teresa

If you have followed the recent dialogue between the newlyweds you know we make each other lazy.  Is it so bad that we just want to relax together and drink margaritas?  Well when Elliott was out of town we both shaped up, ate better and started running.  So this morning, we ran together.  We got up before the sun to trek out a couple of miles before breakfast.  It was nice to have Elliott back and on the run so I don’t have to be afraid of being kidnapped.  He also runs a faster pace than I do by myself so I had to pick it up.

Then we had a delicious dinner tonight.  Adelle’s sausage is a staple in our house.  We like the chicken apple and the mango flavors.  Elliott tries to work in other flavors although non are as good as the fruits.  We had mango sausage in the fridge and the package suggested a recipe for kabobs with pineapple, red pepper and mango chutney.  We adjusted it and had it on pasta and since we couldn’t find the chutney we used mango jelly and added the left over mint from another recipe I should share.  Anyway, mango sausage, pineapples, red peppers all grilled with mango jelly over pasta – yum it was delicious!

Yum!

The mint was left over from this gem, we brought it to a dinner party and except for the 2 who said they didn’t do tomatoes it was a hit!  It is from Better Homes and Gardens which I am actually embarrassed of… I have asked them to stop sending me their magazine, because we have worked hard to reduce our junk mail.  I don’t really glean much from the magazine other than the recipes, this one is a keeper.

With Elliott being gone I have tons of time on my hands.  I am reading 2 books and the other night spent some time surfing the Internet – normally that is Elliott’s schtick.  I started looking for something don’t remember what now when shiny blinky things distracted me on the MSN page.  I read a few stories, watched a few videos when this caught my eye: http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-us&vid=cfbf32a8-2be8-4cdc-9791-8493896297d9 .  I had never seen the music video so I went looking for what was so leud and suggestive that warranted “I kissed a girl and I liked then I went to hell”.  I have a 2 friends who are gay who used to live in Ohio who left and moved out here looking for a better life where they would be more accepted, I think they made a good choice.

Looking for that link just now I learned that Paul Neman died.  I watched some of the videos, he was an amazing actor and gave back so much later in life.  That made me cry…  I love that he stayed with his wife for over 30 years. 

Running update.  I ran my loop the regular way today and ended up walking 1/2 of it, not sure why I wasn’t feeling as good this morning.  Maybe because it was hotter than normal since I went later.  I did go in shorts and a sports bra which was a big step for me.  It is my goal to be in good enough shape to feel comfortable out and about in shorts and sports bra, its silly although my goal.  So I did it and felt good.  It was nice to get some sun on more than just my arms.

I listened to quite a bit of the debate last night.  I didn’t see the video I listened to in the car and then on the Internet.  I found it frustrating at times.  I would be more impressed if they answered questions rather than spouting out their agenda without responding to the question.  I normally shy away from politics and taking  a public view although I think McCain was more direct about answering questions than Obama.  The other thing that frustrated me was their word choice.  I heard a lot of gonna’s and we got to.  I hate to be the snobby Toastmaster although I found it borderline offensive.  Do they think they have to talk down to our level so we can understand them?  Or are they just that poor at using proper grammar while speaking?  I was not impressed.

Elliott comes back tonight!  I have some errands to run and more reading to do, gotta run!

Elliott is roughing it in Hawaii this week at a structural engineers conference while I hold down the fort.  Yesterday morning I woke up on my own, the alarm clock only went off for 20 minutes or so – this is a standing fued in our house, I suppose it is slightly annoying that Elliott has to listen to my alarm go off for extened periods of time while I lay there half asleep thinking about getting up.  Although I did get up, while it was dark out and go for a run.  This is my second run this week after taking a break after the triathlon.  It was a good run.  I have started runniing my favorite loop backwards, clockwise instead of counter clockwise.  Counter clockwise is good because you can run against traffic and not have to cross the street to turn the corner.  Being a bit out of shape I use the street crossing to catch my breath.  To top off my solo day yesteday I ended it getting a massage.  Although I had Jose who I have gone to before and he is brutal.  He worked out my left hip which takes a beating because apparently I favor my right knee that I had surgery on years ago and he worked out my right sholder and arm that sad but true get tight from working a mouse at my computer all day – lame!

