* I love how social cruises are. It’s so much fun striking up conversations with random strangers: in the dining room, in the bar, in the hot tubs, everywhere.

* I was happy and surprised to see SO MANY mixed race couples and families and friends. Santa Barbara is a little white enclave. I didn’t realize how cosmopolitan the rest of California got.

* My favorite night was the first one: we ended up in The America Bar, which had a piano in it and a piano player taking requests. At one point I asked him to play “Hey Jude” and my favoritest moment was when everyone in the bar (the twins, the bridal party, the gay couple, the three friends, the young couple the piano man…us) was belting out “naaa na na nanananaaa! Nanananaaa, hey Jude!”

* It’s weird how cruises somehow make your stomach into its own mini vortex where you are always hungry even though you know there’s no humanly possible reason you could be hungry at that moment, since you JUST ATE and did nothing but sit on your heinie and read a book by the pool.

* I’m pretty sure buffet lines are evil. I have no problem waiting for food while I cook it. I can wait ages in a restaurant (unless I’m starving). But put me in a buffet line and I officially hate all the people in front of me and scathingly judge whoever is too slow to get their food in a timely manner.

* The food on the Royal Caribbean was better than the food on Carnival.

* It’s nice to zone out. I’m glad the cruise was a whole weekend affair though because it took a full day before we could relax enough to zone out. Amazing how hard it is to let anxiety and stress go.

*It’s been a day since I got off the ship…and I’m still swaying in my head.

* Somewhat unrelated: The Magicians was indeed like Harry Potter for adults. But I found myself distinctly underwhelmed by the ending. Maybe because it didn’t end the way I expected and the ending I wanted was a little more fairy tale. Maybe I’m not ready for the Harry Potter for adults and I should just stick to reading Harry Potter.

Through the weekend, we stayed with T’s boss…which is another interesting story. For, how often does your boss live 300-some-odd miles away? But we stayed with him and his girlfriend and I really enjoyed that. Not only are they both really nice and interesting people who introduced us to more kind and interesting people, I really enjoyed seeing his office and their amazing home space, for I felt like I got to know them a little bit, in a really nice way. Plus the bonus of seeing him embark on a new enterprise – it’s exciting! I’m happy for him and gives me the vicarious little thrill of feeling like I’ve brushed up close to greatness. (I’ll just say, it’s the film industry sort of greatness.)

I had planned to take a lot of photos for this week’s You Capture (the theme is fun) – and really with such a fun weekend, how could I miss that opportunity? But…miss it I did. Because we were having so much fun I was totally absorbed in really special moments, I couldn’t even think about hiding behind a camera. So I’m hobbling together something a little silly with what few photos I do have.

The weekend was filled with special moments like hugging friends who have been a year and a world away.

Like meeting an old friend’s new baby.

Like exploring new sites and living new experiences.

And rediscovering old ones.

Like stumbling across vintage suitcases in a thrift store:

Complete with old tags!

And silk scalloped lining

And falling in love with all their nooks, crannies, and corners

And sweet old vintage stickers

Oh, and by the way…can I just say? $3.99 each.

It’s the bees’ knees, baby!

But now we are home, with lots to do, for it is my 30th birthday in less than a week! And…did you see my sidebar, just to the top on the right there?

We’re up to 76% of the way to my goal! I’m nearly brought to tears with the amazing people in my life, with their generosity, their love, and their support. It’s the thirtieth year of my life, and I feel I have so much.

I have so much.

Image courtesy of The SOLD Project

So last week I mentioned that when we move to Thailand, I will be working with an advocacy group. Today I want to tell you a little bit about them. The SOLD Project is a group of American twenty-somethings who created a documentary exposing the massive sex industry in Thailand, and how little girls and boys are abducted and sold into prostitution. They thought they were just doing a hard-core expose. Little did they know their hearts would tug and break in the meantime! Some of the children end up in brothels because they were trying to find jobs at restaurants in Bangkok to help support their families. Others are trafficked in from oppressed ethnic groups in neighboring countries like Burma.

The documentary is intense and emotional – once you hear the actual stories of these children, it’s impossible to turn a blind eye to the issue. When the documentary was released, people began asking how they could help…and thus a non-profit was born.

