quick! run-down!

Must leave for work in eleven minutes! Quick run-down of weekend! Consumed only cake & frittatas & champagne on Sunday! Practically true, yes! Although there was also a crepe in there somewhere (attended Baby Party hosted by French person), and several Newman's Own chocolate cookies ("They have good stuff in there. I'm pretty sure", according to Lisa who provided the cookies). French 75's on the patio on Sunday afternoon with Lisa (chocolate cookie-fame) and Christine (bad influence). Briefly danced with a person named Barbara at gay club (IBT's) (first time at IBT's) (Sunday night, though, so people on dancefloor consisted mainly of me & Christine & person named Barbara. Sparse.) Figured out webcam and talked to nephew Jack who called me "daddy", clearly recognizing me right of the bat as someone smart enough to be an Asian doctor. Makes sense. Became addicted to calorie-counting website called The Daily Plate. Addictive. Like many foods I have now counted the calories of. (OMG, three minutes left!) Discovered delicious recipe for Tacos al Pastor (Counterintuitively, ingredients do not include any clergypeople.) (OMG! One minute!)

Time's up. Any questions?

there was a naturalization preparty, naturally

We had an Impending Naturalization Preparty last night and Raphael received many unexpected gifts.

He got:
a John Deere gift bag containing:
- a big American flag magnet for the fridge
- a red, white, and blue Budweiser "King of Beers" baseball cap with a bottle opener built into the brim (to wear to his naturalization ceremony, presumably)
- three small flags to wave around or give to small children as parting gifts
- a 40-oz Budweiser in a paper bag




















Grant and Raphael get all patriotic.

He also got:
- a camouflage University of Arizona baseball cap (so he can hide from la migra, perhaps? It's true that some habits are hard to break.)
- a bottle of wine from Sonoita
- two t-shirts, one which says "America" and has three red, white, and blue hearts on it, and one which says "America, est. 1776" and has a picture of the flag on it so that he will never forget the answer to that one question whose answer was "1776"
- a convenient "shirt-pocket edition" of The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution of the United States for handy reference the next time somebody threatens to deport him ("You can't deport me! I have a copy of the Constitution right here!")
- a 6-pack of Budweiser American Ale. In case deportation occurs in spite of it all. ("Ah, what the hell. I'll just get drunk.")
- a hangover

A toast to not being deported!

It was a very nice party during which Raphael made a long, impassioned speech and the dog developed some weird-ass phobia related to party horns and as a result refuses to get anywhere near the bathroom anymore. It's just so nice to have speeches and parties and pointless phobias instead of sobbing and paranoia around here again.


Oh, and I found lots of stuff for you, too. I found you the ultimate cocktail party combo: the sweet-but-not-too-sweet, oh-so-sophisticated champagne-based Blood Orange French 75 (which I made with Cara Cara oranges) with a bowl of Sugar and Spice Pepitas. This is a perfectly versatile combination that would fit in equally well at your next "America, F*** Yeah!!" party or your next baby shower, or any sort of combination of the two. Very girly. Also totally kickass.

Also popular were the Roasted Asparagus and Red Onion Quesadillas with pepper Jack cheese and a cumin-lime sauce. Yumster. Oh, and the Mexican Chocolate Cake, of course. If you ever make it, follow the tweaks people have left in the comments section of the recipe - double the cinnamon, add cayenne, and decrease both the vanilla and the baking time. There are also easier ways to make a chocolate glaze out there, or maybe I'm just an idiot. I don't want to talk about it.





















Raphael heart heart hearts America but feels fairly neutral about PBR when it comes right down to it.

naturalization guy: day 2

Johnboy "Bubba" Smith looks a little more American today, I think. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure after all this that I want to move to France.

naturalization guy strikes again!

The lawyer showing up with her shirt on inside-out was apparently an auspicious sign, as the hearing went swimmingly. From now on, I'm going to demand that any lawyer of mine wear their clothing inside-out during official proceedings.

The hearing! In case you haven't heard, Raphael's immigration hearing was this morning. We've been suffering a little this week. For the past few months, the big, hungry sharks of anxiety have surfaced only occasionally - usually right around the monthly meetings we've been having with the lawyer. After the meetings, the anxiety would subside, sinking ominously down into the depths to circle patiently around gold-encrusted shipwrecks and dead pirates and weirdo fish with illuminated knobs poking out of their foeheads and whatnot.

Last night, they were back with a vengeance. At least for me. Raphael seemed relatively calm. Too much Sudafed perhaps. Anyway, after studying for the history test that we hoped he would be taking today, we had some tea and he watched some Seinfeld and I read (a story that involved sharks). These activities were supposed to induce calm and sleepiness, but by the time I went to bed, I had an uncomfortable burning sensation in the right side of my stomach, and Lila was shedding uncontrollably all over the bed. (Although the shedding may not have been indicative of anxiety, I'm pretty sure the burning sensation was.)

