bibledash in seattle

just your average weekend in seattle. you know, biodiesel homebrewing guides, wedding crashing, the time warp, VegFest, the experience music project a la my man Frank Gehry, chinese food, and ikea with contingents from the east and west coasts.

oh yeah, and Bibledash.

consider six people sitting in a hotel room still buzzing from dancing the conga and time warp at a wedding to which only 2 of the 6 were invited (Mel was gorgeous, and Andy's dance moves are beyond compare!). imagine, if you will, a desire to play a game together. but which game? ahh, one cries out, balderdash. everyone grows excited at the thought. hearts a-quiver, the search for a wortebuch commences. sadly and finally, however, scavenging and treasure hunting fail to produce the almighty, the requisite, the everliving dictionary. well, posits another, what book do we have that might take its place? more scavenging. tossing. pondering. eyes flitting in oscillating hope and perturbation. and then, a light! what one book does every hotel room in america possess?

that's right. the Gideon's Bible.

thus was Bibledash formed. how Bibledash works: at random (and random, as any balderdasher knows, is quite relative and of lesser priority than whimsicality), each person takes turns finding a book, chapter and verse. others coin what they think could pass for a biblical phrase. books referenced during Bibledash's maiden voyage included Genesis, Lamentations, Acts, 2nd Chronicles, and (what game would be complete without) the Song of Solomon.highly recommended regardless of your liturgical prowess. watch out, King James!

Random: the deity

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this week's randomness quota (for i must do one random thing per week) was filled by snowshoeing. never done it before, never actively pursued the idea of doing it, had no idea who my fellow snowshoers would be, had no idea what modern snowshoes looked like and assumed that they resembled the backs of wingback wicker chairs hailing from the heyday of the 70s, etc. had no idea. also spent most of the 45 seconds it took me to respond to the www.cnrg.org posting contemplating just how surefooted i am not. i mean truly. the last time i went hiking it was on the slippery, damp leaf-carpeted grounds of southern thailand rainforest area, and i almost died once. the short version of that story (though not the focus of this entry, so i hope the telling of it will not over-weary my two readers with tangential data) involved me climbing up a slippery slope with sheer rock faces on either side, no purchase to speak of, sharp rock licked by the andaman sea below, a slip, a slide and a last-minute catch of my foot on a root. every day since has been a gift.

so it was with these thoughts that i rented my snowshoes and met the 13 others at "the daily grind" this morning. we set out for mt. hood with the guidance of Christine and Pat.

i'm already hooked on snowshoeing. it's fabulous. claws secure purchase, toes dig to surety. the journey is ponderous and hushed with snow. crunch shhhhh clack crunch. crunch shhhh clack crunch. the sounds of every character Jack London ever immortalized can be heard to clatter their teeth or spit ice with every snowshoeing step.

all hail, deity of Randomness!

my favo(u)rite soup

well, you literally asked for it this time! as requested, following is the recipe for the soup i made last time at Izzi, Matt and Ted's house:

dilled broccoli soup
(from Lorna Sass' "cmplete vegetarian kitchen")
serves 5-6

INGREDIENTS
1 lg bunch broccoli (2lbs)., cut into small florets
4 c. vegetable stock
1 lg. onion, peeled and coarsely chopped
1/2 c. steel cut oats (the original recipe is for old-fashioned, but steel cut are better)
sea salt or blond miso to taste
3/4 c. tightly packed minced fresh dill (you can substitute 2T dried dill, but don't whimp out and go for dried!)

DIRECTIONS
1. throw everything into a pot and bring to a boil
2. cover the pot, reduce heat and simmer about 15-20 minutes, until the broccoli is soft and the oats cooked
3. add miso to taste and serve

(3a) the recipe calls to puree the soup, then add miso and serve with dill garnish, but i prefer this soup chunkinated. you be the judge.

and there you have it - 6 ingredients, quick as a wink, easy as whistling, and good as Gideon's!

remembrance of things past

talking to my parents as we trimmed the tree this evening, we waxed poetic (or perhaps just waxed) about the ghosts of christmas trees past. we Routh are rather fond of our tree choices - those trees that are off-kilter, somehow slightly askew are the ones that invariably find themselves bedecked in years worth of yuletide trinket collection. so we paused while admiring the fruits of our bedecking labors in order to pay tribute to arbors of yore.

my favorite recollection is actually from that of my teacher in china, whose son's class was learning about western holiday traditions during my wintertime spent in changchun. Shu's son's teacher wanted a christmas tree for the classroom but of course could not find one to cut down (trees are rare enough in cities as to not be available for the taking, and the country is difficult to access without private transportation which few have), so she decided that each student should have to bring a branch in as homework. the teacher would then bind them together, and the class would have their tree! now Shu's husband is a police officer, but they love their son, and the prospect of him not having a branch for the classroom tree was too much to bear, so in the dead of night, he took a saw and went into nanhu park. as he started cutting into one of the branches, he looked around carefully to see if anyone was watching him only to find that there were a few other parents doing the same thing. i didn't get to see the "tree" that the teacher bound together, but i imagine it looks rather like one in line with Routh tree specifications.

