this is nice

it's a crayon ponyfish!

B R A Z I L !

I've been kind of obsessed with visiting Brazil since about 10 minutes into my first listen to an Astrud Gilberto record in 1997. I guess that lots of people around the world grow up watching american TV and movies and listening to american music and they are just obsessed with going to visit the usa and seeing it all in real life. That's just like me only with Brazil! so it's pretty crazy that I've been living in Argentina for a few years now, right next to Brazil, listening to samba and bossa nova and Seu Jorge and CSS and it took me this long to finally go visit! Anyway, we'll just say that i was SUPER PSYCHED and filled with anticipation for this trip. And Brazil did not disappoint.

We split our (way-too-short) visit between Rio de Janeiro and Ilha Grande. Arrived in Rio on Friday, super exhausted from a weird flight schedule and it was pouring rain in the city so we dedicated our afternoon to digging into amazing Brazilian eats. Fish, shrimp, sushi, pineapple, mango, passionfruit, brazilian beef and caipirinhas all appeared on our lunch menu. We had a big nap and a small exploration of Ipanema, then ate awesome thai-brazilian fusion for dinner at a fancy place (Nem Thai) in Leblon.

Saturday was less rainy, so we set out with an ambitious sight-seeing plan! We unfortunately started with going up to see the Cristo Redentor at Corcovado, which turned out to be a huge touristy amusement-ride type thing, with a looooong wait. So we pretty much spent the whole day going up to Corcovado. It was an awesome view, though! Rio is such a ridiculously beautiful city. I want to live in a city that has crazy mountains and jungle and ocean all together! Really I want to live in Rio! but without the crazy class divide and crime and stuff.

After Corcovado we wanted to take the Bonde (street-car) from the station in the Centro up to Santa Teresa, but we had some communication problems with the taxi driver (none of us can speak Portuguese, though spanish and portuguese are so similar, we mostly got by okay with speaking spanish!) and he took us to the Bonde station in Lapa instead of Centro. Lapa is a touristy area, not a favela, but it is rumored to be a great place to get mugged, and the spot where he dropped us was like this weird, trash-strewn deserted old train platform at the end of a long twisty cobblestone alley and the whole situation seemed like a bad place for a bunch of unfortunately conspicuous gringo tourists to be hanging out. We immediately regretted having climbed out of the cab, but he was gone and we were all alone with our thoughts of the 10000 warnings everyone gave us about getting mugged in Rio and not wandering aimlessly around Lapa. We were all panicky and freaked out and didn't know what to do and night was falling fast. We totally feared the worst of every person that walked past - but all of them just walked up and waited quietly at the platform next to us. After the LONGEST half-hour ever, the bonde finally trundled up... and it was completely full, there were people hanging off the sides and out the windows and out the door and we totally couldn't smash ourselves in there, noway nohow. So then the bonde trundled off and we were left alone again, on this platform in the dark. Nothing to do but wander out into the streets and search for a cab. Which turned out to be very easy. Soon we were in Santa Teresa and, still a little shaky, we wandered up to the most beautiful old ramshackle hillside mansion/bookstore/bar where an awesome samba band was playing an informal show on the front porch while people seated at card tables listened to the music and drank caipirinhas and looked out over the ridiculously beautiful view of the city and mountains beyond. We ordered some crispy pizza and much-needed drinks, and played a few rounds of cards while the band finished up and another band started setting up on a little stage on the other side of the house, and a good crowd wandered over to dance to their afro-samba music. What an amazing and perfect spot. Later we had another awesome dinner at a Brazilian restaurant in the same neighborhood, Espirito Santo, which also had beautiful views of the city from the back patio.

Sunday, off to Ilha Grande! We took a three-hour bus ride to Angra dos Reis, with beautiful views of the mountainy coastline in the last hour. Then a half-hour boat ride (on the fast catamaran) out to Ilha Grande! It's a jungly island off the Atlantic coast, the former site of several infamous prisons, but has become a tourist spot in the years since the prisons shut down. It's totally a tourist paradise, but a tiny and simple one, lots of nature and not much development.

well, gotta run - lots of photos and a few more stories to come.

Cesaria Evora

is playing in Buenos Aires, at Luna Park tonight. I wish I could be there!



more songs here.

usa part four: new york

Saturday May 16th I headed down to New York (took Amtrak instead of the bus this time - nice!!!). I had a kind of panic attack as my train pulled into Penn Station because my suitcases were SO heavy and I had no idea how I was going to get from the train platform up to the street and all the way to Sara's house in Brooklyn and I think also visiting New York just kind of stresses me out now that I don't live there anymore! It turned out to be no problem after all, I just took a taxi, easy peasy. Sara and Pete were very nice hosts, and Sara baked a delicious pineapple upside-down cake. On Sunday I went out to White Plains and had a wonderful brunch with Barbara and Lisa, and got to see Lisa's vegetable patch in the community gardens which was pretty neat.

