Salty Is Sweet

Today is the first time I've felt equilibrium in what seems like weeks. First, a birthday and engagement. Then off for 10 days to Japan, courtesy of the Japanese External Trade Organization, which brought eight American writers to learn about Japanese food, beverages and culture. I was bowled over every day by how new and different everything was ... in a culture thousands of years older than our own.

Things that I thought would be salty were sweet. Things that for sure were candy were fish. There was no taste or cultural reference for lots of food. And hello? Heated toilet seats.

The women were well put together and quite fashionable. Everyone was small and beautiful, with good skin and hair. I read "Memoirs of a Geisha" while I was there and decided I could be more demure, more charming, more concerned about presentation.

It's good to be knocked on your ass every now and then.

More Japan: Kumamto

Eight of us are here as the guests of the Japanese government's trade organization. In 10 days, we are taking a crash course in food, culture and products. It is JETRO's hope that as journalists, we will promote the places we visit, which is somewhat of a challenge as most of the products aren't available in the US market. Each day lasts about 17 hours ... we have visits to sake distilleries and miso outfits and biodynamic farms and microbreweries and out of the way restaurants. In between learning, we eat. A lot. Long, languid, impeccably designed meals. We sleep hard and get on the bus early to do another round.

For the last few days we've been in the countryside, and last night, stayed in a traditional inn. Two jovial women served us a seemingly endless feast around indoor cooking pits, and then the men and women in our group settled into our respective communal baths, fed by hot springs, the rushing of the river below. Steamy and soft and sleepy, I retired to my futon in a tatami-lined room overlooking a pond, feeling like my Japanese aunties loved me and were keeping watch until I would wake up early for another day of wonder.

40licious: Highly Recommended

I remember turning 40licious two years ago, and I thought I'd arrived. That I'd hit the spiritual jackpot. That I'd arrived in a room without any walls, a game in which I created the rules, and a plan with no roaming charges.

Then yesterday, my third installment of 40licious (chronolocially 42) bestowed even more heaps of blessings on me.

My three major accomplishments in the last 24 hours have been:

1. Getting bumped to Business Class on my 12-hour flight to Tokyo. They give you the golden key to the lounge, which includes a bank of computers, free food and sandwiches and tea and noodles, comfy benches for lounging/napping, a full bar, today's papers and fre-flowing champagne. There are only a few other people in here, an older American couple and a 60-something Japanese woman. We have bonded. We will breathe the same air for half a day.

2. Bringing one carry-one and one tech bag for my 10-day trip. How to be practical AND fashionable while touring waygu beef farms? I will let you know. Keep checking back.

3. Getting engaged to the best man I ever met.

Best. Birthday. Ever.

Summer

I very much realize that it's a non-entry to write about how I am not keeping you readers updated, nor even mildly entertained. But I also see that of the 20 or so regular blogs I follow, nobody else is either.

Maybe school hard-wires us to take the summer off. Which is pretty much all I want to do -- except there's that whole thing about my habit, which involves keeping a roof over my head. I spend every spare second at the beach. I skip the Sunday farmer's market and don't eat for a week to meditate on the shores, and read Oprah magazine with my big hat on. I vow to live there, next move.

And that is why, even in this bleakest of markets, I am slowly winnowing my possessions so that in a year or so, my forthcoming new baby and I -- whenever the adoption gods decree -- will move to a place where the sand in our toes is a short walk away.

Citizen Journalists

By the time you are 40licious, you have amassed an amazing collection of people. One of the people I am proudest to have in my circle is the talented Amanda Koster. She's a photographer and a writer and she has no concept of "impossible." She's a world traveler, but with a mission -- help those she encounters along the way. Here she is speaking at Web2.0.

She's blogging about helping orphans in India and I'm blogging about eating a pint of frozen yogurt. I don't even know where to begin on that.

What are we?

When you're 40licious, it's likely that you have been many places. I'm lucky to have a list of countries I've visited on at least two hands, maybe three or even four if I remember hard enough. I didn't have a corporate job for most of my life so that I could travel where and when I wanted. Now, it feels like I have a corporate job so I CAN go these places -- and have a paycheck waiting for me at home.

Either way, the best thing you get from travel, besides tiny bottles of shampoo with Hebrew writing, besides a batik sarong, besides notebooks filled with scribbling from breakfast at a beautifully tiled cafe, is perspective.

I want us to be a big-hearted country. I want us to take care of our own. To make sure that nobody has to choose between going to the doctor or paying their rent. To understand that a pocket full of money isn't the end game -- rather, it's where it goes, it's how we help each other, it's how we make the world a sweeter place during the time that we're here.

