Sunday, June 25, 2006

packing!

I'm leaving town in two days, leaving the country in a week. And what have I done about this? Nothing! Why bother to pack in advance when I can stay up all night before leaving frantically throwing things into a bag, only to realize when I arrive that I have brought no underwear, and all of my shirts are long sleeved sweaters. As this is my normal procedure, I was planning to avoid it by packing earlier. But this evening I realized that almost everything I plan on wearing on-site is dirty, and therefore must be washed-but the laundry room is closed tonight, and I have appointments all day tomorrow. So, fine, no chance to have clean clothes, I'll just get up at 7 Tuesday and wash them all then.

Then, epiphany--I can take all of the clothes I plan to bring to my parents house and wash them while I'm waiting to go to a wedding! Finally, after four years of college that was too far away to bring home dirty laundry, I get to do the vacation laundry dump! Now all I need to do is decide what I need to bring instead of making sure it is fit to be brought. I am brilliant!

Crap. Now I need to actually decide what I need to bring. I hate this part of traveling the most--how I wish for the ability to magically summon my possessions anywhere I need them, instead of humping the around Asia and Europe and realizing when I get back that I've only used half of them. Last summer, I brought practically a whole first aid kit- who ever really needs a whole box of band-aids, or pepto-bismol (is there anyone else who spent years thinking it was Pepto-Bismo?), or even a full-sized bottle of Advil? There is no need to carry these things, but I am convinced that I will have some sort of emergency and they will be the difference between life and death. Damn my mother and her over-packing genes! But I will perservere, and this year, this year my luggage will not appear to contain the kitchen sink in addition to my clothes and camping equipment.

I did put the tent up in my living room to air it out and make sure it is functional. I don't recall what I was doing when I put it away the last time--I know I aired it after I lent it to Liz, but I appear to have had a stroke putting it away, as it was more Balled-up than folded neatly. It's so odd, this is completely not me, I like things to be put away in order so they don't get destroyed while they're there, but here is the evidence, I crapped out. And with no memory at all. Beginning to wonder if I might have really, really earlyonset Alzheimers... ANYway, I bought the thing two years ago but haven't actually used it myself, as I managed to finagle my way into a bed indoors each year. This year I've come to the conclusion that, while having an actual bed is all well and good, sleeping inside in the 110 degree weather is so very, very sucky that it makes the bed moot.

Tent pros:
  • It cools off in the evening, to a positively balmy 90 or so degrees (or even 80 if I'm very, very lucky!)
  • I have complete and utter control over the mosquito environment--no one else letting the damn things in while I'm asleep! Also, I can carefully avoid letting scorpions or snakes inside.
  • I can probably get a 'mattress' for the tent in addition to my camping one (although why the Turks choose to refer to large cheap foam pads as mattresses I'm still not entirely clear)
  • I don't have to share it with seven other people.
  • Can be awakened by the early morning bird-song and the distant (and slightly romantic) call of the muezzin (sadly now taped not live)
Tent cons:
  • Since I'm unlikely to get a shady spot arriving so late in the season, it's going to be 115 inside during the day, so no happy shady napping during tea break.
  • Walking to the tent in the dark, snakes and scorpions abound. *shudder*
  • My mattress is a little thin and thus not comfy--the foam 'mattress' is thick and bad for the back, plus being filled with nasty dust mites.
  • Can be awakened by the early morning bird-song and the distant (and slightly romantic) call of the muezzin (sadly now taped not live). That shit is EARLY!!
  • Being outside puts me closer to the mysterious moaners. We could hear them from inside the building last year, and well, they were loud. Very loud. Very often. And she, for one, was incredibly enthusiastic. We finally concluded that she had to be faking it, because there is just no way anyone could legitimately be quite that enthusiastic for quite that long. If he were actually that good, he would be making a living doing porn without wasting his time in the dirty and poorly paid field of archaeology!
As long as its hot, the tent is definitely better--plus, since I'm not likely to get an upgrade to the two bed room, I think the privacy will be good. I will feel incredibly stupid if it turns out to be a cool wet summer though!
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Thursday, June 22, 2006

