I'll be in my trailer...

Sylvie in her new favorite window

I am somewhat established in my new happy abode; I have unpacked eight boxes or so and my computer is finally connected. I love my new apartment. This move has been one of the best steps forward for my emotional health in a very long time. I hadn’t realized the magnitude of my dislike for my roommate situation. Not only am I living by myself in my very own space without having to share a kitchen or a bathroom, but I am starting over. This is a new space that I've never shared with anyone else, and that is really healing for me. And aside from all that feel-good business, this place is just cool. It is incredibly bright and sunny, has hardwood floors (in not-so-hot condition, but I don’t mind), it’s upstairs above my own garage, and my new neighbors are very nice.






















Plus my new landlady is really wonderful--I had expressed some trepidation over the condition of the place before I moved in, so she made sure her maintenance guy fixed it, she paid me $50 to clean it (believe me, it was worth at least that much!), and she reimbursed me for all the new cabinet hardware I bought. They are even going to buy me a new fridge once I find an Energy Star one for the right price. Most of all, however, I am pleased that the landlady is simply a nice human being, and as it's her daughter who owns the place she has some real emotional investment in maintaining the property and making sure tenants are happy. When I went to sign the lease she had me meet her at Starbucks (I spared her the lecture) and she insisted on buying me something to drink--”to celebrate,” she said. She is very sweet.

On to my new status as a movie star. Oh yes. Last weekend, right after I moved in, still riding the big blurry wave of exhaustion, I helped one of my friends at Stone make a movie. It was such an incredible blast. I can’t tell you how much fun I had. No really, I can’t. It was that fun. Molly is our graphic artist at Stone and she is a warm, friendly, and very artistic and talented individual. As I recently discovered, she has her own film company these days and has been involved in the 48-hour Film Project for the last three years. The way this works is that competing film crews are given exactly 48 hours to write, film, edit and turn in a 7-minute film. Genres and required plot elements are handed out at the beginning of the 48-hour period to eliminate the possibility of cheating. We drew the “buddy film” genre, and were required to use the following in our film: a character named either Alex or Alice Gomm, a character who is a county official, a spoon, and the line, “Get that thing away from me!”

I think we did a really smashing job, if I say so myself. It’s a real inspiration and I feel privileged to get to work with so many talented people at Stone. At least five brewery employees were major contributors to the project--Molly was our illustrious producer, Matt was the lead actor in the film, Kevin was one of our key script writers and prop dudes, and Barbara blew us all away with her new skills as sound guru. I must add that she looked quite sexy with those headphones on, holding the boom mike and having all that technology hanging off her hip. But she always looks sexy.

What I meant to say was that I’ve really suffered from a lack of creativity in my life the last several years, and I’ve been making small and slow steps toward rectifying that. This movie adventure is a splendiferous example. I thoroughly enjoyed being around so many creative and friendly people. There were about 20 of us working on this project at different intervals, a handful of whom were there throughout the entire process--kudos to Charlie, our intrepid director (and Molly’s brother, incidentally). Friday night we stayed up late brainstorming and nailing down the basic plot elements. Having been selected as one of the actors, I was allowed to go home to get some beauty rest (it didn’t work) while others stayed up all night writing the script and making props. After a solid three hours’ sleep, I came back and we started shooting Saturday morning at 7 a.m. We finished filming and doing the voice-overs at 5 a.m. the next morning. I managed to fall asleep at Molly’s at 6 in the morning on Sunday, after being up for 25 hours on 3 hours’ sleep and spending most of my day in front of very warm lights saying the same lines over and over again...

That was mostly for dramatic effect. While it was thoroughly exhausting--by Sunday morning both Matt and I had sore throats and he was getting really hoarse; he had a lot more lines than I did--I wouldn’t have traded it for the world. I had more fun than should be legal. The only thing that I am worried about is the film screening tonight. I found out after we finished filming that all of the films are being shown at the Hillcrest Cinemas--on a very large real live actual movie screen. I feel like throwing up when I think of seeing myself on a big screen like that. I don’t know if I can handle it, I really don’t. I've been threatening to leave when our film starts (but I know that my curiosity will get the better of me and I'll stay). So far I’ve only seen a little bit of the finished product on youtube and I turned the sound off for most of it. My big consolation is that I was only the supporting cast; Matt was the real star of the film and the camera focused on him for 90% of the time. I’m truly relieved that I’m in the background for most of the film; I really don’t enjoy looking at myself that much. And since Matt is much better looking than I am, it’s probably a relief for the audience as well!

I do have to say that I enjoyed all the extra attention at work yesterday. People from the office kept coming downstairs and talking about how they had seen the film; a few had even seen our few minutes of fame on Fox news on Saturday night. There was occasional random quoting of select lines from the film and appraising looks (no fawning, though; I could have used some good fawning) from folks who had had no previous clue that not only can I pour beer, but that I possess a WEALTH of acting talent as well. Cough. Ack. I think I have a hairball...

June 21: ok, ok, ok, I've been badgered by several people to post the movie on my blog, so here ya go. I'll be in the other room humming loudly.

So far nobody has asked for my autograph. What gives?

Mayhem

I’m in the middle of furiously packing and cleaning (at least I should be; obviously not much packing is going on as I type) for my move, but I just had to share with you the awful fact that I have inexplicably had “Ladies’ Night” stuck in my head ever since I woke up this morning. Lord help me.

Engrish!

Last night I was at Kiki’s house helping her husband celebrate his birthday by eating an enormous amount of tasty food and staying up way too late. We all gathered outside on the perilous deck (there is no railing yet) and ate our way through several helpings of pasta, baguettes, bruschetta, salad, and pesto. All homemade, all amazingly delicious. Kiki's pesto is way better than mine and I need to learn how to make it as well as she does. After topping the dinner off with ice cream from Mariposa--the best ice cream on the planet, I am not kidding--we went inside for hours of silly word games and heated discussions accompanied by wild gestures and raised voices. Lisa had given Welton a book of “Mad Liberals,” a new left-leaning version of Mad Libs, and we played that for a good long while. We learned many important things, such as the fact that Pegasus is the sole owner of the pinwheel and he doesn’t have to share it with any of you sorry commie pinkos.

Later on in the night, K, L, and I decided to escape the wild gestures and raised voices and retired to the computer room to watch Will Ferrell videos. We had sat in the sun room with the boys for a while, because their initial arguing was quite entertaining. However, it soon became a painful spectacle as they got mired in several tangents and began arguing heatedly over what the subject of their argument should be. I believe they spent a solid 50 minutes trying to nail down an acceptable definition of their “First Principle." I’m glad we got out when we did. After a few youtube videos, L introduced us to a site called Engrish.com. I have to say that I have not laughed that hard at anything on the internet in a good long while. I’m not even going to describe it to you; you just need to go there. Right now!

