2: December 2003 Archives

We've been without internet access for the last couple of days, so I've got to fill in the gaps a bit. C and I are in San Diego tonight, our second night in southern California. It was a beautiful day in San Diego today; chilly, but nothing like the sub-freezing temperatures we'd been shivering through the past few days.

C and I wrote the following bit while driving through the Mojave Desert yesterday. I was driving and she was typing, for the record. I like to call it, "Why Everything Wrong with California is Gov. Schwarzenegger's Fault; A Series in Eight Parts."

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We're in California, in the middle of the Mojave desert. It just occured to us that we're in Arnold Schwarzenegger country, and suddenly, things make so much more sense. In the hour that we've been in California, we've noticed the following things wrong with the state:

1. The smog. We can't even see the mountains for all the smog. There isn't a city around for miles and miles, and yet there's smog.


2. The sun does not set. We don't know where it went, but it didn't set. It's dark now, and we can't see the cactus, and it's only 4:30 in the afternoon; we hypothesize that the sunset was lost behind the enormous head of Arnold Schwarzenegger.


3. This highway has some major holes. No further explanation needed.


4. The rest stop is broken; we think they--the people of California headed by the big head of Arnold--did it on purpose so we couldn't take a picture of the cactus in the Mojave desert. First, they told us there would be a rest stop in 18 miles; then the rest stop was closed down, and the sign said "next rest stop 78 miles."


5. The Coke bottle, which was purchased in Arizona, is not compatible with the state of California; it won't open despite previously having been opened in Arizona.


6. There are too many cars, and when they break, people kick them with hatred and throw things at them; this might be related to item number 3, the holes in the road.


7. The gas is $1.99 a gallon. Luckily, we drive a hybrid (and no, we don't need to plug it in). We get 42.6 miles to the gallon, but we still have to fill up every 426 miles or so (preferably a little more often).


8. We're 300 miles from LA, and already there's a traffic jam.

Seven hundred and fifty miles later, we're sitting in the living room of CY and Ms. Leslita in El Paso, TX. CY made us a lovely vegan Moroccan stew, and we're now ready to rest and prepare for the trip ahead.

We left Corpus Christi as the sun rose over the bay, and we stopped along the bayfront to take pictures to show where we began. From Corpus, we took a straight shot up to San Antonio, and then west on I-10 to El Paso. It's straightforward from a navigational standppoint, but we were on the road for twelve hours, with frequent stops to rest or stretch or take pictures.

We are much further west than C has ever been, and it has been interesting for me to relive the geography and geology of West Texas through her. We went from the flat coastal plains to the rolling hill country, to the dry and desolate plateaus of west-central Texas, to the dusty mountains of west Texas. The air is dry here, and already, my lips are starting to chap.

Tomorrow, the plan is to go to the store to buy sodas, lip balm, and eye drops to combat the fierce dust, and then to explore southern New Mexico as much as we can in a day. The trick will be in trying not to succumb to the urge to do the "look-and-spit" tour of the western US -- there isn't much point in being out here if we aren't going to stop and look at things, at least... is there?

I'm bucking the trend today by not telling you what I got for Christmas. Except for the very very cool Hawaiian shirt that my uncle brought me. And the high-tech tire gauge from C, just in time for our road trip. And a big, fabulous book about photography tips, also from C. And the pedometer I got from my grandmother. Unfortunately, the brilliant idea we had to give everyone in my family pedometers was superceded by my grandmother's idea to give us all talking pedometers. The good news is, C created a packet of informational materials about walking, including a form to track "progress" in walking from Corpus to Austin.

Tonight, we're making preparations to hit the road; we plan to leave Corpus Christi by 7 or 7:30 in the morning and arrive in El Paso by 9 or so. That's 9:00 pm, if you didn't catch it. Texas is really really huge. We're staying at CY and Leslita's place, and I can't wait to see them, though I'm sure we'll be exhausted by the time we get there.

