Appointment with April

I can't believe the first day of April came and went without my mom sending me this story. It seems she sends it every year. The story also always reminds me of Beth in college pointing to the yellow bushes and repeating in an authoritative voice her text book description of Forsythia, "It announces..the arrival..of spring!" So anyways since my mom didn't send it to me I had to look it up myself and I thought I may as well post it for others to enjoy as well...

George Santayana's last day in the classroom at Harvard. The philosopher had received a sizable legacy and decided to retire from the faculty. The room was packed for his final appearance and the lecture went very well. During his concluding remarks, he glanced through the window at a forsythia that was beginning to blossom in a patch of muddy snow. He stopped abruptly, picked up his hat, gloves and walking stick, and made for the door. Then he turned and softly said, "Gentlemen, I shall not be able to finish that sentence. I have just discovered that I have an appointment with April."

From: The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes

I know my parents springtime in California has already come and is on it's way out but since it was a snow storm here yesterday I can assure you ours in Utah is taking it's sweet time getting here. (I wonder if there is a construction detour or an accident. I'm guessing it just slept in, that's why I'm usually late.) I have some early tulips blooming in my front yard now, though they won't open up in the cold weather and the leaves are budding on the trees but no blossoms yet. I've already had my first camping trip of the year along with a hike or two and I was even able to turn my heater off for a whole week at one point and wear flip flops to work so I know spring has to be just around the corner once this snow stops... and when it finally comes I say we just drop everything and walk out the door to greet it.

Argentina!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (finally...sheesh!)

(I've tried to write this post so many times and always end up with a hundred pictures and a novel about each one so this is my last attempt. I'm cutting it way down so just imagine how long it was the first few times I wrote it. Maybe sometime I'll put more pictures up somewhere. Maybe facebook if I ever get a computer...) So without further ado...

ARGENTINA

It seems my spontaneous trips are getting more exciting all the time! But this one is going to be hard to beat. My old friend from high school, Duc Pham, decided about a year ago to become an airline attendant in order to benefit from all the free flying and travel he could do with it. Turns out he's not the only one getting the benefits. He gets some discount vouchers every year and he offered to let me use some for a weekend trip before they expired. My friend Heathyr and I were thinking a cold weekend trip to Chicago for some pizza and art sounded good, but then Duc decided he wanted to go to South America instead and invited me to come along. I thought about it... considered it for 2 days... cleared it with my parents... canceled the bookclub party that was going to be at my house... packed my bags full of skirts and sandals and before I knew it I was in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

We hooked up with a couple of German backpackers in the airport and shared a taxi to a hotel. They actually found us while we were sitting in the airport looking through guide books for a hostel. They benefited from Duc's Spanish in bargaining a taxi price and then we followed them to a hotel they were going to stay at for one night and we ended up staying there the whole time. It was a in San Telmo on Bolivar. My room was on the third floor at the top of a winding staircase. It had a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling and a balcony with floor to ceiling shutters looking over the street next to my bed. There were old creaky wood floors, antique tiles and vintage glass windows, a terrace on the roof overlooking the city (and someones laundry), and the shared bathroom across the hall had a dozen layers of peeling paint and plaster in every shade of blue and yellow along with a bidet and a shower head sticking out of the wall. Most the places are converted old homes and have courtyards and terraces and rooms winding every which way so it was a lot bigger than it looks in the picture. I loved that hotel. It was practically a luxury hotel for $12 a night.

(my room is the top left in this picture. Duc took a cool picture of me reading a map on my bed in front of the shutters. I think it's on facebook. )

(This is the view of the city off the back roof of our hotel)Some of the old vintage glass windows in the hotel and below is the staircase up to my room and the wall in the bathroom.

Every morning I'd take a walk while Duc took his time getting ready. I'd wander around and then try and find my way back. Luckily I did everytime, but I found some cool parks and antique markets that way. Then we'd start our day with empanadas and dulce de leche pastries from one of the two bakeries on our street and plan out what we wanted to see that day. Sometimes we wandered around taking pictures of all the murals and graffiti. Some of it is done by real artists and is really cool and some is just gang graffiti but it was all neat. It's funny what they name their gangs there, especially when they pick something American... like Los Waffles. Cracked me up every time I saw it. We shopped at the ferias (street markets) buying shoes (see the very first pictures for my sandals I got), antiques, jewelry, and other souvenirs. We visited some churches, saw some statues, and famous buildings and bridges...

