Caffeine, my lover

Dear Caffeine,

I love you. You are my very best friend. I wish I could shrink a bite-sized espresso machine to carry around in my shallow girl-jean pockets for emergencies. My dependence upon you leaves me desperate, wandering in the snow looking for a cup of coffee unblemished by Starbucks brand bitterness, disregarding my cashless wallet and frost-bitten nose (my nose gets colder than my feet sometimes, but not when I have a hot cup of caffeinated something to my lips).

I love you most in my mother's milk tea, spiced with saffron and cardamom, paired with digestive biscuits from Devon Ave, and always hot enough to burn the roof of my mouth. At times, I dip the biscuits a little too long in the cup and the rest of biscuit resurfaces, only half intact, and the other half disintegrated at the bottom.

At home, almost twice a day, you are an excuse to sit back and relax, and chat with mom and Avva. It makes me think of tea in India (super sweet, extra hot, made with milk from bags), long to visit the coffee plantation on which my mother spent her childhood, and of my dream to buy a coffee plantation, become a farmer and live on a farm in my retired years.

Caffeine, you are the reason I didn't drop out my sophomore year of college. I couldn't have made it through all those all-nighters without you. Even though I didn't know how to work my sister's coffee machine and poured water over the grounds, you still managed to pull through for me.

Caffeine, you are also my most treacherous enemy. Why oh why did I make coffee at work for 4 days only to discover after 4 horrible nights and days of what I thought was a sinus headache was the result of caffeine deprivation??  I should have noticed the "decaf" label.

Don't ever leave me.

Love,

Me

Tea in Kerala.

Maybe DC is growing on me

I've recently had the opportunity to make a few more cards for some very dear, dear friends.

Miss Catie reminds me of summer, and when I think of summer I think of watermelons:

I miss my idol Alia who is currently in the PRC so I sent her this along with some other goodies:

 

aaaaaaaaaaaand speaking of le PRC, Miss Anne came over the river, through the woods, over mountains, continents, etc., and is now in DC! So I made her this card to remind her to always remember her roots (WI):

 

I made a card for my dad, too, but it's so bad it's embarrassing. I'll just have to fulfill his dream of having a multi millionaire daughter instead.

The holidays are coming around so I've switched from making cards to baking cookies. A much more delicious switch in hobbies, although I may buy a glue gun soon and expand my crafty sensibilities to 3D objects.

I suck at memory

While sitting in a leadership development seminar the other day (yeah, quite the exciting beginning to a blog post), I found out that one of the key components to good leadership, fundraising, community organizing and professional ladder-climbing is people memory. People love it when you remember something about them, however small/insignificant the detail. For example, if you remember that they have a voracious appetite for grapefruit gummy candy or that their kid got their head stuck in a chair, or what have you. 

Too bad I suck at memory. I forget what people have said seconds after they say it. I also forget to inform important people in my life about important things.
Example from a couple years ago (BF stands for Best Friend, read: inseparable since preschool):

BF: So, what're you doing for New Year's?
Me: Oh, well, I'll be in India so, I don't know, family time, probably won't be clubbing or anything. I'd be lucky if I got to wear a party hat.
BF (highly offended): India? Since when were you going to India? I thought you said you were going to be around???
Me: Yeah, that was back in August. I thought I told you, I'm going to India right before I study abroad in Bolivia.
BF: You're going to BOLIVIA????
Me: uhhhhhh.....

So yeah. I do that too often.

I'm also terrible with names. And faces, and dates. and everything. Speaking of names, while I was working an event for work, handing out name tags and registering guests as they entered, a man approached me and said, "Suma! How are you? Decided not to stay in Minnesota, huh?"

I had no idea how this man knew me. I was noticeably surprised and tried to buy time by pretending to be distracted by the light reflected off of the plastic covering of his name tag.

Unfortunately, it wasn't enough time for me to figure out how I knew this man.

Here's was I said:
"uhhh ooo um, bladiggity blah, oooh yess, Minnesota....ha ha what a night ha ha heresyourdrinkticket why don't i just give you two ha ha old friends and all ha ha??"

