elizajanecurtis

moving my blog to wordpress

2009-12-20T17:22:00.003-03:00

hi there! in an attempt to gain a bit more creative control over the appearance of my blog (among other reasons), I've moved my blog over to wordpress! Here's the new address:

http://blog.elizajanecurtis.com/

I'll be posting over there from now on. See you there!

KOM: favorite argentine designer!

2009-12-08T12:29:00.003-03:00

I've been a great admirer of KOMware designs since the first time I saw them (at CouCou in Palermo). There is a wide variety of patterns and colors and products but they all fit within a very tidy palette and style of clear colors and simple shapes in repeat patterns printed on a white ground. They're all hand-printed and constructed in Argentina, just outside of Buenos Aires. There are canvas bags (I bought one!) and lots of baby items: onesies (we bought two!) and t-shirts and leggings and also furniture with beautiful patterned cushions, which I would love to buy too. I've recently had the pleasure of meeting Pablo, the young genius behind this super fun line of products, and of course he is just as nice as his designs, and, well, I am so crazy about these designs, I have to share them! Here's the KOM flickr page which seems to have the most updated selection of new designs.

uggghhhh. I am so disappointed in Maine.

2009-11-10T11:28:00.000-03:00

well I'm sure I don't need to explain that the vote on gay marriage in Maine did not turn out as I had hoped. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but it's really disappointing anyway. It was so close. I do not want to give up! I hope that Maine will continue to progress forward on this issue and I hope that I can be involved when I get back to Maine next year!

today's the day: Gay Marriage vote in Maine

2009-11-03T16:38:00.005-03:00

Today's election day and there's a REALLY BIG referendum question on the ballot in Maine. In May, Governor Baldacci (formerly opposed to gay marriage) signed a bill to approve same-sex marriage in Maine. Over the summer, of course, the hateful, the intolerant, and the homophobic joined together and rallied to raise signatures on a petition to put a referendum on the ballot to overturn this ruling. By the time the law was originally set to take effect (in September), the petition had been filed and the law was put on hold until today's election decides whether or not gay marriage will be allowed in the state of Maine.

I've already cast my absentee ballot... I am so excited and hopeful and nervous about this. Early polling showed the results would be too close to predict. I actually feel that this is going to all go down for the best. No reason, I'm just feeling optimistic and hopeful. I want to believe that people in Maine are more tolerant than hateful. I read predictions that only 35% of voters would turn out for this mid-term election and I honestly find that really hard to believe, given what a HUGE ISSUE this is. I feel like this will probably be one of the most important things I'll ever vote on in my life. I think there are a lot of people in Maine who will also feel it and get themselves out to the polls. Fingers crossed. I want this so badly for the people I love, for my state, for the human race.

314 Sokokis Ave, Limington, Maine

2009-11-01T10:42:00.002-03:00

it's our new house! we're still trying to get used to this crazy idea.

the house

2009-10-29T21:17:00.001-03:00

it is done! they closed on the house today; we've got the deed!

a tidbit of house history

2009-10-28T11:14:00.003-03:00

we've gotten some confirmation from the realtor: tomorrow (Thursday) should indeed be the final closing date!! Hooray!!
meanwhile, we've gotten some historical documents from the State of Maine, it's the official paperwork regarding the Limington Historic District, of which our house is a part. We read through and found the description of our house!

Moulton Family House, c. 1880-C,
Route 11
This two-story three-bay frame house is comprised of what appears to be an earlier side gable building to which have been added a pair of Queen Anne style corner towers and a wraparound porch. Presently, the dwelling is clad in asbestos siding. The original house has corner pilasters with round arched panels and gable end returns, whereas the alterations feature three-sided towers with two-over-one windows and turned porch posts with sawn brackets. A one-and-a-half-story ell extends to a small, much altered barn. To the northwest is a larger, free-standing barn.

According to local tradition, this house was erected in the 1870's or early 1880's by the Moulton family. Its materials are said to have come from two houses that had been dismantled in Hiram.

this is interesting - my parents had thought the house was older, I wonder if we'll ever find more historical info about this! I know that my parents' house in Gorham included several structures - including an original house and an ell, which had been taken from a location a few miles away and dragged off its foundation by oxen, in its entirety, and transported across the fields using rollers made from giant logs, a team of oxen pulling the whole structure to its current location, where it was just tacked on to the side of the original structure. So I wonder if our house was also transported from Hiram in the same manner? or was it dismantled and re-assembled on the current location? Anyway, it would also be fun to find old photos of the house someday...

more house news

2009-10-25T23:00:00.022-03:00

OK, we're totally obsessed with this house and absolutely overflowing with excitement and anxiety to find out whether the whole deal is going to go through! Today we got some positive news, our offer has formally been accepted by the bank, on paper. Looks like it's a go!!!!! Thursday is supposed to be our official closing date. So, we'll be able to really say it's our house by the end of the week, hopefully! My mom went in to the town office and did a bit of research, and learned that this property & house were last assessed in 2003, at that time they were valued at around 400% the price we're going to pay! WOW. Perhaps that was before the barn collapsed and before the ell roof fell apart.

Meanwhile, we've been doing lots of research about the place. Because the house has a historic plaque on the porch, Mike started researching the history and has been corresponding with the Limington Historical Society, he's found some colorful stories about the history of the town but hasn't found anything specific about our house yet.

We read all about the Francis Small nature preserve, hiking on Sawyer Mountain, and swimming at Pequawket Beach on Horne Pond, just down the road from our house! (Of course there's also the Limington Rips, where I remember splashing around as a kid.)

Anyway, I've got some more pictures of the place! Here is the exterior:

complicated roofline (front side of the house)

In back of the house is the ell, which is in terrible condition:

side view of the house and ell

side door

trashy looking junk and ell

the ell is filled with junk

there is also an "in-law apartment" in the ell, but it's badly damaged by water from the leaky roof so it'll have to be all torn out and... who knows.

Here's the back yard:

i'm pretty sure that's one of three apple trees growing in our back yard!

too bad about the barn

squash growing in the back yard

basketball hoop behind the barn

richard and backyard

backside of barn

backside of house - seen from back yard

inside the house!

nice wood floors and windows. first floor, front room
(this is inside one of the front turrets)

indoors

kitchen

windows over the sink in the kitchen

front entrance, nice bannister

missing plaster next to the stairs

one of the upstairs bedrooms

turret bedroom upstairs

more missing plaster, upstairs bedroom

basement: granite slab & boulder foundation

front porch & front yard:

the front porch

view to road from front porch

barn view from porch

retaining wall, street view from downhill

retaining wall, cute house next door

hydrangea bush

decorative pampas grasses

here's the hitching post where visitors used to tie up their horses

it looks like there are lots of other pretty old houses in the neighborhood! here's a video of my sister and brother-in-law driving around getting lost in the neighborhood:

a house in maine

2009-10-19T20:26:00.016-03:00

i thought i'd try to wait on this but I'M SO EXCITED I CAN'T KEEP IT UNDER MY HAT! we are suddenly, kinda out-of-the blue, (hopefully) about to start work on repairing and renovating OUR NEW HOUSE! Probably. the whole deal hasn't gone through 100% yet but it seems like everything's set to go and by October 29th it should be finalized IF all goes well!

Both Mike and I always said we'd love to get a house someday, we'd love to renovate an old place and learn all about carpentry and plumbing and have a garden and live in the country and all that good stuff, and we're starting to save money, but we don't have enough savings to seriously look at buying a house yet. So it was like a "someday down the road" kind of idea. Still, Mike sometimes likes to browse through craigslist and look at houses for sale, just for kicks. Just window-shopping. He came across this place a few months ago, thought it looked interesting and sent me the listing. I thought it looked cool too, and it's nice because the location is right between my parents' house in Gorham and our beloved summer cabin in the White Mountains in New Hampshire.

It's a five-bedroom farmhouse with a wrap-around porch on the front and side, an ell in the back and two acres of land, with a collapsed barn off to one side. It has Victorian-style turrets in the front, which were probably added in the late 1800's, but the rest of the structure probably dates back to the early 1800's.

The price had already been reduced a lot, and the place obviously needs lots of repairs - which made it even more intriguing. We got a little infatuated with this place and our fantasy about living in it and restoring it.

So every few weeks we would go back and look at the website, scroll through the pictures and think "gee, that would be fun... if only..." So, when the price dropped again, we sent the listing to my parents and asked if they might want to swing by the place and look at it, next time they were driving past, just for kicks. We just wanted to hear what it looked like in real life. Since it's right on their way over to New Hampshire. They did stop by and were also intrigued! Eventually they decided to call up the realtor, just out of curiosity, and make an appointment, just to get a peek inside. When they spoke to the realtor she mentioned that the price had just been dropped again, to ONE THIRD of the original price!

So they went on over and scoped it out in great detail. The property is now held by a property liquidation company, and they are in a big hurry to get rid of it before the winter freeze comes on and the pipes all freeze and winter storms cause even more damage to the section of the house that has a broken roof. The house is so badly damaged and the bank is in such a hurry to get rid of it, the whole property is now being sold for the price of the land. So basically you buy the land, you get this hulking wreck of a house for free! The house looks pretty decent from the street but inside it's all messed up. The furnace is broken, the plumbing is all crazy, the electricity is so faulty that most of the house has been disconnected. Up until two months ago, there were 11 people!!!!! living in this house, and not doing any maintenance whatsoever. In the main house, the interior walls have spots of missing plaster, where the original lath shows through. There is a rotted sill above the foundation, under the kitchen. The interior looks like a total disaster. In the back, there is an additional structure (the ell, for those who are familiar with traditional farmhouses) with an "in-law apartment" and garage space, but the roof over the ell is badly damaged, there are blue plastic tarps covering it but there's extensive water damage in the interior of the ell, where the roof is missing. That area is badly rotted and strewn with debris. So overall, it's all in really bad shape.

But the original structure of the house dates from the early 1800's, the foundation is made of boulders and granite and is still completely sound. Most of the main structure is solid and the main roof is new-ish, with only one small leaky spot. The house comes with two acres of land, which really can't depreciate in value - regardless of what happens to the house. My parents had bought a house in similar condition back in 1973, and they nursed it back to health and still live in it happily today. So they're pretty knowledgeable about restoring old damaged farmhouses, and they felt that despite the extensive problems, it was still a great bargain, and basically they felt that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, a result of the crazy economy and messed-up real estate market. Of course we could find other cheap houses to restore, but we'd never find another one this cheap.

So they offered us... if we were interested... to BUY the place and we could throw ourselves into restoring it and pay them back.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Judy, of course, was completely infatuated with the place too, and overflowing with ideas and excitement! Richard was cautious and warned that we had better understand what a huge project we'd be getting into.

When we originally showed them the pictures and asked them if they wanted to stop by and visit the house, we had expected that they would visit the place and say "Oh, gosh, it's so sad but that house is a total disaster and there's no way it could be saved." I really didn't expect anything to come from their visit - I just figured it would be an interesting learning experience for everyone. And of course I never would've imagined that they would offer to buy it themselves! So we were REALLY surprised to hear their offer! We spent the whole weekend talking it over, alternating between giddy excitement and thinking "this is such a crazy idea, we can't even seriously consider it." We talked a lot with my parents about the unbelievably huge amount of back-breaking work, endless time, blood sweat and tears, and money that it would cost to get the house up to basic living standards. We talked about the fact that buying this house would mean we wouldn't have time or money to travel again for five or ten years, we might never get to Thailand or Japan, we'd be basically camping out in this shell of a house for the first few months (or years?) and we'd be isolated and completely swamped with work for at least five or ten years.

But we also talked about how we'd always dreamed of this, we talked about growing a big garden and making jams and pickles at the end of the summer, having goats and chickens one day, having a giant yard for our dogs to run free. We looked at prices for those underground dog fences and we looked at prices for used cars and new furnaces. We talked about all the amazing things we could do with so much space. How we hoped friends would come visit us in the summer and keep us company!

Yesterday everyone was headed over to Intervale so they stopped by the house again and Amy was kind enough to bring her video camera and tape some footage of the neighborhood and walking around the house, both inside and out. It's been amazing to watch her videos, it's the closest thing to being there. The whole place feels like one of those places that I'd drive past and think "wow, how can that place be so abandoned? what's the story there?" I always used to notice places like this and want to stop and explore, poke around, try the door and go inside. I love to sneak in to abandoned places and imagine the history of the place, imagine myself camping out in there, cleaning it up and making it my own. I'm pretty sure that no house is as compelling and enticing to me as an interesting abandoned place.

Thanks to Google Maps, we've studied pictures of the house from the street and aerial photos of the property from above, as well as street-views of the entire neighborhood and some aerial perspective on where it's located in the state.

The location is in southern Maine, near the border with New Hampshire. About 30 minutes from my parents' house in Gorham; one hour from Portland; 45 minutes from the ocean at Old Orchard beach; 1 hour from our family cabin in the white mountains; 2.5 hours from Boston; 6 hours from New York (probably more with traffic).

So... of course, after heavy deliberations we decided to go for it! Mike was completely convinced pretty early on, but it took me a whole weekend of heavy thinking before I decided we should go for it! Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? We had to act fast because we knew that at the super-cheap price, there were lots of other interested buyers scoping the place out. I can't believe we just made such a huge decision. It was kind of the same when we moved to Argentina - very sudden! But this feels even bigger, and even more sudden. The craziest thing is that I CAN'T GO SEE THE HOUSE! I won't be able to see it for another 4 months! Judy and Richard will be looking after the place over the winter, draining the pipes, stretching new tarps over the broken roof, and getting an electrician in to get some basic wiring set up. They honestly sound really excited about this, just as excited as we are! We won't be able to see the place until March. We're thinking if all goes ahead as planned, we'll move in with Judy and Richard at first and stay with them while looking for work and going over to Limington to work on the house whenever we can. By the beginning of June we're hoping to have at least a few rooms habitable so we can move in. We'll hope to get a furnace installed over the summer so we'll be ready when the fall comes. We'll plan to close off a few core rooms on the first floor and live in just those few rooms for the first winter, so we don't have to heat the whole house. It's so unbelievable that now we're not just moving back to Maine, we're moving back to our new house and this crazy epic construction project. What a lot of changes. I can't believe this is all going on - I can't sleep at night, I'm lying awake imagining our new house! And imagining all the work this is going to take, yikes. And wondering if it will even go through - these things often seem to go awry at the very last minute. So... we'll see!

going home

2009-10-15T20:44:00.007-03:00

so... yes, we are finally making plans to move back home! and by home, i don't just mean the united states; we're going back to stay at my childhood home in Maine, with my parents, and look for work and our own apartment in the Portland area... hooray!

we'll be flying out of Buenos Aires on March 3rd. Arriving in Boston on March 4th.
but first mike's going to quit his job and we're planning to travel around south america for a month or two! of course I'm sad to leave argentina - but very excited for all that is to come.

this is our tentative plan:

December 11th: Mike's last day at work
then we'll have two weeks to pack and sell everything we own!
December 29th: Andrew & Vickie coming to visit
then we'll go travel somewhere with A&V - we're thinking maybe go to the beach near Valparaiso, Chile, or maybe head north towards Tucuman or Salta (in the North of Argentina). We'll definitely find somewhere beautiful and interesting to spend some quality time with them, we're totally excited for the visit! Then maybe we'll continue northward towards Bolivia, after they head back home. So we'll spend January and maybe part of February exploring Bolivia and Peru by bus. We want to try and do lots of hiking. We're thinking we might end up avoiding Machu Picchu because it's SO touristy and expensive - there are lots of other amazing Incan ruins and beautiful hiking around the same area - this article about Choquequirao really piqued our interest!
At this point our trip plans are totally up in the air, we've done a ton of research but haven't managed to figure out exactly what we want to do. We are totally open to suggestions if anybody has ideas about great stuff to do (on a small budget) in Peru and Bolivia!!! I think to some extent we will enjoy the freedom of having more time and just figuring stuff out as we go along, depending on weather or what we feel like doing or what we hear from fellow travelers we meet along the way. Our biggest concern is that January and February are rainy season in Peru and Bolivia, so that would make the going a bit harder. Supposedly there can be serious problems with muddy, impassable roads and even mudslides in Bolivia, but there's also the chance that it will be totally fine, so we'll see... Otherwise, there's just a TON of stuff we really want to do and not enough time or money to do all of it. But I'm sure it will be awesome and exciting, no matter where we end up...
we're hopefully going to have some friends staying at our house in Buenos Aires while we're gone, taking care of the dogs and keeping an eye on the place for us.
then... sometime in the beginning or middle of February we should get back to Buenos Aires to pick up our dogs and suitcases and say goodbye. And then...
March 3: fly back to the USA! we'll arrive in Boston in the morning on March 4th.

I can't believe we're really doing this - when Mike first mentioned that he wanted to go back, I thought it might be a passing whim... but a few weeks later it seems to be a real plan, and now we've bought our tickets so it's definitely on. I'm sad about leaving behind Argentina and all our friends here, and there are tons of things that I'm sorry we haven't had time to do... but we're also totally excited about starting the next chapter in Maine, it's always irresistibly exciting to think about what the future might bring. We really have no idea. But for sure the move to Maine will mean spending lots more time with my family, and getting to do lots more outdoorsy and nature stuff, hiking and beaches and all that good stuff. Dogs running free in the fields instead of cooped up in an apartment.

So for now, I'm trying to focus on making the most of the time we've got left here- spending time with friends, spending some good hours making stuff in my studio, going out to see all the museums and places that we've always wanted to check out but somehow never got around to visiting.

Trimarchi

2009-10-15T18:27:00.026-03:00

man, I have been totally crazy these past few weeks, working on this and that and the other. Teaching, freelance work, endless errands, chores, etc. It all kind of blurs together. Except for one awesome thing that I did the other weekend: I joined my friends Tyler and Flavia of Nomad Ink for a trip to Mar del Plata, Argentina to attend the 8th annual Trimarchi design conference (TMDG for short).

Alex Trochut presenting at TMDG

It was awesome, Tyler and Flavia really took me under their wing and made me feel like part of the family. I got to help out with the Cross-Cultural Design Workshop that they presented, and they introduced me to about a million exciting and talented designers. They're based out of Curitiba, Brazil - and they introduced me to lots of other interesting Brazilian designers, such as their friends from Colletivo, who were one of the major presenters at the conference. Colletivo's presentation was really impressive and they were all totally nice and fun in person.

work by Brazilian design studio Colletivo

The whole trip was totally fun and a bit of sensory overload with so many interesting things to do and see and learn about.
A million thanks to Tyler and Flavia for really making it an awesome weekend!

