Would you rather?

1. Have long-term happiness or short-term ecstasy?
   
2. Have someone be undyingly committed to you or infinitely stimulating?
   

When I was younger, I never thought that anything had to be a tradeoff or that anything would have to be a compromise. I wanted everything - very much in the nature of a compulsive perfectionist. I also could never make any decisions. Because I simply couldn't deal with tradeoffs. Everyone called me "Miss I-don't-know," and trust me, I knew or at least thought I knew everything.

Have I learned anything since? Or have I just gotten jaded, after seeing disappointment after disappointment. After working in a job that is all about prioritization and trade-offs. Was the lesson of life learning how to settle?

How has time factored into this lesson? When I was younger, life was a huge unknown. But it wasn't a scary unknown, because 1) I thought I had all the time in the world to get the unknown that was my life right. 2) I really couldn't see out past 4 years in the future anyway. At 12, who can see past 16? At 16 who thought they'd make it to 21?

At some point, my perspective changed from thinking that I had all the time in the world to thinking that I was running out of time. I started thinking things like "I have to take advantage of my youth because before I know it I'm going to be fat and wrinkly!" Yes, that's shallow - but the physical limitations of old age are really scaring me!

And then there's the even bigger question "What am I doing with my life?!!!" I want my life to finally start falling in place. There are so many unknowns and so many things get thrown at you unexpectedly in life, can't I just get a little bit of certainty? Please? In any of the aspects of my life? It's like in Sim City where you have the bar graph with the three bars: Industrial, Residential, Commercial - and you're franticly putting out fires because you take care of one and then the other one goes to hell.

So yeah, the question of longterm happiness vs. short term ecstasy... (Ecstasy being the only word I could think of on the fly as the extreme of happiness.) There's a part of me that has stopped believing in finding the ONE. (when it comes to my personal sim city bars of career, love, and friends, clearly the one needing help right now is love so that's what I'm referring to) Not because I don't want someone that rocks my world but because I want something I can depend on. I want that bar graph for love to be up for a while. I'm tired of just not knowing where my life is going.

So now if I draw on every idealistic bone inside me and try to convince myself "Don't settle" it's just a hard thing to do. It's a hard thing to think that for love or career or friends - that any of those don't have to be such a tradeoff. Can I have faith that if I work for things, they will come? No! Because sh*t happens and sh*t has happened before.

So what do I do now?

For oyster lovers

Deinitely must be oyster season. I want to try these Totten Inlet Virginicas!

Excerpted from NYT article:
The Oyster Is His World

"Totten Inlet Virginicas — oysters native to the East Coast (Crassostrea virginica, to the Latin-spouting crowd), whose ancestors were brought west from the Chesapeake Bay a century ago. Introduced in 2004, they are raised by Taylor Shellfish Farms in a bay that opens off Puget Sound. Mr. Rowley, who helps to market them, gives them his nomination for "the best oyster on the planet."

It would be easy to dismiss that comment as vulgar hucksterism, but it would be wrong. T.I.V.'s are uncommonly plump and sweet, with a memorably pronounced mineral finish, as you can discover yourself at the Oyster Bar, which often features them. Not many oysters deliver such a clean, mellow overall impression — perhaps the fabled Belons from Brittany, which have graced the finest Parisian tables for centuries, and the magnificent big Colchesters from the east coast of England, renowned since Roman times, but precious few others."

By the way, I've never been to Swan Oyster Depot. Anyone want to go with me?

Spring has sprung

After days and days and days of rain, spring finally feels like it's here. Spring never gets half the credit that summer does, but it really has a lot to offer, aside from the raging hormones.

I've lived in the same 40 mile radius for my ENTIRE life. I should really get off my butt and go somewhere else. Despite that, it's important to remember what's so great about the place that you often take for granted. So here it is - my list of great spring things in the San Francisco Bay Area

• Golf
  The rain's over and the days are longer. You can head to the driving range after work, play 18 holes on the weekends. Not that I've been everywhere else, but my favorite driving range is defintely the Stanford range. $6 for 50 balls - $5 if you're a student and it's open till 9pm once spring hits. You're not hitting off grass, but let me just try to describe what it's like to be there after while the sun is setting. The air's cool. It's winter air but with a good dose of summer sun. It's quiet,and everyone is doing their own thing. Today, there was a cat, just hanging out in the middle of the grass about 75 yards out. Over the loudspeaker, they stop everyone from hitting. Two guys run out and chase the cat in circles off the field. Now that's pretty awesome.
  
