Category: open a can o’ whup-ass

Am I Blue?

Yes I’m blue.

Heck yeah I am! A blue ribbon winner, that is.

Long time readers might remember last year when I brought New Mexico cooking to my local county fair. I whipped up a batch of biscochitos, the New Mexico State Cookie, and they were awarded the blue ribbon.

This year, I decided to bring New Mexico back to the fair by entering a special “Culinary Arts” competition.

The event? Enchiladas.

Aw, yeah.

I love making my version of enchiladas with marinated chicken and Hatch green chiles. So I signed up.

Today, I was quite nervous as the judges sampled my offering and wrote notes and counted points.

And then they awarded me first place!! Whoooooo!

How I beat the guy who made his own mole sauce, I’ll never know.

But what I do know is this. Anyone who wants me to whip up a batch? It’s gonna cost you, cuz I’ve got a double blue ribbon winning kitchen.

Oh Fair New Mexico…boo yah!





Photo by Karen Fayeth and taken with an iPhone4s, and subject to the Creative Commons license in the right column of this page.



History Is Open to Interpretation

Just outside the town of Oñate, New Mexico, there is a statue of Don Juan de Oñate. According to the stories told by locals, this fellow wasn’t exactly a nice guy. He was known for, among other things, cutting the feet off the local Acoma Indians.

So when a statue was put up depicting the explorer near the town of Oñate, someone cut off his right foot and left a note saying “fair is fair.”

That truly New Mexico story has always amused me greatly. Mostly because so many people will quote history as though it is gospel truth. History books will say that Oñate was a great explorer and settler of many towns. A founding father, I guess, but not everyone agrees.

History depends on who is telling it.

I was reminded of this bit of statue-based controversy when I visited the town of Alajuela, which is Costa Rica’s second largest city. We stopped off there on the way to visit the Poas Volcano.

My friend and coworker who took me for the ride was raised in Alajuela, so she wanted to show me the town and the beautiful central park and Catholic church in the plaza.

We also visited the nearby park created to honor Juan Santamaria, Costa Rica’s national hero.

My friend is a very proud Costa Rican, so she walked me over to the statue so I could see.

Here it is:




As we gazed up at the statue, my friend laughed.

“It’s wrong,” she said.

As I’d spent the week trying to traverse English and Spanish, I thought I’d misheard her. So I said “what?”

She laughed harder. “The statue. It’s wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

So she told me the story as she’d learned in school. Roughly that Juan Santamaria had set fire to a building containing soldiers from Nicaragua, and by doing so (and dying in the act) it allowed Costa Rica to gain an advantage and win the battle.

However, she continued, Santamaria was only a boy, not a man, as depicted in the statue. He wasn’t actually a soldier, as depicted. And notoriously, he was unarmed when he went forward to set fire to the hotel where the other soldiers were holed up.

The only accurate part of the statue is the torch.

Other than that, it’s all wrong.

“But we love it anyway,” she laughed. “He’s our hero.”

History is in the eye of the beholder, but national pride is enduring.




Photo Copyright 2012, Karen Fayeth, and subject to the Creative Commons license in the far right corner of this page. Taken with an iPhone 4s and the Camera+ app.



The Opposite End of the Spectrum

Yesterday I wrote about my mind bending, artifying, very inspiring trip to the museum. To prove I’m no snobby snobberson, let me tell you about the other thing I did this weekend.

Roller Derby.

Yeah. I know! Roller Derby!!

To be precise, I took in an event featuring the B.ay A.rea D.erby Girls, a flat track league comprised of five teams.

On this night, the match was the San Francisco ShEvil Dead versus the Berkeley Resistance.

The event went down at the Herbst Pavilion at Fort Mason in San Francisco.

Tamales were served.

It was AWESOME!

Of course I toted along my camera gear so I could catch all the action.

Indoors, crap florescent light, and people moving very fast.

My exposure triangle collapsed under its own weight.