Tyler and Flavia, aka Nomad Ink

Nomad Ink's Cross-Cultural Design Workshop

Atypica booth, Trimarchi

warm afternoon on the beach, Mar del Plata

Carmelo, Uruguay

2009-09-19T20:06:00.016-03:00

Went to Carmelo, Uruguay for the whole day on Sunday. I have to leave the country every few months, because I'm not a legal resident of Argentina. I just have to cross the border and then come back again. I usually just go across the river to Uruguay for a day. This time I went alone, and it was my first time visiting Carmelo. I like traveling by myself every now and then. I just walked around all day and sat around under trees, reading and drawing pictures.

Carmelo is a quiet, small-time tourist town on the wide brown Río de la Plata. It has a sandy river beach and a few hotels. I imagine it gets a little busy with Argentine and Uruguayan tourists in the hottest months of the summer, but it's early spring now, everything was pretty empty. One one side is the town, lots of cobblestone streets and typical one-story houses, lots of great art deco architectural details and great old signage. There are a handful of old hotels and nice old theatre buildings.

There's a central plaza with a church and a few businesses, two restaurants and the deserted Club Uruguay. Across the bridge, there's more grass and trees, horses and goats grazing in peoples' yards, a few boat clubs and if you walk about 20 minutes you get to the beach, it's in a big park with campsites and a few desolate-looking beachside restaurant type places. Everyone here seems to be riding a little motor scooter, I think if I came back again I would totally look into renting a scooter too.

I left home before dawn to catch a train out to Tigre, and then in Tigre I caught a ferry, it's a three-hour ride out through the delta and across the river to Carmelo. Stayed there all day and then caught the 8:00 ferry home, got into Tigre around 10:45 and then finally got home around midnight. Long day. But a nice one.

back to school / time zones

2009-09-01T13:08:00.007-03:00

I'm about to start teaching classes again! Last semester I taught an Intro to Typography course at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco! (via their online BFA/MFA program) and this semester I'll be teaching two classes, both Intro to Typography, one for undergraduates and one for graduate students. I'm excited!! I'm trying to do my preparatory work and plan the semester, get everything organized and sorted out before the students log in for their first day of school.

As part of my preparation I'm trying to sort out how many time changes we'll go through in the coming semester, and it's a lot! For September and part of October, BsAs is 4 hours ahead of San Francisco (1 hour ahead of New York). Then Argentina starts Daylight Savings Time sometime in October (not sure when. it's a controversial political issue here and I think politicians are still arguing about the date), so then BsAs is 5 hours ahead of San Fran. Then later in the month, Daylight Savings Time will end in the Northern Hemisphere, so then BsAs is 6 hours ahead of San Francisco. Then there's the eternal question of whether Argentina might end up canceling daylight savings time after all... because Argentina is just kind of flaky like that.

Honestly...? UGH. f*#% Time in general and Daylight Savings Time in particular.

Anyway - excited to be starting classes soon!

veranito

2009-09-01T12:41:00.007-03:00

It's suddenly warm out! It was just winter last week and now it's crazy hot and sweaty outside. I think I have seasonal whiplash. I was inside, doors closed, heat on, wearing several sweaters just a few days ago and now it's shorts weather, I've got all the windows open and I've even been trying to go out and work on the terrace in the afternoons. The jasmine vines out there are blooming like mad and the smell is intoxicating. A friend told us that there's a name for this early hot weather, it comes every year and it's called "El Veranito de San Juan." It's like "Indian Summer" but the opposite. After El Veranito de San Juan, there'll be crazy rain storms on or about August 30th ("Tormentas de Santa Rosa") and then it'll get cold again before it becomes spring/summer for real.

Anyway, the beautiful weather is making me feel SO HAPPY and excited about life and a bit manic! I'm also a little stressed with a lot of work, but I took the morning off on Saturday to get chores done and do fun springy stuff. Woke up at 8:00 am!! on a Saturday! and we hopped on our bikes and rode to Chacarita, where we stopped at our new favorite bakery and got some crusty bread plus some amazing almond croissants and pain-au-chocolat. Next stop, El Galpon, where we drank a cup of coffee and a big glass of orange-raspberry juice on the front bench, basking in the warm and glorious sunshine... then headed inside to stock up on farm-fresh veggies, cheese, eggs, smoked ham, etc! Laden down with beautiful produce, we raced back home and dropped off the groceries, picked up the dogs and took them over to the vet for bathing (yes, our vet washes dogs!) ... then headed over to Av. Santa Fe to search for some kind of improvised compost container. We've been wanting to do composting on our terrace for ever, but we've never had a good container. Now that it's warm out, we've bought a few plants and we're starting to trick out our garden for the coming summer! We settled on a big blue plastic laundry hamper which is kind of ugly but it was the cheapest thing we could think of. I hope it'll work! Came back home, picked up the soft, clean dogs and spent a few happy hours on the terrace planting stuff! We now have tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, peppers, rosemary, thyme, lavender, cilantro, and some lovely flowers underway in our container garden.

We drank mint iced tea and listened to stories and songs from Townes Van Zandt while planting and digging around in the dirt. Dogs rolled in dirt to get all the "clean" off. Ate some tasty snacks and sandwiches with our plunder from the farmer's market. Good times.

a(n incomplete) designer's guide to buenos aires

2009-08-10T22:07:00.008-03:00

every now and then friends ask me about art-and-design-related stuff to do and things to see in Buenos Aires. It's fun answering this question; the city is bountiful of eye candy. I've been sticking together a rough and of course incomplete list of memorable places and things to suggest to like-minded design enthusiasts, here's what i've got so far:

DESIGN SHOPS:

Papelera Palermo = Palermo Soho. beautiful space selling handmade and hand-printed papers, notebooks, art books, etc... retail store at Honduras 4945. they also have a workshop where they give classes (and make most of the stuff sold in the shop) at Cabrera 5227

CouCou = gurruchaga 1783. Palermo Soho. very cute little shop that carries lots of fun objects made by independent designers: home goods, stationery, jewelry, lots of cute tote-bags, baby clothes, etc. The owner Emi is very nice and friendly! She has a great eye, the store always looks super cute and she has a wonderful selection of interesting things!

Fabrolab = Nicaragua 4677. Palermo Soho. big space with some of everything.

Calma Chicha = Honduras 4925. Palermo. home & interior stuff, modern poppy vibe. i think they specialize in argentine-made goods.

Pic Nic = Nicaragua 6080. Palermo Hollywood. patterned wallpaper, pillows, etc.

Cualquier Verdura = Humberto 1º 517. San Telmo. a beautiful house where everything is for sale.

Wussman = Venezuela 570. San Telmo. art gallery in the front and a wonderful stationery shop with fine papers and gifts and a letterpress printing operation in the back and an art-books-store downstairs.

El Mercado de las Pulgas = Niceto Vega y Dorrego. Palermo Hollywood. Flea market with lots of modern home stuff.

La Pasionaria = Godoy Cruz 1541. Palermo Soho. wonderful warehouse filled with a jumble of vintage 20th century objects, , Palermo Soho. (open 4pm-8pm mon-fri, 11-8 sat)

Canasta = Delgado 1235. Colegiales. a tiny little gallery/bookstore/shop. minimal, eclectic and cute. open tues-sat 2pm-7pm.

CLOTHING:

Lupe = El Salvador 4657, Palermo Soho

and on the same block, Rapsodia. El Salvador 4757, Palermo Soho

AY Not Dead = Soler 4193, Palermo Soho

Pesqueria = armenia 1493. Palermo Soho.

Juana de Arco = El Salvador 4762. Palermo Soho.

Objeto = gurruchaga 1335. Palermo Soho.

Tramando = Rodriquez Peña 1973. Recoleta. interesting textiles and clothing by designer Martin Churba.

DAM = Honduras 4775. Palermo Soho. wacky stuff.

CAFES / RESTAURANTS / etc

Lepi Boulangerie = Roseti 1769. Chacarita. Cute bakery.

Oui Oui = Nicaragua 6068. Palermo Hollywood. coffee shop, bakery, café

Arevalito = Arevalo 1478. Palermo Hollywood. Delicious, filling, homey vegetarian café. Good coffee too. And they serve food all day long (many other BsAs restaurants close down between 2pm and 8pm which often causes visiting yankees to become hungry and desperate during these hours!)

Olsen = Gorriti 5870. Palermo Hollywood. lofty scandinavian restaurant, good brunch and impressive design (from the menus to the plates to the architecture of the restaurant itself)

Milion = Parana 1048. Recoleta. Cool, fancy bar/restaurant in a converted mansion. It’s a beautiful space. It’s always nice to have a mojito in the upstairs bar. (the bar-top is glowing alabaster!)

Cusic = El Salvador 6016. Palermo Hollywood. Cute, quiet café with two nice gardens.

Home Hotel = Honduras 5860. really cute boutique hotel with a nice bar/restaurant in the back, lovely view of the garden and pool from the café, i think in nice weather you can eat in the garden. It’s a great spot for brunches or afternoon tea. They have different cool wallpaper in each room, it’s worth taking a peek around. And they have a wonderful spa if you want to drop a bit of cash on a massage or a day of pampering.

La Catedral = Sarmiento 4006 (corner of Medrano). Almagro. Scruffy, dark & atmospheric tango bar, upstairs in an immense dusty warehouse.

COFFEE SHOPS & BOOKSTORES etc

Eterna Cadencia = Honduras 5574. Palermo Hollywood.a beautiful space, bookstore and cafe.

El Boutique del Libro = Thames 1762. Palermo Soho. another cozy bookstore/cafe. A great place to take a break from wandering around Palermo, or to bring your laptop and get some work done while you drink coffee.

Helena = Nicaragua 4816. Palermo Soho. Cute coffee shop (no books)

Ateneo Grand Splendid = Santa Fe 1860. Recoleta. This is a really impressive bookstore, converted from an old movie theater, and the café is located on the stage!

ART & GALLERIES

Espacio Fundación Telefonica = Arenales 1540. Recoleta. Arts foundation with exhibitions in gallery spaces, also an extensive library of art books, workshops, events, etc.

Fundacion PROA = Av. Pedro de Mendoza 1929. La Boca. Contemporary arts museum & gallery space

Hollywood in Cambodia = Thames 1885. Palermo Soho. Graffiti art gallery and bar. Open 5pm – 9pm

Jardin Oculto = Venezuela 926. San Telmo. Art gallery

713 ARTE CONTEMPORANEO = Defensa 713. San Telmo. Art gallery.
http://www.arte713.com

Centro Cultural Borges / Galerias Pacifico = Viamonte esquina San Martín. Centro. art museum (CC Borges) is located upstairs from a very luxe shopping mall (Galerias Pacifico) in a beautiful old building.

MISC:

Graffiti Mundo tour = sounds like fun! It’s a tour of walls, galleries and studios to learn about different artists in the Buenos aires graffiti scene.

A FEW INTERESTING LOCAL DESIGNERS AND ARTISTS:

KOMware

Ana Laura Perez

Patricia Tewel

Lala Ladcani

Marina de Caro (Bola de Nieve)

http://www.proyectopanda.com.ar/

Cristian Turdera

korean food!

2009-07-27T11:26:00.006-03:00

For years we've been talking about going out to Flores (a slightly-off-the-beaten-track barrio of Buenos Aires) and searching for Korean food. Apparently there's been a Korean community in Flores for decades, but it isn't a touristy destination like Chinatown; it's totally the opposite. Most of the restaurants are not well marked, most of the neighborhood's signage is only in Korean, and we heard that outsiders are not overly welcome and restaurant owners are reluctant to unlock their doors for non-Koreans (in Buenos Aires most restaurants are locked and you have to ring a doorbell to be let in). Apparently there is a notoriously impoverished and dangerous shanty-town right next to the Korean neighborhood, which means it's not the safest area to go wandering around aimlessly. Additionally, it's a long-ish trip to get out there and we didn't even know exactly where to go, so it's been hard to get motivated to make the trip out there, knowing that we might never find a restaurant, or might get turned away hungry. Then a few weeks ago my friend Heather mentioned she'd had a good meal in Koreatown and gave me some directions for how to get there.

So, Saturday morning we did a bit of online research (see helpful links below) and we set out with high hopes and only a bit of apprehension. It turned out to be an easy and DELICIOUS trip! We took the A line of the subte (blue line) out to the end of the line, the Carabobo stop. We walked down Carabobo towards the autopista 25 de Mayo and crossed under the highway, and soon started seeing signs in Korean and a few restaurants with their doors open! The neighborhood was definitely quiet and felt kind of deserted, but there were delicious lunchtime smells wafting about. We ended up at Han Gu Kuan, 2135 Saraza just around the corner from Carabobo. The old guy at the door gave us a bit of stink-eye (perhaps because we arrived at 2:00, which is a bit late for lunchtime) but he let us in, and the friendly waiter immediately started bringing us food! They have a set menu, which makes it easy, no decisions to make! We started out with a bowl of medium-spicy soup with tofu, then came a plate of deep-fried sweet potatoes, a small iceberg-lettuce salad, a platter of delicious rice noodles with beef and shredded veggies, and the usual huge array of small dishes with kimchi and Korean tapas-style snacks: eggy potato salad, fried fish, spicy bean sprouts, VERY spicy watercress salad, mysterious fishy things and oniony things and savory things and spicy things, plus a large bowl of cold, cloudy liquid with slices of giant-radish-like things in it. I probably should know what that was but I have no idea. THEN arrived the MOUNTAIN of marinated beef! I honestly think they gave us lunch for 4 people, even though we were just two. There was SO much food and a WEALTH of beef. They put a bucket of hot coals into our tabletop grill and we spread our own raw beef strips on there and it was SO DELICIOUS! the other Korean restaurants we've been to in Buenos Aires gave small portions of beef Gulgogi and we always leave wanting more beef! This time it was difficult to finish all the beef, but it was so so so delicious we managed to eat it all. Finally, they brought a few mandarin oranges for dessert. All this, along with a half-liter of Quilmes beer and a huge bottle of Sprite, turned out to cost $100 pesos even. Not terribly cheap, but totally worth it. We kind of had the feeling that we got the old "Gringo Tax" (that is, the same meal would've cost less if we were locals!) but it was still a great deal. I really want to go back again, like, tomorrow! I could totally see myself going back every single weekend, it was soooooooo good. Definitely even better than Bi-Won, which was previously our favorite Korean place in Buenos Aires.

here are a few relevant links we came across:
http://randompanda.blogspot.com/2008/08/korea-town-barrio-coreano.html
http://www.saltshaker.net/20060128/protection-of-the-cabbage
http://www.tableconversation.com/2008/09/korean-food-in.html

We were advised that Avenida Castañares is the avenue that divides the Barrio Coreano from the nearby villa, so one might want to think twice before wandering further in this direction.

knitting a blanket.

2009-07-24T16:23:00.002-03:00

here's the progress on my blanket so far:

i'm thinking about dropping out the palest pink color, and I'm adding in a dark brown color, and more red squares.

cooking class

2009-07-24T16:16:00.006-03:00

for my birthday present, Mike gave me a vietnamese cooking class! it was fun and delicious!! we made sweet potato fritters, spicy sweet dipping sauce, pho (that's the delicious beef noodle soup), and coconut sticky rice.

YUM. I will definitely use these recipes in the future!

winter at home

2009-07-12T20:06:00.012-03:00

it's cold here! while all my northern-hemisphere friends are hooting and hollering about their sweaty carefree summers, we're bundled up in sweaters, hovering over the gas heater and staying indoors, snuggling with the pups to keep warm. we did a ton of traveling during the summer and fall, and now we've used up all of our vacation time and travel budget so we'll be at home for the rest of the year, and right now it feels nice to be at home, nesting and working in the studio and knitting up a storm. I'm trying to knit a blanket to keep me warm on the couch, hopefully I might even finish it before summer comes! aside from knitting and watching tons of movies, these are fun things we've been up to recently:

• using my handsome new red silicone(!) mini-muffin tins to bake cupcakes and muffins. apple-carrot-chocolate chip muffins were the best so far.

• discovered a cute place called La Castorera right around the corner from our house (thank you Dirk for bringing us there), it's an upstairs space with a nice old-time vibe in the bar and they have bands and music and project movies on Wednesdays, I hope we'll be back there again soon.

• started yoga classes. they're small classes with a nice teacher named Ines who lives in our neighborhood. we use a lot of equipment: pillows and nylon straps and wood blocks and stuff. in that aspect it's different from any other yoga classes I've taken before, but we also did lots of normal yoga stuff. seems great so far, I love being in a small class and getting more personal instruction.

• had a fun dinner with Annie & Matt and friends at a cute and very informal "closed-door restaurant" in Almagro called "Donde Me Trajiste" (where have you brought me?). The food was really not exciting but the whole experience is fun, it's like being invited to dinner at a friend's house, the hosts serve you dinner in their own home. It's a pretty, historic PH house with a bit of a hippie onda, and they perform live music for you while you eat. The "house band" did some fun tango music and later a solo artist played some traditional Argentine folklorico music. Also they served us a delicious mystery cocktail which had pear and basil in it, appropriately called "Que le pusiste?" (what did you put in it?) because they wouldn't reveal what else was in it.

• had a great bike-riding Saturday, rode over to Chacarita and bought tons of fresh veggies & super awesome cheeses at the organic farmer's market El Galpon and then took a break at home, warmed up and did a bit of knitting, then biked over to MALBA, the modern art museum, and looked at the art. Mike had never been to MALBA before! they had a good exhibit of Argentine art from the 1990's, I liked a lot of the work although it did seem weird (given the title of the show) that most of the pieces I liked were made in 2003-2008. Had submarinos (hot milk with a bar of chocolate: you drop the chocolate in and mix it up until it turns into hot chocolate) and pain-au-chocolat and a game of cards in the museum cafe. Perplexingly, a museum guard knocked on the glass wall and scolded us for playing cards in the museum cafe! wtf? we ignored him and kept playing until our submarinos were gone and biked back home, then cooked a delicious pot of hot & sour soup with our farmers-market veggies.

• knitting and more knitting. i made this hat for a craft swap, and now i am working on a slightly-more-subdued version of this blanket (using solid-colored blocks rather than striped blocks, if that makes any sense). I'll upload a picture soon.

• I've been making some new designs for wedding invitations. I've gotten lots of inquiries about custom work for weddings, but I find that mostly people like to "shop" from a variety of available options, rather than inventing something totally new from scratch. So I'm putting together a repertoire of wedding invitations, I'll keep adding more as I have time.

