I have a problem, and I swear I've been trying to work on it. Well, maybe I haven't been working on it exactly, but I feel like I should be. I have a problem with cursing. I do it at work, at home, on aim, over text. I just can't help myself - curse words just come out. Mostly it's to express a sense of frustration, sometimes it's to express a sense of amazement and sometimes it's just because I am so used to cursing.
For the longest time, probably until a few years after college, I was pretty good about keeping the curse words to a minimum. And I never, ever cursed in front of my parents. Sure, something would slip out occasionally, like a g*#dammit when I stubbed my toe or dropped a glass of juice on the carpet. But it was a rare thing.
I don't know quite when cursing started to become a regular occurrence. It was probably in graduate school when everything was so g%$damn hard all the time and I was under a lot of stress for two years. And then there was my first job as an intern, where I had to bust my a#$ in hopes of landing a permanent job.
But I think things really went south when I started to work at the paper I'm with today. I had a few coworkers who were under the impression that the newsroom hadn't changed much since the 1950s in that they liked to curse like sailors, tell off-colored jokes and would probably be smoking in the middle of the office if it weren't against the law. I had two coworkers in particular who are no longer at the who were especially bad at dropping the f-bomb. They started a curse jar in hopes of curbing their enthusiasm for off-color language - but just ended up dropping a few dollars a day at .25 a word into the jar. It was enough for a nice gift for our reception when she retired.
Now I've always been a little bit of a mimic when it comes to language, meaning that I often pick up expressions or phrases that other people say without really realizing that I am doing it. So the summer I was home from college and my younger sister and best friend started using the term butt hurt that became part of my lexicon. And when I came home from Ireland I kept saying I was a wee bit tired or a wee bit cold or a wee bit something or other. Or when I refer to freeways, when I talk about ones in Los Angeles I use the native "the" before them, as in "I was driving on the 405 or the 101. But when I refer to the ones from Northern California I say, "I was driving on 101 or 85 or 680." I even started using "hehe" instead of "haha" over aim and text because a good friend always used it as his short-hand expression of amusement.
Most of these little catchphrases work their way out of my everyday use after a while, or some separation from the person who brought them to me. But for some reason I can't shake this f*#$ing cursing. I'd blame it on working in an office full of men, but to be truthful I know I cuss way f%^&ing more than they do.
So what occasions elicit a curse from me? I find a mistake in the paper - the day after it's gone to press - and it's "Oh s^&t." My computer freezes for the 15th time while I am on deadline and it's "G*d$%mit." Someone calls me when I am on deadline - and it's "I don't have f^&*ing time for this right now" - not to them, of course. Someone reads the latest wacky headline from yahoo news - "That's f^&*ing crazy."
I told my coworker this week, right after I had said some sh#$ in the newsroom that I was trying to cut down on the cursing. And then I admitted, I'm really not trying to cut down on the cursing but I feel like I should.
I can stop it, really, I swear. Like if there are kids in the room or my 70-year-old aunt. But mostly I don't try that hard. So for the next week, I am going to make a pact to watch the words and use some alternatives to the salty languge like freaking or goshdarn or sheesh. And I'll report back soon on my f$%#ing progress.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
'Toy Story 3' brings back some memories
Disney/Pixar has a way of tugging at my heartstrings – and they did it yet again with “Toy Story 3.” And I’m not the only one who feels that way. I saw “Toy Story 3” with my family over the weekend – as did several of my coworkers. I asked one of them – a male colleague – if the movie brought him to tears and he said, “I was choked up a few times.”
Though “Toy Story 3” is a kids’ movie, it is one that will resonant with many adults. While it’s been years since I packed up my own stuff to head off to college, like Andy does in the movie, I have some vivid recollections of trying to decide what to take and what to leave behind. There were things I knew had to come along – the CD binder full of music (back in the days before iPods) and a Sony discman to play them on. I had a pile of carefully selected videotapes to keep my roommate and I entertained, among them “Interview with the Vampire,” “Wings of Desire” and “Reality Bites,” just a few of my favorites at the time. I even had a plastic storage bin full of school supplies and other necessities that one of my aunt’s gave me as a graduation gift.
