10 november 02 (~3am) jesus loves me more than I will know

05 november 02 retail therapy (but I hate shopping!)

30 october 02 regime change begins at home

28 october 02 my addiction, where’s the social change?

15 october 02 more exercise, less silicon!

09 october 02 my life, soundtrack available on…

27 november 02

tomorrow is thanksgiving.

I am already starving for turkey! More like for mashed potatoes, thick and lumpy, and stuffing and gravy!! Today was turkey brochettes in the cafeteria at work… it was good, but it only made this desire for a whole table full of harvest food greater. Do you think I’ll spoil my enjoyment of tomorrow’s dinner if I make myself mashed potatoes tonight?? I don’t have any gravy….

In honor of America, this weekend I’m going to go see the new james bond film. And maybe I’ll

Some days, do you just feel crappy? … Like nobody loves you? … like you cannot take it anymore?… click here!

14 november 02 the barefoot doctor is my guru

I bought yet another of his books while I was in London – “Liberation” – it just came out.

It’s supposed to teach me how to liberate myself from all those unhealthy thoughts that become depression and jealousy and fear of failure.

The barefoot doctor is really BIG… there were ads for this book in all the metro stations in London… right there with the ads for Mama Mia and The Lion King. And in retrospect, I can barely believe how anxious I was to get it once I saw them. [it must have just come out – because amazon.co.uk emailed me yesterday to tell me if I bought it through them, I could get a discount. Too late.]

14 november 02 part 2.

Ok, I may be trying to be Taoist and calm and all that, but I’m still Californian to the core…. Don’t impede my path to enlightenment with your highway to hell!

http://www.workingforchange.com/activism/action.cfm?itemid=14048

10 november 02 (~3am)

Sofia and I just crashed a high school dance.

I decided, “when in rome” (sorta like in Paris when I dress to blend in) and let the 20 year old Italian pick me up. But I only let him kiss me AFTER I taught him to swing dance to The Beatles, The Doors, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers and AFTER I taught him “pickup rules for grown ups”( like “I will not kiss her until after I’ve asked her name”).

When did I become Mrs. Robinson??

[and just for the record, we did not intend to be 10 + years older than the average age; we just looked in TimeOut Magazine, which is usually a good bet, for a club that sounded fun. And this one was described as indie (good), fun (good), and close to our hotel (very good)…. It was only when we walked in that something seemed a little off… and the average age was easy to overlook at that point because they happened to be playing one of my favorite songs by the Offspring. I still may have had a better time than I’ve ever had clubbing in paris: I did like that they played music I really thought was fun almost the whole night, and that people were dressed and dancing in all manner of ways. So there really was NOTHING to feel self-conscious about. The whole Parisian and gothic sense of aloof watching was just gone! Though maybe it has something to do with the fact that I could no longer care LESS about what a 17-year old thinks of me (I wish I’d felt that way when I was 17).]

09 november 02

In the pub. Drinking a pint of courage. Not metaphorically. That’s the brand. There was a whole range of bitters to choose from (according to the barboy with the pierced eyebrow, “based on how pissed I want to get, and how fast”)

Yay.

Not about getting pissed, but about having a selection of yummy, not-yellow beer.

I just got out of the Tate Britain gallery (formerly known, I think, as simply the Tate Gallery, but now there’s also the Tate Modern (which I really wanted to go to this weekend but didn’t get to) so they have to differentiate somehow (when British became the antonym of Modern, I don’t know… but as long as it’s not some other country saying it, it seems fine)) where I saw the exhibition of artwork for the Turner prize. Four artists under age 50 have been selected as finalists; they each put up a one-room installation; on December 8, one of them will win 20,000 pounds. I loved it! Some of it was highly conceptual; some I liked more… but I thought the whole thing was cool…. Sofia was bored.

