El tiempo de la isla

In the first "real" vacation I've had in a very long time, I finally made it to the Caribbean. I spent a few days in San Juan, Puerto Rico before joining 8 friends on a 45-foot catamaran to go sailing around the British Virgin Islands. The two parts of the trip are distinctly different, but enjoyable in their own ways.

I loved loved loved San Juan. I never left the old walled city, but that was definitely enough to captivate me. Next time I visit, I'd like to see the rain forest, caves, and beaches, but for the few days I was there, two Spanish forts, the old city wall, a cathedral, parks, a ton of museums, and various ruins held my fascination and imagination. At night, I loved the sounds of live bands and music coming from clubs, apartments, and street corners.

And the food was amazing! I think my favorite was a sweet plantain "lasagna" ... actually, all the plantain dishes I had were delicious. I ordered mofongo at one restaurant not knowing what it was, and it turned out to be a tasty, uniquely Puerto Rican dish. I also discovered a new appreciation for piña coladas.

My adventures in Spanish are an ongoing saga - and of course, everyone thought I was Boricua. Which was part of why I think I felt immediately at home in San Juan: it struck me as a multilingual, multi-ethnic, multi-racial society with rich traditions spanning several continents, and I'd love to explore it more.

Sailing around the British Virgin Islands was also beautiful and fascinating! We sailed from island to island, docking or mooring every night in a different harbor. (One yacht club where we stayed played Pirates of the Caribbean, which we giddily watched because we were in the Caribbean.)

I've never been a big rum fan, but after having Pusser's Rum, I think I've changed my mind - what better way to start a new beverage experience than with the very rum the Royal Navy served its sailors daily for over 300 years?

After San Juan, the food couldn't really compare - I thought the best food of the trip were dishes we prepared on the boat (like bourbon-marinated pork chops with marmalade glaze). I had conch ceviche at a beach cafe, though, which was interesting and different.

I tried snorkeling for the first time; unfortunately, I jumped right in and tried it in fairly open water. Three daily attempts and three panic attacks later, I finally plunked my head

down in 3-feet deep water on a beach until I got used to the snorkel.

One couple on the boat got engaged during the trip! The next day, they lost the ring; hilarity and heartbreak ensued as we tore apart the boat trying to find it. Ultimately, it wasn't found until about half an hour before we had to leave for the airport.

One thing that haunted me the whole time was the role of tourism and the legacy of colonization. There was something perpetually jarring about a majority-black native population serving majority white, super-wealthy vacationers in the yacht clubs, marinas, and resort towns across the islands. The fabulously gorgeous houses, restaurants, and harbor buildings sometimes seemed like the facades in an Old West town - a block or two inland past the tree buffers, there were actually a lot of poor, destitute-looking areas. This is what struck me the most about my first trip to a Caribbean paradise, and it was rather depressing; I spent many nights on the boat reading up on the history of the Virgin Islands and pondering economies of complicity.

All in all, though, the trip was very relaxing.

The transition back to work has been difficult, especially with a new medication regimen I just started (courtesy of the snorkel-inspired anxiety attacks). It's heartening to realize, however, that I do have good friends - from San Juan travel buddies to the BVI sailing crew to someone willing to drive me to my doctor's office post-vacation.

I have no idea if my impressions of my trip would be different if I hadn't been in the middle of some of my worst bouts with depression and anxiety, but all's well that end's well. It was a beautiful two weeks, and a refreshing break from the hectic rhythms of my busy brain and busy life.

Pacing, pacing, pacing

The first 5K I've actually run twice, NARAL Pro-Choice Washington's annual Run for Your Rights, was today. Continuing the all-jogging-no-walking trend from Thanksgiving, I also ran this entire stretch. (It helped that the course was entirely flat, unlike the surprisingly hilly route for the Ann Arbor Turkey Trot.)

I even beat my Ann Arbor time by almost 9 minutes.

w00t, yo. w00t.

Next up: maybe an 8K or 10K. Sometime...

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Netflix keeps suggesting really quirky, insightful films that I end up appreciating.