I don’t know much about derby, but what I know is this: there is one lady designated as the jammer. She is the only one who can put points on the board. Her goal is to lap the opposing team. Her teammates assist by keeping the opposing team from blocking her progress and they also help try to hold back the opposing jammer.

It’s a lot of knees and elbows and flying females.

In other words: AWESOME!

You know who the jammer is by the star on her helmet.

Like this:





The jammer for San Francisco goes by the name Trixie Pixie. She must be about 90 pounds soaking wet. There would be a big clump of women duking it out, and then *boop* Trixie would pop out from the mass and go flying around the track.

By the end of the night she was my favorite player by far as the ShEvil Dead soundly beat the Resistance.

I came home with about 150 pretty useless photos. That blurry, noisy, streaky photo above is among the best of what I could get.

It may not look like much to you, but to me it’s a happy reminder of AWESOME!



The Withdrawals, man. I got the itchies!

So the good man and I lived quite a long time in our old apartment. The place was built in the 40’s and had a lot of quirks. Since it was an older house in an older neighborhood, we tolerated a lot of the less than optimal things, but was a fun place to live.

For example, we got pretty cruddy DSL service there. When I signed up for the service back in the early 2000’s, they woo’d me in with promises of 3mbps download speed and 1mbps upload.

Not bad, really.

Well, in reality, we got a lot closer to 1.5 down and .5 up. Pretty crappy.

So I called AT&T to complain. Often.

At the end of every year I’d call up again, crankier than the previous year. They would tell me that my speeds were “within normal range”. I’d say “but you sold me on 3!!” Then they’d tell me that my neighborhood wasn’t wired for any of the other faster services they offer, and “oh so sorry about that.”

Then I’d threaten to cancel my service.

So the call agent would send me to the Retention Department who would cluck and coo over my bad experience, then reduce my monthly rate. I’d gotten it down to about $20 a month for my meager 1.5 download speeds.

It was a breakeven. Not much money. Not very fast. So ok.

This month, we moved into a new place. I called them sonsabitches at AT&T and told them I was moving my service, and they weren’t going to raise my rates.

They told me “oooh….yyyeaaaah….um….your new building isn’t wired for AT&T. We don’t actually offer any service there at all. Sorry.”

Well ok. So I started looking at options.

Turns out lo these many years ago, the building owners used to provide basic Comcast cable to all tenants. But Comcast kept trying to bump up the price, so finally the owners said “go away” and the tenants had to pay for their own service, either Comcast or DishTV.

What that means is, the building was wired only for Comcast and AT&T phone lines. No one else. And no ATT DSL.

Which means….

I’m stuck with $#%^*&%^%ing Comcast.

A little history: It was with sheer, unadulterated *glee* that I canceled my last Comcast service back in 2009.

Now they are my only choice. And I am peeved.

So peeved, that for the past week, The Good Man and I have had NO INTERNET in our little home.

None. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

Well, ok, we both have iPhones and get enought done using our 3G coverage. But basically….we’ve been living internet free for a week.

At first it was kind of nice.

And then it was extraordinarily painful.

And then it was nice again.

Now I just don’t know.

I have two loaner MiFi devices coming from two different cell phone carriers. I’m going to see if 4G mobile coverage will get us there. I’m not optimistic. My last evaluation of MiFi service wasn’t positive (great with one device on it, but slows miserably as each new device hops on).

And I am really not a fan of DishTV.

So here I am. Back at Comcast.

How possibly can I live in the middle of a very bustling neighborhood in the very *heart* of the most technologically interesting place in the world, and I can’t get simple, stupid freaking DSL service!?!?!

As an aside, I have to laugh at how reliant I’ve become on having my WiFi internet at the ready. Maybe I need to detox from it. Maybe it’s time to step back.

But then I want to write a blog post about how much I’ve broken my tether to the internet and I can’t because I have no WiFi.

I cried because I had no internet, until I met a man who had no iPhone.