a week after this story was just after christmas and my next lesson with Shu Laoshi. this was the telling of the Stocking Incident. along with learning about christmas trees at public school, Shu's son also learned about christmas stockings at his after-school english class. he insisted on having a christmas stocking with a tenacity that almost led Shu Laoshi to distraction. they made great ceremony of hanging the stocking by the fire (actually the radiator connected to the bloc's centralized furnace, but whatever) with care and then went off to bed. in the middle of the night, however, Shu's son shook her awake and begged that the stocking be taken down because he was afraid that he would get coal in it because he had been such a bad boy. Shu Laoshi, though not fluent in the semantics of western holiday traditions, is very quick on the uptake and a clever woman who knows how to answer the door when opportunity knocks. in the following five minutes, she learned a great deal of her son's recent transgressions which he believed would provoke a coal-ated stocking come christmas morning. he got candy in his stocking, but i am sure not without first promising both his mother and santa claus to be better next year.

keys and mooncakes

i am writing from my parents' computer where i have been camped out pretty much all night in an attempt to answer the 113 email messages from noble friends whose quips have been ignobly molding in my inbox. i am writing from my parents' computer because i locked my keys at work which prevents me from unlocking my bicycle and unlocking my house's front door among other conveniences. the good news is that i am not as bad off as last time, when i was locked out of my apartment in brooklyn for two days wearing only a sarong during a snowstorm. yes, sir, this is much better.

and even better is reading these jewels of prose! for instance, following is from Sasha Tian, a student from Chengdu, China. the Moon Festival was on sept. 18th, and i asked her the story behind mooncakes (a kind of pastry eaten only during the moon festival which everyone hates but everyone eats). here is her email (i hope it is okay to tell your story, Sasha!):

Mid-autumn Day is based on a legend.Long,long time ago,there were ten suns in the sky,people were very hot and didn't have enough water.Many people dead.The God was very worried and looked for someone who could shoot the suns in the sky.There was a man named Houyi,he was good at shooting.So the God gave him the super power and he finally shoot nine suns and left one in the sky.The God was very happy and he gave Houyi a medicine.It could make him young all his life.Houyi's wife(Cheng'e) knew this and stole the medicine.She eat it and to her surprise,she began to fly.She flew to the moon and could not come back.Houyi missed his wife and he ate mooncakes(his wife like eating mooncakes) every year in the middle Autumn.On that day the moon will be round.And you can see a woman on the moon.
So every year,family get together and eat mooncakes.
Also mooncakes are good presents.You can give them to your boss,teachers, friends...
To be honest,I don't like mooncake.I just the mooncakes with eggs inside.
Now you know the story about mooncakes and why they are so popular in China.
I miss you.520!!!!!

my first personal

titter titter gleam shine!!

well, last week Brian Bartley and i stepped into the Sapphire Hotel for a drink and hopefully a free tarot reading (we didn't happen upon tarot, but the band was glorious!). Willy Week was handing out free personal ad apps. so here it is, our first publication as seen in www.wweek.com, and our first collaboration (unless of course you count "Jake's Women"), hopefully the first of many (though not necessarily in personals format):

WHIMSEY WINS!
29-year-old, HWP, wanderlusting chick ISO lexicon-loving, highly humorific, consummately cantankerous soul, adores alliteration. Philatelics, programmers and pet lovers welcome. Jugglers accepted on a probationary basis. Linguistic status *a must. Please enjoy people watching and infrequent eavesdropping.
6956 (10/19/05)
*should read "Linguistic status immaterial", but hey, the ad was free

i was wondering last night to what this sudden interest in personal ads is due (in addition to actually posting one, i have also responded to one on CL). could it be belated culture shock? FOLLOWING PLEASE FIND STEPH'S PALTRY JUSTIFICATION FOR HER CURRENT FEELINGS OF LONELINESS. i came back to portland after gallavanting around new york and asia for the last 7 years-ish among expats and travellers, many of whom are little-attached to the thought of commitment. i came back to find everyone i know married or marrying and/or homeowners, whereas i left an enjoyable romantic interlude in thailand, and my luggage coming from thailand came to 28.1kg. soaking wet. given a week, i'm sure i'll get over it. i think the kicker came when Heather got married, the Heather that was going to be my golden-years bed-and-breakfast partner. Sarah and Heather, please tell me you're still up for a triumvirate of hostel proprietorship, and please say you'll let my rocking chair sit next to yours!

is it the "getting-used-to-being-single-again" conundrum? advice eagerly accepted. i believe that loneliness will be cured on monday when my chinese class starts (it might be cured today if only the pool was open). just wanted to confide in cyberspace. an electronic yawp. thanks for listening, ye deaf ears.

