Thursday, July 28, 2011

Things Seen in Orange County: #2 & #3

#2

Older twenties-aged man in the rough streets of Irvine, CA, on a pretty serious looking unicycle.

So serious, in fact, that I was relieved to see he was wearing a helmet.

#3

This is an old one that Jeff and I recently reminisced about.

'Twas at the Stadium Brewery in Aliso Viejo, CA (ahem, Cougar Den).

Jeff and I were in the bar area waiting to snag a table.

Man in his mid thirties-ish, taking up the one long table by the bar area, by himself.

He was sitting there, alone, with a beer (so, maybe technically not alone), distracting himself

with one of the many tv's around him.

Then, suddenly, it was as if he had JUST remembered something really important.

There was a smirk on his face, it was one of those "silly me, how could I forget this super

important thing?"

He reached into his pocket.

Pulled out his keys.

And carefully placed them on the table,

Making sure his BMW logo was easily observable to those [Cougars] walking by.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

July 27, 2011

Things I did today:
  • Yoga session
  • Cleaned kitchen
  • Went to visit Brookie at Starbucks/had lunch with Jeff
  • Worked on website for Brookie & me (for the whole wedding ministry busy-ness), and wrote a couple intro blogs for it (this took a while...had to do a bit of research on how to do stuff on wordpress)
  • Set up twitter/gmail for the above business
  • Attended MCLE on immigration at Chapman
  • Registered for a free Microfinance course (now I just need to actually take the classes...)
  • Sent a few important emails and made some important phone calls
Things I didn't do/need to do:
  • I'm not going to waste your time or mine spelling out the bazillion things I need to do...not until I can at least bring the list down to something reasonable :)

Veggies and Goat Cheese!


I've been wanting to try this out since Jeff's sister-in-law made this years ago...literally...years.

Chopped up some bell peppers (yellow, red, orange), and zucchini, and tomato...


Added seasoned goat cheese, olive oil (I think I put too much oil...), salt & pepper:


Not the best picture, but it was delish:

Monday, July 25, 2011

Updates and New Beginnings (Again)

(Disclaimer: it's a long one)

So many things to update on that I've actually been putting this off for a few days. Which, within the first line, leads me to digress already: I'm not sure why I feel the need to write; those that are close to me know what's going on, and I don't think I have too many random people following the intricacies of my life that I, for whatever reason, chose to post on the world wide web. Regardless, I feel I have the responsibility to let you all know what's been going on. So here we go.

WORK. I haven't written [too] much about my frustrations with TBM and my job because 1) I'm sure it gets old and most people seem to dislike their job to some degree; 2) it's minor complaining compared to what other people have to deal with in their lives; 3) as someone once said before, "be ye not so stupid" and don't write about your work on the internet unless you have permission to. So yeah, I wasn't so keen on the idea of my boss finding out about my blog while I was still working there and reading all the things I hated about the position (although I'm pretty sure he knew anyway).

This job was meant to be temporary, but it actually started looking like it would turn into something more permanent, and then it didn't. Woah, what does that even mean?! An attorney I used to work for ("TBM") was in need of a legal assistant since the one he had left him high and dry. I needed the money, so I agreed to work in his office part time doing administrative work. He later asked me to start working full time, and told me there was room for me to grow and possibly start a family law practice within his firm. Which sounded great, except that 1) there wasn't really enough time left in the week for me to "start a family law practice" while also keeping on top of all the other things I had to do (you know, important stuff, like correspondence and filing and making court and deposition appearances when him and the other attorney weren't available); and 2) I didn't really want to bust my ass to start a practice for someone else: if I'm going to put in the time and effort to learn a whole new area of law and make it work, I wanna make it work for me, not for someone else.

I could go on forever, but for your sake and mine, I'll just say that the administrative and "personal assistant" duties became a bit much for me to handle, and I realized that any promises made were not going to come to fruition. I was planning on putting in my two weeks notice when TBM let me know last Friday that he was gonna have to let me go due to some financial difficulties. It wasn't a huge shock, and aside from not having a steady check every two weeks (which is HUGE), I was actually relieved.

Here's why.

