new year's eve

I celebrated the eve of 2008 by having a major moving-related meltdown. Then I got over it, kind of, and later I took my personal engineer over to the new apartment to put together my new IKEA cabinet:



It's good to have your own personal engineer. See?



Also, please note that I have already stocked the new fridge with all the essentials:



The movers will come on Thursday and do the rest.

house proud

These are what I like to call THE KEYS TO THE APARTMENT I JUST BOUGHT!!!! No more rent payments...ahhhhhhh.

current conditions

Oh yeah, I am really looking forward to going back in a couple of weeks. The marathon should be especially fun.

Seattle half marathon

I would like to send an open letter to all the people who register for the Seattle Half Marathon Walk and then RUN during it, and it would go a little something like this:

Dear Assholes,
One of the cool things about the Seattle marathon and half marathon is that they have different registrations and different start times for walkers and runners. In theory this should mean that a walker could compare her results against other walkers only, rather than have her results blended in with everyone else's. But then there are you people, you people who can't just register for the half marathon run for chrissake, and who totally cheat and run for part or all of the walkers' event. And then the real race walkers, such as myself, are screwed. So you can all blow me, you cheating sacks of crap.
Love,
Karen

That having been said, I finished in 2:44 (which translates to 4.8 mph) and a maximum of four WALKERS finished ahead of me, and possibly only three, which means that I finished either 4th or 5th among the WALKERS as opposed to the "walkers."

The Seattle course is lovely and the weather was fantastic--crisp and dry (unlike last year, when it snowed and everyone was miserable, or so I am told).

Also, I have decided that 13.1 miles is the perfect distance. Just long enough to be a bit challenging, but not so crazy long that you need a day or three to fully recover.

EDITED TO ADD:

Unofficial results indicate that even with the Cheaty McCheaters factored in, I seem to have come in 28th among about 1600 participants.

apartmental case

OMG, I just made an offer on this apartment. (The middle front unit, 2 br/1 ba.) Near Alamo Square. Hold me.

UPDATED TO ADD: I got it! Whoohoo!

greatest children's toy in the history of the world

The annual Diwali holiday ended about 5 days ago. Diwali is known as the "festival of lights," which is not so much a reference to peaceful, gently glowing oil lamps or candles (or to Hanukkah), but more to gaudy, multi-colored, dubiously wired decorative flashing mini lightbulbs and, most importantly, cheap and abundant fireworks that go off day and night for five days straight. And when I say "day and night," I mean literally sometimes starting at 6:45 a.m. and ending at 1:00 a.m. And not at some distant public park, I mean right outside your window for chrissake.

One good thing about the incessant fireworks is that they provide acid-flashback style enjoyment when paired with Robin's fabulous snowman hologram glasses. For those unfortunate enough never to have experienced these novelty optics, basically they are like 3-D specs you get in a box of cracker jacks, except instead of making things 3-D they make any bright point of light into a little snowman. We managed to capture this on digital "film":



Now imagine that, except on the fourth of July when you're seeing triple. We could hardly keep ourselves from wrenching the glasses off each other's faces during some of the more active fireworks displays.

Another benefit of the week-long pyrotechnics was the additional smoke and trash generated by the festivities. When Mumbaikers tell you that Diwali is problematic on account of its worsening the air quality so much, you know you're in for some carcinoriffic, cleansing breaths of delight. This is a city, after all, where half the year the current weather conditions are already described simply as "Smoke." If you could take a deep breath in the first place, you'd realize that this smells like trouble.

Also, the fire safety guidelines in India...aren't. All week we saw happy 4-year-olds brandishing Roman candles and the like right in front of our building and sometimes even in the lobby. People were launching rockets from the parking lots of various surrounding buildings. One night some embers landed in the foliage of our (22nd story) window ledge. Every morning the streets would be filled anew with firecracker-related detritus. This seemed a nuisance until the day when Robin and Alex discovered the following piece of discarded packaging:



I don't even know where to begin with the sheer excellence of this artifact. Perhaps with the pensive, chubby-cheeked two-year-old who seems to be thinking, "Hmmm, what haven't I blown up yet today? I know! My own head!" Or maybe the fiery flushing toilet bowl of glittery flames? Or the non sequiturial squirrel logo? The cautionary instructions, which I repeat here for the reader's convenience?