Spent most of the New York visit in design mode, window-shopping and researching, took lots of fun pictures!

Its always amazing to be back in Greenpoint, where I used to live almost TEN years ago! Everything has changed so much, there is so much more going on in Greenpoint now, but it's still a really lovely little neighborhood and no longer feels as remote and disconnected as it did when I lived there. Anyway, it was fun to see this place totally unchanged:

they still have the same payphone that I always used to call up to my (then) boyfriend's apartment to say come on downstairs and meet me!

Had a happy night out drinking beers at Botanica with New York friends, went to visit Ben's backyard garden in Brooklyn, hung out at Emily's house in the East Village, and on my last night went out to a Public Art Fund benefit dinner and bowling night in which I WON A BOWLING TROPHY in a fabulous surprise coup since I am usually a poor-to-horrible bowler. An excellent finish to my New York visit. This was the first time that I've gone back to visit New York and NOT gone in to work a bunch of hours while I'm there. It was a super short visit but I think it was a lot nicer not having to squeeze in long work days on top of visiting friends and everything.

Wednesday, May 20th: night flight back to Argentina, sad to leave behind friends and family but excited to get back to my work and routine, feeling homesick for my cozy house in Buenos Aires and Mike and dogs and studio etc...

usa part three: maine, new hampshire

Finally arrived at the family home in Maine on wednesday april 29th! had a warm reunion with dogs, cats, chickens, etc. and it felt so good to drop some laundry in the washer, browse for snacks in the fridge, and relax with some pups on the porch. We had one quiet day of chores and freelance work and stuff. Then on Thursday we packed up to head to the summer cabin in Intervale, New Hampshire. It's a beautiful hour-and-a-half drive, and we got there around 3 or 4 on Thursday afternoon.

The house was all closed up for the winter so we had to start by unlocking, moving some furniture, turning on the main circuit-breaker, and then trying to turn on the water. I've never done the spring opening-up alone. Richard had warned me that the plumbing would be the most complicated part of opening up; every year something always goes wrong with the water turn-on. "What kind of problems? where should I look first?" "Well, it's different every year. You never know what's going to happen until you turn on the water main!" Sure enough, we sprang a leak in the bathroom near the toilet, and as the evening turned to night, we decided to give up plumbing for the evening and made do for the night with just one outdoor faucet running. In the morning, with lots of indispensable help and advice from Richard over the cell-phone, we devised a solution, bought the hardware, and fit everything together! Plumbing success!

Feeling grand after this problem-solving victory, we spent the rest of the day working furiously to drag furniture into place, sweep up drifts of pine needles, locate and dispose of dead mice, mop, scour, and generally clear away a winter's accumulated dust and disorder. Finally we cooked up a great big pot of corn and potato chowder and had a well-earned delicious dinner by the fireside. Friday night around midnight, Emily and Pete and Elizabeth and Caroline all arrived from New York!

We spent a beautiful and crisp, chilly weekend relaxing and hiking in the White Mountains... Saturday we went out for a hike on the Imp Trail. We had expected a pleasant, moderate hike of a few hours; we had not expected that the upper half of the trail would be covered with deep, icy crusted snow. I'd never really hiked so high up in the mountains around Intervale so early in the year and I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. At first we thought it was fun to see a bit of snow, but it made the hike a lot more challenging than we'd expected. Every third step sent our sneaker-clad feet crashing through the snow and splashing into the mud and icy water running below.

Because we had mis-read the trail guide, we kept thinking we were almost at the top, so it didn't seem worth it to give up and turn back. The last hour before the summit was kinda brutal, there was a lot of screaming as we continually plunged into ice and mud up to our knees, and a lot of laughing about our ridiculous situation, and I felt ignorant for not having had any idea about the conditions I was leading my friends into! I was a bit nervous that someone would break an ankle and the sun would go down and then we'd all freeze to death on the mountainside. But after wading through a few icy waterfalls and crashing and lurching our way very slowly through the final mile of the trail, we found ourselves at a spectacular summit indeed!

We limped out onto the sun-warmed rocks and took off our muddy shoes to dry our feet in the sunshine. Enjoyed some superbly delicious trail mix and sandwiches, took lots of photos, generally felt our spirits lifted by the beautiful panoramic view of Mount Washington Valley and warm spring sunshine.

The downhill part of the loop was much much easier, less snowy, and we thankfully made it back to the car just shy of sunset, several hours late but in good spirits, filled with the warm camaraderie of having survived a surprising and exhausting challenge and having a warm fire, a nip of whiskey and a big pot of corn chowder waiting for us back at camp.

All in all, it was such a lovely and cozy weekend that it was hard to head back to Maine again on Monday. The rest of the week was spent quietly with some delicious family dinners, visits with some old friends, freelance work and art projects, jigsaw puzzling with Judy, tasty home-cooking, fireside knitting and lots of snuggles with the dogs and cats. Mike's last afternoon in Maine, we went out to visit the famous Portland Head Light, a picturesque 1791 lighthouse originally commissioned by George Washington, which was charming despite the cold grey misty weather.

