This May there will be no mother's day for me.

The problem with Mother's Day is that it falls right after my birthday, this year, the day after my birthday party. And it's a problem because I go all out on celebrating my birthday. I figure, if I have to plan the celebrations myself (and I do), then I'm going to give myself what I want.

This year this has included dinner with Mike at Cafe Majestic, dinner with my family (including my sister and father) at El Morocco and wine tasting with Kathy and my father in Livermore. I still have a birthday mystery role playing party planned (hosted by my friend Desiree - thanks Desiree!) and a girl's weekend out with Lola. So a Mother's Day celebration seems like overkill.

Instead, we've decided to celebrate Mother's Day in October - the 18th of October to be exact. That's when Mother's Day is celebrated back home in Argentina, and the date is not close enough to other significant dates (except for Halloween!), to be any other conflicts. So I have to wait 5 more months (and probably plan it myself). But I'm sure restaurants and parks will be much less crowded.

My husband and my sister keep insisting on knowing what I want for my birthday, and though I really don't want anything much I figured I'd post my amended list from last Xmas:

-A good quality blender
-New mixing bowls (plastic is fine)
-A good quality: small saucepan & large frying pan
-A cloak (with a hat, like in the French Lieutenant's woman)
-Babysitting coupons
-Gift certificates to nice (or not so nice) restaurants
-Piedmont Springs gift certificate
-Down comforter
-Framing my pictures (I have LOTS of pictures I need to frame!)
-Salad spinner
-movie tickets
-sunglasses (any)
-good quality mandoline
-Driving lessons

I particularly want a salad spinner :-)

Not only do we have a new (red) car, but I finally put a favicon.ico on my website - so now you can see a little daisy (for the uninformed, Margarita is daisy in Spanish) every time you visit :-)

Yesterday we bought a new car. It was a first one for us. Until then, we'd taken pride of never having spent more than $5K in a car. Driving cheap cars, not having a monthly payment, was not only how we kept afloat during tough economic times, but our way of turning away from the uber-consumerist society in which we live (and in which we so readily participate at Christmastime) .

But after crushing our car last year, we needed a new 4-door car to accommodate the whole family. We went through all the feasible possibilities. I wanted a wagon - but we discovered that at best these cars get 25 mpg - same thing with minivans which I didn't really want (too big). I liked the Matrix, which are basically corollas with hatchbacks, but their 31 mpg (Hwy) didn't convince me. So we went back to our original plan: a corolla - we've owned 2 so far and we've been happy with them. But, but, but... as long as we were talking fuel efficiency, shouldn't we just go for a hybrid? They are, OTHO, significantly more expensive than corollas.

We went back and forth and finally the environment won out. So yesterday, we went car shopping. We were in sort of a hurry because we wanted to have the car before my sister arrives early next month - that way she'll have something to drive while she's here (and can thus taxi us around). But I didn't really have to buy a car yesterday, and now I sort of wish I didn't.

We first went to look at used hybrids at a dealership near our house. They had both priuses and civics, selling for about the same price: $19K for basic or just above basic models with about 50K miles. There wasn't a price difference between the two. Of course, that was the price before negotiation - I've no idea what the real price would be.

Then we went to see the new civics - Mike liked them and I negotiated what was probably the best deal they could give us. Still, we had to see the priuses first. And we did, at the Toyota dealership in Alameda.

Mike test drove one and he liked it more, I think the thought it was smoother. I liked the fact that it has a higher MPG rating for city driving (and this will mostly be a city car), that it's a hatchback and that the back seats recline. I also liked the back camera - when and if I ever drive, I'm sure it'll be very useful getting out of our driveway. So in sum, I wanted the prius.

