My Heart Does the Tango

Sometimes I get depressed by all of the things I can't do.

I blame a lot of these things on being monocular, mainly not driving. Everyone is always quick to point out all of the near-blind, 90 year old people they know who drive. I say: is that a good thing?

Whether or not I might be able to drive if I put my mind to it, which I honestly believe I can't and shouldn't do, I am undeniably uncoordinated.

Besides not driving, I also can't snap.

Although I am flexible, I definitely have two left feet when it comes to dancing. It always made me sad when I was younger and had a new ballet teacher who would see me at the barre, put me in the front row on the floor, and then demote me to the third row by the next class.

I wanted to swing dance before the trend came, and then went, and I love the tango. A few years ago, I met a tango teacher who told me he could teach anyone to tango. I don't know if his ego or mine was more bruised by my inability to learn the most basic steps
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Resurrection: I'm back, judging and using run-on sentences

Sorry blog.

It's not just you I've been ignoring.

The combination of moving and changing jobs has been pretty overwhelming and I have been flakier than I've ever been in my life.

Recently, though, it has been suggested to me that I am too content to write. I have also been accused of using The Angry Librarian to say bad things about Seattle.

Since I disagree with both these things, I will make an effort to start writing more regularly.

And just to show the overly-sensitive Seattle people that that I don't think Portland is perfect, I will start by listing things I don't like about Portland.


1. Lines/waiting

The way people stand patiently in line here drives me crazy. The number of times I have had to leave a coffee shop without coffee or I would have been late to work is ridiculous. And it would be completely avoidable, if baristas didn't insist on having long conversations and trying to make a personal connection with each customer. I far preferred the fast-paced rude baristas in Seattle who would pretend they didn't know what size and type of coffee I wanted, despite the fact that I had been going to the same place and ordering the same thing ever day for years.

I am also astounded by the fact that people will wait up to two hours before they are even seated at certain restaurants. Don't they have anything else to do with their time? Whatever ever happened to being able to make a reservation? This is overlapping into my pet peeves about service.

2. Service

Portland has hands down the worst service I have ever experienced in my life. Many times I have arrived at a restaurant and been told there is only room at the bar when it is clear there are ten+ tables available. Servers in many places have acted like they are doing their customers a favor to simply do their jobs. Sometimes when I have been served something that is cold or is entirely different from what I ordered, I will eat it anyway, since the level of hostility or superiority I received from my server was so high just when I was ordering that I am afraid of what would happen to my food if I sent it back. The one time I did do that, at the despised Bread and Ink Cafe, getting my corrected dinner took almost 45 minutes and the friend I was eating with was done by the time I finally received what I had ordered.

3. Drivers

I know, I know, I don't drive. But it doesn't mean that I can't tell when other people aren't good drivers, and I have a special disdain for bus drivers who fall into this category.

I am also amazed by the short term memories of so many Portland drivers. Last Friday it rained more heavily than it has since last spring and I was astounded by the traffic and the fact that in four months, people had forgotten how to drive in the rain.


4. Lack of decent Indian food

I didn't really like Indian food until I was in my mid twenties. I attribute this to my mother being overly zealous with curry in the kitchen when I was growing up. My mom is a great cook, but I was either too young to appreciate her efforts, or more likely, she was prioritizing the nutritional aspect of dinner above the taste. Or maybe she was just experimenting. What I do know was that I didn't have a real interest in Indian food until about 1995 and then I wanted to eat all the time. Seattle really does have great Indian food, and it's also really cheap. The Indian food that I have in Portland can't hold a candle to it, and with the exception of the food cart by my work, is also more expensive.

If I wasn't tired and my eyes didn't hurt, I could come up with some more things I didn't like about Portland. Maybe another day...it has just occurred to me that I forgot to mention the abundance of hippies and the trend of shared tables in resteraunts. But maybe not...I am not so content that I've stopped being judgemental, but I am really happy here.

Vacation

The only vacation I took this summmer was one from writing, but apparently a patron in the library was much more active than me.

Found by a computer, on a large yellow post it note:


Gone out of country
Beaten someone up
Gotten beat up
Killed a animal
Swam in ocean
Broke the law

Did these events happen in the sequence they were listed in?

Some Things I Love

abundance * accessories * antique shoes * baths * camping * crumbling beauty * dairy products * exaggerating * eating outside * family stories that probably aren’t true * garage sales * going barefoot * going out to breakfast * kissing * ladies’ night * naps * pedicures* playing dress up * pretentious French movies * projects * reading out loud * summer vacation * talking to strangers * wine

Adolescent

I have recently discovered my inner middle school self is alive and well. As soon as I arrived in Vietnam, I noticed signs with words like phuc, dic, and hung on them. It didn't take long before my brother confessed he'd been noticing the same thing. We began making a list of words.

Sometimes we were frustrated they weren't in the right order, and wanted to rearrange them, but we found some fun combinations like hung lo, hung phat, tu phat, bich sin, long phuc, thinh phat, song long and cat tok, which means hairdresser.

Spring Cleaning

I am really ready for my spring break next week. I have all kinds of organizational projects I want to work on.

I want to rearrange my kitchen, alphabetize my books, and figure out a better way of organizing my clothes in the one tiny closet I have in my apartment.

When I was thinking about how to go about accomplishing this, I started thinking about cleaning in a broader sense. I love getting rid of crap and giving myself a fresh start.

I decided it was time to clean out my cell phone. My renaming project has gone on long enough. I hesitate to call it a project, actually, since I didn't really know what I was doing when I started and had no idea I would continue it as long as I have. The whole thing began last summer, when someone I trusted entirely revealed himself to be a self-involved, immature ass. I changed his name on my cell phone to something so mean (but entirely true) I'm not even going to share it here. You'll just have to guess. I thought that was it, until I encountered the Misogynist. I loved seeing that name come up when he called. Jackass got entered that same week, and Victim is my latest victim.

I have to say the project has been, at a minimum, a conversation starter. People enjoy looking through the address book on my cell phone. But these names are taking up space, both in my phone and in my life. Besides, I’m afraid I might accidentally call one of these people when I'm trying to call someone else.

Au revoir les messieurs! I wish you greater success in interacting with women in the future.

Lists_,Projects_

Bad Habits

I've been thinking about some of the things about guys I've been involved with that really bothered me. I never said anything about these things, I was just silently horrified.

Since it's not good to keep feelings bottled up inside, I will share.

•Constantly buying condiments rarely or never used

•Wearing a poncho

•Talking in a British accent for no apparent reason and seemingly without irony

•Occasional utterances of "sweeet Jesus" during passionate moments

•Borrowing another person's reasons for becoming a vegetarian

•Compulsive collecting of obscure action figures


Lists, Judgments_