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March 30, 2002
Yesterday I decided to go to Ikea. Not because I needed to buy anything for our hovel. (Living here temporarily it would be silly to buy anything but truly necessary items. I have been debating in my head for 3 months now whether a tea kettle is a necessary item. I have looked at them in a million stores, yet I can still say the answer is NO. A saucepan will do just fine to boil water, even if pouring it out can be rather tricky.) I decided to go just for the ride. Because of course Ikea is located in some far-flung outreach of the city. I just wanted to explore the bike paths that wind around the outskirts of town. I love that at every intersection there are signs with meter markings to other destinations "Diemen 10", "Haarlem 20". It was rather smelly driving through the countryside though. I couldn't tell if it was the fertilizer for the fields or just the ditches with muddy water. It was rather odd riding on a bike path that ran along the freeway, while listening to Elastica's "car song".
I ended up at Ajax's ArenA (spelled with two capital A's for the soccer team I guess) which had a shiny new mall next to it. It was an amazing modern architectural feat. I didn’t really spend too much time looking around in the stores though, because all of them were home-design shops. Every shop, and we're talking at least 50 of them, had its own little showroom, boggling the mind with a zillion combinations of how your dream house could look like if you only had the will to slough through them all: kitchens with shiny brushed metal stoves and countertop espresso machines, living rooms with overstuffed chairs and precision lighting, glistening hardwood floors samples and paints in a thousand deliciously tasteful shades. I snapped this photo and quickly left before I got dizzy.
I eventually found the Ikea, looked around a bit. It wasn’t all that exciting having just been to the Vila ArenA mall, I must say the Dutch have outdone the Swedes in this round.
Rowing down the amstel. Part of the scenery on the path out of town.
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March 24, 2002
Bad thing I find an itsy bitsy pleasure in: Now that the weather has gotten nicer, I see a lot of tourists riding around on rented bikes. You can tell they are rented because the bikes have these huge round placards on the front that say "MAC BIKE". So, when I'm out walking the dog, while crossing the street I like to step right out in front of one, giving them a good scare as they try to slow down. Give them a taste of what it feels like when some halfwit walks into your way on a bike path, hah! Oopsie, am I in your way? Also, I don’t think those bikes have bells, or if they do, people are too timid about using them.
Posted by shannon at 03:00 PM | Permalink
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March 22, 2002
ok, I made a directory of all the amsterdam photos from this log (which you've already seen) so they are all in one neat place. There is a link to that page over there on the left.
Posted by shannon at 10:15 PM | Permalink
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March 17, 2002
I began the afternoon innocently checking out my web page's stats, to see if my recent inactivity had slowed down the traffic. That led me to some stranger's web logs, where I found they had linked my site to theirs. I spent a good while reading people's sites that are way more intricate and robust than mine (oh how I hate to use that word "robust" when describing anything other than perhaps coffee, but well, there it is), people who seem to live much more interesting lives and take way more photos than I do. I wondered how they found my site too. I'm sure someone somewhere knows the friend of a friend of a brother of a coworker or something. It can't just be pure web-connectedness.
So after feeling a bit out done, I decided to get off my but and take a long walk before it got dark, and take my camera along to see what I could do. These are some of the snaps I took tonight. Click on the pictures for a bigger view.
I still can't get used to the fact even though daylight savings time hasn’t happened yet, it doesn't get dark here until maybe 7pm now. There is this eerie glow that hovers in the early evening sky.
glowing sky
It rained early today, rather than later in the evening like it usually does. Not a day doesn’t go by without some sort of damp.
The ice rink behind the museum seems to be on its last legs, melting away
I took the dog and headed east, through the Rijksmuseum
I love that you can ride your bike right into the middle of the Rijksmuseum, through this echoic corridor
I ended up in a part of town that was crammed with antique stores. I took a few photos of the creepy dolls in a storefront.
And of course, the obligatory dog picture
I am starting to understand why I like to take photos. Just looking though a lens, makes everything sharper, makes the ordinary something more than it is. At least for me.
Posted by shannon at 11:59 PM | Permalink
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March 15, 2002
I tried to make chicken Pot-au-Feu for the first time from a recipe out of a magazine earlier this evening. It all came out wrong but still somehow managed to be tasty. The dog is now snacking on the remains of the roasted potatoes that took a little bit longer than the 12 minutes that the recipe called for, so I didn’t put them in the dish.
Last week on an early morning run as I passed by these two guys, one heckled me obscenely, so I turned around and gave them the finger and a dirty look. The other man shrieked in horror as I did it, in disbelief, which made me chuckle a bit. I don’t know, what is the correct reaction to a man whistling at you?
I have drunk too much coke this week, it’s the only thing that cheers my up sometimes, just the thought of the ice cold sugary-brown fizzy drink. I even stopped by a soda machine in a Domino's Pizza while walking the dog for a fix. Maybe I am becoming addicted, ya think?
I must have this thing after I saw it in this months Outside magazine. To have power literally in my hands, between my fingers!
I added a list of books I have recently read over to the left there. I spend much of my time reading because its cheap, simple and highly portable entertainment. I can read in the café next to the tabby cat that sleeps on the table sprawled out in the afternoon sun, on a bench in the park on a nice day, in another café with a view of the riverbank, on the couch while flipping between the three music video channels, even in the bath surrounded by fluffy white bubbles. The day can sometimes be just a bike ride in between reading spots. Maybe by changing the scene I am trying to create the feeling of something happening, rather than just reading, which is such a passive activity. And as you can tell by the list, its not like I'm sucking up all sorts of educational non-fiction. Its fiction all the way for me baby!
