this is what winning looks like

Winning is tasty.

This is my first self-cooked meal in Kyoto! The one downside is that now it is all in my tummy. Perhaps obviously, I have checked into my apartment. It is tiny (but not that tiny) and pretty great. My only food preparation spots are either in the sink (which is big! yay!) or on top of the small fridge in front of the microwave, but other than that, it's pretty complete. I checked in this morning with nary a hangup or problem and then went and got some groceries. A small package of unflavored udon costs about 60 cents (which is as much as you see here, though much bulked up by chicken and some veggies.) One serving of raw chicken is about $3.00-$3.50, so I can already guess I'm going to be eating eggs (didn't see any beans at the store.) I accidentally bought some sort of sweet vinegar, thinking it was oil, and had to run out again, so I shall be producing some interesting-flavored sauces for a bit. Note: oil is "abura," 油. I also got some corn flakes and milk, so my breakfast is covered for a few days. (In case you're interested, $2.50 for a liter of milk and $4 for the box of cornflakes.) (For more context, I spent $20-30 a day on food in Tokyo. So this is not that obscene.)

Other things -- on the train ride from my hotel to my apartment, I was standing next to a guy in a dark pinstriped suit who was intently studying English on flashcards hooked to a ring. Made me feel a little better -- everyone is trying to learn something. At the next stop or so, another guy got on and stood next to me wearing a "Michigan University: State Ivy League" t-shirt, which made me think of Alyssa and mentally chuckle.

things I've realized

All the bath products I'm currently using would probably fall on or near the same paint sample card in hue. (Blame my mother for taking me out to buy paint last night.)

every time I hear

"Bang Bang," by K'Naan featuring Adame Levine (from Maroon 5), I think of sitting in that vaugely pink-hued hotel waiting room outside Venice, waiting for the receptionist to finish entering the information from my passport. They were playing what appeared to be Italian MTV on the TV in the corner, and that song came on.

This makes me happy.

some other things + cold enough

to wear a scarf, so I have broken out the gorgeous pashmina that Barb gave me last Christmas. Of my dozen scarves (and the five or so I brought with me -- ha, the joke's on me :P) it's tied with the orange-gold-cream-pink scarf I bought at Maya on Newbury Street for the position of my favorite, though its weight makes it a slightly more functional garment. (Somewhere in the folds of this scarf is my Fenway House button, but I can't find it, which should tell you how voluminous it is.) (Though not quite this voluminous.)

The other things?

1. I have decided that I am a competent traveler.

For some of you, to read this may seem silly, but it feels very odd to me to declare myself competent in almost anything. Except, I don't know, baking cookies or something else equally non-threatening. Who's going to argue with me about that? Especially if they might get some cookies.

But really -- I think I'm competent. It involves some advance preparation; I'm not a spur-of-the-moment person. But I don't feel particularly bad about that. I do what I need to in order to feel comfortable. I am a "calculated risk" person. I feel like that's no bad thing.

I decided this after contemplating upon this summer, but also last summer. I think I have finally "gotten over" the stress that is flying. (Admittedly, I say this with some caution, since a 16-hour+ lots-o-checked-luggage intercontinental flight marathon is in my near future.) It doesn't freak me out to pack a bag one night, take the taxi/subway to the airport the next morning, spend the following day navigating a new (sometimes large) city, sleep in an unknown bed (usually in a room with other people, also sleeping in their own unknown beds), spend another day navigating, take a different subway back to the airport, and fly back. I am good with directions (somehow this is odd to type; I think that the general knowledge is so inundated with the idea that women must be spatially helpless and directionally challenged than it seems bizarre for me, a woman, to claim competence in this area), in that I can read and remember a map, and once I have walked a route, I generally remember it forever after. Sure, I spent 20 minutes being lost here and there, but never so much that I can't right myself (or at the very least backtrack.) I can also usually get a sense of relative directions fairly quickly (maybe in a weekend, maybe longer than that) -- a general sort of, "Well, if I walk in this direction I will run into this landmark; if I walk in this direction I will run into this landmark; the thing I want is sort of in this direction." I don't think the fact that I can't reliably say anything like, "We need to go NORTH" rather than "We need to go THIS WAY" makes me less competent.