I knew that it was a more popular car than the civic, so I was willing to pay more than for the civic, but I ended up paying about $1K more than I wanted to (and $2K more than the civic). And for this I blame myself. I wasn't ready to negotiate - I hadn't done my homework and the only basis for price I had were the numbers the civic dealership had given me. I didn't have a negotiating plan and I hadn't thought the process through. They, of course, have the process down to a T and I fell for their tactics. So now I'm feeling pretty screwed, and instead of feeling happy for having a new car, I feel stupid for having bought it yesterday just like that. I guess this is why they have laws making cars non-returnable :-)

In addition, we got a red car. I don't mind the color, per se, but everyone and their mother has a red prius and I would have liked to have a different one. Hmm, I wonder if we should return it and get a different color (that you can do within 3 days :-).

But the point is that I'm unhappy when I should be happy (and this is without doing any research to figure out just how much I overpaid!). I can't even say "lesson learned" as I don't plan to buy a new car ever again :-)

For some reason, I love reading about expeditions to Everest. I loved "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer (an awesome writer) and enjoyed "The Other Side of Everest: Climbing the North Face Through the Killer Storm" by Matt Dickinson and "Doctor on Everest: Emergency Medicine at the Top of the World - A Personal Account of the 1996 Disaster" by Kenneth Kamler. "Climbing High : A Woman's Account of Surviving the Everest Tragedy" by Lene Gammelgaard wasn't as good, but I didn't have any major complaints about it. "High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed' by Michael Kodas just plain sucked.

It was an interesting subject: how Everest has become so busy and commercialized that it has attracted all sorts of crime and unethical behavior. Injured, overtired or confused climbers are often left for dead by others trying to make it to the summit of the mountain and back. Under-equipped climbers steal provisions, equipment and in particularly oxygen bottles from others, severely risking the lives of the victims. Sherpas (who really come up horrible in this book) demand more money to continue mid-way through the climbs and to rescue injured climbers, attack them, leave them for dead (while still alive) and also steal equipment. Guides abandon their clients and participate in side-business of dubious morality of not legality. One particularly dangerous one is the refilling of oxygen bottles, often without informing the buyers of the fact - refilled bottles have a high failure rate, and at 8,000 meters a failing oxygen bottle may very well kill you. And then there is prostitution, gambling, overdrinking, drug and steroid use and other vices of civilization.

It was very interesting to find out all of this, and if I ever had dreamt of climbing Everest (which I haven't, because I do have some grip on reality), this book definitely would have made think twice about it.

The problem with the book, however, is that it was very badly written and organized even worse. There are two major story lines in the book - an account of the author's own 2004 Connecticut Expedition and the account of an elderly Bolivian climber who died on Everest and the alleged responsibility of his guide. These are told more or less in chronological order and, while ultimately boring, they are easy enough to follow. Other stories, however, appear disjointedly throughout the book. In some of them, the author expresses what seems to be sincere admiration for specific individuals, in others, those same individuals are torn apart. People do have good and bad sides, but there is too little character development to understand what these people are really like.

The story of the disintegration of the Connecticut team is also not very understandable. The author suggests that members of the team turned against other members suddenly, but there is little explanation about how that came about. He seems more interested in vilifying his perceived enemies than in finding an objective place from which to look at the expedition. Jon Krakauer he is not.

He also can't write like Krakauer, it's suprising to me that he is a professional writer (a journalist), and while he uses the tools of storytelling, he doesn't do it successfully.

In sum, as far as Everest books go, this is way down the pile.

Vox Publica now has a new look. In reality, I've imported the entries to a newer version of Movable Type, the blogging program I use. I just like the look better. Alas, a new blog comes with a new RSS address, this one is: http://www.voxpublica.org/atom.xml - so if you are subscribed to my blog, change it. If not, this may be a good time to subscribe ;-)

Doing the change in blog has been a pain. Not so much for Vox Publica, but for Human Rights Listings, a blog I keep where I post jobs, internships, conferences and so forth in human rights. I haven't found a way to export the notifications, so I'm afraid I may have to enter them one by one. That would *really* suck. Anyone has a solution?

This week the Economist had a very interesting article about happiness in America - who is happy (conservatives and extremists on both sides of the political spectrum) and who is not (liberals). Parents are usually happier than non-parents, but not about spending time with their children.

Eating, shopping, exercising, cooking, praying and watching television were all rated more pleasurable than watching the brats, even if they don't bite. As Mr Brooks puts it: “There are many things in a parent's life that bring great joy. For example, spending time away from [one's] children.”

