Oh my goodness, the nostalgia deepens. So I found myself the other day with about $5 left on my iTunes Birthday Gift Certificate and couldn't think of what to do with it without dipping into my savings and buying another album. So what did I do? I went on this strange mission to find all these extremely weird and obscure bands that I was exposed to during my colorful junior-high years. And I hit the jackpot. And I downloaded. Now albeit that these songs that I got will never appear on any Top 500 list, or even my own top 10 list, but Boy are they enjoyable to listen to. I click on "Nesbitt's Lime Soda," sit back, and remember my old friend, Ben Bush, who was listening to such iconoclasts as Tom Waits and Negativland when I was still discovering the New Kids on the Block. Bless you, Ben, and your totally innovative musical tastes. Question: if that's what you were listening to when we were 12, what on earth could you be listening to now?

ps- I hope you google your name and this post appears.

Three major events happened in my life since last I posted.

1. We moved. I spent nearly a week hauling stuff to our new place. Thanks to my friend Akoni for giving me a hand with the furniture.

2. My 28th Birthday. Josh, I never thanked you properly for the iTunes certificate. It went to great use and you'll be getting a mix in the mail sometime in December.

3. Thanksgiving. I love it. I'm a big fan.

There's an interesting way that all three of these events tie together. It's weird and nostalgic, so if you're not in the mood just come back later. While moving, I was finally able to unpack all of my cd's and store them in a nice home that spins. I rediscovered what a fanatic I was about making mix cd's and used the hours I was unpacking all of the other stuff to peruse my old favs and contemplate getting older. Interesting it is how my musical tastes have changed so much but I can still rock out to Living Color and vintage Pearl Jam. Not to mention "El Scorcho," that piece of brilliace that Weezer issued back in the late '90's. What a scream.

The nostalgia continued through Thanksgiving, even though Sher and I weren't able to travel back home. But it was more like I was rediscovering and reconnecting with all this old garbage that I hadn't thought about since we moved here. You know how people say, "you can't go home again?" As in, after you leave a place you instantly begin evolving so that when you return you're likely to view the place as entirely alien to you? Well it can be true, but it's more like you take everything with you anyway, and just examine it under different microscopes. My memories of Utah, for example, become much sweeter when I look at them from under the California lens.

ps- holy moly I almost forgot. Some carpenter from Massachussets broke the single-word high scrabble score this week. "Quixotry," spelled through an R on top of two triple word scores = 830 points. Needless to say, he also broke the single-play and game high score records. How d'you like that quixotry?!?!

Oh, how I wish this were shareware.



In other news, it rained in earnest yesterday, for the first time since we got here. It also happened to be the day for me to go out and do my meter-reading job. I got soaked. I blame myself, really. I started late, I started at all, meaning that I also had to finish. You know what, though? I really couldn't complain. I just got over a nasty-wasty cold that apparently everybody out here got that laid me out for a good ten days, so I was just happy to be out and on my feet. The five-mile bike ride back home was exhilirating, both in the fact that it was great exercise, and a bit of an adventure in that I had to make it home before the rain soaked through my pack and got my laptop wet.

Why was I carrying a laptop to read gas meters, you ask?

Answer: I thought I was going to end up at school.

ps- guess who we just signed a one year lease with?


(for explanation see previous posts)

Today is Bram Stoker's birthday (of Dracula fame). Find something appropriate to do.

Ah, clarity. It's never been one of my strongpoints.

So the job thing- I've interviewed for this job in Carmel Valley as a Translation Project Manager for a Translation & Interpretation Agency. What does this mean? If I get the job, I'll basically be managing translation projects done by people who are doing what I'm getting my degree to do - translate. Different companies will come to the agency with something to translate (into any language) and I'll negotiate a deadline with them, after which I'll contact people from a list of freelance translators and dole out the work. I might edit the final product, too, but I'm not sure.
Pros-
$$$$$$$$$$
Good business contacts
Experience
Not having to look for internship next summer, which probably wouldn't give me money even if I did find one, and if I were lucky enough to snag one, I'd have to leave Sheri all alone in Marina for the summer (which might be better by her)
$$$$$$$$$$

Cons-
It's in Carmel Valley, which is considerably far away.
Less time to do homework (con?)
The General Malaise of Working.
I don't have the job yet.