ex dullness

I had dinner with an ex and his girlfriend tonight. This isn't the drama that people seem to expect--we broke up because he was moving to Costa Rica for eighteen months to work in a place that had no phone or internet access, so there was no anger or fighting or whatever. We just...ended. And when I moved out here, naturally I got in touch with him and said hey, and we've been meeting for dinner every three or four months for two years now. I don't have any unresolved feelings even--he was just who I needed to be with at the time, but I wouldn't want to date him now. Which is kind of the issue that tonight brought up. I know we've both changed in the four or so years since we broke up. I don't think I've changed too much, and he doesn't seem to have changed that much either.

But he's just...dull. Boring. He's a sweet guy, and his girlfriend is lovely, but they're just so...I don't even know what. We can't even seem to have a conversation (and yes, conversation is partly my responsibility too, I get that, but I can only do so much, people!), and yet I remember that we had tons of stuff to talk about.

Was I boring back then? HaveI only recently become the (terrifically!) interesting person I believe myself to be now? (and I actually called a friend when I left, to make sure I wasn't being overly generous in my attribution of non-dullness. You know what they say about people who 'assume'!) Or has he just lost all of his quirkiness? It's just so sad! I feel badly when I can look at him, at his life, and think that I would never want to live that way--it seems like a judgement of him somehow. It's not wrong to be dull, it's just... yes.

Perhaps this is just an issue of mine--my best friend from high school is getting married next week, and I sort of feel similarly about her. She is wonderful, lots of fun, crazy in a good way. But her fiancee is- I don't know, he's sweet, he loves her, whatever. He's just not interesting. And this is a man who was born without ankles (I know, right?!), so you'd think there would be a lot of interest there, things to overcome and whatnot. A good funny story or two, him being a genius skiier because he's used to not bending at the ankle, him managing to achieve his goal of competitive figure skating against all odds, I don't know, anything. But there's nothing. They're going directly into the white picket fence dream life that would make me want to rip my face off, singing together in the church choir, sitting on their back porch every summer night drinking lemonade and talking about the neighbors. And I can't even manage to have a conversation with the man, because the only thing we have in common is her, he thinks I'm odd and possibly crazy (I feel like the druggie sister or something) and I think that he's boring and she could do better (like Bill Pullman in Sleepless in Seattle). I feel badly about this, like my not wanting to live her life means I'm devaluing her choosing it.
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Saturday, June 17, 2006

ghosts and gold

I had my first confirmed California earthquake Thursday morning--no longer will I be able to say that I've experienced more earthquakes in Ithaca than in California! It was only a 4.7, but I've been waiting for one I could actually feel for so long that it woke me from a sound sleep. And knowing I was in an earthquake zone produced quite a different thought process from the Ithaca quake--I more heard the rumble than felt the shaking. It coincided with a plane going by, and once I was conscious enough to realize that the noise was far more than a plane could possibly make, I thought 'it's like the sound of thousands of voices crying out in fear and suddenly being silenced'. Yes, apparently I am that geeky, I not only quoted Star Wars in my sleep, but I paraphrased it to account for the fact that the quake wasn't loud enough to have been made by millions of people. Yes, I'm very proud! On the other hand, this was a slightly more rational mental reaction than the Ithaca one, the rough shaking of which woke me from a sound sleep to the following thought process:

'The bed seems to be shaking. Why is the bed shaking? Perhaps there is a loud truck outside, so loud that it is shaking the bed with its noise?' *listen*

'No. No loud truck noise. Perhaps my housemate needs to wake me up and has come in and begun shaking the bed?' *pry eyes open, attempt to focus*

'No. No housemate. Also, cannot focus eyes at 4:30 on Sunday morning. Mental note. Why then is the bed shaking? There is nothing visible, audible, or otherwise perceptible shaking the bed--it must be something invisible and imperceptible. It must be ghosts!! And if they are shaking the bed, they must be angry ghosts! I was dreaming...something. It must have been something bad. It must have been something very, very bad, because it upset the angry ghosts who are shaking the bed so that I will stop dreaming about it. Only angry ghosts can possibly be shaking this bed. Yes. Must try not to dream about...whatever it was. Must stay awa...'


