Mango salsa: December 2004

Road trip

Adam and I are on our first long ride together since our trip to New York City to get him a visa for France. He’s still the only guy I know who gets giddy over Cher, Natalie Merchant or good 80s love songs (a good variety of which, and as far as we can both figure, are most often heard in central PA.)

We’ve been singing for hours. We traded bu dat dahs on The Proclaimers’ I Would Walk 500 Miles, a perennial favorite, which I had stored on my computer. We collectively gasped when "I’m a Believer," from Shrek, came on 107.9 FM. We sang solos alongside Toni Braxton, Aerosmith, and Phil Collins, and double-duetted with Don Henley and Patti Smith, Nelly and Tim McGraw, and Sheryl Crow and Kid Rock. My voice hurts.

The trip itself was great, and the Washington Auto Show, sponsored in part by XM Radio, is going to comprise a chunk of my Master’s project. I only have two hours of battery life remaining in my laptop, and I’m trying to use them to write before the scenes erase themselves from my working memory, but it’s hard to concentrate in a car that’s full of songs with sing-alongable lyrics.

Tomorrow’s New Year’s Eve, and I’m excited to spend it with Kathleen and a few other friends, maybe at a random party in Webster. I can’t wait to see Ben, the adorable TV post-producer with hair that stands up by itself. I just met him a few days ago, and he lives in Los Angeles, but he’s swoon-worthy and I’m sure his friend's party would be a good time.

Adam and I stayed at Kimberly Chesebrough’s for the past two nights. She’s a great friend and a terrific hostess, calling frequently to check in and even inviting us out on her date (the guy couldn’t get tickets to the jazz concert, it turned out, so Adam and I went to see the National Christmas Tree and other DC ornaments.) I couldn’t drink without a valid photo ID (part of what was stolen from me a few weeks back) so we left the one bar we entered. We watched a guy clean an ice skating rink with a zamboni for entirely too long of a time.

I love Pennsylvania’s thoughtful road signs, in bright neon orange and pink: Buckle Up Every Time; Beware of Aggressive Drivers. I feel like this state really cares. The cheapest gas we’ve seen so far was a few miles ago: an unbelievable $1.65 a gallon.

Outside of one white, dilapidated church in Allenwood, this guilt-tripping sign was plunged into the dirt:

Jesus Came To Earth
So
We Could Go To Heaven
Service: 10:30

We just passed Purity Candy, where we stopped on our way to DC to get 50 percent off all Christmas candy. It’s the only place we took a picture on the whole trip, besides the car showrooms where friendly 20somethings offered to snap our pictures and post them on the internet. We were photographed in front of a yellow Dodge Viper and a funky, boxy concept car made by Jeep.

Despite a big Styrofoam cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee, I’m tired. I want to take a nap, but it’s rude to sleep when you’re not driving any of the 7.5-hour drive. (Adam drives standard. Driving standard freaks me out a little.)

Route 15 would be so much cooler if we had time to stop at random places to check them out. Adam has to pick up one of his fraternity brothers at the airport this afternoon, so we left at 9:30 without looking back, forward, or to either side. We’re stopping only for pottybreaks, dismissing signs for veritable hotspots like Tom’s Leather Goods, Farmer Boy Furniture, and various adult video stores and scenic overlooks.

The trees on the mountains in front of us are a fine fringe. They grow on the horizon like hair. We’re almost in Lycoming, wherever that is.

Post-Christmascookie hungover

I've eaten enough chocolate in the past week to kill a dog. This contributed, in part, to the merry Christmas I had yesterday. I spent it at home with Mom, saying goodbye to the puppy we were watching for Adam Devitt and then opening gifts for most of the morning. The lab was also chocolate --- a gift for Adam's dad that stayed with Mom and me so she'd be a surprise --- and eventually got named Abby even though she looked like, to me, a Cecelia. She slept with me Christmas Eve Eve and was a perfectly well-behaved live teddybear.

Christmas Eve we went to Aunt Mary and Uncle Dale's for wonderful cookies, cheese and crackers, bread dip, and a game of Risk. It was good to see the cousins, as usual. They're closer to siblings than anything I've ever had, and it's been fun to watch them grow up/change hairstyles/get jobs/fall in love/fall out of it/ pick careers/ pick new ones. I'm the oldest, which means I'll be annoyed when they each get married before I do, one by one.

I have a lot of calls to make today. There are a few people I still really want to see while I'm home, and I have a sh*tload of work to do on my Master's Project. If I set up some interviews today with reps from major record labels for the week I get back to New York City, I'll sleep easier. This does not necessarily mean I'll do it.

I read David Sedaris' Holidays on Ice to get me into the Christmas spirit, and am now snowplowing through The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. The latter is beautiful but the former is laugh-like-you-know-you-shouldn't-because-it's-so-offensive funny. Here's one of my favorite parts, from a story called "Santaland Diaries" that features David Sedaris getting a job as an elf at Macy's:

We were standing near the Lollipop Forest when we realized that Santa is an anagram of Satan. Father Christmas or the Devil --- so close but yet so far. We imagined a SatanLand where visitors would wade through steaming pools of human blood and feces before arriving at the Gates of Hell, where a hideous imp in a singed velvet costume would take them by the hand and lead them toward Satan. Once we thought of it we couldn't get it out of our minds. Overhearing the customers we would substitute the word Satan for the word Santa.

"What do you think, Michael? Do you think Macy's has the real Satan?"