We're packing a cooler, a laptop, and some books on CD for the trip. It's just as well; singing all the way to El Paso would make us far too nutty to be around. But make no mistake: we have our trusty Car-ioke CD, as well. It's a fabulous idea, but not quite as cool as it sounds.

I went geocaching with my uncle and my three adorable cousins today. We found four different caches and got in a decent hike, as well as some birdwatching. Sadly, I forgot my camera, so you won't be seeing pictures of the pelicans (brown and white), the blue herons (greater and lesser), or the egrets (great). It was a lovely Texas Christmas day, with temperatures in the 70s.

Since tomorrow is Day #1 of our road trip, the next time I post, I should be in El Paso. I plan on posting entries from the laptop (hopefully) every day, with pictures as is possible; keep in mind, I may be on a slow modem connection for the rest of the month. Keep your eyes peeled for the girls in the Prius.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all.

As of about 8:45pm today, I'm officially done with my Christmas shopping. I had over 27 hours to spare, so it isn't really procrastinating, is it? Okay, yeah, I procrastinated.

The most expensive present I bought this year was for my mom. I bought her something she both needs and wants, but I've been second-guessing my choice since before I even bought the item. I've been looking forward to Christmas morning with a sense of impending dread, which isn't really what the adage, "Tis better to give than to receive," is supposed to be about. It isn't that she won't like the gift; it's that I think she'll be upset at the amount that I spent.

The whole thing makes me wishful for the kind of Christmas where everyone makes silly presents for one another, and gifts aren't really an important part of the day. In my family, even though every year someone declares that it will be a more modest Christmas, no one ever seems to survive without the post-holiday financial hangover.

Fiscally responsible? Not so much.

For my part, it isn't that I'm attracted to the material side of the gift-giving; it's that the things I want to give people cost money. Part of my initial holiday roadtrip plan was to skip Christmas with the family altogether and spend it someplace else. Theoretically, I could skip the whole present transaction that way, and just travel instead. In the end, it didn't work out that way, and I'm okay with that.

But next year, maybe I'll just bake cookies.

The Christmas tree went up this afternoon, after a long morning of shopping for last-minute Christmas gifts. My mom and I set up the tree in the stand, and C and I wrapped the red and white lights around it. Then we waited for the kids to arrive to decorate.

The result of having four kids, ages ten, nine, six, and five, decorating the tree is that the ornaments are all being hung at their eye-level, and certain branches are receiving more attention than others. One bottom branch must've had twelve ornaments on it, weighing it down until most of the ornaments were resting on the floor. My youngest cousin was tasked with rearranging that branch, and it's now not quite floor-bound.

It's quite the motley arrangement, but the kids are having fun, and my mom, my uncle, C, and I are having a great time watching them. As my cousin Hayley remarked, "The grownups have the giggles."

After a fairly impromptu departure, we drove to Corpus Christi this evening, leaving Austin after dark. It was so profoundly dark on IH-37, fifty miles from nowhere, that I couldn't see what was coming around the next bend, but I could see a million stars in the sky.

Let's go fishing in the morning
just like we've always gone.
You can come inside and wake me up;
we'll pack and leave by dawn,
we will pack and leave by dawn.

And the fish will watch our boats
with envy and with fear
because we will live forever
and our days are slow and dear,
and our days are slow and dear.

--Dar Williams, 'Fishing in the Morning'

We listened to this song, over and over and over and over; it's hard to explain what the appeal is, but this is what we do some days. Over and over. The last 65 miles to Corpus, we had it on a loop in the CD player, and after a while, we started doing a different version each time. There was the Shania Twain version, the opera version, the six-year-old version, the choir director version...

Before we knew it, we were laughing until we were in tears, and we were driving down the freeway in Corpus Christi. We're just lucky that I didn't drive us into a wall or a ravine while I was laughing.

The poor cats sat in the back seat silently, afraid that we'd lost our minds.

Home again -- and off to the backwoods of south Texas tomorrow.

Every year around the holidays, a group of extended coworkers gets together to sing Christmas carols in the (acoustically friendly) foyer of the main building. I always participate, because 1) I like to sing, and I get very few opportunities to practice reading music, and 2) I sorta dig Christmas carols.

