Every Stone

I return to Saturday, to Andolu Kavagi, because I must take a step back to explain the genesis of yesterday’s expedition — it was shaped at the insistence of a Turkish woman I met on Kavagi. I was sitting in a café just shy of the top of the hill, having surveyed the fortress and the view and just then settling in for lunch when I was enveloped by a swarm of vocal Turkish women. Their encroachment on my table began innocently enough: a bag on the edge, then a newspaper, then a seat.

At this last piece of real estate claimed, one woman finally thought to turn to me and say, “You don’t mind, do you?” I had as much choice in the matter as fresh asphalt under a steam roller. They made great lunch company, our Turk-English discussions amusing both parties — she asked whether I was there alone. I stuck to the story that I have a husband staying at the hotel, a lie of caution. She looked at me sharply. She said that Turkish women are socially conditioned not to go anywhere without their husbands. I looked at the group. Five women, no men. I asked, “Where is your husband?”

“Mine,” she said, “is dead,” and she took a sip of her beer.

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There can’t be more than five or six flights leaving Kiev at any given time. The airport can’t possibly sustain it.

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Okay, this is the final bit from Ukraine before I start sending Istanbul and Athens emails. Forgive the post-dating. I wrote yesterday, but had a complete meltdown with all the goodbyes scheduled into my day that I didn’t send.

As I write, I am surrounded by all manner of hostile Ukrainian electric devices. The water-boiler thing is barking at me from the kitchen instead of gurgling pleasantly, and the washer is screaming and whining from my tiny bathroom, the sounds tearing through the flimsy wood of the door and my not-quite-as-tiny living room. I can feel its heaves through my bare feet on the floor as I sit hunched over my laptop on the coffee table. My lamps and refrigerator seem to be holding up, but, unlike these other devices, they don’t require working knowledge of Cyrillic — or as one colleague referred to it multiple times in a really very knowledgeable way soon after he arrived, “acrylic.” If he weren’t so sanctimonious, it wouldn’t be funny. But is he is, so it is. The washer won’t stop, and it won’t open. Two other members of the consulting team have broken washer doors trying to retrieve clothing. Both hold or have nearly completed graduate degrees, scarily enough. It’s that complicated. Again, knowledge of “acrylic” is necessary. (Of course, the guy who said “acrylic” broke his washer door. Maybe he should be removed from the sample.)

Even without the stress induced by my appliances, the past week and a half would have been very stressful. J and M arrived Sunday afternoon, and my prep for their stay began several days prior to their visit while the visit itself was a multi-day, multi-hour meeting extravaganza. Scheduling has been hell from start to finish.

Our pre-meetings meetings went something like this:*

They propose yet another meeting, this one to begin at 6 am, and I put my foot down. They compromise by asking, “What will J be doing after dinner?”
What I thought was, “Complaining about you, as you’ve had him in meetings since 9 am, and swearing he’ll never attend another meeting with you.”
What I said was, “James and Mary will be jetlagged and will probably want to spend evenings unwinding.”
Unsaid throughout was “Are you kidding me?”

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Will catch up on back-dated posts — they’re saved, just waiting to be posted — after I leave, but for now, I can share my new travel plans. Visas for Russia take up to a month unless you pay large fees, and it’s probably not the best idea to be an American women traveling alone in Russia right now, so I think I’m going to do Eastern Europe by train: Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Bucharest, then finally Athens and maybe Istanbul if I make it that far. We’ll see what I come up with these next few days.

June 21 was Thursday, right?

We had our last round of groups. It wasn’t until then that I realized that the groups from Wednesday had been half from Chernobyl, meaning we’d been very near Chernobyl. You’d think I would have known earlier, but the process is mysterious.  We pile into a van, drive for five hours, and get out and do focus groups in a random building, usually a school. At some point during or post-travel I hear a Ukranian town name that means nothing to me, or to most Ukranians, given the size.

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Driving in Ukraine is an adventure. We were lucky enough to have seatbelts in the third row of the surprisingly new VW van, a brilliant silver, that we took today to the focus groups in the town that sounded like a bad infection of some type. (“Smila”?) Unfortunately the seatbelts were more temperamental than Cher and Madonna combined. They only worked at a certain angle while the car was off and parked. Fine. O teased me about putting on my seatbelt while stopped, even before starting, but not five minutes later we nearly crashed into the side of a car and everyone, as soon as they returned to their seats and fastened their seatbelts, thought it rather ironic. The driver explained he’s never braked that quickly before. Of course.