The SOLD Project starts with prevention and their aim is four-fold: they hope to 1) provide scholarships to children through individual donors like you and me so that at-risk children don’t have to pay for their education, thus easing the grip of extreme poverty, 2) provide mentors for each child with a scholarship, 3) build a resource center for the community, and 4) develop awareness programs in schools to help children learn how to protect themselves.

While I am there, I will be doing two things. I plan on volunteering time to tutor and mentor children at the resource center as well as lead weekly rotating seminars open to the community, focusing on various professional skills: computer literacy, basic accounting, college application/grant writing, etc. But my little baby is a project called “Operation Shackle Free”. I’m setting up an email exchange program between the sponsored children in Thailand and students in the US and other western nations. The goal is to give the kids in Thailand a chance to practice their English literacy skills – giving them an edge in the job market – and to motivate them to dream of a better life, one that is far away from the brothels. For the students here in the US, the goal is to raise global awareness and cultural sensitivity, and show them how one little action, as simple as sending emails has global implications not only in the lives of their Thai counterparts but also for GDP, national health – even reducing terrorism.

A lot of this will be happening at the resource center The SOLD Project is trying to build. Check out how it’s coming along! And feel free to browse The SOLD Project website to find out more about what they do. You can even host your own documentary viewing party!

The resource center is well under way, BUT WE NEED YOUR HELP! We need help raising funds for supplies like children’s books (we {heart} the Seuss), desks, stationary, computers, a security system (so no A-hole jacks our computers), and staff support (because, yo, we’ll need to eat too).

If you look to the top right of this page you’ll see a link to donate. I’ve created a profile through CrowdRise and I’ve set an {albeit ambitious} goal of raising $1,000 by June 1 to go to building and running this resource center. Do you think we can do it? I think we can do it!

Every dollar helps! I think it’s easy to forget these days just how far a dollar can go. But for these girls and boys in Thailand, $1 is all it takes to keep one kid in school one day more.

If there’s anyone who can be counted on for love and support, I know it’s the blogging community. Bloggers and blog readers alike, you all are such amazing people with such large, warm hearts. Every day, there’s an unbelievable outpouring of affection, advice, and well-wishes to friends in need. So I’m just asking for a little help for some very little friends in need: the young girls and boys in Thailand who want nothing more than to just be home with their families, go to school, and live a decent life. Let’s keep them home with their families and away from pervy men and brothel gangstas!

I have two answers for this one. If I were a slightly different person, I’d want a life where I traveled the world for a living, perhaps working for National Geographic or The Lonely Planet, writing exposes on different peoples and cultures. There’s a part of me that always wished I had the cajones to live a life like that. But you have to have more than the average gusto to not only negotiate a viable career out of that, but also to live like that. As much as I love travel, I don’t love to be a woman traveling in foreign countries on my own. I have done it and can do it, but I prefer a traveling companion for both the security and the company. I know some women, even friends of mine, who have scampered through dangerous parts of Afghanistan all by their onesies. I give mad props to them. But I’d need to be a different person for a day for that.

But assuming I’m the same old me, I would love to live somewhere along the Mediterranean coast, perhaps even on Sicily or Corsica. I’d live in a little flat where I could soak up the sun and plant a little herb garden. I’d write all day long on my terrace or in a cafe, and be blissfully secluded from the hubbub of cities unless I felt the urge to visit one. My little life would be sanctuary.

What life would you live for a day?

The Rules
I think there is real power in the human voice, as flawed as it may be. And when the voices speak together, when you have a multitude of voices speaking, patterns begin to emerge and there you can begin to understand truth. So in the spirit of the personal narrative, I am hosting a weekly challenge every Tuesday morning, where I will post a topic (ranging from the banal to the intimate) and ask readers to respond. I would love to see everyone’s answers and how similar and different they all are.

You can respond in any way you choose. You can give a fictional response or a true one. You can use words, sentences, and/or photographs. If you have a blog, you can link it with Mr. Linky below. Please be sure to include “Tell It To Me Tuesdays” in the title, and link back to this post. If you don’t have a blog, but want to join in, you can just leave a comment. Please follow the rules. I don’t want to have to delete links. I like links! Don’t make me delete them.

Next week’s challenge: Favorite house items
What household items could you not live without? Do you have a go-to brand of cleaner? A cooking utensil you’d grab if the house were on fire? What household good helps you turn your house into your home?

