Traveling Dina - Explore. Dream. Discover.

Sorry for the bad photos, right now I only have a fairly lousy camera in my otherwise pretty cool phone, very short arms, and no mirror. The project looks really good in real life, though. They are the “Rollergirl Leg Warmers” from the Stitch and Bitch book.

Everybody sing!!!

It can cut you like a knife, if the gift becomes the fire
On a wire between will and what will be

She’s a maniac, maniac on the floor
And she’s dancing like she’s never danced before
She’s a maniac, maniac on the floor
And she’s dancing like she’s never danced before

I’m very excited:

It was only $30 after the rebates, plus I found a nice pretty picture of a turquoise beach scene for the wallpaper, it’s got predictive text, a camera, and I’ve already ordered my zebra-print skin for it. I am soooo 21st century!

Well, I originally thought I was updating this blog mostly for Mom & Dad, and, since I’ve been with them the last week or so, I figured I wouldn’t bother updating. But, it turns out I’ve got more readers! How exciting! Please feel free to click the “Comments” link under the post and say Hi!

It’s been really nice to be home on the East Coast, even if the weather has been less than stellar. (I hear it’s been raining a ton in California, too, so I don’t feel so bad…) Lots of good food, including an amazing dinner at the Hilton complete with wine and champagne, a bit of a celebratory dinner in honor of my brother and his fiancee. The food was divine.

Mom & I did a little shopping, which has proven quite successful. I’ve got a new, stylish pair of jeans, cute heels and a dress for Lee’s wedding! Sadly, my experience actually walking in the heels has been a bit less successful. How do y’all do it? Give me back my Tevas! We’ve also, as usual, spent a lot of time watching Law & Order. Love that show.

I’m keeping super-busy for the rest of the time I’m here, what with hockey games, dinners, parties, dentist appointments, a wedding, bridal-dress shopping with my friend Lisa and her mom, and, of course, Thanksgiving. At first I thought I was going to be on the East Coast for way too long, but now it seems too short.