Here is my favorite t-shirt from their store that someone can buy me for an early Christmas present: monkey shirt. I would like it in red in a size small. Thank you very much. This website also has instructions for a fun diversion that I discovered this morning: how to translate your very own English excerpts into tortured and amusing phrases by using the Babel Fish site, or by using Sherlock on a Mac. I did both, and I am happy to say that they turned out splendidly. I took a sentence from my previous blog post that was kind of bizarre even in English. Here is the original text:
"Doesn’t that just happen to you all the time?--You’re sitting at home relaxing and watching a movie, and then two grease-smeared young women show up at 10 o'clock at night asking to borrow some tools to fix their tandem bicycle?"

And now, for the oh-so-enlightening translations, which I have not altered or edited in any way. The first is from Babel Fish, the second is by Sherlock. Please let me know which version you like better.

In that fair you all time? Then -- where it does not happen it loosens the movie, sitting down in the house which is seen, because it locks the tandem bicycle 2 at 10 o'clock the grease coating it is accustomed to painting the fact that you ask that you borrow a certain equipment which in the young woman shows in the night is high.

It causes exactly always in you? In regard to being seated of the
foam/home which -- it loosens is seen the movie because the tandem bicycle is locked, that the tool which at 10 o'clock is in the night is borrowed you ' and then two it asks the grease which shows in the young woman where coating it is accustomed to painting is high.

Situational Hippiedom and Tandem Adventures

In an attempt to quell the lingering blues that have been nagging me for so long, I’ve been making a concentrated effort to spend more time out and about and with my friends. During the past three days I’ve done some really significant socializing. I’ve been to Jen’s house two times; we lazed around on the floor and various articles of furniture, ate a lot, discussed future communal baking opportunities, and I got some serious dog therapy. I love having a friend’s dog that I can borrow for walkies, and of course, he loves it as much as I do. I just tend not to show my enthusiasm by panting and grunting so much. And I get some extra social opportunities thrown in because everyone who sees you on the street says hello when you have a dog. Jen told me it’s also a great way to get dates. So far this has not proven true.

Monday night I got to go to dinner with Louie, a friend whom I used to work with at Stone. I still work at Stone; he’s the one who took off to go pursue a degree in music at Humboldt State. Louie is great company, and he likes good beer, of course. At some point during dinner, we got sucked into the ever-present argument about whether or not I am a hippie, on account of my somewhat hippie-ish values regarding trees and being nice to other people. Why won’t this discussion go away? I don’t believe we ever came to a conclusion about me, but we decided that Louie is a situational hippie. Down here in southern California, particularly in Oceanside, where he lives when he’s not at school, he is definitely somewhat of a hippie--he’s got very long curly hair, a laid-back friendly attitude, his family is 80 percent vegetarian, and he’s a musician. Up north in Arcata, however, he’s nowhere near hardcore enough to be a real hippie. He doesn’t smoke pot, he bathes regularly, his hair is not in dreads, he hates the Grateful Dead, and he’s just too darn responsible. I had never realized that hippiedom was such a relative thing.

At any rate, Louie and I stayed up WAY too late that night talking (mostly not about hippies, thank goodness), and so he stayed here on my couch. The next morning after we got up, he sat down and played some utterly gorgeous pieces of classical music on my piano. It was bliss--sitting on my futon feeling the breeze sifting in through the open window, staring out at the profusion of greenery glazed with early afternoon sunlight, and listening to some really beautiful music made at the hands of a friend. We tried playing a few new pieces and noticed that he and I are just about equally as bad at reading music, although he actually knows what the words on the side mean. He even knows about timing! I’m glad that his education is working so well...and then there’s the fact that he actually practices every day; perhaps I should try that. Then we went to breakfast (at noon) at the Big Kitchen and stuffed ourselves silly on good food. Although I suppose that my fondness for the Big Kitchen does nothing to support my protestations of non-hippieness.

Last night I called up Alegra (no, she’s not fast, so quit asking). She was up for some spontaneous company, so I drove to her place in Pacific Beach. She is lucky enough to have inherited her family’s house on a fairly large plot with a big front yard full of fruit trees. It’s very peaceful; far enough away from the main drag to not feel like you’re in the shallow, too-hip world of PB nightlife. She was in the process of trying to use up her multitudinous carrots from her Be Wise Farm CSA box and was making a very yummy carrot ginger soup. Or, as we decided it was more aptly called, carrot GINGER!! soup. She had used fresh ginger root--and a lot of it. I brought her some tabouli that I had made in exchange. After munching on homemade yumminess, we headed out to the beach for a late-evening picnic. It was all very romantic but she didn’t even hit on me. Geez.

We rode her clunky and fantastic tandem bike down to the boardwalk--it was the greatest! We didn’t crash or fall over or anything. I’m not even sure that I’ve ever ridden on a tandem bicycle before. My only complaint was that in order to not throw off our balance, I couldn’t look to the sides too much and spent much of my time scrutinizing the print on the back of Alegra’s shirt. But it was all worth it. Her bicycle has a wire basket in front and three, yes THREE bells on it--one in the front and two on the back to compensate for the obstructed view. And sitting so close together meant that we could hear each other really well and we shared our respective “breaking down in front of the fire station and hanging out with firemen” stories. Hers was much better than mine, particularly since it involved the very bicycle we were riding on at the moment. We finally found a good bench without glaring lights to obscure our view of the waves, and sat ourselves down with a tiny bottle of champagne, organic dark chocolate truffles, and some of the best damn cheese I’ve ever had in my life. Lovely!! Alegra really knows how to show a girl a good time.

More adventure was in store on the way home, however, as the front chain slipped off its gear and got horrifically jammed when we had only pedaled half a block away from the beach. We tried to no avail to get it out with our fingers, and ended up walking halfway back to her place before we ended up at her friend’s house. Doesn’t that just happen to you all the time? You’re sitting at home relaxing and watching a movie, and then two grease-smeared young women show up at 10 o'clock at night asking to borrow some tools to fix their tandem bicycle? It took some effort, but we finally pounded the chain out of where it was jammed between the two gears, and after some prodigious hand washing and a little chit-chat with our friendly savior, we were off again. We managed to make it all the way back to her place with no further mishaps or need for assistance. Which was good, since there weren’t any fire stations around.

Introspection

I have spent much of my afternoon reading blogs written by other people--people who are delving into matters of much more sociopolitical relevance than I do on mine. This bothers me. Not because I feel inadequate or incapable of discussing situations more pressing than how my doctor’s visit went today, but because I am not doing so. I am not doing so largely because I’m feeling mired down with survival tactics rather than real honest-to-god living. I’m having a difficult time confronting all the myriad things I find wrong in the world around me because my own life is snaring so much of my emotional energy. Even though I feel justified in not being able to devote too much of my energy to crucial cultural events, I can’t help but think that someone who feels the way I do about social affairs has no business ignoring the world around me.

That said, I really think you should take a look at what others have to say: this is a blog entry about an artist who has more nerve and courage than I could imagine; I don’t think I could even have watched her show without running out of the room in squeamish terror. This blog post is by my friend who has been in Jordan for nearly a year; my favorite posts of hers are always the analytical ones where she digs deep into the core of human relations and the often ensuing psychological fallout .

