granola with extra fruit

California is called the Golden State, but it would rather be called the Green State. There may very well be more vegans than Republicans in the Bay Area, and people say "organic produce" and "locally grown" as if they were holy words. I admit that I have some green tendencies -- I bring my own bags to the grocery store, and I drive a Prius, but I draw the line well short of growing my own vegetables to feed to the chickens I'm raising in my backyard in order to be 100% sure that they produce organic, cruelty-free eggs. (Yes, people actually do that. It's commendable but insane, especially if the people have jobs and kids. Who has time to tend to chickens?)

I've met many people who are at various crunchy stages on the granola continuum (see chicken owners, above), but I met my first completely, ridiculously over-the-top one recently. Oddly enough, she is originally from Texas, not a state I really associate with crunchy granola types.

Over dinner, this self-proclaimed "free spirit" informed us that:

(1) She and her husband still "co-sleep" with their two kids (ages 7 and 10) in one bed.

(2) She is a recent subscriber to the "raw food" movement, and will be getting her very own food dehydrator soon.

(3) She only gives her children raw milk, because heating the milk during pasteurization kills all the good stuff (presumably she meant something other than dangerous bacteria), leaving nothing but "cow pus." (Is "cow pus" more nutritious if it hasn't been heated? If she thinks milk is basically just pus, why drink it at all, heated or unheated?)

She spouted a lot more entertaining fruitcake dogma that I won't go into. What I love, though, and what she doesn't know, is that her husband secretly gorges himself on chicken wings and pizza when he's at work. I don't blame him, if the food he gets at home is not only raw, but dehydrated. Yum.

too late

This came too late for me. I suffered through a lot of transatlantic flights sitting next to wheezing rhino behemoths who couldn't keep their massive bulk out of my seat. No amount of passive-aggressive elbows and lowered armrests can save you from The Fat Travelers Who Refuse To Acknowledge That They Can't Fit Into One Seat And Then Give You Dirty Looks For Trying To Use All Of The Seat That You, The Reasonably-Sized Person, Paid For, But Which They Think They're Entitled To Encroach Upon Because They Can't Resist Hostess Cupcakes.

Maybe this will end their reign of terror. Although I'm not sure that the airlines will actually enforce it, since there were similar policies already in place, which I always hoped would be used, but never were, at least not when they could have rescued me from on-board hippo-wrestling.

Next, they should let passengers of below-average weight bring more luggage. Seriously. It's only fair.

And don't even get me started on babies and young children. Do you remember when there used to be smoking on planes, and there was a smoking section and a non-smoking section? Yeah, they need to do that with babies and kids now. Put them in their own soundproof cabin, and everyone will be happier, except the parents, perhaps.

a few of my favorite things

When people ask me for recommendations in Zurich, this is what I tell them.

achoo

I never thought I had seasonal allergies, having made it through 30 years of seasons without issue. Apparently, however, I am allergic to Mountain View in late March. March has passed, as have my allergies, but now the mystery remains: what is in the air in Mountain View in March that isn't in the air anywhere else that I've lived at any time of year?

My only other allergies that I know of are cats, rabbits, large quantities of dust, and Sulfa drugs. Maybe someone tossed all of those into a wood chipper and sprayed it all over town, but just for a few weeks, until it got old?

relativity

It's all relative.

The typical desk job in the States starts you off with two weeks of vacation per year, plus some standard company holidays. You gradually work your way up until a trillion years later, when you get four or even five weeks off per year.

Law firms start associates off with four weeks per year, plus firm holidays, but it's all for show. No one really takes all four weeks off, and chances are pretty good that you'll end up working on a fair number of the holidays and weekends, as well.

Then I left New York firm life for Swiss NGO life. When I first learned that I would get five weeks off, plus about two weeks of Swiss holidays, I couldn't imagine how I would use that much vacation up each year. Weekends and holidays? They were mine, as well. The first year I was there, I ended up with a few days left over, but after that, I used up all of my vacation days, and by the end of my time as an expat, I was finding it difficult to stretch my days off to fit my travels. My friends and I wondered, "How did we ever get by on less than seven weeks off per year?"

And then I moved back to the States. I get three weeks off, plus twelve company holidays, for over five weeks off total, which is quite generous by American standards, but still not quite the same as the Swiss seven. I worried that I would find it difficult to adjust back to the American way. As it turns out, I've been back in the States for over ten months, and have only taken two vacation days. In fact, by the time I hit my one year move-a-versary, I'll only have taken seven out of my fifteen vacation days. How things change...