WARNING. FLAMMABLE. EMITS SHOWERS OF SPARKS AND REVOLVE ON THE GROUND. (...) LIGHT MOUTH WITH SPARKLER AND GET AWAY. USE ONLY UNDER ADULT SUPERVISION. FOR OUTDOOR USE ONLY.

Whew, thank goodness those toddlers have such clear instructions, written in a language they most likely don't even speak. And in case you are craving more information about this quality product, feel free to visit their website, www.anilgroup.com. You will get a server error.

you don't say

It is probably time for an update on the latest running jokes at the Swingin' Linguist Pad. We discussed the expression "do the needful" the other day; here are some other linguistic divertissements:

1. For some reason I do not recall, even though it only happened last night, we have decided henceforth to refer to Ganesh as "Knish." I lobbied to go all the way and just refer to him as "Rugelach," but Alex argued that you could never expect to actually slip that by anyone without them noticing, even if they were very, very drunk. So, Knish it shall be. Which is nice because it sounds like Krrish, I guess. Hey, wait, what's that in Ganesh's left hand?! I think we can all guess. (Hint: it rhymes with gefilte fish.)

2. Just now as I was writing #1, I realized that if we are going to call Ganesh "Knish," we need to start calling Hanuman "Hamantasch." Alex and Robin approve.

3. On account of a particularly ridiculous musical number in Dhoom II, we no longer say "Excuse me?" but rather "Excuse me to please?" (Usually when what we really mean is "WTF?")

4. Here the way you write "three hundred rupees" is "Rs 300." The fun part is that they also say it in that order. Things don't cost three hundred rupees, they cost rupees three hundred. So Robin has got us all saying it the local way, as well as asking not "How many rupees?" but rather "Rupees how many?" You know, to be consistent and all.

5. I bet you didn't realize that all your life, the thing you have been referring to as a "grilled cheese sandwich" was actually a "cheese grilled sandwich." Really, it is. Look on any menu.


6. Damn, I just realized we'd better start calling Laxmi "Latke."

finery

Robin found this informative list in the local paper today:



OK.

A. The fine for defecating is only half what it is for urinating.

ii. Spitting, apparently, also is twice as bad as defecating, fine-wise.

3. If your dog shits on the street, it will cost you 5x what it does if you shit on the street.

IV. What if someone takes a dump on the hood of your car (fine: Rs 100) and you, reasonably, wash it off (fine: Rs 1000)?

e. Parking while sweeping?? What the?

tonic

It's Friday night, we're home in our jammies watching the supremely ridiculous Bollywood movie Dhoom II, and we are drinking kiwi vodka tonics.

Oh yeah.

have you seen this monkey?

WANTED

October 21, 2007
India Official Dies After Monkey Attack

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:28 a.m. ET

NEW DELHI (AP) -- Wild monkeys attacked a senior government official who then fell from a balcony at his home and died Sunday, media reported.

New Delhi Deputy Mayor S.S. Bajwa was rushed to a hospital after the attack by a gang of Rhesus macaques, but succumbed to head injuries sustained in his fall, the Press Trust of India news agency and The Times of India reported.

Many government buildings, temples and residential neighborhoods in New Delhi are overrun by Rhesus macaques, which scare passers-by and occasionally bite or snatch food from unsuspecting visitors.

Last year, the Delhi High Court reprimanded city authorities for failing to stop the animals from terrifying residents and asked them to find a permanent solution to the monkey menace.

Part of the problem is that devout Hindus believe monkeys are manifestations of the monkey god Hanuman and feed them bananas and peanuts -- encouraging them to frequent public places.

