Tibs What?

Someone dusted the cobwebs off my Ethiopian goatskin lunchbox.

But no one knows who did this good deed.

Who could have been so efficient? Who was such a good houseguest? I don't know.

I'd been collecting cobwebs there, mostly because I was too lazy to go get a ladder since I couldn't reach them (11-foot ceilings in my old Victorian). But someone removed them. Maybe Sean from Oz, or Babc0ck or Kraiger went into a cleaning frenzy while I was busy microwaving Peeps.

I accosted Yancey first. He'd stayed three nights in my place last week (having left JC for San Francisco when his fiancée got a job out there). And he'd worked at the drawing table, right under the offending cobwebs.

"Wasn't me. Try the sweeping Swede."

I emailed the eSwede. He'd been here too. He didn't even know what a goatskin lunchbox was. And when he googled it? It turned up… me.

"Not very informative," he said. "What's an Ethiopian goatskin lunchbox anyway?"

It's not really a box. More like a goatskin coconut that is sliced in half and then the top is tied back on. If I were to use it for its genuine intended purpose instead of just hanging it above my drawing table, I would fill it with injera (a spongy Ethiopian pancake style bread) and tibs wot (spicy pieces of meat) or pureed spicy lentils or chickpeas. And I'd lug it around Manhattan, then find a nice park to open it up in when I got hungry.

I don't know what possessed me to carry an Ethiopian lunchbox out of Ethiopia, then onto the ship from Israel to Italy, where I posted it home. I just thought it was a cool idea, this goatskin lunchbox.

Anyway, I use it as much as I use my drawing table these days.

Spotsy

My mother and her husband, who live in the mountains of Virginia above the Shenandoah Valley, are looking for a larger house in the area. They have a beautiful wooded chalet near Bryce Resort.

I was really traumatized the first time she moved, leaving the house I grew up in--though it was undoubtably for the best as the neighbors were insane--but since then it's turned into no big deal.

Each time my mother moved, more and more of my useless junk got jettisoned. Which was for the best, as I obviously didn't need it or I would have taken it with me to New York. (I am still jettisoning my own stuff, but for some reason I seem to acquire at a more rapid rate than I shed, even though I'm not a big shopper.)

Mom did rescue my early 70s acrylic painting of Spotsy—my childhood dog—during the first move. I think this is the only thing I ever painted that didn't involve superheroes or paint-by-numbers.

Jumping the Gun

Do you think I could buy this book and
save myself the trouble of writing it?

I'm kind of disturbed that they're selling it for $5.70 when it's not even published yet.

Downtown for Sale

Something is amiss in downtown JC. There's 8 houses or condos for sale on my block alone. I saw dozens of "For Sale" signs today when I went to have coffee with my pal Jessica over in Van Vorst Park (I live in the Hamilton Park area).

But I only saw one "Sold" sign.

Is it the rise in property taxes? That's what squashed JC's last run-up, in 1988. Interest rates? Or is it just that the insane value increases (my place tripled in value since I bought it in late 2002) that has everyone trying to take profits? No one knows. There will probably be some kind of shake-out over the next several months and we'll have some answers by autumn.

Tangible Results of Kuwait

I went to the gym today, for the first time since I returned home.

While I was living in Kuwait, I never went to the gym. They were really expensive there and I didn't have a reliable method of transportation to get to and from the gym. I really only worked all day, or worked freelance all evening. And then I slept. Not much of a life, but I did have a lot to get done.

Today, the helper at the gym weighed and measured me. I knew I'd gained weight, but now I have the tangible results of what sitting still for three months in Kuwait means to me.

Gains:
7 pounds overall
1.25 inches around the waist
1.25 inches around the hips
1 inch around the abdomen

I guess that'll teach me to sit on my butt for three months.

Ro's Opening Begins At 40

I turned 40 yesterday and it wasn't so bad after all.

More importantly, my pal Roberta has an art installation in a show that opened yesterday up in The Heights. Her piece is displayed outside, so we're hoping it can handle today's rain. The medium is paint, wallpaper, and electrical tape.