I dozed on and off through much of the drive, having only gotten four hours’ sleep, but I was conscious enough of the time to note that the countryside is very, very, very flat, and the only bumps or hills you’re likely to see are those visual tricks created by the bumping and jostling of the car. I suspect it was another 160-180 km/hr day. Didn’t look.

Aside from the seat belts and speed, the major driving event was simply seeing Soviet cities and architecture. They’re vertical. These huge identical apartment buildings that look like projects in the US, very blocky, and very compact. Every town. Every place. Blocks of them together indistinguishable to any but a resident. We did our focus group at a nexus of some such buildings, in a run-down school. O offered his opinion succinctly: “Bad toliet. When you have a good school head, you have a good toilet. Bad toilet means bad school head.” It’s very true.

As a side note on the people, O has rapidly become my favorite Ukranian. He carries a small leather man-purse that may or may not contain a small gun. Probably not. Probably. He teases me gently about random things that he can manage to say in English, such as the purported connection between my refusal to consume adequate amounts of chocolate and beer for dinner and our van’s being stopped by the train. When he says my name, it’s like three separate words: “Reh,” “Beh,” and then shortly, “Kuh.” It’s a bit like the way I remember my grandmother Carole saying it, so that reminder makes me happy. He’s also of reminding us when his children’s and wife’s birthdays are. That’s endearing. S also carries a picture of his daughter in his cell phone memory and happily shows it as often as possible. Of course, he’s about 12, so none of us are sure how he had her so early. (He’s very smart, very competent, incredibly hard-working, and outstandingly decent, and he holds a very high position for such a young age — in the Bankova, the White House.)

The focus groups were very good, very educational, and, as always, people were remarkably funny. One woman referred to the affect of one politician as like “a boiled fish.” Not even sure what that means. The female politician got ravaged in terms almost identical to those used to describe Hillary. People were pretty shameless in their appreciation of plain physical might. Never heard people come so close, although here they do as well, to saying, “Strong and wrong is better.”

In the car on the way back, we had a “traditional Ukranian dinner” of chocolate and beer. I’ve come to really like Stella, which is good, because they don’t really drink water, soda, or tea often, at least in the circles of very large, ex-KGB men I travel with for these things. We also had some smoked cheese. I really thought it was turkey. They insist it was cheese. At this point, I don’t want to know the details, but I’m pretty sure it was terrible for my arteries. Thank goodness chocolate and beer are full of vitamins. (I think the chocolate really did have berries in it.)

Okay, so, Day 3 through 6 – let me see if I can remember what I even did.

In general terms, I can certainly offer a bit in the way of what an adventure it is to go to Ukranian restaurants. Step 1, and don’t underestimate the difficulty, locate a restaurant that is neither simply a glass counter below which ubiquitous and mysterious meats loll against one another, sweating in the imitation of air conditioning the ancient machine beneath is mustering, nor a café serving the strict diet of cigarettes, vodka, coffee, and pastries followed by most Ukranians. (Take that, Atkins.)

The night of June 17 and early morning of June 18 were a whirlwind of meetings, insomnia, and itinerary negotiation. First itinerary finalized by 10 am on June 18. Then Monday was another flurry of jetlag and itinerary negotiation that led to a weakening of my resolve and subsequent return to caffeinated coffee. We finalized the itinerary for the third time only to have it fall apart again just before I found myself writing this, June 20. (Expect strikeouts and revisions.)

So, jumping back to Saturday, did I mention we had a formal meeting at TGIF? We’re not sure if Ukranians really love TGIF – the location might support this conclusion – or if it was an attempt to make us feel at home, with the tacky splendor and half-English menus. Bless the interior decorator or entrepreneur who thought to use road signs and license plates as décor. And who shipped that to Kiev, anyway? Really? I might almost rather have gone to the McDonald’s in the Maidan, which, much to our amusement, is boycotted by Ukranians, who, from their perch atop the flawlessly healthy diet of Parliaments and horse-radish vodka, deem it terribly unhealthy.

Saturday night was the Elton John concert. A quick shout for advocacy and activism: “In 2002, Ukraine registered the highest, and among the fastest-growing, rates of HIV infection in all of Eastern Europe. The spread of HIV is being driven by injecting drug use and, to a lesser but growing extent, unsafe sex among young people.” Officially the number is 104,000, but realistically it’s closer to 377,000. The concert was fantastic. Not only was it Elton John, and not only was it HIV/AIDS activism and advocacy, it was very successful despite substantial religious controversy. I posted some photos at my Flickr site.

