Archive for August, 2008
A day of varying degrees of intensity. Fantastic breakfast and a serious discussion over a second cup of coffee and the front page of the Sunday paper. It feels kind of like a weekend, kind of like a vacation, except with a whole lot more work than either usually involve. We’re both so ready to be done with this apartment and this shitty building – with the trash in the hallway and the ghetto neighbors and the elevators that never work and the stench of smoke and whatever it is that makes the Run smell so bad at night.
I felt at loose ends this afternoon – mostly done, not much to do until we actually start the move – but! we picked up our keys tonight and took the first carload to the new place, which already feels more home-y. Shane played with the exiting tenant’s kitten and our landlord was super welcoming and we celebrated with cupcakes, despite the screw (!!) that SB found in the tire after running to Buzz. The size of the kitchen is probably going to be an issue, but I think we can make it work.
And now, 9pm, home on the couch watching the IOWA GAME on the Big 10 Network, winding down for the night and trying not to think of a whole day of lifting and moving and unpacking tomorrow, followed by another of unpacking and cleaning – but then we’ll be done, and set, and in Alexandria, and out of The Carlton A Condominium. And that will be a good thing
August 31st, 2008
I’m newly inspired to write by The Orwell Prize’s real-time blogging of the Orwell Diaries. Orwell’s small observations of life in 1938 England, coupled with the letters from my grandfather that I reread this morning, have me thinking about blogging as a way of capturing every day life rather than just trying to say something meaningful, you know?
Saw a white owl two nights ago – the first in about two years. Also in the distance another bird probably a little owl.
(An excerpt from August 16, 1938)
Since the 70s (at least), my grandfather has kept a diary, recording small events, what they had for dinner, etc. To most people, reading these diaries would be boring as sin, but to those of us who love him and will miss him terribly when he’s gone, it’s a way to connect with his life and understand the things that were important to him.
Over the 6 1/2 years that I’ve been blogging, I’ve gone back and forth between recording the day-to-day, musing on bigger things (or attempting to do so), and not posting at all because I didn’t feel like I had anything to say. In the last week, however, two of my friends have posted about small things and the need to post more, even if it’s about less. I think I’ll try to do the same.
August 31st, 2008
Reading about the evacuation of New Orleans – again – this morning in anticipation of Gustav’s landfall, I am equal parts concerned for the people who are losing their homes – again – and fleeing for their lives – again – and also a bit unsettled, thinking about what I’ve read this year in River-Horse and The Population Bomb, about nature righting herself despite our best intentions of keeping her at bay. About how if we as a species don’t find a way to control our population, nature will do it for us. About how we’ve changed our coastline and our rivers, and how eventually that change will right itself with likely devastating consequences. About how the place where I work is on reclaimed land, and how we will be living by a river in just a few days. And about how in time past, people who chose to live by water understood the consequences and benefits of that decision because they understood that we live on and with the land, we don’t own the land.
At breakfast this morning, SB and I talked about the inevitable end of industrialization, and how perhaps we are living at the end of the English-speaking empire, half a millenium after it started. In my Saxon England class at Regents College, our professor brought the fall of Roman Britain dramatically to life, reading letters from Romans left behind after the legion pulled out to return to Rome. The letters spoke of being trapped between barbarians and the sea, of a profound fear for the loss of life and of civilization. Of a sense of abandonment – that the civilization that had made their existence possible had left them to the wolves and the sea and the painted people from the north. I wonder if that is how the people evacuating New Orleans feel right now in the wake of the second evacuation in four years – and if we are going to see more of this as the spectre of decline continues to be seen in the West.
August 31st, 2008
Let’s just go ahead and mark this down as the summer when I fell absolutely in love with vegetables again. It’s not that I ever stopped liking you, vegetables. It’s just that this summer has been so good, vegetables, that you’ve won me over again. I’m like a new bride, giddy with excitement, swooning for love of whatever’s in the crisper, cut up and roasted with some olive oil and salt and pepper.
I know that all good things have to come to an end, and that eventually I’ll grow tired of your vitamin-filled goodness and we’ll drift apart, dear vegetables. Ours is a May-December romance in the truest sense. But you can rest assured that come the dark days of February, when I’m sustained only by the things that I’ve canned and the few items that farmers have managed to over-winter, I will be pining for you and longing for the dog days of summer, when we can be together again.
August 28th, 2008
…dredged up in honor of Brio, formerly Bacchus, winning the bronze in the America’s Best Restroom contest!