  
  
• Running the Stanford Dish
  So the dish isn't at all what it was like before - like 7 years before. No more dirt roads - heck, you can't even get to the dish anymore - it's fenced in. But it's a three mile run with amazing views of the foothills and the golf course. The skies are clear and you can see for mile over the entire Silicon Valley. Play some Green Day on your ipod and the ascension and decension might actually go by somewhat quickly.
  
  
  
• Strawberries
  So this isn't a bay area thing, but strawberries are really good right now! So are Muscat grapes from Piazzas. Get the redder ones. They're sweeter.
  
  
  
• Spring clothes
  Skirts and heels and tank tops and NO MORE HEAVY COATS. Colors and cotton. And the hope of shedding the paleness for the first brownings of a tan.
  
  
  
• Hog Island Oyster Company
  So they say you shouldn't eat oysters in the summer. So take advantage of the slightly warmer weather AND oyster season and go up to the Hog Island Oyster Company. They have the restaurant in the ferry building, but there's also the farm up in Tomales Bay. You can buy oysters by the hundred. They give you a tray, a thick rubber glove, and a shucking knife. Yes, it's a shuck-fest.
  
  
  

Final product

I cooked myself too much food. I think. And I ate it all. Hah!

• Roasted portabello mushroom with olive oil and lavendar. Lavendar-infused, if you will.
  
• Pan-seared tilapia fillet
  
• Rigatoni with fresh tomato sauce with mushrooms - from scratch not the least
  

Here's the recipe for fresh tomato pasta. It was pretty good! And pretty easy for how complex it sounds.
(Makes 2 servings)

• 3 ripe tomatoes
  
• 3 cloves of garlic
  
• 6 white mushrooms
  
• Fresh basil
  
• salt and pepper to taste
  

Boil the tomatoes with skin and everything in water. When they're fairly cooked (skin should be falling off), remove them from the heat, peel off the skin, and cut them up a little bit. Saute the mushrooms in olive oil. When they're pretty much cooked add the boiled tomatoes and a couple sprigs of fresh basil. Yes, I made this up. But you might as well try the recipe. It turned out looking appetizing at least.

Somehow domesticity feels good right now.

Where do broken hearts go?

To the kitchen of course!

43 Things

I was a camp counselor in college for the Sally Ride Science Camp for Girls. It was on of the hardest experience of my life. I had to call on patience, sympathy, kindness, and confidence that I thought I had but that was never put to any real kind of test until I had to be dorm mom for adolescent girls frought with a tender combination of hormones, angst, fear, hope, dreams, and desires - both aspirational and sexual.

I made them make a list of 100 things they would want to do in life. Some of these were in the tone of "I want to meet Orlando Bloom." And others were in the tone of "I want to discover a new solar system." I won't be so naive or preacherish as to say that those two kinds of statements ever came from the same girl.

One of the hardest parts about being a camp mom that summer was looking at how little and how much I had grown between the ages of 12 and 22. Or even now, a few years after 22 - I have changed so much, yet also so little. At 12, I had dreams, but it was more like I had forever to fulfill them. At 22, I had dreams, and I felt like I was about to embark on them. I believe that the one thing that those 12-year-olds should always have was dreams. I believed that they should all be useful people in some huge way. And now, at 26, I know I forgot for a little while that dreams can come true. But I've also learned that dreams don't have to involve changing the world. Not that they can't.

Here's the beginning of a list of things that I want to do at some point in my life. I'll keep adding to it. And it's in no particular order of priority or timeline.

I want to...

1. go to Peru with my roommates
   
2. start a company that solves a problem
   
3. be a bridesmaid
   
4. fall in love
   
5. have children
   
6. do arts and crafts with my daughter
   
7. make Halloween costumes for my kids
   
8. build something that touches someone's heart
   
9. learn to be more generous and giving
   
10. live somewhere other than San Francisco for at least 6 months
    
11. spend more time with my parents
    
12. understand why my parents are the way they are
    
13. do a triathalon
    
14. swim from Alcatraz to San Francisco
    
15. decorate my own home
    
16. live somewhere with a view of the San Francisco bay
    
17. keep better in touch with my friends
    
18. visit the Pyramids
    
19. see the terracotta soldiers in Xi'An
    
20. take a train up and down the French countryside
    
21. drive a stickshift smart car from London to Stonehenge
    
22. learn to paint
    
23. keep dancing
    
24. get my motorcycle license
    
25. buy a Vespa
    
26. be able to take public transportation to work
    
27. take a month-long vacation
    
28. learn to cook Chinese food from my mother
    
29. learn how to shoot archery
    
30. compete in a golf tournament
    
31. kiss in the rain (inspired by 43things.com)
    
32. keep up with this blog
    

Ok back to work for now. Thank you to my roommates for reminding me how much I have to live for and look forward to.