The Opposite of Sex is narrated by a sarcastic, manipulative, 16-year-old pregnant runaway who seduces and then absconds with her half-brother's bisexual boyfriend. Throw in the thousands of dollars she also takes off with, a false molestation charge against the brother (who is a teacher), and the neurotic and meddling sister of the brother's former lover, and it's a head-swirling recipe for an edgy and enjoyable comedy.

It did get to be a little tiresome, though, the way the whole entourage of characters kept trotting across the country and over the northern border - Indiana to LA to Canada. That may have been symbolic, however; though the traipsing about North America wasn't very realistic, what was real was the range of characters' reactions to and relationships with "traditional" setups involving sex and love, and the defenses they put up to cope with both. From the media and political frenzy over a gay teacher to ignorant comments about "deserving" AIDS to judge-y comments left and right that are turned upside down, the snapshots are all definitely art parodying life. Even the narrator toys with the audience, telling them what they're probably expecting in the plot twists, what they should be foreshadowing, etc. It's a clever and tactical mirror for the social scenarios playing out in the storyline.

Based on the Netflix description, I expected to somewhat dislike the film, but I actually ended up liking it. And apparently I didn't learn my lesson about not judging a film by its Netflix description, because I expected to be somewhat bored with Me and You and Everyone We Know, but ended up really liking it too.

The focus of Me and You and Everyone We Know are the little eccentricities everybody has that make up their identities. So the whole film is basically about finding beauty in everybody's weirdnesses. Which is kind of appealing, given that the uber-OCD freak in me has been coming out a lot lately due to stress and anxiety.

There were also the themes of not taking anyone at face value, about technology both giving people the courage to be themselves and giving them the anonymity to pose as anything they want, about innocence and cynicism in navigating social facades, and lastly (but crucially) about misinterpretations. Naturally, I appreciated the "new" communications (chat rooms, video messages) both complementing and working at odds with "old" communications (phones, notes left in a window). Then there were the images of self-presentation - the shoes people wear, the makeup they put on, the large magnets that change a motor vehicle from a car to a cab.

I really liked how all the fragments and idiosyncrasies made a believable patchwork of a neighborhood and people's lives - and how the film ended with a generational torch-passing of sorts.

The Village people

At a community screening of The Stonewall Uprising, I don't think there was a dry eye in the theatre at end of the film.

It's a powerful and short documentary about identity, safe spaces, civil rights, and political power. Most of the people featured in the film were all at the Stonewall Inn the night police raided it - bar patrons, a reporter, a cop commanding his squad.

Half of the documentary focuses on laws that persecuted gays and lesbians, and on making the viewer understand the very real fear and culture of hiding that accompanied being gay or lesbian before the 1969 Stonewall "riots" that sparked the beginning of the LGBT rights movement began to change that. It's interspersed with horrible propaganda clips from the 1950s and 60s about how gays and lesbians are deviants, sociopaths, and predators; it highlights how people were methodically hunted and their lives ruined for trying to find both public and private spaces to be themselves. Without that context, it's impossible to understand how monumentally important it was that people resisted and fought back during this one bar raid in New York.

A friend remarked that, from an organizer's perspective, it's extremely moving and humbling to realize "Holy shit, there's something huge going on here, socially and culturally." (Having just wrapped up about two solid months of rallies and protests of our own, we could definitely relate to certain parts of the movie about mobilizing people and finding out that you have vastly underestimated the level of interest in your event.)

The most poignant scenes of the documentary were the moments where participants said, in their own words, how proud or shocked or happy they were that the "riots" were the first time they felt empowered.

The film ends with the first Pride Parade, organized in New York City to commemorate Stonewall a year later. It was a great way to end, showing how the momentum from Stonewall was channeled into something enduring and amazing.

Though there's still a hell of a long way to go in America in terms of gay rights, this documentary was a good tribute to how far we've come - and in the lifetimes of pioneers who were there 42 years ago.

When you know the notes to sing

I watched High School Musical a few days ago.

And I liked it.

There. I've said it.

It was nothing close to what I was expecting. Netflix kept suggesting it because I like Glee, but there's really no comparison. I was expecting High School Musical to be another variant of the same old plot: unexpectedly good singer lands starring role in production, finds love, shows up rivals.

