Karma killin'.

You know what's hard? Trying to write a TV script that links Kofi Annan and a high-priced four-door luxury sedan. A link that isn't so nauseatingly advertising that I want to jump out the window. A link that kind of actually makes sense. Maybe a link that's even intelligent and meaningful. In approximately 20 seconds.

But I suppose if intelligent and meaningful were on top of my writer's priority list, I wouldn't spend my days in an ad agency trying to use an important peace maker to hock a car that will be en-vogue for a matter of months among perhaps 2% of the world's population.

No match for ________.

In our bathroom, we have a bunch of matchbooks. It's an impressive and ever-evolving collection. And I'm always impressed with how many different ways there are to contain a bunch of match sticks.

But next time you find yourself in our bathroom, take a look around and notice that there isn't a single candle, pilot light, BBQ, campfire, cartoon bomb, firecracker, spliff, cigarette, crack pipe or trail of gunpowder in sight. Yes, the dearth of flammable material in our bathroom is simply undeniable.

But everyone knows why people really keep matches in the bathroom. And the thing about that is, that's not really what matches were invented for. So my question is: what percentage of these consumable tools for lighting a fire under controlled circumstances on demand are actually just used to cover up the smell of poop?

And if that percentage is as high as i think it is, how come no one has created scented matches? Like a miniature, localized scent bomb (that should probably be kept out of reach of children). If no one's ever seen that, let me know, and let's make our million.

Things I learned this past week:

Sleeping on the balcony on a warm summer night is fucking fantastic. It was fresh air and the quiet of the sleeping city mixed with soft sounds from the harbor all night long, followed by bright sunshine and birds chirping in the morning. It was my favorite kind of camping - outdoors but with a full-on mattress and bathroom easily available. Go ahead an call me a pansy. It was wonderful.

And in other summer news, I bagged up my poofy winter clothes and shoved them under the bed, safely out of sight and mind. Symbolic! Satisfying! Space saving!

There's hardly any heroin in my life. We went to the park for a little pre-theater impromptu picnic in a park in a part of the city with a bit more character. As we were walking along the grass looking for a perfect spot, she (only half jokingly) said Be careful not to step on any used syringes. and I chuckled just as I turned my head to see a guy shooting up under a huge oak tree. He had the strap and the inconspicuous look and everything. I realized that I'd really only seen that sorta thing in a movie, and I'm not sure if that's a good or bad. On one hand, it's not the most pleasant reality in the world. On the other hand, it's real life baby.

Apparently I'm not an Economist reader. This makes me feel stupid. I was suprised to find the latest issue - in English! - in my local grocery store. So excited, that I tossed it in my basekt, genuinely interested in inflation and why it's back but not where I think. So far I think I've read about three pages of the thing. I just can't get excited about the world this week.

The AK-47 assault rifle has only seven moving parts. It's that simplicity combined with devastating firepower that has made it such a well recognized symbol of both revolution and terrorism around the world. I've been reading a very interesting book about the history of the AK. Maybe that's why I haven't been reading The Economist.

Having an office at work with a door I can close makes me happy and more productive. And upgrading from a eMac (single hamster) to an iBook (hamster duo) didn't hurt either. My new favorite position is: feet up on the windowsill, laptop on corner of desk just a few degrees from my center, watching the big maple tree wiggle to the wind ouside our big ol' windows, while thinking thinking thinking and writing writing writing.

I can make my own salsa, and making my own salsa makes me happy. It's delicious! I don't know why I didn't do this sooner. The thing about salsa is, you just can't get it (at least not the fresh, non-jar stuff) anywhere around Hamburg. So I looked up some recipes on the web, and found what I should of realized from the beginning: that it's just a bunch of veggies chopped up in a bowl. Duh. So I got a bunch of veggies, a bowl, and a knife, and made it happen. Here's my silly recipe, which I proudly call Salsa1 (sounds like it comes from the Mexican space program):

4 big tomatoes chopped into little pieces.
1/4 cup white onion chopped into little pieces.
1/2 cup cilantro chopped onto little pieces.
1 clove of garlic chopped into tiny pieces or mashed in garlic press.
Some spicy pepper of some sort... enough so it's spicy but not ridiculous.
Mix everything together.
Eat.

Upon further eating, I've decided that I may need to add another quarter cup of onion and one more clove of garlic. And maybe some more spicy pepper. But damn, son - that shit is good. Fresh salsa rules!

Why I must leave this country immediately.