But among my favorite things was a drawing/painting by keith Tyson… it’s a design for a sculpture to be called “molecular compound #8. and in the descriptive text, it says, “…. So that the piece is constantly changing its form (underlining my belief that sculpture and form are simply information leasing matter).”

I just love that line… so so so true… kinda platonic, really, in that a piece of art is just a medium to represent an idea…

08 november 02

Just one thought. I’ve been in London for 15 minutes.

I haven’t yet gotten on the subway

Or even seen the sky.

But I have a bike map with all the bike lanes, separate traffic lanes, and “quiet streets” marked.

I still haven’t even heard of such a thing in Paris.

Perhaps if it’s not raining Monday, I’ll have to rent a bike!!

07 november 02

ok. i guess i'm petty.
i was having a conversation last week with a certain french person, and his position was that Americans are fatter than French people, and similarly people from lower-social economic situations are fatter than rich people, entirely for cultural reasons: what you choose to eat and how you live your life are entirely cultural choices.

my position was that it was much more complex than that. That it was almost certainly a combination of
factors, some of which might be: more sedentary lifestyles/more time spent working so less time to
exercise and less availability of nutritious food. That part I was basing on living by USC, where the
nearest supermarket, if you could call it that, was small, constantly crowded, difficult to manage your
way through, and more importantly, seriously lacking in produce or healthy food. There was no giant
super-store, with piles of beautiful fruit and aisles and aisles of well arranged food, no major chain.

however, there was a jackinthebox, a wendys, a taco bell, a del taco, a green burrito, a sizzler, and a starbucks.

it seemed really obvious, that there wasnt the incentive for a big, bright supermarket because there wasnt the "purchasing power" of a more upscale neighborhood. and, as everybody knows, usc is in an "economically-challenged" neighborhood. (as long as you dont count the students)

but now i feel totally vinidicated. researchers just found the same thing (well, at least that the presence or absence of a supermarket in one's neighborhood was a stong facor in whether one's diet had fruits and vegetables, and also that there were less markets in predominantly black neighborhoods)

read it yourself.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=594&e=1&cid=594&u=/nm/20021107/hl_nm/diets_supermarkets_dc

so there.

06 november 02

last night i bought organic gin at the supermarket.
did you know they make organic gin? i didn't, but i couldn’t pass it up.
(they also make organic vodka, but yuck. i'm sure I could find organic baby corn too, but why?)

gin is my clear drink of choice.

only in europe can you be an organic drunk.

apparently, though, organic gin brings out the rockstar in me. i just found myself jumping up and down playing air guitar to the song "lump" in front of the window that looks out on the pompidou center. (it's like a big mirror because its dark outside.)
have you ever seen me play air guitar?
no.

has anyone?

no.
i do not play air guitar.

because i can dance.
until now.
now i'm thinking, "dude! i need to be on stage!"
....
excuse me "love shack" is on... i gotta go be a sexy rock and roll singer.

05 november 02

i'm a bit shitty because my paper just got rejected (again)... and, in fact, a series of not necessarily important to anyone but me things have been kind of falling apart recently, and i'm finding it a little disturbing.

but, i have been fighting it with retail therapy, which usually isnt a big part of my regime, but right now buying warm, wooly sweaters, and fresh organic vegetables and bookshelves seems to be working... it's as though i really can reach my heart by warming from the outside with thewool, and the cleaner environment, and also from the stomach.

tonight i might buy a winter coat.... then there will be nothing left to buy, i hope.

30 october 02

I vote today.

And I just have one question:

Hey! What happened to the left?!?!

I don’t mean that in the same way it’s usually used lately. I don’t mean, “Why are the democrats so moderate?” (Though, I don’t like that either,)

I mean:
What happened to the extreme (and slightly unusual) left parties that are not the democrats?

What happened to the peace and freedom party?

And the communists? And the socialists?

And wasn’t there another?

Who’s on the ballot to balance the libertarians, the reformers, and the natural lawyers??