• starting a new website/blog to post pattern and textile designs. This is still in the idea phase, and it's a collaborative project with my friend Julia. the idea is we'll both post pattern/textile designs, sketches, etc. For years I've been wanting to assemble/develop a real portfolio of textile and repeat designs so hopefully this will be an incentive to start pulling them together and developing more work in this vein. I'll post a link as soon as we have something to share!

this is nice

2009-06-28T12:20:00.004-03:00

it's a crayon ponyfish!

B R A Z I L !

2009-06-19T15:28:00.021-03:00

I've been kind of obsessed with visiting Brazil since about 10 minutes into my first listen to an Astrud Gilberto record in college. 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 lived up to my great expectations.

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.

Crispy pizza and much-needed drinks were ordered, and we 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.

We stayed at a place called Sagu Mini-Resort. They picked us up at the main dock and we had a 5-minute boat ride over there. It is a totally cute and kinda fancy little place, a few cabañas and a very nice restaurant.

We spent the rest of Sunday exploring Abraao, the island's only real town. We waded in the water (it's wintertime so the water is not very warm, but it's Brazil so it's not very cold either) and wandered down a string of small beaches, had caipirinhas on the beach while the sun went down. We had to wander home in the dark, as the sun sets very early (like 6pm!) and we'd forgotten our flashlight. We had a great dinner in the restaurant at Sagu, I've forgotten the name but it was excellent. I had linguini with scallops and shrimp and just the right amount of garlic, which was awesome, and I am very picky about pasta.

On Monday we took a hike through the jungle that covers most of the island, out to the famous Praia Lopes Mendes beach. It was steep going and the trails were made out of packed clay, which was pretty slippery on the hills!

The temperature was a bit cool in the shade of the jungle, and then sometimes the trail would come out onto a little beach and get warmed up in the sun.

At the top of the mountain the foliage opened up for a minute and we had spectacular views across the bay, and we could see the town of Abraao and a few small beaches around the island below us.

At the top of another hill, we met a friendly family of monkeys!

luckily we had a few bananas in our pack, so we shared them with these cute little guys. We think they were marmosets. Their fur was incredibly soft, but their little hands grabbed my fingers so tightly it startled me. At first they were wary of us, but as soon as they tasted our bananas they started calling all their friends and family over, and soon we were surrounded by a bajillion curious monkeys.

We hiked for three or four hours, including a stop to drink freshly squeezed fruit juice on the beach.

When we finally arrived at THE Beach, it was indeed spectacular.

Praia Lopes Mendes is world-famous for its beauty! but because it's so remote (and it's winter), there were only eight or ten other swimmers and surfers dotted around the beach. Unlike the island's other beaches, the sand was perfectly white and incredibly fine and soft. Dramatic mountains looming just beside the beach:

The sun was warm, it was perfect swimming weather and we stayed in the water until we were exhausted.

The waves were pretty big and fun to play in, and I saw the most AMAZING thing: a giant wave about to crash over my head, and in the thinnest crest of the wave, above me, a big silver fish swimming along the crest of the wave, silhouetted in the sunlight, as it broke over me! Nobody else saw it though, he disappeared after this one magical moment.

When the sun started to get low, we had to trot back through the jungle to another beach where we caught the last ferry back to Abraao.

We stopped at a beach shack for a caipirinha on our way home, and then we had another caipirinha, and then they fired up the barbecue and started grilling skewers of beef and fish and giant prawns, and we never made it home to change out of our sandy bathing suits, we just kept drinking caipirinhas and feasting on salads and grilled meat and fish as the moon rose over the beach, then finally stumbled down the beach and home to bed.

We'd originally thought we might head back to Rio on Tuesday to see more of the city, but once tuesday arrived, of course we didn't want to leave yet. We caught a boat out of Abraao to do a snorkeling adventure at Laguna Azul, they handed us flippers and goggles and herded us on a little boat full of tourists. They took us to three different snorkeling spots; the day was overcast and there was a chilly breeze so it was really hard to get into the water, I just kept wanting to sit on the boat and huddle under my towel, but thankfully, at the final (and best) spot, I made the chilly plunge. Mike is not wimpy about the cold, so he was splashing around exploring everywhere and kept shouting "come over here you have to see this!"

I'd never been snorkeling before, and never seen a coral reef before, and honestly despite being a confident swimmer, deep water gives me the heebie-jeebies. It was hard to get used to the snorkel thing and I kept getting mouthfuls of salty water when I wanted lungfuls of air. But Mike kept saying "come on over here, I'll show you, I'll give you a tour of the reef, it is so awesome, you have to come see!" and soon I started to get used to breathing air while my face is in the water. While the world above water was grey and chilly, the underwater world was a spectacular and crazy fantasy waterscape of freaky beautiful fishes and bulging coral formations and undulating, pulsating seaweedy looking things that might have been flora or might have been fauna, I don't even know. There was a loooong skinny fish and there was a fabulous fish with feathery wings, there was a camouflage fish that looked like a swimming rock, translucent fishes and zillions of stripey black-and-yellow fish, and who knows what else. When I finally surfaced and looked back, I couldn't see the boat anymore and I was all "O god where are we, oh no! it looks like it's going to rain, we better hurry back!" and then I stuck my face back in the water and I was all "WHOA, COOL" and forgot about going home. I was so surprised that a whole hour had flown by when the boat tooted its horn to call us back. I so wish I had an underwater camera to take pictures of all that.

Then they took us to a cantina on a beach somewhere and we got this ridiculously huge black cauldron of stewed garlicky shrimp and it was awesome.

After lunch, back to Abraao, rushed back to our rooms and packed everything in a hurry and hustled onto the last boat out of town.

We got back to Rio at 9 or 10 at night, had an amazing churrascuro buffet in Ipanema (I didn't even eat any beef, the salad bar was so spectacular, and they had amazing pasta and sushi and seafood, and I just want to eat that every night for the rest of my life. Food in Brazil is so good!) and then after a good night's sleep we flew home first thing in the morning. I want to go back already!

Cesaria Evora

2009-06-04T11:27:00.006-03:00

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

more songs here.

usa part four: new york

2009-06-02T16:58:00.011-03:00

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

2009-06-02T16:57:00.017-03:00

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!

2009-06-01T17:32:00.013-03:00

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

2009-05-05T14:55:00.033-03:00

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!

2009-05-05T14:50:00.014-03:00

April 2009: 6 days in the deep south of Argentina. Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, El Calafate, Glaciar Perito Moreno, El Chalten, Cerro Fitz Roy...

Day 1: it took us most of the day to get from Buenos Aires to El Calafate; we finally arrived at our hostel around 4:00 and then explored El Calafate. It's a lot like Bariloche or any other Argentine touristy town; lots of fake-alpine architecture and chocolate shops and souvenirs. The view from our hostel was awesome, out over Lago Argentino to the mountains beyond.

Day 2: a visit to Perito Moreno Glacier and Parque Nacional Los Glaciares. We woke up bright & early and had a scenic two-hour bus ride through foothills and pastures and lakes, out from El Calafate to get to the park.

There's an impressive series of boardwalks and platforms from which to admire the front edge of the glacier, watch little icebergs calving off from the icy mass and crashing into the lake below.

this ice is 400 years old! These spires of ice began as humid air moving east over the Pacific ocean and over Chile they condensed to clouds and then over the Andes they became snowflakes which fell on the Patagonian continental ice field and slowly made their way down to Argentina a few hundred years later. This is one of the only glaciers in the world that's not receding. Between the melting and the giant icebergs constantly crumbling off the front end, it's not really advancing either, but it's more or less holding its own and neither advancing nor retreating.

After an hour or two of admiring the glacial action, we went to the tourist center and had a hot chocolate, then headed out for our hike across the glacier! We took a boat across the lake, then hiked along the lakeshore and up alongside the edge of the glacier.

Our herd of tourists split into smaller groups and we all strapped on crampons over our boots and gingerly marched, single-file, up onto the side of the glacier. From across the lake you see how massively wide it is, but from this vantage you realize how tall it is, like a giant ice mountain and all of the climbers are little tiny ants on its side.

The ice was all pebbly, just like crushed ice. Every now and then we came across crevasses where you could see deep into the ice, and it glows bright blue inside. The sun was surprisingly warm and there were rivers and lakes of melted glacier-water running all over the place.

Our guide told us to fill up our water bottles and drink from the puddles, it's the purest water in the world! With the crampons it was really easy to climb up and down the ice. We had sweet views of the lake and mountains from atop the glacier. After clambering around for a while, we arrived at a little wooden chest nestled inbetween two great ice-drifts. Inside: a pile of hand-made chocolates, a bottle of whiskey and a dozen glasses; the guide scooped up glasses full of glacier ice and we each had a whiskey on the rocks and a tasty chocolate.

We were sleepy on the bus ride back to El Calafate but I was glad I stayed awake because it was the best colored sunset I have ever seen.

Day 3: bus ride to El Chalten and an afternoon hike to Laguna Capri brings us face-to-face with the mighty Cerro Fitz Roy.

Day 4: Blustery buckets of rain. Stayed inside the hostel knitting a scarf and cooked a pot of pea soup.

Day 5: hiked the Laguna Torre trail, a long but easy trail through amazingly bright fall foliage, and at the end a spectacular view of the laguna, Glaciar Torre, and the cloud-covered Cerro Torre. Snow flurry at the summit.

Day 6: bus back to El Calafate, had a few hours to relax in Calafate and then flew back home to Buenos Aires.

here are more pictures!!!

I am going here

2009-04-08T00:52:00.002-03:00

tomorrow!! gotta go pack now.

i am obsessed with Roisin Murphy

2009-04-08T00:28:00.004-03:00

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.

The Puppy!

2009-03-29T13:30:00.013-03:00

oh, this post is long overdue. I've just been so busy with the new puppy that it's been hard to find time to write about her! On December 6th, Mike and I strolled over to Parque Las Heras to "look at" the rescued dogs up for adoption because we had begun to think that maybe a new friend would be the perfect cure for Emmy's lonely neurotic anxiety blues.

If you don't know Emmy, she's always been a delicate flower, thrown into fits of desperate anxiety and violent shaking by thunder or rain, passing trucks, cameras, tv, opening the oven door, the entire world outside of our house, the sound of the water heater or the chirping of birds outside the window, to name a tiny fraction of the many daily occurrences that made every day a horrible day for poor Emmylou. After Zviah died she seemed like she had lost her security blanket and she got even more miserable and terrified and anxious and preferred to spend most of her waking hours trembling in a dark closet or shaking under the bed, hyperventilating, her beady little eyes bulging in terror. When she wasn't under the bed she was relentlessly needy. She wouldn't run and play with other dogs outside, she just ran under a bush and hid every time we took her to the park. Everything we tried to do to cheer her up seemed to make her even more afraid. So we started thinking that maybe we should get Emmy a new friend to try and bring a little joy into her days. It seemed like a great idea for her but maybe a questionable idea for us since we are planning to move overseas (back to the usa, that is) within the next few years. So we were just at this "kind of maybe" stage when we decided to stop by this park on a Saturday afternoon, to visit the rescued pets up for adoption and think about our options...

And then we sat at the park ALL day long, snuggling puppies and cooing and playing and cuddling... and then we just could not let go of this puppy and put her back in the cage and say goodbye, so we had to bring her home with us!!! she was just a tiny, sleepy little pup, beige with a black snout, 5 weeks old. She pretended to be polite and affectionate. She weighed 2 kilos. Mike wanted to have a medium/large dog and we thought she looked like she might grow up to be a big one. We could only guess since all the pups are rescued mutts, who knows! When we walked in the house, Emmy ran at us, excited, and then caught sight of the little puppy in my arms and backed away, shaking, and wouldn't come near her. I thought Emmy would be SO excited to meet her new friend but she did not want anything to do with her! It took her about a week to start warming up.

I will have to skip over lots of stories. Too much to type. It took a few weeks for the new puppy to be named, we were indecisive and made a list of cute names and thought about it for a while and Inga was the one that stuck. I think Inga was a good choice, it fits. Inga peed and pooped all over the house, squealed and screamed constantly, kept us awake all night every night, chewed on everything in sight, chewed on our arms, feet, fingers and toes, bit our noses, and had no manners at all. She was ravenously hungry all the time and once tried to kill me over a bag of doritos. She couldn't go up and down the stairs, she would sit and cry until someone carried her. She viciously massacred our plants and turned plant-pots into excavation sites. She was madly in love with Emmylou and we were madly in love with her. She never really showed much interest in us at all, except for biting us and trying to steal our food. She HATED going for walks and had to be dragged, screaming and fighting, down the street every single time.

Now Inga is 6 months old, basically house-broken, and LOVES walks. She weighs over 20 kilos, she was recently spayed, she has no problem tearing up and down the stairs, she has stopped biting us and humors us with cuddles sometimes, but obviously Emmylou is her one true love and best friend. She still screams and yaps constantly, what is up with that. She screams mostly when she's bored and wants someone to pay attention to her (anyone who has advice about discouraging this behavior, please send it my way).

Emmylou is now just as much in love with Inga as Inga is in love with her. They spend their entire lives snuggling together, biting each other, chasing each other, wrestling and stealing each others' bones. They run carefree at the park, jumping and chasing and shrieking and sprinting and pouncing and wrestling. Emmy still gets afraid and shakes alot and hides under the bed, but I like to think that Inga helps to take her mind off of her worries most of the time and shortens the duration of her terrors when she gets them. Inga likes to bite Emmy a lot more than Emmy likes to be bitten, and I think sometimes Emmy is hiding from Inga. But they are both completely in love with each other. Inga is the most happy-go-lucky, carefree, well-adjusted dog I've ever met. We were worried that Emmy's bizarre anxieties might rub off on Inga but that has not happened at all. Inga is a bold and fearless explorer who loves everything and everyone, except for big dogs that walk up to her in the street. She gets scared of big dogs and when they sniff her she runs away crying with her tail between her legs. We feel like we totally made the right decision to get her as a friend for Emmy and I am still just out of my mind with love for her cute little puppyness and her cute little puppy face. Those eyes!

holy moly! whoopie pies!

2009-03-18T15:06:00.008-03:00

I grew up on whoopie pies and they're one of the top snacks I look forward to eating when I go back to Maine for a visit. (along with lobster rolls and Italians!) I was surprised to find that nobody in New York had ever heard of them... it turned out they were just a Maine thing. Until today, when I read in the New York Times that whoopie pies are suddenly popular all across the country.

"The whoopie pie would probably be Maine’s state dessert, if the state had one." When my out-of-state friends visited came to visit Maine with me, I was always excited to introduce them to whoopie pies but had to remember to explain that you'd better not try to consume a full-sized whoopie pie in one sitting...
Here's the article: New York Times whoopie pie article

more presidential

2009-02-19T09:51:00.003-02:00

i bought this. it was only $8 on etsy. a memento.

FUERA BUSH

2009-02-03T12:29:00.004-02:00

BUSH OUT! word.

watched the inauguration last week (i think it was last week? i've been working too much and losing track of time) and it was truly a great moment. I have been waiting for this day for EIGHT YEARS! as much as I was excited to see Barack Obama inaugurated as president, i have to admit, i was even more excited to see the back side of George W Bush.

WORST. PRESIDENT. EVER. For real.

Goodbye and good riddance and I can only hope that history remembers him as the despicable, idiotic, bumbling, ruinous tyrant that he was.

Ironically, from the expatriate perspective, I think the past eight years of Bush disaster have caused the rest of the world to have more sympathy for American citizens though not the American government. Now that the rest of the world has begun to understand that Americans, too, suffer under the tyranny of an unelected, inept government run wild, I think it's becoming easier for the rest of the world to sympathize and to understand that any given American citizen does not necessarily stand as a surrogate for American government policy. I can't count the number of times we've been asked by taxi drivers or shop-keepers here: "Where are you from? Ohhh, United States? You like Bush?" and we say "NO!" and they say "Yayyy, me neither! nobody likes him, everybody hates him, yay!" and we can have a joyful bonding moment over our shared opinions, before they may or may not give me the ol' gringo discount (that is, a $5 surcharge for being a know-nothing foreigner).

The Prisoner.

2009-01-15T14:08:00.008-02:00

Yesterday actor Patrick McGoohan died. He played Number Six on The Prisoner, an amazing 1960's fantasy spy show set on a beautiful fictional island where everyone wears stripes and pretty hats and pretends that everything is just marvelous even though it's really not. In every episode, the solitary Number Six makes a daring escape attempt, but he never succeeds. I'm not really a tv person but this show is one of my favorite things in the world. Some of my favorite memories from The Brooklyn Years are the nights we all gathered around the projector to watch The Prisoner episodes together.

Someday I will go visit Portmeirion, Wales, where the show was filmed. I'm also a big fan of The Prisoner's typeface, though I don't know what it's called.

AMC has recently posted all of The Prisoner episodes on their website to watch for free!!! and you can also check out The Prisoner fan club.

summer fun!

2009-01-11T20:34:00.007-02:00

Andrew came to town in December! we spent the weekdays exploring Buenos Aires and making fun stuff at the studio, and we squeezed in two little out-of-town trips on the weekends. First weekend, we packed up our tent and bathing suits and headed out to Tigre bright and early on Saturday morning. I love packing for camping, I always forget something important but I love the process, making a little list and packing it all neatly in bags.

Here was our camping list:
tent
sleeping bags
bathing suits
towels (we ended up only bringing one tiny hand-towel to share between the three of us. oops)
deck of cards
flask of whiskey
books to read (Eliza: A Clash of Kings by George RR Martin; Andrew: Dwelling Portably, 1980-1989; Mike: Blood Meridian
candles
matches
chocolate bar
bananas
tin foil
apples
tomatoes
onions
sweet potatoes
cheese
dried pasta
butter
bread
peanut butter
chips
water
beer
cook-pot
forks
sharp knife
plastic bowls and cups
bug spray
sunscreen
shorts
sweater

We took the commuter train up to Tigre and caught a ferry out of Tigre, up the river about an hour into the leafy delta, and got off at an island with a humble little boy-scout-camp type place called IMOS. I believe it's a municipal campground. As soon as we got our tent up, we put on our swimsuits and jumped in the river!!!!! Sweet sweet cool summer river water. Splashing and paddling and somersaults ensued, followed by lazing in the sunshine and beer and card games in the shade. We found sticks and Andrew made a magnificent campfire, I jumped in the river one more time, and we feasted on smoky roasted potatoes and onions and pasta. Went up to the camp building and played a round of pool. Fell asleep to the sound of mosquitoes and cumbia dancing. In the morning it was rainy, we stayed pretty dry in our tent but we didn't stick around to frolic in the river as I had hoped. To get home, you have to go sit at the end of the dock and wait for a ferry-boat to go past, and wave it down. There didn't seem to be any schedule, we just had to go sit out there for what turned out to be a few hours before catching the boat back home.

