| Please stop shitting on my friends |
[Dec. 4th, 2009|02:37 pm] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Leaves That Are Green - Simon & Garfunkel | ] |
I am driving to Cape Cod in a few hours, to warm the house of my dear friend and former housemate J. It seems ridiculous to drive to Cape Cod for the weekend, although I suppose no more ridiculous than plenty of my other adventures. But it turns out to be lucky that I'm going, because I need some time and space to recharge my batteries with singing/music-playing/hiking/whole food-eating folks and my dear friend J. Turns out J. could use the support too, since he just had a large life kick-to-the-teeth. In fact, a lot of my friends and acquaintances have had large kicks to the teeth recently:
P on the men's morris team died last night from liver failure.
N, Pete's 17 year-old son, had to help make the decision to unplug his dad from machines.
E, formerly of my morris team, is having major pancreatic surgery next Friday.
G, 18 year-old friend of mine and kid of friends of mine, had a seizure on Thanksgiving and now has learned that he has a small brain tumor. Not cancerous, but not good.
C has been out of work for over a year now and has a torn rotator cuff.
E is about to lose her job.
J was dumped by his intended fiance two months ago
I can do nothing much but send good energy and my sympathy to most of the folks on that list. For a precious few, we are close enough that I can call and be a person who can listen and support them. So I am extra glad that I'm going to Cape Cod to be there for the friends I can be of use to. Hopefully I will recharge my own vat of joy and positive energy, so that I have more to send out to the folks struggling through such hard stuff.
I often wish I was better at being a person who sends sympathy cards, even to people I don't necessarily know very well. My mom is fantastic at that, and it's something I've always really admired about her. She sends sympathy cards to everyone she knows. She sent one to a woman whose husband she worked with when that woman's mother died. Sent one to relatives of a guy she was acquainted with twenty years ago, not very well. She doesn't worry about awkwardness the way I sometimes do, doesn't worry that the person won't remember her, and doesn't seem to ever drop the ball for long enough that it becomes almost silly to send the card. I would like to be better at keeping in connection with people on those sorts of things. I know it's important that I'm thinking of them, but I think it's also important for people to know that they're being thought of during hard times.
Anyway, with any luck I'll come back more cheerful and ready to share the amusing side of life, instead of the lame and bummed-out side. Here's hoping. |
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| Where I'm at (or where I was at): The List 2009 |
[Dec. 4th, 2009|11:58 am] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | folkalley.com! | ] |
So things were a little shook up over the last several months of my life, and I didn't quite get around to making time for my annual list-writing and check-in with last year's list. I scrambled together bits and pieces of this year's list over the last month or so, but didn't really get the time to sit down and give it the time it probably deserved, nor the time to sit down with last year's list until now. So here (cut because it's rather long) is last year's list, split into things that happened, sort of happened, or didn't happen at all, with a bit of explanation for each. I hope to also make time to look at some of the things I succeeded with and make some better notes about how I managed to change them and what impact that's had on the quality of my life.
( The list, evaluated )
So the end result is that I succeeded at about half of my goals. Not bad, I guess. Evaluating this one makes me realize that my current list is not that exciting. I'm much more likely to get things done if they're things I actually want to do, and not things I feel like I should do (even if I recognize that doing them will make my life better in some way). Plus, that's what makes the list fun, and if it's not fun, why do it?
This year's list to come. Here's to saddling up another year!
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| The Gestation Period of a Nile Crocodile |
[Dec. 1st, 2009|12:37 pm] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | They Say Virginia Is for Lovers - The Sweetback Sisters | ] |
The Gestation Period of a Nile Crocodile is 96 days, which is how long it's been since I've updated here. Who even knows what's been going on in all that time? I'm not going to try to go back and reconstruct, except to say what a bummer it is to have lost my own twisted memory's recollection of the hearty ups and downs of that period of time because I had no easy method of recording my experiences. Lame.
I also don't imagine I'll get to catch up on 96 days worth of friendslist, unless things get really slow at work. For the salvation of my livejournal experience is that somehow the court has failed to block LJ, despite blocking every other social thing I can imagine, including NPR (it's categorized as 'shopping'). So in my brief lulls at work I may still be able to get on here and do some updating, which would be lovely.
