conversation I overheard today. One ballerina sat reading a magazine, and another girl came up and asked her what the article she was reading was about.

“Something about Prairie Home Companion.”

“Prairie Homecoming?”

“No, Prairie Home Companion. The radio show.”

“Oh. On the radio here.”

“No, Minnesota, I think.”

“Oh….Ghetto!”

Ode to Jamie

Yesterday was not my day. I had been complaining that it needed to rain for most of the week. It has been hot and humid, and the rain would break the heat, I thought. There had been occasional thunder, but no actual rain. You know how it feels when you need to sneeze but just can’t? The air had that same sort of tense, waiting need for rain.

Yesterday, it rained.

I was waiting for a bus after work when the first few drops hit. A bus came, and I didn’t even need to get out my umbrella. But by the time we got to the metro station, it was pouring. I opened my umbrella, and tried to move quickly to the metro. By the time I made it into the station, my clothes were pretty wet, in spite of the umbrella.

It was my friend Sara’s birthday, and I was meeting her, her boyfriend Jamie, and some others for a celebratory dinner and a restaurant near my house. On the metro ride home, I decided that I would call Sara and Jamie to ask if they could pick me up on their way to the restaurant. Brian was using the car that night, and normally I would walk, but I didn’t want to go in the rain.

When I came out of the metro, though, the rain had stopped. The air had cooled a bit, and it felt less humid. The ground wasn’t even very wet. I went home and threw my pants in the dryer (yay for having my own dryer!) and found a clean shirt. A little while later, dressed in dry clothes, I headed down to the restaurant, carrying my umbrella, just in case.

I walked quickly down the hill, waving to Marvin the bus driver as his bus lumbered in the opposite direction. When I hit the bottom of the hill, I had to cross over the freeway, on a pedestrian overpass. Just as I started up the ramp, another downpour began. I unfurled my umbrella and quickened my pace. As I started over the freeway, the wind picked up, and a tried to use my umbrella to block the rain coming from my left to no avail. I thought about how embarrassing it was going to be to arrive at the restaurant as wet as I had been when I reached the metro earlier, but as I neared the half-way point of the overpass, I realized I was already much wetter, in spite of being in the rain for under a minute. How did I know I was that much wetter? There was one key reason:

My pants were trying to fall off.

I was completely soaked, and my pants were so heavy with all the water that I was having trouble keeping them up. I folded my useless umbrella, held my pants up with one hand, and ran, wishing I’d worn a belt and wondering what I would do when I reached the restaurant.

I stood underneath the awning when I arrived and looked through the glass front. I could see my reflection in the window. I saw my friends having a drink while they waited for a table. I saw them noticed me and start to smile. I stood there until I saw my friend Jamie heading toward me. I motioned him outside.

“I’ll drive you home to change,” he told me, before I could say much of anything. I refrained from hugging him. No one likes to be hugged by a drowned rat. I gave him my umbrella as we hurried to his car, as any attempt to stay out of the rain seemed a little irrelevant at that point.

At one point in time, Jamie had worried that Brian would be upset with him. That was after Jamie had delivered me home in an inebriated state about three times. We had a pattern: whenever Brian couldn’t go out with the group, or wasn’t in the mood to go out, I would go, drink more than I ought to, and Jamie and Sara would make sure I got home safely. Brian was, of course, never upset with Jamie (and usually not with me, either), but simply glad I had made it home safely. Somehow, in my mind, Jamie driving me home for dry clothes was closely connected to his willingness to be my designated driver. Still, I wished I were drunk rather than soaked.

Jamie waited in the car, listening to the Red Sox game, while I ran into the house to change. I was soaked to the skin, so I shed my clothes in the bathroom and ran to my room. I dressed, and ran down the stairs. I hurried back up to loop a long scarf through my belt loops and knot it, just in case. Within 15 minutes of my first arrival at the restaurant, Jamie and I returned. It was barely raining anymore.

Sara and Jamie dropped me off at home after dinner. I went inside and sat on the couch with the cat in my lap, listening to the messages on the answering machine. The first message made me smile.

“Hey, Elizabeth, it’s Jamie. It’s pouring right now, so if you want a ride to the restaurant, just give me a call on my cell phone and all come pick you up.”

Jamie rocks.

And I am going to try not to wish for rain for the rest of the summer.

