Question and Answer Time

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Q: When does a casual acquaintance/annoyance cross over into stalker?

A: When he comes and finds you at your substitute instructor job that's only supposed to last a week.

Luckily you are in your car, just leaving the job to go home and eat breakfast. You can just speed away, engrossed in Ladytron and pretend that you didn't see him waving frantically from his bicycle. You then call Margo, screaming about it and she tells you to call the police (and laughs at you). Let's not mention the two phone calls and two text messages that follow.

Not My Finest Hour

Monday, March 26, 2006

I have tasted freedom. I have lived a year of debauchery, general hooliganism, mayhem with just a touch of promiscuity.

I am faced with the possibility of a break from this, faced with someone whom I like a lot and apparently likes me a lot. Someone who wants to do nice things with me like go for long hikes with Jeeves, discuss the meaning of life and have great sex. What do I do?

I give my phone number to a Portuguese Stanford post-doc that I met at the Nuthouse. The Nuthouse.

It seemed like a fine idea at the time, after 3 Bloody Mary's, a Fat Tire and a Stella, a great way to assert my independance and, more importantly, my control over the situation. Now that he's texted me 4 times and called me 5 times, it doesn't seem as though it was such a great idea. Especially because the texts were overtly forward, ending with the words "Kiss.... Paolo".

As grossed out as I am I still feel like a total bitch not responding, but I don't know what to say.

1. "I'm sorry. I'm seeing someone who's taller and more attractive than you in just about every way. I only gave you my number because I'm trying to run away from my emotions."

2. "I'm sorry. I can't really stand the thought of you, so you see this makes it impossible for us to have a relationship.

3. "I've a VD, d'you?"

4. "I'm only 12."

5. "I'm actually 58"

I'd like to add, at this point, that he is calling me as I type, this makes it 6 calls.

6. "I'd like you to meet my parents. Why? So we can start planning the wedding, silly!"

Call number 7.

7. "I'm sorry. I confused my real number with the fake number I normally give out to strangers in bars. So this whole thing is really just a typographical error."

or, and this one's borrowed from a television show we all know and love,

8. "Dear Paolo, Welcome to Dumpsville. Population: You."

I'm welcoming further suggestions. I still feel like a total bitch.

Bloody Noses and Dirty Hippies Part The Second

Apparently, the dirty hippy with the gum disease is in love with me. I was informed of this today by his closest friend, simultaneously being warned not to "touch that". I think he meant figuratively as in pursuing a relationship, but I chose to take it literally and said,

"Don't worry. You couldn't pay me to touch him."

Bloody Noses and Dirty Hippies

Here's a funny story kids.

Saturday night, in a farm-fresh stupor, I walked into a wall and gave myself a bloody nose. This is the first time a physical act has resulted in my getting a bloody nose. I got bloody noses all the time when I was little, but it was always a very random occurrence, my mother always attributed it to my being "over tired" (I came to understand later that this was her excuse for everything).

This bloody nose episode, I had gotten up from my couch in the living room where I had been watching a what is really the only thing appropriate to watch at 1 in the morning in a farm-fresh stupor, a horror film, circa 1979. I was also trying desperately to forget the drunken, dirty hippy with the worst case of gum disease I have ever had the displeasure of witnessing at close hand. He had followed me around claiming my accent was fake, asking me would I please stop faking it and could he have some of my whiskey. He then proceeded to inform me that my dog really loved him and that a dog's closest relative was a dolphin (if you look at the snout, it's obvious, apparently). Then he sat way too close to me on the couch and made remarks about my sexual history, mainly along the lines of "I know all about you." repeated over and over again. I finally got up and went home.
The horror movie that I was watching came to an end, I got up and stumbled towards what I though was the hall that leads to my bedroom, but was in fact the wall of the hall that leads to my bedroom.

The reason I'm writing about it now is because it is still on my mind, because it still hurts - It feels like when you jump into a pool and you forget to breathe out and all the water rushes up your nose and pounds into your sinuses.

Either that or it feels like I snorted Tang.

Silly news people-Kirk Cameron isn't interesting!

I had a conversation tonight with Ryan about the inanity of news b-roll, which reminded me of my foray into the world of television yesterday.