I brought my baseball glove and baseball to the picnic on Saturday, but for a while we couldn't play catch because Sergio, the only other person in Germany with a baseball glove, had to leave for a bit to go look at an apartment and the glove was in his bag. Though really it wouldn't have mattered if he left it, since he's a left, and this was an otherwise right-handed shindig. We're not prejudiced; it just worked out that way.

But then Sebastian had a brilliant brainstorm: why don't we hop on our bikes and ride down the street to the sporting goods store and buy anther glove? I expressed skepticism. It's hard to find a baseball glove in this country - I know because I've tried. Love for baseball seems to be limited to America, Japan, and a few countries in South America. I've looked around a bit, and never found a good source. Oh come on, said Sebastian. Of course they'll have them.

So we hopped on our bikes, rode through the park, out onto the street and into downtown. Weaving with precision between mere pedestrians, from street to street to the bike rack, we locked our bikes with the clink-clank efficiency of a machine. I began to feel optimisic. My search before had been lazy at best. And we were going to a real sporting goods store. This would be easy. We were unstoppable! We entered the mall and bounded down the escalator into the underground store. All the signs of success were there. Racks of Gore-tex, shelves of shoes, balls of all shapes and sizes. This is going to be brilliant, I thought. In a total of ten minutes, we will have acquired a second glove and a beautiful game of catch will ensue. And in the corner, on the bottom of the rack, I saw the baseball gloves.

Kneeling down towards our prize, I could already deduce that these were not the finest gloves in the world, but that their reasonable price (a mere 17 euros!), decent construction, and lack of baseball experience amongst my compatriots would ensure that one of these gloves would fit the bill nicely. It was perfect. I extended my eager hand. But there was something wrong that caused me to pull it back. Some disturbance in the force. A million voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. This was a left-handed glove. And so was the next one. And the next. They were all left-handed gloves! I was kneeling in front of what could possibly be every single baseball glove in the country, and they were all lefties. How could this be?

For those of you who don't know because you are with the terrorists, the thing about baseball gloves is that you wear them on your non-dominant hand. So if you're right-handed like me and most of the world, you put your oh-so-non-symmetrical baseball glove on your left hand, and you throw with your right. If you're left-handed, you can't just strap on a standard baseball glove; you need a left-handed glove that goes on your right hand. I know, I know, it's confusing daddy. But this is just the way it is and always has been. My right-handed glove goes on my left hand. My brother's left-handed glove would go on his right hand if he were a bad-ass catch-playing motherfucker like myself*. But of course, since like 99.99 percent of the population is right-handed, it's really hard to find a left-handed glove (or a suitable chair/desk combination when it's time to take smeary notes in class). If this had been Larry's Left-Handed Sporting Goods Store, I wouldn't have been so shocked. But it wasn't.

As I uttered expletives, as the shock set in, Sebastian started off to find someone to help us. But of course the store was suddenly devoid of help. He found one tall guy standing next to the information counter and dove in, asking for "baseball handschuhe**" I don't sprechen, so I don't know for sure, but it seems like the conversation went something like this:

Sebastian: Excuse me, do you guys have baseball gloves?

Salesguy: No.

Sebastian: Oh. Well, we found some over there, but they're all for left handers.

Salesguy: Oh. Well, those are all we have then.

Sebastian and I looked at each other. This was a rather unsatisfying bit of dialogue coming from a guy I wasn't sure we could trust. He lacked a certain dedication; his pasty white skin and oddly baggy sweatshirt betrayed any sporting confidence he may have had. He wasn't exactly what I would call athletic. And I'm pretty sure he rolled his eyes when Sebastian said the word 'baseball'. Attitude! In fact, neither of us were sure if homeboy actually worked at the store.

This just can't be, I told Sebastian. Do you know how hard it would be to find FOUR left handed gloves in The States? And this place has ONLY THOSE FOUR! What we needed was some knowledgeable in-store guidance, and pronto. So we hightailed it over to an older woman with bifocal glasses, a price scanning gun, standing behind a cash register. She looked at us and her eyes said BRING IT ON BITCHES! So Sebastian asked about the baseball handschuhe. She tilted her head back slowly, letting the challenge sink in, no doubt considering her options. This was our girl. She grabbed the phone and sprechened the Deutsch, machine gun style to whoever was on the other end of the line. Ten seconds later, she hung up and told us to meet a guy right over there who could save us. She found us a guy. Our guy. I wanted to kiss her on the mouth. I refrained.