The following weekend, we took a 1 am bus out of the city, headed for Mar Azul, a tiny little town on the Atlantic coast south of Buenos Aires. We fell asleep and woke up in the small beach city of Villa Gessell at 7 am. Caught a local bus and rode down a dirt road through a string of little beach towns, Mar de las Pampas, Las Gaviotas, and Mar Azul. Last year we'd spent christmas in the same area, in Mar de las Pampas, but we headed for Mar Azul this time because it seemed like a tinier, quieter, more relaxed spot. We had backpacks and sleeping bags but no tent and no idea where we'd be sleeping at night. We took a walk around the campground, then wandered down the main drag checking out the jumble of beach houses. We caught sight of the cutest little tiny A-frame cabins near the beach and we were in luck, the owners happened to be right there and were happy to rent us a cabin for the weekend.

So, we spent christmas sitting on the sand, jumping in the waves, strolling down the beach, dutifully applying and re-applying sunscreen.

This year there were more people on the beach, but it was still far from crowded. The sun was hot and the water was suprisingly warm. There was a strong wind and lots of big big waves and a strong current. And moments of total summer fun and contentment, sitting on the beach and playing in the waves with two of my favorite people in the world. On the last day, we saw two or three orca playing in the waves just a hundred yards out from the beach! We could see their black and white markings as they jumped in and out of the waves.
I really wish we could get back to Mar Azul (or any kind of summer swimming spot) again this summer but it's pretty hard to get around with two dogs and no car...

sneak peek!

2009-01-07T13:00:00.003-02:00

more nice publicity for Morris & Essex...

On Monday Design*Sponge ran a little set of photos of our house. It's part of a weekly series called Sneak Peeks where they show photos of different artists' and designers' homes and spaces. I'm a regular reader of Design*Sponge, it always perks me up to look through Grace's daily picks of interesting and inspiring designs. So I was really honored to be asked to send in pictures of my home!!
It's also exciting because I really totally love this apartment, I feel so much at-home here, it's like a physical manifestation of my colorful, convoluted, cluttered and drafty mental space, I still feel really lucky we found this place!... so I am psyched to be able to show off our fabulous apartment to the world... But most of the interiors they feature are so very clean and tidy and smooth and look like they belong on glossy magazine pages... so I was a little apprehensive about whether our, uh, rustic apartment would fit into the series.
To do the photo shoot, I decided I could really use professional photography help and our friend Stephen put me in contact with his friend Caitlin, who turned out to be very nice and absolutely professional and talented. I made some cute new curtains for the kitchen, bought lots of flowers, Mike and I cleaned the heck out of the apartment. At the last minute, frustrated by a few unsightly objects and stacks of clutter that I couldn't find homes for, I did hide piles of junk into the oven and the bathtub.
In all, it was a ton of fun doing the photo shoot and the pictures came out looking beautiful. Caitlin has a great eye and knows what she's doing.
In truth, the apartment was furnished when we moved in so we aren't really responsible for most of the design decisions here. The only thing that's ours is the art on the walls. It's a little weird reading all the nice comments directed towards me, since most of the credit should go to Adrian and Laura, our landlords who furnished the place with all these fun colorful flea-market odds and ends.

can't keep up!

2008-12-08T18:23:00.001-02:00

Lots of exciting and awesome things have happened in the past few weeks/months, and all of these exciting things have been keeping me very very busy. Too busy to blog! I'd like to go back and write a more detailed entry about each of these things, but for now here's a quick list:
-October: weekend at the beach in Uruguay with Julia and friends.
-November: taking Level 5 spanish course at the University of Buenos Aires aka La UBA
-November: got the worst flu
-November: Amy Sawyer came to visit, yaaayyy!!
-November: 8-day trip to Salta and Tucuman provinces in the north of Argentina
-November: nice mention of Morris & Essex on Design*Sponge, which brought me tons of card orders and wholesale inquiries! i've been working like a sleep-deprived madwoman to fill wholesale orders and keep up with it all. I am my own sweatshop.
-December: adopted a new puppy! we wanted a friend for Emmylou Elbows, who seemed terribly sad and lonely and scared all the time. new puppy is adorable and fearless and nameless. we're thinking of calling her Inga Josefina.

spanish class at La UBA

2008-12-08T18:13:00.013-02:00

in the spring I took Level 5 Spanish at La Universidad de Buenos Aires, more commonly known as La UBA. Level 4 was nice because they had some classes at a branch office in Palermo, much closer to my neighborhood! For Level 5 I had to go all the way downtown to the Centro, the oldest part of the city, to take my class. This part of the University is located in a beautiful, decrepit old building which apparently was once a hotel! here's some not-very-descriptive pictures of the grand central staircase:

La UBA is free to residents of Argentina (not free for foreigners like me!!) and the state of disrepair of the buildings is honestly a little shocking. There are windows boarded over and parts of the building that are blocked off with piles of rubble! Also there is no toilet paper in the bathrooms, you have to bring your own. And sometimes it gets really hard to concentrate when it's 106 degrees and there's no air-conditioning in the cramped classrooms. Anyway, despite the physical appearance, I believe La UBA is academically the most well-respected university in the country? They say the professors aren't paid very well there, but it's an honor to work there, and it means that you are serious about your area of study, and allows you to be in contact with other leading minds. I've heard this from both my spanish teachers and a few Graphic Design professors that I've run into around town. It makes sense in that a university is supposed to be about ideas and community and academic experience, not flashy stupid expensive buildings. But sometimes it's a bummer when I have to pee after class and I forgot to bring my own toilet paper, again.

So anyway, level 5 was mostly Subjunctive. "No creo que vaya mañana" = "I don't think she's going tomorrow" ... or "Es insoportable que haya tanto ruido en la mañana!" = "It's unbearable the noise they make in the morning!" In English we don't really have a separate tense to express doubt/uncertainty/unlikeliness/possibility/opinion/etc but in Spanish we do, and it's called Subjunctive. We also learned how construct ideas such as "If I had a million dollars I would buy thousands of umbrellas" = "Si tuviera un palo verde, compraría miles de paraguas" and say things like "He told me that when you spoke last week you told him that you hated pizza so I didn't make you a pizza today" which is just a combination of estilo indirecto and a few different past tenses and subjunctives, and I've already forgotten how you're supposed to do that.

At a certain point we crossed into some territory that is, like, grammar that you need to know if you want to submit a formal academic paper and you live in Spain, but it's grammar that nobody on the street in Buenos Aires would ever use for any reason, and if you did they would probably laugh. So I feel like I might've reached the end of the line (for now, anyway) as far as my grammar studies. I still make a LOT of mistakes with past tenses and subjunctives and basically everything I've already learned - I definitely need lots of practice and review, I want to keep learning more vocabulary, but I don't think I will tackle any more advanced grammar for the time being. They do offer a spanish-language film appreciation course for advanced students of Spanish as a foreign language, and I'd like to take that one if I ever have time and money! For now my plan is to read novels in Spanish, listen to the radio in Spanish, turn on the TV news in Spanish, read the newspaper in Spanish, and go out and talk to Argentine friends in Spanish!

road trip through Salta

2008-11-27T17:52:00.056-02:00

so much to tell! in November we were graced with a visit from the Fair Amy S, who came all the way from Asheville, North Carolina to enjoy springtime in Buenos Aires. Sadly, I got terrifically sick the night before she came to visit and although I'd been looking forward to her visit with great anticipation, i spent most of the first week whimpering in bed with THE WORST FLU, while Amy patiently hung around waiting for me to feel better and start having some fun.
On Friday afternoon we headed off to find adventure in Salta, a beautiful province in the northwest of Argentina. We traveled by bus, it was a 16-hour overnight ride in a deluxe double-decker sleeper bus. They are pretty comfy buses though the food they serve is always scary.

DAY 1: We arrived in the city of Tucuman (in the province of Tucuman) on Saturday morning and managed to locate an emergency Saturday dentist because Mike had woken up with an infected tooth. After filling our bags with pills and potions for all of our many ailments, we rented a car in Tucuman and drove off into the hills, headed for a small mountain town called Tafi del Valle. We drove up into lush green hills on a small twisting road, climbed switchback turns up jungle-covered cliffs, and crossed a high pass where the jungle opened up into yellow pastures.

We passed a lake on the way into Tafi del Valley, and stopped in town for a break. We'd thought about staying the night in Tafi but decided to keep driving on towards Cafayate.

The land turned from pastures to rocky desert and great fields of cacti. We crossed another high rocky pass and the road climbed back down into valley, crossing dry riverbeds surrounded by cacti and strange trees. We took a detour to visit the Ruins at Quilmes, which was once the site of a fortress city inhabited by the indigenous Quilmes people. The Quilmes people resisted the invasions of both Incas and Spaniards for centuries before they were finally defeated in 1667. The Spanish invaders forced the remaining 2000 Quilmes people to march all the way across Argentina on foot, to a reservation near Buenos Aires, where they eventually died out.

Until recently, these ruins were privately owned, with a hotel and concessions on the grounds, but in the past few years a group of locals claiming ancestral ties to the original Quilmes people have occupied the site and closed down the hotel; now they charge $10 pesos admission and offer tours of the site. Seems like progress to me.
From the ground, the ruins are a maze of stone walls, forming rooms and walkways that climb up the surrounding hills; as we climbed up through the city, we could look back down on the structures and see a striking birds-eye view of the restored ruins.
After Quilmes, we drove on through the same rocky valley terrain and arrived in Cafayate near sunset. We checked into a nice hostel called Ruta 40, near the main plaza.

DAY 2: Wandered around Cafayate, a really beautiful little tourist city with mountains all around and a beautiful pastel cathedral on the main plaza and vineyards all around.

We tried to visit a few different vineyards but found them all closed for Sunday. Stopped for a deluxe lunch and bottle of wine at a fancy inn called Viñas de Cafayate, nestled amongst the vineyards on the edge of town.

In the afternoon we drove out of town on Route 68, into the fabulous red canyons of the windy Quebrada de Cafayate. The road between Salta and Cafayate follows the Rio de la Concha which meanders around and cuts down into the dry, bright red earth.

The landscape is all intense color, with a jumble of wild green near the river, red canyons all around and dark clouds overhead. There are fields of rocks shaped into pillars by the strong winds, and there's one great red cliff with hundreds of tiny parrot holes and parrots swooping all around.

When the road climbed up to a high point and we could look out over the whole expanse of canyons and colors, it looked primeval and I thought there should be dinosaurs roaming about, grazing on the shrubbery. We did see a herd of goats by the river, and two goat-herders rounding them up with their dogs.

Further into the canyon-lands, there are two famous spots, El Anfiteatro (an immense natural amphitheatre with a narrow mouth and high striated walls) and La Garganta del Diablo (the Devil's Throat, a great, tilting red canyon). There were tour-buses and groups of people at both. At El Anfiteatro there was a barefoot hippie guy taking advantage of the cave's unique acoustics by playing Astor Piazolla classics on the mandolin. At La Garganta del Diablo, we scrambled up a few levels of high, slanting ledges but didn't get anywhere near halfway up.

We turned around and headed home on the same route, as purple storm clouds filled the sky. We passed a couple who were walking towards Cafayate on foot and decided to offer them a ride before the storm arrived. The were Bert and Gon, visitors from Holland, and we shared travel stories and salty dutch licorice candies on the way home, and then we all had a few beers by the plaza back in Cafayate.

DAY 3: We rented bikes on the main square in Cafayate and biked out of town to see some vineyards. First stop, a tiny vineyard called Finca las Nubes, 5km out of town at the end of a long gravel road. The ride was hot and dusty and hilly; by the time we pulled into sight of the vineyard buildings with their shady trees and green grass, it looked exactly like heaven on earth.

They gave us a tour of their tiny facilities and we had a tasting of a few different wines. We learned that the rose bushes growing at the end of each row of vines are functional: they give an early alert to any fungus problems because the roses are more sensitive to fungi than the grapes. They are such a small operation that they do their entire harvest in one day, and they invite all their friends and family, people from the village and even visiting tourists to take part in the harvest. Everyone gets a pair of scissors to snip the grapes and a basket to gather them. At the end of the day there is a feast and all the harvesters drink wine and dance all night! It's called vendima. If only we could come back for vendima next year. We got a bottle of their special reserve wine as a souvenir (one of 8000 numbered bottles produced from the best grapes of 2006), and we stayed for a simple lunch of cold meat and cheese and tomatoes and olives on the terrace, drinking a bottle of their fruity Torrontes and admiring the mountains and rolling vineyards.

Rested and refreshed, we biked off to tour another vineyard Bodega Etchart, a much bigger operation that showed a more industrial side of wine-making.
In the evening we managed to find Cafayate's main fruit and foods marketplace, a great little jumble of vendors where we filled our baskets with fresh veggies for another tasty home-cooked dinner back at the hostel.

DAY 4: We packed our bags and strolled to the main plaza, where we had a leisurely coffee and some very interesting sandwiches. Breakfast was further enlivened by a very drunk and talkative Argentine tourist enjoying his morning litre of beer at the next table. After we escaped from our new acquaintance, we hit the road, headed towards Cachi. It was another day of twisty, turny single-lane dusty gravel roads, winding through astoundingly beautiful scenery. We drove through La Quebrada de las Flechas, a pale landscape of jutting rock formations.

We passed few houses or signs of human habitation. Mostly we passed kilometers and kilometers of wilderness, and then saw a group of three or four small houses, a goat corral, and a church, looking very alone in the world. Most of these buildings looked a bit colonial, with rows of pillars in front. We stopped for lunch in a town called Molinos, and then carried on twisting along the side of the valley, with mountains rising up to either side.

At some points the road was just a crumbly shelf of gravel clinging to the side of the mountains, and got so narrow and precarious it felt almost impassable, but Mike did a great job at the wheel, careful and unshakeable. In the afternoon we came around a blind curve and found a great back-hoe lumbering at us down this one-lane road carved between two high rock walls. A harvester came up behind us so we couldn't retreat and we had to do all kinds of crazy maneuvers to squeeze out from between them.
By evening we came into the little village of Cachi, a very sweet mountain town.

We hadn't arranged a place to stay, so we were relieved to find an open room at a simple old hosteria. Mike and I took a walk up the hill to visit Cachi's hilltop cemetery, and along the way made friends with some of the town dogs, who followed us along the path. They were all cute and playful until this big boxer got too playful and jumped up and took a bite of Mike's arm! Mike yelled "NO!" but he was all rambunctious and kept following us and biting Mike! we eventually got really freaked out when we couldn't make him go away and couldn't make him stop biting! He was totally playful but they were real bites and we didn't know what to do. He chased us up the hill and he could tell we were getting panicky, he was acting like he'd cornered a chicken and he was having the time of his life! Finally a gang of French tourists walked up the path and we were so relieved to see them, we hid ourselves in the middle of their group, and advised them not to try and play with the crazy dogs. At the top of the hill the cemetery was really beautiful, it felt pretty surreal and foreign and the views of the mountains all around were stunning.

We still felt kind of shaken about the dogs, and as soon as we saw they were distracted we slipped out of the cemetery silently and snuck back down the hill. We washed and inspected Mike's arm and decided there was no need for panic or doctors or rabies shots. We found Amy and sat in a tiny little wine cellar/cafe and poured out our story over an excellent bottle of Cafayate wine.

For dinner we tried the local specialty, stewed goat and potatoes, which was perfectly salty and tender.

Day 5: We had to wake up bright and early to get on the road, which was easier for Mike who'd prudently gone to bed early, but harder for me because I'd stayed up late with Amy, sitting under the stars finishing a second bottle of wine and chatting about the nature of the universe. I tried to wake up with a shower but there was no hot water so I climbed in the back of the car and fell asleep. We drove out of Cachi and up into the mountains, headed straight into the clouds that surrounded the mountaintops and over a high rocky mountain pass. Inside the clouds, we were surrounded by thick wet white fog and couldn't see much; then suddenly we emerged from the whiteness and the world dropped away; we could see across another valley, a richly green world of steep, carpeted mountainsides and ravines. We could see the road zig-zagging down the hillside below, fluffy little clouds above and below us, and yellow morning sunlight starting to warm the tops of the mountains.

The valley is called Valle Encantada, the Enchanted Valley. The drive was a little scary but we were duly delighted and awestruck by the valley itself. We passed only two buildings on this road, and we stopped at one of them for breakfast. They only served one thing and it was great: fresh, soft home-made goat cheese, crusty bread, apricot jam and milky coffee.

After breakfast the road started to level out, and unlike the past few days, the hills were green and lush and jungly again. We passed farmland and tobacco plantations and by lunchtime we were in the city of Salta (Argentina's eighth largest city), where we said goodbye to our big car and checked into a hostel. After a nap, we walked around exploring the city and had some paella at an old Spanish restaurant. The architecture in Salta is old and beautiful and many of the buildings are neatly painted in bright colors. Some of the oldest buildings were built by 16th and 17th- century Franciscans.

At night there was a big asado at the hostel, lots of grilled meat and wine and company.

DAY 6: In the morning we set out to find the tram-ride thingy that carries you up Cerro San Bernardo, a tall hill within the city. At the top of the hill is a very pretty little park with panoramic views of the city.

After lunch, we packed our bags one last time and climbed on the bus for a 19-hour ride back to Buenos Aires. What a trip!!!

uruguay beach weekend

2008-11-27T17:30:00.020-02:00

ok, i'm trying to catch up on some good stuff that I've neglected to write about in the past few months... In October we took a nice chill weekend at the beach. Mike had a day off from work for "Virgin Day" or something like that. Argentina has so many national holidays. Julia invited us to come to Uruguay with her; we took a ferry across the river to Uruguay, arrived in Colonia and got right on a bus to Montevideo. I'd been napping on the ferry and was still totally groggy when we walked out into the terminal; I immediately crashed straight into a giant pole (it was painted white and everything in the room was white, i didn't see it!) it hurt so bad and it scared the bejeezus out of me, i was so groggy and confused I spontaneously burst into tears and then i felt very embarrassed about a) being clumsy/oblivious and b) crying like a baby, but luckily nobody seemed to notice, or at least nobody pointed and laughed at me. We got into Montevideo around 10 or 11 pm and met up with Julia's friends Eugenia and Antonella. We ate some dinner in Montevideo and then took another bus, headed north up the coast, around 1 am! An hour or two later we asked the bus driver to drop us on the side of the highway in the middle of nowhere around 2 or 3 am. It was beautifully cool and quiet and deserted and dark. We walked about twenty minutes, through a tiny seaside town, to get to the rental house next to the ocean. Dropped off our backpacks and walked on out to the moonlit beach!
The town is called La Tuna, somewhere between Montevideo and Punta del Este, where the brown Rio Plata water mixes with the salty Atlantic Ocean.