I have been thinking rather intently of late about what the hell I want to do with my life. I’m a little old, I admit, to still be in the early stages of figuring out what I want to be when I grow up, but that is the truth of where I am. I had a great discussion the other day with a very kind, enthusiastic, and friendly young woman at Stone. She had taken my tour and somehow got me to talk about my Master’s in Education and my brief dabbling in the teaching profession. She is a teacher herself and is thriving at her job in Santa Cruz. She listened patiently to my reasons for not feeling up to teaching in the public education sphere--too damn many students to take care of, which strips you of much of your ability to actually CARE for them; too many restrictions from the administration about how you can teach in your classroom (don’t flunk too many students, it makes us look bad! Who cares if they’re reading at a second grade level as a high school junior?); etc. I enjoyed her non-judgmental sympathy and acknowledgment of our educational system's shortcomings, even though she has managed to flourish and maintains some real enthusiasm about her job.

Last weekend, after our dance troupe’s performance at the fair, I stayed at Evie’s house for a while. At one point, her cousin, Jessica, who is a beginning teacher, shared a lot of what she’s dealing with at her school. J is the kind of teacher I always thought I would be, but in reality, I’m just not strong-willed enough or don’t have enough guts to be that person. I’m not being overly hard on myself; I’m just finally coming to terms with who I am. Yes, I’m disappointed that I will never be that hero-teacher. But I simply don’t have the nerve to stand up to an entire school administration and say “Screw you, I am going to give those students who plagiarized their papers zeros and I don’t care if their parents call you to bitch about it.” This is the kind of thing that J does say.

Jessica is an inspiration; she is the epitome of what a teacher should be. She cares about her students deeply but doesn’t let them get away with sub-par work. She has been written up four times in the past month--as far as I can tell, mostly for being a good teacher and standing her ground. She wouldn’t let ROTC come into her classroom to recruit her students. Good for her! Specifically, she got written up for telling them “F- you. You’re not talking to my students!” Particularly when they had actually asked to speak only to the minority kids. I’m not kidding. They apparently didn’t want to enlist the white kids who were ostensibly much more college-worthy or would complain too much about being used as cannon fodder.

Through these conversations I’ve had with other teachers lately, I’ve realized that I have been right in my nagging feelings that I’m not a good fit in the public school system. I am chagrined about my shortcomings, but I’m being honest with myself and that’s a bit freeing. Constant battling with administrations and being asked to defend myself and my actions would require more psychological energy than I possess, not to mention that I am simply not as courageous as I’d like to be and probably would do as I’m told and then feel resentful about it and disappointed in myself for caving in. I need to turn this disappointment into something else. Use it as fuel to get my ass in gear and find that career niche that I really do fit into.

Please submit job offers to my secretary, Bob.

Deranged Knee

You may remember that I hurt my knee on my last archaeological survey. Something inside it has gone wrong. The medical phrase for that is "internal derangement." Really. Specifically, Mike the friendly physical therapist thinks that the most likely cause of my problem is a small tear in the meniscus cartilage that lies on top of the tibia bone and keeps the femur from scraping it when you bend your knee. It's not really that problematic except when I use it extensively; most of the time it doesn't even hurt unless I squat down for more than 30 seconds or climb something fairly steep. Still, it needs fixing. I can’t spend the rest of my life avoiding hills and stairs or walking more than 1 mile at a time.

After an hour and a half’s wait at the doctor’s office this morning (!), I was told that I am going to be referred for an MRI of my knee and to see an orthopedic specialist. I hope it helps. I worry that whatever is wrong in there isn’t bad enough to be obvious and I’m just going to have to live with it. That probably isn’t true, considering that I can consistently make my knee click in this really odd way by bending my leg toward my butt. I think what I’m really worried about is what Mike told me--that if it is a cartilage tear, the only two treatment options are leaving it alone until it heals by itself (two years potentially) or surgery. I like neither of those.

In the meantime, I continue to make poor use of my time off: spending too much time writing blog posts instead of looking for a place to live, for instance...

Chocolate Mountains

As tasty as that title may sound, it refers not to anything edible, but to a jagged range of hills in the northeastern portion of Imperial county. That was where the last survey I worked took place, and it was really amazingly lovely. That was a whole month ago, and I am just now downloading the photos from my camera. I have been too consumed with other matters to bother with it until now.

I just received some fabulously good news this morning--my worker's compensation claim (for my knee injury incurred on said Chocolate Mtns. survey) has been approved and they are going to write me a check for the past month that I haven't been able to work. Thank god! I was starting to be very very worried about how I was going to pay my bills this month, not to mention that I need some extra funds to be able to find a new place to live.

Now, on to the photos! I will only post a few here; the rest are on my Flickr page (click on the little animated badge on the right), so be sure to check them out. I can't really tell you how gorgeous this area is. I would love to be able to go there again. Seeing as how it's not accessible to the public, and that it's a military firing range, that may not happen anytime soon. I don't suggest hiking around out there unless you don't mind losing a few limbs or possibly your whole self in the undertaking. One morning when we got horribly lost on our way out to our work site (it was an hour away from our hotel in Calipatria), we found ourselves in the middle of a very eerie and fantastic tableau. There were dozens and dozens of mangled and rusting tanks sunk into the landscape for target practice, and even more ominous, hundreds and hundreds of bombs sticking up out of the sand like upended metal fish. It was exciting in a frightening sort of way. We beat a rather hasty but careful retreat--after Matt snapped a few photos. I don't have any of those, but I'm not sure they would really do the scene justice anyhow. The camera lens can only capture a few tanks at a time; they were so huge and were scattered over a really wide area.

At any rate, here are the few photos I promised. These are a sampling of the fauna we saw during the survey; be sure to click on them to make them bigger, they look waaaay better that way. There are more landscape photos on Flickr, as well as detailed descriptions; I'm too lazy to type them out twice.
Unidentified but beautiful snake (June 14th--I just learned that this is a coachwhip snake)

Very tiny baby tortoise. See the sand grains clinging to its shell for scale.

Very cool desert iguana

This isn't a good photo, but these lizards are REALLY hard to photograph; they are lightning fast and very leery of humans.

Photographic Medievalness

As promised, I now have just a few photos to share from my eventful Memorial Day weekend (see previous post for details). I would have had them up much sooner, but my internet connection has been rather churlish and spiteful lately. I think I've gotten it chided back into proper behavior for the moment, touch wood. I don't have the one photo that I was boasting about previously, and I apologize--you know, the one with me throwing a sinister look at the camera as I sip from a skull. I know you are all wound up with anticipation, but you'll have to wait it out...I'm sure that no one else finds it as riveting as I do anyhow. I was told that I don't look sinister or threatening at all in that photo, just cute. Hmph!

I also apologize that we have no photos of the other colorful war attendees: the guy dressed up in the amazing Pan outfit, complete with hooves and furry legs (or was he just a garden-variety faun? He didn't have a set of pipes on him), the belly dancers in the ramada dancing to some really outstanding percussion, the singers from the "Bawdy" version of the bards' concert (of course including terrible songs about sheep complete with inflatable lipsticked ewe), the fighting, and all of the other merchant's booths. Of course, I do think, as do numerous other SCA members who told us so, that Kiva Han was one of the best booths at the event. We had no visible PVC or cheap tarps, darnit: lots of tassels, tapestries, a wooden booth and counter, and a lovely little pavilion on the side with low tables and hookahs and full of rugs and pillows to lounge about on.