I've been thinking about what I want to do, or at least what I could enjoy doing, that would help bring some income into our household. I've got some business ideas floating around with Jeff, my friend Brooke, and an old colleague also, but I haven't been able to do anything with these ideas because I've been wasting forty hours a week at a pointless job. Sure, not having a source of steady income is scary as all hell, but I think it's something that needed to happen to make me do something for myself. I'm so used to things working out, and always being able to get things done with minimal effort, that I'm not used to having to work really hard at things. This is my challenge, and I'm nervous/excited to see how I deal with it.

One thing Jeff and I did have to laugh/cry about: I wrote before about how our lives seem to be a roller coaster, but one that never careens out of control: there's always a very delicate balance that keeps us holding on. I mentioned in the "Failure to Launch" blog (which I still have to respond to, thank you everyone for your very thoughtful comments!) how Jeff and I would be moving into his parents house. We were both so excited to be able to save up some money. But with the whole loss of income thing...it seems like we'll be, once again, just getting by. Thankfully we won't have to worry about paying rent, but we also won't have the income we had...which we were hoping to save up. Just so typically us :)

FOOD. Salads. They're kind of my jam right now. I grew up on salads that contained minimal ingredients, and figured that was the norm. I'm discovering that you can throw just about anything into a salad and make it delicious. Like almonds. Or bell peppers. Or feta cheese. Or cilantro! I know, they may seem obvious to you, but for whatever reason, they're new discoveries to me, and I'm excited about it. I think I've been pretty good the last few weeks on not over-indulging on stuff. I did have Mickey D's on Friday (right before I found out I was getting laid off), but that was because I had few alternatives, plus, it came out to about five bucks. Sigh.



This last picture is from dinner with Jeff's parents on Sunday. Holy glorious. Those potatoes? Yep, amazing. Foil paper, slice, salt, butter, put some onion chunks over them, smear some italian dressing over them, put them on the grill, and voila. Not pictured: stuffed chile. I don't know enough to give details, other than it was delicious. And it sent me into a food coma.


EXERCISE: I haven't been the greatest at this, but with being unemployed and Vegas being around the corner, I'm really gonna try to kick it up a notch. Jeff and I are trying to go on little walks before/after dinner, and I actually made it to the gym this morning! It was probably my most lame attempt at working out, but I at least made it there. Baby steps...

THINGS I WANT: Remember that iPhone case I wanted? Here's a reminder just in case. (Ha! iPhone "case"..."just in case"...get it?! wow...Lord help me...) Well....I GOT IT! Turns out Jeff wanted to give me some sort of compensation for helping him get his art show set up at Mesa, and it's absolutely fabulous. It's taking some getting used to, but I really like it. I still haven't dropped my phone, so I can't attest to it's protective powers, but hopefully they're good...because my phone falls quite a bit. Needless to say...I need to set up Jeff's next art show before my next installment of "Things I Want"...this could be great!

Unemployment accountability: I think I might go back to my old accountability reports from my last stint of unemployment. It shamed me into being productive, and I might need that up and running again. I think this post is long enough as is, so I might skip my accountability from the last couple days, but I am proud of everything I did yesterday and today, so I'm off to a much better start.

The Walking Dead: One thing I did do yesterday was go to Barns & Nobel and buy Volume 13 of The Walking Dead. As if I didn't have OCD issues on my own, this comic makes it nearly impossible to put down. I read volumes 11 & 12 on Sunday at Jeff's parent's house, and although we had volume 14...we were missing volume 13. So I went to B&N yesterday...then sat in the parking lot of Trader Joe's reading about a third of it before I forced myself to go buy stuff for dinner and go home before finishing it. Which I did. Then I finished Volume 14. Holy cow. The father-son relationship reminds me so much of Roland and Jake from The Dark Tower, which I love. I actually keep wanting to call Carl, Jake. It'll be interesting to see what they keep for season 2 of the show. And I'm hoping volume 15 comes out soon...

Well, I hope that wasn't entirely boring. One thing I'm excited about with this whole unemployment thing is working on more substantive blog posts...so hopefully that works out to your advantage :)


Monday, July 18, 2011

Has our generation "failed to launch"?