........So we spent a few days chilling and doing nothing, walking on the beach and reading and drawing. The beach was really quiet, just a few fishermen and occasional families playing in the sand. I jumped in the water once and it was super chilly! I guess Uruguay in October is about like Maine in June...
Antonella staged a video shoot on the beach, lots of her friends came out for the afternoon and they acted out some kind of live-action Super Mario video art with lots of jumping in the sand dunes. Then we had a typical giant asado, lots of beef and sausages, crusty bread and fresh salad. They had these delicious sweet blood sausages that tasted like fruit and cinnamon! Usually blood sausages are too creepy for me to eat (they're called morcilla here) but these ones were just so tasty, I couldn't get enough. We made lemon squares for dessert.
After a big thunderstorm the sun peeked out through the clouds and there was this amazing light on the wet deserted beach.
Muchissimas gracias a Antonella, Eugenia y Julia para invitarnos!

YES OBAMA.

2008-11-05T10:07:00.003-02:00

awesome. i know this isn't going to fix everything that's wrong with the world... but it's pretty amazing. i have never really felt excited or proud of my country before, and i am feeling it today. President Obama. this is not the end of racism, maybe it's a distraction from the real issues that need to be tackled, but its gives me some hope and faith. here's to this sweet moment. i know i will remember this for the rest of my life.

craft fair saturday

2008-10-19T22:35:00.004-02:00

had a table at a really cute craft fair in Colegiales on Sunday.
it was sponsored by this shop: www.ca-nas-ta.org
it was tons of fun, gorgeous weather, met lots of nice new people, sold lots of cards!

yaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyeeee visitors!

2008-10-15T11:09:00.003-03:00

we've had so many visitors come stay with us here in Buenos Aires and it's always totally fun and awesome and right now i am REALLY excited and happy because in the coming months TWO of my favorite most beloved people in the whole world are coming to visit, back to back! what a sooper duper fun pile-up of visits. HOORAY for Amy in November and Andrew in December! YES! awesome. i am drafting lists of fun, cheap, awesome things to do with guests in buenos aires.

elders

2008-10-08T12:19:00.001-03:00

via holga.

oh wait, one more

2008-10-03T16:27:00.002-03:00

these are beautiful and shiny.

dots

2008-10-03T16:22:00.002-03:00

random image of the day. via weheartit.com

today it's grey out but i'm inside, working on some potato stamps! funnnnn!

happy new year

2008-09-30T12:08:00.005-03:00

Last night we went to our friend Jonathan's parents' house for Rosh Hashanah dinner. It was really huge and tasty and fun. We've had lots of wonderful family dinners with them in the past two years, but this time was the first time I felt like I could really understand most of the conversation, so it was even more fun. Except there was so much food that I was basically in a deep food coma for most of the night.
When the horseradish came out (to go with the gefilte fish) i said "como se llama? Rabino! rabino picante, mmm, me encanta!"(i thought i had said "what's the word for that? oh, horseradish! I love horseradish!") but everyone laughed and I didn't know why and they told me that I was saying "oh, spicy rabbi! I LOVE spicy rabbi!" because rabbi is rabino (rabino picante is spicy rabbi) and horseradish is rabano picante.

ha ha. spicy rabbi.

bike ride to tigre!!

2008-09-29T14:31:00.007-03:00

For at least a year and a half, Mike and Leandro and I have been talking about taking a bike-ride to Tigre some weekend. Tigre is my Coney Island in Buenos Aires, one of my favorite places in Argentina, a neighborhood/city north of the Capital Federal, a weekend amusement town on the muddy brown river delta that includes a zillion green, overgrown islands, lots of old victorian mansions, humble weekend cottages, boats of all kinds, an amusement park, a casino, a giant busy market, a grand old museum in a former gentleman's club, and a festive, nautical, fantasy-land air that ranges from dirty, creepy and dilapidated to expensive and fabulous.

So Saturday was the perfect hot spring day and we finally did it!! We guess that the ride was 25 or 30 miles one-way (mike's bike odometer broke after 15 miles), though that included some rambles and detours to see some sights along the way. It was definitely the longest bike-ride i have ever done! but it made me want to do more.

Leandro was an amazing tour-guide, and named all the neighborhoods and landmarks for us as we rode through, took us to see the giant towers at the riverside in Olivos, guided us through some busy traffic on the avenues and some beautiful shady lanes in the fancy neighborhoods. I definitely would've been terrified to do this ride on my own, but with Mike and Leandro i felt more or less invincible. I put sunscreen on my nose (and Mike's nose) but didn't put it on my back and shoulders, so by the time we got to Tigre I was not only sore and tired from riding but completely sunburned to a crisp and sick from sun-poisoning. oops. It was an awesome trip though, an amazing way to start the spring, a perfect day in the sunshine with friends. And how satisfying to finally go through with the plan! when we got to Tigre we dragged our tired butts to the riverside and had a fabulous picnic of stuffed olives and fancy cheeses on the lawn in front of the museum, until the guard came and kicked us off. Barbaro.

Afterwards we were too tired to ride back home so we took our bikes home on the bike train!

debate-watching party / registering voters

2008-09-29T13:14:00.008-03:00

Friday night i volunteered with Democrats Abroad Argentina... They hosted a debate-watching party at a bar in my neighborhood, and I got to help out at the voter-registration table. At this point most expats should hopefully have registered already, so we didn't have a lot of work to do, but we got to answer a few questions and hopefully some of the folks who still hadn't registered yet will be able to hurry up and squeeze in before the deadline!
The event turned out to be huge, like over 300 people attending! it was definitely the biggest group of *North* Americans I've ever seen inside of Argentina. There were two local news teams broadcasting live, lots of cameras snapping everywhere, and i heard there was someone there covering the event for The Huffington Post (here's the article).
I'm not generally attracted to "expat" gatherings, but I am getting totally excited/anxious about the upcoming elections and after getting myself registered and requesting my own absentee ballot, I still felt like I wanted to do more! and I'm glad I went, it was kinda amazing to be in a bar FULL of people who were all so excited about electing Obama. I'm generally pretty cynical about mainstream party politics and all the political charades in the US... but after the catastrophic 2000 and 2004 elections and the UNSPEAKABLY DREADFUL events resulting from George W. Bush's election and re-election as president (ie: war, tyranny, empire, failure of domestic infrastructure, economic collapse, the rest of the world really hates us now, etc etc etc), I feel like presidential elections actually can be very very important. And this one is. Living in Argentina makes me realize how meaningful it is just to elect a president that the rest of the world can tolerate, for starters. And it made me feel a little bit better to see that so many other expatriates are feeling the same.

Anyway... on Thursday night Maria had hosted a lovely voter-registration-training for volunteers at her house, and this is what I learned: At this point, any US citizens who haven't registered yet should go to this site:
http://www.votefromabroad.org/?adid=KDAW9990001071701
and fill out the registration form, print it out, sign it and mail or fax it ASAP! many states require absentee voters to register before OCTOBER 6th! Also, for anyone who is ALREADY REGISTERED to vote in usa, there will be an event at the US embassy in Buenos Aires (4300 Av. Colombia in Palermo) on October 8th, from 9am - 12pm, where they will provide voting assistance, blank federal write-in ballots, and they will accept ballots to deliver to the USA via their special FedEx diplomatic mail delivery. This is handy because the Argentine mail service is notoriously unreliable and it's sad to think of any hard-won absentee ballot disappearing into the Argentine mail black hole and not getting delivered or counted. Even if you can't make it to the embassy event on Oct 8th, you can bring your absentee ballot or federal write-in ballot to the embassy and drop it off for diplomatic mail delivery any weekday 8:30 am to 12 noon or 2:30 to 4:30pm, go to window 15 at the embassy.
YAY VOTE!
please save us all from McCain and Palin.

bottled water is stupid

2008-09-18T10:12:00.004-03:00

kinda gimmicky, but if i still lived in new york i would TOTALLY buy this. from their website: "Tap'dNY is a New York City bottled water company with a local twist and knack for honesty. We don't travel the world from Fiji to France seeking water or offer the usual bottled water gimmicks. We work with NYC’s public water system to source the world's best tasting tap water, purify it through reverse osmosis and bottle it locally, leaving out ludicrous transportation miles. We offer an honest and local alternative to thirsty New Yorkers, giving them a smarter choice: to drink their own (award winning) water."
the thing about new york is that no matter how much i hate paying $2 to buy a plastic bottle full of water, i sometimes have no choice because i'm walking around all day, it's hot, i'm dehydrated, and there's not exactly a water fountain on every corner. i try to carry around a nalgene bottle or something but sometimes it runs dry or gets left at home. so anyway, this company sells NYC tap water (which is supposed to be some of the best in the country) in a bottle. It makes a lot more sense to drink "local" water than to drink water shipped from france or maine. idunno how much it costs, but it better be cheaper than evian or poland spring.
on the same topic, Poland Springs company sucks water out of lots of towns around Maine, not just Poland Springs, and while they make gobs of money selling it around the world, not everyone in Maine is psyched about having their natural resources sucked out from under them and sold to profit corporate giant Nestle. defendingwaterinmaine.org

i'm working on...

2008-09-16T13:30:00.005-03:00

new card designs! updating my website! organizing my hard drive!
i don't have any freelance projects right now :/ which is something that i kinda always want - because i love having creative time to myself!! - but also scary because i need the paychecks, ya know. and i don't know when i'll have work again. freelance life is such a constant roller-coaster. anyway, this down-time is filling my mind with lots of fun project ideas. but for now, i'm trying to focus on Morris & Essex. I've made some sweet new card designs (see above!) and i am now updating my website with the new designs, and thinking about how I can sell more cards! publicity is the hardest part, but it's also probably the most important. of course, i'll post all the new stuff when it's ready to share.

smog

2008-09-13T15:41:00.008-03:00

went to see bill callahan (a/k/a smog) last night at niceto club. it was real good. he started out playing a whole string of favorite songs: river guard, our anniversary, blood red bird, i can't remember what else. i feel like the mother of the world. rock bottom riser.

in truth it was my third or fourth? time seeing him. a few years ago i was in the height of my smog obsession and he came to play a few nights in new york and friend of a friend was working as like the tour manager or something and he put me on the list to get in free, so i went to the show three nights in a row, without getting tired of it at all, only an increasing illusion that bill callahan was really my imaginary boyfriend because we were hanging out together every night. by "hanging out" i mean he was playing beautiful sad songs for me and 200 other people. i think at the bowery ballroom show i saw nick nolte descending from the balcony. he looked like the walking dead. at the hoboken show, bill callahan asked "what do you want me to play for the encore?" and i shouted "held!" and he made a face and said "okay, really I don't want to hear what you want me to play. i am just going to play what I want" and he did not play held. maybe he hates that song. maybe everyone always asks for that one. it's my favorite. he didn't play it last night either. the weird thing at the show last night was that at various points during the show, three people fainted near me. they weren't hanging out together or anything. they happened like twenty minutes apart. creepy. each time everyone was very polite about making way while they were carried outside. drugs? bad ventilation? the shittiest thing about Niceto Club is that there is really no ventilation and everyone smokes like crazy. The best thing about Niceto Club is it's like four blocks from home.
anyway, i haven't listened to smog so much in the past year or two, though i still love him. so it made me think of moments from the past. sitting alone in the moldy basement at 206 skillman all day, making things out of paper and glue, and listening to the "supper" disc which Ben B had burned for me. Or drawing in my room at night when I lived upstate in Rosendale, hearing the sound of crickets and coyotes outside and listening to "knock knock."
it's music for quiet times.

random picture of the day

2008-09-07T18:37:00.001-03:00

via flickr.

some call me compulsive

2008-09-06T20:18:00.005-03:00

it has recently come to my attention (again) that my passion for organizing things in rainbow order sometimes freaks people out. here I offer two examples of art that celebrates the chromatically obsessive urge.

city of god

2008-09-05T01:32:00.003-03:00

last night we watched city of god. brazilian movie based on a true story about a kid growing up in a favela in rio de janiero... it was really good. i had been wanting to watch it for years. it was really violent. but great...
speaking of brazil, i think we might take a trip there in november?!

picture of the day

2008-09-03T18:59:00.002-03:00

via ffffound.com

violent police state at RNC (again)

2008-09-02T09:38:00.008-03:00

Here's a video of Democracy Now producer Elizabeth Press and others describing how the police broke into several private homes in the Twin Cities. Police entered with guns drawn and handcuffed the journalists and searched their house and property for no apparent reason (other than intimidation).

and another video of Democracy Now host Amy Goodman being arrested for "interfering with a peace officer" yesterday when she attempted to ask police about the violent arrest of two Democracy Now journalists.

Amy Goodman discusses her arrest on Free Speech TV.

Eileen Clancy of iWitness Video on WNYC's Brian Lehrer show:

twin cities indymedia here

salon.com coverage here and here

coverage of these events is so far mysteriously absent from the New York Times.

101, 31

2008-09-01T16:16:00.003-03:00

i just noticed that i passed blog post #100! i think this is actually #101. although that count includes all the ones that i've started and never finished, or deleted. Anyway, wow! 100. So, a post about numbers. I really like numbers, mostly on an aesthetic basis. (The tickets pictured above are from an awesome website which I will probably have to discuss in a later post.) When I started this blog a few years ago i basically wanted to see if i could form a new habit and stick with it, and I'm sort of pleasantly surprised to look back and see that yes, I can. I always wished I kept a journal but never could do better than writing one page and then misplacing/forgetting about the journal. Really it's been the move to Argentina that has kept me attentive to the blog, as i a) have more time to waste and b) miss everyone back home and want to communicate. So, hooray for sporadically documenting my banal observations, and hooray for all three (or four?) of my readers, I love you!
Also on theme, I recently turned 31, so that is another number. In spanish you literally say "I completed 31" which I think is nice. I do feel that I'm older than I used to be, sometimes i feel wiser, sometimes i just feel that I am creeping closer to the grave. In general though, I am positive on getting older. I like it. I think that in the united states our culture is very youth-centric and squeamish about aging, especially in regards to women. I won't argue that youth culture isn't interesting, but I will say that growing up is underrated. And no, I am not going to buy any stupid beauty products to make me have less lines on my face, I am proud of them.

Bajofondo / electrotango

2008-08-15T14:11:00.007-03:00

I just heard that Bajofondo is playing Central Park Summerstage tonight! I think it's free. Awesome. Actually i've never seen a central park summerstage show (based on a suspicion that it would involve too much waiting-in-lines) nor have i seen Bajofondo play live but anyway, I have a few of their cd's and I like their music. It's more or less electro-tango, i think it's really easy for anybody to enjoy.

Buenos Aires is s totally saturated in tango music and culture, it was weird moving here and knowing nothing about tango. At least half the time people hear my american accent they ask me "oh, did you come here to study tango?" At first all the tango everything (cds, stage shows, street performers, tango schools, tango shoes, tango apparel, tango murals, tango vacations, tango museums, etcetcetc!) struck me as touristy and schlocky but now I am totally filled with awe and respect for this intense tango culture and tradition that's all around Buenos Aires all the time. And I've realized how much I love accordions.

During the military dictatorship in the 1970's, tango dancing was outlawed (like most other types of public gathering). So tango culture became less popular and started to die out. It became an old-peoples' culture, just a throwback to old times... but now there's a whole new interest in tango, tons of young people are learning to dance and in addition to the milongas filled with old people dancing tango, there are now other milongas filled with young people dancing tango. I love going to a place where you can see everyone, young and old, twenty-five-year-old hipsters and ninety-year-old guys with suits and neatly greased hair, crowded together and gliding around the same dance floor. And although you can pay US$300 for a big tango dinner show, you can also go to the community center in any neighborhood and pay $2 to dance cheek-to-cheek with the local senior citizens, if you know how.
Anyway, i'm obviously neither expert nor purist when it comes to tango music; I totally love all of this electro-tango music: Bajofondo, and Gotan Project, Carlos Libedinsky, Tanghetto, ummm, i think there's more but i can't remember, i'll check my ipod and post more later...

suitcases

2008-08-09T22:17:00.003-03:00

awesome. artist = michael johansson.

h o m e

2008-07-23T18:12:00.008-03:00

yay! i'm so happy to be back home after my lengthy travels. I returned home to unreasonably beautiful, warm weather (75 degrees in the *wintertime*!) and enormous protests in the streets about tuesday's senate vote on farm taxes (mike got sent home early from work on account of 250,000 people protesting in the streets near his office in Palermo). And we have a *new* home! the story is that our beloved friends Eamon and Lucy used to live in this apartment, but they left Buenos Aires to go back to England (and sometimes Wales) so we got to take over their sweet apartment! We always loved this place, and we are so lucky that now we get to live in it!

Let me give a little tour of our new apartment: it's located on Ravignani, between Cabrera and Niceto Vega, in the cool neighborhood of Palermo Hollywood (stop by for a visit!). It's called "hollywood" because all our neighbors are TV and film studios. Our building is an old PH, which stands for propriedad horizontal, basically it means that it's a big house that has a small facade on the street but reaches way way back, usually PH's are divided into several different apartments, one behind another, each one accessed via a long passageway that runs from front to back.

When you enter our apartment from the passageway, you're inside of a giant jungle! we have this sunroom / indoor patio / dining-room with a glass roof and plants climbing the walls all around. What a beautiful space!

behind the dining-room is our little kitchen, it's kind of small but it's cute and it works fine.

On the left of the dining-room, two doors open into the livingroom, a huge loft space with really high brick ceiling (like, 20 feet high?) and a cozy collection of couches and a piano and a guitar and a ping-pong table!! (we usually keep the ping-pong table folded up in the corner when we're not playing.)

The downstairs bathroom is painted all over in these crazy colored squares which i totally love.

Upstairs (watch your head going up, you have to duck to get upstairs!) is another bathroom and our beautiful bedroom, which has glass-paned doors opening out to the upstairs terrace! The bedroom is so bright and sunny and white, and the down comforter is so fluffy, I always feel like I'm floating in the heavens atop a cloud when I wake up in the morning.

The terraza is covered in plants, it's got honeysuckle and jasmine and ivy climbing all around, and a vine-covered trellis overhead for shade in the summer. we're lucky enough to have a hammock for relaxing among the vines, a little table with lots of chairs, two barbecues, and an outdoor shower out there!! The terrace is totally surrounded by vines and high white walls and blue sky, so it feels totally idyllic and private. Mike just bought a movie projector so we'll be able to have outdoor movie screenings on those high white walls in the springtime!!

