District 12

If being really sick and going out anyway to drink your way through Baltimore and drive into District 12 is indicative of anything, I would say that it means The Hunger Games are way funner than we give them credit for! With Pam on a graduation trip with her family up in Napa, Doug had a free week and got a ticket out to Baltimore, which, lucky for everyone, included a weekend that Sri and myself were able to escape Philadelphia and New York City and join him and Palak there. Nevermind that I was coming down with something and had a nasty sore throat. I was not going to miss a weekend with Pal and Sri and Doug!

Sri got out there early on Friday and they all went to an O's game before I came in. Even though my bus was almost an hour late, they picked me up and we wasted no time in getting to the downtown apartment we had for the night, changing and pre-partying in a rushed 20 minutes and getting a cab to a place called Bond Street Social on the Baltimore Harbor. As Palak was climbing into the backseat of the cab, she called to the cabbie: "Excuse me, sir? This is a really good song, could you please turn it up?" That's how good the night was. It was perfect! It was a great bar with a big dance floor, good music, and my friends! Afterwards we went to some pizza place in a nearby square and as Sri was shaking peppers and oregano onto the pizza, I thought it was funny to hit the jar so mounds of them fell onto the entire pie. Oops.


Doug was up front chattin' it up right nice while we had a photo shoot in the back


I think I made Doug take this picture, so he was out another as well.


But we got all four of us eventually!

For Saturday, Doug had arranged some river tubing down the Shenandoah River. In the morning we packed it up, got Starbucks, and hit the road to Harpers Ferry, in WEST VIRGINIA! In the Hunger Games, District 12 is only described as being in a region that once was referred to as Appalachia, but my understanding is that West Virginia is sort of the heart of that operation, so we took comfort in the idea that Katniss and Gale wandered about these roads... such as the Appalachian Trail!



Palak and I have a tradition of the black and white cookies from Starbucks, so we introduced Sri and Doug to these and made them a complete legacy



The rolling blue and green hills and farm houses were almost beyond anything I'd seen before. It was so beautiful! And the clapboard walls and wooden fences and little American flags everywhere just really made you feel as though you were in Small Town America, USA's capitol. It was really beautiful.


I think this was the Potomac, and what didn't show up in the picture so well, is the little town nestled at the end, with a church steeple and spire and houses at the river's bend.



But even just a few miles into West Virginia, things turned into hickville 101! The pimply-faced boys working at the place held paddles and dodged "traffic" (one pickup truck) to come to our car and ask "Do you wanna park... there?" Inside, we were checking in and were told we should wear shoes with backing that wouldn't slip off, but we all had flip flops. "Oh that's fine! We can give you some string!" Although we laughed hysterically later, we all used the string to tie our shoes around our ankles like morons. We waited for a little while, rented a floating cooler to hold our beers we were taking with us, and amused ourselves in the West Virginia countryside. It was leafy with lush hills and trees, and the insects gave off a loud buzzing hum all around, and it was warm, even with the overcast sky.

We had to watch a safety video on the porch, and they opened a small wooden cabinet that housed a TV and the lady selected our video. Palak said "Wow guys, this is really high-tech for West Virginia" and Sri just said "Palak, it's just a TV..." and for some reason that had me cackling over the side of the table, which was probably rude while the video was going, but it wasn't exactly helpful. You can imagine the low-quality contrived video of awful West Virginian actors we were watching that only gave us ideas rather than teach us safety.

They then gave us all life vests and drove us out further into the hills and upriver to drop us off and give us our tubes. Being out on the Shenandoah River in West Virginia was the most relaxing and beautiful thing I have done in a long time. I really wish we hadn't been so scared to bring our phones and cameras, because it was incredible. Rolling hills and a red bridge in the distance, storks and other birds flying and landing on the shores, dragonflies flitting around, floating on a cool river with friends next to me and a beer in the cupholder with not a car or plane or disturbing noisemaker in sight.