So here are those photographs:
This is another version of the one at the top. I included two because various people had their eyes closed in each version. This is all of the Kiva Han women except Anna, plus a few hangers-on.


This is Kiki and me in our fabulous hookah lounge. Lounging.


Kiki and me standing in front of our lovely coffee booth. Pretty much all of our costumes are borrowed, but the jewelry is ours, dangit. Check out Kiki's gorgeous necklace!








Kiki looking beautiful, as always. She really doesn't need to cover herself with adornments and makeup to look good.





















Me modeling my sparkly outfit (all mine except for the blue hip scarf, by the way) that I bought at the previous war in February. Sparkly!!

quick note from Kathryn-land

Hey ever'body. I am still alive and managing to slog through this spasmodic morass that is my life. That may seem like a contradictory phrase, but believe me, it's appropriate. I hurt my knee on that last job out in Calipatria, and I have been told by the doctor that I can't do any survey work for at least 5-6 weeks. Due to the complications of not having a real permanent job and switching between companies project to project, I may not be able to collect worker's compensation benefits for the time I can't work. If not, I'm hoping that unemployment can help. We shall see.

I have told my roommate that I want out, and he's terribly upset, but that can't be helped. I love this apartment complex, and I will miss the friends that I have made among my neighbors, but I just can't handle living with anyone else right now. It's making my emotional distress that much more acute. I am dreading moving, but I am looking forward to having a new space of my own with much eagerness.

At the apex of my mood parabola, I had a great time this past Memorial Day weekend. I spent the entire time at an SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism--you know, Medieval reenactment geeks) event. The best part was that I worked for my friend Liz at her Turkish Coffee booth and I made a decent amount of money. Certainly enough to pay for the weekend and leave a little bit for boosting my bill-paying ability. And I had a lot of fun, which I desperately needed. Kiki works there, too, now, and it's just wonderful. Actually, the five of us who work there all know each other pretty well and get along famously. And working at Kiva Han is like no other job: I get to wear really outlandish and beautiful ethnic costumes and jewelry, I'm encouraged to flirt outrageously with the clientele, and people feed me and bring me fun things to drink while I'm working. I enjoyed this war event more than I had any other in years.

Photos will be posted as soon as I can get them from the other people who remembered to bring their cameras with them. My personal favorite is the one of me drinking rum and coke from a ceramic half-skull. Watch this space for new and improved blog posts...

A Post Especially for Ba-bawa, Whose Attention Span Necessitates a Dearth of Text to Ensure that She Will be Able to Read it to the Very End

Today I woke up late and had a bowl of cereal.

:)

One Month

Desert Sojourn round two just never quite materialized the way I intended it to. To sum up, week two in Barstow was much the same as the first, minus the gale-force winds and with a lot more topography and cans. I did end up spending my birthday in a dive bar in Barstow (there aren't any other kind there, as astutely noted by a coworker), but I was able to score a few bottles of Sierra Nevada while the bartender guzzled down some Bud Light and gave us weird looks. We wrote several things on the bar's ceiling, as encouraged by our helpful barkeep. We made sure everything we wrote included the word "bitch" or made some reference to oral sex so that we didn't stand out as high-falutin' outsiders. I am now immortalized on a ceiling in Barstow--"Kathryn is a Hot-Ass Psycho Bi-atch. And How!" I am thrilled.

And now, some photographic highlights for those of you who don't like to read all these damn tedious words.

Khaki-clad Kathryn and Tamara enjoying tasty lunchables in a sandy wash, and blending in beautifully with their surroundings.

Russ modeling alternative hat-wearing options

Horny toad hiding under a bush after I nearly stepped on the poor thing--sometimes camouflage can be a disadvantage when you can't outrun the bipeds.

Cute little flake tool made out of chert. We didn't find very many interesting things such as this; mostly just a bunch of modern garbage and boring historic churchkey cans.

After I got home from the Barstow job, I celebrated my birthday with a group of friends at Lips, the local drag-queen cabaret. Yay for drag queens! We had a blast, of course. Look how happy everyone is! Since it was my birthday I was taken up on stage and had a crown put on my head while the host made fun of me. S(he) called me Tickle Me Elmo because I was laughing so much--this was after they told me that my hair was way to conservative and teased it until it was a foot high. I am not kidding. See? Afterwards, a few of us went to the Red Fox Room, and I left my crown on with its crest of teased hair. I am not easily embarrassed. The funniest thing was that a nice young man actually gave me his phone number when I left. He was very polite and sincere and I am sorry to say that I laughed when he gave it to me. I felt bad for hurting his feelings, because I wasn't laughing at him, I was laughing at the fact that anyone could think I'm attractive wearing my fishnets and blue eyeshadow and big hair and silly paper crown. He wouldn't have liked the real me, anyhow.


I was home for one week and worked at the brewery for a few days, then went back out to the desert, but this time we were in Calipatria, a pungent one-gas-station town 1/2 hour north of El Centro. Thankfully, we were working quite a bit northeast of there--in the Chocolate Mountains--where it was much more scenic. There is much to tell of our trip, but that is going to warrant its very own post with accompanying photos and lots of adjectives.

Desert Sojourn round one

I am back from my first week of surveying in the desert. The town of Barstow wasn't the terrible sucking void of rural depravity that I had been imagining--but that may be because I only ventured out from my hotel room on one evening out of the four we were there. We arrived rather late on Sunday night and then I had a terrible time trying to sleep--the last time I looked at my clock it was about 1:20 a.m., and I had to get up at 5:45 in the morning. After a full day of stomping around on desert pavement on less than four hours of sleep I wasn't up to going out for dinner with my coworkers at all and hibernated in my hotel room. I was in bed before 9 o'clock. The next night we all piled into the two company vehicles and went to the local pizza place, which was nicer than we expected. But of course, they had nothing on tap that a beer snob like myself would consider paying to drink. However, to make up for this terrible affront to consumers of quality alcohol, they did serve an appetizer called Mafia Bread. I forgot to have some.

I do love working out of town sometimes. It gets tiring being away from home if you have been doing it for months on end, but in small doses it's a nice departure from the responsibilities of daily life. I had no chores to do, no pressing issues or business to take care of other than loafing in my hotel room and reading a good book. I also tend to eat better for some reason when I'm working in the field: I eat at least one piece of fruit every day and vary my diet beyond the ubiquitous bread and cheese that I subsist on at home. I'm really not sure why I can't sustain this kind of healthy eating behavior when I'm not out of town. Now I'm back to three meals of cold cereal per day, punctuated by the occasional yogurt.