It was fascinating, and even a bit jarring, to see Elton John, with full stage, sound, and lights, perform in the Square of Independence as Ukranians refer to the Maidan where the Orange Revolution took place. The backdrop was a series of old Soviet buildings and more of the beautiful architecture that is commonplace around Kiev. Even walking around here, I feel privileged to see and experience such culture and history. My usual tone-deafness arose and, when asked, I was unable to tell whether or not John had played “Rocket Man.” (It’s a running joke how bad I am at parsing out lyrics, stemming from an auditory mishap listening to a Sixpence None the Richer song with my sister a few years ago.) Admitted I wasn’t sure, but bet foolishly that he had based on another auditory mishap. I thought he’d opened with it. As of right now, I still have no clue what he opened with on Saturday. In any case, when John actually did play “Rocket Man” a few songs later, and I was listening for it, it was spectacular and very memorable. Bold new landscapes and space appropriately cued by a starry electric background.

Back to work. Research is going well, as I found out at TGIF, but translation from Ukranian to English is slow and takes place primarily ad hoc and verbally. We call the best English speakers most proximate to the person we need to contact as a general rule and, comically, use a lot of gesticulation and speak very slowly. Of course, it’s a good way to feel like an ass when someone does speak English. Not many do here, and, interestingly, there’s not much in the middle between bare minimum English and foreign-level fluency. I haven’t even heard many other European languages, although there is a lot of Russian going on – in addition to and in the midst of the Ukranian. Depending on where you are in Ukraine, the Ukranian is more or less pure measured by the amount of Russian that is mixed in with the original Ukranian.

Sunday we ventured out, to the Pechersk Lavra. (I count my blessings that I am able to type this and don’t have to mangle it aloud yet again, as we did first with one another, then in the taxi, and again as we were trying to explain what our first outing in Kiev had been.) As the site of an Orthodox church, it required I cover my head. As it’s 90 degrees in Kiev, I hadn’t thought to bring hat or burqa. My colleague offered me a hat, and I gratefully accepted, my gratitude only somewhat mitigated by the sight of the white hat dragged from a back pocket. Totally clashed with my really chic plain black tank and skirt. (Right.)

The compound was enormous. Although originally built atop a set of caves in which one monk lived for nearly 50 years, and in which many monks came to reside, creating a subterranean monastery, it grew to incredible and beautiful proportions in the form of what seemed to be several churches and numerous walkways, gardens, and buildings. The funniest part of the venture was the difficulty of finding the caves. Wandering yielded nothing. The pamphlet did include a top-bottom split of Ukranian and English miraculously, so I finally came up with accosting an attendant – not only not covering her head but not much of the rest of her either, incidentally, but I’m not bitter – with a finger pointing to what I was pretty sure was the Ukranian translation of a sentence mentioning the caves and making the international “Where?” gesture of exaggerated bent arms and confused expression. She took pity on us and pointed downhill, making several twisty motions with her fingers and offering some exited Ukranian.

We went downhill, down slick cobblestone with a few cursory footgrips, and followed the guide’s directions as best as possible, encountering several older women with covered heads whom my colleague took it upon himself to loudly label “babushkas.” I pretended not to know him and considered lifting my skirt a foot and a half and tucking the straps of my tank top in so as to fit in among the Ukranian women. Unfortunately there was no way to turn my much abused black flip-flops into any variation on the brilliant four inch heels that I’ve seen on the feet every woman from the age of 13 to 60.

So, resigned to my fate, I trudged alongside my friend with a minimum of stumbling and slipping. For me that is. Meaning I almost fell on my butt at least twice per 10 feet, or maybe three meters if we’re being both generous and European. We made it down to what we thought was the entrance to the cave and after several abortive efforts and a few confused interactions realized it was, in fact, the exit. We began trying to find the entrance. Up the hill, through a gently upward sloping open stairway with a beautiful view, we ended up at the top of a hill. It didn’t seem right that the caves would begin there. And it was raining. These two very logical conditions of the visit conspired to convince me that there was no way the entrance was there. Determined to find the opening to the caves at the bottom of the hill, I led the way back down. It was pouring when we got there. Sheltering in the bottom of the passage, we started discussing where the entrance was.