Over the years, city authorities have employed monkey catchers who use langurs -- a larger and fiercer kind of monkey -- to scare or catch the macaques, but the problem persists.

We told you Delhi was covered in monkeys.

cereal killer

Some of you may remember the saga of the $8.00 box of Cheerios, and if you are one of those people you will not be surprised to hear that for this latest trip back to Mumbai I filled my suitcase with boxes of various cereals, granola bars, soy jerky, etc., in order to help me get through these 6 weeks without having to take out a second mortgage on my house and/or start wolfing down mutton tikka masala out of sheer calorie-deprived desperation. One of the cereals I brought along and really liked and wish I'd brought more of is something called Special K Red Berries.

We went to HyperCity yesterday, which I have deduced must be owned by the British grocery chain Waitrose, since they have a lot of Waitrose house brand products. I was excited to notice that while HyperCity does not carry Special K Red Berries (or any other version of Special K, for that matter), they did have a Waitrose brand product called Special Choice with Raspberries, Strawberries, and Cherries. It is clearly a knock-off of the other cereal and I got extremely excited about it.

And then I looked at the price (at least I've learned that much). One box cost 575 rupees. At today's exchange rate, that is $14.46. This was not a Costco 8-pack, this was not a 10-gallon bucket...no, my friends, this was a standard size box of cereal. It turns out it isn't vegan anyway (it has milk powder), so the point became moot, but JESUS CHRIST ON A CRACKER ALREADY.

food and critter update

A woman true to my word, I made vegan (banana oatmeal) pancakes for breakfast last Saturday:



And tonight I made Moroccan vegetable stew and couscous with raisins:



When we got home this evening, we were greeted by a tiny insurance salesman. Alex and Robin tried to catch him while I started making dinner, but they lost sight of him. He may or may not still be in the apartment. Earlier Lon was trying to freak me out by deadpanning, "You know, geckos really like to crawl on your face when you're sleeping."

headline news

Lon, Robin, and Alex have made it here safely. Hooray!

Here is an article on the front page of today's Times of India:

5:40:50

Well, I did not realize my dream of cutting 20 minutes off last year's time, but I did cut off almost 9 minutes. I would have been faster except around mile 10 my right hip decided to say, "Hey lady, you're almost 40...don't make me come over there." And I was without ibuprofen and they don't give it out at the medical stations. Doh.



Anyway. Last year's pace was 13:21, or 4.54 mph. This year's pace was 13:00, or 4:62 mph. And before you laugh, please remember that this was walking. I am too lame to run these things.

prepped

All ready to go tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. Whoohoo! I'm bummed that I signed up a little too late this year to get my name printed in big letters on my bib.

I used the marathon as a perfect excuse to buy vegan doughnuts from Voodoo Doughnuts. You can even get married at Voodoo. Hmmm, I may have to reconsider my position on that issue.

getting my knit together

I was stuck at home sick and miserable most of this past week, so I decided to start on a sweater I'd purchased the yarn for back in March. It's called the Bauhaus Fair Isle and the pattern is in Interweave Knits Spring 2007 issue. I got the body done last night:



The stripey part above the little orange clip at top center is a steek for the V-neck. For the non-knitters out there, that means I will be cutting that open with scissors. Same goes for the arm holes. (The whole thing is basically a big knitted tube right now.) Xtreme Knitting, people. It's what I do.

I thought about taking it with me to Bombay to finish it, but then I remembered (a) one should never take anything to India that one would be upset about getting ruined, and (2) Bombay is not where you want a couple pounds of wool sweater sitting on your lap as your work on it. So, it will have to wait till December to get finished.

selling it

I just now had the TV on and a Jeep commercial came up and I thought to myself, "Hey, that sounds like my friend Steve singing on that commercial," and then it was. (Steve and my ex husband were in a band together for many years.)



Groovy.