I have a lovely life, and am blessed to have family and friends close to me. But sometimes, I still feel alone. It’s not a bad feeling; it’s not a bad, heavy, aching loneliness. It’s just a sort of melancholy. It’s the anomie of a modern life. It’s usually a brief feeling, and mostly I savor its bittersweetness until the moment passes.

In these moments I sometimes fantasize about flying off to foreign lands, sailing across glistening oceans, or at least taking the scenic route home.

A few brief moments of quiet in my head, before I catch back up with the train of every day life.

It reminds me of a line from one of my favorite movies: “So take a nice picture you got in your head home with you, but don’t be fooled. We lonely here mostly too. If we lucky, maybe we got some nice pictures to take with us.” – elderly Jamaican lady, Meet Joe Black.

I’m young yet, but I have some nice pictures to take with me.

This week’s You Capture challenge was left up to us to set. Take a look at Beth’s website, I Should Be Folding Laundry, to see what paths others have taken. Click here to see the You Capture challenge: Photographer’s Choice.

My gift to the playa

Time That Wasn’t Lost

One doesn’t count illusions
or bitter realizations,
no measure exists to count
what couldn’t happen for us,
what circled like a bumblebee,
without our not noticing
what we were losing.

To lose until we lose our life
is to live our life and our death,
and nothing that passes on exists
that doesn’t give constant proof
of the continuous emptiness of all,
the silence into which everything falls
and, finally, we fall.

Oh! what came so close
that we were never able to know.
Oh! what was never able to be
that maybe could have been.

So many wings flew around
the mountains of sorrow
and so many wheels beat
the highway of our destiny,
we had nothing left to lose.

And our weeping ended.

- Pablo Neruda

I am off to meet the multiple million-eyed monster. I am off to the land of transcendent energy, the land that beats with the unrestrained rhythm that is the heart of collective intentions. I am off to be thrilled, to be overwhelmed, to be awed, to be humbled, and to be unabashedly, irrevocably, unequivocally, irrepressibly, unfailingly, unencumbered me.

No cell phones.

No internet.

I will think of you. And come the 8th of September, I shall return.

In the meantime, a gift for you:

“Surrendering completely to love, be it human or divine, means giving up everything, including our own well-being or our ability to make decisions. It means loving in the deepest sense of the word. The truth is that we don’t want to be saved in the way God has chosen; we want to keep absolute control over our every step, to be fully conscious of our decisions, to be capable of choosing the object of our devotion.”
- from Paolo Coelho, The Witch of Portobello

Well, my loves, I ask you to find a beautiful moment…and surrender.

We were joined by a couple up for a mini vacation from LA, and having such a small group, our wine tour talk quickly devolved from the usual local history tidbits, to which everyone politely nods with bemused interest, to the latest news about the pot farm just beyond the ridge and how much tax money we’re wasting on suicide barriers on the nearby bridge. Not your mother’s wine tour, I must say – but infinitely more entertaining. We also more readily herdable, being a smaller group, which meant we got the added bonus of hitting up a fifth winery since we had time.

The thing I loved most was that the tour did not have preset winery destinations. Our driver asked us what kind of wines we liked, what we were in the mood for, then took us to his recommended spots. We hit up Brander, Lincourt, Gainey, Saarloos, and Artiste. My husband and I had planned to buy one bottle of wine. We took home three.

Of the five, Artiste was the only one we had been to before, and it was the last one on our list. I would like to tell you their wines were amazing, fabulous, and not-to-be-missed. But as it was the fifth winery that day, my wine palate had disintegrated from detecting floral, citrus, or spice and earth tones, to only being able to distinguish between whites and reds. Though, the sweetness of the final port did shine through enough for me to smack my lips on it, find a scrap book and draw a picture of a turtle. My husband added to the drawing: his turtle humped my turtle. You can see what a state we were in.

We ended up buying one bottle from Brander and two from Lincourt – all of them were whites of some kind or another. I think the heat of the day ruined my taste for reds this trip around. But the winery I truly enjoyed visiting was Saarloos & Sons.
Family owned and operated, this winery has quirky-yet-cool staff members who love to talk to you and tell stories. It also has the most AMAZING cupcakes…I might have to say they even beat Crushcakes. They were oh so moist, and flavored with wine. But the part I loved best was the aesthetic: vintage Victorian with a hint of modern, and a twist of grunge.



