Booklist

I'm making a list of books to read while in Iraq, and am open to suggestions! What are your top 5 books, or even a book you heard was great, but haven't read yet?

Less than 2 weeks and counting! BBQ was smokin', I'll write about the details later.

Happy Birthday Meems and Harry Potter!

Indiana Jones & the Little Gray Ball of Fur: Part IV

Once inside, it wasn't so bad. I had to keep crouched down so my head wouldn't hit the low ceiling. I neither saw nor felt any spiders or mice running over my feet.

"Here kitty kitty kitty! Here kittykittykittykitty!" This is something I often hear my neighbors do in the evening. I always thought they sounded stupid, but I figured just then that it must work if they kept on doing it every night to get their kitties to come home.

"Meow!"

Brilliant. The meow was louder this time, which meant it was closer. I shined a flashlight around and finally spotted it above my head about 2-3 feet away, perched on top of a foam mat about 3-4 feet above the ground. It was the cutest little gray ball of fur I had ever laid eyes on. I guessed that it was no more than a few weeks old, though I really have no idea how to gauge the age of animals. Its glowing hazel eyes were staring back at me. We started meowing at each other again, but it wouldn't come forward.

"Just grab it!"

"Hold on Abba, let me try this." I continued to try to coax it forward by kitten-speak.

"Just grab it, you've got gloves on!"

I ignored my dad and continued meowing and calling, getting slowly closer to it. It was clear to me, by this time, that the reason why it was not coming forth was because it was afraid of heights. As young as it was, it had yet to learn the law of nature that all cats land on their feet, and so though somehow it had managed to climb up, down was another story. One story up feels like 5 stories down, one could say. I wanted to minimize its fright by meowing rather than grabbing.

"Quit that meowing business and just grab the damn thing!"

Sigh. There goes the infamous Chung family temper. And who was the one who had the balls to actually go in and get the damn thing in the first place? Didn't I at least deserve patience from those who remained outside? Alas, patience is not a Chung family virtue. For the sake of keeping my dad quiet, I decided to try to grab it, but slowly. I approached slowly, until I could reach out and touch it with my fingers. I let it sniff my gloved fingertips, and I was overcome with kitten-love as it ran its soft little nose around them.

"Hurry up and grab it and bring it out!"

Sigh. Spell was broken. I looked around and spotted another foam mat lying on the ground. I took it and lifted it slowly up to the level of the kitten, and the kitten hesitated, then deciding it was safe, stepped gingerly onto the mat until all four little white paws were standing on it. Success! It was just like the scene in La Vita e Bella, where Roberto Benigni's character unrolls a red carpet fit for a queen over the rainy ground so that his "princess" wouldn't have to get her feet wet. Or like that scene in Mary Poppins where Mary and Bert are taking a romantic stroll through the chalk painting and Bert gets the turtles to give them a ride over the river. Anyway, I crept back toward the opening with the mat with the cat on top, dad yelling all the while from the garage: "it's gonna run away again, just grab it like I said, just do it!"

Finally, I reached the opening, set the mat down, and grabbed the damn thing and set it onto the garage floor. It promptly ran off to hide behind family artifacts that have amassed in the garage over the years. The next few minutes was spent chasing and yelling and ignoring yells, then finally getting a hold of the little gray-white furball and snapping dozens of pictures of it, laughing and cooing and creating a makeshift home for it, then snapping more pictures. I'm going to be a terribly obsessed mother, I can tell already, recording every minute of my baby's life with a camera. Thank god for digital cameras! Remember all those bad pictures of the ceiling or a close-up of someone's knee that we were forced to pay for and get printed? Digital photography is a godsend.

The next day, during the sailing trip across the Sound, I found myself showing these pictures to my sailing companions/cat-lover friends Becky and Sarah, and relating the tale of the rescue to them, including the part where I felt like Indiana Jones on a dangerous mission.

"So what's going to happen to Indie?" Sarah asked later on.

Indie? Oh the kitten! What a perfect name. And so goes the story of Indie.

The day spent sailing ended with dinner at Luau, a Polynesian restaurant near Becky's new apartment in Greenlake, and then a ride down Greenlake Way during sunset, which was pure magic.