I thought I might give it a shot and I ended up watching 15 minutes of some idiot on MSNBC "interviewing" former tv child star and current religious nutcase Kirk Cameron (Growing Pains, Left Behind) while presumptuous and sensationalist b-roll played. Think a combination of clips from such films as Ben Hur and David vs. Super Goliath in addition to shots in seedy dive bars to demonstrate the moral demise of Hollywood as the reason why The Passion of the Christ was so popular (nothing to do with the fact that our country is stocked with people who will pay for anything that gives them a free pass out of the guilt of social responsibility, including the belief that someone else will show up and absolve them of all their bad deeds providing that they hate gay people).
I think that in this case and probably lots of other cases, the b-roll was mainly to distract the audience from what was actually being said, due to the fact that what was being said was total crap.

Currently listening :
Growing Pains & Other Hit TV Themes
By Steve Dorff & Friends
Release date: By 25 October, 1990

blackface noodles and introspection

Karen and I had a great Saturday. We took Jeeves to Lake Lagunita and he ran around like a very happy maniac. Then we went to the flea market at my alma mater, Palo Alto High School (surprisingly enough, I didn't burst into flames or melt or anything like that upon entering the grounds).
Then we went and ate noodles at her favorite restaurant in Mountain View. (Yes. It was further south than Rengstorff, once again I didn't burst into flames or melt or anything like that). We watched Japanese television while we were eating our noodles, there was a pop music show on with all these weird bands on, fairly innocuous for the most part.

I did almost spit out my noodles at one of the acts though, as it was five Japanese men in honest-to-goodness blackface.

I mean it. Really. Blackface.

---------------------------------------------

I find myself, quite often, looking for imperfections in my friends.

You see, I generally have such admiration, compassion and loyalty to my friends that I have to find comfort in their foibles and flaws. Otherwise, I'm afraid that they'll see mine and perhaps not like me anymore. In short, I love them so much that they seem faultless, where as I feel continually faulted in comparison.
-----------------------------------------------
I recieved an email on Monday from someone who really enjoyed spending the day with me on Sunday.

I'm terrified because I can't imagine why - I am in the middle of discovering that I am an entirely interesting person without being a horse trainer, but I haven't gotten quite comfortable in my new skin yet.

Currently listening : Here Come the Warm Jets By Eno Release date: By 01 June, 2004

Part four, Jessie + I try and find a post office.

The table was rectangular and wooden and the people sitting around it were smiling. Their white teeth contrasted brightly with the dark stone walls and the dim light.

As the little woman handed me a large plastic cup full of foggy yellow chicha, we moved to our seats. I sipped a little as I sat and Jessie muttered to me under her breath,

"How is it?"

"It's dis-gus-ting."

I replied, singing it softly between my polite smiling teeth. She replied, equally succinctly,

"Here's to wildly violent diarrhea..."

And then took her own sip. The man sitting directly across from Jessie and in front of a stone wall that was wallpapered with poster calenders started talking to us in Spanish. The poster calenders were bright and colorful and, despite the somewhat scantily clad women featured on most of them, made the dark small room seem quite cheerful.

_____ was very interested in us. He was very proudly Quechua and motioned to everyone around the table saying that they were all Quechua, and that Quechua is a much happier language than Spanish.

"When you say something in Quechua, you want to smile." Jessie translated for me.

Part three, Jessie + I try and find a post office.

We discovered them by walking further back into the village, away from the main square. The streets were tiny and the buildings were made of the huge Inca stones that fitted together so firmly and tightly that you couldn't slip a knife between them.

Every once in a while, a house would have a pole that stuck out of it, with a red plastic bag wrapped around the end. We peeked into the first one we found and saw a group of people, men and women sitting around a table.

"That's the chicha that they're drinking." Jessie said.

Chicha is a fermented drink that I was already familiar with. As an undergrad at UCSB I worked with a grad student named Justin Jennings on a project to make Chicha. We made it out of the maguey plant, which is similar to agave, which is what you make tequila out of, assuming you are, of course in Tequila.

Jessie and I continued to wander the grid of Ollantaytambo. Happy, dirty stray dogs would run between the houses and beautiful, purple cheeked children played football in the streets. At some point we realized that we were not going to find the post office. Jessie turned to me and said, "Let's get a drink."

Hey Marianne + Jeremy,

Here's a postcard from a strange shop in Ollantaytambo. They sold honey and seeds and alpaca cloth but it was a benefit shop to encourage local people to keep doing what they've been doing for thousands of years. So it was a little more expensive than the other tourist shops, but I felt compelled to support them.

See you soon!