Also, its a short list of books (that’s what I have read since about December I think). I am a slow reader (and the better the book, the slower even still). I like to savor the pages. I like to have the people and places and ideas seep into my day, invading my perspective of things. (Or maybe that's an excuse for not being a fast reader, I dunno, reading slow is somehow seen as a sign of stupidity. I don't care. I can read fast if I have to, but I don't really enjoy it. And I have all the time in the world at the moment, so I might as well.) Right now I am in the middle of Underworld. The paperback fits neatly into the front pocket of my messenger bag.
Posted by shannon at 11:02 PM | Permalink
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March 12, 2002
i'll fix this up here soon enough, hold yer horses!
Posted by shannon at 10:06 PM | Permalink
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March 06, 2002
This isn't about dreaming, it's about waking.
In the morning, or sometimes in the middle of the night, when I'm lying in bed half-awake, I hear the sounds swirling below the window, like a car treading on wet pavement, I sense my husband sleeping beside me, my eyes still closed… it is at this point in waking that I forget where I am. I think I am still in San Francisco, in our small bedroom overlooking the bay, that it’s a rainy winter day and I still have a bit more time to sleep before my alarm goes off. Or maybe it’s a Saturday and I can sleep as late as I want. In the haze of waking I feel as if I am in a familiar bed. Not the one I come to realize I am in, on a much busier street in a different city halfway across the earth. The awareness that I'm not where I think I am develops slowly, and no matter how many times I have awoken in this same bed I forget almost every morning. For just a few moments everyday I awake to a San Francisco morning. Its not that I'm necessarily disappointed when I come to realize where I am, its more like waking from a pleasant dream. I know that SF is in the past and I don’t want to go back. At least not for a long while.
This happens to me every time I move, my mind waking in an old bedroom while my body wakes in the new one, yet this feeling has hung on longer here. In my mind I am still in San Francisco, it still feels like home to me, even though I have left it. I keep running across ghosts of my old city. I go have coffee in the café of a dept store downtown that a guidebook recommends, for the view. And up on the 6th floor it is a pretty nice view; you can see all the rooftops of Amsterdam, the spires of the churches in three directions. But while I'm looking out the window I start to feel like I'm in the rooftop café of another dept store. I used to have lunch at the café on the top floor of Nordstrom's in the SF Center when I worked across the street. The view from up there was of my office building across the street, (quite and ornate number 12 stories high) up the cable car tracks of Powell Street, past Harry Denton's Starlight Room with its tacky neon sign, all the way to the top of the hill at California Street. Sitting in the café I couldn’t help but compare the two, and how similar they felt. Maybe because there aren’t many views in a city with no hills, and just having one reminded me of home. But even the mediocre food and coffee were eerily similar, as was the shape of the windows that held the lofty views.
San Francisco felt like my home not only because I lived there for a long time (long by my standards - 5 years or so) but because I choose to live there. So many other places that I have lived in my life I just sort of ended up in. I wanted to live there, and I grew to like it more every year. But in the end I also grew very weary of it. Maybe that means that I loved it all the more that I started to become so critical of its many flaws. Maybe I just can't stay in once place for very long.
My last home in San Francisco was a tall, creaking house in Bernal Heights. I lived there for 2 years, which is the longest I have lived in the same building (apart from my childhood home). It was also the first house I ever owned (well, sort of owned). But I didn't even like the house that much; I liked the location much more. (It was close to both downtown and the funkier parts of town, it was a quick freeway hop to the beach. Plus the neighborhood had a good mix of people, was relatively safe and quiet, and had an independent health-food supermarket a block away.) So here I am now, in another place where location is more important that anything else. If I had my way, I would live by the sea. Any sea really, that is the only location that really matters to me. Everyplace else is just the same.
Posted by shannon at 11:09 PM | Permalink
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March 05, 2002
photoshop is my friend
Rode out to the park today to take some photos and give the doggie some exercise. Most came out pretty boring, so I started fooling around with color curves in photoshop and came up with something interesting. It looks as if this picture was taken at sunset, but it wasn’t. I kinda like it. I wish I knew more about color photography in general, and how these color curves work.
Another thing I like: the doggie treat vending machine at the pancake house in the park. People stop in for a cup of coffee verkeerd (white coffee or coffee with steamed milk, it translates literally to "wrong coffee", which I can now pronounce and order correctly, at which point I get an earful of Dutch back at me. Just because I can order coffee people, doesn’t mean I speak your language!!) and the dogs don't have to beg for your silly little sugar cookie that comes with it. The very fact that dogs can come in to restaurants and cafes, or ride public transportation makes Amsterdam a much nicer place for Misha. And for me too!
Posted by shannon at 11:17 PM | Permalink
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March 04, 2002
I found out today that the fluffy doll cake phenomenon isn't native to north america.
This photo was taken in a kinder-shop in the neighborhood. This one, while not using an actual Barbie doll, does bear striking similarity to her Barbie cousin across the pond. She may be made to resemble Maxima, new princess of the Netherlands, in her wedding gown. I wonder why it is that these dolls always have their arms in the air, as if an imaginary robber is saying: "Hands in the air! This is a stick up!" Or maybe its more like: "Come and get it! EAT ME!"
Posted by shannon at 07:55 PM | Permalink
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March 01, 2002
taking a break, be back in a few days!
Posted by shannon at 11:03 PM | Permalink
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