Instead, it was a cheesy but cute story about kids in high school being unfairly constricted by stereotypes: the jocks, the nerds, the stoners, the drama kids. In fact, the title's musical is never actually performed - the tryouts are the endgame, not the production itself.

The acting is bad and overdone (it's a made-for-TV Disney movie, after all), the songs aren't all that memorable, and I can't relate to these young 'un pop stars (though my niece watches the Disney Channel all the time). But I thought it was a cute story with a healthy message that trying new things, taking risks, and not conforming to what is expected of you can all be liberating.

Quo fata ferunt

The fourth and so far final book in the Depression-era mystery series I've been reading took place in a fun new locale: Bermuda, where the small-town Connecticut protagonist detectives are honeymooning.

Unlike Books 2 and 3, where I somehow (disappointingly) managed to figure out the cases fairly early on, in this one I merely identified the murderer based on a short description of his eating habit, but not the motive.

So now my opinion of the series has changed completely. I love the characters and the settings; but the quality of the mysteries are somewhat lacking. I might be a mystery fan, but I shouldn't be able to guess 3 out of 4 of a series' whodunits. The enjoyment comes from the suspense of being completely surprised by the ending.

Having said that, I think this one was my favorite of the series. The tropical location, the classic Agatha Christie-esque crime in a big house with a dwindling number of suspects ... even if it ended on a sad note (the looming Second World War), it was still good fun to read.

It happened one night

There are few things more affirming and disappointing than solving back-to-back mysteries in a series. It makes you wonder if the writing and twists are too easy that your first suspicion (which clouds your reading of the entire book) turns out to be spot-on.

The third book in a mystery series that amuses me, Shadow Waltz was the second where I guessed the murderer's identity less than halfway through the story. So naturally, I had to stay up until 2am to see if I was right; it was a bit anti-climactic to discover I was.

Like the first two books in the series, this one featured a great cast of characters, with the recently engaged detective protagonists solving yet another murder while also planning their wedding.

I'm drawn to the series because it does, in fact, mimic the gritty innocence of a Depression-era film: it effectively captures the attitudes of both noir and musicals from the 1930s. However, though I understand the need to connect a modern audience to the characters, the historian in me is beginning to find the speech anachronisms unappealing - this book had characters dropping the word "pregnant" left and right, instead of euphemisms used at the time and certainly in mixed company.

Quibbles aside, it was still a fun, light means of escaping this upcoming busy week.

A serpent's tooth

Because I've had it out from Netflix since before legislative session started, I finally got around to watching Confetti, a mockumentary about three couples vying for "Most Original Wedding" and fame and fortune on the cover of a wedding magazine.

The problem from the start was that two of the three couples didn't seem to work as couples. And the couple that did had the most gender-stereotyped nostalgic wedding (a Top Hat-esque musical number), and (spoiler alert) of course they won the contest. Ironically, I thought the really annoying couple (super-competitive tennis players) had the most original wedding, and the nudist couple were just there for shock value.

I think the film was trying to mimic Christopher Guest's hilarious faux-documentaries, but it in my mind it fell far short.

In a similar vein, I found myself a little disappointed with Fool, Christopher Moore's retelling of King Lear from the fool's point of view. It took great liberties with the plot, which was to be expected.

The concept was great - since the fool appears so little in Shakespeare's play (plays if you count the quarto and folio as two), his off-stage activities leave a lot to be imagined. It turns out, in Moore's story, that he is secretly directing the flow of events by both accident and design. It's an old theme: the fool as wise man, the caste-less as the most noble or powerful, the public funny face contrasting with the private personal struggles, the acerbic wit a biting social commentary.

As the author's postscript notes, the play was performed for centuries with a rewritten happier ending, so this particular new revision is nothing new. I was intrigued for the first half of the book, when it largely paralleled the original, but then by the end got tired of the obvious deviation from it. Honestly, most of it was the numerous incestuous plot twists - though true to both the time and the rank of the characters themselves, this modern reader was really grossed out and disturbed by it all.