Indiana Jones & the Little Gray Ball of Fur: Part III

"There's nothing we can do. There's a hole in the garage that leads into the crawl space, but I boarded that up years ago to keep out the mice. Call Animal Control tomorrow, and they can take care of it." 

"Why can't we just do it ourselves tonight? We can unboard the hole, and-"

"No, there's mice down there. Just call Animal Control tomorrow morning, and they'll find the best way to get the cat."

"Fine." I went upstairs to my room and tried to forget about the poor cat. Once again, it slipped out of my mind fairly easily, until my dad came in. 

"I just thought of something: what if it dies in there tonight?" he said.

Yes, dad, what if?

"Let's just do it now." 

Sweet, a cat rescue plan was about to be put into action! "I'm coming cat!" I called out. On my way down, I grabbed a bowl from the kitchen, poured some vanilla soy milk into it and headed into the garage, where Abba was unboarding the 2 x 1.5 foot hole with a hammer. Soon enough he was peeling off the board and I oohed and ahhed as I saw the underside of the house for the first time ever since we moved in 15 years ago. It was dark. We shined a flashlight into it and looked around for the cat. The floor of the crawl space was about 2 feet down from the garage floor and its ceiling was about 1.5 feet higher than the garage floor. There were foam mats scattered about in singles and piles, for some reason. We could have easily housed a midget in this room, it was big enough, as far as I could see. The cat was too far away from the opening to be seen, and our view was obstructed by boards and foam mats.

"Meow!" I cried, setting the bowl at the edge of the hole.

"Meow!" the cat responded. We got another lively conversation going, but it still would not budge from its distant perch even with the temptation of a bowl of vanilla-flavored soy milk. I took the bowl and was about to lay it inside the hole, closer to the cat, when my mom came in. Uh oh.

"What are you doing?? What is that?? What do you think you're doing? Does that look like a bowl for cats?? Are you crazy??" Etc. etc.

Sigh. "Please just stop yelling Umma, you're scaring the cat," I said. Is it any wonder I hate the Korean language? It's such a fighting language. In my defense, we have dozens and dozens of bowls in our house and in the garage- remnants of our old restaurants- so I had figured we could spare one little plain white bowl for a hungry stray kitten. How our values differ, Umma's and mine! Anyway, I resigned myself to waiting for Umma to take the bowl and replace it with an empty tofu box. In the meantime, Abba and I tried meowing the cat out again, but to no avail. Someone was going to have to go in there and manually grab it. The two of us peered into the dark abyss full of god knows what sorts of creatures worse than cats.

"Uhhh, I'm not going in there, I just showered," said my dad, man of the house.

"Uhhh, I'll get James," I said. I ran into the family room where James was working on his laptop.

"J, can you come here for a sec?" See, I knew it would be stupid to inform him of his task while he was still inside the house. I had to lure him into the garage, and then tell him what we wanted him to do. Here he came. Here he stood in front of the hole.

"NO! I'm not going in there!" said James, second man of the house.

Damn. Didn't work. Back inside the house with the phone in my hand, ready to call for help, I gave it a moment's thought, mulling over the idea of going in there myself. At first, my imagination was suffused with images of mice and spiders and other creepy crawlies. But then I had a sudden realization: this could be a chance to have my very own Indiana Jones type adventure! Did Indiana Jones cave in the face of snake pits and caves full of crawlers? No way! Would he ever surrender his responsibilities to Animal Control Services? Doubtful. Newly inspired by this heroic vision, I grabbed the hot pink rubber dishwashing gloves from the sink and marched determinedly back into the garage.

"I'm going in there myself!" I announced, snapping the gloves on like a surgeon preparing for battle in the OR. I put on a hoodie to shelter my head and arms from spiders and slipped into the foundation of the house with the tofu box full of faux-milk.

Indiana Jones and the Gray Ball of Fur: Part II

~20 minutes later...

Mm, thirsty, I could really use a glass of water. I got up and wandered into the kitchen. Hm, why was the radiator- oh my, the cat! I totally forgot! Was it still alive???

"Meow?" I asked nervously. Silence. "Meow," I said a little more convincingly.