Earthquakes have moved from the reaction of dream-censoring ghosts to a disturbance in the force. One can only imagine to whom I will attribute them next...


I went out near Yosemite with an odd mixture of drama folks and particle physicists to go prospecting today. It was surprisingly fun, spending the day digging in a muck-filled pit, hauling heavy buckets, and sitting in a creek swishing dirt and rocks around in a sluice. We actually found about $300 worth of stuff, which divided among us all was not all that much, but I still feel slightly rich. Is it sad that all it takes to make me feel rich is a $40 chunk of gold? Even more excitingly, the nugget i got is shaped like a little fat woman sitting. And who doesn't love fat woman shaped gold? Certainly not I! (Heh, evil money-making scheme, I could bring it along this summer and charge the crazier of the goddess-worshippers who come around to look at it. But I suppose that would be 'wrong'. Should I be obligated to protect the foolish from themselves? Besides, they do have more money than sense and need a non-insulting direction to use it in. It takes a special kind of blindness to think it was a good idea to move into the tiny local village and tell the women that they have been oppressed and need to throw off the patriarchal yoke of Islam, and then be shocked when the women hated them and their building mysteriously burned down)

The man who runs the place loves gold more than any human being ever. He tells long, involved stories about the different kinds of gold and how they form (did you know that the purest kind of gold found in nature actually comes from an extreme bacteria which lives about ten miles under the surface of the earth, eats oxidized metals, and then poops out gold? I didn't! And hey, I've circled back around to excrement, so I'll stop this parentheses before it goes any further out of control), and about specific pieces of gold that he found years ago, and all of his travels to various gold-rich areas around the world. I can't imagine feeling that strongly about a metal. I was seriously thinking of Terry Pratchett's dwarves, who only say they love gold to get it into bed!
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Friday, June 16, 2006

un-knowableness

I was talking the other day with a good friend of mine, whose mother-in-law went missing for a few hours last week. The MIL is a tiny old Lebanese woman who doesn't speak English, and who is beginning to forget things, so this was a fairly big issue, especially since they recently moved to a new apartment. She eventually turned up when someone found her wandering around, confused, and took her to the police, who were already looking for her (the benefit of going missing when you're really old I guess, the cops don't wait 24 hours to look for you). And it struck me--this woman and her husband have been good friends of mine for two-plus years, the MIL lives with them, and I've never met her. I've been over to their house on several occasions, I've even spent lengthy periods of time there, but for whatever reason, no MIL. Maybe she was visiting friends, or was at one of her other childrens' places in the area for a visit, but it's still surprising.

Which made me think. Even your closest friends, even someone you have known for decades, even a spouse that you have been living with for decades, even your own relatives, have friends and relatives you don't know. In our society, it is almost completely impossible to know everyone that anyone else knows--that's only possible in a small town that no one leaves or moves to. Friends grew up somewhere else, in different schools filled with different people; even living together, two people will interact with different people in their jobs or their daily routines; and family has other family--your cousins have a completely different set of grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins of their own. So everyone, always, is part of social networks you are excluded from. Not in a nasty way, simply with no reason to be included. Which makes a little more sense of the difference of people--the social influences on them are always different, so they think differently. Even identical twins who grow up together and are in the same classes are seated near different people and so come to know different people better.

It also made me think, it is hard to have to deal with someone else's slightly senile mother, especially when you can't reliably communicate with her. I don't know how my friend does it, because I would probably go a little berk. It's one thing when you have kids and become completely responsible for another human being--you decided to do that, and you planned on the necessary changes in your life. It's quite another thing to take someone like this, where you can't really form a relationship with them, and where the sudden need to monitor them at all times comes as an unhappy realization. Especially when she has other children in the area who are married with children (and thus already plan their lives around being responsible for someone else), whose spouses and children speak arabic, and who have large houses with ample space. I really admire her for dealing so well with this.
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