Last week I went to a deposition for one of our cases, and I got to talking to Mr. Doctor (his specialty is in bio mechanics, really interesting stuff about friction coefficients and what not--seriously) during breaks and for a bit after the depo (legal lingo, short for deposition...so fancy, huh?). He ended up talking about his frustration with the failure of each of his kids to be able to live on their own. They're each between 22-27 years old, and yet they're all living off of the old man still. Mind you, they're not losers or bad children: his daughter is an attorney, another son works in the environmental non profit sector, and the youngest is an aspiring actor (Mr. Doctor said this last one is going to have a "coming to God talk with his father very soon" about the realities of pursuing an acting career while living off of his father).

The daughter was laid off from her last job, and has been unable to find a similar job in the legal industry. The middle son is working, but doesn't make enough to pay rent, so Mr. Doctor pays for that. I guess to an extent he's enabling them, but on the other hand, he's not the only person in his generation going through this. Jeff and I might actually be moving in with Jeff's parents for a bit to save up some money. Is it wrong for them to let us move in instead of making Jeff and I figure it out on our own? Who knows.

Mr. Doctor made a comment which I found interesting, and I'll paraphrase: "I thought having kids was going to be like my generation was: you go to school, get a job, and start supporting yourself. I thought I was going to be done after college, maybe graduate school, but I'm still having to support all three of them." This is something that's come up quite a bit lately, and I find it pretty intriguing. What is crazy about this whole situation is that Jeff's parents and Mr. Doctor are among plenty of parents going through the same thing, I'm sure.

I think I wrote before how my family seems to be disappointed in the fact that my cousins and I haven't reached any sort of stability in our lives. They think back to when they were our age, and although they all had their difficulties in getting where they are, they had kids, a steady and secure job with potential to move up, and eventually a house.

The New York times published an article, a lengthy one that I'll confess I wasn't able to read in it's entirety, talking about why 20-somethings are taking so long to grow up. They've termed it "emerging adulthood." Our "transition to adulthood" is traditionally marked by five milestones:
  1. Completing school
  2. Leaving home
  3. Becoming financially independent
  4. Marrying
  5. Having a child
Our generation is reaching these milestones at a later point in life than past generations. According to the article, some of the reasons for our delay in reaching these milestones include:
  • "Need for more education to survive in an information-based economy;
  • Fewer entry-level jobs even after all that schooling;
  • Young people feeling less rush to marry because of general acceptance of premarital sex, cohabitation and birth control;
  • and young women feeling less rush to have babies given their wide range of career options and their access to assisted reproductive technology if they delay pregnancy beyond their most fertile years."
I find that all very interesting, and I have few points of my own that I've been wanting to make about all of this:

We're not fuck ups. Sorry for the f-bomb, but I'm not sure what other expression to use, haha. I get the feeling that older generations (or maybe just the media, hmm....) think we're doing something hugely wrong with our lives, that we haven't played our cards right. But, we've kinda played the cards we were dealt. We were raised on the understanding that if you go to school and put your time in, things will work out for you. Given how many people get college degrees these days, that simple plan of just "going to school and working hard" can't work out for everyone.

As spoken by Tyler Durden in Fight Club:

"Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war...our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

Which leads me to...

The education bubble has to burst. Remember that whole housing bubble and how it finally exploded? I think something similar has to happen with higher level education. Hear me out. So. Housing. Prices got crazy high. People were able to buy them based on loans they couldn't afford to pay back. People didn't pay. Housing market crashed. People got stuck with over priced homes, and many of them lost them. But the pricing of real estate finally came down to something that was at least remotely affordable for the average American.

There are so many people going to college now, it's basically like another high school degree. Tuition for colleges and universities has been on a steady incline for how long? I'm not gonna look this up, but I'm pretty sure that every semester I hear something on the news about tuition going up 10, 20, 30%. NPR had a brief segment in which, if I remember correctly, it stated that the UC system was the most expensive public education in the world. How is that a public education? Not to mention private schools, such as my law school. Which is overpriced, and I couldn't afford, but someone gave me a loan, which I'm not quite able to pay back. I haven't made a decent payment on my loan since I graduated, but the interest is still accumulating. And I know I'm not the only one that didn't think this through. So what's going to happen when thousands of graduates start defaulting? I think something has to give for the cost of education to normalize. The big difference between a house and an education: they can't take back my degrees! Suckas.