I do have internet access at home again, after long last, but my life is as busy as always, and I am for sure out of the habit of even doing tedious brain-dumps here, nevermind actually posting something of interest. Perhaps I will get back on that wagon, perhaps not. I am more and more allowing my time to be sucked by Facebook, which makes me less inclined to spend time lots of other places online, but we'll see. I am certainly still in the period of readjustment to being connected to the crazy electronic web. I can look up bus schedules any time I want! I can watch Jon Stewart! I can see the latest exciting youtube video everyone's been passing around like venereal disease! It's a joy, I tell you.
I moved last weekend (again). The house I moved to in August was way less than ideal, and I am not wasting my time being bummed about that, but spending my time being glad I got out as soon as I did, and found a great house with many things that are important to me (porch, garden, bike storage, access to transit, lots of windows, mellow housemates, open shared space that everyone uses).
Work is mostly going well. Of our 6 pre-organizational-transition staff tomorrow we will be down to three. They are in the process of hiring, but for the present I'll be the only petition-writer at my location. Eek. But possible. What's more, I continue to mostly like what I'm doing and feel pretty capable and competent at my job. That is a Good Thing.
In other news, I'm planning a big morris thang for January, still working on law school applications, my sister is gestating, and I'm driving to Cape Cod this weekend for my old housemate's housewarming. Hopefully my 'new' car will not strand me in Massachusetts the way it stranded me in Albany for a week a couple of weeks ago.
Perhaps I'll finally get around to adding the miscellaneous bits of thought I scribbled down somewhere else while I was 'net-free, but hold not your breath, for I am not known for following-through on that kind of stuff.
It's good to be back, kids! |
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| Things are looking up |
[Aug. 26th, 2009|11:14 am] |
Gah. There are two posts-in-progress on paper somewhere that will be here (hopefully) in a few days. My wonderful if slightly-forgetful father recalled that he had an old-but-functional Dell laptop sitting around his house that he got for a friend's recuperation-from-car-accident several years ago and she ended up not needing. It is wending its way toward me now via UPS ground, and should be here by Friday or Saturday. Then all sorts of picture-uploadage and trip-storytelling and answering of very, very back-emails will occur. And I will be able to see all the damn videos people link to that I've missed over the last month or two, look up bus schedules anytime I want, and look for cars on the weekend as well as in my spare moments at work.
For the epic Honda Civic of legend hath finally given up the ghost. 338,800 miles and 13 years and he'd still run if I was willing and able to throw somewhere between $1000-$2000 at him for the nth time. Considering I only paid $3000 to initially purchase him and put close to another $3000 in repairs over the last seven years, and his trade-in value is about $500 (and that's generous), I decided it was time to let the old guy go. So the hunt is on for a new(er) vehicle, to be financed with an interest-free loan from the Bank of Inheritance-Loaded and Overly-Generous Grandma.
Bought my plane ticket for the Last Gasp, and am now contemplating whether to take the fiddle with me. My guitar doesn't have a very sturdy case, and I couldn't carry it on, and I just don't trust checking it. But the fiddle could come on with me, I think, and that would be all right. Guitars will be plentiful at the festival anyway, so that's fine.
As might be obvious from reading this, I am through the bleak transitional period (one of the paper-posts details some of that) and it is a joy to be out the other side once again. My brain is clear, the world no longer feels constantly overwhelming, and I am not wearing the pain of every person I encounter or story I read. Hallelujah!
I discovered that despite being unable to get most sorts of computer-music (iTunes, Pandora, MySpace, streaming radio) I can somehow stream NPR on my work computer, and through that, FolkAlley. That makes the long periods of lull at work (like right now) manageable, and I'm so glad my co-worker pointed me that way.
Had a friend drag me out of the house on Sunday (the last day of transitionalbleakperiod09) for a short bike jaunt into Rock Creek Park. Turns out I live 3 zippy blocks from Rock Creek Park (RCP is long strip of 2000 acres of National Park smack in the middle of DC, full of great biking/hiking trails, picnic shelters, etc.) - glad I didn't wait a long time to make that connection. Also Close to my new digs are lots of connector trails to Sligo Creek, Long Branch, and the Northwest Branch trail of the Anacostia. So I have a lot of bike-exploring to do, which is exciting.
Other than that just chugging along, planning the morris team's 30th anniversary shindig, practicing rapper, sending ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) aturquoisecloud off to the wilds of Maine for grad school, looking for new books to read that aren't focused on suicide (the last three I've picked have been, two of them unpredictably), waiting for the big paychecks to start rolling in so I can start doing crazy things like paying rent and buying groceries. Smiling, still.