2. Just so I don't forget -- an industrial design blog and design boom competitions.

3. This is interesting. Sort of. Primarily I like it for giving me this quote, ‘Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.’

4. At some point in the near future I want to put my favorite moments from Coraline, as it was a very pretty movie, and possibly from the Hellboy movies as well.

can we please declare a moratorium

on the use of the metaphor "cute = edible" for babies? Please, for the love of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, STOP SAYING crap like, "I could just EAT HIM UP" when referring to a chubby baby, "All the better to nibble on," when referring to babies' legs, or any of that gross business. It's worse than dead baby jokes, because those are supposed to be creepy.

Ugh.

less psycho thoughts on Barcelona

O Internet, how excellent you are! Yesterday I started researching the upcoming jaunt to Barcelona (unfortunately a surfeit of information probably led to yesterday's outburst of paranoia); this morning I read most of the section in my Lonely Planet (skipping the bits that sounded boring and the beach stuff -- it's too damn cold to go to the beach. Also, what on earth would I do with my stuff while I was there?)

(My big upturn in mood today may have to do with the fact that I felt really overwhelmed by all the not-so-great possibilities when I got home from work yesterday and so went to bed at 8:30 PM. Since I woke up at 6:30, that makes. . . uh. . . ten hours of sleep. Yes, I am refreshed. Also I checked and found that a locker-with-lock is INCLUDED in my hostel in Barcelona, which also makes me more optimistic.)

Wikitravel has the basics on Barcelona, including some on the different districts, such as Ciutat Vella (Ciudad Vieja, OR Old City argh I will never get a hold on one language before another one sneaks up and bites me), the medieval quarter, and the 19th century development L'Eixample. (Catalan is somewhere between French, Italian, and Spanish, as Catalonia is sort of equidistant between all there. I'm going to guess it has more Spanish loanwords than loanwords from the other two, just because it's been dominated by Spanish-speaking governments for 200 years or so.)

The best of the safety information I found is this. I'm always a little worried about being mugged (but I can avoid deserted areas), and I'm still specifically worried about having the strap on my bag cut, the bottom slashed, or my pocket slashed (not the least because I personally doubt that someone could slash the pocket on my close-fitting jeans without slashing me too. I'm not sure whether this means it's less likely to happen or that I should be glad I've had a tetanus shot recently.) But the rest of the precautions on this list are all things I do anyway or things that won't be super difficult to do -- like keeping an extra copy of my passport and remembering to go inside a store or cafe before checking my maps. (Apparently "undercover police" is a common scam, so I looked up what the Barcelona police actually wear -- they look just about like Madrid police.) (Moral of story, in all of the scam/distraction thievery explanations: There is usually not a good reason for someone you don't know to initiate contact with you.)

Also in a preparatory mindset, I think I will go ahead and buy the Barcelona Card. The convenience of included transportation is nice, and I see at least four or five attractions included on the list that I want to visit.

I've determined what sorts of transportation are available from the airport (barring construction like in Paris :P, but then they had replacement shuttle buses), though I still have to check out a map of said airport a little more carefully (I'm okay familiar with the Madrid airport by now, but not so much with others. Ugh Charles de Gaulle and Heathrow. Ugh ugh ugh.) There are a lot of good maps online, including some of the Barcelona metro, though when it's all said and done once I'm somewhat oriented Google Maps is still about the best thing ever.

On a more pleasant note, I'm also organizing what attractions I expect to be able to see. La Pedrera, also known as Casa Mila, by Gaudi. (I accidentally included Casa Amattler on the list of Gaudi-designed houses, but it's actually by someone else.) Casa Batllo, as aforementioned. Museum of the City, which includes some Roman ruins. The reconstruction of the Barcelona Pavilion (on the edge of the big park Montjuic or "Jewish Mountain." Apparently people think there used to be a Jewish cemetery there?) And maybe, perchance, if I have time, a vintage store. Sadly, I would like to go to Montserrat and the Dali museum, but I don't think I will have time.