Sashay on the left

One of the cardinal rules of Metro is that you stand on the right on the escalators. There are no signs to explain the rule to anyone unfamiliar with the system, because Metro is afraid that it will encourage more people to walk, which will lead to more people falling, which will lead to lawsuits. So Brian and I coach all of our out of town visitors on this important rule, in hopes of keeping our guests alive when they travel on the trains, especially at rush hour, when the locals are rushing and cranky. When I am stuck behind someone on an escalator, I sometimes excuse myself and try to pass them. One of my friends has been known to yell “Stand on the right” on the escalator at the Smithsonian station, when it was full of tourists standing on both sides. I don’t have the nerve to do that, but sometimes, like this morning, I do want to tell the person ahead of me to sashay on the left.

Last year, Brian and I went to see A Streetcar Named Desire at the Kennedy Center. As we came out of the Foggy Bottom metro there were three women on the escalator. They were standing in a group talking, and two of them were on the left. We weren’t in a hurry for our dinner reservation, and there was no one else around, so we didn’t say anything.

We rode up behind these women. They were older, white, probably in their sixties, and two of them were rather heavy. They wore denim shorts, and they all had some sort of American flag pattern, or at least red, white, and blue—on a shirt, a vest, or a ribbon around a straw hat—almost a uniform of a certain class of DC tourists.

Behind us I heard a loud voice yell, “Stand on the right please.” I actually felt a little bad for the women—even with the “please” the loud voice seemed rude. I turned to look and saw an African-American man, probably around my age, coming up the stairs in long strides. He had extremely dark skin, a shaved head, sunglasses, and was nicely dressed. The women moved to the left.

“Thank you, ladies,” he boomed. “We stand on the right here. If you’re on the left, you have to sashay.” He was either flamingly gay, or did a good impression of it, and he continued past them, chanting, “Sashay. Sashay.” The women began to laugh, and Brian and I did, too. We took the opportunity to pass the women, and we turned in the same direction as the man, toward Washington Circle.

“You got to sashay, ain’t that right, beautiful?” I felt a hand rest on my shoulder for a brief moment. Then he passed us, saying to himself, “Sashay, sashay, sashay.”

First date

Among the forgotten things I found in the back of my closet over the weekend was the journal I’d kept in college and just after. I glanced through it, distracting myself from all the chores of moving for half an hour or so. It is primarily a record of the depression I was struggling with and the guys I was dating. Some what I’d written amused me, some of it was embarrassing, and some entries just brought back fond memories.

The most interesting entry was about my first date with Brian. It wasn’t interesting for its own sake—more for the fact that it doesn’t match either Brian’s or my memory of that night. Both of us remember the date being somewhat awkward. I remember him not talking much during dinner. He remembers being nervous, not knowing what to say, and being afraid to look at me because I was wearing a sexy dress, and he was worried about being caught staring (which was really the whole point of the damn dress).

But the day after that date I didn’t write about any nervousness or awkwardness. I wrote about what a good time I had, how comfortable we’d been, how we talked and talked and talked forever over dinner. I can’t say with certainty which is the more accurate description of that evening. I’m inclined to think my memory is correct. Maybe it was just the euphoria of a new relationship that made me write what I did. At the time, that night was apparently absolutely perfect.

Moving

I am in the middle of moving. We’re literally moving just down the street, to another apartment in the same development. I’m excited about the new place—it’s much bigger, it has more “upgrades” than my current unit, and I will have my own washer and dryer, so I no longer will have to constantly bug the supermarket clerks for quarters.

Even though I am glad to be moving, I am not having fun this weekend. I hate the whole process of moving, even though the end result is usually pleasing. I hate having to put my entire life into boxes. I hate all the cleaning. I try to think of it in a more positive light. Even though I hate all the cleaning and sorting involved, it’s good to go through everything and purge things that aren’t necessary, random things I’ve been dragging around during various moves that I really don’t need.

I’ve thrown away a lot of stuff, including about 500 pages of photocopied journal articles I’d used for my senior thesis, and birthday cards in which the senders hadn’t written any notes, just signed their names. There are boxes of things that haven’t been touched since I moved into this apartment three years ago: a box of snapshots and cards and other small things from my wedding, and one of miscellaneous cords, many of which are probably from electronic equipment that’s been tossed.