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| Things I am trying not to freak out about - a list |
[Jul. 27th, 2009|05:49 pm] |
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1. The glasses that were consigned to the waves at Rehoboth Beach, DE on Sunday after I got bodyslammed by a wave. If I moved a lot quicker I could get down the glasses place and maybe order some new ones that would come in time to be picked up before I leave for Madison/Seattle on Monday. But they might not come in time, and the money would be better spent cushioning other upcoming things. Plus, under the vision plan with new job I'll get a much better deal than currently, but I have to wait until the 1st of September, which is 5 weeks sans glasses. But I don't need them to see, just to see well, so I can do without if I must.
2. The security deposit I need to go pay tonight on the apartment I'm theoretically moving into on Saturday. I have just enough money scraped together and/or borrowed to cover it. I just keep telling myself that soon I will have a real salary and paychecks coming in and this is not as scary as it feels; I am not signing away all the money I've managed to hang on to in the last year of living at the bottom of the barrel. It still feels daunting, especially since I didn't find a perfect living situation, just a totally feasible and perhaps quite pleasant one. Still, there are weird bits of misgivings.
3. The flattened boxes I have yet to even unfold and tape back together, much less actually put things inside for said move. That's probably the next task, as it's just about mindless enough to satisfy a brain as fried as mine is right now. A little dancing, a little packing, a little singing at the top of my lungs; that way lies progress. Plus, is this really worth a worry? I have to be a pro at packing after all this. I know what needs to go where, it won't take as long as I'm imagining. 4. My almost-ready-to-pass-inspection-after-a-year-of-illegality car. After $400 it is down to one passenger side mirror before it will supposedly pass DC inspection. The mirror should be here on Thursday, installed on Friday with lots of luck (involving someone who can take the car to the mechanic at 8am, since I have to be on the train to work by then). Then it's on to inspection when I get back from Seattle (thank goodness you can get cars inspected starting at 6:30am in DC), then off to purchase a swift and hopefully gentle insurance policy (keeping in mind how pretty my driving record has gotten recently and the imminent magic-25). Then DC DMV sometime in the hairy future, to actually register the car, enabling me to park legally at my new place, and have shiny license plates that say 'Taxation Without Representation' at long last. The impetus/time crunch on this is that my NY registration expires August 10th, so essentially I have to re-register in DC or give up the car.
5. Financial and logistical details of various trips. I planned all these grand adventures, but combined with moving and switching jobs, they're a wee bit crazy-making. Madison/Seattle/Vancouver starts Monday, and while I've booked plane tickets, I'll have to make sure I have enough to feed myself and deal with variables along the way. Then I need to figure out travel for Maple Morris, somewhere near Toronto the last weekend of August. Can I afford a plane ticket? I don't have enough vacation time from the new job to drive, so that's my option. Flights are cheap now when I have no money. By the time I'll be getting paychecks, they will have doubled. What to do? Also, Youth Dance Weekend at the end of September - am I flying for that? Driving? Vacation days vs. money? Plus it's in the middle of nowhere, so if I don't drive I have to find a carpool somehow. Not impossible, but not figured out yet either.
6. First day of training at the NEW JOB! It was interesting, elucidating, difficult. There is a lot to absorb, a lot of procedure to download and policy and background to understand. And I read a lot of petitions for protection orders today, and I'm sure a certain amount of the stress is just residual from reading all that stuff, and hearing the few clients we had today detail their experiences. Also, tip: don't read Alice Walker while you're starting a job where you'll deal with battered Black women on a regular basis. Too tough. I think it will be good, but for now I'm the new kid, and don't have my own office until the end of the week, so I'm almost squatting there. Weird. I think I'll really like it as I get into the groove, but first days are always stressful, even if you don't take the wrong train, then get out at the station and walk a mile in the wrong direction before you correct yourself, think you're half an hour late and turn out to still be right on time. GAH!
Add to all this a healthy dose of the beach yesterday (read: long car drive on either end, minor sunburn, fatigue from treading water most of the day and minor scrapes from getting slammed into the beach by a wave), and I'm pretty pathetic right now. But at least now I've eaten some, drank some, and expelled a little of the crazy in my head. Now maybe I can rock some box-packing. |
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| Absence (has the heart grown fonder) |
[Jul. 21st, 2009|08:49 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  pleased | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Magic Foot on MySpace! | ] |
Well, posting recently has been tricky since a large glass of iced tea delivered the coup de grace to my laptop. It's 7 years old, and wasn't good for much besides internet, but since that was the bulk of what I needed, and I've been living rather close to broke for a while, I've been riding it out. Now that I may be within a year or two of law school and needing to buy a brand new 'puter with particular law-school-related specs, there's been even more reason to hold out on getting a new one. Until the iced tea.