Tomorrow morning it's off to Portland. Marathon on Sunday. Limping on Monday. Lots of good Portland vegan food in between.

put that cat in a bag...please, people, for the love of god already

I never thought I'd be able to use the "inappropriate animals" tag on a post from San Francisco, but the cats at Borderlands Books have proven me wrong.





Many of you know that I have a severe allergic reaction to sci-fi/fantasy literature, so you will not be surprised to hear that I only go to Borderlands under duress and as a favor to a particularly geeky friend. And usually I just go across the street to the Little Otsu vegan boutique instead. So don't get the wrong idea...because that bookstore gives me hives, seriously.

when running jokes collide

We have several running jokes at the apartment. One is about how at least one thing breaks seemingly every day, but that one's kind of a joke on us, so maybe it doesn't count. But also there's the water filter system that optionally plays "It's a Small World" as the water comes out—and let's just say it is no longer optional, as far as we're concerned.

Then there's the little internal window that leads from the kitchen/laundry area to the dining area. I'm not sure why this is so funny, but one time Alex and Casey were having a conversation in the living room and Alex needed something from the kitchen, so he stopped talking briefly as he walked through the kitchen and then pushed the little window open and stuck his head out and kept talking as if nothing had happened, and it cracked Casey up in a way I have never seen before. For a few days you could get him to lose it just by sticking your head through the window and not even saying anything. So now we make a point of occasionally sticking our heads through the window and initiating or continuing conversations.

And then of course there's the cat macro syntax. These days when Alex and I say "Oh, hi" to each other, we know that what we are really saying is "OH HAI."

So the other night Alex turned the water filter music on, stuck his head through the little window, and said "OH HAI." It almost killed me.

running on empty (wallet)

Round trip plane fare, OAK-PDX: $138.80
Two nights at Portland Hilton: $360.00
Race registration fee: $96.85
26.2 miles of sheer agony endorphin high: Priceless.

teh socks...i maded them

I know y'all were waiting with bated breath to see the completed pair of short row socks. And who I am to disappoint you?



Normally I take pride in not making my self-patterning socks match perfectly, unlike certain anal retentive people who shall remain nameless deb s, but these accidentally matched up perfectly and I figured it would be against my own principles to manipulate the starting point to force them not to match, so I didn't. I will just have to live with matching socks.

EDITED TO ADD: Hey! I just realized my socks match the blog colors. Fancy.

if it ain't broke...whoops, too late

A few hours ago we heard a loud bang and then all the power in the apartment went out. We aren't entirely sure, but we think it may have something to do with this:



That would be the plug from the living room a/c. You know, the a/c unit we were only finally able to use again for the prior three hours or so, because the landlord had finally come and jury rigged a drainage system that neither flooded the downstairs neighbors' balcony nor backed up water so that it dripped down the curtains and onto the living room floor. Three or four hours of air conditioned living room bliss, that's what we got before we got the Big Bang, India style.

So, we call downstairs for them to send the electrician, Datta. A very muggy, internet-less, water filter-less, fan-less hour or so later we call again. We are told he is coming in 5 minutes. An hour later, he arrives. To keep this post to a reasonable length I won't go into detail about all the reasons why it took a further 2+ hours before we had everything all fixed, but much of that time was spent in complete darkness.

Please note that the living room a/c was installed, brand new, about 6 weeks ago.

There is something I've noticed here, and it is the following: everything is a piece of crap. Brand new stuff malfunctions immediately or almost immediately. Some recent cases in point:

The newish washing machine requires you to stuff a pen into the latch opening and wiggle it around to trigger the latch so that the door will close properly. If you are lucky enough to get the machine started, it leaks water out the bottom, so you have to shove a thick rag up to it to absorb the trickle.



See the measuring cup in front, with the handle? Now see the one behind it? We bought those in early August. Within a week, I was washing the smaller one and the handle snapped right off.



This is the underside of a colander, also purchased about six weeks ago. The entire f*cking raison d'être of a colander is to have water flow through it. So naturally you would want to manufacture it out of something that rusts. Am I wrong?