This makes me feel much better. I love my kids with all my heart, but I don't particularly enjoy spending time with them. I like to have them around, but not be responsible for their entertainment (or care, really). Fortunately, I'm not the only one who seems to feel this way.

I arrived from Kenya yesterday afternoon. But for the work that remains, and the plight of its people, it would almost seem like a distant memory.

In all, I had a very good time. I met some very nice people, learned quite a bit about the country, the culture and the politics, and I hope I'll be able to help in the fight against impunity there. I wasn't as useful as I hope I'd be, but there is still time, and I may go back.

I'm glad to be home, with the kids and Mike, but it's definitely a readjustment. From having nothing to do but work (and blog), I come to having everything to do but work (though I'll still blog). Spring break starts Monday. I'm afraid.

I came to Kenya to work, but the possibility of going on a safari was hard to give up. A colleague, Luke, was willing to come along so last weekend we headed for the Maasai Mara, in southwestern Kenya. The Maasai Mara is a relatively small park - in particular if you compare it with the Serengeti, which it borders. But it's pretty full of animals and it's an easy 45-minute flight from Nairobi.

Luke could only go for one night (which meant an afternoon and morning game drive), while I decided to stay for two (which meant two game drives each day). Alas, the first two drives were the best - Luke was lucky. On the first afternoon we saw a lot of herbivorous animals: elephants, giraffes, gazelles and the like, wildebeests, ostriches, cranes, zebras (though they only have a few around, most are back in the Serengeti) and, of course, bisons. There are hundreds of bisons in the Maasai Mara, they must be the most numerous animals. They are not particularly pretty, but they are very cool in that the whole group is sort of together - but they have what I imagine is a mail on the edges of the group looking out and confronting any predators. They are smarter animals than they seem.

The second day was even better. We *almost* saw a pack of lions hunt a bison. They prepared themselves, they put themselves in position, and they were getting ready to attack when a hot air balloon flew over them and spooked them. Fuck those balloons.

We did get to see a pack of hyenas eating a zebra - though we got there about 10 minutes after they killed it, so we didn't see the hunt. Perhaps that's for the best. The hyenas managed to eat pretty much all the zebra in about 10 minutes. There were about 10 of them - and we were maybe 30 feet away. It was a bit gruesome to see them, and yet so fascinating.

We also saw the usual assortment of herbivores - and hyenas, jackals and a fox near the lion hunt - and then we went to the river where we saw a crocodile from very far away, and lots of hippos. It was very cool.

The next afternoon we went in search of a leopard, and not only did we not find one, but we didn't find pretty much anything else. The highlights were a 2-week old elephant, a newborn bison (the mother was eating the placenta when we saw her) and a breastfeeding gazelle-like-thing. We saw some lions resting in the late afternoon, young males. We were so close to them - 10 feet perhaps? - so much so that I was actually afraid of that. But I guess it was cool.

The last morning was also pretty sparse on animals, though we did see a sitting cheetah (not very exciting to watch) and a rhino (again, not that exciting). There were more elephants and giraffes and assorted herbivores.

The place where we stayed, the Sarova Mara Game Camp, was beautiful. Our "tent" was more like an airy luxury cabin - with a HUGE bed, nice furniture, a huge bathroom and all the comforts you could want (except for a phone - though they'd do in-person wake up calls). They had more standard, less luxurious tents, but we got a free upgrade, reportedly because we couldn't fly there on Saturday morning as we wanted to, but probably because they didn't have any guests to speak of. Of the 75 tents they have, probably 10 were occupied while we were there. That was good for us, the service was top notched and neither the hotel nor the park were crowded - but it's horrible for the poor Kenyans who depend on the tourist industry for a living. If you are thinking of going on a safari, now is the time to come (and yes, Kenya is utterly safe right now).

Others seemed to be happy with the food, I thought it was merely OK, but you guys know that I'm very picky.

In all, I had a great time and I wish I could do it again, next time with the kids.