So, in all, this place is really fun. I want to take more pictures as we get more unpacked/moved-in/cleaned up. I sound like a real estate agent but it's just because i'm excited to be in a beautiful new/old apartment, and (although we're renting, obviously), its' nice to feel like i have a home, and to feel like I could really stay here happily for a while and make myself comfortable. On the other hand, this place definitely has some drawbacks; it's impossible to really heat it in the cold weather, and it's generally leaky and humid and a bit moldy. It's just old, and there's always a lot of dust and bits drifting down from the slowly-disintegrating ceiling and walls. But whatevs. Right now I'm totally in my honeymoon with my new apartment and everytime I come home i'm like "wow, this place is so beautiful and I live here!"
Stay tuned for upcoming posts about all the neat stuff in our posh new neighborhood, such as El Galpon organic cooperative farmer's market!

new york

2008-07-15T16:19:00.013-03:00

como siempre, my visit to new york was fun and way too crazy. i stopped first to visit Emily and Eric in Boston for the weekend, which was nice, especially because it was the only part of my trip when I really didn't have to be anywhere at any particular time or do anything. just wandered around beacon hill, boston common, newbury street, ate an ice cream cone, watched the people coming and going. we did get stuck in south station for three hours on sunday evening, waiting in line to buy a bus ticket to new york, only to be told that all the buses were sold out. so we had to stay another night and take a bus on monday morning. it all worked out fine in the end.
in new york i stayed at Emily D's apartment in the East Village for a few nights, and one night at Sara's apartment in Greenpoint too. Emily took me out for dinner at Prune, which was yummy. I was sad when I got full and couldn't eat any more. There was a ricotta ice cream with butterscotch croutons for dessert. Butterscotch croutons!!! they were supremely crunchy, sweet, and salty. wow. Also, at Emily's house I picked up this book off the shelf: Everyday Matters by Danny Gregory. I read it in like one hour and it was fun and kind of inspiring.
My favorite moment in New York was picnic night in McCarren park with friends.

I did freelance work at Oshkosh for two days, which was really fun. It made me wish i could go back and work there full-time again!! Went to visit the Met with Sara and sat in Central Park, drinking an iced tea out of a clear plastic cup with a straw, which felt very fancy and special because you can't get that in BsAs (and because i normally try to avoid such gratuitous plastic wastage).
Really, everyone and everything in New York was awesome but getting from one end of the city to another can be such a bitch, and it's impossible to be in new york without a cell phone! That, and there is always so much to do and never enough time to sleep!!! By the last day, I was so totally completely exhausted, and sick of running all over the city. Friday I had to run an errand near the BQE in Clinton Hill and ended up walking along the expressway all the way up to williamsburg in the hot hot sun, sweating and frying on the pavement with the cars flying by overhead, ugh.
So, I was very very exhausted and relieved and happy and homesick when I headed to the airport on Friday. This was a really awesome and fun trip to the USA! but boy, was i excited to go back home.

maine, new hampshire

2008-07-14T09:45:00.023-03:00

Next stop, Maine! we turned up in Gorham, ME on Friday afternoon and after cheerful greetings from all family and dogs, settled right in to the back porch with a beer and italians from Amato's. My sister Amy and her husband George were traveling in Italy so their two dogs Django and Annabelle were staying at my parents' house, in addition to my parents' two dogs, Paprika and Juniper. My two cats Buster and Boris are also living there, in addition to 8 baby chickens who were living in a cardboard box in the hallway. On top of all these animals, and Mike and I, Mike's mom Bonnie and her friend Les had come out from Michigan to visit with us in Maine too! so it was a pretty full house. Bonnie and Les had never been to visit Maine or New Hampshire before, so we all wanted to show them the best of New England. On Saturday we drove over to Intervale, New Hampshire to stay in our family's cabin in the White Mountains. We went to visit Jackson Falls, ate lobsters for dinner, enjoyed some beautiful hours relaxing on the screen porch, went for some beautiful hikes in the white mountains. We walked up Mt. Willard trail (aka Bubblegum Hill) with all four dogs and six people, under cloudy skies and by the time we reached the spectacular viewpoint at the top, it had started to rain... on the whole walk down it was pouring buckets!!

in general our time in Maine and NH included a lot of rain, though there were good hot sunny days too. After a few days in Intervale, we went back to Maine for a few days, snacked at a few seafood shacks, explored Portland, joined Amy and George at an idsva fundraiser, had a great dinner at Fore Street, took a ferry out to the islands in Casco Bay.

Mike left us on Thursday evening and then Bonnie and Les headed home on Saturday morning... but we weren't lonely because my Aunt Barbara arrived on Saturday evening to visit for the week! We stayed in Intervale for most of the week. Amy and George and Alicia and Kathy all came up to Intervale too, so we had a cozy visit with lots of family and dogs and good food.
Again, it was so sad when I had to leave. I packed all my suitcases (I had accumulated SO much new stuff to bring home with me to BsAs... I had to take a whole extra suitcase to carry it all!) the night before and early Saturday morning, Judy and Richard drove me down to the Eastern Slope Inn in North Conway, where the bus to Boston stops at 8:25 am. Goodbye to family and goodbye to the mountains and my homeland. Snif.

Troy, New York

2008-06-27T10:58:00.026-03:00

Next stop on our journey was Troy, New York. we got a cheap flight from Detroit to Albany (via DC... changing my tally to 7 airports, 5 flights, and 2 train stations inside of 5 days!) we stayed with Andrew and Vickie at their famous house on 9th street in Troy. The house was large and exciting, as promised. It was totally a fixer-upper and Andrew and Vickie have been lovingly renovating it over the past year.

I have much nostalgia for the days when Andrew was my roommate in Brooklyn so it was great to be back in AndrewSpace, a mental and physical place filled with lots of bike parts and lots of action and fun and colors and ideas and good food. For instance, when we arrived, Andrew was putting the finishing touches on a back-yard shed which he had conceived and constructed entirely from scrap wood in the course of two days! without measuring anything. I helped out painting its doors bright red.

Then we made a bonfire in the fire-pit and roasted some vegetables and a lot of people came over for dinner in the Yarden, it was lots of fun!

We also went to visit The Sanctuary for Independent Media, an amazing media venue inside of an old church, a beautiful and inspiring space. And we met Andrew's friend Branda and her daughter Masha and their tiny amazing dog Rosefang and went out for a canoe trip on the Hudson River and Erie Canal and took a bike ride in the rain.
While in troy, we also ran into Jason Steven Murphy, a friend from high school who happens to be getting married this weekend! (congratulations!), and visited Cat Mazza and Jim Finn, who we'd met in Buenos Aires when Jim had a retrospective of his film work showing at the BAFICI Film Festival. Cat showed us her amazing knitting studio, filled with knitting projects by herself and other artists, a collection of knitting patterns and literature and a Brother bulky knitting machine, among other interesting objects. Cat told us about one of her current projects, Stitch for Senate, and gave us each a ball of yarn and a set of needles to participate in the project by knitting our very own helmet-liner for a US senator.
Also, on our second day in Troy, fellow former 708 Greene roommateAngie appeared just in time for the cook-out! It was just like old times. Angie is amazing.
It was sad to say good-bye to everyone and everything in Troy, but we had to head to Maine on Friday morning. We'd planned to take the greyhound bus but we were incredibly fortunate to get a ride to Boston with Cat and Jim, and another ride from Boston to Maine with Andrew and Vickie's roommate Sarah and her friend Brendan. Sarah is a musician and author who was really nice and interesting and great company for the ride. We stopped in Ipswitch for fried clams along the way.

a synopsis in list form of my trip from buenos aires to chicago:

2008-06-27T00:37:00.000-03:00

24 hours
4 airports
3 flights
1 dreadful cold
1 nyquil tablet (dusty, found under dresser while moving)
1 sudafed tablet
1 cafaspirina tablet (caffeine plus aspirin)
1 tarifol tablet (i'm not sure what that is but the guy at the kiosko in the airport gave it to me after a frustrating game of "what medicine do I need?" charades which ended with me shouting "tengo demasiado moco en mi cabeza!!!" (I HAVE TOO MUCH SNOT IN MY HEAD!") and the poor guy wincing and handing me a packet of Tarifol)

back to the US of A.

2008-06-27T00:10:00.011-03:00

it's time for our annual trip back to the northern hemisphere!! mike left first, and I followed a week later. my last week in Buenos Aires was totally crazy, as I had a HUUUGE screenprinting project to finish up before the trip, and I was still unpacking and cleaning and moving-into our new house (we had arranged for some nice folks to come stay in our apartment with the dog while we were out-of-town, so we wanted to get the apartment into decent, livable condition!), and then I got the worst head cold right before I left, so I ended up staying up until the wee hours the night before, finishing this work project and sniffling and sneezing and wheezing and then the morning before my flight i was running all over town trying to tie up loose ends and run errands and find cold medicine and i had about 12 minutes to pick out all my clothes for the trip and pack my bags. I did my classic rushed-packing-job resulting in way too much stuff and really heavy suitcases. Normally I don't like taking cold medicines (and thus don't have any in my house) but I was terrified that my head would actually explode during flight so I desperately swallowed as many decongestant-type pills as I could get my hands on. I flew out of Buenos Aires and had a layover in Santiago, Chile. Then flew from Santiago overnight to New York City. Then I had 5 hours to loiter inside of JFK airport before flying to Chicago. Mike met me at the airport in Chicago, about 24 hours after I'd stepped into the airport in BA! (i was SO happy to see him!!!). We spent the night in Chicago and then early in the morning we took Amtrak to Ann Arbor, Michigan, and arrived at Mike's dad's house just a few hours before the wedding.

Spent the next few days in suburbia, enjoying North American delicacies like pancakes and bacon and oatmeal cookies, and getting to know Michigan, Mike's hometown, and all of Mike's family, who were all very very sweet and generous and took great care of us!!

awesome.

2008-06-05T09:54:00.003-03:00

yesterday mike showed this to me: the beard cap. from craftzine.com.

"sos extranjera?"

2008-06-03T13:15:00.004-03:00

life has been totally totally nuts lately. the greatest point of craziness was saturday, when we were simultaneously moving into our awesome new apartment, WHILE cooking thanksgiving dinner for twenty people. we made a morning run together, carrying boxes from Diaz Velez to Ravignani. Then I started baking the pies while Mike and Jonathan made another trip to pick up more boxes and stuff. I was rummaging through boxes digging for spoons and saucepans while basting the roasting chickens and whipping mashed potatoes all at the same time. Anyway, dinner was really delicious and fun (lots of friends brought tasty dishes too!). It was great to have our house totally filled with food and wine and friends on our very first day. now i'm getting ready for my trip to the USA, i'm leaving in less than two weeks and I have SO much work to finish before I go.

today I called a flete service to arrange a truck to carry the last of our boxes and big stuff over to our new apartment. after talking to the guy on the phone for a minute, he asked, "sos extranjera?" = "are you a foreigner?" which made me smile and laugh because he had to ask me!! like, we actually had a conversation in spanish on the phone for a full minute before he realized that I'm not from here and I talk funny.

Phone calls have been the scariest thing for me here, it's so hard for me to have a conversation in spanish over the phone and I used to be way too terrified to make any phone calls, which made life really complicated and difficult. During my first year here, whenever I did make a phone call, it was just a lot of shouting "what?" "can you please repeat that?" and feeling impotent and frustrated and i'd hang up the phone having no idea what just happened. In person I can rely on body language to tell me a lot, even if I don't understand a single word. Anyway, now it's really gotten much easier and these days I feel brave and optimistic whenever I pick up the phone.

fun in Mendoza with wine.

2008-05-29T00:55:00.005-03:00

Emily and Arjie came to town for a quick visit and we had lots of fun together. After their 18-hour flight, we relaxed at home for a while and then we had a massage! what a great idea for tired travelers arriving after a long flight. This wonderful masseuse named Linnea came to our house, carrying her massage table, and gave each of us a 30-minute massage with beautiful lavender or eucalyptus-smelling massage cream. I wish she could come give me a massage every day.
After our massages I dragged the tired visitors out to Maria Emilia's birthday party, which was fun and led us from her house in Palermo to Sugar bar nearby on Costa Rica, and then to Club Podesta for dancing afterwards!
The highlight of the visit was a short trip to Mendoza via overnight bus (13 hours in comfy reclining sleeper-seats). We spent the first day recovering from the bus-ride and wandering around Mendoza, enjoying a sunny crisp fall day and strolling in the park. We had a great posh dinner at a place called Praga (Aguirre 413), yum. The second day we took an awesome wine tour with Ampora wine tours. They picked us up at our hostel at 8:45 am and brought us to four different vineyards to tour the facilities and sample wines. The tourguide was incredibly cute and nice and gave us lots of interesting info about the region and its history and the winemaking traditions in Mendoza. The focus of our tour was boutique wineries, so they were all smaller operations, each with a distinctly different type of facilities. My favorite was probably the first one, Bodega Benegas, which was very old-fashioned and had a chatty and informative tourguide. The most interesting thing we learned was that most of the wine producers in Mendoza used to ferment their wines in enormous underground concrete vats, which is why Argentine wine used to have the reputation of being cheap and mediocre, and also explains why older Argentines have the habit of drinking their wine mixed with soda water and ice cubes (to dilute the yucky concrete taste). Now these fancy places ferment their wine in imported cured french oak barrels which cost like $600 each! and each barrel can only be used one or two times before it loses its flavor and is sent to a lower-quality place. Anyway, there were lots of tasty malbecs and we had a delicious lunch at one of the vineyards, with a different wine paired to each dish. It was cool to learn more about how wine is made and how to enjoy it, although I still did not learn how to describe wine with words like "rustic" or "chewy" or "apricots" or whatever.

The only sad thing about the tour was the drizzly chilly wather and clouds which almost totally hid our view of the Andes. One of the most beautiful things about Mendoza is the rows of vines growing in the valley with the snow-capped Andes looming above, but we could only see the foothills on our visit. Nonetheless, our spirits were lifted high by many glasses of fancy wines, good company and tasty food.

ffffound.com

2008-05-21T09:08:00.009-03:00

i'm obsessed with this website. i discovered it a few months ago when a photo of my cards was posted on ffffound.com and suddenly i got a bunch of orders that said "i saw your cards on ffffound.com!" so I went to check it out. it's totally simple and great.

anyway. i really like it and i can't stop looking at it and i wish i could have an invite so i could login and post stuff too. but it's invitation only and i don't have an invite. so I just look at the pictures... i especially like that this site reminds me how much i dig typography... on the other hand, there are an awful lot of naked ladies on here, and I can't honestly complain that i don't like looking at naked ladies, they're nice, but there's no naked men or anything, just naked women. it kind of makes me feel like i'm in a college freshman boys' dorm room, which is not a feeling that i'm into. but i still love looking at all the pictures.

wall animation

2008-05-16T11:58:00.005-03:00

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Andrew just sent me this link, an awesome video made in Buenos Aires. Wall paintings and graffiti and stencils and street art is one of my favorite favorite things about Buenos Aires. It is everywhere and it's out of control and it's interesting and beautiful.
Also, incidentally, I am feeling in a great mood. Not sure why, it's a cold gray rainy day out there but I'm feeling proud for having survived the past thirty years and excited about the day ahead of me.

Robert Rauschenberg

2008-05-15T09:00:00.002-03:00

Robert Rauschenberg died on Monday. I remember going to see the Rauschenberg retrospective at the Guggenheim museum in New York during my first year studying textiles at Parsons. Our drawing teacher Karen(?) brought our class to see the show and she talked about how Rauschenberg's paintings are related to textiles; they're about treating the surface, rather than creating an illusion of depth. He was one of my first favorite modern artists. I love that he uses old things, scavenged and salvaged. Here's a quote:

“I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly,” he once said, “because they’re surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable.”

cupcakes en español

2008-05-13T13:56:00.002-03:00

this is my latest favorite baking recipe (for English readers, please read down to find the English version!), they are sooo easy and good i've been making cupcakes more often than chocolate chip cookies! i love that the cupcakes aren't too too sweet, but the frosting is totally sugary. argentines don't generally bake much, and never ever bake cupcakes (or choc. chip cookies) so people always get REALLY REALLY ridiculously excited when I turn up with homemade sweets. my spanish teacher asked me for the cupcake recipe, so I have translated it with loving care. perhaps you remember my previous effort to translate the toll house chocolate chip recipe into spanish? well, my spanish has improved a lot since then and I think I've done a much better job here!

Cupcakes de Chocolate con Frosting de Limón y Crema

ingredientes
cupcakes:
30 gramos cacao (en polvo, sin azucar)
120 cc agua hervido
125 gramos harina
½ cucharilla bicarbonato de sodio
85 gramos manteca, templada
100 gramos azúcar
1 huevo grande
1 yema grande

frosting:
2 cucharas Crema de leche
10 gramos manteca templada
100 gramos azúcar impalpable
Jugo de ½ limón

preparación
Caliente el horno. En un bol chico, mezcle el cacao con el agua hervida, hasta que el polvo se disuelva, y deje enfriarse. En otro bol, mezcle la harina, el bicarbonato de sodio, y dos pizcas de sal. En otro bol grande, bata la manteca y la azúcar, agregue el huevo y la yema, y bata hasta que esté bien mezclada. Agregue un tercero de la mezcla de cacao, mezcle bien, y agregue un tercero de la mezcla de harina y mezcle bien. Siga hasta que todos estén combinados. Con un poco de manteca, engrase un molde para muffins. Ponga la masa en el molde con una cuchara. Hornee 8 – 10 minutos, y de una vuelta, y hornee 5-10 minutos mas, o hasta que estén bien cocidos. Prueba con un palillo: meta el palillo en el centro de un cupcake. Si el palillo sale limpio, están listo!

Cuando las cupcakes estén cocinando, prepare el frosting. Ponga el azúcar impalpable en un bol y agregue la manteca, la crema, y unas gotas de jugo de limón. Mezcle. Agregue un poco mas de azúcar (si es muy liquido) o mas gotas de limón (si es muy duro) para que sea la consistencia perfecta.

Deje los cupcakes enfriarse antes de untar el frosting en cada uno.

Disfrute!!!

Chocolate Cupcakes with Lemon Cream Frosting!

ingredients
cupcakes:
1/3 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder
1/2 cup boiling water
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 stick (6 tbsp) butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 whole large egg
1 large egg yolk

frosting:
2 tbsp cream
1 tbsp butter, softened
1 cup confectioners sugar
Juice from ½ lemon

preparation
In a small bowl whisk together the cocoa powder and the water until the cocoa powder is dissolved and let the mixture cool to room temperature. In a bowl whisk together the flour, the baking soda, and a pinch of salt. In another bowl with an electric mixer cream together the butter and the sugar and beat in the whole egg and the egg yolk, beating until the mixture is combined well. Beat in the cocoa mixture alternately with the flour mixture, beating well after each addition. Grease a muffin tin and divide the batter among 12 1/2-cup muffin tins, and bake the cupcakes in the middle of a preheated 350°F. oven for 15 to 20 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean. Turn the cupcakes out onto a rack and let them cool completely.