Alice

We had seen quite a few of these homes that served chicha, but we decided to go to the first one because it had lots of people in it.
It was a two or three steps down into the main room of the house, accessible from the street. An uneven wooden table was to one side, with chairs all around it. All the chairs were taken but one and a small crate. I sat on the crate and Jessie took the chair. A tiny Quechua woman said

"cincuenta centavos."

In response to Jessie's "¿cuánto para una taza?"


We only had one 5o cent piece between us, it was either that or a 100 sole bill which we reasoned she would not have the change for, so we got one cup.

We sat down with our new companions and introduced ourselves.

Cold skin

Yesterday I went for an amazing hike. I brought Ryan along to meet Margo + David + Meg and I ended up really enjoying myself a lot.

The air was cold but I was so warm from the exertion that it was prickly on my skin, the same feeling you have when you jump into an ice cold lake on a very hot day. I could feel just under my skins surface I was warm, blood was rushing through my body so naturally and normally but my skin itself was cold to the touch.

It was a purge of sorts and very refreshing to not feel cold all the way through my body.

Other than the trip to Peru, I really haven't felt as good as I felt yesterday in a long time. In Peru, I think it was being in different surroundings and seeing Jessie and being far, far away from here. It was a little worrying to think about coming back to here, but I took comfort in the plans that Jessie + Claudia + I were making.

So to go on that hike yesterday and wander around underneath the madrones and redwoods was a relief. It was also nice to have such a relaxing time with Ryan. He was great company.

Part two, Jessie + I try and find a post office.

Hey Ben,

I got this postcard because it reminded me of all the bones we saw in the catacombs of Lima - they had a "bone well", which some moron thought meant they threw dead bodies in their drinking water. Really it means that they have a giant pit, in which they put the bones.
Right now we are sitting and drinking coca leaf tea in a coca leaf shop. They gave us weird cookies that I think were also made out of coca leaf (they are kind of gross, unlike the tea - you'd really like the tea).
Anyway,

Hope you are well,

Alice

At the bottom of the rock slide, there were more ruins. We were shielded from the sun by the big hill we had just come down. The side of the hill was a sheer rock face with rectangular holes that had been cut away and then worn smooth. They made perfect seats for us, although one or two were less than ideal to get to. I curled up in one, Claudia took the next one, John the third and my brother scrambled, with his underwear sticking out of his trousers, along to the last one.
Jessie took our picture a few times and then handed snacks and water up to us.

What got us to come down was a white dog with big brown eyes that loved plantana chips. We played with him and fed him all our chips and then he accompanied us back to the village, running ahead and then waiting for us, looking back over his shoulder.

So it was at this point that we all split up. Jessie and I wandered off on our own, asking several people where the post office was. The thing about asking for directions in Latin America is that you aren't really given specific ones. Usually just an arm waved generally towards where they think you might want to go. We were waved in several different directions and never did find the post office.

We did however discover the chicha bars that we had read about in the guide book.

Part one, Jessie + I try and find a post office.

Claudia needed to make a phone call and my brother and John needed to sleep, so Jessie and I took to the streets of Ollantaytambo to find a post office, where I could by some stamps for my painstakingly written postcards:

Hi Matt + Kat!

This postcard is a picture of the main square in the city of Cusco (on the way to Machu Pichu). We got attacked by small children with water balloons and raspberry flavored foam. It was funny at the time but sucked later when we had to sit and eat dinner soaking wet.
I'm going to try and stay longer, but John will be back on the 25th.

love,
Alice

Ollantaytambo is in the Sacred Valley of the Incas and has a huge fortress at one end. We had spent the morning wandering around the fortress in very strange weather. Blustery winds would blow one moment and then you'd turn a corner into hot sun and sprinkling rain. Behind the main fortress was a long trail that lead us along the side of the mountain and gave us a good view of the valley and all the subsistence farms that were dotted along the road, complete with plows pulled by oxen and Quechua farmers with sun leathered skin and work roughened hands.

By the time we had got to the very top of the mountain and found another ruin, seemingly separate from the fortress, the weather had taken a turn for the worse. John had neglected to put on any rain gear and I was getting a little hungry for more than just the Oreo cookies and plantana chips that we had packed. Also Claudia had to make that phone call. So we went back down along the mountain trail, pointing at the other hills and trying to decipher all the words that people had scraped into the hillside as well as remarking on all the other ruins we could see. There were striations across the other mountains, evenly spaced lines running across the whole mountain, looking almost like stretch marks that had occurred as the mountain had pushed itself forth from the ground.