We had the entire afternoon to do this, so after the initial half hour or so of relaxing, taking it in and peacefully enjoying this, we somehow found ourselves grouped together with our tubes tied to the cooler and other tubes via the string from our sandals and the buckles of our life vests, which were either only halfway on or off completely, jumping out into the water, swimming sidestream and trying not to be the one left to hold the floating fortress, playing Six Degrees of Separation and wondering what the Civil War must have been like here. (We had Doug, a history major, to hold us to reality when we started bringing email and Tapatio into the idea.) When it started to sprinkle, Palak and I relished it and sang Just Around The River Bend and Colors of the Wind from Pocahontas. I'm not sure why this makes sense, but it added up at the time. It was perfect.

After the river excursion was complete, we drove back to Palak's little Maryland town and bought a volleyball and played 2's until it got too dark, and even shining the car lights on the sand court weren't enough, then had a nice sit-down dinner (still in bathing suits and bedraggled attire) and then went home to shower and clean up, and somehow still made it out of the house, even though it was 11:30 or midnight, to a bar in the city for a few drinks and shuffleboard for the evening.


We have a habit of sending pictures of ourselves at any given moment in the group chat we had going on our phones, and Doug and I sent this gem when we ran into CVS for two seconds for me to buy cough drops (and emerged with cereal and Poptarts too...)

On Sunday, my voice was gone completely. I tried to sign, but no one knew sign language, and Palak only knew the sign for "engineer" that I taught her once, but I had a few more things to say than that, so I took it all in, with a few bursts of throaty and squeaky monologues when I had some particularly good stories or strong viewpoints to add to the conversations.

It was a lazy, rainy Sunday of lunch and Starbucks and Palak with tofu...

(literally!)

And I was sad for the weekend to be over, although I only really needed to mourn Doug since Pal and Sri and I seem to be getting pretty consistent with seeing each other. But it really was perfect! On the way home I got on the subway right next to roommate but didn't even notice him until he waved to me! And since I couldn't stop talking, my voice didn't rest at all. And now my dad and Kathleen are coming into town today. So here goes nothing.

Fun fact: On this day in 2006, I boarded a plane from Los Angeles to Paris on my way to Bordeaux, France, to study abroad for the year. Oh what a difference six years makes!

Icy Connections

See if you can follow this: After college, my roommate from France went to Taiwan and made friends with a guy from Iceland who just moved to New York for his masters in engineering. Said friend passed my information to the guy since he didn't know anyone in New York and he and I got lunch recently.

Have you ever met anyone from Iceland? Me neither! But for the lack of sunshine they supposedly get, he was an incredibly cheery and jolly personality. It's also a West Germanic language so they pronounce their V's as English W's. Which means I have to resist smiling and laughing when they talk about "wisiting the willages" which seems to come up more often in conversation than you would expect. (On a side note: I did once meet a guy from Greenland. GREENLAND. It was at some bar in Barcelona and no one in our group believed him so we made him show us his national ID card and sure enough it was legit. This girl with us, Daphne, got so excited she kissed him. I have a picture of that moment somewhere...)

ANYWAY, the Icelandic chap asked which building I worked at and I told him.

He said "Is that the one with the really fancy lobby?"

I replied, "Um, I wouldn't call the lobby fancy but there are some TV's and all the international flags hanging from the ceiling."

"Oh yeah, that's the one. Any place that takes the time to put up Iceland's flag is fancy to me."

Maybe it was funnier when he said it, but that was probably the moment I decided that I could continue to be his friend. I mean, sure I'd always help out the friend of a friend, but after that I figured, okay I can probably bring you around my other friends with that sense of humor.

And on this international note, Cousin Bobby and I ate our ways across the world and we never even had to leave New York City. We had Japanese, Turkish, Szechuan, Irish, Cuban, Mexican, Greek, Thai and Lord only knows what else. We also had a fun time!



Vive la New York City.

Northern California

I really hit the jackpot last weekend when the stars aligned and I was able to make it out to Northern California for a quick stint. A friend from college, all the way back to the dorms, was getting married, and enough of us were able to make the trek for it to be a fun, summertime mini reunion. How I found such a cheap roundtrip summer flight from New York to San Francisco is beyond me, that's how the stars aligning came into play.

Ronnie drove me to the wedding! To give you a reference point, I spent every single year of college driving him around (read: to McDonalds or Borders in Goleta, or downtown Santa Barbara anywhere) so this was a big moment in our friendship! It was roasting hot that Saturday, August 11, in and out of the shade



The wedding was at a small winery, and it was cute, quaint, and classic. It featured a showing of many of us from the freshman dorms that year, and we had so many memories to re-live! It was great to come together for such a fun occasion too. (Where is Iris in this picture?!)