There were, however, several clever aspects that I loved. For starters, chapters were peppered with casual quotes (and characters!) from Shakespeare's other works, which were great little inside jokes. Turning Shakespeare's greatest tragedy into a partially irreverent sex romp was also subversively laudable.

In the end, I appreciate all Shakespeare retellings, remakes, reiterations, and reduxes. I don't always love them all (like this one), but I love the creativity that goes into re-imagining a well-known and well-regarded classic.

In sunshine or in shadow

As someone who can sing "Danny Boy" by heart (in various harmonies), I lovelovelove the Muppets' version:

Thanks to the FG for posting on FB!

In related news, in support of a rally in Olympia today, we sent out an email alert from a staff member named Erin. Totally went over our heads that that made sense on St. Patrick's Day until a member replied, "Erin Go Bragh!"

Love that too.

Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart

I am admittedly biased because Mi Hermana is a linguist, but the short documentary (56 minutes!) about two American linguists documenting dying languages around the world is a must-see for anyone who cares about language, communication, and knowledge in general.

Two linguists visit Siberia, India, Bolivia, and Arizona to find native speakers of dying languages. In doing so, they address some of the reasons languages become extinct: no writing system, colonization, economic opportunities associated with speaking a dominant language, social pressure to stop speaking a language.

But the most compelling reason to try and document dying languages: that language is the complex expression of human knowledge itself, and unique ways of seeing the world will die with the language's last speaker. In India, for instance, they found a numerical system based in both 12 and 20; in Bolivia, a moribund language taught to only male healers contains generations of medicinal knowledge; in Siberia, one-word sentences include subjects, verbs, and objects.

For me, the most powerful takeaway from the film was something one of the linguists said, in a call to action for fellow linguists: "I don't see how you can justify devoting your research career to the syntax of French - a language with millions of speakers - when the skills that you possess could help document a language that is going to go extinct in your lifetime."

I know not everyone (in any field) feels called to be an activist, and that linguists who do study the syntax of dominant languages are also doing good work and contributing to the body of human knowledge. But that statement was one of the many poignant moments from the film. Another would be the last speaker of a vanishing language in Arizona admitting that he talks to himself in it because there's no one left with whom he can carry on a fluent conversation.

Again, I'm admittedly biased because my own mother didn't teach me or my sisters Tagalog (and we resisted the few lessons she sent us to anyway - children choosing not to speak languages is another reason they die). Tagalog is by no means a vanishing language, but passing on a language to children can be incredibly difficult if it's not spoken in the home or elsewhere in their lives. Mi Hermana is having problems teaching the pingüinitos Spanish while living in Michigan, and La Otra Hermana is trying to teach the kiddos Samoan completely separate from any regularly spoken exposure to it.

Since St. Patrick's Day is just around the corner and all things Irish are everywhere in America, I'm reminded of some of the classes I took comparing the Welsh and Irish efforts at reviving the respective languages that English eventually replaced. Some were successful, some were not; elsewhere in the world, resources are not necessarily available to resurrect a linguistic identity and culture.

At any rate, The Linguists is definitely on my list of highly recommended films.

Chess on ice

New in the "2011 is the sportiest year ever" saga: curling!

Two friends' joint birthday celebrations started off with a visit to the open house for Seattle's curling club, where non-members get a quick lesson and some time on the ice.

Fun fun!

Sweeping was equally as fun as actually throwing the stone across the ice.

And what with the many Cross of St. Andrew emblems and the club's excellent scotch selection, I felt right at home.

Le singe est sur la branche, every inch a king

Because my brain has been a little fried lately, I watched Eddie Izzard's Dress to Kill. I think I've seen snippets somewhere before - the last half of the show was very familiar.

Nothing like watching an intelligent stand-up comedian whose routines draw on history and language to restore a vestige of my sanity.

One thing that did not help with restoring sanity: re-reading King Lear, which is currently overdue at the library and accruing fines.

It remains, undoubtedly, a masterfully told tragedy about family, betrayal, loyalty, duty, power, and nature. But it is a rather depressing tale after dealing with budget cuts and union busting for two straight weeks.