While the cupcakes are baking, prepare the frosting. Mix the powdered sugar, butter, and cream in a bowl. Add a few drops of lemon juice. If the frosting is too liquid, add more sugar; if it is too stiff, add more lemon juice.

Let the cupcakes cool before spreading them with frosting.

Yum! Enjoy!

we used to microwave, now we just eat nuts and berries

2008-05-09T16:21:00.004-03:00

yesterday I was humming along to the Talking Heads and thinking about my (weird?) passion for post-apocalyptic stories. when I was a little kid I loved wandering around in the woods near our house and finding old old piles of garbage, decades-old beer cans and rusted things covered by leaves and sprouting saplings, and old bricks and foundations showing where houses or factories once stood. If I walked far enough through the woods I'd come out into the backside of the town dump. There was a great swath of dishwashers and washing machines people had thrown out over the past fifty years. Looking out across a field of discarded "white goods" makes you think a lot about the fragility of modern life as we know it. One day this fridge was sitting in that maytag dealership out by the traffic circle, smelling new, waiting for someone to take it home and fill it with food and then another day it was nestled sideways against a pile of washers, peaceful and sprouting vines. Like any kid, I loved sneaking into abandoned buildings, tiptoeing through the dust, touching things and imagining who used to use this place and why they left it. what if I woke up one morning and the whole world was like this? what if I was the only one left? i could just go into peoples' houses and eat the food in their cupboards or try on their clothes. what if there were only three people left in the world? who would they be? i'm not sure if this is a natural and universal obsession or if it seems morbid. i never imagine what could happen to everyone to make them disappear, i only savor the imaginary quiet, spooky, empty world, grass sprouting through sidewalks and vines twining around refrigerator doors.
so, over the years I've come across lots of stories that cover this kind of territory. Here's a list of some good post-apocalyptic stories. They're mostly scary, because really apocalypse is scary. But it's still perversely fascinating. One of my favorite elements of post-apocalyptic stories is the seeds of hope. Ultimately I think what's compelling about these stories is the idea of a clean slate and the possibility for something new to grow, something better, purer, smaller or less complicated than what came before. I think a lot of us secretly wish that the world would suddenly be different, that we would suddenly all have a reason to stop overconsuming and survive on what we have.

(Nothing But) Flowers, song, Talking Heads, 1988

Wump World, childrens' book, Bill Peet, 1970.

Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents, novels, Octavia Butler,

28 Days Later, zombie movie, directed by Danny Boyle, 2006.

The Road, novel, Cormac McCarthy, 2006.

The World Without Us, nonfiction, Alan Weisman, 2007

The Rapture Index, crazy christian shit.

Oryx and Crake, novel, Margaret Atwood

Children of Men, movie, directed by Alfonso Cuarón, 2006

well, I think this is only a partial list, but it's a start. a few weeks ago, Mike and I were sitting in Lo De Roberto, an old tango bar, on a quiet night and the electricty went out and we were drinking our beers in silence, in the pitch dark. I was thinking about connections between the political atmosphere of our particular moment in history, and the current appeal of these post-apocalyptic stories. I feel like there's some kind of apocalyptic currents bubbling around us, ever nearer to the surface of popular culture. or is it just me? everyone's suddenly obsessed with global warming and what, exactly, will happen to us if we don't shape up. we're losing a never-ending war in Iraq. the news is all recession, downward economic spiral, home foreclosures, serious stuff. and meanwhile, are there more and more post-apocalypse books and movies popping up all the time? I remember reading that at the change of a century, there is always an increased popular obsession with doomsday for a few years before and afterwards. Maybe this is all a millennial thing.

(nothing but) flowers

2008-05-09T16:11:00.004-03:00

i was listening to the talking heads last night and realized that this song goes on my list of post-apocalyptic stories.

Here we stand
Like an Adam and an Eve
Waterfalls
The Garden of Eden
Two fools in love
So beautiful and strong
The birds in the trees
Are smiling upon them
From the age of the dinosaurs
Cars have run on gasoline
Where, where have they gone?
Now, it's nothing but flowers

There was a factory
Now there are mountains and rivers
you got it, you got it

We caught a rattlesnake
Now we got something for dinner
we got it, we got it

There was a shopping mall
Now it's all covered with flowers
you've got it, you've got it

If this is paradise
I wish I had a lawnmower
you've got it, you've got it

Years ago
I was an angry young man
I'd pretend
That I was a billboard
Standing tall
By the side of the road
I fell in love
With a beautiful highway
This used to be real estate
Now it's only fields and trees
Where, where is the town
Now, it's nothing but flowers
The highways and cars
Were sacrificed for agriculture
I thought that we'd start over
But I guess I was wrong

Once there were parking lots
Now it's a peaceful oasis
you got it, you got it

This was a Pizza Hut
Now it's all covered with daisies
you got it, you got it

I miss the honky tonks,
Dairy Queens, and 7-Elevens
you got it, you got it

And as things fell apart
Nobody paid much attention
you got it, you got it

I dream of cherry pies,
Candy bars, and chocolate chip cookies
you got it, you got it

We used to microwave
Now we just eat nuts and berries
you got it, you got it

This was a discount store,
Now it's turned into a cornfield
you got it, you got it

Don't leave me stranded here
I can't get used to this lifestyle

Montevideo

2008-04-23T20:28:00.010-03:00

was fun! We thought we might not be able to go, because of all the smoke. On Friday the smoke was so thick in Buenos Aires that there was no visibility at all and the port had to close down. All the highways were closed and the bus station closed too, so I was feeling really trapped! But at the last moment the smoke lifted a bit, they opened the port, and we caught our ferry over to Montevideo. We had an hour-long ferry ride to get across the river and then a two-and-a-half-hour bus ride to get to Montevideo.

People say that Montevideo is boring and quiet, and it was kinda true, but I liked it. In general I think the vibe of the city is much more relaxed and quiet than Buenos Aires, and at night (or on Sunday morning) it can be pretty spooky, like a ghost-town. The architecture is pretty similar to Buenos Aires, which I love. On Saturday morning we went to the Old City and there were some lively bustling touristy areas. There was a fun antiques-market in Plaza Matriz. We bought some old lino-prints from the seventies to add to our growing collection of cheap art. The Ciudad Viejo in Montevideo seemed a lot like the San Telmo neighborhood in Buenos Aires; that is, lots of beautiful old buildings and cobbled streets, and some intense touristy spots and other areas that are just quiet and old. When we returned to the Ciudad Viejo in the evening, we wandered off the main drag looking for a restaurant, and suddenly all the streets were SO dark and absolutely silent and deserted, it was totally spooky and we hurried back to the main plaza.

We rented bikes for the whole day on Saturday and rode all around town. That was my favorite thing about Montevideo. It cost about US$10 to get two bikes for eight hours, and the traffic in Montevideo is totally chill. There is a bike/walk path beside La Rambla, the road that follows the seashore all around the city, past piers and parks and fishing clubs. It was beautiful riding all along the shore and looking out to sea, going past people fishing off the piers or sitting on the wall drinking mate. We also rode around the streets, which are beautiful and quiet. The cars drive in single-file (unlike in Buenos Aires) and nobody ever tries to run you over. The city is a bit hilly, but not too much.

We stayed at Red Hostel Montevideo, which was really beautiful but terribly disorganized. It's a gorgeous big old stone building that's been nicely renovated, with a cute little woodstove in the middle and a gorgeous stained-glass skylight, and a nice terraza with a bar on the roof. Our first night there, they had screwed up our reservation and had given away the room we'd reserved, so they put us in a terrible little room with awful beds, but the second day we got to move to the room we'd reserved. Then they kept asking us to pay for our room, even after we'd already paid. So, I recommend the place because it's so beautiful but they were as disorganized as any hostel.

The food in Uruguay seems to be mostly the same as Argentine food, but they do have this special combination, Chivito, that's served at all the restaurants:

It's a big steak with ham, cheese, bacon, and a fried egg on top; sitting atop a mound of french fries, melted cheese, potato salad, lettuce, tomato, carrots, beets and green beans.

sweet relief

2008-04-23T20:13:00.008-03:00

these pics are from last week, the left hand one is in Buenos Aires during a relatively breathable moment on Friday afternoon and the right-hand one is in Montevideo on Saturday. the smoke is lots better now. that sucked. i guess the fires are still burning, so the wind could bring the smoke back this way again anytime, but i pray it doesn't.

i heard that last week the subways were closing down because the city was so smoky that the conductors couldn't see for all the smoke in the subway tunnels! que fuerte.

OH GOD THE SMOKE!

2008-04-18T09:18:00.012-03:00

........... i promised myself not to post any more boring whiny quality-of-life posts (see: internet disaster) for a while, but OH MY GOD. this is so so so so intense i can't not write about it. Buenos Aires is totally filled with foul, evil-smelling, thick smoke. It's been here for 3 days and it's really hard to live. I mean, it's stinging my eyes and hard to breathe, and it hurts my throat and it makes my head hurt and it makes me feel sick and it wakes me up at night when I can't sleep for the stench. It's like an evil thick thick milk fog in the streets outside, but it goes all the way up into the sky and it comes inside the houses and buildings. Last night we went to see a movie at the mall, and the mall was filled with smoke and inside the theater you could see the smoke, thick in the beam of the projector. I am praying that there is no smoke in Montevideo because I can't stand it any longer. Also, I don't know if we'll be able to get to Montevideo this afternoon because I think they've closed down most of the city's roads and transportation, and maybe the port, due to low visibility.
The story is that farmers in Entre Rios have been burning fields and pastures, and that the fires have spread out of control, and the wind is bringing all the smoke straight into the city. Fires have spread to islands in the river delta, now most of the fires are on islands, which are hard to reach and extinguish. Clarin says that only a "change in the weather" can put out those fires, and firefighters are now just fighting to contain the fires from spreading further. The thing is that last week we also had one day of intense, fierce smoke, and it barely hit the news - though the brief statements said it was also attributed to farmers burning land. At that point i was all freaking out already, like "why doesn't someone do something about this?" and the president and the mayor were totally silent and there was no mention of, say, putting out the fires, or prohibiting intentional burning of farmland. Last week they just ran a statement saying it was no big deal and the smoke's not toxic. NOW the smoke is back, and it's much worse, and the government's all "oh god, it's out of control, we're doing everything we can but we can't put the fires out! we'll never allow this to happen again!" So it makes me feel like they just ignored the problem until it became too big to control, and now it's too late! Not sure if that's really accurate, but everybody knows it makes you feel a tiny bit better if you can blame someone for your suffering. The paper says the smoke is not toxic because it's coming from organic materials, but I am skeptical about that, I'm pretty sure this is not good for living creatures.
Anyway... this sucks. Really really sucks. Can't breathe. Head hurts. I wish I could get out of this smoke, I wish I knew somewhere to go. I wish I could go up to Maine and breathe fresh air for the weekend. I hope this isn't giving me brain damage or something. I read that the smoke has reached Montevideo too, but I'm hoping maybe it's not as bad there. And hoping they will open the port in time for our ferry this afternoon! HELP! got to get out of here. "Buenos Aires," my ass!

Montevideo here we come!

2008-04-16T12:46:00.009-03:00

We're still here on tourist visas, which means we have to renew them every three months. We braved the bureaucratic maze of the Migraciones office in Buenos Aires to get ours renewed three months ago, but you can't do that twice in a row, so this time we really have to leave the country and come back in again! Usually we go across the river to Colonia, Uruguay for a day, which is lots of fun but after the fifth trip, it's getting a tiny bit boring. So we decided to go a bit further and spend the weekend in Montevideo, Uruguay! You take the same ferry across to Colonia, and then get on a bus up to Montevideo. We're expecting a chill, laid-back weekend of strolling, sitting in cafes playing cards, exploring and walking on the beach! In truth, most people in Buenos Aires really have nothing good to say about Montevideo, like "if you want to be in a city, stay in Buenos Aires! why bother going to Montevideo, it's small and boring!" but I'm sure it will be fun just to get out of town and see a new place. Also, I love beach cities so I think I'm going to enjoy it. Of course, I'll post pictures and stories when we get home!

otoño

2008-03-31T13:15:00.003-03:00

it's fall here! it's so nice. cool nights, warm sun, clear skies, days in the park. i used to think of myself as a summer girl, but i think that I love Buenos Aires most of all in the fall.

Buenos Aires without beef!

2008-03-27T11:30:00.005-03:00

Things are getting kind of crazy here because of a national farmers' strike that is making it impossible to buy beef and difficult to get milk and flour in the capital! Farming is a huge part of the national economy, and Argentina is one of the world’s main exporters of beef and soya and wheat, while grains are becoming increasingly precious recourses throughout the world. So President Cristina Kirchner is raising taxes on farming exports (I read that some taxes have increased as much as 45%) and in response, the farmers have gone on strike. Protesters are blocking highways and not letting allowing trucks through, or dumping out the produce on the highway. I believe the strike has been on for like two weeks now, but it’s just starting to be a really big deal in the Capital, because there is no more beef left in the stores! The shelves are empty! And people here are accustomed to eating a LOT of beef, like every day! (well, the ones who can afford it, anyway.) What will they eat? Luckily for me, I eat more vegetables and grains than meat or dairy, and for some reason there are still plenty of vegetables for sale. According to the paper, milk and dairy are disappearing too, because trucks full of milk have been stopped in roadblocks for days, the milk is going sour in the trucks and not reaching the factories or stores. Yikes.

On Tuesday evening, President Cristina Kirchner gave a public address which was apparently intended to comfort and calm everyone, but it had the opposite effect, and after her speech there were huge protests all around the city, with people banging pots and pans in the streets. It’s interesting to note that there is a special name for these protests, the banging of pots and pans in the streets, CACEROLEZOS, In 2001, when the Argentinte peso was devalued and everyone lost their life savings, housewives famously took to the streets with pots and pans to protest. I’m not sure if that was the beginning of the tradition, or just the most well-known example.

Anyway, Cristina says she will not negotiate with the farmers until they end the strike, and the farmers say that they will not end the strike until she backs down, and the beef-loving residents of Buenos Aires are caught in the middle. It seems like public sympathies are generally leaning towards the farmers, this based on two casual conversations and the results of a readers’ poll in Clarin.

internets nightmares

2008-03-24T12:22:00.006-03:00

i haven't been posting much because we've had no internet at our house! since thursday, february 28th. it really sucks. we came home from Iguazu and it was broken. I called FlashCiudad, our internet service provider, and they told me that it appeared to be a problem with our phone line (we have DSL service), and that the telephone company, Telefonica, would have to fix the line. They told me they had submitted a service request to Telefonica, and that we should expect to wait 2 to 5 business days for Telefonica to respond. I told them i couldn't wait 2 to 5 days (ha!) because I work from home and I really need to be connected to the internet in order to do my work. they said there's no way to get it fixed faster, we just have to wait for Telefonica to respond. So we waited two, three, four, five days. I was calling FlashCiudad every day to ask if there was any news, but they kept telling me the same thing. We had our friend Jonathan (native spanish speaker) call for us a few times, but he got the same answer too. I kept calling them and begging and pleading and wailing (in spanish). I threatened to cancel our service, but I actually couldn't cancel it without first contacting the woman who owns our apartment (currently traveling in Asia). I called Telefonica, but they refused to speak to me, saying that they don't offer customer support for internet services, except for customers of their own DSL service, which we are not. They told me I have to go through my DSL provider. Finally, around March 10th, Jonathan called up FlashCiudad again, and insisted on speaking to the manager and said that he would not hang up the phone until they fixed the problem! He talked to a few different people but mostly he was on hold for the better part of 45 minutes. Finally someone explained to him that our problem is probably not going to get fixed, ever. Telefonica owns the phone lines, but we get our DSL service through this other company, FlashCiudad. Telefonica offers their own DSL service, it's called Speedy, and so it's not in their interest to cooperate with competing DSL companies such as FlashCiudad. So they basically never respond to service requests for line problems for customers who have DSL service through anyone but Telefonica/Speedy. FlashCiudad recommends that we cancel their service and just subscribe to Speedy if we ever want to have internet service again. End of story.
Obviously this is infuriating, not only because it's an evil bastard thing for Telefonica to do, but furthermore because I had to call FlashCiudad crying every day for 11 days before they bothered to tell me the truth about this situation.
So, we contact Speedy to order DSL service. They tell us they can't set up our new internet service until we've cancelled our old service, so we call FlashCiudad to cancel. FlashCiudad tells us we'll need to provide the DSL number (national ID number) of the owners of our apartment in order to cancel our (BROKEN!) internet service. It takes us a few days to get it, because our landlord is traveling in rural Cambodia, far away from internet cafes. Once we have his DNI number (and sympathy and permission to change anything we need to change), we contact FlashCiudad again and they tell us oops, actually we need to get his passport number, not his DNI number. So it takes a few more days to get the passport number from Cambodia. We call FlashCiudad again on March 16th, with the passport number, and they tell us that they only cancel services on the 1st of the month and the 15th of the month. Because we've just passed the 15th, we'll have to wait another 2 weeks before they can cancel our broken internet service.
So, now we're waiting for April 1st, to find out what will be the next act in our Internet Hell in Argentina drama. And shaking our tiny fists at the sky and feeling small and helpless and angry.
At this point it's really difficult for me to do any work, I have a laptop but the battery is totally dead so I can't really sit in those nice internet cafes drinking tea and working. I've been working at home, then copying my work to something portable, then running down the stairs to the locutorio on our street to send out my work and find out my new assignment, then run back upstairs to do more work. The locutorio is a giant room filled with old PC's. The lights are always off, and there's always this shock of stale computer heat and some kind of stink when you walk in the door. Usually there are dozens of 11-year-old boys yelling and playing Counterstrike, so it's not the easiest place to concentrate. Last week there was a guy next to me watching exhaustingly graphic porn, full screen, eight inches to my left, for two hours without stopping or showing any emotion whatsoever, while I was trying to concentrate on writing emails and stuff. Fun times.

Cataracas del Iguazu

2008-03-11T16:10:00.014-02:00

Last weekend we went to see Iguazu Falls! it was kind of an impulse decision, because our friends Eamon and Lucy were going that weekend and we decided to meet up with them there. Iguazu Falls is probably the most popular natural-wonder tourist attraction in Argentina. At least once a week somebody has asked us "have you seen Iguazu yet? It's amazing, you have to go!"