I'll be switching income brackets rather drastically soon, and after I've dealt with things like security deposits, finally registering my car in DC (including paying off those pesky 3 year-old parking tickets), and a couple pairs of new shoes, a laptop might be a possibility. For the last month I've been grabbing online time at work, after work, or in the office on the weekends. Workable when one's office is three blocks from one's house and one has a key. Not so workable at the new job, where the office is 45 minutes away in a hospital wing with specific hours of operation. So I'm not really sure how that will work, but I trust that I will not shrivel up and die from lack of exposure to the all-important screen.
That said, I've been writing things in dribs and drabs, but not having the time to commit to actually finishing a post while actually in front of a computer. By the time I get back to the kernels of a post's beginning, I'm frequently in a completely different place, so can't adequately finish the thought. It's really rather irritating. But such is life.
( Aimless thoughts on the nature of summer routine or lack thereof )
But once again I've run out of time for musing aimlessly, and I swear I'm going to post this before I have to leave for the next meeting. The next month I'll be running like mad, packing/moving/orienting to new job/travelling and when the dust settles maybe I'll have more time for musings. Until then... |
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| Pleasing discovery |
[Jul. 18th, 2009|11:03 am] |
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I'm housesitting this week for friends who are up at Pinewoods (their beagle, Bartok, is enamored of me, and he has one of those irresistable faces, so...). While poking around and getting settled this morning I sat down idly at their baby grand piano to screw around. They had a copy of Bach's Notebook for Anna Magdalena sitting on the piano, and I started to play that old and overdone chestnut, his Minuet in G Major. Then I continued through six or seven more of the classics in that book.
I took piano lessons from age 6 to age 11, when I decided I was never going to be as good as my sister, who was really committed to and good at piano (piano and drawing/painting - gave them both up because I'd never be as good as her, and regret both. What a dumb reason to quit something!). Anyway, I got a solid background for reading and playing music, which I've always valued, and that was plenty, but it's been a long time since I had a steady relationship with a piano. So it was a hoot to sit down this morning and find that I still have some muscle memory for the minuets, marches and musettes of my mid-90s piano lessons. I've plunked around on pianos from time to time, using the ever-present Protestant hymnal on the pianos of my relatives if nothing else presented itself, so it wasn't a big surprise that I could get through these pieces (if slowly, with many mistakes). But it was like going through old school papers, encountering those surprising little bits of connection to mundane parts of your past. Like a series of friendly waves from people you were rather fond of, but had forgotten along the way.
It was really nice to encounter them unexpectedly. I imagine I'll be spending quite a bit of the upcoming week plunking about. Good thing the dog loves me and the neighbors aren't too close. |
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| India decriminalizes gay sex! |
[Jul. 2nd, 2009|11:36 am] |
At least in the National Capital Area, but maybe it will extend farther soon. News and exciting parts of the ruling here.
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| Spinach for your brain! |
[Jul. 1st, 2009|11:54 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  nerdy | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | The Devil's Paintbrush Road - The Wailin' Jennys | ] |
All the fascinating stuff I've been reading this morning while not finishing my end-of-year-assessments:
Trying to get a grip on the climate bill that passed the House last week, I wandered about hither and yon, not finding too much of use, and then popped over to my former employers to see what their take on it was. Turns out they find it toothless to the point that it's almost a step backwards.
All that wandering lead me to this, which is sort of intriguing, although I remain really skeptical. Steve Kirsch has a really, really long argument in favor of fourth-generation nuclear, which is something I had no idea existed, and now that I do I doubt I have the knowledge to evaluate it or really figure out where I might stand. It seems sort of plausible, and he seems to cite a lot of scientists who are behind it. The main problems I have with the concept so far are general skepticism that anything to do with depleted uranium can be good, and also a worry that it sounds too good to be true, that depleted uranium currently stored as nuclear waste could be the simple and safe and already mostly-developed solution to our energy crisis. The idea that these fourth-generation nuclear reactors couldn't melt down because it would violate the laws of physics is something I don't have the knowledge to refute, but I'm a bit wary of just the same. Also, if such a thing has been sitting around for twenty years and is the magic button to end our energy woes, I want to believe that we wouldn't have squandered it. Then again, I suppose I wouldn't exactly be surprised if we had. Anyway, it's interesting food for thought, and I want to go in search of more people talking about it.