All of this was said while I stared at his name tag trying dig through the black holes in my brain to place his face and name with memory.
It was embarrassingly obvious I had totally forgotten him and how I knew him. If he didn't have a name tag, I definitely wouldn't have remembered his name.  It was only a couple of hours later when the aperture in my brain clicked into the right setting and the world came into focus and I remembered that HE WAS MY OLD BOSS from a campaign I worked on in Minnesota. AHHHHHH. Talk about terrible relationship building.

In unrelated news, my grandparents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary on Monday. Congrats, Avva and Thatha!
Below is my Avva with the card I made them for the special day.

Isn't she lovely?

Meat in Basket

While hunting for snowpants (don't you miss those??), hats, mittens, post-apocalyptic gas masks, and other cold-weather related seasonal contraband, we stumbled upon a most educational toy.

 

But my dearest sister, why are you so sad? "Meat in Basket" is one of the most amazing discoveries I've made in recent weeks. What's next? "Meat in Bucket", "Meat on Rollercoaster", "Meat in Meat", or "Meat in Well with accompanying pulley system"?? There is so much potential to capitalize on making toys imitating plastic meat-shaped oblongs in various nooks and crannies in everyday life.

I've got to start perusing the dollar bins at Target more carefully.  

What do sushi, sunflowers, and clouds have in common?

All of them have been featured on my handmade-homemade cards! Delicious enough to eat? Definitely not. I don't believe cardstock has any nutritional value, but I'm sure we could work it out if that's your thing.

I have amazing friends. That's for sure. They're so amazing I have the urge to make sushi-themed cards for them like the one pictured below:

Sure, the sushi rolls are 4 times the size of the chopsticks, but that's because of my clever use of perspective.

Check out my sunflower for Miss Kim/Best Roomie ever!

This wasn't really for Kim's birthday, it was just because Kim was visiting and I felt like making her a card.
The following card was for my mom's birthday: But before you judge....

...let me explain. Yes, it is shaped like a house, but what can I do? I associate my mother with home and of course, my dog, whose favorite person is my mother (honestly though, whose favorite person ISN'T my mother)?? That doesn't mean I think of her as confined to the house only. It simply means that I associate her with home and comfort and feeling relieved and reassured (sometimes). She's a powerful woman who can hold her own in and out of the household. Also, I'm homesick.  Previously cards I've made have featured otters, kangaroos, laptops that bake cakes, penguins, naked mole rats, elephants, and a cloud. The cloud was for my dad, who's a total dreamer.

I'm in the process of making more cards, but I couldn't post the pictures because I have not given them to people yet. I don't want to ruin the surprise.

Cheating

I'm totally cheating and I've decided to do a blog post on blogs that I've written for other blogs.
At least you know that I'm not totally slacking, even if this blog's getting stale.
Read about my lame update on life in the 'real world' at the Minnesota Women's Consortium's blog here.

and

pictures and a few words about my experience riding the Skullmobile around DC here.

Lame I know, but I've had the swine and that's the best excuse for not doing shit.

Vegetarian Spiders

I made some fantastic discoveries recently.

1) The first ever predominantly vegetarian spider was discovered in Central America and Mexico.

I generally like spiders anyway because they eat flies.  But this one is JUST LIKE ME. YAY.

2) There is a book called My Mom Eats Tofu.

I've decided to collect progressive children's books about alternative lifestyles and befriend vegetarian animals. I already own My Daddy's a Nurse which I found while shopping for ugly Christmas sweaters last December at a hospital thrift store where my grandpa used to work. I bought and met the author of My Mom Eats Tofu this weekend. She was vivacious, ultra-conscious of her community and her carbon footprint.
BUT...

...here's the thing. There is this part:

and this part:

This made me a little uncomfortable. While I <3 vegan cookies, the last couple of lines had me raising my eyebrows.

Like, as if knowing the dress or food or dance of a culture makes you well versed in and tolerant of this particular culture. While the book as a whole is incredibly cool because it makes little vegetarian kids feel like they're not freaks (which was something I felt often), it reminds me of when people I have just met and with whom I have had no discussion about my background or identity tell me that they LOVE Indian food. That's great, asshole, what do you want me to say? A few possibilities:

1) "OMG what a coincidence! You should come over so I can cook you 5 million delicious curries that I memorized at age 5 like a nice Indian girl should."

