been thinking...

Packing at midnight =

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 01:18:32 -0500

Significantly less of a good idea than it seemed this morning. So tired. Just want a nanny to come pack for me and put me to bed.

But I want her to know exactly how I want all my clothes rolled and stacked to maximize space and how I put baggies around my little shampoo container and that I sneak gummy bears and licorice into my carry on bag and stuff my swimsuit into that one secret pocket at the top of the backpack.

I guess really, I’m saying I need a wife.

Hitting the Road...and dragging along a new Tumblr

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:41:52 -0500

So, assuming we can get our acts together, wrap up work and actually find time to pack between 11 pm tonight and 11 am tomorrow, we’re leaving town!

Headed to Vietnam and Cambodia for two weeks and I’ve created a new tumblr site to keep track of our shenanigans: trekfeet.tumblr.com

Somewhat because I’d like to keep my oft’ dramatic travel ramblings separate from my daily blog. Also because I’d prefer not to share Been Thinking – and all its tactless details about wine affecting lady parts – private from my family and coworkers.

So, over to the proper and sexless Trekfeet we go. Hope you’ll tag along!

I'm going to eat my weight in noodle salad and springrolls.

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:35:52 -0500

trekfeet:

So this Saturday morning, we’ll leave the land of Thanksgiving revelers, cell phones and bailout debates for this year’s annual exodus.

We fly into Saigon so Kraab can have pages added to his passport at the US embassy and then intend to work our way over through Cambodia.

By December 6th, we have to be to Bangkok to catch a flight home. In the meantime, we hope to marvel at Angkor again, get lost in the spooky Bokor Hill Station and ride a bamboo train with the locals. Anything more than that is just icing on the rice cake.

Thanks for checking in - hope you enjoy the journey almost as much as we will!

forthebooks:soupsoup:bohemea:suckafuck:girlwearsmascara:aliexplai...

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:35:25 -0500

forthebooks:soupsoup:bohemea:suckafuck:girlwearsmascara:aliexplainsitall:

Mount up.

Warren G - Regulators

Gaaaaaaah I love this song. I am for sure the whitest person ever to so emphatically enjoy it.

I like:

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:55:41 -0500

Leaving punctuation off the last line of an email.

It gives me some passive-aggressive comfort when I’m saying something nice that I only partially mean. Also if I want to say something nice but don’t want the recipient to read too far into it. I feel it keeps them guessing.

Congolese rebels via www.timesonline.co.uk

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:19:02 -0500

Congolese rebels

via www.timesonline.co.uk

Killing Time in the Heart of Darkness

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:18:52 -0500

Two years ago I spent a few weeks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo while wandering through Africa. Met a few folks I still keep in touch with sporadically, visited the displaced persons camps…which had been operating in oblivion for almost a decade by that point, and spent the vast majority of my time sitting around waiting for someone to let us save the day. I still love the place in a cursed, conflicted way. Here’s a post from my rambling travel blog that documented that year (I was pretty self indulgent and melodramatic in those days. Thank God that’s changed.)…

* * * * *

By day eight in the Congo, two facts had become clear:

1.) The South African Army’s gin rummy talents far surpassed my own.

2.) We were not dealing with a government that necessarily wanted to be helped.

Bidding a bittersweet farewell to Kenya, I hopped a night bus bound for Kampala, Uganda. Unkempt yet eager to take a stab at improving my karma, I arrived on the figurative doorstep of a Ugandan man named Charles. A former UN employee, part time preacher and full time idealist, Charles currently works for a Finnish NGO that has a long history of tough and successful aid work in East Africa and was now aiming to extend that service to the tumultuous Central region of the continent.

Under heavy coercion from a mutual friend (thanks Kevin!), Charles had foolishly agreed to let me tag along on his organization’s first ever relief mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo. The plan was to get in, spend four or five days distributing non-food aid items (blankets, cooking pots and tarpaulins) to several refugee camps comprised of “Internally Displaced Person,” I.E. Congolese
citizens run out of their homes by rebels or the government warfare used to combat said rebels, and get out.