My friend Ellen mentioned this article last week, pointing out the overlap between terms used in attacking women who've chosen to have abortions and women who've purposefully chosen not to procreate at all. The central point seems to be that when you take the fetus completely out of the equation the condemnation is the same, and it becomes all the more obvious that the anti-choice arguments are not really about the rights of the fetus but about limiting women's choices and control over what they do with their bodies.
And from miriamjoyce, one of the coolest things I could spend my whole day noodling about on that I've seen in a long time, the speech accent archive of George Mason University's Linguistics Department. (Playing the sound clips requires Quicktime). Each entry has the person reading a paragraph with common English words and the more difficult sound sequences found English. There is also a phonetic transcription of the paragraph, and biographical info on each person, how long they've been speaking English and whether they learned in naturally or academically. I've only listened to twenty-five or so entries so far, but I could easily waste a whole day listening to what Stella is supposed to bring back from the store. Really fascinating stuff.
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| Reason # 381 to love living in DC |
[Jun. 30th, 2009|08:10 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | pleased | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Arlington - The Wailin' Jennys | ] |
If you've been wanting a map of the ethnolinguistic groups of Africa for the longest time, you might finally get around to searching for what sorts of options are out there for such a thing, only to discover that the most in-depth and up-to-date version lives at the Library of Congress, a quick hop, skip and a jump down the Metro's Red Line from your humble DC abode. And it turns out you can order reproductions (or even digital copies) for not too awfully much money, and pick them up at the Duplication Services desk in the Adams building.
Guess who's getting herself a map of African ethnolinguistic groups for her birthday? |
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| A well-rounded festival |
[Jun. 29th, 2009|05:24 pm] |
A vignette that sums up my experience of Old Songs nicely: I was given a quick respite from parking cars in the periodic rain on Saturday to grab some lunch. Hopped on the parking crew golf cart with my dad and we cruised up towards the food vendor collection on the Gate 3 hill. We stopped at Gate 2 to take a picture of the arty umbrella being held by the volunteer sitting there. Ran into Fred pulling in as we pulled away towards food. Waved at Cindy Mangsen as she walked by, and Graham from the Berkshire Morris Men. Saw Melanie and hollered a 'Happy Birthday' to her as we passed by. Parked the cart by the entrance to the instrument exchange and hopped out to chat with Melanie for a minute. As she wandered off to a concert Michael and Connie came up and we chatted with them for a bit, then Howard and Betsy came up. More hugging, more chatting. We drift away to look at food options and run into Dan Berggren, who exclaims upon seeing me in the flesh, as opposed to in the little Facebook box. I put in my order and then head off down the hill to the portajohn while my dad waits for the food. On the way I run into Greg (iccubis Greg), then Charlie Baum from FSGW. When I get back to the food stand my dad is chatting with Ed Guider (who, it turns out, works for the NYS Dept of Criminal Justice implementing the Stop Violence Against Women Act - how did I not know that?). Then we managed to get back to the parking lot and actually eat lunch.
The Saturday night sing was really pleasant. The sing at Old Songs can really be a mixed bag, and there have been past years where it was not a thing I particularly enjoyed. This year though, there was a nice mix of the usual suspects and new and different folks who brought some really good stuff. I was pleased to trot out some of my old stuff and carry off some of my newer stuff with a stronger voice and stronger choruses than before. There was also a good pace of good songs and only a couple of times where I beat a hasty retreat to the bathroom rather than sit through a song I didn't enjoy. I thought about throwing in the towel and going to bed a couple of times, but not very seriously, and then we had dwindled to twenty, and then fifteen, and then it was 5am and the last of us went outside to sing "Bright Morning Stars" before heading off for a few hours sleep. Then it was 8:30 and I was hunting for my bells to go morris dance.
Among other highlights of the weekend, I ran into my old across-the-street neighbor, who was a folkie briefly before his wife became born-again and they stopped coming. It was really nice to see him after quite a few years, and to get the updates on his kids, who are around my age and doing strange things like getting married and buying houses.
I got to sing shape note twice - once at the slower sing in the morning and again at the book sing in the afternoon. In the morning sing I was actually one of the stronger voices in my section of the alto section, and during an unfamiliar song, when I lost the pitch, all of a sudden eight or nine people nearest me also stopped singing. It was very weird to realize that I had been the note some of them had been depending on. Kind of nice, but also a little too much pressure for me, as I'm still not confident I have the right notes with any regularity.