Now about the moving- we Sheri and I are sickantired of living in a place that smells like a motel. Like a smokers-only motel. Though it's pretty cheap, and they let us have our dog (a RARETY in cen-Cal, apparently), our neighbors are chainsaw-wielding psychos who shout at each other at all hours of the day from across the complex. And smoke. And smoke. And smoke.
So we've had our eye out for another appt. in Marina for a while.
Qualifications for new place:
1. Must allow pets
2. Must be affordable (HAHAHAHAHAHHOHOHOHOHOHO!)
3. Must not smell like smoke
4. Must be within ward boundaries

1+2+3+4=impossible. Or so we had thought. Untill we found a 2B/1B place just down the road with a YARD and a FRPLC and LNDRY. A dream, right? Yes.
When I said we were moving I jumped the gun. I meant we were trying to move. And I was pretty sure we would. For all the crap that the realtor put us through about the new place, i.e. asking for a letter from Sheri's boss stating that they didn't intend to fire her in the near future, i.e. a detailed outline of my financial aid (and I mean clean-your-colon type detailed), I thought that we had in. Not so. I got off the phone with the b**ch at the office this morning who said that the "owner" didn't want us in because of the dog/new carpet situation(despite our initial, and repeated conversations that the dog, with his yard, would not be an issue) and that we might still be left destitute (despite the letter) and that there was nothing we could do because of her "extensive wheeling and dealing" with the "owner."
In summary: we are moving to a different place in Marina, just not as soon as we hoped.

An open letter to Monterey County Real Estate Agents:
If you bastards have it in you to charge people outrageous amounts of money to live in the glorified shacks that you have the gall to call decent housing, you can't very well expect people to fall all over themselves to get inside. If they can afford to give the blood money you ask for, they deserve it already.

With Love-
The Napalm Brain

p.s.-this is you.

This is a picture of a cool cultural experience that I witnessed last night. Our good friend, Jen P, is moving to Utah to set up shop while her husband is training in Texas (I think) for his next air force job. Her neighbor is this cool woman from Pakistan, and in celebration of her journey and confusion and pregnancy, etc, brought over a cone full of mendhi, which I guess is the proper term for a specific type of henna, and drew something like the above on her hand and fingers, all the while telling her stories of the crazy-accurate predictive nature of mendhi-tattooing. One example: the night before said Pakistani lady got engaged, her friend gave her a mendhi drawing on her hand of a big splotch, with three lines on each of two sides and five lines on the other two sides. She also drew a single line on her ring finger. The next day her husband proposed, and gave her a ring with a large central diamond with three stones around it, and five stones on each side of the central stone on the band. Coincidence? Her friend denies any pre-knowledge of the details of the ring, even though she knew the boyfriend would propose soon.

In other news:
We are moving. Hooray!
I might get this sweet job. Hooray!
Happy Birthday, Albert Camus.

A glance into the life of an interpreter.

Here's the story of one of those moments where one of your childhood linguistic fallacies comes full circle.


Roberto and I used to sing a song in Spanish that I had once heard on Sesame Street. I didn't speak any Spanish back then, and thus couldn't understand any of the words, so I just assumed they meant in English what they sounded like phonetically.

"Las choppas neck-as Ay, Ay."
"Ay! Ay!"
"Las choppas neck-as ay, ay."
"Ay! Ay!"

Rob and I would go around all day singing this crazy song about people getting decapitated. And we loved it.

So fifteen years later I'm here going to grad school and we begin to translate this thing about the civil unrest in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. Well, it just so happens that a person from Chiapas is called a "chiapaneco," usually pronounced "choppa-neck-o." Well, it didn't take me more than a couple of days to realize that the whole time we had been unwittedly singing this old Mexican folk tune about hot chicks from Chiapas.

Las Chiapanecas, ay, ay.

Good heavens. None of those chicks are hot.

I was totally disappointed in This American Life's Halloween show. The scariest thing they could come up with was David Sedaris.

Two other things that happened this halloween, scary in different ways:

Thing the First: California has a way with moist air and fungus. The carved pumpkins that we placed on our porch went south so quickly that they were lined with green fuzz within three days. By the time I had a moment to toss them, my own pumpkin, sitting on the ground, was leaking water all over our stairs. It practically dissolved at my touch. In the end I had to scoop it up with a dustpan. The stain can be seen still....

Thing the Second: Halloween night we opened our back door to let in some cool air, and to let out some of my cold germs. No sooner had we opened it than our dog's hackles stood directly on end, and he ran out onto the balcony and began growling and barking, neither of which he really ever does. After he started, all the dogs in the hood started up. We had to bring him inside and close the doors.

Well, now it's November. No more slasher movies on TV. But we do have a Spooky Midterm Election to haunt us in the Witching Hour!!!

Mw Ha Ha Ha!