Monthly Archive for February, 2007

Drawn lines

Published on February 23, 2007 in hiking, internet and outdoors. 11 Comments

Hello Erik,

Pat O sent you this message from Southern California
Backpacking Cooperative on Meetup.com:
—————————————————————-
Hello Erik,
I have your request to join pending, your answers are fine,
that’s all I’m looking for – people who like to backpack BUT
I’m also trying to foster a group that shows some level
seriousness about it. If you are willing to change your picture
you’re in. If not, well, I pay the Meetup bill and I’m the one
that arbitrarily decides. Your choice now. I will check back
every few days and will decline you in 1 week if no change. I
think you can have separate pictures for different groups.
Pat O
—————————————————————-

My reply:
—————————————————————-
Pat O,

Thanks for the offer, but no thanks. I am a goofy guy, and if
I’m going backpacking I want to be out there with people who
will cheer me on for being me.

Erik
—————————————————————-

Standing up for yourself

Published on February 21, 2007 in blogging and confidence. 0 Comments

I just wrote a long entry I really want to share. But I don’t feel like I can. Because I can’t handle the thought of one particular person judging me.

It sucks.

I generally feel confident about who I am, but it’s amazing how one person can unnerve you. I hope I’m getting stronger, and I hope I can stand up to it soon.

St. Valentine’s Curse

Published on February 15, 2007 in being queer, cooking, drinking, food, friends, love and pi. 0 Comments

Posted on message board

In case you hadn’t guessed, I found my camera! It turns out I left it in Stephanie’s car after the reading at The Rubber Rose… which was awesome, by the way. It was a sort of book release party for The IHOP Papers, a novel by Ali Liebegott. I think it was part of some kind of LGBT reading series they have there. Attached to the “sexuality boutique”, The Rubber Rose has this community space where a lot of performance art and gallery showings happen, and it was packed with Ali’s friends and appreciators. People from many different parts of her life (students, partners, publishers) all read from her book, and it was amazing to see someone accomplishing something so cool with such great support from her community. It was obvious Ali had given a lot to those people and that they’d given back.

Made from 100% salvaged materials!

So. Valentine’s Day.

I wasn’t even really thinking about Valentine’s Day until I stumbled out of the lab at about noon and realized that campus was awash with dapper young men with bouquets of roses and sorority sisters dressed up in tiny little matching pink polka-dotted dresses.

And I felt a twinge of sadness that I would have no Valentine this year, that I would probably not even get a Valentine’s Day card or phone call. It was a depressing thought. But then I thought, why do I deserve a valentine? I hadn’t given any, why should anyone give one to me? I hadn’t asked anyone to be my valentine, why would I expect to be in any other position?

So, I tore down some faded red flyers that were posted, ran back to the lab, found a pair of scissors and made some valentines for my lab mates and other loved ones. It’s awesome to get your creativity on, it’s awesome to salvage materials from the trash, and it’s awesomer to turn minor depression into cause for adventure.

I left them on keyboards and delivered them in person, and it was really nice to see people smile. Brynn gave me a big hug. I still didn’t receive any valetines, but I felt pretty good about my love Karma.

Rapini in lemon garlic sauce over pasta

My Valentine’s evening was to be a quiet night at home and at the laundromat. I cooked up some Rapini, which is a really intensely flavored leafy green, sometimes known as Broccoli Rabe. It comes in our food box, and I’ve been stir-frying it, but this recipe came right from our farmer. She said to sautee it in olive oil with garlic and raisins and then squeeze lemon juice over it. Basically, you put it in with a bunch of other super-intense flavors and they miraculously all stand up to each other. It was delicious.

I added cashews for some extra protein, but the cashew flavor, which is normally pretty detectable, was totally dominated by the other flavors. They provided a nice crunch though.

That said, by the time I had eaten dinner and sat in the laundromat until 9:30pm, I was again thoroughly depressed that no one was thinking of me this Valentine’s Day and I had no one to think of. My mind wandered to all of my friends out there spending the evening with a lover or a friend. I trudged home with my folded laundry feeling sorry for myself. At the apartment I joked a little about it with Kerry and Gina, but then they left and I was alone in the apartment again.