That's more of a rant, but the point for this particular conversation is that almost everyone goes to college now. A college degree does not set you apart from the next person applying for the job you want. Maybe a master's degree. Maybe a Ph.D. Maybe the fact that your uncle John knowns the hiring partner. Education alone does not set you apart anymore. "I'm a dime a dozen, and so are you!" Yep, I just quoted that book you should've read in high school: Death of a Salesman. Maybe the cost of education will continue to increase to such staggering rates that not everyone will be able to go to college or a university, and the rest will follow through, you know, yadda yadda yadda supply and demand, less over-qualified applicants per available job positions. (Which begs the question, is it fair that only the wealthiest will be able to afford an education for better jobs?)

Job stability isn't what it used to be. I see my mom who's been at her job for over 10 years, and Jeff's dad, who just celebrated his 10 year anniversary with his company, and I wonder if/when I'll find a job that I see myself staying with for that long. Careers these days seem full of moves, transitions, lateral hires, moving up to the next thing. I'm not sure if that's because we can't be happy staying at a job that long, or because the possibility just isn't available as much anymore. Given the competition for a job position these days, it seems we're all a little more expendable. A company could probably find someone younger willing to work for free to get experience, for the same job that I want to get paid for, ha!

Priorities have changed. Getting back to the reasons for our delay given above, I'd have to agree with most of them. Instead of one head of household, you usually have two now. That's two people that have probably gone to school and are trying to figure out their career before settling down. Which also means school loans that need to get paid, and maybe that factors in to the delay in having kids and buying a house. I think this generation has also changed the order of priorities quite a bit. Maybe it's selfishness, I dunno, but it seems that our generation has put a lot of value in living their life before settling down, whether that's through travel or other life experiences. I don't think we feel the same pressure to settle down and have kids that our parents or grandparents had. Whether that's for better or worse, you can each decide :)

So. Have we failed to launch? Or are we just living life at a different pace than those before us? Or is this part of some Darwinian evolution?

Hmmmmm...

P.S. Pretty timely to come across this online today.

P.P.S. Another timely article I saw today regarding the business of law schools.

Music Corner: Princeton

I want to dance around inside a hula hoop. And do the splits on rollerskates. And synchronized dance moves...yep, on rollerskates. Don't think it's possible?

It is.


Boo-ya.

OCD: Must....finish....watching...

Some may recall my obsessive compulsiveness about reading. This same obsessive compulsiveness seems to apply to TV shows that have multiple seasons available on netflix instant watch. Also, given the fact that this is my third blog installment on some sort of OCD-ness, I'm wondering if I have some serious issues I should discuss with a professional.

I stumbled across Party Down on netflix one of those nights that Jeff was out of the house, and I needed something mindless to waste my time on (or the more likely scenario: I was procrastinating on the stuff I really needed to do that night). I ended up watching "16 to Life," which I also really enjoyed. Ratings for "16 to Life" aren't all that great, apparently, but I enjoyed the quirky yet kind of real life story. I'd post a trailer, but it's way too cheesy. I refuse.

But I digress. I started watching Party Down at some point last week, maybe Thursday or Friday...and by Sunday, I had managed to make it all the way through Season 2. I know, 2 season's isn't as epic an accomplishment as 7 or 8 seasons, but it's not my fault: they only made two seasons!!!! It's like Arrested Development only airing for 3 seasons, what the h-e-double-hockey-sticks?! Seriously, I don't know how Two and a Half Men made it a bazillion times longer than either of these shows.

Jeff was seriously disappointed in me not waiting to watch the episodes with him, since we started watching it together, but it's the same OCD that takes over when I start reading a good book: I just couldn't focus on anything else until I knew I was done. Good thing, however, is that it's still funny the second time around, so I'm totally ok with watching all the episodes over again with him.

But I digress again. Point is, if you're into uncensored shows (no nudity, but definite foul language) with pretty great humor, you should watch it. It's available on instant watch.





If you need some more convincing:



I'll leave you with one last pre-show:


Seriously funny stuff. To me and Jeff, at least.

Friday, July 15, 2011

Haiti Stories: What Scratch?