“That couldn’t be the entrance.”
“No, way too narrow with people headed the wrong way.”
“I wish these Ukranians spoke English.”
“Nobody speaks English.”
“I’m going to start asking –“

With that threat still hanging in the air, a Ukranian girl beside me asked us which English-speaking country we had escaped from to terrorize her. Okay, she left off the last part, but given the conversation we’d just had – we’re in the bad habit of assuming people don’t speak English, which is 98 percent true – it was not unlikely. He answered as he always does, that we are from, not the US or the United States or America, but the United States of America. Say it out loud. Takes way too long. Just awkward. We talked for a bit. I explained that Texas does not qualify as the United States. Finally I asked where the entrance to the caves is. Uphill.

Gamely my companion followed me back up the hill. When the direction of the entrance was still unclear in the small maze of buildings and entryways at the end of the passageway and the rain wasn’t abating, I conceded that perhaps I could come back with our third Muskateer consultant when he got to Kiev the coming weekend. (Wisely, my friend was having none of this cave business himself.) Always the gentleman, he offered again to wait for me at the end, but given the proximity of the Pechersk Lavra to Kiev and the beauty of it, I didn’t mind the prospect of coming back another weekend.

The rain let up as we left, and we decided to explore the neighborhood a bit more. Walking to the left we found a tiny Italian restaurant with great people-watching. I had yet another latte. The coffee here is wonderful, even the weakened version that I order to Ukranians’ disgust. Side note. A friend here who studied in the States said that he and the other Eastern Europeans he studied abroad with on the East Coast of the US, bemoaning the “coffee” served at Starbucks, finally came up with a summarizing statement for the US, why it is we’re a free country: “Everything is free. It’s fat-free, caffeine-free, sugar-free, toll-free, and so on.”

Dinner Sunday was at a pizza place a few blocks of the Maidan, which, for centrality and for ease of verbal reference for cab drivers, is a good place to meet up for food, and it was terrific. We met up with a few guys from the campaign, including a very gifted translator who speaks a few more languages than Ukranian and English and has great conversation. As usual I was the only woman at the table. Not terribly unusual either, we ended up in a conversation about Hollywood. It’s a pretty safe topic. Unlike religion or politics, pretty much the only two other conversation topics for which people with basic language skills (Ukranian or English) can make themselves understood, no one gets too worked up about it, unless you come down on the wrong side of the Jen-Angelina conflict, and it makes for an entertaining time of it. It’s also, I think, pretty revealing of people’s character and interests. (The Jen-Angelina conflict in particular. Really.)

A long-held theory about men and Hollywood was proven to hold true internationally when a light conversation about popular culture in both countries quickly turned, as most such conservations with men will, into a top-five ranking of actresses and models. The critierion was international fame for the purposes of making it work for everyone at the table. That and the addition of Ukranian standards of beauty made it slightly more interesting a variation on the typical testosterone-driven drool-fest. Keira Knightley wasn’t really a hit. Angelina Jolie was too weird-looking. Then Monica Bellucci, Laetitia Casta, and Sophie Marceau were suddenly on the table alongside Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts. Catherine Zeta-Jones and Penelope Cruz were heartily approved of, but didn’t make any of the top-five lists.

Sadly my vegetable pizza that night disappointed. Mushrooms may be the only bad produce I’ve had here. Vegetables are terrific as a rule. Sunday I had eggplant for lunch. Yesterday I had a bunch of salad. Today I had caprese salad twice – and with two very different spellings, naturally. All of it was fantastic. The dishes are not altogether good by measure of my US-ified palate, but the basic fruits and vegetables, and coffee, are great. There’s something in the soil – Ukraine was the breadbasket of the USSR, after all. (And, as we argue, it’s all either entirely organic or not even close to a semblance of organic.)

We do joke that every dish with more than two ingredients generally turns out almost terrific. There’s always just one weird ingredient that throws everything off. It’s usually shrimp. Or prawns. Like a salad with chicken and vegetables with honey mustard sauce accompanied by mayonnaise and shrimp. Or the pepperoni pizza with an inexplicable additional topping of shrimp. I almost expect to find shrimp in my milk and cereal. Or maybe bobbing helplessly in my coffee next time I order.

