Monday, June 30, 2008
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Fun with Literature
Today I ran out of books, so CC (who knows how annoying I get when I run out of books) shoved me in the car and drove fast to Ghandi, the only bookstore in Queretaro that has a decent selection of books in English. At Ghandi, I saw 2 books for the price of 1, a package deal for only 149.00 pesos. Which I bought. :)
The two books, Oliver Twist and Trainspotting, came as a set, wrapped in cellophane. At first I thought to myself, "Wow, someone at Ghandi has either got a funny sense of humor or is totally illiterate". But then it hit me- funny, illiterate or just mindlessly doing their job, the person who paired these two seemingly incongruous books to be sold and read together has very appropriately paired two fictional representations of degenerate societies in Britain, the Old vs. Modern, and that makes a whole lot of sense.
The two books, Oliver Twist and Trainspotting, came as a set, wrapped in cellophane. At first I thought to myself, "Wow, someone at Ghandi has either got a funny sense of humor or is totally illiterate". But then it hit me- funny, illiterate or just mindlessly doing their job, the person who paired these two seemingly incongruous books to be sold and read together has very appropriately paired two fictional representations of degenerate societies in Britain, the Old vs. Modern, and that makes a whole lot of sense.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Pippen at the Park
I thought that this video merely showed Pippen's extreme fondness for water sprinklers, but as CC pointed out, it also serves as a nice example of his separation anxiety issues.
A Story About Happiness
Ever since I can remember, people been telling me “Cristabelle, you ain’t that smart.” They been telling me that so long that it don’t bother me none and it never bothered me none. They let me know when I was real young so I could adjust to it and know my place on the brain scale, and I’m glad as hell they did or else I’d be bustin’ my butt to be like Annabelle and then I’d never be happy.
My big sister Annabelle is the real smart one. She went to beauty school and got herself a diploma when she was only sixteen years old. Dropped out of high school when she wasn’t even pregnant and went and signed up at the beauty school. She learned how to do everything so good and now she works at a fancy hair salon in Ryers, the kind with big chairs that you sit in with water tubs down at the bottom that you stick your feet in so you can get your toes done if you want. Annabelle, when she come visit, don’t give no services for free even though she practically a millionaire from all them tips she get. Not even to our Mama who was in labor for sixteen hours before Anabelle decide to finally come out. And Mama need a haircut bad sometimes and ‘cause Anabelle won’t do it I do it and I don’t cut straight so I keep cuttin’ and cuttin’ and tryin’ to even them hairs out. Then Anabelle come home and get mad cause Mama’s hair look like an ugly gray rug that the cat scratched up. But she don’t try to fix it. Anabelle, she’s like that. She don’t like to help out Mama. She don’t like to think about where she come from because if she did she’d never get nowhere.
I don’t care that I ain’t smart like Anabelle, ‘cause if I was then I couldn’t work at the Quikmart and I love working at the Quikmart. I don’t have to think too hard with the math either, cause all I do is put the items under the scanner and then the machine tell me how much the customer owe and how much change he need back. Then all I need to do is smile real wide and say “Have a nice day”.
I been working at the Quikmart for so long and I ain't got no plans to quit. I love the Quikmart cause it’s right next to the freeway and all sorts of people come in there. I seen every type of person there is on this planet to see, I bet. I seen gay people before, and all the time people be coming in from all over the world. One time I got a bus full of Chinese people all the way from China, talking Chinese. They didn't understand no English, either. All kinds of people come in the Quikmart. I bet Annabelle sees the same people all day everyday, and that’s what I’d be missing out on if I was born smart.
My big sister Annabelle is the real smart one. She went to beauty school and got herself a diploma when she was only sixteen years old. Dropped out of high school when she wasn’t even pregnant and went and signed up at the beauty school. She learned how to do everything so good and now she works at a fancy hair salon in Ryers, the kind with big chairs that you sit in with water tubs down at the bottom that you stick your feet in so you can get your toes done if you want. Annabelle, when she come visit, don’t give no services for free even though she practically a millionaire from all them tips she get. Not even to our Mama who was in labor for sixteen hours before Anabelle decide to finally come out. And Mama need a haircut bad sometimes and ‘cause Anabelle won’t do it I do it and I don’t cut straight so I keep cuttin’ and cuttin’ and tryin’ to even them hairs out. Then Anabelle come home and get mad cause Mama’s hair look like an ugly gray rug that the cat scratched up. But she don’t try to fix it. Anabelle, she’s like that. She don’t like to help out Mama. She don’t like to think about where she come from because if she did she’d never get nowhere.