Yesterday I found a large manila envelope that had slipped behind the shelves in my closet. It was a random collection of stuff:

• A yellow notepad, mostly used
• A copy of my senior thesis
• A photo Christmas card from my half-brother’s family, from several years back
• A photo of me and my friend Mark at Porter College—taken in July 1998 according to my note on the back
• A black-and-white photo that my friend Lynn took of me on the carousel at the Boardwalk in 2000
• A dollar bill
• Six pennies
• Print outs of classifieds from the Washington City Paper from my apartment search when I was first moving to Washington
• A copy of the first issue of the New Yorker to come out after September 11^th
• A hot pink Post-it note: “Call Jeff: B-day 7/22”*

I clearly haven’t looked at this envelope since I left Santa Cruz. Some of it I like—I saved the card, the photos, the magazine. But I’m unclear on how some of it ended up making the move, like the Post-it note (I moved in August, so I didn’t really need the note about Jeff’s birthday at that point) and the ads.

At any rate, the move is taking more time and energy that I’d planned. I’m trying to be philosophical, though, about the whole (miserable) process. Brian has entered some sort of organizational euphoria as he unpacks our kitchen stuff, trying to find a place for everything, repacking things we don’t really use (or that he thinks we don’t need to use) because I won’t actually let him throw away most of it. He repacks it all into carefully labeled boxes that will go up into the attic. I am trying to think of the process of moving in the same way: I will weed out what I don’t need, eliminate things that are no longer necessary, put aside what I am uncertain of, to deal with at some point in the future. I can see some benefits to having a philosophy of life that purges what is unused and organizes everything into carefully labeled boxes. I’m just not sure if it’s an appropriate philosophy for me, personally. And I still hate moving.

*That’s coming right up, isn’t it?. Happy birthday, Jeff!

A chance to sing the song

Warning: There is a very high likelihood that this post will be riddled with clichés.

A friend was visiting last week, and she told us about her new romance. It was sweet to see her so excited and happy. I thought I detected some nervousness there, as well, but that seemed normal, and I decided it was probably part of the excitement.

When she had gone, Brian said to me, “I hope she doesn’t get hurt.” He has said similar things in the past, usually about other female friends who are beginning new relationships, so I wasn’t entirely surprised. But I didn’t quite agree with him.

“She probably will,” I told him. Brian was seemed astonished that I said so—maybe because I am usually the romantic and sentimental one. Still, I thought what I said still qualified as romantic and sentimental.

Another friend used to quote a lyric from a folk song when I was nervous about a new relationship (including my relationship with Brian), and I quoted it right back to him at least once. I was tempted to quote it to Brian right then, but I always feel a little funny offering up wisdom from music, and so I just tried to explain myself.

I told him that she was probably going to get hurt no matter what happens, because she's in love. If the relationship doesn't last, it will be painful since she has already allowed herself to care so much. And if things do work out, the two of them will almost certainly hurt each other, just as Brian and I have. We don't want to hurt each other, and because we are in love we try not to, but it can't be helped. When we cause each other pain, we apologize (because that line from Love Story? It's just wrong. Not that I've ever read the book or seen the movie.) and try to do better.

I feared sounding trite, because I knew I was expressing something of an “it is better to have loved and lost” sentiment. When you love you get hurt. You open yourself up to that. And that’s why being in love is so exciting and so good.

I didn’t say that I hope she does get hurt. That sounds wrong, and it’s not really what I mean. But if you care enough to get hurt, I think that’s probably good for you. That’s romantic. That’s wonderful. And I hope the hurt isn’t too terrible.

Tasteless humor

Last night Brian said to me, "You heard that Michael Jackson got off?"

I nodded, and waited a beat for the obvious joke to follow. When Brian didn't say anything more, I couldn't help myself, and I stole the punchline that I had been expecting from him:

"And the jury didn't convict him."

Judging books by their covers

Who was it that decided one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover? I was in Barnes and Noble yesterday, and I find judging a book by its cover very useful. A certain kind of small, thick book with block letters on the cover and little art is clearly a mystery novel. Add a little art and it’s some kind of popular fiction. Some cover art just says “I am literature, not just fiction.” Pink covers with curly fonts with pictures of high heels and martini glasses scream “chick-lit.” I recognize the covers of books from certain publishers—the orange spines of Penguin books, for instance, or the small Signet Classics—and treat them with varying levels of trust.