Hi Miss Margeauxbee!

We are on a bus home from Machu Pichu. It was unbelievably breathtaking, it made me realize a lot about a lot of things. Nothing like sitting in a room built by someone thousands of years ago to make you feel both insignificant and yet unbelievably happy. Hope you and David are well. Squeezes and tickles to Freddy + Santi. Miss you!

Love,
Alice

At the main fortress after the hike, we rested and then decided to continue along a different path, other than the one we had used to climb up, to get down to the bottom. It was a stone path with a wall between you and the side of the mountain although every once in awhile there was a window that came all the way to the ground and you could stand there and think about leaping through and flying across the hillside, all the way back to town.

We followed this stone path until we came to a thatched house, sort of stuck inside of the mountain. The path lead above the roof and then steps went down next to it and along the front where there were two openings to the inside. It had clearly been used as a toilet by any number of stray dogs and stray people.

There was a path that lead the rest of the way down the hill, but it was marked very clearly in Spanish:

"¡Peligro!"

It seemed safe from where we could see, standing on the side of the hill. The steps back up to the top seemed so steep and after as many steps as we had taken that day and the day before, the path peligrosa down the hill seemed so invitingly downhill. Jessie went first, followed by John. Jessie disappeared a little as she found exactly where the path became so peligrosa, a sheer drop with only a few footholds in the rock between us and the next portion of the path. John forged ahead, finding it less difficult than it looked. We all followed suit and soon we were hiking again on a nice solid path for a little while, until it became treacherous again. John and I were in the lead at this point and we discovered that once you climbed down a short little way, you came upon two very long, very smooth rocks, one set on the other at a right angle. These gave way to another very smooth, but much larger rock that sat under the other two like a giant lip sticking out. Once at the end of this rock, a few stones lay and then the green, grassy ground.

John stepped carefully down, clutching onto his blue bag that he bought in Colombia, containing his small five dollar guitar and not much else. I decided that sliding down would be much more fun, seeing as the smooth long rock looked so very much like a slide.

Claudia's voice came from around the hedges that hid all of this from view:

"Is it safe?"

We called back:

"Yeah, it's really easy from here."

"Great. You know, this really wasn't that bad at all. Although I can see why they wouldn't want people going this way."

She and her maroon jacket appeared around the hedge, just after Jessie. She was wearing an orange scarf that she had bought in the market in Cusco tied around her hair, leaving her bangs at the front and the ends hanging down her back, coming from underneath the rest of her hair. Jessie and I had both admired and envied the scarf, Jessie trying it on and me buying my own, but in green.

Hi Robert,

We are in a coca leaf shop drinking tea. The walls on the front of this card were built by the Incas and then built on top of by the Spanish (you can see what a crappy job the Spanish did, the Inca rocks can't fit a knife between them!). I may stay longer, I don't know, it's really easy to be here away from everything.

Alice

My brother came last, by the time he rounded the hedge, I had already begun sliding down the big rock underneath the right angled ones. John was already at the bottom. The others followed suit with the sliding. My brother tore the seat out of his trousers.

7. cafe con leche

The market that we found my last morning in Cusco was so many things.

It was like the markets I was taken to as a child, clutching my mothers hand and wandering through stalls of fish, vegetables and bright fruits some of which, to my enjoyment, I didn't recognize. One looked like a white tomato with purple streaks lightening bolting through it. When I picked one up, it felt like an apple. Green gourd like round things are next to the grapefruits and strange brown woody roots are in buckets on the ground. Around one corner a man was selling bicycle parts and next to him another stall filled with bright South American candy. The awnings over the stalls were so low but not too low for me or Jessie.

Small women sit on the ground and in wavering thin, tired voices ask us if we would like corn:

"Choclo? Choclo?"

We were trying to find an open travel agent at 7:30 am. In a panic, my brother had stumbled into our bedroom, his pants half on, urging me to go and take care of the business of my lost ticket. He was mostly asleep and so were we, so asleep that neither Jessie nor I had bothered to think about whether or not anything would be open this early.
Once awake and walking down the congested, polluted street of El Sol, in Cusco, we both realized that finding anything open, even somewhere to buy a cheap cup of Peruvian instant coffee that comes as a syrup you pour into your cup of hot water, was futile.

We thought we were finding the bus station where we had been the day before, but really when we turned into the doorway made by two sheets of corrugated steel, we discovered the market full of all these magical things. Partially covered by plastic and tarpaulin, partially out in the open, and partially tucked neatly into the side of a building, it was bustling at 7:30.