I got two books of essays by Joseph Brodsky and Gideon's Trumpet by Anthony Lewis (one of my law class profs) for Christmas. I also got some hot jewelry, a teal travel coffeemug, a Diana Krall CD and a Palm Pilot identical to the one that got stolen a few weeks back.

And some more chocolate. I thought the other day that I should go to some sort of camp, where I am sequestered and forced to eat only chocolate for two weeks, to drink only melted chocolate in to-the-brim-filled plastic cups through a straw. I think this would sufficiently cure me of my chocoholism.

Enveloped in thank-you notes

I don't have anything particularly electrifying to put down right now, except that I'm swamped with thank-yous to write and we're still pre-Christmas. It's great that I have so many people to thank, right? Recommenders, references, interviewees, interviewers, friends who helped me after my stuff got stolen. I hope I can find the stamps.

I'm meeting Contessa for lunch soon, and then going to the Spot to stare at a computer screen. I have a load to do over break: a personal statement; a few more interviews for my live-in re-do, which I promised Tom Curran I'd hand in over break to save my honor; master's project writing.

And sleeping til 11 every day. Not sure if that last one should be a top priority.

Employee me

It's super late because I got back recently from hanging at Mod Lounge. I'm exhausted after getting minimal sleep last night due to extreme anal-retentiveness on the law exam.

But I wanted to blog my news: I got a job today, a flexible part-time fact-checking position at the Columbia Journalism Review. I'm going to be a metawatchdog, watching the watchers. Or, a bigger dork... You choose.

Check out the magazine's websites sometime: www.cjr.org and www.campaigndesk.org.

Spooky

Yushchenko was poisoned, after all:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&u=/ap/20041211/ap_on_re_eu/yushchenko_health_13

Making the rules

Even if Viktor Yushchenko were your worst enemy, would you want to pummel him the way his sickness has? Whether his disfigurement was natural or state-induced seems still to be in question, but the director of a hospital in Ukraine today said it wasn't caused by poison. It's heartbreaking to look at him, especially considering how hard it has been for him, I'm sure, to campaign in a country where the leadership is dead against him and willing to go to great lengths (extensive voter fraud, for one) to prevent him from having a fair shot.

An AP story, including an "after" shot of Yushchenko's face that isn't for the flimsy, is here:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1756&e=3&u=/041208/481/xel10112081636

When Ukrainians re-vote Dec. 26, if the government hasn't finished off the opposition leader by then, Yushchenko will inherit a job with a watered-down job description. After changes President Kuchma signed into law today, the parliament has more say in budget-balancing, and some high-ups once appointed by the president will now be appointed by the legislature. Many Yushchenko-supporters in parliament abstained from voting on the "reforms" today at the same time that new election law was being considered, at the request of opposition leader Yuliya Timoshchenko.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has good coverage of the Ukraine election crisis. The latest is here: http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2004/12/d8d6c286-df70-4388-90d1-e338956c6cd3.html

This just in

Naive me got all her stuff snatched tonight by two women, apparently, who raced out and spent $200ish on subway cards. I lost my only phone, my palm pilot, three notebooks full of notes, my subway card, three credit cards, a health insurance card (complete with my soc. sec. number) and *terrifying organ interlude* a j-school camera. I was initially upset over the camera because I took pictures this week that were better than anything I ever thought I could produce. I'm really going to miss the shots I took of the holiday market at Union Square, Stephanie the seventh grader in Red Hook, and the guy reaching into his pocket on the subway escalator. I'll save the swear words, because I'm sure the robbers will get theirs.

But apparently if I don't get that camera back I have to pay a whopping deductible. I can't afford it. And I don't see how it's fair, especially since the camera was stolen at The Heights, where I was having a mandatory (albeit fun) margarita with my master's project adviser and classmates. I guess another chick got her wallet stolen in the same hour my bag disappeared.

The bartender I spoke with got my goat. As soon as I told him my bag was missing, he told me about two women who'd been lurking around the bar earlier looking reeeally suspicious. "I would have done something," he said, "but I wasn't managaing."

?

Nine. Nine!

Dan Nathan-Roberts, my friend from college with three first names, came to visit just before Thanksgiving and the pics below are some of what we took. I hadn't cracked out my Photo Microskills camera yet, so these are all zapped from his digital camera. The trip across the Brooklyn Bridge was my first, but I hope to go again soon. The views were worth a gawk.

Hopefully Dan will come back soon, so we can open up the first of a chain of high-quality peanut butter and jelly sandwich shops. (C'mon, if cereal specialty stores are opening up, why not a store that's all about the best sandwich since sliced bread? For a good story on Cereality: http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-cereal02.html)

It's such fun in New York to see freckled faces that remind me of home. Before Dan's visit, I'd done Planet Hollywood with Lisa Herzig, almost done the elusive Central Park rummage sale with Jan Wong, gotten crepes and homework with Drew Abrams, and had sandwiches and politics with Audrey Stewart. Jon Koehler was up this past weekend and I spent a lovely morning of almond-crusted french toast and real estate speculation with him and Josh. And of course, it was nice to see my mom this weekend. I love when people bring Rochester to me. (I'll be coming back to it on 12/18.)

Speaking of friends and Rochester, I'm really excited to plan the Ninth Annual Christmas Party with Adam when I get back. Dip my head in a tub of cold water --- we've been throwing holiday parties the week of Christmas for NINE YEARS. We're all aging faster than dogs.