Neva was my actual freshman year roommate. She and I had such great times, and I don't think that we ever once fought or argued or got upset with each other. We used to always leave the string of Christmas lights on in our room for the other if they weren't in by the time we were going to bed. Oh, and we always threw great dance parties in our room, you can see us reliving some of these in the picture below. One of my favorite memories with Katie (the bride) was the dance party she came to in mine and Neva's room to Madonna's Like A Prayer during quiet hours. Our RA came and told us to shut it down, but we didn't until the song was over.



The breezy summertime wedding with the open bar went into the night but was still over too soon! Ronnie and I compensated by visiting San Jose's Santana Row with Tashi afterwards, so it was a gradual letting go.

This weekend was a double header though, because on top of the wedding, I got to spend the weekend with FAMILY! If I'm going to escape the city, there's no better way to do it than in scenic northern California in a real home with wonderful family that I can't seem to see often enough...! Walt & Lisa generously took me in and I was delighted that the kids even remembered me. Except Hamilton, who thought I was a babysitter and Annabelle had to inform him that I was a cousin. (This is how I remembered Annabelle and Holden!)



All Friday night Genevieve and I got to hang out with the whole works: she gave me a tour and showed me her room and dresses and we got to watch some Olympics and talk. Holden showed me his school project he was working on as he put it together, and Meredith gave us all the low-down on the One Direction boys when they were on during the Olympics Closing Ceremonies. Annabelle was my mini-hostess: she was kind enough to let me stay in her room for the weekend and even though she had a soccer tournament, she found the time to hang out with me and show me some of her crazy contraptions, like a gadget that can imprint onto gum, and even personalized one for me.

Hamilton really put me to work. Shortly after learning that I was family, he threw his Spiderman sleeping bag over his head and crawled toward me. I said he looked like a Hamilton Burrito with Cheese and he said he knew how to time travel. Well, I had to see this. The rules were very specific: first, we had to arrange all the pillows inside the time traveling machine just right. Then, he had to hop in his sleeping bag and I placed him in the box on top of the pillows. After I folded all of the cardboard flaps over him, I had to push the orange buttons on the side. This is all it took before we were in the land of dinosaurs!



Somehow, though, we slowly entered the Jedi realm. And by that I mean Hamilton was a bounty hunter, and I was Darth Vader. Complete with mask and light saber, mind you. At first it took some creativity on my part, but then it became much easier, because it was Darth Vader's birthday, and Hamilton was having a great time just imagining all the gifts to bring to me (storm troopers that could swim, sand troopers that had pots of hot lava and alligators to put the jedi into, six-sided light sabers... never ending!) and my job was to accept these gifts.



We also played Sorry on a team against Genevieve. Boy does he not like losing! But it's great because he also celebrates the wins; whenever we drew a useful card, he would be too excited sometimes to move the pieces and would spend every second until our next turn parading around and declaring that this was so great and that we would win. We didn't win, but we had Mystery Date and the Olympics to take our minds off our loss! Annabelle and I enjoyed watching the Closing Ceremonies and commenting on all the performances and sites, and was even allowed to stay up until 10pm with me!



It was so nice to be comfortably around family and out of the city for a summertime weekend that leaving was such a downer, so I had a lot of Starbucks and chocolate and gum on my flights home. I'd say I'm back to the grind, but Cousin Bobby comes into town today!

Gold Medal in Watching

Remember how I said I kept a small browser in the corner of my computer screen to watch the Olympics? Shortly after that, I realized I wasn't utilizing the space. Due to the rectangular sizes, there was a small space of nothing. The solution was to fill it with another browser with another sport on!



Today I thought, why stop there? Olympians gets where they are by pushing themselves further and I took it one notch more today



I know, where does it end? I could have like 8 screens going if I really wanted, but I'm also trying to keep my job soooooo, there you go.

And by the way, just finished watching some womens boxing and Ireland took gold! Aside from the sulking Russian with the silver, arms crossed and leaning on one hip, the medal ceremony is so cute, you can tell the Irish girl doesn't even believe it. Neither can I believe that I have the gold medal in watching the Olympics here in my office.