2) "Indian food? Indians eat....food??!? First I've heard of that."

3) " I can shit out a pretty good curry sauce when I concentrate real hard. You should try it sometime."

Honestly, I can't say I know any 'culture' well at all. Perhaps a  culture of a very specific experience, based upon heritage, class, family structure, race, gender, etc, etc., the list goes on and on. But still.
I don't fucking care that you LOVE naan.

As a whole, though, I really enjoyed this book. Not only did it take me all of one minute to read, I also think it has a lot of potential to make an alternative lifestyle (or diet, in this case) more acceptable to children, and to everyone. I have more of an issue with essentializing cultures and people than with the book.

Back to befriending vegetarian animals. I am so on top of this. The tortoise on my profile picture is actually Leo Tolstoy, my vegetarian Russian tortoise who loves to cuddle. He lives with my family now and bff with my dog, who doesn't really like him. I miss them. I need to repost my desperate craigslist ad begging people to let me walk their dogs.

Fuzzy photos

Enjoy a few out-of-focus photos from my phone. I like to think the poor quality of these makes me seem more endearing. But really, I have shaky hands.


I went to a place called "So's Your Mom" in Adams Morgan, and I found this delightful cookie which looked like it had fallen out of Willy Wonka's wet dream. It didn't taste as good as it looked.

This dog is sweet. Check it out, chillin' on the windowsill. This dog's a mad playa.

This was some sort of soup and edemame at a cozy little place called Teaism near Dupont Circle. The soup has "Teaism" written on it in something. Clever.

Evidence of my first (and thus far, only,) venture into DC's very own gated community: Georgetown. The above is what the tourists are allowed to see. Needless to say, I live far, far away from here.
Kabs told Oriel that this was a monument to the American Phallus. Not too far off.

Kabir's roommate likes to collect Michael Jordan figurines and surround them with tiny plastic adoring Smurf fans. This is too much.

I have other photos. But I'll leave the photos of the real things for facebook. Where people actually look at them.

DC is an armpit

It really feels like it sometimes. This guy from work told me to look at it more positively, like, as if I am entering a rainforest. But I can't shake the feeling that I need to rub deodorant on everything around me in order to survive the intense suffocating heat. DC is an armpit.

Try these fruit bars. I bought them when I was really hungry in Safeway (along with a whole lotta cornbread, which was also delicious), and it was such great luck that I liked them! I wonder if I could just make my own fruit bars by putting some raspberries in my bag with some mushy carrots and hopping up and down on them. I think they're vegan too! They are also fun for kids because they come in squiggly shapes! I love squiggles. Actually, I just like saying squiggles. That word's gonna be in my head all week now. Like the week I had the words 'sigourney weaver' stuck in my head. Everytime someone asked me how I was doing I just had to scream "SIGOURNEY WEAVER!" Now someone will ask me where I'm from or how much work I've gotten done today and I'll shriek "SQUIGGLIES!!!" at the top of my lungs.

I want a brick pizza oven in my kitchen. That is my one and only vision for the future right now, besides universal health care, seeing military money transferred to social services, education being recognized as a right, and freedom and equality for all.

I will post some fuzzy pictures soon from my camera phone. Yes, the one with a pink jelly cover and Dooney and Bourke keychain with a pink heart on it. What can I say? My uncle has good taste.

I got a bike!

and it's purple! But too bad biking around DC is TERRIFYING.

I shall bike to work everyday.

Also, who knew that the Lincoln statue was not the same thing as the Lincoln Memorial? I told Kabir he lived 4 blocks away from the Lincoln Memorial, when it was actually 22 blocks away from his building. Good thing no one ever trusts my sense of direction. Well, one person did. I told a tourist on the metro who was looking for the Washington Monument to get off at Judiciary Square on the red line, which is actually very far away from it...I figured that while he may curse me at first, he'd thank me later for adding years to his life by power-walking 3 miles to the monument.