It's generally a very pleasant experience. The acoustics are very flattering, much like singing in the shower, and the other singers are very talented -- not at all what I expected when I first got involved a few years ago. We generally have an eager audience to listen to us, and we sing during the lunch hour, so it's not like it interferes with my rigorous daily schedule of meetings.

Today was the second (and final) holiday performance for the year. We sang for an hour, which is just long enough to make my out-of-practice voice hoarse for the rest of the day.

I sang in the choir for six years when I was in school, which means six seasons of Christmas concerts, not including the three years that I've participated with this work choir. That's a lot of time for me to develop strong opinions of many of the songs that we sing. Care to know what I think of them? Too bad. I'm telling you anyway.

1) Jolly Old St. Nicholas. I hate this song. I abhor it. It's so asinine, and very eight years old, and to be frank with you, I haven't been eight in nineteen years. Plus, it reminds me very vividly of the choir in fifth grade, and the stupid Christmas show that we must've performed a dozen times in various venues around Corpus Christi, and the solo that my best friend JoAnn sang. She sang, "Johnny wants a pair of skates," and her inflection was so damned perfect, and I was jealous, because I? I got nothing. No solo, nothing special. I was just part of the choir.

I'm not bitter. Really. But I hate this song, and we sing it every time, and if I never had to hear it again, it would be too soon.

2) O Come Emmanuel. This is one of those rare Christmas carols that I never heard before joining this choir. It's beautiful, actually -- haunting, if you'll forgive the cliche -- and I adore the phrasing the choir leader uses:
piano for the verses --
"O come, o come Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the son of God appear;"

and then a beautiful forte
"Rejoice!
Rejoice!
Emmanuel has come to thee, o Israel."

Truly gorgeous. The text doesn't really convey it.

3) Jingle Bells. Jingle Bells sometimes runs the risk of sounding asinine (see "Jolly Old St. Nicholas" above). I don't particularly like the verses, and it isn't as though the audience can understand what we're singing anyway, but I like how we go from unison on the verses to four-part harmony on the chorus.

4) O Come All Ye Faithful. There's an alternate soprano descant for this song that I don't know yet. A few sopranos sing it, and I sing the melody. It's in a good key, so I enjoy this one.

5) O Holy Night. We don't actually sing this one. More's the pity. It's my favorite Christmas carol, and I can totally handle the leaps near the end. It isn't really suited to a choir, though -- particularly one where all the sopranos secretly want to be the lead singer. (I've described every choir, haven't I?)

6) Silent Night. We sing this one in German, which feels a bit affected to me. Every year, someone has to go through the proper pronunciation of the German words, and it seems to me we could just sing it in English and be done with it. Couldn't we?

It's a nice song, but I think I've sung it a thousand times. I could sing it in my sleep, and you probably could, too.

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No, I was not one of the lucky ones who got to skip work to see The Lord of the Rings. Nor did I see the midnight viewing; nor did I skip work yesterday to see the entire trilogy. So you will not hear me waxing poetic about what a cinematic masterpiece it is. Not yet, anyway.

While the rest of you slackers came down with the hobbit flu, I was at work, trying to get something productive done. No, I can't say that with a straight face. What of it?

It is a horrible twist of fate that my auto insurance comes due in December every year. With the purchase of my new car, my insurance rates are suddenly rather inflated, and even after the promotion I got a couple of months ago, I suddenly find finances tight again this month.

My dastardly credit card company has seen fit to raise my credit limit by 50%, however, in a sinister effort to convince me to make Christmas purchases on that card. So far, I have resisted admirably, but the month is still young. The timing of this raise in credit limit is certainly suspect, and anyway, that's the card I've been trying to pay off for months! Progress is slow, but I haven't made any new purchases with it in a while. Among other things, my credit card company is (I discovered recently) one of the top supporters of the Republican Party, and I am not. I wouldn't have a "Kill the Whales" credit card, either, for the record.