But some of the most important things I brought along weren’t really necessities and were more to offer a sense of comfort away from home. I brought a stuffed turtle my friends and I won at the Santa Cruz Beach and Boardwalk one summer a few years before. We’d spent all kinds of money playing games in the arcade just to get enough tickets to win the turtle. My best friend and I had traded off keeping it at our houses for a while, joking that we were sharing joint custody. But it went to me for that first year of school.
I also brought along the baby blanket my grandmother had made for me when my mom was pregnant. My grandmother died when I was 2 ½ years old so the blanket was always the one thing that made me feel connected to her. My mom told me the story of when she was pregnant with my sister – she sent me to Reno with my aunts will she was in the hospital recovering from a cesarean. My dad had to work so there was no one to watch me at night so my aunts took me along on their trip.
On the way home, they realized that they had forgotten my blanket in the hotel room. They were already across the California border when they turned around and headed back to Reno for it. When they arrived, housekeeping had already laundered it and folded it up in case someone returned for it. So in a lot of ways the blanket was also a reminder that my family, immediate and extended, would always be willing to drive miles out of their way for me. By the time I went to college, the blanket was ratty and torn along the edges, but I kept it folded up on the bottom of my dorm-room bed.
The last thing I packed was a photo album with pictures of all my best high school friends to keep on my dorm room desk. Now, again, this was in the time before digital cameras and social networking sites so the pictures felt like they were worth a lot because I had to pay for the film and to have them developed – and their was limited space in the album so I had to pick and choose the best ones to keep with me. The album included pictures from trips to the Boardwalk and the beach; the 17-mile drive and Monterey Bay Aquarium, pool parties at one of my best friend’s houses and just snapshots at school.
It was a small photo album that could be easily packed up with me and it became the album that I kept with me through moves, new jobs and graduate school. I even took it with me when I studied overseas. I added in photos of my college friends through the years and my first boyfriend; pictures of my best mates in Ireland, including my coulda-woulda-shoulda guy; photos of the friend who helped me make it through graduate school and then who dropped out after the first year, but not before scoring me a picture of the super hot bartender from our favorite bar – who turned out to have been married all along.
The thing that really got to me about “Toy Story 3” is that the packing up and moving on never really gets any easier than it was on the first move away from home. In some ways, that was the easiest move because I was still young and sure of where my life was headed, and I have a naïve belief that my best friends would always be my best friends. It’s always hard to decide what items to pack up and take along, but I think now the hardest part is the people that are left behind. I’m old enough now to know that it is really hard to keep in touch with people who live halfway across the world or even just in another county.
I still keep in touch with friends from high school, from college, from Ireland and from graduate school, but in a lot of ways it’s never quite the same as when we were immersed in a situation where we spent most of our waking moments together.
Though “Toy Story 3” is a kids’ movie, it is one that will resonant with many adults. While it’s been years since I packed up my own stuff to head off to college, like Andy does in the movie, I have some vivid recollections of trying to decide what to take and what to leave behind. There were things I knew had to come along – the CD binder full of music (back in the days before iPods) and a Sony discman to play them on. I had a pile of carefully selected videotapes to keep my roommate and I entertained, among them “Interview with the Vampire,” “Wings of Desire” and “Reality Bites,” just a few of my favorites at the time. I even had a plastic storage bin full of school supplies and other necessities that one of my aunt’s gave me as a graduation gift.
But some of the most important things I brought along weren’t really necessities and were more to offer a sense of comfort away from home. I brought a stuffed turtle my friends and I won at the Santa Cruz Beach and Boardwalk one summer a few years before. We’d spent all kinds of money playing games in the arcade just to get enough tickets to win the turtle. My best friend and I had traded off keeping it at our houses for a while, joking that we were sharing joint custody. But it went to me for that first year of school.