Goodbye from Kuwait

One of the guys from my Kuwait office posted this on his blog. His blog is anonymous, and he sounds off about plenty on it so I can't link directly to it, but he said I could reprint it here. It's a really sweet goodbye. I have serious doubts that I did all these things he credits me with... mostly I just stumbled around blindly, but that doesn't matter so much. It's still a lovely piece. And I don't really look like an elf.

Thursday, April 06, 2006
And just like that

And just like that, things went back to the way they were!

Three months ago Marie came to work. It's always difficult to tell how you're going to get along with Americans in your workplace. Kuwait is quite overrun with them like ants on sugar - and for the most part they haven't done the country any good. But my first impressions of Marie were quite different -- surreal actually. Why is she always smiling? What does she know that I don't? Is it me or does she look like an elf? (Note from Marie: Elf in question here.)

It was difficult for the folks at work not to take a shine to her. She seemed so out of her element - single american female out in the big bad world. So out of her element and yet still in control.

She had come to Kuwait to help us come to grips with the not-so-fun side of comic book production. She's sort of like a reluctant comic book geek/world traveller/editor type person. And here she was in one of the most life-sucking deserts in the world and already she wanted to take a bus, go to the post office and see the camel races.

She's insane!

And so we boys and girls of the comic book industry in the middle east - set to work creating a universe. Characters were born and then surgically altered. At our whim their loved ones lived and died. The planets were set to spin, rules were set, the animals were named and on the seventh day we rested - although my suspicion is that marie never really did!

It wasn't long before Frankie would take me aside and say "Marie knows her s*it doesn't she!?" and i would be quick to agree.

Any fight that broke out at work (and in our little dysfunctional company there were plenty to go around) it was always decided that Marie would know the right answer. And so it was that this insane person brought some sanity to the workplace.

It was more than that though. I remember when the company was made up of 4 people and it wasn't divided up into editorial, creative and financial. It was made up of four neurotic, psychologically disturbed individuals - one who always came late and drunk, one who was always trying to jump off the 28th floor of our old office building, one who would disappear to the stairwell to steal his 24th smoke of the day and one who did the filing. well it's obvious which one i'm NOT.

And then we grew into this big massive self hating organism. Friends became co-workers, and some even became bosses. And it was all lost in what was 'good for the company'. And then Marie came.

On the last day Alec, Muneer and myself took her out for dinner. Thai food. I recommended the place cus i knew the food was top notch and everyone would like it. I'd taken my sister and closest friends there but always made sure i never brought it up in front of other ppl. It was after all, a safe haven for me away from work and home. Anyways we had a great time and there was a little sadness in the air because well the three months were up and she was leaving. Chicken in green curry, vegetable soup, pad thai, squid and an amazing dish which was made simply of chicken on toast covered in sesame seeds. "This stuff is so good," i said and munched away as the others nodded their assent vigorously.

We shot the breeze and we laughed and it was all-in-all a great night. And then the next morning, Marie got on a plane and left for Barcelona.

The office was kind of dead and people realised that the most important things were once again deadlines and paychecks. The workload never stops and it only takes a little effort to just throw yourself into it.

Oh well I'm sure the office will never quite be as much fun as it used to be.

Alec and Muneer went for lunch the day after Marie left while i was neck deep in writing an Iron Man character profile for the website. I was so tense and engrossed that i didn't look up when they came back. "We have a present for you," said Muneer, smiling. Alec was smiling too.

Why are they smiling i said to myself. Do they know something I don't know?

Alec placed something on my table, wrapped up in kleenex. "it's a rat isn't is?" i said. "Something like that," says Alec. After unwrapping several layers, i saw what it was - and i was quite touched.

Chicken on toast with sesame seeds.

Sure the office won't be as much fun as it was when Marie was around. But it will also never be the same.

Thanks Marie!

Peep Show

I'm not much for celebrating Easter. But I had a houseguest--Sean from Sydney--and I felt that I should do something other than my usual holiday celebration, in which I work late before collapsing into bed.

I called up Michael Kraiger and Jon Babc0ck and we (well, Kraiger) made an Easter dinner.