I peeked my head out the window and saw that my neighbor Carrie had her light on and her door open, so I poured a glass of wine and went down to say hello. She could totally see in my eyes that I was feeling down, and she immediately said we should get a drink at the Tractor Room.

To make a long story short, it was just the nicest possible end to the day. Carrie and I had a great chat about all kinds of stuff… romance, the fact that she prefers tropical beaches and prefer New England lakes, self-empowerment, the crazy tasty drinks we were being served… I don’t know, it was just a great conversation.

It’s funny how we find things in unexpected places. I think of Carrie as an awesome neighbor more than a best friend, but this is the second time she’s just come along at the perfect time and picked me up a bit.

And that’s what friendship is. That’s what love is. Stepping outside of your own day-to-day concerns, looking into someone’s soul, and reaching a hand out to them.

And it’s a nice feeling.

Bean stickers, hairy legs, and other agents of inspiration

Published on February 9, 2007 in Comics, art, feminism, food, pi, vegan and women. 1 Comment

Friday is Gender Buffet day at the Women’s Center. Usually the discussion is pretty inspired and we end up lingering afterward and snacking and chating about feminism and art and gender and love and whatever else. We got to talking about valentine’s day, and I offered that I felt the day was really oriented towards lover/lifepartnering and I’m looking for affection and intimacy and support outside of that context lately, and we had a really cool discussion about sleeping with friends and sleepovers and how there should be a women’s center sleepover and stuff.

At some point I got up to graze the lunch table, and Renee (the women’s center intern) was like “oh, are you hungry Erik?” and I was like “yeah a little” and before I could protest she ran off to the kitchen to scout out some more food. She came back empty handed and then I explained that really, I’m not dying of hunger, but I am trying not to be wasteful, and that launched an awesome discussion about food.

I started telling Renee about my veganesqueness and Niko joined in and started talking about her veganism. I was telling them how I’m wanting not just to spend lots of money on fake meat and gourmet produce, but to actually figure out a way to eat sustainably and responsibly on a budget that a large swath of America could afford. We got to talking about rice and beans and how it makes an awesome staple diet, and Renee professed (bodily!) her love of rice and beans and told us how when she was growing up her family would just cook up a huge pot of rice and beans and it’d just be there, ready to eat all week.

That was really inspiring for me, and then Niko ran back to her office to grab something for me. She comes back with a sheet of stickers like these:

beanstickers.gif

Which she drew. Also awesome and inspiring. Two weeks ago I had another awesome conversation with Renee about self-image and how I’ve been approaching my appearance differently as a result of my feminism. I’m growing out my beard, and enjoying that. When I look in the mirror and think my hair looks ugly, I don’t “fix” it, I take the “ugly” parts and accentuate them and realize that they’re awesome. And that stuff is mostly coming from the feminist women I’m talking to.

And lots of my friends have been really inspiring lately in other ways too. I think my recent focus on sustainability is coming totally from Kaya and Alex. My focus on cooking has been totally feeding off of Kensy’s energy. I’m climbing in part because Matthew is so supportive, and working on art because other-Matthew got so excited when I told him what I was doing. It’s just awesome to be mutually inspired.

Fiji, Evian, Poland Spring

Published on February 6, 2007 in action, energy, environment and pi. 5 Comments

Often when I speak about issues on this blog (abortion, etc) I try to put forth an equivocating, balanced perspective. On the issue of bottled water I’m going to be direct:

STOP DRINKING BOTTLED WATER!

I’ve known bottled water was an irresponsible habit for a while, but today I read Pablo Päster’s math about how much water, energy, and pollution are tied up in a bottle of water, and it convinced me that I needed to speak up.

One bottle of artesian water from Fiji, which costs a few bucks and looks so harmless on the shelf at Whole Foods…

… requires 27 liters of water to make (for making the plastic, getting it out of the ground, cooling power plants, etc)

… requires one liter of fossil fuels to get here

… and generates 1.2 pounds of greenhouse gasses.

That’s Fiji, but you know Evian (which comes from France) can’t be all that different. And that crappy tap-water that you buy bottled at the grocery store is not fundamentally better. You’re still fabricating that bottle. You’re still driving it hundreds of miles in a truck. You’re still paying grocery clerks to stock it, price it, and bathe it in flourescent light for weeks.