Other books are less clear. Most science fiction is easy to recognize—by the title, the font, the cover art. Yesterday I picked up a copy of Flowers for Algernon. It didn’t look like science fiction, but the back cover proclaimed that it was a winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards, which I thought had something to do with sci-fi. I took it over to Brian, who knows more about that genre than I do. He confirmed that it was science fiction, but the kind that I like—I’m resistant to strange names and different planets, but I can handle time travel and futuristic laboratory science. When I was reading The Time Traveler’s Wife and described it to Brian, he said, “You’re reading science fiction?” I was reluctant to describe it as such. “No,” I told him, “it’s just sort of…magic. But treated as real.”

I should admit that I am a book snob. Where a book is in the store and what its cover looks like matters to me. Flowers for Algernon looked interesting. I don’t read much sci-fi, but since it wasn’t in that section (although maybe it was just misfiled, since it didn’t have a black cover with futuristic looking people or creatures on it), I thought it might be worth my attention. But those books with the bright pink or green covers? The one where a cartoonish woman with a high ponytail and high heels holds a martini glass or a shopping bag? That’s chick-lit, and I’m not even going to pick it up to read the back cover. But if a book has a blurry, artsy photo, that’s my book. Blurb from the New Yorker? I’ll take it. A sticker indicating that it’s got Oprah’s approval? Oohh, that’s tough. Some of those books are a little too…Oprah, for my tastes. But then she goes and picks Anna Karenina or The Corrections. What then? And of this is to say that I only read books that are (or aspire to be) “literary fiction.” I look forward to new Patricia Cornwell mysteries. I buy some of those small, fat popular novels. But somehow those aren’t the same for me as the classic books or the new authors I read.

I’m such a snob, that I’m even a bit embarrassed to admit that I was in Barnes and Noble yesterday. I love to look through the books recommended by Booksense. I’d rather say I was in an independent bookstore—Kramerbooks or Chapters. It makes me miss Santa Cruz, where Bookshop Santa Cruz is as big and as comfortable for browsing as Barnes and Noble is. I go to Barnes and Noble, and I buy books on Amazon.com, but I would rather admit to lurking in few, long, narrow aisles of Kulturas, my favorite used book store. That is truly a store for people who love to read—it’s hard to find a specific title, as they don’t know precisely what they have in stock; alphabetical order in approximate (if you are looking for Toni Morrison, start when you first see authors whose names begin with K, and continue until you run into someone whose last name starts with R); and books are two or three deep on the shelves, with more on their sides, stacked on top of those that are lined up neatly. That even makes digging through the mysteries fun, although in my pretentiousness, I tend to wander through the genre-less fiction, picking out books that have been noted by Booksense, or that have those artsy, literary covers. I go there because I like picking up books I've never heard of and those I have, so I can touch them, read the covers or the first chapters, put them back on the shelf, and lose them among other classics and best sellers and obscure titles, while I move on to something else.

Walking for the Cure

I remember when one of my dearest friends was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was in college, and she sent me an email to tell me. When I went home at Thanksgiving a few weeks later, I tried to make her promise that she would come to my graduation in June. I thought that if I made her promise to be there, she would have to be okay. She wouldn't promise, but she was there (although without much hair) when I received my diploma. And this month she celebrates 5 years since she completed her treatment.

About a month ago I signed up for the Race for the Cure. I was excited about it at the time, and eventually sent out a fundraising email to friends and family. But that was last month, before I went to Italy (photos coming soon) and came back jetlagged.

So last night a sleepy little devil sat on one of my shoulders telling me, "No one will know if you don't go. Just stay home and sleep in."

But a little angel in walking shoes scolded me from my other shoulder, "You said you would do it. People donated $300."

"It's probably going to be raining. You don't want to go downtown at 8 am in the rain," the devil in slippers said.

"Walking 5K in the rain at 8 am is nothing compared to surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation."

How could I argue with that? So this morning I woke up early, headed downtown, and walked 5K, along with thousands of others, included many cancer survivors. And it didn't rain.

Thanks to those of you who gave me donations. That money goes to support valuable research, as well as treatment for those who cannot afford care. And it means a lot to me.

Race for the Cure

It's been awhile since I walked to raise money, so when a nice young woman at Whole Foods asked if I would participate in the Komen National Race for the Cure, I said yes. Two women I've known for a very long time, Helen Mehoudar and Anice Nolen, are breast cancer survivors, and I wanted to do this to honor them, as well as to raise money to support breast cancer education, screening, and treatment programs.