I also brought along the baby blanket my grandmother had made for me when my mom was pregnant. My grandmother died when I was 2 ½ years old so the blanket was always the one thing that made me feel connected to her. My mom told me the story of when she was pregnant with my sister – she sent me to Reno with my aunts will she was in the hospital recovering from a cesarean. My dad had to work so there was no one to watch me at night so my aunts took me along on their trip.
On the way home, they realized that they had forgotten my blanket in the hotel room. They were already across the California border when they turned around and headed back to Reno for it. When they arrived, housekeeping had already laundered it and folded it up in case someone returned for it. So in a lot of ways the blanket was also a reminder that my family, immediate and extended, would always be willing to drive miles out of their way for me. By the time I went to college, the blanket was ratty and torn along the edges, but I kept it folded up on the bottom of my dorm-room bed.
The last thing I packed was a photo album with pictures of all my best high school friends to keep on my dorm room desk. Now, again, this was in the time before digital cameras and social networking sites so the pictures felt like they were worth a lot because I had to pay for the film and to have them developed – and their was limited space in the album so I had to pick and choose the best ones to keep with me. The album included pictures from trips to the Boardwalk and the beach; the 17-mile drive and Monterey Bay Aquarium, pool parties at one of my best friend’s houses and just snapshots at school.
It was a small photo album that could be easily packed up with me and it became the album that I kept with me through moves, new jobs and graduate school. I even took it with me when I studied overseas. I added in photos of my college friends through the years and my first boyfriend; pictures of my best mates in Ireland, including my coulda-woulda-shoulda guy; photos of the friend who helped me make it through graduate school and then who dropped out after the first year, but not before scoring me a picture of the super hot bartender from our favorite bar – who turned out to have been married all along.
The thing that really got to me about “Toy Story 3” is that the packing up and moving on never really gets any easier than it was on the first move away from home. In some ways, that was the easiest move because I was still young and sure of where my life was headed, and I have a naïve belief that my best friends would always be my best friends. It’s always hard to decide what items to pack up and take along, but I think now the hardest part is the people that are left behind. I’m old enough now to know that it is really hard to keep in touch with people who live halfway across the world or even just in another county.
I still keep in touch with friends from high school, from college, from Ireland and from graduate school, but in a lot of ways it’s never quite the same as when we were immersed in a situation where we spent most of our waking moments together.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Summer concerts - now and then
I had big plans this week - U2 was supposed to be performing at the Oakland Coliseum yesterday. But Bono's back injury while rehearsing in Germany, which led to back surgery and a need to recuperate, sort of ruined that for me. The latest news is that he is doing well rehabilitating with Lance Armstrong somewhere in Europe - at least according to People Magazine. The concert is supposed to be rescheduled, but it probably won't happen until some time in 2011.
I am hoping that this postponed concert experience works out better than the one I had in college, when a bunch of friends and I got tickets to a Bjork concert. We bought the tickets from the Wherehouse Music store, which used to be a ticket vendor. And then Bjork got a bladder infection the week of the Los Angeles concert. At the time I was pretty pissed that it got cancelled - but now that I've experienced a bladder infection and the extreme pain that comes with it I totally get it. The problem was the concert was cancelled and all the ticketholders were encouraged to get a refund and repurchase tickets if and when the concert got rescheduled.
My friends and I went back to the Wherehouse Music where we had bought the tickets - and it was a our bad luck that in the time between when we bought the tickets and needed to get a refund, Wherehouse Music had left the business of being a ticket vendor. They refused to give us a refund and the concert was never rebooked. So we were just out the money.
I am hopeful that the U2 concert will get rescheduled - even though I know it probably won't happen anytime this summer. But I do have another option for summer entertainment - and it will be a lot cheaper than tickets to U2.
The Spin Doctors are scheduled to perform at the Santa Cruz Beach and Boardwalk - for free. Now the Spin Doctors are not one of my favorite bands at any rate, but they do hold a special place in my heart as the first rock concert I ever went to with my friends. I was 15, and my cousin bought me three tickets to the concert at Great America - featuring Screaming Trees, Soul Asylum and the Spin Doctors. It was the perfect day for a group of noisy, goofy teenage girls - we all had season passes so we got in for free to the park and we spent the day riding all our favorite rides and flirting with the cute boys who worked on the log ride.