On the other hand, that number is quite deceptive, because I'll also have spent thirteen days working from our offices in London, Zurich, and New York (to avoid taking vacation time while traveling), taken all twelve of the company holidays, and spent several days at company or department off-sites (wine blending, eating, doing pub trivia, skiing, going to the beach, and so on).

I'm not really sure which system works better for me yet, but at least I can say that, contrary to expectations, I don't feel vacation-deprived.

spring is when...

...the temperatures start regularly hitting 70 degrees most days, and we get more sunny days than cloudy days, and fewer rainy days than in winter. OK, I can understand that, that makes sense. Apparently, however, it is also when some of the trees grow new leaves or burst into bloom, and others let their leaves turn red and fall to the ground. Couldn't they come to some sort of consensus on proper arboreal seasonal behavior? The six month perfect summer is only a month away. Schizophrenic as the climate is, I have no complaints. Just mystified confusion.

what is this madness of which you speak?

The other day, I was at work and I walked up to my manager and another coworker as they were engrossed in conversation. My manager turned to me and asked if I had filled out a bracket. 

It was the beginning of the day, we were about to go into a meeting, and I had no idea what he was talking about, and was momentarily concerned that I had overlooked some work-related thing that I was supposed to have filled out. 

My confusion must have been very apparent on my face, as he then said, "March Madness? ...Basketball? ...College basketball? ...The championship? ...Are you filling out a bracket for the office pool?" 

Oh!! Much relieved, I said that I had not, and did not plan on filling one out, due to my (very obvious) total lack of knowledge and interest when it comes to sports. 

I was better able to seem less ignorant in Europe, where the only sport that anyone ever talks about is soccer. In the States, however, there is always something going on -- football, basketball, baseball, hockey -- and they overlap, so a non-sports person can never be sure what kind of game people are referring to watching "the game," and someone who is completely uninformed about sports (like me) is clueless about what kind of playoffs are going on at any given time. 

Sigh. 

At least it wasn't some work-related thing that I had forgotten to do.

rage, rage against the dying of the light

One of the random benefits of living in the States is that Daylight Saving Time starts two weeks earlier and ends one week later than it does in Europe, so we get three more weeks of light lasting later in the evening. This makes an even bigger difference when you take into consideration the relative likelihood of sunny days in California versus Switzerland. 

Perhaps in Switzerland, where people wake up at ungodly hours to get to work by 9, 8, or even (gasp!) 7 in the morning (and where clouds often obscure any direct sunlight), it makes the morning commute darker for a while, but here, where people wake up a bit later (and the sun is more likely to shine cloud-free), it just means that the sun is around for more actual waking hours. Sweet.

wintergreen

I've lived in a few different places before moving to California -- Denver, Houston, Delaware, Cambridge, New York, and Zurich -- and they are all very different places, but one thing that they have in common is the way the seasons work. 

In the spring, the grass starts growing and the trees start budding and growing leaves. In the summer, everything is green. In the fall, things turn colors, then turn brown and die. In the winter, the world just waits for spring to come back again.

Not here. Here, the seasons are all backwards, inside out, and upside down. Confused. In the summer, the grass is brown and yellow, fried to a crisp in the dry sun, but the trees are green. In the fall, nothing changes. In the winter, some of the trees get with the program and shed their leaves, but the grass gets confused by the sudden appearance of rain and turns green, and the flowers come out. 

I'm not sure what will happen in spring. Probably something weird. Spring is probably when the marshmallow bushes grow Peeps, which are then picked by hippie elves and sent to drugstores around the country.

not so flexible

In an attempt to use up more of my 2008 flex dollars, I went to the eye doctor to get new contacts. I wear contacts maybe once or twice a month these days, but it's good to have them for scuba diving and for days when I want to wear sunglasses. We went through the whole rigmarole of eye tests, ordering various brands of lenses, trying them out, and having followup visits. We finally settled on a brand, and I went to pay for them.

Apparently, if your eyes are bad enough, and your vision plan is good enough, the checkups, fittings, and lenses are all free, because they are a medical necessity. So the good news is that I got free contacts. The bad news is that my eyes are really bad, and I still have to use up my flex account.

To make matters worse, I found out that the handy dandy debit card that they issue for the flex account, and which I've been using to avoid having to submit expense reports, has been drawing from my 2009 flex account. So a bunch of my hard-spent expenses haven't even gone towards my goal of using up my old flex dollars.

In a last fit of desperation, I bought a bunch of random things from drugstore.com, like super duper first aid kits for home and car, and will go get prescription sunglasses. And if that doesn't work, then I guess I was never meant to use those flex dollars.