My Philly Cheesefriends

When I was first moving to New York City, there was a lot of excitement in the idea of exploring the uncharted territory of the East Coast alone. I didn't know a single soul in the city, but I knew names of coworkers in the corporate office where I was coming to work. I was not dissatisfied with this. On the contrary, I liked it this way.

When some friends started moving to the city or East Coast, I started wondering if my life was going to turn into exactly the same thing it was before, as though I might never meet new people or get involved with new things. And now? Now my friends from home are like a treasured beanie baby collection, and not only can I not imagine them not being out here, I also wonder if I still would have moved here in the assumption that I wouldn't have anyone from my previous life here, if I were to do it all again.

Aside from UCSB'ers Ronnie and Betsy, I now also have my San Diego-era Palak and Sri out here in Baltimore and Philadelphia, respectively. Sri just moved to Philadelphia two weekends ago for business school, and so Pal and I went to Philly last weekend to welcome him to our stomping grounds. While the weekend was filled with lots of fun and laughter and inside jokes, it was also so relaxing and comfortable, so easy to just be, and so familiar and comforting to get ready slowly in the mornings with Matt Nathanson radio playing on Pandora and all climbing on the bed together for a power nap before Chipotle (small Philadelphia local eatery, you've probably never heard of it) and bar hopping in the city. Now that I have them so accessible, I wonder how I could ever survive without them nearby for support and close enough for respite from a life in the big, bustling, ever-changing NYC.

This was Sri's view from his 16th floor apartment in the heart of the city center


Day 1 around Philly, here at Independence Hall. I am holding a bag of Kiehl's facewash that I bought because I got excited when we passed the store. I had to carry it around just about all day and it was a source of a joke for the rest of the weekend. The point is that they may laugh, but I will have a beautifully clear face from this point onward in life


In the elevator on our way down to a night on the town


Sri and Palak ascending the Rocky steps


Me and Palak at the top of the Rocky steps


In other news, it actually took me until yesterday to realize I could watch the Olympics live online. (To think of all the events I've missed!) I've adjusted computer browsers to leave an open view of my little TV in the right hand corner all day. I've watched Russia beat Lithuania in men's basketball, saw Argentina lose to Brazil in men's volleyball, and now getting sad as Italy is about to win the men's volleyball quarterfinals against the USA. I just can't get enough!!

On The Third Day

...I rested. My intensity is being upped which means the volume is being lowered. I said goodbye the treadmill after running on the streets on Sunday and seeing how much work I had to do, and have taken to the track on lunch breaks. I am running without stopping at a respectable even pace for about 12 minutes, then will walk for about 4, and take up the pace again without breaking for another 10. That's what I did on Tuesday and Wednesday anyway. Now I have to break today to recover. The floor gives me new pains everyday... knees, hips, shins. It's all just me being pathetic because unless I'm leaping or turning, I can't seem to control my force and weight on my joints (thanks for nothing, ballet?) so I'll be back at it tomorrow. I'm kinda starting to freak a little, but I remind myself that a dropping waist is a victory, too. In a competition against myself, I'm a winner either way.

My old hatred and aversion to running has been seeping back in slowly, and for the first time in a long time, yesterday running the track I found myself thinking about how much I just hated it and how stupid it was (everything is stupid when you hate it), which was weird because for the past few months I've been surprised at how openly I've welcomed running and even looked forward to it. Buuuuut the right playlist can change almost anything. In these very recent weeks, I absolutely could not have done anything, even open my eyes in the morning, without the following songs:

Dancing in the Dark - Bruce Springsteen
Human Touch - Bruce Springsteen
Titanium - David Guetta
The Suburbs - Arcade Fire
Sprawl II - Arcade Fire

As a matter of fact I may have done 2/3 of my workout yesterday with Bruce Springsteen on repeat. The moral of the story is that you shouldn't listen to music while you work out. You should work out while you listen to music.

From the streets and the shores of Fort Lauderdale:







And a view along the Keys



I was ashamed at how excited I was by all the palms on vacation. As though I didn't spend 95% of my life surrounded by them in the first place.