I don’t care that I ain’t smart like Anabelle, ‘cause if I was then I couldn’t work at the Quikmart and I love working at the Quikmart. I don’t have to think too hard with the math either, cause all I do is put the items under the scanner and then the machine tell me how much the customer owe and how much change he need back. Then all I need to do is smile real wide and say “Have a nice day”.
I been working at the Quikmart for so long and I ain't got no plans to quit. I love the Quikmart cause it’s right next to the freeway and all sorts of people come in there. I seen every type of person there is on this planet to see, I bet. I seen gay people before, and all the time people be coming in from all over the world. One time I got a bus full of Chinese people all the way from China, talking Chinese. They didn't understand no English, either. All kinds of people come in the Quikmart. I bet Annabelle sees the same people all day everyday, and that’s what I’d be missing out on if I was born smart.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Another Pippen Post
The Overdependent Labrador
I think that most dogs pick up on the routine in a household and eventually reach a point where they know instinctively where their owner is going to go or what their owner is going to do next inside the home. I think Pippen knows too, but I don't understand why he doesn't just pick a central corner in our house and watch me move from room to room on my extremely mundane THE SIMS-like movements. He comes with me no matter where it is I'm going, even if where I'm going is two feet away from where I've been. When I go to the bathroom he always tries to run past me and I always have to struggle for a few seconds to shut the door in his face or push his sixty pound tail thumping body out so that I can go in peace. When I open the door, he's there with his tail wagging, ready to accompany me to wherever I'm going next.
Pippen's dependency issues are so severe that he has a hard time separating from us to go to the bathroom himself. I rarely ever see him go outside to use his restroom. Because we spend most of our time upstairs, he has to wait until I go downstairs for something, then dash outside as fast as he can to go to the bathroom and get back in ten seconds or less. I've watched him do this before and it never fails to make me laugh.
Sometimes we throw the ball down the stairs and then we hide from him and listen to his paws scratching against the tile floors in frantic race through all the rooms to find us. One time we hid in the shower and watched him running back and forth and back and forth in a frenzy, until I couldn't take it anymore and started cracking up. I have a very hard time being quiet when something is funny. Then he found us and now that I think about it, those "games" probably make his separation anxiety even worse.
I wish that Pippen could gain some independence, however I know that I am partially responsible for his Mamitis because I baby him too much. It's just that I feel for him because we're all he's got, and labs are very social dogs.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
SuperShopping
When I first moved here to Qro, there was only one supermarket in my area. It was called "GIGANTE", and it used to make me cry.
It was like a ritual. I would go to "GIGANTE" with a mission: to make some recipe from Epicurious. I would be so optimistic, starting out, with my recipe in my hand to make something that always had this ridiculous title, like "Hazelnut Praline Torte with Creme de Menthe mousse and Chocolate Ganache, Infused with Cherry Liqueur". I would walk in the store and immediately get overwhelmed. Grocery stores here are not like the ones back home. They're massive, with names like GIGANTE, MEGA, and SUPERRAMA. They're like if Safeway and Target merged and made one big superstore.
Unfortunately, as my good friend Nikki noticed, I am an unorganized person when it comes to grocery shopping. I scramble up and down aisles and haphazardly crisscross my way through any store to get what I need. For example, I'll need milk, so I'll go to the dairy section, all the way in the back, and then go and get the bread, which is in the front, and then go for the butter, which is next to the milk, etc. I can spend HOURS in the grocery store and when I'm finished shopping my legs are so tired and I have a headache. Grocery shopping can really stress me out and it is something that I have grown to dread.
So this is what I used to do in GIGANTE, and this is why it made me cry. I'd have this long, long list of items I needed to make my ridiculously snotty recipe, take two hours crisscrossing in a store bigger than a USA Walmart, and then finally I'd be ready to leave . . . as soon as I found my last ingredient, the one that had been evading me for two hours, two pounds of hazelnuts, or whatever. It was always the most important ingredient in the recipe and I always waited until the last moment to find it. Why? I don't know.
But if I'm not organized when it comes to shopping, I am proudly organized when it comes to cooking, so I would have ready a translation of all the products needed on my list. Avellano, if you care to know, is how you say hazelnut, in Spanish. So I would look for avellano another twenty, thirty minutes, and then finally ask an employee for help. My conversation with the employee would go something like this.