Contributions are tax deductible, and you can pledge your support online by clicking here. And if you're in the DC area and want to join me in the walk on June 4th, you can sign up here.

Thank you so much.

A politician making sense

I don't normally think of myself as a single-issue voter, but I don't think I could ever vote for someone who wasn't pro-choice. Still, when someone is against abortion, I have some understanding of where they come from. Yes, I could say, "If you don't like abortion, don't have one." But if someone really believes that to have an abortion is killing someone, I can see how they would fight to make abortion illegal. I don't agree with them, but I have some understanding of their position. My real frustration, then, is those who are so opposed to abortion, but are also against comprehensive sex education and improving family leave policies. I think the abortion debate needs to be broadened. It's not just about abortion. There are a lot of other issues, and there are better ways to reduce abortion (it will never be eliminated) than than making it illegal. When I read E.J. Dionne's column today, I thought that Thomas R. Suozzi made a lot of sense.

In which I write about an event that I'm already tired of reading about

Last Wednesday, I attended an all-day meeting at a hotel over by Embassy Row. During lunch, someone came over to the table where I was sitting and mentioned to the group that the White House, Capitol, and Supreme Court were being evacuated. The bearer of the news didn't have any more information than that.

One woman sighed. "I hope whatever's going on is over with before too long. This could really mess up the commute out of the city this evening."

Then we went back to our food and our conversation.

When the meeting resumed after lunch, there was an announcement that everything was fine. We still didn't know what was going on, but it hadn't affected us while it was happening, so it didn't seem worth speculating over now.

I forgot about it until I got home and turned on the computer. My browser opened up to the Washington Post, with news of the small plane that had accidentally ventured into restricted airspace over the District. I had an email from a friend in the midwest, wondering if everything was okay. Was I scared? Had I been evacuated? By that time, I was sure she had the news that everything was fine, so I wrote a quick note back, telling her that we hadn't even really known anything was happening.

I've been wondering if I should write about this at all. I was going to mention how the media overreact to these kinds of things, but after reading nothing except that in the Post for the next couple of days, I'm pretty much tired of it.

I think I'm more interested now in the fact that we don't react. We don't panic. We worry about our commutes and eat our pasta. Most of these things are seen as inconveniences. Last summer, when the terror alert was raised for certain buildings in several cities, buses entering the Pentagon were being stopped. They ran mirrors along to check underneath, and bomb-sniffing dogs were led around the outsides of the buses. I heard rumors that the Pentagon police were even boarding some buses, although it didn't happen on my bus. One of my neighbors was glad they were taking these precautions.* I was upset that my seven-minute bus ride was taking 45 minutes. Add that onto my 5 minute train trip and 2 mile walk to from the metro to the office, and my commute was ridiculously long. I was noticably cranky upon arriving at work that week.

A couple of months ago, as my morning bus made its way to the Pentagon, the driver announced that people weren't being allowed to board trains at the Pentagon Metro. I felt somewhat panicky. After the bombings in Madrid, I began to worry about the terrorism and the Metro.** But none of us displayed any fear. We just concentrated on how we should get to work. The trains were apparently running, just not stopping at the Pentagon, so we got off our bus, and joined all the riders from other buses in the trek back to the previous station. As we passed a HazMat team closing up shop, a Pentagon police officer informed us that we would be allowed to board trains at the Pentagon, and we retraced our steps, and we continued on our normal journey into work.

Even though I'm continuing about my normal business, I am nervous. I worry. In November, in spite of my fear of heights, I climbed the steps to the top of the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral to look out over London. I knew I was safe, but my stomach felt empty, and my knees shook. Back in Washington, I hear that the trains aren't stopping at the Pentagon station and see the flashing lights on the emergency truck, and I have to tell myself not to panic, even as my stomach feels hollow and my knees go a bit wobbly. Then I take a deep breath and head to work. And if it's happening across town, I don't pay much attention at all.


*He works in one of the buildings that had its alert level raised, so he may have just been more nervous than the rest of us in general.

**I'd like to point out here that my main fear isn't that something bad will happen on Metro during my commute. I'm more worried about something happening 30 or 40 minutes after I've exited the system, while Brian's commuting. Because, seriously, if the train I'm on explodes, I'm dead. If the train Brian's on explodes, I'm alone. For me, personally, Plan B there sucks a whole lot more (I am so freakin' eloquent). I haven't decided whether this is selfish or unselfish on my part. And when I mention this to people, they mostly are just surprised that I've thought it through so carefully.

