Q.E.D.

I play hockey. (barely, and I’ve only been playing since last October, but that’s neither here nor there). I am playing in my first tournament this month. granted, it’s a very, very recreational level tournament, but for a girl who has only been skating in clinics and a handful of scrimmages and games for the last ten months, it’s still neat. it’s kind of like the first time you made it through the castle at the end of level 1-4 only to find yourself pixelated eye to pixelated eye with bowser himself.. you know damn well that you’re still at the beginning of the game and that your princess is mostly certainly in another castle, but the prospect of reaching that axe on the other side of the bridge is a little exhilarating nonetheless.

so while I’m thinking about how I can avoid making a fool of myself and maintain the stamina to play three full games over two days with a short bench and a team composed of beginners like myself, I thought I’d share with you how I got involved with hockey in the first place. maybe you’ll want to start playing too. or maybe you’ll just figure if I can start playing a sport at 25, you can start learning the drums at 29, or take up photography at 34, or learn another language at 56. you get the idea.

while Pittsburgh is a pretty big hockey town, I grew up in Massachusetts, where hockey is even more popular. I’ve followed hockey since I was a kid: growing up, I watched it on TV and later at my younger brother’s games, where I’d occasionally see a braid peeking out of an opposing team member’s helmet and feel a secret envy that she’d found her way to hockey while I had stubbornly denied my athletic tendencies (despite my father’s encouragment) in favor of Dungeons & Dragons with my sports-shunning friends.

fast forward several years, to summer 2006, I noticed that RMU Island Sports Center offers a Learn to Play Hockey clinic for adult women. the “women” part didn’t mean anything to me; it was the “Learn to Play” and “adult” parts that caught my attention. so I mailed in my registration and spent the rest of the summer getting ready: I scoured used sports stores and my brother’s old hockey bag for equipment that fit and joined the prepubescent free-skate crowd almost weekly in order to dust off whatever ice skating skills I’d hopefully developed during my own free-skate days of yore.

fast forward again, (what a stupid phrase), to the present; where I can now skate backward with relative ease and handle the puck without looking at it (as long as I’m stationary). I’ve figured out how to sit low and go fast (as long as there’s no contact), take wrist shots and slap shots (albeit weak ones), transition smoothly from forward to backward and vice versa (though only in a clockwise direction), and fall without fear (no parenthetical elaboration needed there). I am having more fun playing hockey (with a bunch of women with whom I have almost nothing else in common) than any other new endeavor I’ve pursued in years.

I’ve also sought out and discovered several other clinics in the Pittsburgh area, (including a really fun co-ed adult hockey clinic at the Iceoplex at Southpointe that I’m also taking), and next season I’ll be skating with a team that plays in the Pennsylvania-Ohio Women’s Hockey Association recreational league with hopes of eventually (some day) playing in some co-ed adult D-level leagues around Pittsburgh. if you want any of the information I’ve amassed about local adult hockey clinics, classes, and recreational leagues, just get in touch. and if you’ve been thinking about trying something new, quit thinking about why you shouldn’t or can’t and just give it a try. at least if it sucks or you hate it, you can write about it in your blog.

but I’m poor right now (well, self-induced poor, trying to save $$$$) and so instead, for your food photo pleasure, I offer the first few pictures I have taken of food with my new, decidedly non-fancy-but-better-than-my-old-one, camera.. (which I only bought because I was in Tokyo and, well, see mention of “impulsive electronic purchases” in prior posts..)

I’m not a photographer at all; I just know if I’m photographing food that it’s better to use a macro setting and natural light when possible. took me a little practice to feel out the timing of the “shutter” and such, so the first few I took were blurry.. but, well, I’ll shut up and you can check out some food I made:

I’m not a big fan of heavy, greasy food, but sometimes you just get a craving.. maybe the gorgeous (read: not humid) weather in Pittsburgh lately has my body thinking it’s fall or Thanksgiving or something, I don’t know.. but I got a hankering for some fake chicken fried steak type concoction, so here it is- fried seitan, complete with mashed potatoes and chickpea gravy:

then I made brownies:

the next day, I decided I just as well ought to continue the trend of non-summery foods with some spinach-tofu lasagna and very buttery garlic bread:

followed by homemade cinnamon rolls for the birthday of someone special to me:

don’t tell anyone that I am nowhere hear the quality chef (or photographer) that these pictures might suggest, ok?