I did some ironing this morning. I literally had to unwrap the plastic from the ironing board first, that is how brand new the ironing board is. I ironed a few pillowcases and sheets, and now the cover has a spot that looks like this:



Potential alternate titles for this post included "If it ain't broke, you haven't switched it on yet;" "If it ain't broke, you're not in India;" and "If it ain't broke, it's still in the box (but maybe not even then)."

OK. Completely unrelated topic. Run, do not walk, to get your hands on a copy of Susan Tedeschi's cover of Bob Dylan's Don't Think Twice, It's All Right from her CD Wait For Me.



I've had it on loop most of today; she's got a throaty, bluesy voice to give you shivers, and this is a great song to begin with (classic Bob in that he says what he wants to say by saying the opposite of what he means). Get your ass to the iTunes store and give up your 99 cents already.

teh new post...u has it

We seem to have turned a corner here at the Swingin' Linguist Pad and have started actually speaking and leaving messages in cat macro syntax. The note I left for Alex in the kitchen this morning said "BANANA PANCAKES...U HAS THEM. TEH KITTEH IS HAS GONE RUNNNING. CULTRBYE. PS PANCAKES GOOD WITH NOOTELLA LOLZ." When I got back from my run the pancakes were gone and the note said at the bottom "U MADED ME A PANCAKES--BUT I EATED IT. KTHXBAI." And when I walked into the living room in my wet running clothes Alex looked up and said, "Oh, is it teh raining?"

glottal stop

I am always surprised to see women on motorbikes here (whether passengers or drivers) wearing long scarves and other flowing garments that end up darting flirtatiously around the bikes' wheels like so many Isadora Duncan copycat deaths just waiting to happen. (Interesting--I just see that tomorrow is the 80th anniversary of poor Isadora's silkily throttled demise.)

But what really gets me are scenes like this:



Dad wears a helmet in heavy traffic while mom and baby sit sidesaddle behind him, draped in flowing clothes and with no head protection.



Baby, quite rightly, looks worried.

arrivederci, farfalle

This morning I grabbed my shopping tote and headed down to the supermarket. I got out the front door of the building and thought, "Hmm, seems like it is threatening to rain. Maybe I should get an umbrella. (pause) Nahhh, it's just a few blocks. It's too much bother going back up to the 22nd floor."

OK, I have been living in monsoon for HOW MANY WEEKS NOW? Approximately 800. Alright, like 11 or 12. Enough to know that when it even looks the teensiest tiniest bit like rain, you will soon be wetter than a Seattle swimming pool in April.

I got to the market without incident. The walk home, however, was a different story: torrential downpour starting just as I left the building. By the time I got back I was sopping wet, to the tune of having to go in the shower to wring out my shirt and pants, and towel dry my hair. Then I went to the kitchen to unpack my groceries, most of which were little affected by the waterlogging (fruits in plastic bags, that sort of thing). But as I pulled the last item out of the bag, a box of Barilla farfalle pasta, the bottom of the box--which was thoroughly wet and thus de-glued--opened up and the entire contents dumped out onto the kitchen floor in a semolina-based lepidopteran nightmare.

Next time I'm buying the ones in the plastic bag. It could have been worse, I guess...it could have been an $8.00 box of Cheerios.

linguist lolcat

This has nothing to do with India other than that I have jet lag and I am awake at 5:00 a.m. looking at lolcat pages (thank jeebus WE HAS TEH INTERNETS AGIN).



(Credit to the folks at Language Log.)

I am also liking these Shakespeare lolcats. They inspired me to make this one from an old photo of Albert:



And also:

wedded bliss

My friends Kristin and Chad got married yesterday. The wedding was a blast. The bride was beautiful, as always:



The kids were cute,



the cake was gorgeous and delicious,



and the newlyweds did an incredible first dance that was choreographed by Hep Jen:







And after the reception we went to the pub downstairs and ate cajunized tater tots. Awesome weddings are awesome.