"Meow!" it cried. Oh thank god! I looked around and spotted a ruler on the family room table, grabbed it and stuck it down the radiator hole. C'mon, grab the ruler, Cat! But the stupid cat wouldn't grab it and just started meowing helplessly again. Hm...what I needed was something longer and more flexible, something that resembled yarn (because cats like to play with yarn) like a rope...or a skipping rope! I found my old hot pink jump rope and strung it slowly through the radiator, yanking it up and down like I was trying to bait a fish. Still nothing but meowing! Unbelievable. I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to rip open the vent netting from the outside until I talked to my dad about it, so I decided to leave it there until later that night when Abba would come home. I crossed my fingers, hoping it wouldn't die of starvation while I was gone because that would make me party to a kitty killing act, and I don't think I could take that kind of guilt! Plus we would have a dead cat rotting away under our house, which could become a problem later on, so really it was in the best interest of both humans and feline to not die in there.

Q&A With the Travel Detective (Peter Greenberg)

Q: I thought it was great that you included visiting Iraq in The Travel Detective's Bible.

A: Absolutely. Because most people get propagandized into thinking you can't go. Of course you can go, to Northern Iraq to a place like Arbil. There are places in Newark where I wouldn't go, but that doesn't meet I'm not going to visit New Jersey.

Good point! On the other hand, I have absolutely no desire to visit New Jersey, even outside of Newark.

G******

I hate when I have that Blind Melon song "The Pusher" stuck in my head because I only know that one word that he repeats over and over again. I don't think it's healthy to have that repeat in your head over and over again for an extended period of time. 

Indiana Jones and the Little Gray Ball of Fur: Part 1

Earlier today, while I was going through old pictures in the family room, I heard a distressed meowing. Assuming it was outside the house, I peeked my head out the balcony door leading into the backyard, and meowed.

"Meow!" it cried back, but the crier was nowhere to be seen. Strange! Where there is a meow, there is a cat, yes? I continued playing Feline Marco Polo with the invisible cat until eventually, I pinpointed the sound- it was coming from underneath the porch- right beneath the kitchen radiator-, but still inside the house! But I was quite sure there was no cat in our kitchen, which meant that it was stuck in the crawl space between the concrete foundation and the floor of the house! All the radiator vents were netted shut, and I wasn't aware of any other openings, so how did it get in there in the first place, and why didn't it just go out the way it came in? But it was no use wondering because for whatever reason, it was just meowing and meowing so piteously, and not even trying to move from its spot.

I ran back into the family room and into the kitchen, opened the radiator vent and meowed.

"Meow!" the cat cried back. It sounded so distressed! I had to get it out. Umma had mentioned she'd heard mewing a couple days ago, but couldn't find the cat, so assuming it was the same cat, this little guy had been stuck in the crawl space for at least 2 or 3 days with neither food nor drink nor merry company. Who knew how much longer it would last before it breathed its last breath, after which we'd have an expired, rotting cat in the foundation of our house? But more to the point, how to get it out? I opened the vent and tried to meow it out (I have a very realistic meow), and the kitten and I got a great conversation going- but it still would not come out of the radiator. (At the time, I didn't know that the hole in the radiator led to the gas pipe, so clearly the cat could not escape through the radiator.) I went back to the pics, hoping that ideas would come to me as I flipped through embarrassing pictures from my youth.

Dear Diary

I am trying to decide whether being able to read people's diaries would be really interesting or really boring and mundane. Diaries are interesting because its a record of your thoughts or moods or events- all of which have a very low chance of being remembered- even weeks later. Memory is fleeting, and I would guess that 98% of everything that you think or hear others say that is even remotely worth remembering passes right through storage and into the land of the forgotten. Well, there may be a lot that is stored, but requires some sort of trigger to be shaken of the dust that gathers over it so quickly. But until that trigger comes- if it ever comes- it's pretty much gone, baby gone.

But at the same time, I believe memories make the person- a big part of the person anyway, so if memory is so fleeting and inefficient, how can our selves be stable? On the other hand, I said a few entries ago that there remains a part of us that remains eternally unchanged no matter how many years have gone by. So fleeting memories, steadfast personalities? Was Phineas Gage a different person after he got the iron rod stuck in his head?