At the end of the day, we headed over to the amphitheater and were shocked at all the beer and pot smokers in the audience. Now I know it's just part of the concert-going experience - as with the U2 Rose Bowl concert when the person sitting behind us started puking as the concert ended due to a mix of too much beer, too much pot and too much sun.
At the Spin Doctors concert we sang along to all the songs we knew, which I will admit weren't that many. But we loved the Spin Doctors "Two Princes" and "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong," probably like every other kid our age. The music wasn't great and the performance was just okay. But it was at a time when my little trio of friends thought life would always be just the three of us having a good time - back before college, relationships, careers and life made it a lot more difficult to get together for things like a concert with our favorite band of the moment.
I am hoping that this postponed concert experience works out better than the one I had in college, when a bunch of friends and I got tickets to a Bjork concert. We bought the tickets from the Wherehouse Music store, which used to be a ticket vendor. And then Bjork got a bladder infection the week of the Los Angeles concert. At the time I was pretty pissed that it got cancelled - but now that I've experienced a bladder infection and the extreme pain that comes with it I totally get it. The problem was the concert was cancelled and all the ticketholders were encouraged to get a refund and repurchase tickets if and when the concert got rescheduled.
My friends and I went back to the Wherehouse Music where we had bought the tickets - and it was a our bad luck that in the time between when we bought the tickets and needed to get a refund, Wherehouse Music had left the business of being a ticket vendor. They refused to give us a refund and the concert was never rebooked. So we were just out the money.
I am hopeful that the U2 concert will get rescheduled - even though I know it probably won't happen anytime this summer. But I do have another option for summer entertainment - and it will be a lot cheaper than tickets to U2.
The Spin Doctors are scheduled to perform at the Santa Cruz Beach and Boardwalk - for free. Now the Spin Doctors are not one of my favorite bands at any rate, but they do hold a special place in my heart as the first rock concert I ever went to with my friends. I was 15, and my cousin bought me three tickets to the concert at Great America - featuring Screaming Trees, Soul Asylum and the Spin Doctors. It was the perfect day for a group of noisy, goofy teenage girls - we all had season passes so we got in for free to the park and we spent the day riding all our favorite rides and flirting with the cute boys who worked on the log ride.
At the end of the day, we headed over to the amphitheater and were shocked at all the beer and pot smokers in the audience. Now I know it's just part of the concert-going experience - as with the U2 Rose Bowl concert when the person sitting behind us started puking as the concert ended due to a mix of too much beer, too much pot and too much sun.
At the Spin Doctors concert we sang along to all the songs we knew, which I will admit weren't that many. But we loved the Spin Doctors "Two Princes" and "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong," probably like every other kid our age. The music wasn't great and the performance was just okay. But it was at a time when my little trio of friends thought life would always be just the three of us having a good time - back before college, relationships, careers and life made it a lot more difficult to get together for things like a concert with our favorite band of the moment.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
The perfect gift to give myself
Whenever I get a gift card for my birthday or Christmas, I tend to hold onto it for a while. I guess I feel like I should use it for something extra special since it is a gift and then I usually end up saving them forever because nothing seems to be quite good enough.Last fall when I was helping my cousin register at Macy’s for her wedding, I saw a whole bunch of kitchen appliances I really wanted. At the top of my list was an automatic ice cream maker.
Last summer, I bought my mom a “play and freeze” ice cream maker. It’s basically a plastic ball that has a compartment for rock salt and ice, as well as a spot for ice cream ingredients. And you have to roll it around, agitating it for half an hour until the ice cream freezes. I bought it for a camping trip, but when we tried it out at home it quickly got relegated to a shelf in the garage. The lid didn’t seal well so the ice cream mix was kind of leaking out the whole time. And rolling around a ball full of ice, rock salt and ice cream is basically like rolling around a medicine ball. It’s hard work. The end result was a really labor-intensive milkshake since it didn’t really freeze all that well, either.