At one point, we turned a corner and crossed out of the tarpaulin covered part, across a sort of division and inside a giant white room, full of animal carcasses and women making fruit smoothies. On the way in, we passed a Quechua woman handing out bowls of sopa, clearly made by boiling the head of some kind of animal.
The white room had a pungent, salty smell that a little more than I could handle, but as we crossed through the room and to the next part of the market, the first stall outside was big beautiful flowers bursting out of their respective jars.

We started thinking about coffee and breakfast. After Jessie spoke to the bicycle man about buying some mud flaps for her bike, ones with something on them that I can't quite remember at the moment, and explaining to the man that she couldn't bring her bike to him, because it was in La Paz, we made an effort to find a place. Lots of little holes in the walls and funny little stands under the stall appeared to be serving something. A lot of them were empty though and we wanted a place with people.

The people were mostly Quechua, the women were wearing their wide, knee length skirts, brightly colored sweaters and fedora hats on top of jet black hair worn in two very tight braids down their backs. Quechua is the language that was spoken by the Inca, and is still spoken by at least 3,200,000 people in Peru, according to the 1993 census. The Inca were the high class warriors, diplomats and politicians. People today who still speak this language call themselves Quechua. It is apparently a much happier language than Spanish.

The market was lined at one end with a building that had an open side to it. This mouth opened up into the market and was divided in the back into little kitchens. Some were empty and some had busy women, cooking and serving.

We chose one and ordered two huevos con pan y cafe con leche for 1.50 soles each which is about 50 US cents. The bread (pan) everywhere, including at this market, came fresh and about the size of a cd. She fried up the egg and cut the bread in half, slipping the egg in between the two slices, handing it to you along with a small salt shaker. The cafe con leche, was made by pouring a little bit of coffee syrup in with a few spoonfuls of powdered milk and sugar and then adding hot water. While we ate, we watched her prepare the other customers meals. There was a strange lumpy soupy thick drink called ponche that was burnt cream colored and spent most of it's time before being served sitting in a boiling vat. A tiny girl with purple, sunburned cheeks sat next to me and had this drink, dipping her pan into it and chewing it slowly. A group of men sat and ordered it over and over again, also dipping their pan into it.

After this we got up and wandered through the market some more, before discovering the exit and feeling the need to get some real coffee.

6. Machu Pichu and Aguas Calientes

It has been a few days. We are in Cusco again after a trip to Aguas Calientes (literally Hot Springs. Well if you want to be absolutely literal, it should be Luke Warm Springs That Smell Like Rotting Onions, but you know, that'd be too long probably).
Aguas Calientes was like a Hollywood movie set. It felt really safe and comfortable, but was a lot like Fisherman's Wharf in SF. This is probably because it is the jumping off point for all the tours to Machu Pichu and unless you want to pay 70 dollars a night instead of the 5 dollars at the hostel, you stay there.

I cannot begin to describe Machu Pichu. It was magical and awesome and humbling and incredible. I spent a lot of time sitting alone and aborbing the sheer emptiness but total completeness of the entire space. It´s surrounded by huge mountains that appear to shoot out of the ground in an almost urgent manner, were it not apparent that they had been standing for millions of years.

We also hiked to the top of Wayna Pichu, another ruin on top of one of these mountains next to Machu Pichu. There were stairs almost the whole way up, chiseled out of the rock and worn smooth from use. So smooth that in the rain, and standing on what felt like the edge of the world it was exhilarating and terrifying.

When we got to the top, we chose the highest stone to sit on, all five of us, were we stayed until it started raining harder than it had been.

With the taste of coca leaves and oreo cookies on our tongues, we descended back to Machu Pichu.

5. Boiled corn and tiny people

I´ve found the most noticeable thing when you travel is the different smells. Cusco is certainly no exception.

Apart from the obvious difference in the air that comes from it being an entirely different country on an entirely different continent, walking up and down the tiny cobblestoned streets, avoiding tiny cars hurtling towards you at break neck speeds, you walk in and out of pockets smells.

Some are delicious like boiled corn on the cob or some strange spicy dish. Some are not so delicious - The sewers are open air so the pungent smell of human shit will also hit you when you turn a corner occasionally and when it started raining, all the urine from the people who piss in the streets started running down the hill and the smell rose up from the ground.