Oh, and La Otra (Loca) Hermana is moving to New Zealand in a month. She's quitting her teaching job and moving to Wellington with the children so that her husband can possibly find a better job in his hometown. It all came about very last-minute, and it is an understatement to say that Mi Hermana is incredibly hurt that they won't wait until she'll be in Seattle in June (for La Madre's surprise birthday party) so she can say goodbye to the little ones. I'll also miss the kids something fierce.

Maybe King Lear was close to home after all...

Wisconsciousness

I woke up at 6am, I was in the office by 7:30, on the road to Olympia by 7:45, shoveling snow and salting pathways by 9:30, singing the national anthem at (and with) anti-union protesters by 11, and rallying with 2,500 fellow Washingtonians at my state's Capitol by noon.

My favorite picture:

I also liked a sign that said "Raise your Wisconsciousness," but I couldn't snap a photo in time.

There were also so many firefighters and firefighters' unions! I was hoping they'd march to the rally playing bagpipes like firefighters in Madison did last week, but (alas!) it was not to be.

More pics here. Video with my coworker being interviewed here.

Easy wind and downy flake

2011 might be my sportiest year yet, if the past few weeks and upcoming plans are any indication.

The first weekend of the New Year, I went snowshoeing for the first time. (And in the process of renting snowshoes at REI, I discovered it was way cheaper to finally become an REI member. As a native Seattleite, perhaps it was destiny. At any rate, because the outdoor activities I've played all my life generally involve cleats, balls, or bats, I've always felt a little out of place in outdoorsy-themed stores. Maybe I can remedy that.)

I was expecting the appropriate gear to look like the tennis racquet-like items that Grandma has displayed in her basement den.

However, much to my delighted surprise, snowshoes actually look pretty sleek these days. Who knew? Clearly not me - somewhere in the back of my brain, I obviously thought they wouldn't have changed in centuries.

At any rate, it's always very cool to try something new and learn that you like doing it.

Snowshoeing is fun!

This weekend marked my second-ever snowshoe trip. The trail wasn't as challenging as the first, but there were great views. If Mt. Rainier had only been out, the view would have been even more spectacular.

For half the hike, though, I had "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" echoing in my head.

What's the good of scheming

The second book in the latest mystery series I'm reading was better than the first. Mainly because half of it took place in Boston. And in my old neighborhood!

Ghost of a Chance, like Million Dollar Baby, played out like a Depression-era film - but instead of the hat tip to luxury that the first book was, this one largely took place in seedy bars. The love triangle from the first book was finally resolved as well; it was obvious how it would end up, but what's a good mystery-cracking team without a little internal drama?

I did, however, figure out the identity of the murderer halfway through the book. If the book's detectives don't suspect someone, and the character happens to mention something vaguely tied to the case but it's phrased in a very different way (in this case, "Argentina" instead of "South America," where the imported poison was from) then it's kind of a giveaway. Oh, well. There are usually a few books in a mystery series where the reader catches on before the characters do.

Books 3 and 4 await.

No Comment

From Anne Taintor:

Order oysters and cancel the ersters

On a friend-of-a-friend's recommendation (in a Facebook status comment, no less) I read Amy Patricia Meade's Million Dollar Baby. Since I finished my now-favorite historical mystery series ever, I've been looking for another one. Only requirement: plucky female protagonist.

The first of three Marjorie McClelland books, Million Dollar Baby takes place in a sleepy Connecticut town during the Depression. The heroine herself is a mystery writer, and naturally stumbles upon a cold case. To help her solve it is a fabulously wealthy Englishman who has just bought a mansion in town and a dashing police detective (foreshadowing the triangular drama was not difficult).

The charm of the book is that it plays out like a film straight from the era in which it takes place. In fact, I had visions of Top Hat and Bright Eyes in my head while reading the whole thing. At various points, I found myself identifying several potential anachronisms (mainly speech patterns and slang). But I wanted to finish the story, so I didn't double-check. And in the end, none of them mattered to the story anyway.

Though it wasn't a gripping, suspenseful page-turner, I still couldn't put it down. Maybe it was the often comical dialog between two of the main characters, but I think most of it was that the background stories of the townspeople was so real and tragic. Meade did a good job of painting a picture of a town with colorful, caring, or tragic characters during some of the worst economic times in history. The book is presented as a light-hearted period caper, but there are darker, pathos-ridden elements brimming under the surface. I liked that.