What is love?

Baby don't hurt me. Don't hurt me. No more ...

I have two wonderful roommates. Incredible women that have helped me, ok probably more like, pushed me to continually reflect on who I am and why I might feel a certain way. They're the ones that know me despite how I might express myself externally. Probably because what I would hide to most people in a subdued, stoney, professional and proper demeanor, they get to see when I get home and just let the rage, ecstasy, or whatever come out like a small tiger bursting out of perfect, sealed, origami box.

So the question of the night last night was "what is love?" And yes, for you non-mushy types out there, we are talking romantic love. (Apologies.) For once in my life, I thought I had an answer. Bold, I know. But I very craftily worked into the logic of my answer that love is different for everyone. Crafty, I know.

So here is my love in two parts:

------------------------

1. Love is when

All the things that are right for you about a loved one outweigh all the things that you seemingly can't stand about them.

So you stand them.

You realize that what you want is not half as important as what you already have. Romantic notions of happily ever after, how you think you deserve to be treated, the need to look out for your best interests - all become unimportant because that fairytale life is not your fairytale.

So you grow up.

You stop thinking what if this person isn't the best that I can do? Because you know that like the two halves of cracked plate or a lock and the key that opens it, all your perfections and imperfections are right for each other.

So you take a leap of faith. And then that brings us to commitment.

2. Commitment is when

Through good times and bad, no matter how that person may be during those times, you believe in them. You are there for them. You let them see that their problems are bigger than yours.

So you give. And then you give some more.

Even though you know that people don't change, you begin to believe that it's not changing you're asking for, but learning. Because people can learn, can't they? Can't they?

And so you are desperate.



------------------------

A couple more things:
- Love sometimes is unfortunately, one-sided. Especially for the picky.
- The above was the definition of what it is to love. Not to be in love.
- There's love and then there's the expression of love. You love somebody for who they are, not how they show you their love.
- If how they show their love is not enough for you, that has nothing to do about what I'm talking about here. That has to do with a relationship and fueling it.
- Love is something you know, commitment is something you do.

And yes, I know this is incomplete, and shallow, and probably not the most understandable or interesting. Oi. I suck.

Dreaming of vacation

Who doesn't?

I'm glad it's a little sunnier this week, but it's still not quite there. And I am really very very ready for the summer. There's something really nice about right now. Spring, after all, is when you get to anticipate summer. And in my mind, there's very few things as wonderful to anticipate as summer.

Because along with the summer comes a sense of relaxation. You can usually look forward to something deliciously slower-paced, warmer, more care-free. It might just be a barbecue with hot dogs and a coldish reubiat. It might be a more elaborate vacation to some tropical place with sun, sand, and ocean waves. Humidity, bathing suits, sarongs and sandals. I'll have to write again about summer clothes.

But back to anticipation. Anticipation saves me from depression. I think it saves me from depression more than the actual thing that I'm anticipating. I feel like we spend so much of our lives waiting for things to happen. And honestly, a lot happens, but it's always going to feel like stuff happens too infrequently. Or at least the good stuff does. That's the wonderful thing about anticipation. It has the ability to fill all the down time between high points.

So I'm anticipating. Right now, I'm anticipating Peru.

Image hosting?

Anyone out there with a server feel like letting me host an image (the green one with the white silhouette up top)? I miss my rounded corner.

micro-formats

Mike's selling stuff!

http://mostlyspam.blogspot.com/

If you're interested, contact Mike. Be sure to mention that you saw the ad on ipaud.blogspot.

April Fools - Google Romance

http://www.google.com/romance/tour.html

So Google's April Fools joke wasn't that funny. But at least they had the humor to do one.

Alli thinks user A lived in our freshmen dorm.

Best travel sites

From Wired's re-publishing of Forbes' best travel sites. I thought I'd list them out here, because Forbes' list is in an annoying slideshow and because I love dreaming about vacation. And since I love to travel and I know the few people who read my blog (if they even read my blog) also like to travel, here they are, categorized and in order of what seems most interesting to me:

Buying online and deals

• Kayak.com - a new version of expedia/travelocity like sites
• site59.com - last minute deals
• breezenet.com - cheapeast rental cars
  
• Priceline.com - cheap hotels
• travelzoo.com - cheapest ever, if you're flexible

Travel guides / reviews

• gridskipper.com - urban travel guide, occasionally raunchy
  
• MyTripJournal - personal travel blogs
  
• IgoUgo.com - user created travel journals - write to earn points redeemable for coupons or miles
• hotelchatter.com - hotel reviews

Traveller services

• seatguru.com - best seats on your airplane
• flyertalk.com - getting the most out of your ff miles