With an appropriate touch of drama, we departed Kampala for the Congo in the deep blue hours of the early morning. Scratch that. We *arrived at the tiny airstrip outside Kampala with intentions to leave* under the cover of darkness. By the time our pilot arrived, checked our baggage with a cheerful, leisurely pace and actually lifted our tiny bush plane from the pock-marked tarmac, the mid-day African sun was beating down with a far less dramatic tone.

This would be a sign of things to come.

From the day we stepped into dusty Beni, DRC, the mission was besieged by delays, corruption and expenses that strained an already drum-tight budget — all the direct result of a bureaucratic force that would have the IRS crying uncle.

Trucks were waylaid at the edge of town for days on end, with their Kenyan drivers forced to camp out underneath indefinitely. Bribe upon bribe was demanded, mythical permits were lost, hoops were raised, red tape was reinforced. We spent the first five days in Beni trudging through an alphabet soup of government and non-governmental offices literally begging for permission to give away hundreds of thousands of dollars of free equipment to people in need.

The regional folks blamed the clowns at the capital — but promised to plead our case for a few francs and a “sample” of the goods.

An outraged member of parliment offered to publicize the plight on the local radio station — and then moved on to the next injustice before the commercial break.

The UN and USAID said they’d love to help — if only we’d asked sooner.

I don’t mean to suggest no one cared; Eventually a few local NGOs and faith based non-profits went to great lengths in search of loopholes for our project and ultimately their assistance and endorsements likely helped loosen the bureaucratic murk. However, there is undeniably some darkness in this continental heart, even if it runs in the less than exotic shades of corruption and indifference.

Even as progress toward the end goal was elusive, we were still privy to amazing opportunities: Visiting IDP camps (And hitching home after the car broke down. In rebel territory.), touring the refugee’s farming, irrigation and wood working operations, and playing a million rudimentary games with their brilliant children. These kids absolutely illuminated at the simplest gestures — adults paying any attention to them, listening to them sing, shaking their little hands, crouching down to their eye level and acknowledging in the barest, easiest way that they matter too.

We got to know the aldermen of a local church that served as our partners in the distribution effort - spirited, optimistic and patient old gentlemen whose faithful hearts for their challenged, challenging country were more than a little convicting on the days I spent cursing the place.

We wandered through the market, made crippled French small talk with the women hawking vegetables and voodoo cures and found a friendly little shop that served goat milk yogurt.

Once we earned permission to at least transfer the aid items into storage in Beni, we spent a long tough day offloading four truck loads of goods with a handful of local men. I’ve never seen anyone work like these guys worked - old and young, parched and eventually coated with the dust of every dirt road between Nairobi and Beni, straining under the weight of boxes and bags that required two to move, they never slowed down and never complained once.

And in the midst of the moderate activity and endless waiting, we made a home in Beni. Specifically at the Hotel Beni — the finest establishment in town — where the water ran cold and brown, electricity emerged once a day to briefly illuminate the long black nights and a worn sign in the lobby warned that “brawls, thundery discussions and breaches of the peace” would not be tolerated. The hotel made the best fried bananas I’ve ever had, the nightly parade of prostitutes provided amusement and I was able to kill some of the long, waiting hours playing cards with a benevolent South African Army captain named Braam. The few hands I won were undoubtedly due to him throwing the game…a charitable spirit I rather hope he does not take to the battle field.

When I wasn’t busy losing at rummy or sweetly batting my eyes at some government official in the naive hopes that I might melt their hearts and suddenly compel them to permit our relief mission to proceed (Can’t you just imagine the triumph!? It’d be Oscar worthy.), I searched for rebels. It was a sort of real life, high stakes version of “Where’s Waldo.” A game neither Charles nor Braam likely enjoyed as much as I did, though they patiently tolerated my eternal question:

“Is that a rebel? “Wait - is *that* a rebel!?”

“No Erica, that’s a farmer. No Erica, those are students. No, Erica, that’s the actual Congolese army.” (To be fair, you wouldn’t expect the national army to take public transportation, would you? Though it is the Congo….)