And of course, it all takes place between the Wars, so I'm partial to it anyway (see below).

Books 2 and 3 are in queue at the library.

Speak the speech, I pray you

What's the perfect mid-day sanity break for a history major whose focus was "Between the World Wars"? Going to see The King's Speech, of course.

(Colin Firth as the star had nothing maybe everything something to do with it.)

At any rate, I really liked it. Even though I tend to agree with the local paper's review (they sent a Marxist critic to a movie about King George VI), as a story about a protagonist with a stammer and the relationship he forges with his Shakespeare-quoting speech therapist, the film was quite good. Historical inaccuracies abounded, but overall it was captivating.

But the movie appeals most to raving Anglophiles, particularly former nerdy tween girls who spent much of middle school obsessed with Edward VIII's abdication and would dramatically roll their eyes when classmates blinked and said "Wallis who?"

(Twenty years later, those girls dive into a matinee to temporarily escape the madness of legislative session. And then they geek out for the whole movie because they recognize all of the film's minor characters as major historical figures from their pet era.)

Ahem. I digress.

Geoffrey Rush was good as usual, but really his role didn't really differ drastically from any other role of teacher or coach in any other film. Colin Firth (and I realize I'm biased) had the more difficult role of mimicking a well-known voice in a particular accent as well as acting out the stammer itself. But the character I was fascinated by the most was the future Queen Mother: Helena Bonham Carter as Queen Mary. For starters, she was the only major female character, even if she basically played the aristocratic version of the stand-by-your-man gal. We got small glimpses into the personal life of the speech therapist and certainly the king - but of the one character who lived to most viewers' lifetimes (she only died in 2002), we got virtually nothing.

One theme that didn't get played out as much as I had hoped was the way in which radio and newsreels changed the relationship between Britons and the monarchy. (Buckingham Palace has a youtube channel now, and first announced Prince William's engagement via Twitter, so the idea of technology changing royal communication - and why - is certainly prescient.) Though there were many fleeting references to the role of the Royal Family, I think that the connection to the rest of the realm (or lack thereof) - and how radio changed it - could have been emphasized more. Without it, the climactic scenes where subjects throughout the world are inspired and comforted by their king's wartime radio speech just didn't seem very convincing.

Ay, there's the rub...

Gloriously dorky

A friend on Facebook posted a video from these self-described "kooky teachers making history-based pop music parodies."

SERIOUSLY. GEEKING. OUT. Now, instead of watching Season 2 of "Dollhouse" on Netflix Instant Viewing, I am compelled to watch as many of these videos as possible before I fall asleep.

This one brings me back to my high school freshman history class:

Like jasmine petals, fluttering down

I finally got around to watching Persepolis, which was a minor miracle, considering that Netflix shipped it to me in late November.

The graphic novels, which I read a few years ago, are definitely better. But the film was good too: even onscreen, Marjane Satrapi's memoir about growing up in a changing Iran remains a poignant coming-of-age tale for expatriates everywhere.

The film is also proof that there are many instances where animation can convey quiet but powerful scenes in ways that frames in a comic book can't.

Börk, börk, börk!

Back when I made the same New Year's resolution every year (to re-evaluate my relationship with food), I would spend the first few weeks of January preparing meals and actually learning about flavors and techniques. Then, each year, as legislative session became progressively chaotic, I stopped. Then the resolutions ended altogether.

The behavior and the routine, however, have staying power.

After a building open house party, our office had half a keg of porter leftover. So I made a chocolate stout cake (marking the first time I made a layered cake!) and bland beef porter stew. Then I made a less bland stew, followed by Batch Three of the beef porter stew, which turned out pretty well.

Next up: a vegan lemon cake!

I spent all day at the MLK Day rally and march and post-march rally, though, so I'm too tired to crawl to the grocery store to buy ingredients.

Oh, and I'll be running an 8K in Vancouver in May.

Clearly, I'll have to balance all this rediscovered baking-and-cooking enthusiasm with an aggressive soccer-and-Zumba regimen.