Unfortunately, this guy was no better than the first. Short and pudgy, with facial hair that was trying way too hard, he looked like the kind of guy who would tell you all about the latest carbon fiber cycling accessories, but then smoke a cigarette while he rides. I would guess he was about sixteen and has never seen the world outside of the tiny German village he came from, and the utopian embrace of Hamburg. And he most certainly didn't know a damn thing about baseball, or helping customers for that matter. We stepped onto the mound with questions and needs, he saddled up to the plate like an overweight catcher with a hang over and an impending divorce.

Sebastian: We're looking for baseball gloves.

Pudgy: Yeah, right over here.

The Pudgster waltzed over to the four lefties, and slid one on his right hand.

Sebastian: Yes. But those are all left-handed gloves.

Pudgy (looking at the glove on his right hand, and then at us like we were the idiots): No. Look. Right hand.

Waterboarding is a pleasant way to spend an afternoon. This was torture.

Sebastian: No, look, it says here on the tag that it's a left-handed glove.

Pudgy: That tag must be wrong.

I'm not making this up. If there were guns in Germany, I would have gone on a shooting spree. I tried to explain.

Me: No, see, if you're right-handed like me, you wear the glove on the left hand, and throw with your right.

I mimed the CATCHING and the THROWING. Pudgy looked at me. He looked at the glove. He took the left-handed glove off his right hand and tried, like a monkey with a rubiks cube, to put it on his right. Obviously, it wouldn't work. I wondered if he was going to stand there (slouch, really) and tell the American how a baseball glove works. Fortunately for all of us, he changed his strategy.

Pudgy: We don't have it then.

Yeah, thanks for the update genius.

Salesguy Number One had recommended another store to try, so with our proverbial tails between our actual legs, Sebastian and I walked back out into the world, without a whole lot of optimism. The second store was fancier than the first, but yielded nothing. We looked around ourselves, found nothing, and then asked a sales guy. Before Sebastian got to the second l in baseball, the guy was already shaking his head with a smirk.

I'm sure that when a young Ghandi first stepped (bare) foot onto western soil, at some point there was a moment where he realized that it just wasn't the place where he belonged (what tasteless advertising asshole blogger compares himself to Ghandi, even as a joke? This one, apparently). I dare say I have a decent understanding of how he must have felt in that moment. I have lots and lots of love in my heart for Deutschland, but there's this feeling I get every time I have to explain why I don't like beer. Or what the word 'douchebag' means. Or how a baseball glove works.






* He doesn't play catch, but he has other bad-ass motherfucking qualities, BELIEVE YOU ME.

** That's right the word for 'glove' literally translates into 'hand shoe'

Summer singlespeed update.

tubes
tires
those anti-flat-tire-strip things that go between the tire and tube (I put some on my Bergamont commuter a year ago, and haven't gotten a flat tire since - totally rad!)

Purchased and installed! I bought Continental 26" slicks and a thing of baby powder to make everything slide together and stay dry. In my (limited, wimpy) experience, it really is the secret weapon when it comes to tires and tubes as it is the original "dry lubricant". Only problem is my roommate Birgit is going to think I'm slinging cocaine since I'm tracking fine white powder all over the apartment.

fork
headset
stem

On order. Or at least the fork is, and the nice guy at the bike shop down the street said he had to order the fork and that the stem and headset are always in stock. I got to choose the color - matte black - and it'll be the correct length for a frame built for suspension. It'll have V brake mounts. Yay! It'll be here in two weeks. Boo!

The rest of the list is looking a lot more manageable since Ricardo sent me a link to Singlespeedshop. Holy crap, they've got everything! All I need to do now is learn the German terms for all the bike parts.

Gabeln = forks
Ketten = chains
Kurbel = crank
Innenlager = bottom bracket
Lenker = bar
Naben = hubs
Ritzel = cog
Steuersätze = headset
Vorbauten = stem
Zubehör = accessories

At the moment I'm filling my spare time up by looking for a crank/chain/cog combo. But I'm having trouble figuring out what width bottom bracket axle will create a proper (whereby 'proper' I mean 'straight') chainline. There seem to be hardly any options are a bunch of options - from 100 to 130mm - and I'll have to get the right one the first time since, there isn't any room for adjustment in this setup.

And once I get the bottom bracket, I add the crank, and who knows where it's going to put the chainring in relation to the chainline? I'm skeered!

The bikes of summer.