Did we all decide to join the greens? I can understand, and maybe even applaud, the decision to band together to make our voice louder… if that’s what we’re doing.

But, I don’t know. It can’t be that the whole country swung so far to the right that we cant sustain the multitude of ideas from the left and can only afford one….. can it?

I like the greens, really… And I vote for a lot of them. And I want the Green party to become a strong and oft-elected party. But I don’t agree with everything on their platform (ok, I’m a little sensitive to their skepticism of science in general in the name of anti-nuclear policies in specific. Maybe that’s not entirely objective…. But maybe it is.)

Perhaps it’s that I’m so far away…. Perhaps I didn’t get all the voter materials…. But I miss reading the candidate statements peppered with lines like, “married to the lovely Tatiana”…

And I miss thinking that the progressive left was big and broad and diverse.

Now I just hope that the progressive left can survive without succumbing to hawkish hoopla.

28 october 02

I love daylight savings!

This morning I got up in time to eat BEFORE I left the house (some soy yogurt I just found – it occurs to me now that it has no calcium, so what’s the point?… but it’s blue berry and tasty)

And more importantly, I was early enough to get coffee and the paper on the way to the bus. In fact, I was the first person at the bus stop. Which is stunning! Since often I’m the last – no, not just the last, the last possible. … running across the street, possibly dodging traffic, after the bus, yelling “attend!” … or arriving just seconds before, having run the whole way from my apartment. (something which is very unfrench and gets strange looks, or maybe it isn’t that un-French since the run, then the sit in the warm bus in my winter coat, then the freezing cold outside, then the heat of the office seems to make me smell stereotypically, and typically, French.)

So… this coffee… not exactly “on the way” to the bus. More like seven-minutes-out-of-the-way of a 5 minute journey. But what it is is an American style coffee bar I first tried yesterday, the Columbus Café. Absolutely modeled on starbucks and cafes in new york (according to them). (though, I’d say, the name plus the logo of a big bear are more evocative of san Francisco than new york.)

The only cardboard cups in paris. (including teeny Dixie cup size shot glasses for espresso)

Nice, foamy cappuccino with your choice of cinnamon or chocolate on top.

“Barristas”, who are actually called barristas, and a tip cup.

Muffins (chocolate-chocolate chip and blueberry) and an oven to bake them.

Fresh squeezed juice already in the plastic glasses with lids.

Mochas with chocolate and whipped cream.

And a drink called the “San Francisco Steamer”: steamed milk with a shot of syrup….. though, I think if they were remotely true to the name it would be steamed organic soy milk.

This morning I said to the barrista, “Hier soir, j’ai revi que vous avez de lait soja” (“last night I dreamt that you had soy milk”) and she just laughed. “never. I think in the states you drink it because some people can’t drink milk. Noone likes the taste. We can drink milk.”….

Sniff. I’m nobody.

Oh, well, I’ll keep working on it.

At least I got a yummy cappuccino with cinnamon on top in my travel mug.

Which already feels like a victory.

Even if I did spill some on my jacket on the way to the bus. At least it was only my jacket and not my shirt.

(note to self: put lid on travel cup rather than carrying lid in other hand.)

15 october 02

i had my own sort of bi-athlon weekend... i went to lacanau for surfing. surfed twice a day. and did tai chi once a day. so im a bit sore now. and even though the surfing did not go so super well, (waves too big, and not well formed at all... so i did a lot of getting pounded and a lot of paddling), i had the greatest time.

i just love being in the water, surrounded by the hugeness of it all.... i miss that so so much in paris.

of course now i and my apartment are total wrecks. me for having not slept enough because my train came in SO late on sunday night, and that sadly put me in a stay up late habit that i reinforced by seeing a french film last night, and my apartment for not having had any attempt at a weekend clean. instead there are still the regular items: laundry to do, dirty dishes in the sink,... and also extra towels and wetsuits and swimsuits hanging everywehere, and also all the pieces for this project im working on (long lengths of copper piping, cold solder, newspaper everywhere to keep the cold solder off the floor, stains where i missed the newspaper)-- i'm building shelves out of copper pipe. to hold my shoes... how girly!... but i have a lot of shoes and i have to do something with them.