The work itself was as exciting as ever; I am not being sarcastic in the slightest. Even though we found very little of archaeological interest and we were assaulted by gale force winds for three days, I had a great time. The area we are working in is south of Barstow proper by at least 8 to 10 miles, on the west side of the I-15 freeway. By many people's standards, I suppose it isn't pretty. I used to hate the desert myself. I'm sure it stems from my childhood trauma of relocating from the tree- and water-bound realm of New England to the hottest part of central Arizona when I was seven years old. As a child, I found nothing inspiring or beautiful in the denuded landscapes surrounding the Phoenix area. Family excursions to the painted desert were excruciating exercises in boredom, and Hole-in-the-Rock was just a mildly interesting geological phenomenon that barely held my interest before I was distracted by the delicious thrill of fear provided by our substantial new elevation. Even the varied and sometimes bizarre desert wildlife that I found so utterly fascinating and collection-worthy could not alter me from my steadfast opinion that the desert was an ugly, barren waste.


I was twenty-eight years old the first time I ever found beauty in the desert. I was working my first paid archaeological job surveying in Anza Borrego State Park. It was late winter, but springtime for the high desert. Every cactus in sight was covered in multicolored blooms, the ocotillo were in full riot mode, sporting fistfuls of tiny red flowers at the tips of skeletal green fingers, and there was even grass in many places. Grass! I finally began to notice that the landscape was not a barren wasteland at all, even without the flowers and the unexpected greenery. There is a symphony of color and texture to be found in deserts unlike anywhere else.

The desert outside of Barstow may not have the wildly varying topography of Anza Borrego, but the tenacious cacti in all their varied forms and the long, sloping lines undulating up to the horizon are still beautiful in their sparse way. The cacti out here are unlike any I've seen before--they are so thoroughly covered in long, interwoven spines that the cactus itself is almost completely hidden from view within the basket-like encasement of miniature swords. I even found several that had died, and the spines remained locked together in the shape of the original plant even though there was nothing inside anymore--all the cactus flesh had long since wasted away and the spines held nothing but air.

The last few days of our survey were unbelievable from a meteorological standpoint. I had never ever been outside in winds like that before. In the afternoons, we were still bundled up like astronauts even though it wasn't quite that cold, although the mornings were unbearable with the 45-degree temperatures coupled with 60-mph winds. I kid you not. We heard on the last day that there had been gusts up to 100 mph out there, and it certainly felt like it. We had to abandon our survey on some of the hills because the winds were so ferocious at the higher elevations that we were losing our footing on the loose rocks, and it was just too dangerous. Cheryl fell down 4 times, and I lost my balance on countless occasions. Both Cheryl and I did some experimenting and discovered that we could lean our bodies fully into the wind and it held us up. I counted a maximum of 6 seconds on one occasion before the wind finally let go and I started to fall. Up on top of the hill, before we gave up and went down to less treacherous altitudes, we encountered a related phenomenon. There is a cell phone tower at the top of the hill surrounded by a cinder-block wall. We all gathered on the lee side of the wall at one point to escape the wind, and every single one of us had the same experience getting there. Our bodies were so tense and leaning so hard into the wind that when we turned around the wall's corner, the sudden cutting-off of the wind made us all stumble and almost fall over.
That's me on the right, there; this was actually taken on one of the LESS windy days.

There isn't much to report from an archaeological standpoint. The area we were surveying this week was mostly disturbed. People have been using the cell tower hill and its vicinity as a shooting range for a good long while. Absolutely everything there is full of bullet holes--even many of the yucca plants are all shot up. People evidently have great fun taking their old computers out to the desert and using them for target practice, along with just about anything else you can think of. We found bowling pins, bowling balls, a plastic human skeleton (nearly life size), numerous propane tanks, black light pot posters, and my favorite, a statistics textbook, all blasted apart and riddled with holes. Have something around the house you don't use anymore, doesn't work, or you just want out of your life? Don't sell it on ebay or take it to a thrift store--take it out to the desert and shoot the bejeezus out of it instead! K told me that the hill was used by the military for target practice before the general public discovered it, and it is now called Lead Hill. Apparently, there is so much lead from the spent ammunition that it is now leaching into the water table.

We found very little cultural evidence--only a few very sparse rock rings that may have been hearths at one point. We did see several desert tortoises, however. That truly made my week. I've only seen a tortoise one time before in the wild. We found a total of 4 or 5 between the two survey teams. Two of the tortoises were snug in their burrows, but the others were out an about, roaming their slow way across the desert terrain. We also found three shells/skeletons. One was a tiny tortoise shell smaller than the palm of my hand, and it made us all sad that the little thing died so young. The other desert life was pretty scarce--no snakes at all, and only a few lizards and the occasional jackrabbit bounding away from us. I believe that it was just too cold and overcast for the reptiles to be out in the open air. The second to last day of this week, we even got a few minutes of rain along with the wind and clouds. It was beautiful watching the clouds racing through the sky and their shadows zooming across the landscape were almost surreal, but it was terribly cold. The wind was just so fierce that sometimes I literally could not catch my breath.

Now I am home and enjoying the lack of wind. Actually, I am at K's house with her family. She is making french toast for breakfast, I am looking out the windows of the sun room at a canyon full of trees, and my cat is here bounding around like one possessed. I feel good.

Decent

Well, I had a fairly good day today and thought that warranted posting. It started out pretty nasty (see below for just a small sample of the nastiness), and I was in a wretched mood by the time I arrived at work. Fortunately, I work in a beer factory. It's fun. Just about everybody who walks in the door is supremely happy to be there, and if they're not when they get there, they definitely are by the time they leave. We even get the occasional hardcore fan from several states away making a pilgrimage to the brewery--they are always easy to spot by the awed and disbelieving looks on their faces as they walk into the store very slowly and reverently, which soon gives way to sheer joy and giddiness and exuberant stories about how far they had to travel to get here. These people are loads of fun to be around.

The above photo, incidentally, is of my very favorite beer that we make. It's truly lovely, and if you are a fan of Imperial stouts at all, you have no business not trying some. Soon.

I also got to give another tour today, to my largest group yet--28. I actually started out pretty badly (in my opinion, but was told later it wasn't so). I felt like the first 5-10 minutes of the tour I was only warming up to my usual meaningful banter, and unfortunately the warm-up took place with everybody listening while I repeated myself and said stupid things amplified by a microphone. At any rate, it ended quite well; people laughed at my dumb jokes and were good-natured about my making fun of them. I even passed a sneaky test--one of the tour-goers was an experienced customer of ours who was evidently feeling that I couldn't possibly be up to par with Ken, who is our main tour guide. So, he expressed his doubts to my brother, who encouraged him to ask me his question rather than bugging Ken about whether I knew it or not. I got it right! Hah. I may just be the small back-up tour guide, but I know my beer.

I'm not a believer

For some horrific and inexplicable reason I woke up this morning with a Monkees song stuck in my head. Bloody hell.

Feel better or else!