Emily and Joshua, who rode up with me for their first foray into this particular festival, and Joshua's first foray into anything folk-like on this scale, seemed to really enjoy themselves. Joshua made friends right and left, and seeme to find his calling in the fields of the parking lot, with an orange vest and flag. Maybe I should hook him up with my brother-in-law as a professional parker.
I even got some time to trade a few long, rambly, no-chorus-or-refrain songs with Robin, which we've agreed we'll have to do more of. So nice to have someone to be able to sing those at, since they don't fit the regular sing format well, and I've got a few good ones stored up now. It was also good to hear a couple of his, one of which was really beautiful.
Perhaps best of the whole experience was that Emily and Joshua took the vast bulk of the driving, leaving me to entertain on the way up, and catch up on sleep on the way home. They were lovely traveling partners, even if Joshua did give me a wet willie which may or may not ever be forgiven.
No more festivals for me until Labor Day, as the rest of this summer is crammed with finishing the current job, starting the new job, packing up and moving again, and the Madison/Seattle/Vancouver adventure. But this one was good enough to hold me for quite a while. |
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| Fear not the other shoe |
[Jun. 25th, 2009|10:02 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  elated | ] |
I thought the good news for today was over with the thrilling conversation in which I was offered the job I interviewed for last Thursday and decided I really wanted. I am still vibrating from that phone call, the one where we worked out my training for that job during my last official week of this job. I'll still manage to get my 2 weeks visiting A & L in Madison and dancing in Seattle and Vancouver with the morris team even! 34K a year is a big jump from from 11,5K. Full health benefits, including vision and dental!! 3 weeks vacation, 2 weeks personal leave, and best of all, it's work I'm really interested in, with people who seem to have a good sense of how to run a non-profit and get useful shit done. Knowledge of the situation to come will really help me get through the last four weeks here. Hallelujah, I can look for an apartment without pinching every penny for rent, for I will once again have a salary, complete with 403(b) if I want it!
So I carried on with my day, notifying the thrilled parents, crowing to my co-irkers, who would like me to sprinkle some of my lucky-job-fairy-dust on them. I returned to the office around 9 to check email and deal with some computer stuff (my laptop finally bit it the other night, I think for good). And here, lurking in my inbox, is an email from the Law School Admission Council with my LSAT results.
167 = 95th percentile baby! Exactly what I'd scored on most of the practice tests I took, but I really had my doubts when I was actually in the room, that I could pull it off the same way.
I am now floating about three inches off the ground.
And the absolute best part of all of this is that tomorrow morning I will hop in a car and drive north for the Old Songs Festival, where I can share my fabulous news with some of my very favorite people. And next weekend I'll be spending with my blood-kin.
Triumph and bright shiny bits of future are so much better when shared with people you love.
Now all I have to do is convince myself that this good fortune is not the precursor to some negative payback. When really good things happen to me I always start looking up to see if a meteor is coming or a piano is about to fall on my head. I look both ways when crossing the street - twice. But in this case I have to admit that while some of it can be chalked up to good luck, cosmic forces aligning, what-have-you, some of it is definitely my hard work paying off, and that feels just great, and doesn't make me nervous at all. |
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| Solstice pause |
[Jun. 22nd, 2009|11:12 am] |
I spent most of my weekend schlepping people to and from Dulles airport, and then helping out at orientation for AGLI, the program with which I went to Burundi two years ago. This year's workcampers are lovely and thoughtful people, and I was glad to be able to be part of their discussions and see some video footage and interviews that have been put together since my participation. The program and all the local projects it supports continue to do really incredible work in the region.
Coming home last night to get some much-needed rest between airport runs, I stopped at my office to get my spare house-key. As I was coming out and locking the door, I stopped for a minute to look across our little grassy field at the winking fireflies and dusk settling over my neighborhood at 9:15 or so. I wished briefly that I had been able to spend more of this weekend outside, soaking in the beautiful weather and longest days of the year, but mostly I was just thankful for the moment, for the space to appreciate it, and for a slightly renewed sense of hope in the world.
Of course then I got up at 4:30 this morning to do another airport run and am spending the day underslept and crabby, but for a moment last night the world seemed ripe with possibility. |
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| Practicing patience |
[Jun. 19th, 2009|06:26 pm] |
Whew. So life has finally slowed down to the point where I've had a little time for contemplation and breathing this week, which has been nice.