A cup o' kindness yet

I've done this every year for the past 6 years on this blog: welcome the New Year by reflecting on all the new experiences from the previous one. I do it mainly to remind myself that life isn't stagnant, that it's constantly exciting and rewarding, that happiness and joy can (but don't have to) come from huge life-changing events, that sorrow and tragedy force you to grow and change and adapt, and that small wonders never cease.

Notable "firsts" from 2010:

• Held a 6-hour-old baby - my newest niece, Sailo! Previously, the youngest baby I'd ever held was about a week old (her sister, my other niece). I'm still secretly afraid I'll break newborns when I hold them, because they're so tiny and fragile. But I doubt I'll get to meet a newer baby anytime soon!
  
  
• Joined a soccer team - a real one, not a dorm-based or ad hoc assembly. The spring season I started, we lost every game; we wrapped up this last fall season as division champions.
  
  
• Had makeup done at a department store for a wedding. I will probably never do it again, but it was part of a group activity for the bridal party. None of us really knew how to put on makeup, so I wasn't alone. And now I have $40 Dior lipstick I need to finish in 2011.
  
  
• Fell under the influence of cannabis. I was bored and antisocial at an isolated weekend cabin, and ate an entire "special" cookie when everyone else knew to eat just a quarter. I amused my roommate by spouting nonsense about being a rainbow in a cloud hammock under a tree, before hugging my pillows to avoid falling off the merry-go-round of Earth. Oy.
  
  
• Heard tornado sirens and spent half a night in a basement. While visiting Mi Hermana in Michigan, two tornadoes touched down a few miles away, in the middle of the night. We had to get the toddlers out of bed, take them to the basement, go back upstairs, then back to the basement, etc. Mi Hermana y Mi Cuñado have a few harrowing tales of tornadoes from their college years in Minnesota, and my admittedly tame twister introduction definitely pales in comparison.
  
  
• Ran in two 5K races! I jogged/walked one in Seattle in May, but jogged the entire route in Ann Arbor in November. It was my third 5K ever (in as many cities).
  
  
• Finally upgraded to a smartphone. My God! How did I function in the Stone Age for 7 years? My prehistoric flip-phone went extinct in a rainstorm in D.C. in June, and now I can't live without my crackberry.
  
  

2010 didn't have a lot of the drama or tragedy that past years have had. (It didn't have a lot of free time, either, what with the crazy GOTV hours during both the primary and general elections.) But it was a good year. I'm content.

Here's to 2011...

Retrospective veg-out

I finally had time to re-order my Netflix queue and discovered I did, in fact, watch a few movies in the past 6 months.

Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary was, perhaps unbelievably because it's just 80+ minutes of one woman talking about her wartime work experience, completely riveting. The woman happens to have been one of Hitler's personal secretaries, and the entire film is her recounting the last days in the bunker as the war. Her own story is captivating and necessarily includes a reflection of apolitical attitudes that enable political atrocities, the cults of personality and power, and wartime psychological survival. The fact that the film isn't a documentary or a biography is especially powerful - for almost an hour and a half, the viewer listens to this one woman's tale about a job she once had, with the horrible burden of knowing about the rest of the war and a continent that burned around her.

Unfortunately, other films I watched to escape election madness were not as disturbingly mesmerizing.

Once bored me, though I love its concept. The music was beautiful and deserved to win the Oscar it did. But the story itself didn't grab my attention: two musicians meet randomly on the street in Dublin, form an awkward friendship, and eventually record an album together. Watching it was slightly uncomfortable at times - perhaps it was the combination of the vague and unconsummated sexual attraction coupled with the undeniable musical compatibility of the two characters that made the storyline more tragic than bittersweet. I appreciate that the fleeting moments of an incomplete relationship in the larger completion of painfully beautiful music are what make the film a true artistic statement. It was just a little tedious to watch...

The Namesake also bored me. I didn't read the book, and I admit I only put the movie in my queue because Kal Penn stars in it. It turned out to be a lot longer than I thought, for a story that is told frequently for a variety of cultures and communities. This incarnation of the struggle-between- immigrant-parents-and-identity-forging-second-generation-American focuses on a Bengali family. I sense that the film doesn't do the book justice, that the book probably has more nuanced descriptions of the characters and their relationships with each other.

