child devil of tuna

Tis the Season!

Merry Christmas,
Happy Hannukah,
Happy Kwanzaa,
Happy Winter Solstice,
etc. You get the idea.

Just for kicks, here is some holiday cheer. If you like what you see, you too can Elf Yourself. Enjoy!

posted by Grace @ 12/25/2006 04:41:00 PM 0 comments

Communists? What Communists? I Don't See Any Communists...

I've had a lot of free time over the last couple of months and while a couple of very temporary jobs have distracted me from my cleaning crusade (an ongoing process through which I've tried to purge all of the unnecessary crap that has accumulated thus far in my life), I took some time out today to attack a drawer in my dad's desk which I found yesterday to be full of school work from 8th grade... all chronologically organized and filed by subject, year, and assignment type. Yes, I realize I am totally OCD, but hey, it makes me happy to put things in order. My desk may be an utter mess and I may throw my clothes over the nearest chair and on my bed, but when it comes to paperwork and school assignments, I'm as neat-freak as they come. I remember last year Ali challenged me to find my MCB 110 second midterm cheat sheet in less than 30 seconds and suffice it to say that I did so with time to spare. But I digress.

The real reason for this post is that I found a gem of a book report. I had apparently read George Orwell's Animal Farm for this particular report. It's dated December 5, 1994, placing me at the tender young age of 13. Seeing this book report brought back oh so many memories. I remembered reading the book. I remembered how sad and tragic the story was. I remembered a friend telling me that the Cliff's Notes she had read said the book was about Communism. I remembered thinking that this friend of mine must have been crazy because Animal Farm was most certainly NOT about Communism. It was about animals. Duh.

It's interesting to see how different a book can seem upon a later rereading, especially when that re-reading takes place 12 years afterwards. From looking at my report, I realized that I had understood every important plot point and their importance in the context of the story itself; however, I just could not see anything that was below the surface of the nice little fairytale about animals trying their best to live on their own. My 13-year-old mind could not grasp the allgorical nature of the story, something which was so glaringly obvious when I picked up the book again just a few months ago (for those of you who haven't read it, for one thing, the animals all refer to each other as "comrade." If that's not Communist, then I don't know what is). It makes me kinda want to go back and re-read some of the books I tried to tackle back then and see how different they'll seem after a second reading.

Unfortunately, for all the books that offer something new and exciting with each subsequent reading, there are those books which fail to rise to the occasion when revisited. There are many books that I remembered enjoying when I was younger that left the older me feeling somewhat disappointed because the stories now seem so dated, trite, or juvenile. This is kind of how I feel about the recent resurgence of 80's cartoons. While part of me wants to feed my nostalgic side, I'm worried that I'll just end up marring all of those fantastic memories I have of sitting in front of the TV Saturday mornings with my favorite bowl of overly sugared cereal. I loved loved LOVED She-Ra, but I stopped myself from buying the first season DVDs because I realized, like those well-loved childhood books, a re-watching of my favorite cartoon will probably only work against me. Maybe it's best then, to leave those childhood memories untouched and pristine?

posted by Grace @ 12/16/2006 08:56:00 PM 0 comments

Mini Road Trip

Apologies to all. Blog posts have been few and far between since I finished of my Europe trip entries. Long story short, I'm still looking for permanent work, but in the meantime, I have started temping. More on that to come. But let me get on with the most interesting thing I have done since Thanksgiving weekend. Presenting:

Adventures in the Desert.
The Story of a Mini One-Day Road Trip


My mom and I packed our day bags and an ice chest full of diet coke and headed southeast, into the more desolate regions of the Southern Californian desert. Away from the artifically green suburban sprawl, away from the palm-tree lined coast. The city of Indio (waaaay out past Palm Springs) was hosting its annual Tamale Festival. It was kitchy, the tamales were good, and the guacamole was excellent.


Holy guacamole, Batman! Seriously, this stuff was made by a place called "Holy Guacamole" and it was indeed heavenly!


Since driving 180 miles to eat a couple of tamales seemed a little not worth the trip, we decided to drive out to the Salton Sea as well. Until about 2 months ago, I didn't even know the Salton Sea was actually still full of water. I thought that it was a "sea" by name only and that the scorching desert sun would have evaporated all of the water leaving behind salt plains not unlike what one would see at Death Valley or around Salt Lake City. Boy was I wrong. I believe it's larger than Tahoe and wide enough so that you can't see the land on the other side. It's so weird to see such a large body of water in such a dry hot desert. There were even tons of seagulls, pelicans, and other random oceany animals you don't expect to come across 200 miles inland.


Our next stop, Algordones Sand Dunes. Another 30 or so miles inland. At this point, we're really close to the California-Arizona border. Let's switch up the scenery yet again. The little tiny spots on top of the largest sand dune on the right are a bunch of people on ATVs.


Sculpted beautifully by the wind.


My mom venturing out into the Sahara-like sand.


All in all, the trip was fun. We logged over 540 miles that day (and I drove half. Woohoo! All very good driving practice). Now I'm gonna need to try and work myself up to 350 or so miles so that the trip from LA to SF won't destroy me!

posted by Grace @ 12/10/2006 09:28:00 AM 0 comments