on the andaman and other noiseless ramblings

SCHOOL CLOSED
well, we have finished the school year at Suratthani School after more holidays than i thought could possibly be justifiable, poetry finals, pinatas and withdrawal symptoms.
after "Peter Pan" and "Alice in Wonderland", we were confronted with a vacuum of rehearsals. this slack was quickly taken up by the preparation of our final project, the Poetry Book. we delved into syllables and haikus, word types and cinquains, forms and concretes, letters and acrostics, and tied it all up with title and table of contents pages. the results were awe-inspiring. one student made their poetry book out of a pizza box, another created a story of the tsunami utilizing all of the required poetry forms, and there was a brilliant acrostic about unrequited love that had my eyes crying and my side splitting. suture material, anyone?
having finished these exemplary works of creative writing, i though the mattayom 1 students deserved to whack something with a big stick (isn't that a natural reaction?). so we took a few big balloons, a week's worth of old newspaper, flour and water and made some pinatas. it took much more time than i had originally alotted for the constructions, so each pinata took at least 6 hours to construct and roughly 5 minutes to destroy. but hey! candy is always a good idea.
the withdrawal symptoms, of course, were mine. i have seen some of them during vacation and have to check the temptation to sit them down and extract their life philosophies from them. next year's new teachers are lucky bastards!!! of course, at least by not teaching in thailand next year i am eschewing the arduous task of filling out pink books. no more talk about those evil, pepto-bismol (sp?) monstrosities of illogic. i'm sorry to have brought it up (but not sorry enough to have deleted mention of them before sending).

MOM AND DAD
shortly after the close of the term, mom and dad landed in bangkok. this began a three-week adventure through bangkok, ayutthaya, suratthani, ao railay in krabi, and koh tao. i will let them tell of our exploits in detail, but we had one HECK of time. my major aim was to not leave them in quite as much pain as i did last year when my father was subjected to forced marches, long hard-seat train rides and "populated" bungalows (most residents sporting 4, 6 or 8 legs). we went to ayutthaya on a bus and came back on a boat which was lovely though LONG. mom and dad both got massages at wat pho after visiting the grand palace. we recouped in suratthani before spending some quality beach time on ao railay, my favorite place in thailand so far. the parents took a day snorkelling trip that stopped on koh phi phi, and dad was especially amazed to see the extent of the damage from the tsunami. it is very much changed from our time there last year. ask him and i am sure he will oblige you with pictures. another few days in suratthani followed by our trek to koh tao. the boat was heavily populated because we travelled two days before the full moon party on koh phang-an. oy veh! needless to say, we were all happy to find ourselves on land. Jane's boyfriend, Amnat, happens to work at a dive shop/bungalow, so he arranged transport to sairee beach. dad and i took our advanced open water course which included a night dive (sting rays at night!) and a gorgeous deep dive to chumphon pinnacle (that dive was actually the original reason i talked dad into going with me!). the diving instructor was particularly fascinated with some of dad's tales of using older diving equipment (i am currently reading a great book called "stars of the sea" which tracks the evolution of diving technology, so i have a devel oping appreciationg for how far underwater equipment has come in a short time). our last day on koh tao was spent snorkelling around some of the coral gardens, so mom was illuminated with contentedness upon disembarkment from koh tao. we spent one more day in suratthani together (you can see the fabulous dress mom had tailored if you attend Rob and Jo's wedding) before they left for bangkok. i had to head in the opposite direction to malaysia to renew my tourist visa. it was the best border run ever (and how often do you hear that, really?)! i was planning to hoof the long walk into town from the border, but a janitor told me i would do no such thing, put down his broom, climbed onto his motorbike and drove me straight to the van stop. such drama. such compassion. gotta love it.

GOING WEST
more on this portion in a while (i just lost it and the derriere protesteth much at the thought of retyping all of this on such a beautiful day). in short, i have spent the last week on koh phi phi helping out as a volunteer for the coral reef cleanup on the island. there are two major projects in the area: diving/swimming shore cleanup, and business renovation and reconstruction. i've been swimming which i love and doing something i feel is important. we are pulling up oxidizing metal and suffocating plastics that might have long-lasting impact on the coral and fishlife. it's like Swimming for a Cause. we have filled up about 3 pontoons in 5 days which are then ferried to the shore and sifted for salvage metals, etc. i feel as though i have personally taken out enough bricks from the shallow corals to repave broadway, but i imagine that is slightly exaggerating. the government hasn't arranged for any relief on the island that i can discern, but there are three volunteer organizations which are active not only in this region but also on kao lak and phang-nga. if you have a few extra sawbucks lying around and care to donate to the cleanup or a reconstruction program, here are the websites:

http://www.projectaware.org/americas/english/news/tsunami.asp