So I tried to persuade my cousin to register for the automatic ice cream maker, which would be the least she could do for all my maid-of-honor work to come. But she said no.
Then in January, it finally dawned on me that I had several $50 gift cards to Macy’s in my purse, way more than enough to buy an automatic ice cream maker. I spent some time looking over the different models before deciding on a mid-end one. Of course, I also had to make a trip to the grocery store for some ingredients to mix up my first batch of ice cream.
For the first batch, I made strawberry ice cream – with frozen strawberries, since it was the middle of winter. I was a bit impatient and didn’t let the inner chamber of the ice cream maker get cold enough for the first batch. The next time I let it chill overnight and then made peach ice cream – with frozen peaches. The ice cream still came out about soft serve consistency, but it held up well when packed into a sealed container and put in the freezer for several hours.
I put the ice cream maker away for the rest of the winter, as I started on my healthy eating kick. I knew when summer came along I would want to try a few recipes with fresh ingredients. I had in mind one with fresh strawberries, perhaps with cherries and definitely peaches. But I never thought of Meyer lemons until a few vendors at the local farmers market had them for sale. I bought a half dozen last week and set out to make some frozen lemon custard.
I was home alone on Friday and so I attempted to make the frozen lemon custard, which called for tempering eggs, which I've never done before. I was sort of multi-tasking as I was trying to prep the custard by finishing up dinner. I slowly added some of the hot cream mixture into the eggs as described by the recipe I was using. But as soon as I added it all together and continued to cook it over the heat I realized something had gone wrong. The mixture wasn't smooth and creamy - it looked like something had separated out. I decided to go with it anyway, and let it chill in the refrigerator for a while before putting it in the ice cream maker.
The custard thickened up faster than regular ice cream, but there was one problem. A lot of the fat from the heavy whipping cream had separated out into chunks in the ice cream. Before I put it in the freezer, I tasted it and it tasted great - but I just couldn't get over the solidified lumps of fat in the mix. So my first attempt at frozen custard didn't turn out so well.
Since that batch wasn't very edible, I decided to find a recipe that required no cooking to make some more ice cream today. We had fresh strawberries from Andy's Orchard in Morgan Hill. The recipe calls for mixing strawberries, sugar, a pinch of salt and a little bit of fresh lemon and blending it all together. I mixed it into the cream and then chilled the whole mixture for an hour. Then it went straight into the ice cream maker. It was thick and creamy, and most importantly smooth and without any separated fat chunks. It came out about soft serve consistency, but I packed it into a container and put it into the freezer for a few hours. It tasted delicious after it hardened up a bit more.
Photos by Melissa Flores
Strawberry ice cream can be made with fresh strawberries, sugar and heavy cream - and requires no cooking.
Frozen lemon custard, requires tempering eggs and cooking with heavy cream, something I haven't mastered quite yet.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
'Glee' gets another year
When "Glee" started it's first season it had so much potential. It was funny in kind of a snarky way. The characters were amusing, the actors good a pulling off their roles. And there was really good music mixed into every episode.
I liked the love triangle of Finn-Quinn-Rachel (and maybe Curt deserves to be in there too) and I liked the love triangle of Will-his wife-Emma. I guess I can relate to Emma and Rachel having feelings for someone they will probably never stand a chance with, but it was fun to root them on.
I was excited to see where things would go with the couples as the show took a break mid-season.
But when it came back, something just seemed to be awry. The weekly plot of coming up with ideas for a song to sing at competition - or to teach some kind of lesson to the kids - just started to get old. Also, the couples I'd been longing to see together in the first half of the season where quickly torn asunder for really no good reasons.
Something about the second half of the season just felt a lot more superficial than the first half. And the music turned bad, too. It started to seem like the writers were coming up with plot points just so they could use as many different musical genres as possible. Finn and Puck get a job where Will's ex-wife works seemingly just to have a chance to sing Beck's "Loser." There has been no mention of the job since that very short scene.