On the subject of how I channeled my impatience: Being in the company of two African men had its advantages. I could suggest any number of ill-advised, absurd ideas and both were too macho to object. Which is how we ended up on the back of piggy-piggies (the moto taxis that dominate Beni’s dusty main street like locust) slogging up the steep foot path that runs to the top of a squatty green mountain overlooking town. And though I slid off the back of my driver’s bike more than once, the adventure paid off big time when we got to the top of the hill and saw for the very first time a snow capped, shear tower of a mountain rising from the horizon. We were all — even our Congolese moto drivers — spellbound and speechless. Feeling our most useless, discouraged by wasted days and delays, the sight of this Shangri-la-ish peak standing above us, under our radar all along, seemed incredibly methaphorical; Perhaps a solution or divine intervention was just as imminent.

Within a few days, with no movement towards distribution in sight, I was obligated to abandon the effort and head back to Kenya for a flight to join my parents in Egypt. I was torn: The relief I felt at escaping the madness-inducing frustration of a government that makes good so hard to do was significant. On the other hand, this was my big chance to make some miniscule difference in a life that is all too often all about me. And I felt a bit the failure for not seeing it through.

The church’s old boys club hugged me goodbye at the air field, the congolese government ripped me off one more time with a few last minute fees and fines and Braam gave me a care package of toffees, cookies and playing cards.

Within a couple of weeks, things fell into place without me.

Charles’ remarkable perseverance paid off and he was able to oversee the delivery of more than a thousand relief packages to families who’d been waiting in hope for over a month. Admirably, he’s already talking about heading back and what more can be done to relieve and fortify the country.

Braam is still serving his time in the Congo, attempting to register reformed rebels into the National Army while avoiding the constant landmines of corruption. He hears rumors that his troops may be sent home around the Congolese election season, a brief respite while the country is left to battle itself.

And me. I guess I learned that as far as I might run from politics, life is a pretty political beast by nature. As I’ve heard from Peace Corp veterans in Mali to missionaries in Kenya, the aid game ain’t as idealistic as we’d like to imagine, but good work continues to get done despite all the challenges, constraints and bureaucratic dances.

Maybe most of all, I realized it really doesn’t matter if I was there to pose for a photo op or hand off the goods to the refugees myself or personally taste the tropical fruits of victory. Time only remembers that the job got done. And I am grateful to have spent a couple long weeks learning from the folks who did it.

there are a couple of emails from my past you should know about

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 07:07:50 -0500

there are a couple of emails from my past you should know about:

notthatkindagay:

(via emmyjean)

Justin Peter’s hilarious response to:

Question No. 13 on Barack Obama’s extensive questionnaire for potential members of his administration: “If you have ever sent an electronic communication, including but not limited to an e-mail, text message or instant message, that could suggest a conflict of interest or be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family, or the President-Elect if it were made public, please describe.”…

"I want to discourage you from choosing anything or making any decision simply because it is safe...."

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 07:00:43 -0500

“I want to discourage you from choosing anything or making any decision simply because it is safe. Things of value seldom are.”

- Toni Morrison (via suzannexie)

via www.timesonline.co.uk

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:11:31 -0500

via www.timesonline.co.uk

via www.timesonline.co.uk I can’t stop being fascinated...

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:10:51 -0500

via www.timesonline.co.uk

I can’t stop being fascinated by this piracy story.

What's not cool:

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:52:46 -0500

The boyfriend reassuring his friend that I “get jealous all the time too.” In the midst of, I can only imagine, a conversation about nutty women and their rampant insecurities.

Not cool, my friend.

My incessant questions about attractive acquaintances and touchy co-workers are company secrets!

In which I way overshare.

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:59:00 -0500

After the first quarter glass of wine, I always start to feel it down in South Virginia first.

How does it manage to circumvent everything else and go right to the good stuff? Does it work that way for everyone else or am I physiologically a pervert as well?

Not that I’m complaining…it’s very….relaxing.

"Couldn’t you all have downgraded to first class or jet-pooled or something to get here? It would..."