August 27th, 2008
Things I took pictures of while in Denver:
CouchSurfer Max’s ceiling (while he slept)
A beautiful airport
A not-so-beautiful airport
Ballpark food
Strange buffalo
Trains (from a train)
Things I did not take pictures of while in Denver:
- Linda
- CouchSurfer Max or seatmate friend Taylor (Tyler? the world will never know.)
- My walk to/from the light-rail
- the giant demon horse or the big blue bear
- myself with any of the above
- the mall where Linda and I hung out
- any of my myriad fast food meals (oh my aching tummy) at the airport
- mountains (well, ok, not enough photos)
I enjoyed my very brief visit to Colorado, and definitely would like to go back again. Denver struck me as a strangely large, but rather nice city – one I would like to know better, though I suspect that were we to live there, we’d need to live downtown to have the lifestyle we’d like. Somehow that seems to be a theme with us. SB has described Colorado as basically his dream state – and this sight unseen – so I imagine we’ll be there more in the future, especially with Linda, Jeremiah, and their menagerie beckoning!
August 11th, 2008
Why do I love Etsy? A whole lot of cuteness for not much money at all. My friend Tina and I both bought these charms – not matching ones, though – the other week, and I love them! The absolutely only downside is that I managed to get one wet, so the kitties aren’t as cute anymore – but I’ve learned my lesson, and will take better care.
Get your own at homestudio.etsy.com!
August 6th, 2008
(I had set a goal for myself to blog somewhere every day this month, but that goal was impossibilified by yesterday’s travel suckiness. In lieu of yesterday’s post, an overly thoughtful one too too early in the morning.)
So it’s 7am and I’m in Atlanta, having spent the night in the airport after my flight out of Denver was delayed by a couple of hours. Crying was involved, as was encouragement from several random strangers. The random strangers are the subject of this post.
I really don’t like talking to people on planes. It’s not so much that I’m antisocial as it is that I just want to zone out, read my book, sleep, etc. That said, I talked to my seatmate for the entirety of the 2 1/2 hour flight from Denver to Atlanta, our conversation running the gamut from Aspergers to wilderness therapy to climate change as a concept to metadata. At the conclusion, we exchanged warm farewells, aware that this was a chance connection, forged only because we were stuck in the airport and then in the plane next to each other for several unplanned hours.
When Erin Fae visited a few weeks ago, we talked about how we both really feel the lack of intimate friendships in our lives at the moment. We both certainly have those sorts of friends – the ones that hang out in the kitchen while you’re making dinner, or call you at the last minute to go to the grocery store, or are comfortable being quiet together – but not as many as we’d like, and not necessarily in our same geographic regions, making the spontanaeity and comfort of the relationships a little more difficult. We also talked about how it’s so much harder to make those kinds of friends as adults – and harder to make friends in general.
I guess that’s why I so value conversations like the one I had last night – or like Sunday night, when Max and I went to a bar near his apartment and just talked about whatever for an hour or two. It’s so rare these days to have a real conversation with anyone, much less a total stranger, much less a conversation spanning multiple hours – so when they happen, it seems like a wonderful gift.
I guess the point of this – and bear with me, as I’ve had like 3 hours’ sleep in a cold and uncomfortable terminal – is that I’m thankful for opportunities to connect, to share a little part of my life with someone new, to step outside my comfort zone and be enriched by the experience. I’m especially thankful when, as with Erin Fae, as with Linda, those moments turn into a wonderful friendship.
August 6th, 2008
Denver edition:
- woke at 5am, tossed and turned, took pictures of my CouchSurfer Max’s ceiling
- was showered, dressed, and on my way to the light rail by 6:30am (the time for which I’d set my alarm)
- light-rail to the ‘burbs, breakfast w/random GSLIS grads
- opening plenary, 1st session, nerves setting in
- lunch w/David
- first conference presentation ever! entitled: “Okay, This is Just Too Weird: Identifying Outreach Opportunities in Facebook” and coming soon to an institutional repository near you
- climbed on a rock to take pictures of the mountains
- 3rd session (not as interesting as advertised)
- light-rail back to downtown, drop off stuff at Max’s, walk back to the 16th St Mall and then to Coors Field
- bleacher “rock pile” seats for $4 to watch the Rockies vs. Nats. Add 1 Blue Moon ($6.50) and 1 chicken sandwich and you get 1 happy E.
- leave after the 6th inning out of sleepiness, walk back to Max’s with a stop for airplane snacks.
- Fin.
August 4th, 2008