I have been in a terrible funk of late, due to health reasons among other things, but my friends have done their best to help me banish it. Saturday after work I went over to K's house and had dinner with her, her kids, husband, and husband's friend. It was great to be surrounded by so many people. We ate lots of homemade burritos and watched a movie--or attempted to. Out of the six people in attendance, only two of us managed to remain conscious throughout the entire show. Granted, it was a long and slow-moving film, but it held my attention well enough. The movie was "Mongolian Ping Pong." I liked it, but I think I was alone in my appreciation. K's husband and his friend were being driven absolutely nuts by the pacing and began boisterously heckling the screen about halfway through. If you don't mind prolonged, long-range camera shots and a slow-moving and sparse plot, it's truly worth it. The scenery is breathtaking and I felt that the pacing and subdued dialogue fit the story and the culture beautifully. It reflected the broad, bleak landscapes and the isolation of a nuclear family living alone miles away from the closest neighbors.

Then I spent all day yesterday in Newport Beach with three friends--it was a much needed departure from my daily routine. Nothing but mindless fun and lots of lascivious conversation. We tried on corsets, ate a lot of food, made dizzying rounds in and out of the dressing rooms in a funky alternative clothing store with a sulky salesclerk with multicolored tall hair, and watched K (the other one) and L drink a lot of mixed drinks. Those girls know how to have a good time.

That's me in that photo, by the way, sporting the dominatrix outfit that I will be wearing to my new night job. I seem to have misplaced my whip...

Today I paid dearly for my fun, unfortunately. While I had only a few sips of the drinks (I was driving), I shouldn't have exerted myself so much. I couldn't sleep last night on top of being so exhausted, and today I'm really just not feeling up to snuff. I work tomorrow at the brewery and then have two days off to rest up. After a few more days' work at Stone I will leave for my survey job in Barstow--wish me luck!

Grammatical Rapture, Mutants and Bacon

It looks like my intention to write in my blog every day has fallen rather short. I have been somewhat busy, actually. Either that or moping...at any rate, here's an abridged synopsis of the past week, minus any episodes of brooding and non-activity (truthfully, there haven't been too many of those lately; I'm just using them for dramatic effect).

The last few weeks I've been working a lot more at the brewery, which doesn't really inflate my bank account by much (I actually did some calculating yesterday and realized that I make the same amount there that I do by not working at all and collecting unemployment payments), but since nobody else is even replying to my job applications, it's the best I can do. And it is a fun job; I truly enjoy my time there...when I'm not folding shirts. This last Monday I had the occasion to give both of the brewery tours that day. I had a great time. Giving tours makes the day go by incredibly fast, for one thing. And I positively love talking about beer in front of large groups of people; I think I just love talking to people no matter the occasion. And yes, I enjoy being the center of attention, to be honest. However, whatever selfish motivation I may have for enjoying giving tours so much, they were very well-received. My brother is convinced that people pay more attention to a woman than a man leading tours, and I'm starting to think he's right. One guy even told me that this was the third tour that he's taken here, and that mine was "By far the most informative." Amazing! And then someone else asked me if I was the main tour guide. And then another guy tried to tip me (we can't technically accept them). He should have tried harder--I would've taken it had he offered it a second time. All in all, I had a wonderful time. Even though I'm not getting paid much, I love being paid to stand around and share my beer snobbery with a captive audience.

Two days ago I had an unprecedented and totally gratifying experience at the grocery store. Henry's, to be more specific; I want to give them all the credit they deserve. Bear in mind my fanaticism in regard to the proper use of English grammar (except when writing my own blog--note previous sentence). Well, there I was in the checkout line, and lo and behold, their express line sign actually said, "10 items or fewer." Fewer! Every other express checkout line in the land says "10 (or 12 or 14 1/2) items or less," which is, of course, totally and horribly wrong. Less is for things you can't quantify, like sunshine or happiness. Saying you can have only 10 of something certainly makes them quantifiable entities. Hurray for Henry's, the only grocery store in Southern California to fully grasp the simple beauty of correctly applied grammar!

One result of my ongoing pennilessness is that I have sunk to new lows of gastronomic self-abuse. Last night I made a sandwich, the more offensive details of which I will leave out to spare the faint of stomach. I was actually laughing out loud as I made it, and thinking to myself, "This is the most horrible sandwich I've ever made!" Truly, it was. Why did I do such a thing to myself? Partially out of boredom; I'm tired of eating cold cereal and bread and cheese. I was also attempting to stretch my grocery money out a little further by attacking the long-forgotten Morningstar brand fake bacon lurking in the freezer. Blechh. That stuff tastes like bacon bits in elongate form. I have been avoiding it because in addition to its unappealing flavor, this brand, in particular, has an ingredient list that takes up half of the box, and it's full of polysyllabic words of unfathomable origin. I didn't buy it, just in case you're wondering. But it was there, and I thought I'd try to be frugal and eat the stuff. Next time frugality is taking a hike in favor of eating something that is actually pleasurable.

Today I went downtown to sign paperwork for the project I'll be working on next month. I wish it started sooner; that paycheck is a long way in the future. At any rate, I'm exceedingly happy just to have the work. I did have to spend about 1/2 hour of my precious day off completing the company's online code of conduct training--you know, answering questions about whether or not it's unethical to lie to auditors or leave photos of naked people on coworkers' desks. I think I passed (leaving nekked pictures is okay as long as nobody knows you did it, right?).

Oh, and I saw The Host last night. Fantastic movie! It was not highbrow artsy fartsy cinema; just a good old-fashioned entertaining Korean monster movie. With some extremely unlikely humorous moments and a good wallop of well-executed human drama thrown in (I nearly cried several times). I recommend it: there was no gore or gratuitous violence, just some honest scary moments and not too over-the-top tension. And the monster was very, very cool looking. Quite appropriately freaky and mutant-ish. But don't go see it expecting logical explanations of plot elements--that's not the point. Just enjoy it. I did!

Beggars and Raindrops

Hey Kids! Today has been a decidedly better day than yesterday. I'm sure that not waking up at 4 a.m. with a persistent bout of insomnia had something to do with it. Then I was just a whirlwind of activity, which always feels good. I bravely tackled the many stacks of old paperwork and unopened mail which have been lurking ominously in hidden locations around the house. I did a lot of recycling and refiling. I went to the store, post office, and gas station. All in all, I am very pleased with myself for being so successfully industrious.

One of the main perks to my day was that someone called me this morning and offered me work on a 2-week project next month. Oh happy day! I'm ecstatic to have real work in my immediate future, even if it does entail staying away from home in a cheap motel in Barstow. Yikes. It's a survey project, and I love surveying--it's always been my favorite archaeological endeavor. Sometimes it feels like getting paid to go on long hikes in the wilderness--that's in the most ideal situations. Sometimes it can be a real ordeal, as in the three months I spent in the blinding heat of El Centro's desert last summer. No matter what, it always is exponentially more fun than sitting in an office typing away on a keyboard under florescent lighting.