Me: Excuse me, will you tell me where I can find avellano?
Employee: (not making eye contact) Avellano?
Me: Si.
Employee: The bakery.
Me: Gracias.
So I'd walk away, towards the bakery, thinking about the pleasant evening ahead of me, when all of a sudden common sense would grip me. The Bakery? I would ask myself, and my finely honed sense for common sense would tell me that the employee was wrong. But, being an American, and coming from a country where excellent customer service is something to be taken for granted, I would trust the employee and make my way across the store to the bakery.
When I finally got to the bakery, about a ten minute walk from that last helpful employee, I'd look around by myself for another ten minutes before finally asking for help from the bakery lady behind the counter.
Me: Excuse me, will you tell me where I can find avellano.
Bakery lady: Avellano?
Me: Si.
Bakery lady: Produce.
Me: They told me that I could find it here.
Bakery Lady: No, you need to go to produce.
Me: Gracias.
So I would trek on over to Produce, which would be on the opposite side of the store, a ten minute walk, of course, but at least it made sense, this time. Once in Produce, I would look around for another ten minutes, find the nuts, peanuts, cashews, walnuts, pecans, but not hazel nuts. So I'd hunt down the nearest employee (which always takes another 5 minutes, at least).
Me: Excuse me, will you tell me where I can find avellano?
Employee: Avellano?
Me: Yes.
Employee: I don't know. Sorry.
Me: What do you mean, you dont know?
Employee: Oh, you mean avellano?
Me: Yes.
Employee: We don't carry avellano here.
So I'd walk away and the tears would start to form. I'd push my cart into the center of the store, filled with items from all over the place, and just walk out.
Since those days, I've grown up a lot and can now handle stores even bigger than GIGANTE with relative ease. Plus, I never have to set foot in GIGANTE again if I don't want to, (and I don't) because Soriana bought out Gigante recently, so soon it will cease to exist and is currently transforming itself into another Soriana. Plus, in the past two years, my area has become supermarket central. We now have Walmart, Soriana, Superrama, Gigante, MEGA, and Sam's Club in a five mile radius from my home. I am always surprised at how quickly Queretaro is growing.
I'm a Superrama girl, so up until yesterday, I had never been to MEGA, which they just finished building about 5 months ago. The experience was amazing. When you get to MEGA, you notice that its a HUGE building with two floors. The first floor is a little shopping mall, galleria style, and the second floor is MEGA. To get to the second floor, you have to grab a shopping cart and make your way to this really long, steep escalator that has a no slip surface. You get on the escalator and slowly make your way up to the top. You can't push your cart and walk up the escalator rapidly, either, because the grips on the belt to the wheels of the shopping cart wont let you. You have to not move and make the slow ride up to the top. I felt like this little shopper on an assembly line, going to the factory to be assembled. Once you get to the top, they give you a map like you're in Disneyland, and that did it for me. Because of that map, I felt like I was on an adventure instead of doing boring grocery shopping.
Plus, inside MEGA is a little cafe next to the bakery, where you can take a break from the madness and have a cup of coffee or hot chocolate and read the paper, and so that is exactly what I did, and that is going to be my routine from now on. I am done with stressing myself out at the grocery store.
It was like a ritual. I would go to "GIGANTE" with a mission: to make some recipe from Epicurious. I would be so optimistic, starting out, with my recipe in my hand to make something that always had this ridiculous title, like "Hazelnut Praline Torte with Creme de Menthe mousse and Chocolate Ganache, Infused with Cherry Liqueur". I would walk in the store and immediately get overwhelmed. Grocery stores here are not like the ones back home. They're massive, with names like GIGANTE, MEGA, and SUPERRAMA. They're like if Safeway and Target merged and made one big superstore.
Unfortunately, as my good friend Nikki noticed, I am an unorganized person when it comes to grocery shopping. I scramble up and down aisles and haphazardly crisscross my way through any store to get what I need. For example, I'll need milk, so I'll go to the dairy section, all the way in the back, and then go and get the bread, which is in the front, and then go for the butter, which is next to the milk, etc. I can spend HOURS in the grocery store and when I'm finished shopping my legs are so tired and I have a headache. Grocery shopping can really stress me out and it is something that I have grown to dread.