The day ended with dinner at Via Maestra 42, the top-notch, authentic Italian restaurant who catered our wedding. All in all it was a fabulous day and a magical way to spend an anniversary. For all you Californians out there, or others near a winery, this is a great vacation idea for these tight times when you want to keep it close to home.

For example, on both my flights to and from Florida on Delta, I checked in early with my flight and travel insurance confirmation number in tow for a flight I had booked in January. But somehow I did not get an assigned seat (despite having picked one out online). I just got a pseudo-ticket with a bold stamp on it saying “Seat Requested”. WTF?! Yes, I paid for a flight, I do request a seat on the mother-f’ing plane. So I go through security, and go to my terminal, and the people at the counter say they will call me when they have a seat ready. What does this mean? Does this mean I might not make the flight? Both flights were overbooked with a mile-long “wish-list” (Since when did they start calling the waiting list a wish list and really does it make people feel better that they’re wishing rather than waiting?). Was there a possibility there might not be a seat for me? Why do they do this? Why couldn’t they explain it? So I wait around, praying I’m not getting bumped off the flight and preparing myself to raise hell especially as they’re starting to board people and I still haven’t gotten my seat. They finally call me when the terminal is nearly empty and I get my seat, but underneath the relief I am fuming because I’ve been stressed for no apparent reason. A little communication people! I’m just saying, it would have been nice to know in advance what was going on.

When you purchase your ticket, there is never any information about what you’re getting for your money. All flights are not equal, and in the era of cutbacks, they’re getting worse. Instead of getting the usual food, movies, blankets and pillows included in the whole flight package, you now have to pay for all said items–and hope they haven’t run out of what you want because the airline didn’t prepare for demand. Moreover, some flights offer some of these things and others don’t. Some offer meals, others offer junk food you have to pay $7 for or go hungry. Some flights have pillows, others have blankets, and still others have neither. And now they’re charging $15 apiece for check-in luggage–which of course means people try to squeeze their big-ass bags into the overhead bins and create delays, cramped space, and all around headaches for everyone else.

I, for one, would much rather have a set price included in the actual price of the ticket in order to have a comfortable flight, than to be nickeled and dimed every step of the way. But if they are going to charge separately for these items, they should offer a rundown of prices so you know what you’re getting yourself into when you buy the ticket. Choosing flights solely on price and travel times can leave you stranded with a subpar or positively hellish flight.

So what is the consumer to do? Short of demonstrations, boycotts, and strongly-worded letters, the only thing to do is adapt. Having flown 8 domestic flights in something like 2 months, I have compiled a list of ways to have a smooth flying experience:

1) Prepare to play your part in security theatre:

• Only carry liquids and gels in 3 oz. containers and keep them in a clear ziploc bag you can easily pull out of your bag
• Wear shoes that are easy to take on/off so you don’t have to bother with laces and such in the security line
• Pack so you are prepared to slip your laptop out of its case and place it in a separate bin
• Minimize the amount of metal accessories you’ll have to take off before going through the metal detector

2) Pack light. If you cannot travel light, don’t be a cheapskate. You’re allowed 1 carry-on bag (please keep it small) and a purse or laptop case. If you cannot fit everything you want to bring in either of these items, pay the lousy $15 and check it in. The overhead bins are overcrowded and trying to stuff your duffel bag or almost-suitcase just creates problems for everybody. You’ll hold up the line as you puff and sweat trying to shove your bag where it won’t fit, piss off everyone behind you, and most likely end up having to check it anyway.

3) Be prepared to bring whatever you might need on the plane because there is no guarantee the flight will offer what you want and it most certainly won’t come at a reasonable price. So if you want a pillow or blanket, go buy one of those little travel-size ones. A good quality travel pillow is worth its weight in gold when you want to get some shut-eye. Also, bring some food like a sandwich, fiber/protein bar and/or fruit; something that is filling and doesn’t take up too much space. You’ll be so glad you did when you see the flight attendants going down the aisle offering unhealthy, unsatisfying, and expensive snacks. Seriously, who wants to pay $5 for a bag of peanuts to sustain themselves on a 5-hour flight? No thank you.

4) Last but not least: arrive early. Better to be bored than harried and stressed out.

I hope this list is useful (especially for anyone who hasn’t flown recently). Happy travels!