I own a misleading and incomplete map of DC. Granted, I tore it out of the back of a Congressional Directory given to me at work (the only time I've ever used it), but still. I finally decided to invest in the inaugural edition map of the DC metro area with Obama' grinning proudly at the part in my hair (which I am sure will be my bald spot soon) at Safeway, where the cashier who rung me up basically said, "HEY YOU'RE NEW TO THIS CITY!", and everyone was like, "DAMN, WOMAN, WHO ISN'T?"

Exactly. My new status as a DC resident will never be a novelty.

The other day, I walked into an elevator in which lingered the effect of 50948730 cans of beans some farty asshole ate. It was the longest 2 flights of my life. Normally I would walk up the stairs, so I believe my lethargy that day was being punished by some higher, divine, gassy being.

Speaking of smelliness, I've been rationing my Altoids, which I bought the first day here, not only because they're mad expensive, but because I always seem to smell like coffee. ALWAYS. I think it's because I always spill some on my clothes. But I found out they have gelatin in them, which grosses me out. It seems kind of counter-intuitive to put horse hooves in your mouth as a breath freshener.

Metro musings

The thing about being short is that on the metro you get a lot of armpits in your face. It doubly sucks if you are claustrophobic. I envision myself vomiting on the tall, pit-stained assholes around me just so they would get the hell away from me.

Yes, so I've made it to DC in one piece (more or less) a little less than 2 weeks ago, and have been working at USAction for about a week now, taking the metro back and forth like another cog in a machine.

Riding the metro gets me thinking about what it would be like to be a giant squid. Or any other deep sea creature. It might be because it's nearly impossible to go against the flow of body traffic just like a current, or the fact that we sway back and forth with the motion of the train like underwater plants. It could also stem from the deep sea episode of Planet Earth I saw this weekend with Becca.

Ok, so that video didn't have anything to do with underwater plants, but man! So cool! Venus fly traps are the weirdest things alive. Also, I kinda feel like that frog on the metro during rush hour.

I also hate how quiet it gets, even when it feels like all of D.C.'s professional population is in your particular car. My inner camp counselor oftentimes thinks about starting a round of "row row row your boat" to boost morning morale, but mostly just to freak people out. I think I would get a kick out of bugging all the grumpy morning people. That might make my day.

One thing that I've come to realize is how easy it is to ignore everything around you, at least as a middle-class, commuting professional in D.C. EVERYONE has a freaking ipod, newspaper, some cheap paperback, knitting project, kindle, blackberry that gets service underground, etc. etc. People are totally lost in their own little worlds.

On the bright side, I get to eat PB and Js again, throwback to grade school. But it might take a while before the proportions are right (a little too much peanut butter). Normally, I would wad up my pb and j into a delicious wonder-bread ball and dunk it repeatedly in a glass of milk. Judge away, haters, I like my soggy food.

While my mind may have stayed put in Mrs. Burke's fourth grade, my body has aged 50 years. I have a FREAKING ULCER. Seriously, folks, my stomach grew rebellious with a diet of frozen boca burgers and red sauce from the jar annihilating my insides. As of now, my stomach is preparing to reject the peanut butter and jelly sandwich i so generously offered to it as a peace offering.
Gotta go.

But before I sign off, good news, I found a place to live! It is glorious.
More on that later.

A Day in the Life of a Recent College Grad

"College Grad" should actually be read: "unemployed bum".

Today I....

11:50 am: woke up, ate stuff

12:30 pm-2pm: went to the car dealership and spent money I don't have

2-4 pm: Napped wonderfully

4- 5 pm: rode my bike pointlessly around st. paul

5-7pm: lost many rounds of tetris against Sudha and pretended to help with dinner

7-10 pm: ate dinner while watching Cillian Murphy beat up infected people in post apocalyptic London/Manchester

10pm - 2am: Had a couple of beers while shootin' the breeze with some good friends

Doesn't sounds too bad, huh? But I can't imagine doing this for very long. I hope this isn't the case, because I feel like my brain will turn to mush and my bones will become porous. And I really get my ass kicked in video games.