Tonight, I want to leave my job and take care of orphans. Or wipe off the wounds of Untouchables. Or cradle a baby dying of AIDS. Maybe that's the least I could do. Maybe the most I could do would be to help shape policy to help make it better for people who aren't as lucky as I am.

I voted for Barak Obama in hopes that he would spur people to think less of themselves, and more of us as brothers and sisters.

But maybe I gave a job to someone else that I should be doing myself.

I don't know how to make it better for the society's wretches. Welcoming any suggestions.

I Can't Take It

Everybody's relatives and friends are dying at work. I am so sad for them. Crap. That must mean it's my turn soon to have a friend or relative die. Um, God, you didn't read that. Just skip over that part.

I am alternately thrilled and overwhelmed and frustrated at work. I am happy when I can rock a good non-corporate, not-very-slutty-but-still-punky look, like today.

My mother's house caught on fire and I sent her some boots and the UPS guy got the wrong number but she found him at the store and finally got them but they are too small and now she has to return them but Zappos does not have her size in that and can I get her some other ones and I don't know what she wants and she has to look on a computer but oh, right, HER COMPUTER BURNED UP IN THE FIRE and the line to use one at the library in her little town is too long.

However:

It is a good thing Obama is our president.

And it is a good thing that I am counting down to my vacation. My TROPICAL vacation. To the Caribbean. That I won on a game show that only lasted, I think, half a season. People tell me that I am still on in reruns, though. And my cousin, who manages a car dealership in Florida, just happened to see it when it aired last January, which was fun. It was called "Temptation: The New Sale of the Century!" and it combined shopping prowess, trivia, and lightening reflexes. So, you see, if you think you are wasting your time pondering the wares of the Rack and Goodwill and SkyMall and Target and TJ Maxx, you, my dear, are wrong. You are in training. For the what you were meant to do -- get free money and be on TV! It CAN happen to you!

The Maine Event

Cousin Elizabeth's daughter, Mary, can kick

anyone's hiney when it comes to monkey bars.

Each October I haul my tukus all the way to Maine, where I go to recharge in nearly every way. First I spend time with family, get all gushy, and fantasize about moving here (where you can buy a huge house with water view for 300K, a Victorian manse for $600K). Then I hit Pop!Tech in Camden, which fills my head with radical and innovative ways to make the world a better place. (Feel free to drop in any time, the conference will be webcast!)

It is all a state of absorbtion. Absorbing the good, good fun I have with my cousins and their kids. Absorbing words from great minds and souls like Malcolm Gladwell, Chris Anderson, Brian Eno, Imogene Heap, Tom Friedman (I bumped into him last year, got all weak-kneed and asked him to sign my book), the people who started KIVA ... the list goes on. The world's best thinkers and creators, telling us how they did it and what we can do.

And each October, I realize how I need to quit whining and realize how lucky I am that I can come here, that The Powers That Be at work are supportive and understand that if I don't feed my creative brain I might die, that my family is hilarious and lovely and will take me in, no matter what tales of chaos I bring to the table.

Oh, and have I mentioned that my last 4 out of 5 meals have involved lobster? ($3.99 a pound! Bad for the lobstermen. Good for us, though.)

My handsome, charming and freaking hilarious cousin Seamus serves up a "lobby."

A Dog's Life

This weekend I needed to get out of the house. It's about two weeks into chaos due to my kitchen remodeling, and at this late date, I am still insecure about my choice of countertop. I am closest to deciding on the granite that looks like early-morning television snow (if you are under 35, go ask your parents what this is), but I am still, ugh. I don't know. I had an anxiety dream about it last night.

So I packed up into the car for a vacation designed around LuLuBelle, the beagly mutt. Dog-friendly hotel. Hound-lovin' beaches. Porches for pooches. We drove up the coast to San Luis Obispo.

After looking after Lucy for 12 years or so, she still makes me laugh every day. And there are some things I learned from her in the past 72 hours.

Such as:

1. Act like you are running for mayor, all the time. Expect that everyone will love you. 99 percent of the time, people will. The remaining 1 percent, they will be a little bit afraid. That's not such a bad thing.
2. A nap is always better after a long hard run on the beach.
3. Insist on the long hard run on the beach.
4. Who's the loser? The dog who chases the ball, or the person that keeps throwing it, saying, "get it, get it, get it! Who's getting the ball? It's my ball. My ball." I'd say the latter. Especially when you decline to chase the ball.
5. There is nothing more perfect than a restaurant in Morro Bay that lets the dog hang out on the deck, listening to a folky singer warble kd lang tunes, while the people eat barbecued oysters and drink brown beer, watching the sun go down. Nothing in the world.

Camping, 40liciously

This 40licious is seriously considering becoming a vegetarian again.