what else is up with me?? i guess not too much... i'm still the opposite of jazzed about my job, and sometimes it really gets me down, both because it's just not fulfilling and i'm just not accomplishing anything, and lately, because im really worried that the result will be that i wont be able to get another job in the states afterward.

and i really dont knwo what im going to do when it finishes in a year and a half. the only thing i do know is that i wont have a job lined up because i dont seem to be applying for anything this job cycle.

on the other hand... i'm really trying to use this as an opportunity to learn how to disconnect my profession from my life. which is different from how i've been a lot of my adult life: it's always been part of how i identify, and a lot of who i am, being a grad student and a scientist.... now i'm trying to really focus on the rest, which is all there anyway, and make friends based on on surfing and dancing and stuff... and to really keep doing all those other things... have the hiking and biking and rollerblading and enjoying paris be the things that make me feel good at the end of the day instead.

i guess that's probably a valuable lesson to learn.

and it's making me want to get a bike again!!!

im thinking about a cyclocross... cuz i still want something that can go on trails... something that can take me most places, but i want that extra-large wheel fastness... i guess i should do some test-rides ... as im not actually sure i'll like the drop-bar profile.

it hasnt been a very good time for me and "stuff"... i lost my celphone and cracked the screen of my laptop. i am now trying to do the slightly-overdue backup onto cds before i take it in to find out just how much it will cost.... a lot i am sure. and wow! i had no idea how much i had come to depend on that phone!! i mean, i am not that social, especially here, but wow! it's like i cannot have any social engagement without it, because they're all based on, "well, get off the metro and then call me..."

oh well, again, all the more reason to have my life de-tech a bit... more exercise, less silicon!!

9 october 02

what is new with me?? i got an ipod when i was home in september.... and it has changed my life!!

it's like my life now has a soundtrack.... and somehow that makes everything i do cooler...

plus, it makes being in the lab NOT SUCK.

and the rest of my trip was pretty fabulous too: burning man (weird and wonderful and the opposite of france in almost every way), visiting the parents, surfing nearly every day, 1 week in hawaii, which is good on its own but was better because it was for kanani's wedding, which was beautiful, and it also meant that it was time with friends, and the ocean every day.... so so sonice.

here's a note: do not order a bloody mary in france.

i've had these very strange cravings over the past few months == like in july when it was really hot, i found myself daydreaming about oysters and champagne, which is odd because i had never really had oysters. but when i finally went out and had the combination, it was divine. it was like eating the sea, and it was exactly what i needed.... and then last weekend, after a dificult time at esrf, i was in this, "i just need a drink" mode. and i wanted it to be a bloody mary. again, not something i've had a lot of to really know when i should crave one. i had one at burning man (and it was delicious), and if i've had another, it was probably with you, but im not sure..... nonetheless, on sunday, it was completely what i CRAVED. so i was in this french restaurant in grenoble, and i said, "en fait, je voudrais une cocktail americainne -- a bloody mary"... the waiter nodded and brought me one... but it was just tomato juice vodka and lime. ick. i guess it's a little like buying brie in a seven eleven in texas.... just not a good idea.

what else? not too much... im trying trying (still) to construct a life that i like here... lately ive been rollerblading more places, which is fun even if i;m not very good at it. one of carrie beam's housemates from berkeley just moved here... so i have one more friend who understands me a little more. (though she's swiss, so she's having a much easier time of adapting)

since i stopped going to french classes, life is nicer,.... because i have more time to just do what ever i want... this week i'm building a shelf for my shoes out of copper pipes. i discovered this "cold solder" stuff, and it's opened a whole new world of making stuff... like tinker toys!