Total aside: Why does it seem like I'm the only touristy person I know who goes to the grocery store for food? Guidebooks talk about cheap places to eat, but they almost never tell you to just go to the grocery store and buy a pastry or a sandwich. I do not understand this.

Other total aside: Someone told me I should eat doner kebab while in Barcelona. I am really looking forward to this, actually. The most delicious thing I ate in Granada was from a kebab place -- a big pita full of yogurt, chicken, and random veggies. Mmmmmmm yummy. Also it was 5 euros for that and a drink and some (admittedly mediocre) fries, so pretty cheap. (It makes me sad that the tastiest ice cream I have had in Europe so far was from the Haagen-Dazs (sp?) down the street from where I work.)

so this is pretty much my nightmare

(and rant city is a-comin' in) Nightmare central.

the guy list

I have what I think are compelling reasons to think I will probably always be single.

The idea of being single forever is, at least at this point in my life, not particularly intimidating, but more of an "aw, gee, that sucks" kind of thought. Like discovering that they discontinued my favorite flavor of yogurt, perhaps. (Well, maybe a little more profound than that.) The idea of settling for a guy who is in many or all ways "less than". . . strikes me as burning in a slow hell.

I realized that I have actually developed a fairly long list of traits that a potential Mr. Gochenour ideally would have. And while some of the requirements may change, the probability of one guy meeting them seems slim.

The point of all this is to make an excuse to write up the list of traits for said person that I had unconsciously been cataloging anyway. So, without further ado:

progress toward sanity

Well, that might be a bit of an optimistic overstatement, but let's just keep hoping for now.

It is 80 degrees outside, and it it nearly 10 PM. I am awed.

Two things:

One. I discovered the swiss miss design blog this weekend. I'm pretty far behind the curve for awesome design blogs, but it pretty much rocks my socks off.

Two. I have this one friend. He is kind of an ass. Sometimes I read things he posts on my (and other people's) Facebook wall and I think, How do ass genes like his get perpetuated in the general population? You would think that such genes would be bad for survival, since they encourage people to punch you in the face and do other things to you that have poor effects on your health.

Then I listen to the recordings he has posted of himself playing guitar and I think, Ah. Yes. This is how.

Moral of story: The arts were invented by jerkwads who otherwise could not reproduce. (Maybe.)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, he has also has really good taste in music. Woot.

peeps ahoy!

YES.

Peeps show. Spectacular dioramas featuring PEEPS.

---

I am pretty well completely panicked. Just thought I'd share.

shoes and other thoughts

The last week has brought a bounty of shoes. Maybe I have too many pairs; I have 12, three of which are primarily for walking, including one pair that I will throw away as soon as I have a replacement. (O, Roos, you have served me well. So many miles have a walked in thee. The necessity of the replacement unfortunately became quite apparent after my 6.7 mile walk today -- ouch, blisters.)

The first pair is from H&M (predictably enough). I now have a black pair of heels (which need some repair work, erk) and brown pair.

The second pair is. . . wearable boots! By which I mean comfortable boots! Not only are they comfortable, they're real leather! Not only are they comfortable and real leather, they're cute! O happy day! (Ignore the blue socks, dammit. I wanted to be comfortable but not horrifically schlumpy today. . .which led to a button-up shirt. . . which led to a skirt. . . which led to knee-highs. Gah.)

---

I don't watch very many movies. I can't pin down a precise reason, except maybe that I am usually uncomfortable watching violence or sex (unless there's a compelling reason for it to be onscreen) or bad comedy, which means that most current movies are just out.

But I don't like being

satisfying

I think it must be utterly unsatisfying to not be able to blame someone for natural phenomena that you do not appreciate or (at least profess to) understand.

Example. "God, I understand the initial source of cramping. But really? Is it really necessary to involve my lower back and digestive tract as well?" Then, crabbily, not directed at anyone in particular: God is clearly a man.

This is why I couldn't be an atheist.

---

I bought a book, because I have no self control.