I think I somehow convinced myself that the history test was The Most Important Thing, and I kept going over the questions and answers in my head as I was trying to fall asleep. When was the Declaration of Independence adopted? July 4, 1776. Who wrote the Star-Spangled Banner? Francis Scott Key. Whose rights are guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? All people living in the United States. (Honestly. I don't know who they're kidding.) It was as if I had to know the answers in order for them to stick in Raphael's head. As if knowing the year the Constitution was written (1787) was more imperative than Raphael having accurately and honestly recorded the sequence of green-card-related events between his marriage and his divorce and also not having been convicted of a felony or having anger management issues or anything.

No matter. We were all three able to sleep and woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready for the hearing. Or at least Lila did. Raphael and I required lots of coffee, but that's fairly normal.

So here's all what went down. More-or-less. I wasn't actually allowed in the room where the hearing took place. I was instead sitting in the waiting room reading a story in which a hyena eats a zebra alive and is then devoured bloodily by a tiger. So. Keep that in mind.

Apparently there has been some speculation over the past few months that Raphael was initially allowed into the country on the wrong visa. Actually, it wasn't speculation. It was true. I just didn't know what we were talking about, ever. (Form XCN-S2-6? Visa blah blah blah? This is all I heard any time we had a meeting with the lawyer. Thank god Raphael spoke her crazy language.)

But the wrongness of the visa wasn't the only problem. It was only the problem that came before the immigration office in Phoenix lost his entire file. (It was found much later on somebody's shelf after she retired.) In any case, the examiner Raphael met with today apparently spent much time flipping through his documents, shaking his head, and moaning under his breath about the ineptitude of the people who let this happen in the first place and the general ridiculousness of the whole damn thing. Which is good on one level, but not so much on another. (Mainly the one on which we were perched with all the lawyer's fees and the emotional trauma.)

After a complicated legal-type discussion with our lawyer (interspersed with eye-rolling), the examiner quizzed Raphael about his marriage, gave him the history test, and sent him on his way with the promise that an official approval letter will arrive in the mail soon, and at that point we will also be told the date of his naturalization ceremony.

And from that date on, I will be changing Raphael's name to Johnboy "Bubba" Smith. A good, solid American name. "Raphael" is clearly too foreign. It makes the people at the immigration office nervous. And I don't want that happening again.

we got no dinosaurs in the filing cabinets, people

According to the internet, March is Women's History Month, National Nutrition Month, Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Month, Math Holiday Month, and, disconcertingly, Kidney Month. Most importantly of all, March is also Archaeology Month. You might have been aware of this already, if you're like me, with Archaeology Month posters hanging all over your work place, and those stacks of brochures you like to foist upon unsuspecting passersby during your lunch break. The whole thing's exciting as a new toothbrush, really.

Anyway, in honor of Archaeology Month, I have decided to do two things:

1. Write an Archaeology Song (it's high time someone did)

and

2. Tell you about my day

Number 1, I will do tomorrow. Number 2, I will address below.

If you're like most people, when you meet an archaeologist, the first thing you do is say, "Wow, really? I always wanted to be an archaeologist but I was way smarter than that". The second thing you say is, "So do you know about that new dinosaur they just found? They found all the bones and the laterally interior mandibular thyroidazeses (which you never get), and even the cranial whatzit was intact, and it's supposedly the most amazing discovery ever documented because it was actually STILL ALIVE." And then, when I indicate that, it's true, dinosaurs are super-awesome and all, but that's not really what we archaeologists do, you sort of step back and look a little puzzled (or perhaps concerned) and you say, "So...what do you guys do anyway?"

Well, today is your lucky day, because I'm going to tell you exactly what I do when I'm not fleeing headhunting pygmies in a tattered evening gown through the jungle, leaping rocky chasms on my trusty steed, sipping yak butter tea high in the Himalayas while fondling the priceless gold medallion I have hidden in my underpants, or infiltrating Nazi headquarters and making love to hot blonde frauleins. (Oh, you got me! I totally made that last one up!)

So - gosh. Where to start? This week, I have:

1. Created a seven-question ceramics quiz for Girl Scouts.
2. Printed a bunch of stuff.
3. Given an exam that included questions about Latitude and Longitude.
4. Graded at least fifteen quizzes that had something to do with genetics and which many people failed.
5. Stapled some stuff.
6. Looked at my house on Google Earth.
7. Looked at my co-worker's house on Google Earth.
8. Put the big black cart back upstairs where it belongs.
9. Said about one artifact, "That shell is definitely bone."
10. Said about another artifact, "That bone is definitely not human."
11. Said about a third artifact, "That piece of ceramic is actually a rock."
12. Avoided one of my students.
13. Run away from that same student when the whole avoidance plan backfired.
14. Lost the credit card for the Suburban.
15. Found the credit card for the Suburban.
16. Decided that what I really could use is some purple flats.
17. Eaten two mini-Twix bars.
18. Showed someone how to use the VCR.
19. Created about eight million flyers.
20. Spilled lentils in my keyboard.

And I could go on...!

But I won't because dinner is just about ready, and I've got a big day ahead of me tomorrow: celebrating Archaeology Month (and - of course! - Kidney Month) by way of manning a booth at the Archaeology Expo at the Pueblo Grande Museum in Phoenix while simultaneously eating as much frybread as humanly possible. I can't wait until those Girl Scouts ask me what being an archaeologist is all about!

love schmove

The Guatemalan has posed me a challenge. "Write about love," he said, when I asked plaintively, "What should I write about?"