The low lights for me this season were some of the bad renditions of the songs. Rachel sings U2's "One" in an episode and I may be biased as a huge fan of the band, but even people I know who listen to them casually said it was a bad mix. The "Loser" rendition was also bad as was a song from "Les Miserables" that was turned into a duet.
I haven't done an actually count, but the number of songs performed in each episode certainly seems to have gone up all in an attempt to sell more on iTunes.
In the season finale this week, the students lose the competion but get another year to make Glee work. Hopefully, the writers take it to heart or the show may only have another year.
I liked the love triangle of Finn-Quinn-Rachel (and maybe Curt deserves to be in there too) and I liked the love triangle of Will-his wife-Emma. I guess I can relate to Emma and Rachel having feelings for someone they will probably never stand a chance with, but it was fun to root them on.
I was excited to see where things would go with the couples as the show took a break mid-season.
But when it came back, something just seemed to be awry. The weekly plot of coming up with ideas for a song to sing at competition - or to teach some kind of lesson to the kids - just started to get old. Also, the couples I'd been longing to see together in the first half of the season where quickly torn asunder for really no good reasons.
Something about the second half of the season just felt a lot more superficial than the first half. And the music turned bad, too. It started to seem like the writers were coming up with plot points just so they could use as many different musical genres as possible. Finn and Puck get a job where Will's ex-wife works seemingly just to have a chance to sing Beck's "Loser." There has been no mention of the job since that very short scene.
The low lights for me this season were some of the bad renditions of the songs. Rachel sings U2's "One" in an episode and I may be biased as a huge fan of the band, but even people I know who listen to them casually said it was a bad mix. The "Loser" rendition was also bad as was a song from "Les Miserables" that was turned into a duet.
I haven't done an actually count, but the number of songs performed in each episode certainly seems to have gone up all in an attempt to sell more on iTunes.
In the season finale this week, the students lose the competion but get another year to make Glee work. Hopefully, the writers take it to heart or the show may only have another year.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Talent show follies
Last week I covered two local talent shows for elementary schools - one I did in person and the other I did by phone (which really hardly counts as covering it, but attending one talent show a year is really quite enough and I couldn't make myself attend two in one day.)
There were a couple things I realized after the talent show. One is that little kids really, really like Justin Bieber whose songs I had never heard until the show. Not one, not two, but nearly half a dozen kids picked one or another of his songs to perform. The second thing I realized is that even though the kids mostly stood in place instead of dancing and lip synched or sang out of tune, they had some guts to get up there in front of their whole school and take a chance at it.
I was never a talent show kind of kid, and I guess I'm still not. I've never done karaoke or an open mic night and the closest I've ever gotten to a public performance was putting on an art show for my senior project at Pitzer College. But it was easy since I just had to hang the photographs and write up descriptions of each piece - I didn't actually have to deliver a speech in front of a large audience.
The last time I had to give a public speech was at my cousin's wedding. I wrote up what I had to say the day before, tried to memorize it frantically that night and can't honestly remember how things went with the delivery. I thought I was calm and collected, but when I reviewed the pictures of me giving the speech I really didn't recall any of those moments so I must have been really nervous. At least the speech made people laugh and cry - my goal - and it was just in front of family or friends of my cousin I will never see again.
The only time I was ever involved in a talent show, I was on the stage crew. It was my freshman year of high school and it was a fundraiser for the art-lit magazine. Several of my friends were also involved in the backstage work, but I think the real reason I got involved was because of my crush on a senior MC of the show. Being part of the crew gave me a chance to see him during rehearsals and performances, even though he hardly knew I existed. It turns out I didn't really like moving around stage props and lifting the curtain on scenes anymore than I liked being on stage, so I gave up the stage crew after the show.
My joke has always been that I don't have any talent and that's why I wouldn't perform in a talent show, but it's more that I am a little bit scared of making a fool of myself and a lot uncomfortable with being the center of attention. I'd rather be the one with a pen and a pad of paper, taking notes, reporting on the experiences of other people. And that's where my talent lies.