Have you seen this blogger?

One of my favorite bloggers, Julia Montgomery of Tequila Mockingbird, has disappeared from her blog, and her readers are now staging, as one put it, a six-degrees-of-separation search-and-rescue mission. You can read about the operation, headed up by Postmodern Sass, here.

I started reading her site back in March, just before she left for Thailand. I made my way through her archives, and before too long, I had read every post on her site. Some made me laugh out loud (and when I was reading in my cube at work, that was a little embarrassing), and others made me want to cry. I love her writing. She finally came back on April 1st, with a quick post and some photos, but since then the only updates to the site are the comments on that post (almost 200 now) from readers wondering what has become of her. Selfishly, I want her back so I can read more wonderful stories. Less selfishly, I just want to know that the person I've never met but whom I admire is okay.

So if you find someone meeting this description, could you please let the internet know?

Weekend getaway

Because I would rather regret my misspent dollars than my misspent youth, and because a weekend of my youth is surely more misspent doing laundry and grocery shopping than sightseeing in a foreign city, last week I went to Buenos Aires for the weekend. I am quite pleased with myself, even if I do feel a wee bit silly. But Brian was in São Paulo this past week for work, and he figured he might as well spend the weekend before in Argentina. I certainly wasn't going to let him go have fun with out me; I'm certain there was something about that in the vows. So on Friday night we headed to Argentina.

*****

One of the biggest problems we faced in Argentina was the language barrier. Both of us took Spanish in college, but it’s been a good five years since we’ve had any lessons, and four since we’ve had much occasion to use it. Add to our inexperience, the fact that the Argentine accent was stronger than we’d expected. One of our college Spanish teachers was from Argentina, so we had some idea of what the language would sound like, but Carlos must have controlled his accent to help us learn what Spanish sounds like in the States, Mexico, and everywhere else. I wasn’t too worried about language issues when we first arrived. A week earlier, I had called to reserve a room. I was able to understand and answer all the questions the man asked me: How many people? When will you arrive? How many nights?

We arrived at the airport early Saturday morning, and I approached the first counter marked “Remises” to find out about a taxi to our hotel.

“¿Cuánto cuesta un remis a la Calle Lavalle?” I asked, hoping they would understand me. I had no idea whether ‘remis’ was masculine or feminine, and I pronounced ‘all’ as ‘eye.’

“¿A Cah-shay Lah-vah-shay?” The woman asked after a moment.

Brian and I exchanged a glance that communicated all kinds of questions and worries. “Sí,” I replied.

*****

One in a cab, the driver asked us where we were going more specifically, and I checked the address in Lonely Planet. When we were stopped at a toll plaza, the driver asked to see the listing. I showed him, and he said something I didn’t understand. I looked at Brian, hoping he had gotten it.

“He says our hotel burned down.”

I understood that the man was offering to take us to a different hotel, run by someone he knew. Eighty pesos a night, including breakfast, he told us. Any trust I had for the man flew out the car window and was run over by some other little car on the highway into Buenos Aires. I had read posts in the Thorn Tree forum about taxi drivers in this city. They weren’t to be trusted very much anyhow. While Brian and the driver stumbled through conversations about other topics, I concentrated on figuring out how to say “I don’t believe you,” and “Let me out of this car.”

As we approached Lavalle, the driver again repeated what he had told us earlier about the hotel. I told Brian that we needed to just go to the hotel and work things out from there if there was really a problem. Brian conveyed this to the driver, and slowly started to figure out that the hotel had not burned down; that wasn’t what the driver had been telling us after all. He’d only meant the hotel was likely to be full.

“Tenemos reservaciones,” I told him, confident enough to say that. And I still had some 'reservaciones' about this driver. We declined his offer to wait for us, in case the hotel was full, and headed along the pedestrian mall to the hotel.

When we got to our room, we got out our Spanish-English dictionary. The words for ‘flame’ and ‘full’ are rather similar. Brian had simply heard one when the driver had said the other. Having figured out that, we contemplated the sign in our room:

Sr. Pasajero:
Tome nota que su equipaje puede ser revisado cuando usted retira del hotel.
-La Gerencia

Did it mean they would search our bags when we went out? Or that we could check them at the desk when we checked out if we wanted to continue sight-seeing.

“I guess your interpretation depends on how paranoid you are,” Brian said. He went to take a shower, while I turned on the TV. I heard the water start to run, and then he came back into the room.