I then had a Jamba Juice, picked up a book ChiRunning which I remembered on my run and decided I wanted and then talked to my mom, what a great night.  I went home, read another chapter in Solution Selling – a book that is going to teach me to be a rock star business development professional and grow our office here to amazing proportions. 

I woke up this morning, with minimal alarm time, and the light was on.  Thats what happens when Elliott isn’t here to take care of me.  Although I think I woke up faster because of the light…

Now I am at work, a little early and I busted my finger getting the water bottle on the dispenser – I miss Elliott already!

Day 2 was better.   We walked out of our tent and shade structure tentatively to see clear skies.  The team assembled and we finalized the our camps structure.    Then we went out for our first real ride about.  At some point heading down our street we were greeted by a guy asking if we wanted a mist?  I looked at him and he seemed familiar.  I realized he was the same guy who offered me a free hug the day before outside our camp.  This is part of the gift culture.  Elliott and I had originally thought it was a barter system, although interviewing burners before the trip we learned its a gift economy.  You don’t have to offer something in return, people just give.  So this guy had apparently come up with a daily rotating gift idea, starting with hugs and moving to a cool mist - a welcomed treat on your bike the heat.

Elliott and I had brought some things to gift although not really knowing how it worked we didn’t give as much as we could have.  What we did give was help to our camp.  We helped with loading it, setting it up, keeping it clean throughout the week, and also tear down and unload.

I got great ideas for gifts from others while we were out there.  Perhaps one of my favorites was a nail salon.  One camp had set up a shade structure with comfy chairs and tables and when they felt like it they through out a sign that said nail salon.  Lisa and I went one day to get our nails done.  I was mistakenly picturing soaking tubs, massaging chairs, and some cuticle treatment that was desperately needed.  The openly and very proud transvestite that did my nails instead simply asked what color.  I picked blue and he painted my nails, nasty cuticles, dry hands and all.  He also had a glow in the dark topping treatment.  It was fun.

A bigger and more elaborate setting down the street the other direction was a snow cone camp.  Run entirely on solar power, the served snow cones every afternoon around 3pm.  We made it there one of the last days, the day of the man burn, in the middle of a dust storm.  They had lots of flavors.  I invited my snow cone maker to pick a flavor for me.  He smiled, like a sushi chef invited to delight, and he selected a brown liquor bottle and suggested I not add any more alcohol to mine (there were people filling theirs with vodka) as mine would make an elephant drunk…  Between my bad hearing and poor memory if he said what it was I either didn’t hear it of forgot.  Whatever it was, it was tasty, some sort of coffee liquer.

Another gift camp was a nearby coffee camp.  The main camp member heated up a huge pot, as in large pan, of instant every morning, stirred it lovingly and would serve it up with a soup laddle.  The morning we went over there his buddy was hilarious, in a head to toe flourecent, fuzzy suit.  Sitting in a camping chair, he looked hot – and I don’t mean in a movie star way. 

After that morning I think we made a trip to center camp part of our morning routine.  This was the only place you could buy coffee (the only 2 things you can buy are ice and coffee) and they had real espresso machines, soy, mocha sauce, the whole deal.  We would walk to center camp in the morning with our mugs.  Which after a day or two we realized the one price point made better sense if we brought bigger cups, so we started cleaning and borrowing mugs left out from the night before.  We would walk to center camp, probably a 15 min walk or so.  There was so much going on their.  Yoga.  Dancing.  Couples yoga dancing something.  Music.  Naked people.  Sleeping people.  Naked woman henna artists.  It was like being in another world.  We would sit and sip our coffee, listen and soak it all in as the sun rose and it started to warm up.

Most mornings we did wake up before most everyone else.   I think before our walk to center camp we would clean up.  More so at the beginning of the week.  We would sort the beer bottles into cans and bottles.  Clean up the mess tent which was usually a mess.  We had brought some of our bowls and pots which were used nightly by the teams making the group dinners.  The problem with the group dinners is they also included a group punch in a large gatorade type container you see on the back of a truck at a construction site.  Bad news.  Clean up wasn’t on the minds of anyone after enjoying dinner and punch.