There were a couple things I realized after the talent show. One is that little kids really, really like Justin Bieber whose songs I had never heard until the show. Not one, not two, but nearly half a dozen kids picked one or another of his songs to perform. The second thing I realized is that even though the kids mostly stood in place instead of dancing and lip synched or sang out of tune, they had some guts to get up there in front of their whole school and take a chance at it.
I was never a talent show kind of kid, and I guess I'm still not. I've never done karaoke or an open mic night and the closest I've ever gotten to a public performance was putting on an art show for my senior project at Pitzer College. But it was easy since I just had to hang the photographs and write up descriptions of each piece - I didn't actually have to deliver a speech in front of a large audience.
The last time I had to give a public speech was at my cousin's wedding. I wrote up what I had to say the day before, tried to memorize it frantically that night and can't honestly remember how things went with the delivery. I thought I was calm and collected, but when I reviewed the pictures of me giving the speech I really didn't recall any of those moments so I must have been really nervous. At least the speech made people laugh and cry - my goal - and it was just in front of family or friends of my cousin I will never see again.
The only time I was ever involved in a talent show, I was on the stage crew. It was my freshman year of high school and it was a fundraiser for the art-lit magazine. Several of my friends were also involved in the backstage work, but I think the real reason I got involved was because of my crush on a senior MC of the show. Being part of the crew gave me a chance to see him during rehearsals and performances, even though he hardly knew I existed. It turns out I didn't really like moving around stage props and lifting the curtain on scenes anymore than I liked being on stage, so I gave up the stage crew after the show.
My joke has always been that I don't have any talent and that's why I wouldn't perform in a talent show, but it's more that I am a little bit scared of making a fool of myself and a lot uncomfortable with being the center of attention. I'd rather be the one with a pen and a pad of paper, taking notes, reporting on the experiences of other people. And that's where my talent lies.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Summer love bites
Every summer since I was a tiny kid I've had the curse of being a little too likeable - to bugs. When I was a kid, I'd get bit by mosquitoes, spiders, anything that likes to suck on human blood. And the bites would swell into hard, red welts. A doctor once said I was allergic to the bites (though I guess most people and that's why we all have a reaction to them.) My bug bites, however, are enough to drive me to distract although my parents always tried to distract me by saying the bugs just loved to bite me because I'm so sweet.
Most summers I can avoid getting more than one or two bites, but some years are just plain bad. Most of these really bad years included some kind of travel. When I was a senior in college I went to Mexico - Rosarito - with some friends. We stayed at this really nice condo overlooking the beach in May. I shared a room with another girl that opened up onto a balcony. We left the doors open to the fresh air the first night. I woke up with my right eyelid swollen shut with a bug bite. For the rest of the trip, I slept with sweatpants and a long sleeved sweatshirt, with the hood pulled tight over my head so a minimal amount of skin was exposed.
Perhaps the worst was a rafting trip to King's Canyon about seven years ago. A friend invited me to go for Memorial Day weekend. I thought I was prepared with some Avon bug repellent. I applied it as well as sunscreen and thought I was ready to go. On the second day, I decided to take a shower. One of the guys brought along a solar shower, which is basically a balloon full of water that heats in the sun. It hangs from a tree and works great for a quick wash up. But in the late afternoon heat and shade, the water caused a swarm of mosquitoes to attack me. I ended up with 42 mosquito bites - I counted them. I actually felt pretty sick after that - like feverish and flu-like - and was plenty itchy. The worst part was driving home in the front cab of a truck, sandwiched in between two people who rubbed up against the bites the whole ride home. The bites were swollen and hard, and took more than a week to go away after all the irritation.
It turns out the only deterrent that works on me is straight DEET, which feels gross and which is so poisonous I'd rather avoid being outdoors during mosquito hours than use it.
Luckily, when I was in South Africa five years ago, where the mosquito bites can come with malaria, I stayed bite free. I took malarone, an anti-malaria drug, just to be on the safe side. But most of the trip was spent in the urban area of Cape Town and Johannesburg. I just needed the malarone around the time we went on safari in Kruger National Park. But since it was winter and the weather was dry there were no bugs to worry about.