MikeAndTiff have a garage full of bike parts and lots of love in their hearts, so when they heard me waxing economical about my difficulty in finding a single speed bicycle that is both super cool and reasonably priced, they offered to donate a frame, wheel set, and more to the Dan P Mobility Fund. So as I type this, my new-to-me, well-loved Santa Cruz Chameleon frame and a pile of parts are hanging out behind me, waiting to become a part of something a little more meaningful.

I'd like to state for the record that this is exactly the right way to add a single speed slash fixie bicycle to one's stable. Since this style of bicycle is so incredibly popular right now (man, who could have seen that coming?) it's getting harder and harder to build one out of used parts, and easier and easier to buy a brand new one from a big bike company. And there's certainly nothing wrong with the latter option - I considered it myself. In fact Kona nearly took 600 of my euros to the bank in exchange for a copy of their Paddy Wagon. I went as far as scheduling a test ride and waiting around the bike shop on a busy Friday evening for someone to help me get it out onto the sidewalk. I left my wallet as collateral, and took to the sidewalk. But it just didn't feel right.

It's a very nice package, the Paddy Wagon. It looks good and rides solidly. I'd switch the drops for a set of narrow flat bars, get it fitting right with the right stem and saddle, add some mounts lights, and ride it all summer long. But there was something missing.

And something is character. A bike you buy at a shop is delicious and filling, but it would take months for it to be as satisfying as something I've built up myself from a combination of old parts from my closet, old parts from MikeaAndTiff's garage, and the shiny new ones I'll buy myself. It's the difference between baking from a box and baking from scratch.

Anyways, parts not in that pile that I'll be purchasing in the weeks to come include the following:

fork
headset
stem

tubes
tires
those anti-flat-tire-strip things that go between the tire and tube (I put some on my Bergamont commuter a year ago, and haven't gotten a flat tire since - totally rad!)

saddle
seat post

crank
bottom bracket
chain
cog
pedals

brake pads
cable and housing for front brake

(Man, I didn't realize how many bike parts there are on a bike until I started building one up piece by piece)

Since I'm a girl on a budget, I can't buy everything all at once. So I organized the parts into groups so I can do the purchasing in phases. I figure the first thing I need to do is take the frame to a bike shop so they can figure out what (rigid, inexpensive) fork is best for the geometry, and then I'll just buy the front end stuff, and have them install the headset cups. I'll put stuff together and bring the frame back home. Then it'll just be one group of stuff at a time until I can ride that mofo home.

The thing about building bikes is you need special tools - a press for the headset cups, wrench for the bottom bracket, chain thing for the chain, others that I can't think of because I've never really done this before. I have to figure out which of those tools are worth buying based on how often I plan on building up a bike. Good tools are pretty expensive of course... and once I get the tires and tubes on the wheels, it'll be easy to just roll the thing back and forth between home and the bike shop. So for the moment, I think I'll just wimp out and have the shop do it for me. Then again, self sufficiency is a virtue. Then again, a pile of heavy single purpose tools may conflict with my somewhat nomadic lifestyle.

Anyways, the only time I really get to hang out at bike shops is on Saturdays. If I can tackle one group each Saturday, then it should take about five weeks to put the whole thing together. Then again, my experience with the local bike shops in Hamburg is that they never have what I want, but are happy to order it for me and call me when it arrives in a week or so. So this may take a while. But no matter - I've got a (mostly) working bike to ride around in the meantime, and it'll be fun to watch the little dude grow into an adult bicycle with some pizzaz as the weeks go on. Exciting!

Now that Spring has sprung.

Slept until nine this morning, woke up to blue sky, sunshine, and stillness. Opened up all the windows in the apartment. Made a perfect cup of coffee, made brownies for the picnic that we're having this afternoon. Sergio said bring your baseball glove to the park. You can be sure I will. Listening to music.

Had a solidly good first week at the new job. Starting to think that maybe things really are okay. Maybe I'm the only one with control over my mood, my destiny. And maybe...

just maybe...

I'm

(gasp!)

happy.

(and that sunshine sure does help)

Decisions, decisions...

A few months ago my friend Caroline convinced me that one should always take a day off from work on one's birthday. It didn't take much convincing... in fact all it took was a simple demonstration.

So here I am sitting in my room in my pajamas with my feet up on this, my day of birth. It's Tuesday, and the sun is shining in Hamburg. The sky is blue, there's a cool breeze blowing, and I have the whole day ahead of me. What am I going to do with it?