Or rather, because when I walked by the poetry section I picked it up, because I had heard of the poet, and flipped to this page --

. . .
Still the atmosphere quivers
with the initial word
dressed up
in terror and sighing.
It emerged
from the darkness
and until now there is no thunder
that rumbles yet with all the iron
of that word,
the first
word uttered ---
perhaps it was only a ripple, a drop
and yet its great cataract falls and falls.
. . .

the same ---

. . .
Aún la atmósfera tiembla
con la primera palabra
elaborada
con pánico y gemido.
Salió
de las tinieblas
y hasta ahora no hay trueno
que truene aún con su ferretería
como aquella palabra,
la primera
palabra pronunciada:
tal vez sólo un susurro fue, una gota,
y cae y cae aún su catarata.
. . .

Pablo Neruda, "La Palabra"

I'm not sure how to keep my eyes from jumping to the English side of the page first.

In any case, I thought at the time it was brilliant, and whether it is or not, to understand a little bit of poetry would allay some quiet fears of mine. . .

I hate waiting for emails

"The world is not ending, but I feel sad anyway."

There was a logical thought progression behind this statement which disqualified it from being clever in my mind. . .

---

Improve your Japanese by studying manga! Um. I wish I had time to do this. . .

---

Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Change. ARGH THIS BOTHERS ME.

v. anxious

somewhat tired and a little glum. I missed a couple assignments -- one in Spanish, because she changed it from the syllabus during class and I didn't quite understand what she was saying -- and one in Japanese, because I just sort of let it buzz by (we're supposed to be writing a blog entry online, and I forgot.)

I'm worried I didn't get my thesis proposal done in time. I'm worried I'm not going to get my MISTI Spain application done in time. I'm worried . . . that I'm not going to get my Japanese homework done. I have two hours and two pages left. Argh. . . I feel guilty that I added 4 TBS instead of 2 TBS of maple syrup to my oatmeal this morning. I swear it was an accident, and it tasted too sweet, but I didn't want to throw it away. I also feel guilty that my proposal for the Gondoliers poster is a composition of pieces rather than an entirely original artwork by moi. It seems like I'm cheating. I need to think some more about that. . .

I was reading an architecture friend's blog/twitter and feeling mightily inadequate. It seems like most of my architecture friends have done all these marvelous things -- Hawaii workshop, Cambodia workshop, the Veneto experience, study abroad in Copenhagen, study abroad in Delft, working in Paris. . . I feel kind of dumb and small in comparison. Yes, I went to Japan, but I was incompetent and confused and feel approximately like the same person I was before I went, which is to say, unpolished, uncoordinated, and uncool. I did not have deep thoughts about urban planning while I was there.

ARGH.

---

To make myself feel better I will now post things I found on her twitter site that did not make feel inadequate, although now I want to play with watercolors.

Vietnamese wildlife. Watercolors!

Kitties. In honor of Kitty, the Fenway House Feline (her name is actually Zelda, but we are all maladjusted so we call her Kitty. She is a dog in catpants. She lets me rub her tummy and wants to play all the time.)

The Impossible Cool. A blog. I find it humorous. I don't think it's supposed to be humorous.

my lab notebook is boring.

In character. (Courtesy of Stumble.) This blog entry is quite brilliant -- the work of photographer Howard Schatz (no, I hadn't heard of him before either), giving about 10 different well-known actors a series of three very different prompts and capturing their facial expressions.

This doggy photography was created by Sharon Montrose, via Cup of Jo. GREAT DANE.

Refinery 29 Fashion Blog. It looks smart, brief, and informative. We shall see.

Kate Wilson Little Doodles. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaa soooooo cute. I particularly like the ones this blog chose, but Kate Wilson's actual site is here and it looks rather more interesting.

---

And here is what I called the "FU" section.

maybe

One of the blogs I read is written by a fellow student at MIT who I know peripherally (as, I'm convinced, she knows virtually the entire campus.)

She posted a video of one of her friends singing Beyoncé's "Halo," with various inducements to watch it. The funny thing is (because we don't so much run in the same circles), I know the girl in the video, because she was my first freshman year roommate.