Our drive from PaP to Leogane when we arrived was not as emotionally draining as it was the first time we went, but it was traffic heavy, as..I guess..it always is. Bumper to bumper...hot...bumpy roads...bodies and luggage smushed into a tiny car...watching people live their lives around you, as you sit and wait to crawl forward a few inches. Many times I thought we'd be better off walking...like in the opening scene of Office Space. But then the sun would hit me, and I would be thankful we at least had some shade.

At one point while we were sitting in traffic, it seemed as though the cars in front of us were finally gonna move forward a bit, so our driver got a little anxious and moved forward before the car in front of him did. The left front portion of our car hit the right back portion of the car in front of us...I guess to our left...it's hard to tell when lanes don't exist!

Abby and Adri and I looked at each other..."now what?" Our driver got out to survey the damage, the other driver got out to do the same. Meanwhile, everyone else was still waiting for traffic to move forward, so no disruption was caused by this inspection (in case you were freaking out about that). Both drivers took a look at their cars, didn't even look at each other, and then got back in to their respective vehicles. It was literally less than five seconds.

There was no anger, no screaming, no talk about insurance coverage, no exchange of information, no insults. Nothing.

In my opinion, there was simply an understanding that "shit happens." In Haiti, cars are cars. For the majority of Haitians, they are a mode of transportation, not a demonstration of how much you make a year, or how much money your parents have. The cars probably get more beat up by the potholes in the streets than any damage cars make to each other anyway.

Even though it was a five second interaction, I loved what it stood for (again, in my opinion...who knows what the reality is): as long as my car is fine, and I can still get these people to their destination where they will pay me, what's a scratch on the car? The car still runs, my life goes on. At that moment I had to laugh at how different this interaction would have been in the US: can you imagine an Orange County soccer mom who just got her bumper gently tapped by someone else? Yeah, I'm speaking in generalizations here, but I feel like the concern would have been on the scratch, and not the greater picture: nothing really happened.

Unrelated car troubles on our way in. Unbeknownst to us at the time,
Kisa, Mikey B. and Diego were all in that pickup :)

While I'm at it, there was also that time in Haiti when we ate at MaSaJe for Adri's birthday...and Mike's pizza had mold on it. The fries were delicious though!

Things I want: phone case

Yep, another self serving blog section just got started. I've been meaning to write a list of stuff I've been wanting to get [myself] lately, then I thought, "hey, that's why I have a blog." Maybe you'll realize you want one too, you just didn't know it yet. Or maybe you'll realize that despite Jeff's greatest efforts, I still have terrible taste in many things.

I'm starting with the simple things. Like a case for my iPhone that I've been wanting for a while. I came across this one, and think it might do the trick:


It's made from recycled paper, it holds your credit cards, and the logo on the back is an adorable turtle. What more could you ask for?

I found a not-so-great review, complaining about the visual design of it, but it was in regards to the iPhone 4...which is edgier (not as in a photo shoot "I wanna see 'edgy'...'EDGIER!'" but literally, more edgy) than the 3G. Given the lack of any sort of visual design for the last two phone covers I've had, I think I'd be ok with this one.

I also found this review. My thoughts after reading it: do people get paid to write these reviews? If so, I want in. I promise I'll put some thought into it.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Our Battle Cry

(Written by Dalila Maria Godoy Zamora; translated and published with permission)

Our Battle Cry

The wall is blue and the spray paint black. The blue wall belongs to one of those houses easily recognized in the Historical Center of the city of Guatemala. An old house, doomed to be forgotten, to the wearing down of the paint, to the fetid smells that can scare away the curious that for any reason wanted to know its story. I saw it three weeks ago and it wasn’t until today that I took a picture of that phrase that frames the entrance. The phrase doesn’t talk about past loves or threats, it doesn’t talk about political propaganda and it also doesn’t talk about messages between the gangs. Some passerby, one of those adventurous ones that walks on foot and with a backpack probably wanted to launch battle cry. One of those cries that we Guatemalans have stuck in our throat, a magnificent replica of those that we cry at the moment of birth, maybe because we know ourselves to be Guatemalan.