(Don't cry for me Argentina....)

We visited every part of the city including colorful Boca. We made due with some crappy internet cafes till we found that if you buy something at McDonald's you get 20 minutes of internet free on the only good computers in the whole city. McFiestas and McNificas it was! The only difference from what I could tell was they toasted their buns over there. We went geocaching and almost got run over by an old out of control car but got the cache... We watched some amazing authentic Argentine Tango complete with the Buenos Aires Symphonic Orchestra... as well as some authentic goucho dancing with the smaller group of musicians. This video is long. I had a shorter one of them doing a faster tango but this one was so much better. It picks up a little at the end and I apologize for Duc's camera shutter sounds during the whole thing.

We walked a LOT till we found out we could catch the bus that stopped a block from our hotel and it only cost us about a quarter. One day I got to choose everything we did so we took the coastal train north and spent a day in Tigre where we hired a little boat and had Sergio drive us all over the delta and through the jungle. He made an attempt to teach us how to waterski. I didn't do so well with antique waterskis and pantomimed directions in Spanish but I still tried. See my New Years Resolution post for a video of me not waterskiing...

(Everything in Tigre is on water since it's on the delta so these are their taxis.)

(and these are people's front porches onto the water)

He did manage to show us how to successfully walk on water. It was awesome.

We went to the last Boca Juniors Football game of the season and had a fantastic and very authentic South American soccer experience all while fearing for our lives the entire time.

(This was the day before the game. There's no way I'd have a camera at that place on game day. Plus there'd have been riot police and mobs everywhere if it was game day)

And then we ate! I think we took pictures of almost all our food. Duc has most the pictures of food and there was a lot of it! Pastries, cookies, pastas, liquado, pizza, fresh squeezed orange juice, churros with hot cocoa, ice cream, empanadas, sandwiches, meranges, and MEAT!

(This thing stopped me in my tracks when I saw it in the window. It was almost as big as my head and I still dream about it and wake up chewing on my pillows...)

(I even ate... raw meat. Yes it's true I ate raw meat in South America but look at it, doesn't it look good?? I figured I'd already drank a few gallons of river water that day in my water skiing attempts so how much worse could it get. I myself am shocked I didn't come home with a parasite or something but I didn't. Though I admit I liked the cooked meat better)

We did lots of other stuff but this is the gist of it.

Oh yeah and I saw the temple from the taxi window on the way to the airport before flying home first class. Till you've been in first class you have no idea what you're missing.... Five course meal, slippers, movies, massage chair that lays down completely flat, real blankets, fresh orange juice when you board and a fruit plate just before you land...I could go on. Flying will never be the same for me now. It was just the kind of relaxation I needed right before finding out upon landing that my house had been robbed.

I believe...

Recently I was listening to some random things on NPR and just letting it play whatever it wanted for me and it played me this segment.

It's about a little kid who listened to the "I believe" things on NPR and then wrote his own list of things he believes. I thought it was really cool and after thinking about it for a few days I decided to write my own list of things I believe. I did the same number as the kid did. I'm sure I could have done more but it was good to have a limit so as to really think about what I wanted in my list. I'm sure people will disagree with me on many of them. But they aren't just my thoughts and ideas, they are beliefs, they are things that I live by, that form the foundation of my life and why I live it how I do so don't bag on them, just write your own if you want them to be different.