This week, I find myself mired in the stress of "I have so much to do and no time to do it before the holidays," and I'm tired of feeling overworked and stressed. Vacation is a good thing, and certainly, it'll be more relaxing than what I've been up to lately, but it's always tempered with the fact that, no matter where I go or what I'm doing, those work people know where they can find me if the system goes down and I need to help them put it back up again.

The Grand Canyon, of course, would be an ideal place to do disaster recovery.

I called my mom today to ask her for oranges from the ranch. They're almost ready now, and the selection from the grocery store becomes less and less inspiring as I imagine the ones we pick off the trees out there.

I find myself getting more and more into the Christmas spirit everyday; I didn't really expect that for some reason. When my mom told me she planned to buy a Christmas tree today, and that we could help her put it up when we get to Corpus next weekend, I was more relieved than I thought I would be. In my mind, I can smell the fir already. Everywhere I go, I see Christmas lights, and it seems too soon, the way it does when I see them before Thanksgiving, but it isn't too soon anymore.

At just over ten days until Christmas, though, I haven't really done much to prepare. Shipping is trickier at this time of the season, so most of the purchasing or preparation will need to be done in person. I still have presents to buy (and to choose, for that matter) and preparations to make for the road trip. We still don't know exactly where we're going, but I intend to try to dodge the bowl games as best I can.

It was beautiful and sunny today, and I was on campus for a while after seeing "Lost in Translation" at the Dobie. With the holidays upon us, campus was nearly deserted; I find that I like it best with no students around. I spent about an hour and a half taking pictures of the Littlefield fountain (currently not running, but filled with water), details of the Union, the Tower, all the usual stuff.

Sometimes, I get the feeling that I take the same pictures over and over and over again, and to some extent, I know I do. I'm looking forward to the road trip, to the change in scenery. I'm hoping it'll spark something exciting.

After the party she wanted to attend was cancelled this evening (the hostess came down with the flu), C and I made a split-second decision to drive to San Antonio instead, to see the Riverwalk.

It was a chilly but clear evening when we left Austin. C had heard that the space station would be visible early in the evening, so we stopped in Buda to see it fly overhead at 5:54pm. It looked like a slowly-moving star in the twilight sky, and we watched it for a few minutes before continuing on our way.

Downtown San Antonio was packed when we arrived; there was a Spurs game there this evening. We parked at the River Center and set out from there, walking along the Riverwalk.

Bathed in the warm glow of thousands of Christmas lights, a mariachi band played outside in the cold air. We walked past as they were finishing a set, and the band leader began speaking to the crowd in the mixture of Spanish and English that I love to listen to. It is Saturday night, and the area is teeming with people.

It was a bit like swimming, moving along the narrow walkways with the crowd. We kept to the inside, afraid that the crowd might inadvertantly push someone into the chilly water.

Every hundred yards or so, an old stone bridge arches over the river, and each one is lined in white lights. Overhead, the trees canopy, and colorful lights dangle down, their palettes reflected in the rippling water like an impressionist painting.

A constant stream of river boats drifted silently through the water like ghosts, but on board, the passengers teemed with activity. Some of the boats were occupied by choirs of kids, who sang Christmas carols to people walking along the river.

An article I read recently named San Antonio one of the best cities to spend Christmas, and I can see why. It's almost exotic in its celebration, and the river was lovely. For whatever reason, I'd never been there around this time of year; I'm certain I'll return sometime.

CY and I went to indulge in sushi after work. I haven't had real sushi (i.e., not the Central Market California rolls) since the last time I went out with her, and I'd never been to Uchi either, but I'm always game for sushi.

It was all pretty phenomenal, though perhaps not what I should be spending my money on just before Christmas. The talented (not to mention, very cute) executive chef, Tyson Evans, did much of the sushi preparation right before our eyes, and the restaurant was just... gorgeous. Aesthetically, it was the sort of place where it hurt to look at things because they were so perfect, and with every glance, I was framing a potential picture with ideal composition, texture, and colors. I left my camera out in the car, which seems like the healthier choice, though I missed it terribly throughout the dinner.