We know ourselves Guatemalan and even though every person cries at birth, independently of the place of birth, I’m sure that we understand from the maternal womb that living here is not easy, we understood that the books of our history cry blood. The majority of us know that at some moment in life we will also have to grab a weapon at any cost and with such weapon, a cry to war. I don’t mean those weapons devoted to lead and smelling of gunpowder. We cry because we have more sophisticated weapons: those that exude blue ink, black or green (such as Neruda’s admirers), we cry because our weapon is our voice, our drawings or perhaps our guitar. We cry because we know that we’ll have to take them up and we will be persecuted. Better that way, we’ll know we’ve done things right.


There are some illiterate, others like myself that aren’t good for anything beyond making a sketch that can be confused for a tree, but the truth is that each of us have a weapon, that can be your smile, your hope, your own integrity, your punctuality at work, your constancy for investigating, your eagerness to shine your clients shoes well, or who knows, to make him happy.


My uncle Epaminondas, inexhaustible fountain of my daily inspiration, stressed that it’s possible to be the best in what you do without losing the path of what is right. He achieved it. I dare someone to refute that. If he did it, why not you? Why not me? If being one of the good guys is difficult because it brings along with it beautiful sleepy nights and a smile on the recumbent body. That smile that indicates that death has been cheated to enter into immortality. That’s how the good ones are, immortal…and in many instances, anonymous.


Why do we Guatemalans cry? What intuition did we have at birth? If we know ourselves loved by greats, we know ourselves owners of an exquisite millennial history, we know ourselves owners of a luxurious gastronomy, owners of a great part of the color green in America, owners of colors.


We cry at birth because we know that we have to share this land with those who did not deserve to even see the blue of our flag, we cry because we know that not everyone who leaves their house today will come back and maybe we ask ourselves if he or she had an opportunity to say goodbye in their own way and to feel loved in the middle of a country that has cancer, of a country that seems to hate. We cry because a lot of us have family members who have been killed for political motives, because we have family members who have been kidnapped, because we have had threats of death even over our heads, because even without opening our eyes we have read the history and its only ten years of glory. We cry and starting there we are revolutionaries, starting there we have in our throat and in our chest the battle cry.


We cry because we are part of that rare race, of survivors.


And who said crying was bad? If it revitalizes, if it gives peace…we cry at birth because we feel like it, because that’s how we Guatemalans like to be. And afterwards we draw a smile, we adjust our backpack, and we go ahead, as if nothing had happened. And we smile and on the inside we cry because it seems like we live in a permanent state of mourning. That’s how the history is, that’s how Hemingway said it in the prologue to “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” we are part of an everything and any event that happens affects us, a part of us dies daily for every innocent who’s blood spills or spills a tear for a violent act. The bells toll for us…also.


Guatemala hurts….it hurts too much.


The passerby in question had a can of spray paint as his best weapon and wrote:


“THE PEOPLE HAVE TO WAKE UP”


Like a continuation of an August Monterroso story and like a hope of no longer seeing dinosaurs as a tradition I thought that the phrase was well accommodated for its appropriateness and for its happiness. It is well accommodated especially now, when the most dignified representative of politics and of the left in Guatemala dies: Mr. Alsonso Bauer Paiz; it is well accommodated because in my country they have murdered a poet whose best weapon was his guitar: Facundo Cabral; it is well accommodated because there is an average of twenty murders a day and I can’t be alien to it and it is well accommodated because my heart is torn, inevitably, knowing that since a few days ago a person with whom a grew up can’t hug her sister because this country keeps putting up with kidnappings, keeps putting up with people disappearing while things are accommodated and they rinse themselves in their tears.


Well I don’t want to anymore, I don’t want to accommodate myself…


To Mr. Alfonso Bauer I would like to ask him, teacher where are your apprentices? Where are we or what has us distracted from beginning to demand what we really deserve? When will this farce end that consists in granting the presidential seat to the loser from four years ago? Where are we the grandchildren of that revolution? We are sick and tired, it’s true…


To Mr. Constitutional President of the Republic of Guatemala, I want to wish you a life that is long enough to pay the debt you have pending with us. That your life is long enough to pay for each one of the tears that have been shed in Guatemala in the last four years for acts of violence…may your life be long enough. I would like to call you out on the fact that Cristina Siekavizza is not with her family, that maybe a man named Carlos or another named Pedro will die today…maybe they’ll die because a bullet crossed their destiny while they were walking to hug someone they love and who loves them. And I would like him to pay, each of those tears.