“I’m watching Argentine cartoons,” I told him.

“This is important.”

“There’s a guy in a turban. I think he’s the bad guy.”

“No, listen. ‘C’ stands for ‘caliente,’ not ‘cold.’”

Very important indeed.

*****

Later on we checked to see if the water drained the wrong way in the Southern Hemisphere. The toilet didn’t seem like a good way to tell, and we couldn’t quite see which way the water was funneling down the drain in the sink, so I spit in some toothpaste while I was brushing my teeth. It swirled counter-clockwise down the drain.

When I first brushed my teeth after returning home, I watched the water swirl down the drain. Counter-clockwise. I did some research with my most trusted source for random information. It turns out, the water should have drained clockwise when we were in Argentina, but that we needed to let the water rest for a long time before we would see the effect.

*****

So what did we actually see in Argentina? It’s amazing what one can pack into two days. We started out wandering along Florida Street, a pedestrian mall of shops, to the Plaza de Mayo.

One of the first things that we saw was tango dancers on the street, as we’d been promised.

They were amazing. Later, we saw a sign describing tango as “the vertical expression of a horizontal desire,” and that was the honest-to-goodness truth: watching tango is like watching people have sex standing up in public.

Plaza de Mayo was mostly empty, as it was the weekend. We saw the monument there to the revolution and independence of Argentina, and lots of graffiti. The Casa Rosada is there—the government building that houses the executive power (basically like our White House). That’s where you saw Madonna sing from the balcony in Evita.

There is also an interesting cathedral lining the plaza. Outside of the cathedral we saw a camera crew and some trucks, which we’d also seen as we walked along Florida. We watched them for awhile and couldn’t figure out what they were doing.

From there we made our way toward Recoleta, to the cemetery that everyone told us we needed to see. It was the strangest cemetery I had ever seen. Outside there were musicians playing, and a sort of crafts fair was going on. There were more tango dancers. I had expected something a long the lines of Arlington Cemetery, with a series of graves and grave markers and the occasional larger memorial. But all of the tombs at Recoleta are above ground, and it looks like a small city.

We peered into the tombs. Sometimes there was a casket right there. More often there was some sort of altar with a crucifix, and a steep, narrow staircase descending into the ground. We finally located Eva Perón’s tomb, where she is buried with her family (Juan Perón is in another cemetery across town), mostly by following the crowds.

We awoke the next morning to the sound of rain. I dragged a very cranky Brian out in the wet, chilly morning, to look at old buildings, including el Teatro Colon (the opera house), and el Palacio del Congreso (the capitol building).

Finally Brian convinced me to stop in a café, where he ordered coffee and we had hot, fresh, delicious empanadas. We bought a newspaper, and I read that the camera crew outside the cathedral had been a Spike Lee crew filming some sort of commericial. By the time we were finished, it was still chilly, but the rain had stopped, and Brian had enough caffeine in him to make him a much happier sight-seeing companion.

The highlight of that second day was the San Telmo market. Much like Washington’s Eastern Market, the Mercado San Telmo is in an enclosed area, where there are produce stands and stands to buy meat, cheese, eggs, and bread. But there are also antiques booths, with people selling delicate-looking old toys, old-fashioned cameras, and gaudy jewelry. Outside the market, other people set up booths to sell crafts and other goods.

We went from San Telmo to Caminito in La Boca. Caminito, which is named after a tango song, is a very touristy, pedestrian strip down near the waterfront. The buildings are painted bright colors.

I had read that it wasn’t really safe to wander off the main streets in La Boca, but I found it interesting how poor the neighborhood surrounding Caminito was. There was a soccer game about to start in the stadium nearby, and the streets near Caminito were filled with people dressed in blue and yellow, many of them wrapped in their team’s flag, as they walked to the game.

People were obsessed with soccer. On our way back to our downtown hotel, we passed a bus stop that was outside a café. As we approached, we noticed half a dozen men with their faces pressed up against the glass. I couldn’t figure out what they were doing at first, but then we saw that the game had started and was being shown on television in the café. The men were watching it intently.

That game (or maybe another) was on the radio on the bus I took to the airport later that night. The three other passengers on the bus gathered up front near the driver, listening to the game. I let my mind wander as I watched the city float by the window in the darkness. The announcer spoke too rapidly for me to understand anything except his call of “¡GOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLL!” when someone scored.