There is a hitch, of course: I had been planning on going to a really fun beer class at Stone next month on the day before my birthday. It's going to feature many samples of different varieties of stout, one of my favorite styles of beer. And I'm going to miss it. At first I was considering missing a few days of the survey to come down for it and celebrate my birthday, but that's just displaying a phenomenal lack of common sense. I'm in the unfortunate position of beggar at this point of my life, not chooser. So there you have it. I will be spending my birthday in Barstow, sitting in a local dive bar drinking Bud light...ACK! I will, of course, be doing no such thing, even though I'll be in Barstow. Maybe I'll buy a jelly donut and stick a candle in it after I eat my frozen dinner.

The day even closed on a lustrous and gorgeous note: There were mountains of dark blue rain-filled clouds filling the eastern half of the sky, but there was room under the western cloudbank for the sun to break through, and it was shining this brilliant intense white light on all the buildings in the neighborhood and lighting them up in glowing contrast to the darkening sky behind them. It was absolutely breathtaking. And then there was lightning! That is a rarity around here. Real lightning and real, booming, echoing rounds of thunder following. The first fat drops of rain started coming down just as I turned the corner of my street. I thought my ice cream cone was dripping on my wrist at first...but it was just sweet, gentle, glorious rain.

Disguised Alley Stealth-walk

Today was my first "weekend" day. I worked the past five days at the brewery, which is fun, but exhausting with the commute and standing on cement floors all day. I went to Jen's house this afternoon, after a long morning and early afternoon full of lolling about the house. I woke up at 4 a.m. this morning, and couldn't go to sleep again for another few hours. Then I sat on the couch and read all morning til I couldn't handle the encroaching sleepiness and went back to bed for the third time. My day started in earnest at 1 p.m.--that didn't leave me much time to be productive.

I was overly optimistic about the weather when I walked to Jen's place, and didn't take a jacket with me--and I was wearing flip-flops. It was getting dark by the time I left, and the weather had turned very windy and cold, so she loaned me a baby-blue jacket to wear on the way home. Those of you who know me well know that this is not a color I normally choose to adorn my person. Pastels in general tend to make me cringe. However, it was kind of a liberating experience wearing her jacket home. I felt like I was in disguise wearing something so out of character for me. Nobody knew who I was! Maybe I was on a secret mission for the FBI. Could happen. Because it was so cold, I walked almost the whole way home through the alleys. Somehow, all the two-story apartment buildings in the neighborhood are clustered around alleyways, which forms a nice windblock for chilled women walking home in baby-blue jackets.

Here are a few impressions from today's excursion: Walking by a house with an open front door, I heard the reception of a woman who had evidently just gotten home; almost drowning out her affectionate voice was the maddened scrabbling of two large dogs' nails on hardwood floors and a symphony of joyous whining and barking. And then, bordering one of the alleys in a nondescript and humble spot, was a narrow strip of cement with the imprints of several leaves in it. Accidental art.

Only one thing infringed upon my happiness of walking home at dusk with the wind at my back and the darkening sky laced with wispy orangey pink clouds: walking down the alleys (Struttin' down the alley...) made that Stray Cats song stick in my head the entire way home and it is still there...Singin' the blues, while the lady cats cry.

Girlycycle and Pizza Pie

My favorite neighborhood sighting today: a woman on a big street motorcycle, with big black saddle bags dripping fringe on either side. The most eye-catching feature, however, was her helmet--burnished gold with bright pink trim. And the coup-de-grace: a big pink stuffed puppy dog strapped onto the back side of the high seatback, cheerfully glowing girly pinkness at the general public.

I have really been enjoying my frequent walks around my neighborhood lately. It's a great little community, full of older houses and small privately owned shops and restaurants, and a lot of people get around by walking or riding bicycles. I have also been going on extra walks with my friend Jen, who is blind. She needs the extra exercise, I need the outdoor exposure, and we both benefit from being with a friend in the afternoon. A truly symbiotic experience. And today we discovered another mutually beneficial aspect of our friendship: she loves to be read to, and I love to read out loud. So we spent some time today with me reading her some of my more entertaining and older blog posts to her. It's more fun for her because I can use a lot more variation and inflection in my voice than the reading program on her computer manages. I think I do fairly well at not sounding like a robot when I read. Plus, I can correctly pronounce all those made-up words I like to drop into my writing from time to time. The screen reader evidently just plods through phonetically as best as it can, which takes all the fun out of making up words in the first place.

I was overcome by a pizza craving on the way home from Jen's house. Fortunately, a mere two blocks from my apartment building is a tiny little family-owned pizza place. They are super nice folks and you can even order single custom-made slices with anything you want on them. I decided to go the more economical route and just got a whole small pizza--I can justify the extra five bucks of expense by the additional two meals I will get out of it. Walking home was a terrible ordeal, however--the pizza smelled absolutely delicious and my stomach was rumbling angrily at me and it was all I could do not to just open the box right there on the street and stick my whole face into it. MMmmmmmmmm....piiiiiiiizzaaaaaa...(animal-like sloppy devouring noises)

Ma'am Ogled

Welcome to the next installment of "Who Stared at Me on My Way Home." I really am starting to feel a little boost in my self-esteem, no matter how silly, from the visual attention I am garnering on my increasingly frequent jaunts around my neighborhood. I was talking on the phone to my friend Steve and told him that I was getting stared at much more than usual today, so we had a brief discussion about possible causes. He first asked me if I remembered to wear pants. I looked down. "Yes, I am wearing pants. That can't be it." Hmmmm. Maybe it was the fact that I was on the phone: perhaps that made it more permissible to stare openly due to the presumption that I would be preoccupied and therefore not notice as much? I finally decided on the fact that the shirt I'm wearing today has shrunk and a very thin strip of unclothed tummy skin was exposed between the bottom of the shirt and the top of my jeans. No navel was brazenly displayed or anything, but that must be it--people in this neighborhood are desperate for that inch of skin. I even had one solicitous young man earnestly warn me in between not-so-covert downward glances that I needed to walk extra carefully because of all the construction on the street. He actually stopped me to tell me this, and then said, "You have a nice day, ma'am." Ma'am! I find it fascinating that you can have exposed abdominal flesh and still constitute a ma'am at the same time. Maybe my tummy looks old and respectable. My tummy exudes ma'amness. I am ma'am, hear me roar!

Money Toad

It occurs to me that perhaps the reason I am having such difficulty pinning down a real full-time job is that I have not been wearing my money toad. I have several gorgeous jade necklaces, all of which contain some type of Chinese symbolism, generally relating to luck, health, or finances. My money toad is an adorable little stone creature with one back leg extended and gripping a coin in his mouth, ready to deliver it to the home of his wearer. I have been neglecting him, and therefore, he is neglecting me. I am not particularly superstitious, but I do believe that if you surround yourself with physical reminders of what you need and desire from life, these things will be in the forefront of your thoughts and therefore you will be better equipped to make them happen. It is just an assisted form of positive thinking, I suppose. Whatever works; the human mind is capable of much more than we typically use it for during our daily routines, and it's about time that I put mine to better use.