There’s also very little opportunity to modify orders, though whether it be due to the stubbornness of a chef and wait staff or to the language barrier I couldn’t tell you. My erstwhile colleague is perpetually in search of good red-sauce pasta. (We eat a lot of Italian. Plenty of Italian restaurants here.) There’s almost never tomato and pasta. When he asks about the combination, it induces winces and fervent head shaking. Sacrilege. Today at lunch he tried to get spaghetti with the red sauce from another pasta dish, and it backfired terribly. Out of what I suspect to be spite, he received some oily mixture of pesto and red sauce that did not seem at all to complement the dispirited spaghetti piled – much less substantially than on a US plate, more on that later – in his bowl. Furthering my suspicion was the fact that my food was delicious. More vegetables – the “Canadian” appetizer, meaning raw vegetables and Ukranian dip, and the aforementioned caprese salad. All portions are pretty small, but then, so are Ukranians, so it makes sense.

Have I mentioned the bread? It’s all fabulous. Let me know when a Ukranian bakery opens in Virginia. I’m there and buying a controlling share so I can retire at 30. Bread and pastries here are phenomenal, although I still balk at rye bread. Although vastly better than its US counterpart, which I detest, the rye bread still really doesn’t taste good to me.

Right now I’m sitting here thinking about the really nutty, grainy great loaf of bread sitting in my fridge. The same one the bread lady at the supermarket scolded me for trying to wrap myself. I’m making it last so I don’t have to go run the rapids at the store again. I really hate being chided in foreign languages.

While I think about my bread I’m also carefully gauging my internet use. Having exhausted my bandwidth limit twice since arriving on Thursday – a limit my colleague has yet to reach – I am finally on a limit 7 times that which I’ve been on and happily taking advantage of it to download “Under the Tuscan Sun” from iTunes and relieve the overload of music videos on what seems like every channel and in every restaurant. Don’t spoil it. I love Diane Lane. The major consequences of the music videos so far is that I have a really good Ukranian rock song stuck in my head, where it became rooted sometime between the five thousandth replay of Rihanna’s horrific “Umbrella” music video and Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River” masterpiece. (Yes, I love that song.) It’s very strange to see them playing in even the nicest restaurants and really elegant cafes, but I’m not complaining. I might begin to moan a bit, though, if I continue to have problems getting distracted by them during key meetings conducted at various venues.

Today we had one such meeting, which, as these meetings tend to be, was consumed by several language-based miscommunications that once straightened out were minor issues and shouldn’t have merited more than five minutes of discussion. Following the meeting, we made it to the crazy Italian pirate lunch – did I mention that today’s vegetables and salad for lunch were served in what appeared to be a pirate-themed café at which I could have purchased a hookah if I’d liked? Waiters and waitresses were wearing some form of sailor pants and a vaguely Middle Eastern billowy vest. The inside of the café was lined with wood, like the bilge of an old ship, maybe, and its walls were decorated with, wait for it, a mixture of pirate artifacts and assorted African tchotchkes. Yes. That’s right. A map of Africa made of gold beans and a couple of wood statues presumably of African origin. Sadly Captain Jack Sparrow did not make an appearance.

After lunch, up the hill “three blocks” that turned out to be three-quarters of a mile and to focus groups where I observed from a room of bone-chilling, blessed cold. The translation of focus group commentary was nearly instantaneous but, like much of our translation, probably not terribly accurate. The same ad and the same translator in the same combination a few hours apart produced two different translations, a possible crisis in something as delicate and precise as messaging work. There’s a lot of paraphrasing and cultural interpretation going on – some of it helpful, some of it not.

As always everyone I have met in the past few days has been extraordinarily interesting, kind, and enjoyable.

Back to the grind and to my lingering insomnia. Hopefully I can sleep before 5 am this morning. Ninety minutes to go to improve on my record so far. Tomorrow brings a four-hour car ride for two more focus groups out in the countryside. Hopefully no repeat of the Nigeria experience — “put down the child, put away your breast, and answer our questions!”

My plane was an hour and a half late getting in to Frankfurt. Not just any hour and a half, but an additional hour and a half spent next to two small children whose parents couldn’t be bothered to sit with them and instead placed them next to me while they sat in the row ahead. And pretended to be deaf to the cries of “Mommy!” that lasted throughout the flight, relieved only by the moments of concentration as the kid alternately kicked strategically sideways at my legs and made some smells you forget children can make until you’re seated next to one for hours. No earplugs for that.

My nose just couldn’t catch a break. In the Frankfurt airport they still allow smoking. It smelled only faintly better than a seedy bar at 2 am. The smokers all looked unjustly smug. Some of them might even have flown in for the pleasure of polluting the terminal and looking smugly at wheezing travelers. But there were some funny moments. As I ran to the gate, my leisurely lay-over gone, I passed a dad with two long-haired little boys carting an animal carrier. I could see the face and whiskers of a ginger cat, relatively unperturbed despite the uncoordinated swinging at the end of the little boy’s arms, far too short for the boxy container.