1. I believe that Science and Religion go hand in hand if you really believe in both
2. I believe in the need for wilderness even if you never go out into it
3. I believe in imagination
4. I believe that taking risks and chances is important and that it is possible to be too careful
5. I believe in the ability to change and that it's never too late
6. I believe in memories, both for enjoying and learning from
7. I believe there are worse things in life than death
8. I believe that video games are ruining childhood
9. I believe the past should stay in the past but not be forgotten
10. I believe the devil is real
11. I believe in Evolution
12. I believe there is one true church but that everyone has the right to worship as they choose
13. I believe that the root of the problems is the middle east is boredom
14. I believe that the office of the President deserves more respect from this country
15. I believe every person has some feature that is beautiful
16. I believe every experience can be interesting if told well
17. I believe food tastes better when made from scratch, in a cast iron pan, or with real butter
18. I believe extinction due to the irresponsibility of man is a tragedy beyond our understanding
19. I believe truth exists
20. I believe that humor can be found in any situation
21. I believe there's no such thing as a bad or wrong emotion, only inappropriately placed or out of control ones
22. I believe men should be handy
23. I believe in prayer
24. I believe people should respect their elders
25. I believe in leading by example
26. I believe in Karma and The Golden Rule
27. I believe in having choices and sometimes making the wrong one
28. I believe in sacrifice for the greater good
29. I believe in families
30. I believe that experiences are worth more than money in the bank

High Tea

My friend Tisha is having a baby. She's one of what's referred to as my "work wives" with the other one being Heathyr. (a work wife is someone who, while you're at work, you're with so much and they know everything that's going on with you that it's like a marriage. I have two work wives...and a pet nerd but that's another story)

Since neither Heathyr nor I could attend any of Tisha's baby showers we decided to have our own mini one and go have High Tea at the Grand America. It was so classy! They even have someone playing the harp (but not TOO classy on the harp since we noticed once she was playing Stairway to Heaven. Sounded great though) I was surprised at how much all those tiny little finger sandwiches filled me up. They were only two bites each at the most but so tasty! I got a plum tea but if I ever go again I'm getting a hot chocolate. They had all kinds of flavors and Tisha got one that was so amazing. Don't even get me started on the lemon curd they brought out for the scones... Sadly we ate everything before I could take a picture of any of it. Oh well. Maybe I'll join the ladies hat club and then I can go all the time. I've never seen so many ladies in big hats as I did there.

Out of control

I have no sense of portion control. Yes I can control it when it's on my plate and I'm actually eating it, it's the making it that is my problem. I can never seem to estimate how much food to make and as a habit, I usually make ten times too much or make something way too big. No matter if it's the simplest recipe ever or incredibly complex and time consuming, a recipe I made up myself, or one I found on the internet... it will be too much. Here are two recent examples.

First example is this new cake recipe I tried out. It's ridiculously easy. You stack these chocolate wafers up with fresh homemade whipped cream and let it sit for a day and ta-da! Cake! It looks a little different than this by the time you eat it. (Seriously though you should all try it, I'm in love with this cake. I got the recipe from the Smitten Kitchen.) I tried it out and made it for book club ...and then a smaller one to taste before in case it was bad and didn't want to serve it ...and then some mini ones which I brought to work... see what I'm saying? There was just so much stuff, I had tons left over after I assembled the cake so I had to keep going. I ate the cake for 3 days then finally had to pass it off onto a family in my neighborhood that has 6 kids before it went bad. There was still over half the cake left.

Second example, I wanted to make some manicotti to put in the freezer for later. I pulled out my tasty manicotti recipe that I concocted a few years back and spent all evening chopping, grating, boiling, sauteing till I had the most enormous bowl of manicotti stuffing I'd ever seen. (look at the ingredients list in the background. This is one involved recipe! If only I'd paid attention to the amounts I'd written down I might not have had this problem) "What have I done?!?!" I thought as I began boiling a second box of manicotti shells to stuff. It didn't end there. What I wanted to be one tray of manicotti turned into two trays, another square pan, a loaf pan, and then a large casserole dish of ziti mixed in with all the left over filling I still had. How many people did I think I was feeding? This picture is about half of how much food I made. Maybe I should be running a food bank or get a job as a cafeteria lunch lady or something... It's a good thing I like my own cooking because I sure end up with leftovers a lot. (and I didn't even mention the enchiladas I made the next day. They're filling up the other half of the freezer that isn't full of manicotti)