I’m so lucky to have an amazing family to always come home to.

~~~

Anddd, just so this isn’t a text-only post, I give you this:

Last week, I went to the Dia de los Meurtos procession, a “unique festival that is the result of 16th century contact between Mesoamerica and Europe… the result of this cultural blending is an event where modern Mexicanos celebrate their ancestors during the first two days of November, rather than at the beginning of summer. While this modern festival has Christian components, it still maintains its indigenous Native American ones…”

The festival honors ancestors and loved ones who have recently passed. You can read more about the history, traditions, foods and customs of Dia de los Meurtos here: DayofTheDeadSf.org/history

My buddy Chrisotpher came up to SF and we dressed up in traditional “Day of the Dead” makeup and walked for a few hours in the procession. There were drums, incense, banners, lots of candles… People carried small altars and photos of their loved ones. Many houses that lined the parade route had their front stoops decked out with lots and lots of burning candles, photographs, flowers and keepsakes. It was a mellow vibe, even with the drumming, dancers, and music. Most people were in all black and carrying candles; many people (mostly the gringos) were dressed as “the dead” in white face-paint, as well.

Me at the Dia de los Meurtos procession

More images from the parade

Dina and Christopher

Pablo’s photo and brush on an altar

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All in all, it was a really wonderful, worthwhile experience. It felt really good to put Pabs’ pictures and brush at the altars, and I spread some of his ashes around, too… It gave me quite a lot of comfort to do that. ~~~

I don’t feel like writing about Sunday, November 6, so here is a photo-blog of Tuesday, October 31st, 2006: Halloween in the Castro.

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So Ashley and I dressed up & went to check out the craziness in the Castro last night.
It was similar to Santa Cruz’s fenced-in, blocks-long party of costumed people just milling about, but much, much bigger. Drum circles, some music, and LOTS of outlandish costumes. Many of the people seemed to be spending hours having strangers photograph them, and loving it. Some gay boy claiming to be straight hit on me, which I found totally flattering, if somewhat amusing. I am so easily swayed by compliments it’s pathetic!

Anyway, we meandered around for a while, sipping vodka-cranberries out of my Christmas stocking and trying not to get too jostled. The cops were in full-force, and everything got closed down at 11.

One of the funnier parts of the evening was when, on the walk there, we stopped at someone’s stoop to rearrange my backpack and pull out the drinks. A woman in a thin terry bathrobe, hair rollers and cold-cream opened the door and yelled down from the top of the stairs, “What are you doing!?!?!?” Ashley was quickly apologetic, saying, “Oh, I’m sorry, we’ll get going…” and the crazy lady shouted, “Do you want some CANDY?????????????” and came whooshing down the steps, scooping out fistfulls of candy and dropping them in my stocking, practically throwing the candy at Ashley. Her slightly older- and more sober-looking husband looked on warily from the top of the stairs. It was hilarious.

Me and a South-East Asian dancer:

Ashley and a bus pass:

Castro Costumes:

Mayor McCheese and the Wendy’s, uh, girl. People were egging them on for a fight!:

Ashley and some Geishas. You can’t tell in this pic, but the Geisha on the right has the white makeup over his full-on beard:

Ash and BOX WINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Comparing cup-size with the big-boobed guy:

Even though it was super-crowded, it was pretty fun. Ashley’s enthusiasm and gushing over all the costumes was catching, and I definitely picked up on some of that energy, making the jostling of the crowds so much easier to tolerate. And getting all the pics was fun, too.

So I had a boring day at work, not getting much accomplished.
Had an Iced Latte and Turkey Wrap at the Cafe. Fascinating, right?

I had the worst journalism student ever come and interview me for a piece he was writing on telecommuters who choose to work from cafes rather than from home. But he had very few questions and a rather uncohesive thesis. I tried to give him some advice on questions to ask his next interviewees and perhaps a way to spice up the piece a bit. (Something along the lines of running with the “going to a meeting in your bathrobe” theme…)

Eventually I met up with J., who works for a foundation which gives grants to many different organizations, including those involved with the arts. We went to the amazing Grace Cathedral, at the top of Nob Hill, to see the Joe Goode dance/theater company perform “grace”. We hob-nobbed at the donors’ reception beforehand, talking with a few of the Cathedral’s board members. Then we headed to the “labyrinth” for the performance, which consisted of 4 small pieces designed for different areas of the cahtedral, and then the final piece entitled “grace”. It was modern/contemporary dance, with some spoken word, some singing.

Unfortunately, with both the latent ADD and lots of personal stuff going on right now, I found it a bit hard to concentrate on the performance. I typically prefer faster-moving dance pieces, broadway-style or hip-hop choreography and upbeat music (I’m soooo low-brow, I know!) The setting, however, was beautiful, and the music evoked the feeling of the cathedral — moving, dark, religious. It was a little to sad for me, but J. really enjoyed it, which was good.

J. walked me several blocks down Powell Street, which is unbelievably steep. Walking “a few blocks” in San Francisco is definitely a different experience than a few Manhattan blocks. Luckily, I didn’t stumble in my heeled boots. I jumped on the BART and eventually made it home.

Not a particularly exciting day, but it was nice to venture to another part of the city, and to see Nob Hill, the big fancy hotels there and the imposing, beautiful, 100-yr-old Grace Cathedral.

I went to Las Vegas with some friends a few weekends ago and had a really great time.
Here are some pics to prove it!

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A. made a funny face in the trio picture, so here are 2 pics of all of us, where you get to see my cool stripey gloves twice!:

That was the first night. It ended, sadly, with me eating bleu cheese dressing with a fork:

The next night we got all gussied up for a night on the town:

We had a BLAST:

The next day, Phil showed up:

And we shopped for designer jeans at midnight:

Later, an Excaliber knight tried to abscond with my purse:

Each day involved massive amounts of even more over-priced Starbucks:

If I am lucky, j. will not post video to YouTube of me dancing to “Viva Las Vegas” at the Bellagio Fountains:

~~~

We had so much fun, and documenting it all, in some way, mede things even more fun.
Yay road trips in crazy American locales with friends!

In honor of National Blog Posting Month (not to be confused with the actual ambitious NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, where participants write 50,000 words of their novel in one month), I am attempting to write One Public Post Per Day for November, 2006!

(Hrm, now I’m going to have to work hard to find some way to make my boring life seem somehow less… boring. Hopefully it will be easier than November 1992, where the 2nd day of that month had the following journal entry:

“Today was a really boring day. Got up. Went to class. Came home. Took a nap. Got up. Got lunch. Went to class. Came home. Ate dinner. Watched TV. Talked to Katie. Went to bed. Today was a really boring day.”)

Welcome to my life.