The Kiev airport is somewhere above Abuja and Honduras for having AC; it’s below almost every US and European airport. That said, the passport line was not bad, even if the attendant was impatient with my retarded realization of the need to sign — it’s a .2” area, I swear — and the baggage claim was extremely quick. My Ukranian colleagues met me right at the exit and escorted me directly to the car. There was only a moment of reluctance to follow, awaiting some form of identification on their part — the sign said only “Rebecca.” Shouldn’t have watched that BBC documentary.

There’s only one highway in Ukraine, the road from airport to city, and apparently drivers love to make use of it. I peeked at the speedometer — 160 km/hr. No seatbelt in the back. There was, however, a radio, which they had turned up to blare, much to my amusement, Coldplay, Britney Spears, Madonna, and Rihanna. We stopped at a mysterious middle point to have a discussion with a man on the side of the road very briefly and continued on to my lodgings. Having shooed out the realtor and tech guy, who set up my internet, one Ukranian colleague offered to bring me water and food, of which I had neither. Fifteen minutes later he returned with the essentials: a large bottle of water, some slices of American cheese, and a package of fruit-flavored “sweets.” I thanked him very seriously, he gave me a lecture opening the two enormous locks on the door, and I proceeded to starve for the remainder of the day, sustaining myself on the sweet cakes, water, and the few chocolate raspberry bars that survived my uncanny tendency to sleep through meal carts on long flights.

Day 2. Met in the morning to discuss progress and my job here. Went through some of central Kiev. People are, as insisted, beautiful. Very thin, with very narrow builds which make them look even thinner. Beautiful architecture. Construction everywhere. Seems very safe. No one speaks English; there are very few signs in English aside from store ads. Occasionally a menu will be in both English and Ukranian, which is helpful. Ukranian style of meeting is funny: three hours beating your head against a wall for an agreement that will be forgotten the next morning. Both in Frankfurt and here I’ve gotten hideously hostile looks for asking for decaffeinated coffee. There it was powdered — shades of Abuja — but at least here I’ve found a place I can get real decaf with a minimum of derision.

My US colleague here is already acquainted with some cafes and restaurants, but he had yet to find a grocery store. That was our big adventure today. We found an open-air market, then a mall, and finally the below-ground supermarket. Nearly everything — bread, fruit, etc. — is weighed and wrapped for you in that department, which we didn’t know. We both got scolded gently by the bread lady — she just tsked and took my bread and wrapped it for me.

Even when not walking around stealing bread, both Chad and I are pretty easy to spot. My coloring stands out — not too many naturally dark-haired, dark-eyed people, and no curly hair that I’ve seen — and neither of us have features that fit in at all. Then there’s our clothing. He stands out because he’s unfashionable for Europe; I do because I’m not only unfashionable but far too conservatively dressed. In the morning, you don’t notice it, maybe because the younger women are sleeping in. Most things don’t happen before noon as a rule, I’m told. By 10 or 11 am, it’s like you’re going clubbing in daylight. Women’s clothing is universally revealing and principally transparent. What isn’t skin-tight is see-through. What’s neither is skimpy and likely outright loud. Neon orange mini-dresses. Brilliant silver halter tops. Backless black tanks. Butt-exposing denim shorts. Of course, it’s probably not much different than the average American high school.

This evening upon returning to my apartment I found myself in possession of some amazing multi-grain bread, muesli, what seems to be .5 percent fat milk, a bit of dubious turkey and cheese, three apples, two teas, and a large bottle of water. Excellent. (How could I have made fun of the offering brought me yesterday when, given an entire market, I scarcely did better?) We stopped for coffee at my insistence. I’d had a terrible headache all day, which even as I type I feel returning, and so I dosed myself with a latte. Very effective. Then, a meeting later, I walked back to my apartment, kicked myself for not getting more food, and ate apple, turkey, cheese, and bread for dinner. Mm. Tonight: Al Gore and John Barry books. Tomorrow: more coffee and Lexis-Nexis.

Despite our objective being a debate with Bill O’Reilly, it was a great trip.

San Francisco, CA

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So I leave for California on Wednesday at 6 am — necessitating a 3 am drive to Baltimore — and I’ll come back for a single day before leaving for three weeks.