I can. sometimes I forget. because I never do anymore. (not because students have started turning in lab reports with “u” replacing “you” and so on, which they have). unfortunate, really.. especially because I was one of those bookworm kids.. the kind that spent a lot of time in their bedrooms reading and listening to music. (and sometimes just thinking. ego death as a 12 year old? that’s a post for another day).. my first literary obsession was the Sleepover Friends, (for some reason I rebelled against and hated the Babysitter’s Club series, but fell hook, line, and sinker for a poor imitation..), followed by the Dragonlance books, (one of which holds the honor of being the first novel to make me cry.. fuck off, you cried too), then an extended love affair with various classics that I selected by convincing my mom to drive me to the Walpole Mall so I could stand in the “literature” section of Waldenbooks and read the backs of books until I had selected and finished all the works that sounded most essential to someone who would consider themselves “well read.”

why the hell didn’t I use the library, you ask? well, the local library where I grew up didn’t have a big selection, and I grew up in a family that valued books as treasured material posessions as much as intellectual enjoyment. every time I read a new book, I still struggle with the conflicting desires I have- to purchase every book I read, so I can dog ear, scribble in margins, and underline, imagining I might some day return and refer to anything I’ve written, (as if I’ve actually done so in the past).. and to save money while supporting the fantastic library I have at my disposal instead of contributing to deforestation or capitalism or blah blah blah.

this admirable quality diminished through college as I’m sure it does for anyone who majors in anything other than wrestling, and all but disappeared once I started teaching. perhaps all those textbooks about which theory of adolescent psychology is official this year, how every lesson plans needs to start somewhere, and how many types of intelligence Howard Gardner can come up with before people start graphing his theories versus book sales, killed some of the joy of reading for me. or maybe it’s just hard to read for pleasure when you spend all day in an academic setting.

either way, it’s summer, so I’m learning how to read again. and that’s not even why I’m writing a post. I just finished Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, and found it so enjoyable that I had to share it here. you’ve likely heard about it, or the author, or perhaps his other books. I don’t know, maybe you haven’t. anyway, I share roughly 100% of his sentiments regarding religion, and so found reading The God Delusion somewhat comparable to getting hassled in school for having a CareBears trapper keeper until the cool kid walked in with the same one. the book is fairly obvious and nowhere near groundbreaking, but it’s cleverly written and a quick read.. and will make you happy you’re an atheist. (and if you’re not an atheist, you should be. maybe you will be after you read it).

as a postscript, I’ll add that I borrowed the book from my local branch of Pittsburgh’s fantastic Carnegie Libary, as I’ve been trying to do more often for reasons mentioned above. unfortunately, I decided I think I’d like to own this book, but that’s a seperate point. if you don’t want to honor my first internet book recommendation, at least check out your local library for Lost dvds or a tax workshop or something. libraries rule.

everyone knows that, in education-speak, “public” = “shitty.” so, Pittsburgh Public Schools Superintendent Mark Roosevelt and his staff have decided to drop the word from district references and rename individual schools like Schenley High School as “Pittsburgh Schenley.” from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story:

The Pittsburgh Public Schools will drop “public” from its name and adopt a new, standardized way of referring to its schools as part of a campaign to brighten and strengthen the district’s image…

By dropping “public” from its name, Randall Taylor said, the district might be able to avoid the negative attitude often associated with public schools.

Ms. Fischetti noted that suburban districts don’t have “public” in their names, and a marketing consultant who helped develop the policy, Meade Johnson, said the district is less interested in the “public” tag than in linking its identity to the “Excellence for All” agenda.

hope that works out for you, guys. maybe you ought to just change your name to Fox Chapel-Mt. Lebanon-Upper St. Clair-North Allegheny United School District. good luck.

it can be done: you can eat vegan in Japan. and even like it. for a week, anyway. I imagine long term veganism in Japan requires a very strong sense of adventure, determination, and direction to find all those tiny little gems tucked away on streets with no names. however, I not only ate Japanese food without breaking xvegan edgex but ate Japanese food that was pretty damn good.

before leaving for Tokyo, I asked everyone I knew for advice because I knew that nintendo island was going to throw as much fish at me as possible and likely be too polite to tell the truth when I asked if something had meat in it. I received warnings that ranged from “get ready to eat nothing but white rice” and “make sure you bring everything you intend to eat” to “don’t trust any waitstaff or ingredients lists” and “you will starve.” christ, you’d think the entire nation was filled with ex-PETA anti-vegan types who wear shirts that say “for every animal you don’t eat, I will eat three.” I didn’t starve, and I didn’t even eat sushi while I was there. here’s how I did it:

I researched.. using sites like Happy Cow and asking vegans who had visited Japan for advice. I was told I’d find certain foods in convienence stores (open 24 hours on practically every corner) that were dependable vegan options and given tips on how to look for and ask about certain foods in restaurants that held the most promise. I stumbled across this site, and asked my brother in Tokyo to pick up a copy of the Vegan Restaurant Pocketguide described there. it contains several vegetarian and vegan friendly restaurants in Tokyo (and Kyoto and Osaka) that I would have loved to try.. but I only had the chance to hunt down two: Half Sweets and Nataraj. both were excellent, as were many of the snack foods and other unique things I ate. so here, for your palate pleasure, is my foodie review of vegan Japan.. we arrived armed with a box of instant oatmeal, protein and fiber rich cereal, enough clif bars to feed an army, and were promptly pwned by vegan Japan.

breakfast: because I live a luxurious life and never settle for less than the best, (actually we just lucked out), the hotel room provided an electric kettle and mini-fridge.. so we were able to buy and keep fresh fruit and soy milk in the room and boil water for tea and oatmeal. most mornings, I had some combination of oatmeal, cereal with soy milk, fruit and green tea. by the way, I don’t know if it was the magic of Japan or simply bioengineering, but the Fuji apples and peaches that I ate there were both absolutely ginormous and possibly the best tasting fruit I’ve ever had. I was so caught up in eating them I forgot to take pics.

afternoon/evening meals: obviously more difficult.
on our second day, my brother helped us hunt down the Half Sweets cafe, which advertised itself as “half organic, half raw” and seemed to take the “eat healthy because it makes you beautiful” angle over any kind of ethical or religious (Buddhist) stance. fine with me, just promise there’s no fish in it. here is what we ordered:

the “green soup” consisted of a creamy soy milk base and fresh veggies and spices served warm with a side salad; chilled tomato soup was served in a cup and had a nice, thick consistency; and the tea was tea. additionally, we noticed on our way out that they also served vegan ice cream and so enjoyed two cups of fantastic vanilla, but I was too busy eating it to take a picture.

later in the week, we were able to find Nataraj, a vegetarian Indian restaurant in Ginza. I didn’t take pictures, but it was standard Indian fare, and, though pricey, was worth trekking a bit out of the way to find.

we also tried out an Indian restaurant and Mexican restaurant in the hotel, figuring they were familiar cuisine and more likely to provide vegan options, (both true); unfortunately, neither dining experience was worthy of a description, let alone pictures.

aside from some surprisingly good udon with bean curd we ate in a little airport cafe before the flight home, we didn’t eat any other restaurant food; instead we depended on..

snacks: oh Japan! how I wish I could I read the tiny pictures of houses, ghosts and xylophones you call kanji and try everything you offer me without demanding that my brother scan ingredients lists before every purchase.. on the first day in Japan, I discovered onigiri, which is basically a rice ball with nori (seaweed) wrapped around it and something (e.g. fish, pickled plum, salty vegetables) in the middle. I had been told to hunt these down as convienence store staples and expected an actual ball. instead, I found this:

look at those instructions! like magic, you remove the wrapper to find yourself holding this:

as I did.. wondering if I’d regret my selection.. onigiri umeboshi. umeboshi are a type of pickled plum that my mother had tried earlier that morning at breakfast and almost spit out for its sour taste. I, however, can’t resist trying strange foods and dug right in.. and to my delight found this:

words cannot express how much I am in love with umeboshi. yes I even want to marry them. from that moment on, I made sure to carry onigiri with me on our travels so I’d never be far from my new snack buddy when hunger struck. I did try a few other varieties that contained other pickled and spicy vegetables, but ultimately returned to my beloved umeboshi.

we also snacked on other more familiar junk food, including edamame (which in some ways is the Japanese analog to shelled peanuts), arare (smallish crackers) and senbei (larger rice crackers, which I particularly love with a matcha/green tea icing). apparently, these foods are popular in bars, the way pretzels and peanuts are in America. I suppose it figures.. the straight edge kids flock to another country’s beer food.

we spent one day traveling to and visiting temples in Kamakura, a town located an hour away from Tokyo by rail. as we walked down the street, we stopped for fresh yokan at my brother’s suggestion. I’ve had Japanese sweets before, when he mailed them home at Christmas, and thought they tasted like paste.. not bean paste, which they are.. but the paste you eat in elementary school. since I never cared for Elmer’s, I didn’t care for the Japanese desserts either. I am told that Japanese palates enjoy more subtle flavoring and prefer less sweetness than the sugar laden American diet has trained me for. however, this particular piece, a combination of pumpkin and adzuki bean paste with sugar and flour and enjoyed on a nice walk that concluded with a nicer view, was fresh, still warm, and very very good:

we also bought popsicles from the monks at one of the temples in Kamakura; the left is plum and right is green tea, which also contained those sugared adzuki beans:

I’d have brought a case of these home if I could..

and finally, I have to include one last item, though I don’t have much to say. it’s a candy (well, I found it in the candy aisle) and the main ingredient is “mushroom,” accompanied by sugar and what my brother makes out to be some preservatives. I picked it up and said “vegan?” he said “yep..” and I asked “what is it?” to which he answered, “beats me. made from mushroom. looks like candy. who knows.” and I still don’t know what it is, but it tastes awesome. looks like dog food, though:

looking stupid but tasting awesome is the best part of foreign foods. duh.

my birthday is July 5th, the day after Independence Day. I often forget that my birthday is approaching until it’s in my face; America usually steals the spotlight anyway. this year, however, I almost forgot about both holidays entirely, because I was busy traipsing around Tokyo with my family. as previously mentioned, we visited my brother, (who has been studying abroad in Japan for a year), during the first week of July. my trip provides a good opportunity to introduce the flickr sidebar to my blog; now you can check out any and all photos I take and upload by clicking on the randomly selected few that appear there.. aside from tasty vegan food, (including some from Japan- I’ll post about that later), you’ll only find a partial (anonymous) selection of stuff. if you’d like to see the expanded top secret collection that includes photos of my beautiful face and those of my friends and family, just ask; you’ll just need to log in to your own flickr account so I can give you permission.

anyway, I don’t really know how to write about travel. this is because I have never really traveled. I moved a lot as a kid and therefore have been to many places, but my family never went on extensive vacations and I don’t keep a travel journal. I just take pictures, and mediocre ones at that.

so, I suppose I can put it this way. before visiting Tokyo, I had never:

left the North American continent

used a passport

spent more than six hours on a plane (Detroit –> Tokyo: 13 hours)

navigated a train station in a foreign speaking country, let alone the busiest in the world

shopped for groceries with foreign currency

asked for directions from someone who doesn’t speak English

visited a Shinto shrine or Buddhist temple

crossed a street with hundreds of people at once

used a squat toilet

eaten onigiri, umeboshi, or yokan

seen so many people wait for something so overrated

and never thought I’d actually be disappointed to come home.. but I did, and I was.

I explored several of Tokyo’s neighborhoods, dragging my brother along as interpreter; was blinded by the neon lights of Shinjuku at night and the drag queens hanging out in Kabukicho; felt very American as I photographed the Imperial Palace; stopped for purikura photos and chuckled at “punk” Japanese teens in Harajuku; paid tribute to man’s best friend and experienced scramble crossing in Shibuya; made impulse buys in a nine-story electronics store in Akihabara; fulfilled my tourist duty, shopping for souvenirs and my beloved green tea iced senbei crackers in Asakusa; hunted down the Godzilla statue tucked behind Toho Tower somewhere between Ginza and Chiyoda, visited the nearby town of Kamakura to see the Buddhist temples Kaikozan Hase-dera and Kotoku-in; ate terrible Indian food and mediocre Mexican food prepared by Japanese chefs, good Indian food prepared by Indian chefs, fantastic vegan soup from a raw food cafe, and my own weight in onigiri umeboshi, edamame, arare and similar Japenese snack foods.

and I’ll never be able to convey any of the fun I had through anything more than the few words and pictures I have to offer here.

through the magic of edited timestamps, I am writing this post in the past, yet sending it into the future (and I suppose the present, for you). today is the official launch of the true spies site and that means this blog is officially “out there” for all to see. of course, by “all,” I mean the handful of people that will accidentally end up here as the result of a wayward Google search or other diversion on the way to whatever web site they were actually seeking. but I will dispense with the played out self-depreciation and welcome you (whoever you are) to my blog and invite you to read through past writing to get a feel for who I am and what kind of junk you’ll find here. I have spent the last month or so “practicing” by blogging about whatever came to mind, and now that all the true spies’ blogs are officially off and running, I will continue doing so but with a greater focus on local and Pittsburgh related topics.

the reason I am posting from the past, by the way, is because I am currently on a plane somewhere between Detroit and Tokyo, where I’ll be spending the first week of July with my family. I’ll return on the 7th, hopefully with a story or two and some photos documenting my efforts to conquer Japan in the name of Pittsburgh. until then, enjoy the archives.