“But Erik…” you say, “the water in my tap tastes funny… I think there’s a kind of pasty texture that I don’t like! Evian is so smooth and tasty.”

SACK UP! You’re destroying the Earth. That bottle of evian comes with a liter of gas, 1.2 pounds of greenhouse gasses, and 27 liters of fresh water. The water coming out of your tap uses negligible amounts of all of that.

The real thing to remember is this: you get used to it. If you stop drinking soda, you start thinking fruit tastes pretty darn sweet. If you stop drinking Evian, you start thinking your tap water isn’t all that bad. Taste is a two-way street. You need to pull a freaking U-turn.

* for those not familiar with the phrase “sack up”: urban dictionary

Smorgasbord

Published on February 5, 2007 in dinnercoop, family, food, friends, pi and singing. 2 Comments

Dinner Co-op is buzzing along. Kensy made some awesome chili on Thursday. Camille and I are going to cook lasagna tomorrow night. We’re getting 10-12 people showing up each night, which is a good number. There are a couple issues that are hard to navigate… one is that I want the co-op to be a neighborhood event, but I also want to invite all my cogsci friends, and they don’t live in the neighborhood. The whole point is to have a quick, easy, local gathering, but inviting people down from La Jolla makes it more of a production.

But it’s been awesome having the energy of people coming down from La Jolla. And hopefully they can then form the core of a dinner co-op up there. So I think I’ll just continue the policy of inviting La Jolla folks who show an interest in cooperative eating, which has worked well so far. The other issue is that dinner co-op inevitably turns into dinner party. There’s wine, there’s friends, there’s good conversation… people want to stay and soak in all of that. But again, the original purpose was for it to be a low-committment, convenient neighborhood gathering to eat. So keeping it less party-ish is a good idea.

But I think Kensy had the right idea… he suggested that Thursday nights could be more partyish and Tuesday could be more in-and-out. And as the thing expands to more days and locations, I think a sort of party gradient would emerge.

In other news, I can’t find my camera. It might be hiding somewhere in my room, but it’s not in any of the usual places. So, things which I would post pictures of, if I had not lost my camera:

  • My face, which looks like it was in a bar brawl, but was actually in a collision with the ocean floor whilst surfing at Ocean Beach on Saturday. If only I could stay on my board…
  • Our food box, which contained all manner of goodies: several avocados, oranges, tangerines, one very large lemon, yellow chard, rappini, spinach, garlic, baby bok choy, apples, red butter lettuce, and of course one succulent cherimoya. It’s a feast for the eyes, and a feast for the pallette. And the cherimoya gives Kensy, Kaya and I an excuse to get together during the week (as soon as it’s perfectly ripe!) to feast on juicy custardy goodness. For late-lunch I just ate a red butter lettuce salad with avocado, walnuts, raisins and homemade sweet wheat croutons I baked this morning.For those who don’t know… I learned about the concept of a food box from my big brother, who was doing it in Boulder, I think. Also known as Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), the way it works is that you sign up for a weekly delivery of produce from a local farm. You don’t choose the contents, you just get whatever’s in season. You pay a weekly amount (in our case it’s $30/week split between three people). It’s awesome. You get more variety in your diet, you support local commerce, you conserve fuel (the food gets to my house via my bicycle), and you get fresh, delicious, organic produce for a good price. And these programs are everywhere! Here’s a database where you can search for one near you.

    But back to the missed photos…

  • Kensy and I, decked out for Gabby’s 80’s prom party on Saturday. We were stylin’.
  • The self-portrait I painted on my new canvas bag during Gender Buffet at the women’s center on Friday. The flyer said there was going to be discussion of “self-identity, self-worth and lovin’ yo self!” and there was.
  • The new DCog/HCI Lab weekly yoga group, which consists of about six students in my lab. This was Amaya’s awesome idea: each week after lab meeting, several of us do yoga together with the aid of an awesome yoga podcast that Amaya found. So fun.

Anyway, these images are forever lost to the march of time. I wonder how long I’ll last before I break down and drop another $300 on a camera.

And one other note… This weekend I’m performing Beethoven’s Ninth with the La Jolla Sympony Chorus. If you’re in San Diego and want to see it cheap, contact me and I’ll tell you about the free, open-to-the-public dress rehearsal on Friday.