Iguazu is the world's second-largest waterfall, after Victoria Falls in South Africa. It's in Misiones province, north of Buenos Aires (about 16 hours away by bus or 2 hours by plane), on the border between Argentina and Brasil. The mighty Iguazu river just spreads out and falls off a cliff. When the river is full, there are 275 individual falls. The biggest is called el Garganta del Diablo, the devil's throat.

We arrived in Puerto Iguazu on Thursday afternoon, in the middle of a rainstorm, and checked into the Hostel Park Iguazu, near the bus station downtown. Puerto Iguazu is the closest town on the Argentine side to the falls. It's pretty small, kind of simple and shabby and sweet, a bit touristy but not nearly as much as you might imagine. We took a walk down the main drag, looking for some dinner, but every single restaurant looked like standard-issue boring argentine food (steak, pizza, bla, bla, bla) and more expensive than the same thing would cost in Buenos Aires! So we ended up getting some fresh ravioli and sauce at the grocery store and cooking in our hostel kitchen. We had a nice dinner on the patio, played some cards and talked to some German tourists who were nearing the end of a year-long round-the-world trip.

In the morning we took the yellow city bus, El Practico, into the park and paid our $40 pesos entry fee. We started out on the Macuco Trail, a 7 km hike through the rainforest. It's the only trail that doesn't take you near the main falls, it's just a flat, easy trail through the jungle with a tiny waterfall at the end. It was a great peaceful way to see flora and fauna, away from the crowds at the main falls.

We passed only three other hikers on the trail all day. At the end, you can go out on a walkway over the waterfall and look down the cliff, and then you can scramble down a steep path to the bottom of the cliff and look up at the fall. We were hot and sticky from hiking in the jungle and we stripped off and jumped in the pool at the bottom of the falls! it was amazingly chilly considering that it's late summer in the northern jungle! mike climbed right under the waterfall and took a shower.
On our way out, we passed some cute cute little nutria peeking out from the bushes. We also took pictures of jungly vines, scurrying lizards, ginormous ants, and a bright-striped snake crossing the trail.

We got back to the park entrance hot and sweaty and tired and hungry, and went for the $32 pesos lunch buffet at "la selva" restaurant, which was actually way way tastier than we expected. they had brazilian black beans with sausage, and tangy hot sauce on the side! (you never get black beans anywhere in Buenos Aires, nor decent hot sauce!) also they give you a free caipirinha with lunch, yum!

After lunch we were full and lazy so we got on the "ecological" train and rode out to el Garganta del Diablo. From the trolley stop, you walk out for ten minutes on a walkway which takes you right over the wide river and marshy islands, to the very lip of the biggest falls. All around the park they've built steel and wood walkways that allow you to walk out to the edge of the cliffs, and look right down over the precipice, with a bazillion tons of water hurtling down the falls right under your feet. It's absolutely awe-inspiring standing there and seeing this rushing falling water all around. You get completely soaked in the mist and spray, and when you look down you can't see the bottom of the falls, just a great cloud of spray. There are little rainbows all around when the sun shines.

Supposedly Eleanor Roosevelt said "poor Niagara!" when she first saw Iguazu Falls.

We hiked on the "green trail" back to the park entrance and got out around closing time, 6:00 or 7:00. We ended up in a different hostel on Friday and Saturday night, the garish Hostel-Inn Iguazu ($36 pesos per night, mixed dorm), on the highway closer to the park entrance. It's this enormous super deluxe "hostel" with fancy landscaped grounds around a huge curvy swimming pool (and pool-side bar), with cabañas and a great big main hall with a cafe and bar and lofty activity hall and hang-out zone with kitschy chandeliers hanging from the rafters. It seemed like pure heaven for the college freshmen Abercrombie & Fitch crowd, but it's kind of a weird place to be if you're over 23 and you're not wearing a Hollister t-shirt. Anyway, once i got used to feeling like i was on the set of an ad for something stupid and expensive, I could hardly complain about swimming in the pool, watching the sun set while reading on the patio under the palm trees, and playing ping-pong after the sun went down. It's not easy to get into town from the Hostel-Inn, so you end up having to hang out "on-campus" all night and buy their overpriced beer and eat the food they serve you. Again, we expected the food to suck but it was not too bad at all.

We got into the park early the next morning and took a boat ride up to the falls! For $120 pesos, we got a land-rover ride over red mud roads through the jungle, with a park ranger pointing out flora and fauna along the way and telling us about the park environment. Then we got to the river and climbed in a boat, taking off all our clothes and shoes and packing them in waterproof bags, just wearing swimsuits and life-jackets. The river started out calm and quiet, and then our speed-boat started barreling up rapids and soon we were in sight of the falls. We passed a great set of falls called Los Tres Mosqueteros, hurtled towards el Garganta del Diablo, going straight under a smaller cascade, then we turned around and drifted back into a quiet pool at the base of Los Tres Mosqueteros. We could see bright dots all around the cliffs, visitors looking down at us from the various walkways traversing the falls. The boat took us straight into Los Tres Mosqueteros falls, under the pounding water so even when I opened my eyes I could see nothing but water pouring down on me! They did some crazy speedboat loops around the falls and then left us dripping at the landing on the lower trail.

Once we got wrung out and dressed again, we took a very boring 2-minute ferry ride to the Isla San Martin, the steep island sticking out between El Garganta del Diablo and Los Tres Mosqueteros. After a steep climb, we walked around paved paths atop the jungly island, and got some breathtaking views of the river and all the falls.

We took the ferry back and went around the lower trail loop, which lets you see all the falls from below. Then had some lunch at a little "food-court" sorta plaza within the park. We caught an up-close glimpse of the jarringly ugly white concrete Sheraton Hotel, built within the national park in the seventies, with some rooms facing the falls. It's so out of place, and nearby is another building, a beautiful one which apparently used to be a hospital. The old hospital is so charming, and looks like it fits inside the park, while the Sheraton looks like a slap in the face. Luckily it's not visible from most of the park.

After lunch we went out on the Upper Loop, which takes you on walkways across the tops of all the waterfalls, so you can look down on them from the edge of the precipice. There are great flocks of butterflies frolicking all about, and the mist coming up in the sunshine makes rainbows all around.

We looked for unicorns in the forest but could not see any. After the upper loop, we'd covered all the trails in the whole park! so we retired back to the Spring Break 2K8 hostel and washed the red mud from our tired feet in the swimming pool.
We actually never set foot on the Brazilian side of the falls, because we're US citizens it would've cost us US$100 to get a one-day visa to cross the border, and most of the park is on the Argentine side so we were told we didn't miss too much, except for a panoramic viewpoint on the Brazilian side looking across at the Argentine side.
That evening our friends Eamon and Lucy arrived from Buenos Aires, along with some visitors from England. The hostel put on a gigantic asado on the patio, and we ate mountains of grilled bife and fresh veggies and played travel scrabble and enjoyed all-you-can-drink caipirinhas.

So, in all an amazing experience. I wouldn't recommend that crazy hostel unless you're REALLY into that kind of thing. The park is really not a total nature experience, with the walkways and trolleys and speed-boats and food-court. But it was mostly nature, totally beautiful and wasn't as crowded and congested as we'd imagined. It was never annoying or too crowded to get around or see the falls. It was actually cool being surrounded by visitors from all over the world, we heard more different languages on the paths at the falls than I've ever heard in one day before, even way more than any day in New York! The wood-and-steel-grate walkways that carried us out over the falls let us be atop and inside the waterfalls in a totally dramatic way (and easily-accessible for people with limited mobility) that would've been impossible if the park had only dirt paths going around the outside of the falls.

Buenos Aires eats

2008-02-16T17:53:00.040-02:00

I was thinking I should really make more posts about Buenos Aires and life here. The easiest thing to start with is food. We started going out to eat a lot more when we moved here. Of course it's cheaper to go out to dinner here than it was in New York, but I think we also didn't know many people or things to do when we first got here, so hunting for great restaurants was like our primary entertainment for the first few months. It still is, sometimes. Also, I'm a little homesick for the world-wide cuisine of New York. Porteño cuisine offers some of the world's most delicious steak, malbec, empanadas, dulce de leche, etc, and i'm sure lots of people can write about porteño foods much more knowledgeably than I can, so my list reflects my fondness for variety and international flavors. And even most foreign restaurants in Buenos Aires have lots of Argentine influences, such as a focus on great beef and not much spice. We don't go out to eat now as much as we did in our first months, but we love it when people come to visit from out-of-town so we can take them out to our favorite eats. I'm starting a short list of our favorite restaurants and I'll keep adding on as I have time (or discover new yummy places!).

BiWon: a Korean restaurant in Once (Junin 548, 4372-1146, cash only, closed sundays). I think it's pretty authentic Korean but i'm not an expert. The star of the show is Korean barbecue, unbelievably tender and delicious marinated strips of beef or pork. They'll bring you a grill to cook it yourself on your table, or they will cook it for you in the kitchen. There's also tasty noodle soups, dumplings, bi-bim-bap, soju, and lots of other stuff I've never ordered. As soon as you sit down they will bring you a delicious array of 10 or 12 little dishes, like Korean tapas, ranging from pickled spicy cabbage kim-chi to potato salad to seaweed and sometimes a dish of tiny crispy whole fishes. It's a little expensive but totally totally worth it. The ambience and decor are a bit weird, but the waiters are always really nice.

Green Bamboo: a fancy spot in Palermo Hollywood that serves an Argentine version of Vietnamese food. They have lots of special cocktails; try the Green Velvet, a basil-ginger-saki-vodka cocktail. The entrees are huge and very tasty, though they are more "vietnamese-inspired" than authentic. Mike has gotten excellent beef dishes, such as "Bo Luc Lac, sauteed tenderloin beef cubes marinated with lemongrass, honey and sweet chilli," and I've tried a few seafood and vegetable dishes which are all delicious. There is a dessert, ripe bananas wrapped in thin super-crispy warm fried flaky dough, involving chocolate sauce, vanilla ice cream, and an awkward cloud of hair-thin spun-caramel perched on top, which is unbelievably delicious! I am drooling just thinking about it. The prices are a bit expensive ($35-$50 pesos per entree) and the kitchen is VERY VERY VERY slow and it's painful having to wait an hour for the food to arrive, but it's always really tasty when it does turn up. We really only go to this place when we need a place to bring guests, since it's too expensive (and slow) to eat here all the time. It's a comfy place with kind of cute and kitschy decor, a few fake bamboo plants and beaded curtains and pretty paper lanterns.

Antigua Querencia: our favorite basic Argentine parilla. It's right around the corner from our house in Almagro, and delicious and cheap. We can share one bife de lomo, a punto, with sweet potato fries and a lettuce-tomato-onion salad. They serve ice cream with chocolate sauce for dessert. Everything's perfect, the only sad thing is that (like almost every other restaurant in BA) they don't have ketchup for the fries. We usually make a reservation because it's pretty popular.

Artemisia is a vegetarian-and-fish restaurant on Cabrera in Palermo Soho. It's great to visit an oasis of flavorful, fresh, healthy, veggie-centric food in a city of steak and pizza. The best part is before dinner you get a plate with different kinds of warm, freshly-baked homemade bread! and some tasty white bean spread to put on top. The ginger lemonade is really really delicious, sweet and tart and spicy! We've loved the salmon raviolis (no dough - each ravioli is made of two thin slices of salmon, stuck together, with a little packet of mushrooms and veggies inside) and had a few delicious polenta dishes, one of them included sauteed greens, tomatoes and brown-sugar-candied garlic. The salads are always great. The only mediocre thing was an "indian rice" or "hindu rice" or something like that which was salty, boring and bland. But everything else is always great. They have a nice list of organic wines and an impressive selection of herbal teas. The menus are cute but a little hard to read; they are handwritten on a stack of small brown paper bags.

Olsen is a "nordic" restaurant in Palermo Hollywood, one of the few places here that we've found a satisfyingly huge and tasty weekend brunch. They offer a long list of imported vodkas, but I have little interest in vodka so I've stuck to the food. My favorite favorite dish here (i think it's only available on the dinner menu) is smoked pork neck with cranberry sauce (or maybe it's lingonberry sauce, to go with the Ikea theme?) which is more flavorful and tender than any pork I have ever tried before. If you like bacon, you will be very happy with their pork neck. It's not all chewy and greasy like bacon though. It's just purely awesome. For brunch, they have a cute and tricky menu/placemat which offers different-sized combinations of tasty brunch options. Their crispy golden chunky potatoes are my favorites, although (of course) i wish they could give me ketchup with that. They have a pork option for breakfast which is basically as delicious as the pork neck dinner entree. I have good luck ordering the daily special for brunch, it's always been super tasty and very very big. Last time we ordered waffles but were a little disappointed with small, hard, waffles and of course no maple syrup (why am i so obsessed with sauces?). They have nice fresh green salads, and a cute "smorgasbord" which is 5 little nibbles, small bits of bread with spreads and toppings, it's expensive and not filling at all but it's cute. Olsen is kind of pricey in general but it's always really satisfying! The scandinavian-modern design of the space seems kind of overly dramatic, but I do like the feeling of walking in off the street into their front garden, which has some tables and seats in it, and usually if the weather is OK they open up the front wall of the restaurant so that the front of the restaurant feels kind of like it's in the garden too.

Carlito's (sorry, no links!): Corrientes 3100, close to Abasto Shopping (there's a whole strip of Peruvian restaurants here, but we were told this is the best one and we are willing to believe it). A very popular Peruvian greasy-spoon serving amazingly delicious and cheap rotisserie chicken with spicy sauces on the side. They also serve aji de gallina (shredded chicken in sauce that's actually spicy), ceviche, jalea (an enormous mountain of fried seafood), lots of seafood, fried-rice dishes, and even salchipapa, a giant platter of french-fries mixed with hot dog slices. Really, though, it's all about the rotisserie chicken. I think it's around $18 pesos to get a half-chicken with salad and french fries, which can easily feed 2 people and probably three. How do they make that chicken so juicy and tender and flavorful?! Everything is served with two different creamy sauces on the side, a sweet tangy watery one, and a hot spicy exciting one that tastes like green jalapeños. Mike is so obsessed with Carlito's that he actually wants to eat there every day. Really. Every day. My favorite thing is chicha, a thin sweet dark purple clove-flavored drink which is supposedly corn-based. It reminds me of Christmas-flavored kool-aid, plus little sweet fruity chunks in the bottom. Only $1 a cup. The eating experience at Carlito's is usually a little intense, it's one big room, brightly lit, plastic tables and chairs, always completely packed, lots of kids running around, loud cumbia playing on the jukebox, guys squeezing between tables selling bootleg DVD's and the waiters somehow scurrying through it all, bringing your tasty chicken very quickly.

Sudestada is an uber-minimal, clean, modern place in Palermo Hollywood that serves slightly-more-authentic Southeast Asian food. It's one of my favorite places to eat, although on a few occasions we've had serious disappointments there. Dinner is pretty expensive so we mostly stick to the reasonable lunch special. $28 pesos gets you a drink (choose the tangy Thai lemonade!) and a salad or dumplings, plus your choice from a limited menu of entrees. We always always always go with Bo Xao which is a smoky lemongrass stir-fried beef with potatoes and peppers over rice, and the noodle dish, I forgot the name but I think it's the only noodle dish on the lunch menu. Sometimes I get the battered, deep-fried sweet & sour fish, which is actually REALLY delicious despite its alarming raspberry-jam color. The waiters here are so serious and the decor is so serious, the whole package initially came off as cold and inhospitable, but after many many many happy lunch-hours spent here, I have grown to love almost everything about this place. Except for the vegetable fried rice, do not order that unless you are a fan of the cubed-carrots-corn-and-peas veggie mix from the freezer section, plus rice and no flavor.

Cusic is a cute, quiet, homey cafe with some lovely outdoor spaces. It's on a quiet block in Palermo Hollywood, and you have to ring a big old metal bell to be let in. You enter through the front patio, passing under the boughs of a beautiful willow tree (when the weather is warm you can eat at one of the tables under this tree) and inside is a nice big open space with plenty of tables, the menu is hand-written on giant chalk-boards and there is also a pair of comfy couches around a coffee-table with magazines, an upstairs loft with larger tables, and a sweet little backyard with an herb garden and another table where you can eat outside. I think the drinks are the best thing here - they have great fruit juices and smoothies, ginger lemonade, iced tea, a great big frappuchino, hot teas, submarinos, coffees, etc. The food is pretty simple cafe / comfort food, not amazing but decent. I always get the Frida Wrap, which is cream cheese, american cheese slices, tomato, cilantro and avocado, inside of a homemade flour tortilla, with a generous green salad or delicious potato wedges. They have great breakfasts with eggs and smoked salmon and the potatoes are always great. They have nice cinnamon rolls (uncommon in argentina!) and bagel-like things. The prices are okay, if not very cheap... like $8 or 10 pesos for a big smoothie, $20 for a sandwich with salad, or $20 for an enormous breakfast with eggs, salmon, tea, juice, etc.

ok, got to get back to work. coming soon:

el cafe del libro
Thymus
milion
sarkis
status
osaka
La Cabrera
ocho 7 ocho
Home
Olivas i Lustres
enfunda la mandolina
Providencia
La Reina Kunti
thymus
Los Sabios
La Parisiennne
bio
la dorita
cafe tortoni?

if anybody's actually coming to Buenos Aires, it's good to know a few things about restaurants here. Few restaurants accept credit cards, so bring cash. Try to make reservations, as lots of the best places will be booked up if you just wander in at dinnertime. Prices go up all the time because of inflation. Service is generally slower than it is in the usa, and people usually spend a long time over a meal, drinking coffee and chatting afterwards. Waiters will never bring your check until you ask for it, and you should hand money to the waiter rather than leaving it on the table. Sometimes a place can have great service and food one day, and poor service and bad-quality food another day! I think these things are not as consistent here as they are in the usa. www.guiaoleo.com is a great resource to help you find almost any restaurant (or type of food) you're looking for.

stop-motion knitting!

2008-02-10T20:36:00.005-02:00

WOW. mike sent this to me. we were talking about it and we figured that if you had a simple computerized knitting machine, such as the Brother model Mike had back in the usa, then you could make up your animation on the computer. You'd have to turn each frame of the animation into a picture. If you have the right software, you can turn each picture into a knitting pattern, which you can download to the knitting machine computer console. Then the knitting machine sets its needles to make the pattern automatically, so you just need to move the carriage back and forth and back and forth, until you've knitted each frame of the animation!