I'm writing and re-writing a list in my head of possibilities and desires; there are a few things that keep popping up consistently: do a little writing (check!) go outside, and buy something fun for myself. As long as I go shopping in the real world and not online, the outside part will be taken care of, so that leaves me with this question: what should I buy?

Top of the list is a PlayStation 3. Tom came to visit and we drove to the Nürburgring and got a ride around the track, and ever since, the car guy in me has been jumping up and down in my brain trying to get me to play with him. Seated in that black 911 GT3, hugged by six point harnesses and watching german forest fly past me at great speed, I began to form a plan that would enable me to drive the track and feel good about it. The plan goes like this:

1. Buy a PlayStation 3 and Gran Turismo.
2. Pick a weekend several months into the future, book a rental race car and a spot in the BMW Ring Taxi.
3. Drive the virtual Nordschleife over and over again until I have it memorized.
4. Go to Nürburgring and drive the rented race car on it, feel like a god, and fulfill a life-long dream.

The good news is that Saturn, the Circuit City of Deutschland, sells the PS3 and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue as a package! But there's a bunch of bad news:

* That's the prologue, not the complete game, which won't be out for a few months.
* The prologue doesn't have the Nürburgring. GT5 will have it, but no one seems to know when GT5 will be released
* It's 399 euros. That's a lot!

Still, one look at the videos of GT5P is nearly enough to convince me to shower up and head on down to Saturn RIGHT NOW. Oops, I just watched video that opens the GT5P site, and now I'm thinking of skipping the SHOWER. Could there be a more perfect birthday present for a 32 year old kid to buy himself? Maybe I'll just ride my bike over to Saturn and check it out... maybe I'll bring my big shoulder bag just in case...

A day of firsts.

Today is the first day I've made coffee on my own in quite some time. And the first time in a long time may not TECHNICALLY be a first, but it's been long enough that I'm sitting here thinking damn, I should have done this years ago even though TECHNICALLY it's only been weeks. Sometimes everything is a matter of technicalities, I suppose.

What happened weeks ago that made me make coffee was this: Tom came to visit me, and in doing so became the first person in the friend, non-family-member category to come see me in Deutschland. And we had a great old time. Okay, so maybe he didn't come just to see me, maybe he really just came to pick up his brand new, silver, four-door, BMW 335i (see? technicalities!)... but he drove it to my house and we hung out for four days, which was totally rad. We went to the Nürburgring via the autobahn, which was also totally rad.

Tom gets major points not only for the quality of his purchase (that's a pretty sweet ride), but also for understanding that even though my friend from a hundred years ago was in town and sleeping on my futon (technically, it's my roommate's futon; NOTE TO SELF: buy Birgit flowers), a brother still has to go to work every day. Indeed, if I had asked JvM for a few more days off in what is already major vacation time, no doubt they would have offered a few days + the rest of my career, you slacker lame-ass. So GO TOM for a) understanding and b) entertaining yourself while I was doing the work thing.

The other first (I've already finished the coffee; it was fantastic, and in a very small glass, which is probably for the best) is this: I'm starting work at a new group within JvM today. After a year-and-a-half or so in one unit, it's time for a change of scenery. The new group differs from the old group in many ways, including the following:

1. it's way bigger. Like 80 people instead of 15.

2. It's way more German. As in they sprechen the Deutsch all the time, as opposed to just when arguing during meetings (which I understand... it's way easier to argue in your native tongue). Obviously, this is going to be quite challenging. In fact it may not work at all.

3. It's way more machine like. Meaning they pump out work like some sort of caffeinated, 24-hour advertising factory as opposed to the lazy/crazy/lazy/crazy up-and-down-ness of my old spot. Peek under the hood of this machine, and you'll see lots of internal competition, high revs, and lots of pressure. And the occasional flame-spitting backfire.

So this is why I had a bit of trouble sleeping last night, which is why my little eyeballs popped open around 6am, which is why I had plenty of time to make coffee, and contemplate this day of firsts. So much has been going on with me lately* - trip to Italy, Ritter Sport Challenge, VIP passes to the German Touring Car Championship at Hockenheim, Tom's visit, two weeks in America, Spring finally springing, etc. - that it would be easy for this coffee thing to slip under the radar. But after a few weeks of GO GO GO, it's time to for a little home-made coffee and contemplation. Technically speaking, it's exactly what I need.


* I plan to blog on all of this**.

** Promise***.

*** No, really.