I have received hundreds, if not thousands, of inquiries about where I've been from loyal 40licious.org readers. Thank you all for your concern!

I couldn't tell you where I was going, however, because I was delightfully surprised by a camping trip to an undisclosed location. Which turned out to be one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen, the Kern River. Do you know this place?

We bombed out of the city Monday morning. The gritty landscape gave way to the relentless, impossible desert. We drove to soundtrack of 88 specially selected road tunes. We had enough food for a family of eight, for a week (there were only two of us). Except we forgot things like cutlery and plates and dish soap. And what a fool I was for thinking that we'd only need a six-pack of beer!

Our campsite was magical, with a couple little trails leading to our own little slice of shore on the Kern where we fished, took baths, chilled out. A canopy of green kept out the hot, hot sun. We ventured out a couple times for fishing and hiking -- but it seemed better to just get "home," to Site 17 at the Hospital Flat campground.

Now I haven't been camping in years and years. Mostly because when I lived in the woods in Chimacum, off the grid, it was basically the camping experience with Internet access. But now that a few years have passed and I don't expect a bear might take a crap on my coffee table, I can resoundingly yell from the treetops that I want more Big Nature in my life.

Here's what I learned. Feel free to use any of these lessons, should you find yourself traipsing around the woods, sniffing your clothes to see which ones least smell like camp smoke, and swatting bugs for 72 hours straight:

1. Portion control: Really, there's no reason for two full coolers of food, plus a giant box, for only two people. I think the rule is that you're not supposed to eat more than your head's worth every day. You don't need all that variety. Instead of two or three cheese options, slice up a baggie full of some Monterey Jack and call it good.

2. S'mores are never as good as you remember them. If you must indulge, because it just wouldn't be camping without, just make one and split it.

3. You can usually be Zen and let the bees do their thing and you do yours. Usually. but sometimes, a bee will get sick of you, all hanging around their living room, stinking up the place with your leftover carne asada, rice and egg breakfast, and sting your ass.

4. Benadryl. Benadryl. Benadryl. In case you're deathly allergic to the above.

5. You can work the "I got stung by a bee!" sympathy for about 20 minutes, after which time, you have to go back to hauling your share of the stuff back to the truck.

5. You might take a lot of pictures and movies to help you remember your magic time out in the wilderness. Do not look at any of these during the trip. You will not like what you see. You will become obsessive over your puffy eyes and hair by God, and you will just keep trying to check out yourself in the car window. You cannot plug in your flat iron anywhere. Adding lip gloss will only make you look like a fool. Just go with it.

6. A shovel is the single most important tool you can bring camping. You can bat out fires with it and level your tent site. But most important, if you need to do what a bear does in the woods, it is much more elegant to excuse yourself to a remote, leafy location with said shovel and do it there, rather than to use the foul, stenchy, bee-ridden, holes they consider toilets at the campsite. Seriously, they have better bathrooms at Gitmo.

7. Your air mattress? It needs much more air than you think it does. Don't attempt to blow it up yourself, either. About $9 in quarters at the gas-station air pump should do the trick.

8. Fish have their own angels and trout are smarter than people, for the most part, which is the way it should be. I actually rooted for the fish (my friend very masterfully snagged two decent sized ones for dinner. I threw my cute little catch back).

9. Around a campfire, silly songs become meaningful and serious songs turn hilarious. Conversations become sacred as you pull out the old forgotten stories and heartaches. Whiskey doesn't get you drunk, just warmer and more insightful. Also, fireside lighting is quite flattering and makes up for all the puffiness and dinginess you accumulated during the day.

10. Upon arrival home, as soon as you drain the last ice chest and throw out the last waterlogged lump that used to be cheese or salami or sausage or chocolate, do not answer emails or phone calls. Do not read your mail or decide on the tile for your kitchen remodel. Instead, make haste to the nail salon for a full mani-pedi. The ladies who work there will roll their eyes at the condition of your hands and feet, and perhaps laugh and point, albeit politely. But you will have taken the all-important first step of returning to civilization. Which, sadly, is the reality.

You simply cannot go back to work with feet like this.

Where's the Beer?

Can you spot the beers in this picture? (Hint: probably not)

About three bazillion years ago, a fresh-faced, enthusiastic young writer called me and invited me to lunch. We went to a Red Robin/TGIF/Place They Make Waiters Wear "Flair" somewhere on the other side of the 520 bridge, in Microsoft land.

She wanted to find out everything she could about freelance writing. She wanted to meet people and editors and learn the ropes. I can't remember exactly what I told her, but it sparked this how-to article.