I got the garden a few times this week, and it's finally beginning to look like we're growing things, which is so encouraging. I tried really hard not to let my expectations for this thing run away with me and to be in a place where I could be happy even if nothing grew, but it's still awfully nice to eat food you grew in your own garden, and I finally got to do that this week.
I had a solid job interview yesterday morning. I was ambivalent about the job going in to the interview, and came out really wanting to get it. It's doing intake work for a domestic violence legal aid organization called WEAVE. My job would be paralegal-ish for the most part, with occasional referrals for housing/counseling/whatever. There are other NGOs working at the same site who usually take care of those aspects, but overall the group focuses on a holistic assistance program, which I can really get behind. The people seemed great, their philosophy on the work, the workplace environment, and the supervisor/subordinate relationship seem like they really jive with my positions, which is encouraging. I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but I think I could really do this well, and it would be a good place to get a feel for whether family law is a direction I might want to go. There are also stellar benefits, unheard of (for me) amounts of vacation, has a start date that gives me plenty of time to finish my current job and move, and it doesn't have an end date. All good things.
So in the two weeks before they expect to have a decision, I plan on applying for at least ten other jobs, just to fufill whatever cosmic balance needs to be adjusted. I think I came off well in the interview, but I can't really know what that does for me until I know, so I'll tack this up on the "waiting patiently" board next to my eventually forthcoming LSAT scores. |
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| Verbosity |
[Jun. 11th, 2009|10:19 pm] |
Boy. I am pretty neglectful over here, aside from quick line-item updates. And yet, here I go again.
( Non-violent bullet points of what-all I've been up to )
Oy. I'm sure there's more, but I'm too tired to expound upon it. I think I shall take my book to bed and call this good enough for an update. Maybe I'll find some time in the near future to be more interesting about the parts of my life that are interesting these days. Perhaps even witty! But let's not stretch the realm of possibility...
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| Go home and sleep if you can sleep |
[May. 29th, 2009|10:58 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  complex | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | The City Never Sleeps - The Mammals | ] |
This afternoon I dragged my old futon out of the closet it was stashed in, found the appropriate cotter pins without enormous effort, wrestled the mattress into its cover and set the whole thing up as a porch couch. Then I proceeded to eat my lunch out there just as the first big summer thunderstorm came through.
Went for a long walk with Anna tonight, stopped to eat mulberries off a tree on her street, and saw the first fireflies of summer. I've introduced the kids at the afterschool program to eating mulberries off the tree in our yard. Some of them were really boggled by the idea of eating fruit right off the tree. They're a little crazed about it now, moderation not being the province of young children. But they were obsessive about the gypsy moth caterpillars two weeks ago, and they got over that with a little prompting, so I trust that mulberries will pass on in good time. And I've identified four other neighborhood trees that I will be hoarding for myself so maybe I can relax as I watch them maul the tree at work.
Went to the PG County library and finally settled up with them about new card and lost/found book and fines etc. so I can now put things on hold and do inter-library loans, which is pleasing. Got a good pile of chunky non-fiction that I might get through half of before they're due back, and a stack of fiction to break it up. Luckily now that all is resolved with them I can also renew books again.
Other than that I'm just recovering from a too-crazy weekend that stretched into Wednesday, and a trip home that stretched from a semi-sane 8 hours into a miserable 12, as I couldn't stay awake for more than 30 minutes at a time. I'm also working on processing a couple of heart-bruises as well, which is going as well as such things go, which is to say it's hurting and will continue to do so right up until it stops.
This weekend is Swallowtail at contra, Washington Folk Festival, and the Girlyman concert out on the Eastern Shore. Maybe I'll squeeze in another practice LSAT and some garden time, and hopefully some good sleep too. Life is life - hard, but worth it. |
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| Two wheels baby |
[May. 19th, 2009|11:27 pm] |
So I have been getting back into the groove of riding my bike lots of places, and actually begun to go above and beyond the boundaries of what I'd done the last time I had a bike and commuted with it. In my current life bike commuting is a little silly, since the office is three blocks from my house. Occasionally I wish I had my bike when I leave in the evenings, but if I want it it's just a quick walk home and then I've got it, so it really doesn't warrant riding every day.