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:53:25 -0500

“Couldn’t you all have downgraded to first class or jet-pooled or something to get here? It would have at least sent a message that you do get it.”

- Rep. Gary Ackerman, to the CEOs of the Big Three automakers, who each took a separate private jet to Washington to ask for bailout money. (via spiegelman;karion)

Welcome to Burlington Coat Factory, or, Shopping for Coats in the 5th Circle of Hell

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:37:39 -0500

crazyonyou:

Have you been thinking about killing yourself lately, but haven’t been able to find the final push to take you over the edge? Might I suggest a trip to Burlington Coat Factory?

I went to the one on 6th ave and 23rd yesterday, apparently because I’m a fucking fool. As soon as you walk in Burlington Coat Factory, you literally go insane. Everything you knew or thought you knew about coats is immediately erased from your brain, and you are left with nothing. There are millions of coats, stretching as far as the eye can see. Everyone getting off the escalator almost has a fucking heart attack when they see ALL THE GODDAMN COATS. Need a black coat? They have 500,000 of them, crammed onto a 300 ft long pole in a crazy haphazard clusterfuck. It is seriously like a scary movie, where you turn around and the path you had followed into the coats is GONE and replaced with EVEN MORE COATS. You can almost hear their little coat screams.

Burlington Coat Factory is coat Gitmo. But addition to that, coat sizes are jacked. At least at Burlington Coat Factory, Medium is like a 6, and Large is a 14. That’s it. So at least for me, you either look like a horrible wool sausage, or you look like you just basically gave up and bought the coat that you are going to fit into 30 years from now, which honestly isn’t a bad idea, because that’s how long you are going to need before you can go back into Burlington Coat Factory.

Also, who told Jessica Simpson that she can make coats? WHO?!? SOMEONE NEEDS TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THIS. Every fucking Jessica Simpson coat has a plastic belt or pleather stripes or some other hideous piece of crap hanging off it like a fucking leprosy victim, which you never notice until you have spent the time to wrestle it out of the shrieking coat pile.

Some of you might have also been wondering where you can get your hands on a coat made by Beyonce’s mom’s House of Dereon line. It turns out they are all at Burlington Coat Factory! And they look like shit.

And every cute coat that fit? COYOTE FUR COLLAR. Every fucking one. O, except, excuse me, it was made in China so they actually mean dog or cat fur collar (do not click on that if you don’t want to puke everywhere/have your eyes explode)(and yes, I do mean because Trent Reznor is the narrator). Michael Kors, I am looking at you! Cut it the fuck out!

The upside is, once you go to Burlington Coat Factory, you will truly know what hell is like, and will spend every Burlington Coat Factory-less second of the rest of your life appreciating that you never, ever have to go there again. This is probably how I’ll end up getting my coat anyway.

First I “liked it” and then I laughed out loud - nay, Guffawed - twice and realized it actually deserved to be reblogged.

karion: Mariah Carey, All I Want For Christmas I am having a...

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:22:00 -0500

karion:

Mariah Carey, All I Want For Christmas

I am having a serious Monday, disguised as a Wednesday. I hate Mariah as much as the next person, but this song is just goddamn playful and I am irrationally irritated as I am trying to coordinate family and friends holiday stuff for the next hour.

Also, it was in Love, Actually, which is a damn fine movie that I need to own.

Don’t think I won’t spend the better part of December bopping around to this wonderful drivel, suspending my ban on all things Mariah, and loving every minute of the insipid holiday cheer. Because I will.

"So be lonely… learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your..."

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:36:01 -0500

“So be lonely… learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person’s body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.”

- -Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love (via outlaws, sunlit-skies, notemily; therandomnessofyes)

Agreed. The lack of human comfort is a great teacher.

via i1.trekearth.com

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 07:54:29 -0500

via i1.trekearth.com

via farm3.static.flickr.com

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 07:53:12 -0500

via farm3.static.flickr.com

My therapist rolled his eyes at me during our session today

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 07:49:26 -0500

notthatkindagay:

Shouldn’t that be illegal? I’ma write to the Better Business Bureau.

Greatest thing I’ve read today.