Towards the end of the trip we tired of cleaning up after everyone, particulary as the group and the mess grew.  Once our group dinner was over, we didn’t care if the pans were cleaned, not our problem.  It was because of feelings like this that some guys in a tent just outside ours gave me my playa name.  A playa name is your name on the playa, that someone gives to you, that should have meaning.  It was funny as we met people throughout the week and you would shake hands, Hi I am Teresa, Hi I am Jaoquin, or Egg, or Frequency.  Some of our campmates were Gumbo & Roux (we came up with Roux one night in a moment of pure genious), Showy McShow.  So a couple of self pronounced ‘harmless gay guys’ overheard me one night talking about how burning man had grown too big, and must not still be what it was originally intended to be (hence a day late, I feel like we missed a truly amazing experience not going burning man years ago when it was small).  The next day the guys next door said we know your playa name.  They said my name was Jaded.  The last ’d’ is silent though so pronounced Jade.  I loved it.  It was true, thats how I was by the end of the week on the Playa.  

I will end this post with Elliott’s playa name – Hillbilly Fabulous.  Randy thought that name was a little long so we offered a shortened version of Billy Fab. 

Consider this installment one of an unknown number of installments from my Burning Man memories.  Sadly enough I made only mental notes while on the playa.  Although the day or two after we returned I sat with the notebook I had bothered to take to the playa and never use and mapped out with Elliott’s help what I could remember from our week long journey to Black Rock City.

First I would like to reflect on the weeks and days before our trip.  I think the thing that sticks out most in my mind is lists.  We had lists upon lists of things we needed.  Batteries to power our EL wire and headlamps.  1 ply toilet paper (we barely used except for that one late night number 2 [Elliott says not to include this but what do I care] when the porta john’s were all out, that was entertaining opening the door and shouting to Elliott can you get me some t.p.?).  Shopping lists were broken down by store including Home Depot, Target and BevMo.  Beyond shopping lists we had a list of things to pack, things we already owned like towels, tent and umbrella that we also wanted to take.  This was spread over hours of shopping, hundreds if not over a thousand dollars (hence a dollar short, a day late will be explained in a later post) of strange additions to our home, and multiple slips of paper that finally were completed just hours before leaving, the final item being ice, check.

Leading up to our departure we also transformed our hair to get into the mood.  For Elliott this meant a red mohawk  and for me it meant pink highlights

Not to skip around to much although FYI this was remidied by shaving the mohawk off for a short do for E and my hair is also shorter and darker with more socially acceptable burgandyish highlights now.

We left Sunday night after packing our stuff and the Blue Playou our camp’s Louisiana Bayou themed front porch and house facade and other miscellany bbq, kitchen tent, couches, bikes, etc into a trailer that would be hauled by an RV that we were lucky enough to catch a ride in.  Actually thats not entirely true Elliott and I split up for the ride down, he went with the towing RV I went with Mark in another smaller RV to keep him company and make sure he stayed awake for the ride.  We left around 7pm from the East Bay.  The ride wasn’t bad, slow and go,  We met some fellow burners along the way at gas stations which added to the excitement.  On a side note, I learned that I love those faux mocha’s and chai teas dispensed out of vending machines at gas stations.  We picked up more of our group in Sparks, where Brie, Kevin, Suppa Matt, Sandy and Christine joined us.  I took over driving the RV at some point, I think it was here.  We went through Fernley, where shortly after traffic started to pick up.  We were just short of our goal of getting in line with everyone else for the midnight opening of the gates.  We trudged along on the highway and then up to the gates where we arrived around 2am.  After waiting in line to ring the bell and roll in the dirt, at least for us newbies, we arrived at our reserved campsite (thanks to Christine and Ryan the stellar surveyors who with an early entry secured some awesome land) around 5 or 6am.  At this point excited to have arrived we decided to keep going and unload the trailer and start setting up.  Life was all good until in the afternoon a sand storm picked up that didn’t stop until the next morning.  I won’t dwell much on this except to say for the first day it was a tough way to get acquainted with what would be our accommodations for the next week.  We spent part of the time with the group in the kitchen tent drinking some helpful vodka punch although even that didn’t last long enough to make the misery of the storm go away.  We were well broken in, playa dust was everywhere, on our food, in our ears and hair, and on our minds, we were put into our place the first day.

For days after returning Elliott found that with a small gust he reacted as if he was still out on the playa looking around for loose items to secure and having that uncomfortable feeling in your belly that your shade structure and tent may get scooped up and blown away.