This summer, I considered going on the Memorial Day rafting trip again since my trip to Denver earlier in the week was off. I knew my friend would welcome me along, even at the last minute. But I think the thought of all those mosquitoes was enough to make me stay home.
I spent some time outside in my yard barbecuing on Sunday afternoon. I brought a blanket outside on the grass and laid down with the dog for a bit. And as the weather has gotten warmer, we started leaving the glass door open and the screen door shut to let in cool air in the evening. The door doesn't close all the way since the dog broke it last summer and we just haven't gotten around to replacing it. Now I can't say exactly how it happened, but by Monday afternoon I had developed seven itchy red spots in various places on my body. One on each wrist, two on my lower right shin, two on my chest and one on my knuckle. This morning I woke up with two more - one on my back and one on my neck. I don't know whether a few bugs got into the house, or if they got me while I was outside.
I really hope this is not a sign of things to come this summer. But one thing is for sure - getting the screen door fixed is a top priority and from now on, I'll wear long sleeves when I am outdoors in the evening.
Most summers I can avoid getting more than one or two bites, but some years are just plain bad. Most of these really bad years included some kind of travel. When I was a senior in college I went to Mexico - Rosarito - with some friends. We stayed at this really nice condo overlooking the beach in May. I shared a room with another girl that opened up onto a balcony. We left the doors open to the fresh air the first night. I woke up with my right eyelid swollen shut with a bug bite. For the rest of the trip, I slept with sweatpants and a long sleeved sweatshirt, with the hood pulled tight over my head so a minimal amount of skin was exposed.
Perhaps the worst was a rafting trip to King's Canyon about seven years ago. A friend invited me to go for Memorial Day weekend. I thought I was prepared with some Avon bug repellent. I applied it as well as sunscreen and thought I was ready to go. On the second day, I decided to take a shower. One of the guys brought along a solar shower, which is basically a balloon full of water that heats in the sun. It hangs from a tree and works great for a quick wash up. But in the late afternoon heat and shade, the water caused a swarm of mosquitoes to attack me. I ended up with 42 mosquito bites - I counted them. I actually felt pretty sick after that - like feverish and flu-like - and was plenty itchy. The worst part was driving home in the front cab of a truck, sandwiched in between two people who rubbed up against the bites the whole ride home. The bites were swollen and hard, and took more than a week to go away after all the irritation.
It turns out the only deterrent that works on me is straight DEET, which feels gross and which is so poisonous I'd rather avoid being outdoors during mosquito hours than use it.
Luckily, when I was in South Africa five years ago, where the mosquito bites can come with malaria, I stayed bite free. I took malarone, an anti-malaria drug, just to be on the safe side. But most of the trip was spent in the urban area of Cape Town and Johannesburg. I just needed the malarone around the time we went on safari in Kruger National Park. But since it was winter and the weather was dry there were no bugs to worry about.
This summer, I considered going on the Memorial Day rafting trip again since my trip to Denver earlier in the week was off. I knew my friend would welcome me along, even at the last minute. But I think the thought of all those mosquitoes was enough to make me stay home.
I spent some time outside in my yard barbecuing on Sunday afternoon. I brought a blanket outside on the grass and laid down with the dog for a bit. And as the weather has gotten warmer, we started leaving the glass door open and the screen door shut to let in cool air in the evening. The door doesn't close all the way since the dog broke it last summer and we just haven't gotten around to replacing it. Now I can't say exactly how it happened, but by Monday afternoon I had developed seven itchy red spots in various places on my body. One on each wrist, two on my lower right shin, two on my chest and one on my knuckle. This morning I woke up with two more - one on my back and one on my neck. I don't know whether a few bugs got into the house, or if they got me while I was outside.
I really hope this is not a sign of things to come this summer. But one thing is for sure - getting the screen door fixed is a top priority and from now on, I'll wear long sleeves when I am outdoors in the evening.
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