When we went to buy the supplies in ShopRite, there were blue Peeps on display at the front of the store. They don't have Peeps in Australia, as far as I know, so I tossed them in the cart.

"Ever put a Peep in a microwave?" Michael Kraiger has a 7-year-old daughter and knows all kinds of kid games.

"No."

So we microwaved a Peep. Then we tried to get one to absorb dregs of wine. The former got better results than the latter.

No one would eat even an uncooked Peep. They ended up in the Jersey City landfill.

End of an Era?

Leaving Spain turned out to be something I wasn't really interested in doing. I only went home because I didn't want to be alone on my 40th birthday, which happens next week.

"Should have stayed longer," I thought, and it wasn't just because I hated waking up at 4 a.m. to get to the airport for the 7:25 flight.

After the beige, sunny desert landscape of Kuwait, everything in Barcelona seemed incredibly colorful. Green was made greener by the absence of greenery in my previous three months. The bountiful richness of the corner shops, with their piles of fruits, was made richer by the lack of these things in my Gulf winter. The importation of good company after my deliberate isolation in Kuwait made the city all the more enjoyable.

Normally, I would have caught the subway to Barcelona Sants and transferred to the airport train there. But the airport train had quit running directly in November, so I hoofed it up to the airport bus stop on Plaza Catalunya. I'd thought I'd avoided overpacking, as I'd been aware of new airline luggage limitations, but suddenly my two bags seemed ridiculously heavy as I walked through the empty alleys of the old city.

That's the problem with getting an apartment in the old city. The only practical way out is by foot. Not a big deal for the visiting pal with his compact weekend-sized suitcase, but for me with my three months worth of multi-season wear and office documents (not to mention sample copies of Spider-Man printed in Arabic), it was less-than-ideal.

Flew easily from Barcelona to Heathrow, then had to collect my bags, go through Passport Control, and catch the National Express to Gatwick for my Continental flight to Newark. Arrival at 8:40 means I should easily make the 12:30 flight, right?

Er… no. My Barcelona-Heathrow flight arrived late. The bags took forever to come up. Had the motorway been clogged, I would never have made it.

I was a public menace as I raced along with my cart through Gatwick, dodging the other carts and meandering-people as they moved in fits and starts after gazing at departure screens. I didn't hit anyone with my cart, but only due to luck.

"The check-in for flight CO29 closes in five minutes," said the Continental agent, cheerfully. I'd made it, though barely.

Seven hours later, I emerged into Newark Airport. The industrial landscape that lines US 1/9 and the New Jersey Turnpike doesn't look so bad from the train instead of from Yancey's car when he'd dropped me off at Newark in early January.

Home. Home again. What now?

Fast Food Spanish Style

One of the first things I did in Barcelona was try to buy some clothes. Kuwait has a lot of shopping malls but the prices are pretty high. So I headed to the outlet block (on Girona) and hit the Mango Outlet, as well as scoured the shops along Portaferrissa in the Old City.

A pretty pointless exercise, since, as I've mentioned here before, the clothes in Spain are generally too small for me.

So I could buy size Large clothes, but I didn't. I am not much of a shopper, and by the time I finish trying a few things on and discovering they are too small, I'm just bored and ready to not shop again for another six months.

So I guess the question is WHY are Spaniards so much thinner than Americans. WHY did I come home from Spain last time ten pounds lighter than when I'd arrived? I hadn't even gone to the gym while I was there.

It's got to be diet and lifestyle, of course. Fresh fruit and vegetables, olive oil, and good-for-you stuff are all readily available on the Mediterranean coast.

Even the fast food is better in Barcelona. In most of the world, fast food is about fried things—burgers, fried chicken, and… well, more burgers.

In Barcelona, when I'm too lazy to make something and too uninspired to look for a sit-down restaurant, I run to Bocetta or Pans and Company. They're just fast food chains, but they're Spanish fast food chains. Instead of serving up fried foods, they sell bocadillos, which are skinny baguettes on crusty bread.

Of course, having just been in Kuwait, it's not enough for me to get the chicken or turkey baguette… I get the ham or the chicken with bacon. Yum!