So this is what I used to do in GIGANTE, and this is why it made me cry. I'd have this long, long list of items I needed to make my ridiculously snotty recipe, take two hours crisscrossing in a store bigger than a USA Walmart, and then finally I'd be ready to leave . . . as soon as I found my last ingredient, the one that had been evading me for two hours, two pounds of hazelnuts, or whatever. It was always the most important ingredient in the recipe and I always waited until the last moment to find it. Why? I don't know.
But if I'm not organized when it comes to shopping, I am proudly organized when it comes to cooking, so I would have ready a translation of all the products needed on my list. Avellano, if you care to know, is how you say hazelnut, in Spanish. So I would look for avellano another twenty, thirty minutes, and then finally ask an employee for help. My conversation with the employee would go something like this.
Me: Excuse me, will you tell me where I can find avellano?
Employee: (not making eye contact) Avellano?
Me: Si.
Employee: The bakery.
Me: Gracias.
So I'd walk away, towards the bakery, thinking about the pleasant evening ahead of me, when all of a sudden common sense would grip me. The Bakery? I would ask myself, and my finely honed sense for common sense would tell me that the employee was wrong. But, being an American, and coming from a country where excellent customer service is something to be taken for granted, I would trust the employee and make my way across the store to the bakery.
When I finally got to the bakery, about a ten minute walk from that last helpful employee, I'd look around by myself for another ten minutes before finally asking for help from the bakery lady behind the counter.
Me: Excuse me, will you tell me where I can find avellano.
Bakery lady: Avellano?
Me: Si.
Bakery lady: Produce.
Me: They told me that I could find it here.
Bakery Lady: No, you need to go to produce.
Me: Gracias.
So I would trek on over to Produce, which would be on the opposite side of the store, a ten minute walk, of course, but at least it made sense, this time. Once in Produce, I would look around for another ten minutes, find the nuts, peanuts, cashews, walnuts, pecans, but not hazel nuts. So I'd hunt down the nearest employee (which always takes another 5 minutes, at least).
Me: Excuse me, will you tell me where I can find avellano?
Employee: Avellano?
Me: Yes.
Employee: I don't know. Sorry.
Me: What do you mean, you dont know?
Employee: Oh, you mean avellano?
Me: Yes.
Employee: We don't carry avellano here.
So I'd walk away and the tears would start to form. I'd push my cart into the center of the store, filled with items from all over the place, and just walk out.
Since those days, I've grown up a lot and can now handle stores even bigger than GIGANTE with relative ease. Plus, I never have to set foot in GIGANTE again if I don't want to, (and I don't) because Soriana bought out Gigante recently, so soon it will cease to exist and is currently transforming itself into another Soriana. Plus, in the past two years, my area has become supermarket central. We now have Walmart, Soriana, Superrama, Gigante, MEGA, and Sam's Club in a five mile radius from my home. I am always surprised at how quickly Queretaro is growing.
I'm a Superrama girl, so up until yesterday, I had never been to MEGA, which they just finished building about 5 months ago. The experience was amazing. When you get to MEGA, you notice that its a HUGE building with two floors. The first floor is a little shopping mall, galleria style, and the second floor is MEGA. To get to the second floor, you have to grab a shopping cart and make your way to this really long, steep escalator that has a no slip surface. You get on the escalator and slowly make your way up to the top. You can't push your cart and walk up the escalator rapidly, either, because the grips on the belt to the wheels of the shopping cart wont let you. You have to not move and make the slow ride up to the top. I felt like this little shopper on an assembly line, going to the factory to be assembled. Once you get to the top, they give you a map like you're in Disneyland, and that did it for me. Because of that map, I felt like I was on an adventure instead of doing boring grocery shopping.
Plus, inside MEGA is a little cafe next to the bakery, where you can take a break from the madness and have a cup of coffee or hot chocolate and read the paper, and so that is exactly what I did, and that is going to be my routine from now on. I am done with stressing myself out at the grocery store.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Best Name of the Month Awards
The award for Best Name I've Heard This Month goes to:
Dikembe Mutombo Mpolondo Mukamba Jean-Jacques Wamutombo of the Houston Rockets.
And because he sounds exactly like Cookie Monster with just a touch of Yoda, he wins Best Voice of the Month, too. Here is an example. Its much better when he speaks in English but its the best sample I could find.
The winner for the female category of Best Name I've Heard This Month goes to:
Dra. Ladydiana Guitierrez Rodriguez of Michoacan, Mexico.
Unfortunately, I do not personally know Dr. Ladydiana but have been informed of her existence by excellent sources not known to lie. Therefore, the above representation is only a rough estimation of her physical appearance.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
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