Mike had to get back to Buenos Aires for work but I had work to do in Maine (packaging and preparing cards for Morris & Essex) and enjoyed more quiet time with the family.

usa part two: road trip!

monday morning, on the road again. We stopped first at Zingerman's in Ann Arbor to get some crusty bread and other goodies for the road. They hand out all kinds of free samples in there! I tried a really interesting taste of salty chocolate, and the best thing we tried was this Agrodolce white balsamic vinegar. Then we headed out to meet Mike's Bubi Goldie for brunch at a classic greek Coney Island diner (serving the Detroit specialty: Coney Dog, a hot dog smothered with meaty chili, diced onions and mustard). Judy tried the Coney Dog but I opted for a huge greek salad and a strawberry milkshake. yum.
and then back in the car, headed for Canada. I was excited to visit Canada but it was pretty featureless, really. I fell asleep and woke up at Niagara Falls! We stopped to eat our sandwiches and check it out.

I had never seen it before and it was absolutely lovely but kind of an anti-climax after seeing Argentina's way-more-exciting Iguazu Falls. We stayed that night at a cute bed & breakfast in upstate New York, the Adams Basin Inn, an early-1800's tavern which sits right on the banks of the Erie Canal. It turned out to be a beautiful, warm evening and after a long day in the car, we were psyched to head out to the gazebo on the riverbank with a cooler full of fancy cheeses and a bottle of Argentine malbec to watch the sun setting over the canal.

day two, we headed east towards Troy, New York, where we stopped to visit dear friends Andrew and Vickie. We rolled in around 5pm and picked up some groceries to cook a big tasty dinner together! It was exciting to check out the progress on Andrew and Vickie's house, they are continually renovating/improving it in a totally DIY manner with lots of scavenged materials. Since last year they'd built a whole new bathroom and a greenhouse and some beautiful new vegetable beds in the Yarden. Best of all, they adopted Shae, this amazingly relaxed and benevolent little black pup, a lab mix who just lives to hang out and be cute and agreeable. The night flew by and we had such a nice time catching up with old friends, we forgot to take any pictures.

day three: more driving, headed East along the scenic route through the mountains, Vermont and then New Hampshire and then finally to Maine!

usa part one: Michigan

We flew into Detroit, arriving on Thursday morning April 23rd. As soon as we dropped off our luggage and got cleaned up, we headed out for thai food! which was the number one thing we'd been looking forward to eating on this trip. We spent a few lovely days visiting with all kinds of family. My parents had driven out from Maine for the wedding, and we also got to meet up with my uncle David and his girlfriend Liz, who live in Grand Rapids. Then we spent time with Mike's dad Sandy and his wife Cheri and all their lovely family, and we met Mike's adorable new niece Riley (three months old!) and of course we spent time with Mike's mom Bonnie and her now-husband Les, whose wedding was the reason for our whole trip! and all of their families.

There were so many delicious and fun family dinners, it's impossible to recount them all, hopefully it is sufficient to say that we were hospitably received and very well fed.

The wedding was lovely, it was held at an old arts club in downtown Detroit, called the Scarab Club, right next to the Detroit Institute of Arts. The upstairs club room is absolutely beautiful, an arts & crafts style lounge with awesome architectural details. The wooden beams have been signed by hundreds of artists who've come to visit Detroit since the club was opened in the 1920's.

after the ceremony we had a delicious meal and a musical performance by two cello players.

Then we killed a few hours wandering around downtown Detroit (yikes!) in our wedding togs, until it was time to meet Sandy and Cheri and Robin for some delicious BBQ at the famous Slow's Barbeque. It was totally awesome and delicious, as promised. (this was the other top food we'd been looking forward to eating in the USA!)

patagonia!

early April = 5 days in Patagonia! I would love to write more details but too busy now :/
here are some pictures!!!

I am going here

tomorrow!! gotta go pack now.

i am obsessed with Roisin Murphy

She is a singer. (that's "ro-shen" or "ro-shun" or something, in case you don't speak Irish) She used to be in a group called Moloko (I remember some friends recommending them to me in the nineties but I never fell in love with them until now). Then the past few months I would always hear her music coming from Julia's studio while I was working and then I started humming these songs all the time and had then I had to get the album (Overpowered) on my ipod and I'm listening to it all the time and I like it.



And THEN i went and looked on youtube at her videos and she has these amazing videos, i like her dancing and prancing and these RIDICULOUS outfits. I love them. I just want to watch Roisin Murphy videos all day. Now I am trying to listen to all the old Moloko albums because now that I know her I think I am going to love all of those too.



what is up with this jumpsuit and head-dress. it is awesome.