Well, obviously there's no way I can write about love. First of all, it's way too vague of a concept. Second, it's...you know...gooey. Third, it's...well, what is it exactly?

The word love conjures instantly for me pink and orange cartoon images of big-eyed kitty kats holding baby puppies with fwoppy ears and glossy full-page black-and-white pictures of mature gentlemen and women with perfect teeth holding hands and romping through the ivy towards giant heart pendants (and matching earrings - because she's so damn picky) set with actual diamonds suggestive of the decades they've been married, the children they've raised lovingly to become doctors and lawyers and CEOs of large bankrupt companies, the pure timelessness of triple-digit salaries. Not that I see anything wrong with triple-digit salaries, you understand. But I wouldn't personally spend mine on a diamond heart pendant.

So you understand why I can't take the Guatemalan's challenge. Clearly, I don't get love.

I do get other things, though.

For example, I get why a person might want to bake cookies for another person who has had a bad day at school, even if it's nine o'clock at night. I get why sometimes a person who isn't particularly partial to Chinese food might suggest to another person that "maybe we should order take-out from Guilin tonight and watch Seinfeld." I understand that when my mother sends me a box of magazines and a couple bags of mini chocolate Dove bars and maybe a new blue t-shirt that the magazines and the Dove bars and the t-shirt aren't really magazines and Dove bars and a t-shirt at all but indicative of something else. Something that made my mother willing to wait in line at the post office and spend more money on mailing the box than she did on the magazines. I totally get why it's sometimes okay to let your dog up on the bed with you at three in the morning, even though you're going to wake up with a backache and a Charley horse. I understand pictures drawn of smiling people and smothered with hot pink feathers and glitter and heart stickers, and I understand awkwardly handmade bracelets, and I have understood friendship pins 4-ever. I understand mixtapes and Flickr links and favorite recipes passed through email and birthday checks and spur-of-the-moment dinners-out on Wednesday nights during which someone orders the duck (on a Wednesday!) and how deeply affecting pirate sounds can be when emitted by a two-year-old and why Nana is still afraid when I slice vegetables that I will cut myself even though I'm thirty-three years old.

That stuff I get.

Anyway, right now I've got to crawl under the couch to retrieve a slimy tennis ball again, and after that I want to go put the bed together. I don't care so much about making the bed for myself. It's just that the Guatemalan's been going through a rough patch, and smoothed sheets and puffed pillows and lavender oil can sometimes make a person feel better about these things.

So maybe later I'll address his challenge. Love schmove.

on being sick - or not - or whatever

I'm sick and I'm mad because it's stupid, this sickness. Utterly pointless. It's one of those things where one day you're fine, maybe a slight itchiness in the throat, a slight teariness of the eyes, and the next day, it's slightly worse. Definitely a little worse. Some coughing. Some stuffiness. And the next day, hmmm. Worse, somehow. You're not, you know, feverish or anything. You're not writhing in agony or anything. But you definitely don't feel good. In fact, you feel bad in some undefinable way that makes you mad and sleepy. Very, very sleepy. So you figure this is what sick leave is for, and you take a day off, and you get lots and lots of sleep and you wake up feeling not at all refreshed and the next day UGH you feel slightly worse and now you're just irritated because when the hell is the climax of all this not feeling good going to come? Or is it? Maybe you're just going to feel cottony and sleepy and cranky for the rest of your life? Never really just get on with it - develop a raging fever, body aches, strange swellings or whatever, so that you can tell people definitively, "I am sick." Instead of, "Well, I think I'm sick. I mean I don't feel good, but I'm not going to die. Not today anyway. Maybe tomorrow? I'm not sure. I'll let you know." But then the next day you feel kind of...better? Less cottony? Slightly less sleepy? Maybe? And then the day after that, maybe okay? And then one day you feel fine and you can't remember exactly when that happened, and you learned exactly nothing from the experience of being sick. You've developed no particular thankfulness for health or anything. You may have wondered vaguely about it during a restless dream at one point, but you never exactly promised yourself to eat more oranges or take more brisk, invigorating walks or incorporate multivitamins into your day or anything. Nothing. You've learned nothing. In fact, you're pretty sure but not entirely sure that you were actually even sick at all. Pointless. It's all pointless. Maybe I should go back to bed.

i blame my mother

Someone just told me that it sounds like I write some of these here blog posts while I'm high on something.

And it was my mother.

I'm pretty sure I've never heard my mother say the words "high on something" ever before in my life. And what I wonder is, what does it say about what I'm writing here - that I've incited my own mother to tell me I sound like I'm high on something? And, perhaps more importantly, what does it say about you, the reader of things that sound like they are written by somebody who's high on one thing or another? Ha ha! Did you see how I just turned it all around? Now you're the guilty party! So if anything I write ever sounds like it's making sense (or not!) then most likely it's because you've been up to something fishy.

And, no. I am not high on anything right now.