We have a lot of battle cries, the Guatemalans, and we have a lot worth fighting for…to the sound of the ballads, of the marimba or to the rhythm of those songs that perhaps we hum when we’re bored.

I grew up in an educational institution in which it was eliminated – to the good fortune of all of us that have passed through –from our vocabulary the word “impossible” and because of that I still believe that regardless of everything, that the nine letters that compose the name of my country can still highlight with dignity in mid flight of that bird of green plumage that represents us and that maybe now lies in some forest…and bleeds.


(My apologies to the author if anything was lost in translation, hope I've done her writing an ounce of justice.)

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Accountability Updates

I think I've done a little better at making slightly smarter decisions when it comes to what I'm eating, at least much better than I was in the weeks preceding my last update. I knew our 4th of July BBQ's would be filled with hot dogs, chips, dips, etc., so I took broccoli over to Erika's & Julian's house and fixed that up as a side dish, and bought a fruit platter instead of chips and salsa (thank goodness Erika and Julian already had chips and salsa there though...). Honestly, eating that broccoli was super delicious. I had also brought some sweet potatoes (or maybe they were yams...I'm still not sure) for us to fix, and to my overly-exaggerated disappointment (Jeff, thank you for putting up with my dramatic antics), that didn't quite work out.

My 4th of July downfall: Albertson's chocolate chip cookies. Law-school-extern-buddy-turned-friend-turned-coworker-turned-friend, Rama, told me they were the best. And indeed, in the words of Nacho Libre, they are the beeeeest. And so is mint chocolate chip ice cream. Anyhow, I had three too many chocolate chips cookies on the 4th.

BUT, I did go on a nice long walk on Sunday morning, and did a full yoga session on Monday. That evens out, right?

Tuesday night Jeff and I made a conscious effort to go on a little walk around The Lab and The Camp before Suman's show, and today I rediscovered how delicious super fresh salads are. I think I'm jumping back on to the healthy band wagon...

TBM Update

It seems that a couple of you rather enjoy my references to TBM (yes, I'm looking at you Annie & Shirley), so I thought I'd share a little anecdote with you.

TBM rolled in to the office today a little before 10am (he had an appointment with someone in our office at 10am, otherwise I wonder if he would've come in at all).

He called me into the office, and as I walked in he threw a Target bag on his desk and said "I don't have time for this...separate all the house stuff from the medical stuff..." then resumed looking through his desk for whatever piece of paper he had misplaced in the 30 seconds since he'd been in his office.

What I expected to see: at least three months worth of unopened personal correspondence for all his bills and what not. He hasn't had me do that since March or April, so I figured he had finally gotten around to emptying his car and brought it all into the office.

But no.

This is what I found when I dumped the contents onto my desk:

Please take note that although I am writing a semi-bitter and not enchanting blog about TBM, I have been courteous enough to edit out the credit card information from one of his receipts (I hope I did that right...). Yep, crumpled receipts. See, TBM is remodeling the house he just bought, and doing a lot of the stuff himself and overseeing contractors and what not, so there are dozens upon dozens of receipts from Lowes, Home Depot, and a bunch of random contractors. I was really tempted to add up all the totals, but thought it was just be depressing, so I restrained myself. I did separate them neatly, at which point I asked what he wanted done with them.

"Just make a file for them."

I asked where he wanted the miscellaneous receipts that had nothing to do with his construction, since the whole point was to separate stuff out....

"Just put them in the same file."

Done and done.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Re-visiting our Beginnings

Last night, our friend Suman had a show in Costa Mesa. It was at the same bar where Jeff and I hung out for the first time. We had finished our second shift closing at Starbucks, and Brookie and I had made plans to go hear a friends band play at Detroit Bar. We invited Jeff and he agreed to go with us. I later found out that was the night that Sarah was having her birthday party, and I think it took her a while to forgive me for stealing Jeff from her that night. But months later...we were besties :)

So we got to revisit Detroit Bar last night. Almost five years after Jeff placed his arm around me for the first time. Suman, also known as Rocom, put on a great show. Here's my favorite so far (keep in mind that live is [usually] always better) (also, warning: explicit language to follow):


Both Jeff and Suman have a little art show tonight, which I'm very excited for. Hopefully I'll have some stories and/or pictures to report later this week.