Mr. F-word meets Ginger

I had an amusing experience today at my brewery job. As one might expect, being the only woman working in a place serving beer I get flirted with, or just plain stared at, fairly often. Most of the time, this doesn't reach levels of true obnoxiousness. However, tonight, there was a man, presumably about my own age even though his behavior belied it, accompanied by two younger men who said that he was their uncle. He sprinkled the f-word so liberally throughout his comments that I genuinely, with no exaggeration, could not tell what he was trying to say some of the time. At any rate, the nephews kept apologizing for him, which I found very amusing. At one point Mr. F-word told me that I was awfully giggly, and that he liked that in a woman. I don't giggle. I laugh. Loudly. At any rate, after a few more moments of heckling and badly worded come-ons, he then said, "No, no, I'm sorry, I'll stop." I told him please not to because I needed the entertainment. A few minutes later he asked me what my name was, and I looked pointedly at his nephews and asked, "Is it safe to tell him my name?" Vigorous head-shaking ensued from both parties. So I told Mr. F-word that my name is Ginger, which made his nephews laugh uproariously. "Ginger!" They shouted gleefully. "Yeah, that's my stage name." I think Mr. F-word believed me.

musing

It is cloudy this morning, as it was yesterday, and I am so grateful for the temporary respite. I spent much of Monday mentally shaking my fist at the blank white cloudless sky and cursing the dry heat. I suppose a San Diego day of Santa Ana winds is better than a summer day in Florida with all the smothering humidity and bugs the size of small dogs. But still. It's March, for god's sake; it's too early for me to be getting in my car and yelping in shock from the sudden contact of my skin against the blazing hot upholstery. And these cloudy mornings are proving to be an empty promise. Burning afternoons with all the moisture sucked out of them, followed by evenings of scattered clouds and even sprinkles appear to be the new norm. Craziness.

I recently made a few resolutions, only one of which I am making any progress with. I decided that I absolutely must begin exercising more, and that every day this week that I am not working that I will go out for a long bike ride. Monday I managed a medium-length bike ride, and I'm very proud of myself. I'm also trying to be more aggressive with the job search, but I'm having difficulty with self-esteem issues--a serious impediment. Both of these resolutions are kind of on hold today, at least, because I have had a mysterious pseudo-migraine headache for three days. It alternately feels like a moderate oppressive ache and then suddenly there is some crazed demon stabbing my forehead with an icepick. The accompanying nausea is the real kicker, I suppose. It's very hard to motivate myself under these conditions. I just want to go back to bed with the hope that tomorrow this will finally leave me alone and I can take my refreshed and energized self down to the Career Center and do some serious job hunting.

Coda: On Monday, during my bike ride down the looping street that winds itself around the perimeter of my neighborhood, a couple of men doing some roofing whistled at me (several times!) when I rode by. I was amused and surprisingly flattered by this. When I was much younger I used to be totally incensed at construction workers' catcalls and remarks--I felt besmirched somehow by their behavior. I thought they were just being misogynistic assholes. So now I find it terribly amusing that not only was I not upset by the wolf-whistling roofers, but that it actually made me happy. I suppose it is a function of growing older that I am pleased that anyone still thinks I'm worth whistling at.

Literary Diversion

I have decided when I have days like today, steeped in despondency, or when I'm feeling uninclined to write, I am going to share some smidgen of literature with you. Today's installment was written in the six years or so following the end of WWII, by a woman who was New York's State Poet from 1995-1997, and whose photo graces the beginning of today's post. I discovered her when I stopped to browse the used books for sale at the library many months ago.


Meteors

Whom can we love in all these little wars?
The aviator, king of his maps and glowing lights
But dispossessed of six-foot-two of ground?
The sailor, blind as a worm, suspended
In a hammock made of scrap iron, in his fear
Heavy and liquid to the touch as night?

Whom can we love? The same question
Asked five years back drops through my ear and dies
With a fizzle of brightness at the center of my brain.
The sky is streaked with pilots falling. I see
Buried in altitude like meteors
Cartoons of wit and sex, skeletons of leaders.

-Jane Cooper

Confessions

My dear friends and fambly, I'm sorry I've neglected my blog for so long. While I originally began this bloggy venture as a way to keep my widely scattered loved ones in touch with the goings-on in my life, I long ago decided to keep it fairly non-personal. Meaning that I didn't want to lapse into long descriptions of my emotional state, and that I wanted to keep the negativity at bay and only write about the positive happy bits. The downside to this Pollyanna-ism is that when I'm having a low spell, you folks don't hear from me.

This past month has been a combination of extremes: I have alternately been horrifically depressed and weepy and manically busy finding things to distract myself. I have had more than my share of low blows lately, some of it financial, much of it just ongoing wretchedness that began months and months ago. Life is definitely an uphill struggle for me right now, but I'm still plodding along. My largest obstacle at the moment is that when I was finally healthy enough to go back to work full time, there was no work to be had. Financial chaos has ensued. Combine this with my already volatile emotional state and you have a recipe for a very despondent Kathryn. However, I do, as I have mentioned many times before, have a large number of very good friends who have been doing an excellent job of providing me with shoulders to cry upon and with numerous excursions to distract me from my woes. Thank you so much to those of you who have helped me keep my head above the water. With that said, here is the original post that I wrote a week ago (plus a few improvements) but was feeling too morose to post:

In addition to my dance troupe practice once a week, I am now taking belly dance lessons once a week. My friend Lisa (of the gorgeous jade-colored eyes) got me into this class and I love it. In contrast to my dance troupe, where we have to put in a lot of serious practice for upcoming performances, the belly dance class is pure fun. It's also very much needed for me--there are several basic belly dance maneuvers that I still have a difficult time performing, and given that my dance troupe is having our first performance of the year in a week and a half, I really need the extra practice. The instructor is great, too. She's always telling us how hot we are and that we need to flirt with ourselves. She's a blast.

On Presidents' Day Weekend I took my first road trip in years and took off to Arizona for another one of my Medieval Nerd Conventions, otherwise known as an SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) event. This particular gathering was a war, where you have hundreds and hundreds of people--not just men: remember the "creative" part of their name--out on a big field dressed in full armor and bashing the hell out of each other with swords and spears and axes. It's a great spectacle of noise and color. Other than that, it was just a bunch of wandering around dressed in cleavage-enhancing period clothing and enjoying the freedom of being totally separated from my normal life. I spent most of my time shopping at merchant's row in the daytime and carousing in the evening: wandering from fire to fire watching drumming and dancing, and tripping over the agricultural berms and falling in a heap with my friends. I took K with me; actually, he drove, so I suppose it's the other way around. He had never been to an SCA event before, and this particular war is a great place to start due to its size. There typically are 6-8,000 people attending the war in Arizona. I'm pretty sure K had a good time. What's not to like? We got to start drinking at noon, sitting around camp in our period outfits eating fancy bread and cheese and just generally reveling in our indolence before the serious carousing began. A good life.

In other more serious news, I finally have a roommate. For real this time--he's actually moved in; he's been here for a little over a week. I am still fairly leery of this whole deal and I'm having a somewhat difficult time adjusting to having someone else in my living space, particularly a boy, but in general, I know it's a good thing. I definitely needed the help with rent, and after all, he makes delicious smoothies for breakfast. I can't complain too much.