I guess she's learned them ropes pretty good, and tied 'em all up in pretty bows. This curious girl, who since became a friend and an accomplished travel and technology writer (and also moved to San Diego) has a huge story in today's L.A. Times travel section about an alcohol ban on the beach. She's also an amazing athlete (ok, if you want to be picky, triathlete) and has the prettiest teeth I've ever seen.

Yay, Ericka Chickowski! I'm glad to say I knew you then, and that I know you now.

Salaam Garage

I'd like to take a few of these precious cyber lines to talk about my friend and collaborator, Amanda Koster.

Amanda is a photographer. But not just ANY photographer. She's one of the most socially compassionate people I've known. Ever. Her heart bleeds, much like yours and mine, most likely. But here's the difference: Amanda sees some kind of injustice -- AIDS orphans in Africa, body-image issues in the United States, women's status in Morocco, just for starters -- and makes it her mission to KICK THE ASS OF THAT PROBLEM. Personally. She takes world global issues on as if someone spit in her face, slandered her mother, stomped on her daisies. She'll go to whatever hardscrabble place and take a bunch of pictures of people at their most beautiful and vulnerable, then bring them back, introduce them to the world, ask for money and help for them, and change their lives forever.

She's begun a new project called Salaam Garage, a kind of new activistourism. Here's how she describes it:

Salaam Garage Adventures connects media savvy travelers and enthusiasts with international Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs). Travelers commit to creating and sharing unique, independent social media that raises awareness and causes positive change. The rest of the adventure is spent touring around the region, experiencing and exploring the culture and environment with an entirely new context. You will find that Salaam Garage is not just visual art, but also a body of work that has the capability to spark global transformation.

We are the media now. Join us.

Read about her in the Seattle P-I and Some Other Publication.

If anyone can change the world, it's this woman. But if you told her that to her face, she'd brush you off as she's packing for another trip to somewhere else and getting Kodak to sponsor her, like some modern arty Wonder Woman, where they need her more than we do here.

You might have some vacation time coming up. Or maybe you're a freelancer (or a mortgage broker) with all kinds of time. Do not take that stupid and shallow cruise to the Bahamas. Do not go see relatives you don't particularly like anyway in Dubuque. And for the love of all that's holy, don't step foot Disneyland. Or Disneyworld. Or, for fuck's sake, the French Monde du Disney or whatever it is.

Just go with Amanda.

I'm so proud to have been able to work with Amanda in the past, and I look forward to doing so again in the future, even though I am, artistically, not even in qualified to be in the same universe with her.

But most of all, I'm proud to be her friend.

Now I Get It (Bonus: My New Boyfriend!)

Aha! Now I understand. It's always been sort of creepy to me that there are few, if any, 40licious people in Los Angeles. Now that I'm spending the week in Palm Springs, I understnd that Nature abors Nice 'n' Easy and that all the post-40liciouses come here. Therin lies the balance!

I thought that the epitome of happiness was bopping along Palm Canyon Drive after a successful work event to the soundtrack of Monsoon Wedding. But when I came home to the Hotel Zoso, I realized that my epitome was bested by a Liza Minelli impersonator rocking Pink's "I'm Coming Out." Whole new meaning, really.

BONUS BLOG ENTRY: MY NEW BOYFRIEND!

Recently, I have recieved hundreds, if not thousands, of phone calls and emails inquiring as to the status of my lovelife. I can no longer hide the truth: Sonny Bono and I have been captured -- despite our best efforts -- canoodling in the streets of Palm Springs.

I've got him, babe.

England pictures are up!

I will not bore my friends by showing them my vacation photos. However, if you would like to see them, they're here.

The Fine Art of Being* AMENDED VERSION

Loz does all his own stunts

It's taken me a couple weeks to realize that vacation is about the fine art of the hang. Our biggest mission today is to find fish & chips at someplace Loz knows by the sea [GUEST EDITOR NOTE: "The 'place-or-other' we ate fish chips was called Aldeburgh - that's pronounced 'old-bra'." Old bra indeed!]. Then we'll visit a castle in Orford.

I'm having a hard time thinking about going home. My last few days at work were hellaciously stressful and it's only now, more than two weeks later, the knot is leaving my stomach. I will fill it with more black tea and flat warm beer and hope that it will settle.

This trip has also been about clarity. Not just about my family and friends, but about what things are supposed to feel like. For example, I was very conscious when I was with Ilya, Gali and their kids -- amid raucous laughter, fiercely defending our versions of history, and unconditional love -- that this is what family is supposed to feel like. Gali's friend Ayelet explained that there's a Hebrew word for what happens when you turn 40 -- tvuna. It basically means you put into play all the wisdom and experience you've collected over your lifetime.

The difficult side of tvuna, however, is that I now have the understanding that sometimes you have to go back to zero in order to move forward.