In other news, a second tattoo may be on the way- this time designed by moi. Memory may be fleeting, but tattoos are forever!

Numbers (Not Just a Book in the Bible)

Epiphany #32: Guys have hairy asses! Men, is this true??? My god, suddenly I wish I were a lesbian. As a science-minded person, I would ask for evidence, but that would be uncomfortable for everyone involved. I'll just accept it on faith.

Musical discoveries #76 & 77: John Hiatt's "Have a Little Faith in Me", and jazz-pop singer Jamie Cullum, whose sound is a slightly jazzier version of Amos Lee.

Teaching lesson #42: Teaching kids is like being a child psychologist. I constantly find myself wondering why they behave in such ways. Sometimes I come up with some good ideas, other times I'm just baffled.

Innovative teaching idea #27: Do math with sidewalk chalk! For students who yawn as soon as you stick a pencil in their hand, you'll see a definite rise in cooperation level. Not a sky-high rise mind you, but it no longer feels like your talking to a brick wall or a grazing cow. I swear sometimes I can hear them mooing at me. And then I start laughing out loud, and then the student looks at me like I'm an alien. An alien that just landed in a field of grazing and mooing cows.

Interesting experience #32: On Tuesday, I attended my friend's church discussion group on the issue of torture. I even joined the prayer circle afterwards, and as my 3 other friends had their heads bowed in silent prayer, I had the sudden realization that I was the only one of the four of us who was not religious. How strange! I never would have expected to hang out with such a religiously-inclined group before, but there I was, enjoying their company very much.

Confession #5: I used to write to God in my diary. This was high school, 9th grade I think. My how my world view has changed! Now, I can't for the life of me imagine God being even slightly real, one you can address and expect to listen and understand- like a shrink of sorts. What was going on in the mind of high school me, I wonder? Isn't it weird how I no longer understand the mind of the person I used to be?

Random thought #87: When I'm standing at the water's edge, I feel like I'm standing at the edge of the Earth. I know there is no edge, I know the Earth is round, but that's what it feels like, and that's why I like standing at docks and seashores, or even in the middle of the ocean in a small boat.

Another Dancing White Boy On Youtube

Grand unification in motion. Here's the youtube clip.

Felix Felicis II

Today is going to be my lucky day!

It's one of those old Korean superstitions: if you dream of tons and tons- like a river- of pee, then you should buy a lottery ticket the next day. Well, last night I dreamt that this little boy approached the Pope because he couldn't piss, and as soon as the Pope heard about his problem, the little boy was pissing all over the carpet until the room was flooding with piss. In my dream, it was perceived as a miracle of God.

In nomine patris, et filis, et spiritus sancti,

Amen

Ghost Reflection

Ok, I know this is weird. But I was changing into my pj's, caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror, and did a double take- because my reflection had TWO belly buttons! I checked to see which was the real reflection (it was the bottom one), and then I spent about a minute trying to figure out where the secondary one was originating from. Strangely enough, it disappeared when I moved to the right window pane. So I moved my reflection side to side a few times, trying to figure out why the secondary button was disappearing. But then I discovered that if I raised my hand up to the height of my face, its second reflection disappeared even on the left side, so then I guessed that it's just the way the light in the room strikes the window at a certain height. And that's my current hypothesis, which shall go untested and assumed unless anyone else has other ideas because seriously, I need to go to sleep. Belly buttons are not earth-shattering news. It's not even news! But anything that is not news-worthy is blog-worthy...I think that's the general rule.

Out Like a Light

Independence Day 2009 was rather bluesy. But later, I built a test bonfire with my brother-gathering large stones and feeling like the builders of Stonehenge- and talked with my sister on the phone, and still later, I watched the glorious fireworks from our back porch- exploding all glittery from the shadowy evergreens- and I could feel the bluesiness melting away. Flames are really pretty. I don't think I'm a pyro, but it's just something I noticed today as we watched our fire grow and flicker about in the light evening breeze, and the way the tiny orange sparks flitted brilliantly about for a few feet before going out with a sudden poof! Like a great disappearing act at the micro level. I wish I could suddenly become invisible!