But the last three days in a row I've gone somewhere sort of out of my comfort zone on the bike. Sunday I rode up to Joe's Movement Emporium in Mt. Rainier for a potluck/square dance/presentation on mountaintop removal mining. I rode in a skirt in traffic and did just fine. The presentation was really fascinating (more on that later, hopefully), the people lovely, the dancing okay, and I rode home in the dark without getting killed, and made it up the Newton St. hill without stopping. The whole thing was probably only about 4.5 miles, but it was something anyway.
Monday night I rode my bike to the hardware store, got hot pepper plants, rode to the garden and planted them, then rode over to Hyattsville for rapper practice on some scary four lane-ish roads without sidewalks, bike lanes or shoulders, and then rode home after practice in the pitch-black. Had a couple of hairy moments when I realized my headlight was not really very powerful in stretches completely without streetlights, but I still made it home just fine, and tried out going a sort of long way to avoid the Newton St. hill - turns out the 13th hill is slightly worse, but with a better downhill payoff block right at the end. 11miles all told, which is pretty decent for me.
Tonight I had to stop by three of our apartment buildings to check in with families for work-related stuff. None of them are more than about ten blocks away, but in different directions. I always feel silly taking the car, but it takes just a little too long walking, especially when the conversations I need to have at the buildings are so short. Biking is the perfect medium - I get there quickly and don't drag my huge car with me. The only alteration I really have to make is to be sure I have tape and a notepad in my backpack as well as my glove compartment, otherwise I have to leave notes on the back of receipts and stick them under doors when people aren't home. This ride was barely over 3 miles, but I like the consistency of having ridden where I needed to go three days in a row.
Alas, tomorrow I'll have to drive to get to morris practice with the sticks and Julia, but maybe Thursday I can find somewhere to ride, to offset the ridiculous amount of driving I'll be doing this weekend. Either way, I'm feeling good about the change in my mindset, that I'm getting more comfortable with the new bike, with the routine of riding, with navigating my way on the best bike-friendly roads, with asserting myself in traffic and attempting to read the minds of the cars around me. I'm really glad I got back into this groove and I hope to keep it up! |
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| Hair today... |
[May. 15th, 2009|10:46 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  cheerful | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Wont' Be Over You - The Lonesome River Band | ] |
So I hacked off all my hair. Well, most of it. I didn't shave my head, but I'm down to less than 2 inches all around, and less than 1 inch in most places. We did bowl cuts in my family, with the actual bowl, so I have no memory of ever having hair shorter than about bottom-of-the-ears. It is shorter than that now. Big! Deal!
It's a mite shorter than I intended, but when it was suggested that I had enough hair to donate if we cut right to the nape, I couldn't resist. It was a really pleasant surprise; it hadn't occurred to me at all that I would have enough to donate. So here it is very short! I haven't yet figured out what exactly it wants to do on top, but I will continue to experiment. Pleasingly I can spike it if I want to. Wonder what the kids would think about that.
( Speaking of the kids... )
Things I love so far about having quite short hair:- I no longer care if I have rubber bands or clips in my bag/backpack/car/pocket
- Hairbrush? What hairbrush?
- I have so much head! It's right there and I can't stop touching it!
- I have so much face! And my face is not half as round or scary as I always thought
- When the wind blows it tickles my head
- I can sweat all day and roll around all night, get up in the morning, wet my hair and it comes right back
- No hair in my eyes - none of it's long enough
- It dries in ten minutes flat
- I don't have to wash it nearly as often, or use nearly as much shampoo - hello cheap!
- I'm going to contra tonight, and no one will accidentally pull my hair when they swing me!
- No more trying to find a way to keep hair off my neck with a bike helmet on
I'm really jazzed to contra and morris with this hair (nice and cool!), and to go camping and not feel like I have to wash it at all.
I'm also curious about how long it will take my brain to catch up with reality in terms of its mental image of my face. My brain still sees me with long hair. I can call up the image of the new hair, but the default hasn't shifted yet. Interesting.
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| That bittersweet life |
[May. 11th, 2009|11:52 pm] |
( Lots of life been goin' on here )
In other brief news: 27 days to the LSAT, before then I should know the outcome of the FSGW Elections in which I'm running for an At-Large spot, discovered that a friend who lived down the hall from me freshman year of college lives in DC now, and bought a new bell for my bike so I can warn people when I'm coming. It's one of those cheery Brrrrrrrrrring! ones, but plenty loud. Oh, and after a month the epic sunburn is still peeling. But I've been very good about sunscreen since. And the garden is growing things, though not as much as other people's, and not very well. But most of it isn't dead yet, so that's something.
Life is beautiful. And hard. Both those things and lots besides.
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