Occasionally I smell sweet whiskey or a flowery jasmine smell. Smoke and diesal from the pocket sized taxi cabs filled full of pocket sized people; they really are tiny, tiny people. The women wear fedoras and alpaca sweaters; their thin brown legs look like they are wooden sticks peaking out from under their very wide and colorful skirts that come up to just above the knee. Some of these tiny indigenous women lead Alpacas, hoping that you will take your picture with them for a few soles. The Alpacas have a woolly dusty smell and a very soft eye with long lashes.

4. I finally try Coca Tea

Cusco is an amazing town with stray dogs, tiny people and corn on the cob that tastes like potato and had kernals the size of throat lozenges.

Mango con leche, Andean coca and mint tea and a hookah.

3. Suits and Beer

We are sitting in a bar in the Centro De Bogota called Moulin Bleu. After walking all over, it was time to sit, so here we are, with 11 beers between us.
The seating area is really just a lot of cushions, in turquoise, pink, red and yellow on the floor. Everyhing seems very orange and beautiful people are sitting around us in pairs. I think we´re in the make out room.
One couple, a man in one of these fantastic suits that are everywhere and a woman with amazing long black hair clipped back are kissing and cuddling across from us. People are very expressive here.

The fantastic suits are straight out of the 70´s and are very well fitted. The ties are the best part, fat and multicolored. The striped ones are the best. I really want to buy a tie but I don´t have anyone to give it to, we stopped in a shop that was a small white room in the side of a building that had tiny rolled up tie sized shelves - they were so bright it looked like candy.

Earlier, we met Angie, who in her own youth of 20-on-Wednesday, kept exclaiming "wow you are so young" to our respective 27, 25 and 33.

A man just set up with his guitar next to us and it sounds great. For all I know, he´s just playing pop covers - the girl next to us, when she´s not necking with her friend, keeps singing along- but it sounds great to me.

Our plane for Lima leaves in a few hours but we keep putting off getting a cab, not because we don´t want to leave but more because it feels so right to be here.

Love to all.

2. Onwards and Upwards

So far, I´ve had no problems with the food. I say this because everyone has been afraid I was going to get sick. I did have to eat a fish today though, which was strange.

(I guess "no carne" didn´t mean what I thought it would. I was sort of expecting it though)

We got to SFO really early and then almost missed our flight because John + I were drinking mini-bottles of airport wine.

When we got to our airline at LAX there was a two man samba band. They had a flute and a Yamaha home organ, which, when they took there ¨set break¨, they just left on some random automatic beat thing. It was very surreal, almost Lynchian especially because the Avianca Air staff were wearing straw hats and plastic leis, which they were also giving to us. I kind of thought they would show up with cutesy sugary umbrella-y drinks and start telling us how they were the "cool" airline. But it didn´t happen.

Instead they mangled my brother´s bag. When it slid out on the baggage claim thing, it was in a giant plastic bag. Someone had scrawled ¨happened in LA¨on some piece of tape that was holding the whole thing together. It was a little disheartening.

Now we are in Bogota, having gone the Museo d´Oro, eaten lunch or dinner or whatever the hell time of day it is. Tonight we´ve the last leg of our journey, to Lima and Jessie. Hopefully between the airport and hostel, we´ll find her.

1. Jobless and Leaving

I'm getting ready for my trip to Peru this morning. By getting ready I mean sitting at the computer in my pink pajamas and a sweater that little Maya Nagaraj brought me back from the Galapagos.

Oddly enough, the sweater smells like my house in Santa Barbara, despite the fact that it never lived there. I found it this morning at 6 am while digging through boxes in the garage. This was after I had sat straight up in bed, in a cold sweat and realized I had no idea where my US passport was.

I contemplated for a bit the consequences of traveling on my EU passport instead:

On the one hand, I'd get to Peru but I would have a terrible time getting back into the US. On the other hand, I'd get to Peru but I would have a terrible time getting back into the US.

So this sweater was sitting amongst other clothes I'd forgotten about and has apparently absorbed the smoky adobe smell that had permeated the rest of my Santa Barbara belongings.

The same Maya who gave me the sweater gave me a Valentine/Going Away Card yesterday. It reads:

Dear Alice

Have fun in Peru!
Are you going to climb
Machupichu? I've heard that
it's a great place to visit,
along with the ancient Mayan
(hint-hint!) ruins.

Sincerely,
Maya

The underlining was all her, too.

House

The news is that there is no news. We did not buy a house nor are we going to, at least not here.