The funnier thing is, because she was only my roommate for maybe two and a half months before she moved into a different room, seeing her reminds me of a very short, very specific frame of time, the time when I was still discovering MIT, still discovering the people here, when some people who would later become good friends seemed new and strange, and others (who I would later regard differently) seemed marvelous and exciting.

I wrote this during my first month here --

yes, three posts in one day is a bit much

But I actually wrote MOST of this post a couple days ago, so it's okay. Really.

---

It turns out this whole site is worth visiting, not just for giant bunnies: VULGARE > Landscape. Landscape architecture favorites, sort of.

Mammoth. This feels like a blog that I need to get to know better before judging. It deals with architecture -- theoretical, infrastructural, fictional. It also looks to contain a lot on the marriage of architecture and building technology, a subject on which I am shamefully ignorant given my concentration. (I learned some of the technology, and I learned some of the design, but I never skilfully incorporated the two. . . ) I am a bit skeptical, but I feel that I could stand to learn a lot. . .

Hipster Puppies, also known as PUPSTERS! The only problem is that as I look at the pictures, I keep saying to myself, "But this is clearly a NICE puppy! This puppy would never say that!"

I first discovered this website when I was a senior in high school:

rain sucks.

I got home with every. single. fucking. particle. of my being dripping with water.

Also, it hurts to chew gum. Why? WHY DOES IT HURT TO CHEW GUM?

I am now sitting at my desk which is next to the rainy window with my space heater running with no pants and no socks.

---

The last few days have not been so hot on the functionality front. I have been off on my sleep schedule, unproductive, and feeling mightily stupid about the whole thing. I should go to the gym now. But it's raining. I have pottery class tonight. But it's raining. I don't know which of these problems I will be solving. (Not the rain one, unfortunately.)

My body is still pissed at me for the crap I shoveled into it yesterday -- i.e. somewhere around 7-8 cookies worth of oatmeal-coconut-almond cookie dough/finished products. (COCONUT IS SO DELICIOUS. Unfortunately so are sugar and butter.) There is an enormous bowl of bread dough waiting in the fridge to receive similar treatment -- i.e. have me eat 1/6 of it and then bake the rest. Sometimes I feel like my diet is a person, and he likes to go vacationing in the Bahamas every weekend and drives to Wisconsin sporadically during the week.

Vagina Monologues

but first, this blog.

The Uniform Project.

It is effing AWESOME. This designer takes one black dress and wears it every day for a year, while also making sure she doesn't wear the same outfit ever.

---

I have never been to see The Vagina Monologues, even though it is done at MIT every year on Valentine's Day. I sort of like the idea of it, as a medium for brutal honesty about what it means to be human and female.

But I also am hesitant, because so far as I can tell, vaginas serve three purposes: 1) To menstruate 2) To have sex 3) To get the kid out.

One of these purposes is not to be celebrated, unless you're on acid, and two of these purposes are not part of my reality at this point in time.

A show focused on vaginas, therefore, seems to be a very narrow representation of womanhood.

The vagina can serve as a metaphor, I suppose. I think part of the show is supposed to be about "reclaiming" that part of the body from male domination, and in turn reclaiming the power of defining womanhood from the domain of men. And that is legitimate. But I don't really like the idea of boiling down a person into one (kind of ugly, possibly even superfluous) part of her body even as a metaphor. Synedoche is less bothersome when it involves a more useful organ.

Also, I guess that there's one piece in it where the performers repeatedly answer the question "What My Vagina Smells Like," and I am just Not Interested.

lack of focus.

I have Japanese writing homework to be done right now. I will try to make this quick.

---

Last night I went with the CCC girls to a motivational-speaker type talk with Marian Jordan, who wrote a book called Sex and the City Uncovered. No, I haven't read it; I am more interested in her two other books: Wilderness Skills for Women (on the blurb it says, "going through a season of waiting? facing unmet desires?") and The List (the blurb: "Figuring out Prince Charming, the corner office, and happily ever after.")

She was an engaging speaker. She was funny and pithy, and the two "take-away" messages were sound: a) You will not fill up your soul with things, or travel, or people. b) God holds your body and your soul as precious; treat them as such.

She was a little weak, unfortunately