Similarly, Kung Fu Hustle quickly tired me. I loved Stephen Chow's Shaolin Soccer, but Kung Fu Hustle had too many dark and violent scenes to justify the enjoyable over-the-top martial arts spectacle. In the story, a wannabe gangster pretends to be part of a huge organized crime syndicate that has taken over Shanghai, and then hides out in the one poverty-stricken section of the city that the gangsters haven't taken over. An urban kung fu war ensues.
As in Shaolin Soccer, martial arts are portrayed as a marker of cultural authenticity: the ghetto where outcasts from all over China live "happens" to harbor so many kung fu masters who are too modest to display their skills until the hour comes when they have to save their community from the Western-styled gangsters clad in suits and top hats. There were also a ton of other plot similarities to Shaolin Soccer (the love interest as "girl from traumatic childhood memory" is the most obvious). I don't really like gangster films in the first place, so maybe I should have expected to not really enjoy this genre-blending parody of one.

Netflix Instant Viewing of 30 Rock, The Dollhouse, and Weeds made up for some of these recent disappointing movie choices.

Goal for 2011: visiting the library more! Since May I haven't had much time to read. And since May, the library clearly needs my overdue fines to stay afloat with all the budget cuts...

Notes from the field

Taking a cue from the ever-trendsetting FG (and also because a colleague tweeted her most recent blog post, which reminded me that I have one too)* ...

HOLY HELL. I haven't posted anything in SIX MONTHS??? Granted, I've been working mad hours, but that's still no excuse for not keeping up the writing. Unfortunately, however, it means that I haven't had much time to watch movies (TV shows on Netflix don't count) or read (news commentaries and articles don't count, either).

I have, however:

• moved into a new apartment on top of this famous hill in Seattle. I have now lived in 3 of Seattle's 5 legislative districts.
• finally purchased my own wi-fi subscription after the Firesheep scare - auf wiedersehen to mooching from neighbors and nearby cafes.**
• acquired a new niece! Little Sailo was born in July, and she is a bundle of joy. She is also quite stocky and large for a baby. I visit her once a week.
• run another 5K! This time I really did jog the whole thing. I even woke up early in Ann Arbor to run it on Thanksgiving morning.
• crawled out of bed at 7am on a Saturday to watch CSPAN so I could see Don't Ask, Don't Tell finally come to an end in the Senate.

Everything else in the past 6 months has been work-related. Our state primary in August had some great victories for progressive candidates; the national midterm elections were slightly depressing, though in WA we held on to Sen. Patty Murray's seat (even if it took a lot of work); and because voters failed to pass many revenue-related initiatives, tons of core services are being cut. Gearing up for 2011. Oy.

To end on a happy note: my soccer team won the league championship! We won the game 5-2, and beat the team that had been sporting Reichert '10 T-shirts the entire season. At the victory party, I discovered that most of my team (friends of friends from high school) are either nonvoters who lean Republican or consistent Republican-voting Independents (yes, I quizzed them). Sooooo, will not be talking politics with them off the field when winter season starts! At any rate, we won. I joined the team almost a year ago, when we were losing every game. Watching us learn to play together and eventually become a winning unit has been fun and amazing.

* and also because my home wi-fi network name is a hat tip to this blog

* and also because a New Year reminded me that I post "Firsts" from Last Year
* What the hell, the stars were aligned...

** I remain a staunch advocate of free public wi-fi, despite its political demise.

On the mark

Even though I promised to do it before the horrible anti-family, anti-doctor, anti-choice law passed in Oklahoma, the Sooner State's legislation nudged me to actually register for the 7th Annual NARAL Pro-Choice Washington 5K Run for Your Rights.

I quasi-jogged this one, in stark contrast to the only other 5K I've done, for an equally good women's rights cause.

I feel confident that I can eventually jog an entire 5K ... maybe next time without a backpack and without running half the route 15 minutes before the race anyway (due to a misunderstanding of which building was the check-in location).