The sushi bar is the best place to hang out, I think. It was fun watching the sushi chefs work and banter among one another, and it seems like there's always an opportunity to eavesdrop. And the food itself was phenomenal, too. I've always been a bit frightened of unagi, because my first experience with it was a rubbery, fishy-tasting blob, but it came in my chef's choice sushi order, and it bore no resemblance to my previous bad experience. It was incredibly tender and flavorful.

We returned home after sushi to find C still plugging away on her comps. A three-day exam is (understandably) exhausting, and she's definitely worn out. She just has to survive until 9am tomorrow, and I think she'll make it. She took a break to talk to CY and me as we were studying up on travelling to Singapore and Antarctica, and somehow... somehow we got to talking about the fuzzy bunny-monsters.

A year and a half ago, before we got the kittens, C and I were at one of the local pet stores, just to look at the things they had. I wanted to see the hedgehogs, because I wanted to have a hedgehog and name it Hedgewig. It didn't happen, obviously, but while we were there, we saw a little cage with fluff-balls inside. The cage had a sign on it: "Fuzzy Bunny Monsters $15". They were adorable, with misbehaving hair that stuck up every-which-way.

C was telling CY about how playful rabbits can be, and she described playing bunny-tag, concluding, "They're pretty smart, for herbivores." That cracked my shit up, since C is one of my favorite herbivores. And once I started laughing, they started cracking up, too, and pretty soon, we were all laughing until tears ran down our faces.

There are nine hours and twenty-three minutes until C's comps are due. She has more to go, but I think she'll be fine in the end.

She's pretty smart, for an herbivore.

When I was six years old, my greatest ambition in life was to become a princess when I grew up. I wasn't being ironic at the time -- I really meant it. Every picture I drew at that age had a princess with a tall, pointy conical hat with a filmy piece of tulle flowing out of the top.

I think I was seven when a know-it-all at my daycare informed me that you couldn't be a princess without having been born in the country of princesshood. She obviously hadn't heard of Grace Kelly. It had been earlier that same summer that I participated in Winnie the Pooh school, which was some kind of half-assed modelling school that required us to learn the Winnie the Pooh song and the Tigger song so that we could sing it together before we all went out to model the Winnie the Pooh clothes that were being sold at Sears. When they read out my name, and mentioned that when I grew up, I wanted to be a princess, everybody laughed. I could understand why they would be skeptical, since it's not just any girl who can grow up to become a princess, but I was a bit perplexed at why they found this so amusing.

I was genuinely disappointed when I learned that I'd probably never grow up to be a princess, but after I passed quickly through the seven stages of grief, I soon reverted to my backup career choice: school bus driver.

Yes, in my family, we aim high.

But school bus driver seemed like the perfect career to me at that time. My school bus driver in first grade was named Veronica. She drove Bus 86, and she was the coolest person I knew. She had a little radio that she propped up on the floor, and she listened to Z-95 all the time. At least once (and sometimes twice) during that hour-long bus ride, "Total Eclipse of the Heart" would play on the radio. I'd long since memorized all the words I could understand. It was my first favorite song.

Plus, on the morning bus routes, they would sometimes get to practice the bus fire drill. Since I only rode the bus in the afternoons, I missed this, but I'd sometimes see the kids jumping out of the back of the bus at the school in the mornings. Having the authority to make kids jump out of the back of the bus (and then, in theory, to jump out behind them)? That was the ultimate in cool to me at age seven.

I kept the bus driver dream for at least a few weeks, but then I cycled through possible professions pretty quickly. I wanted to be a writer, then a state trooper (like my aunt), then a singer-songwriter, then a plain writer again, then a journalist. My love of writing (actually, it was entirely a perceived love of writing; I never actually enjoyed writing until I was well into my teens) mostly dominated my imaginary career paths.

At fifteen, I wrote a short story. The first line was, "A woman lies dying in her bed." You can imagine the level of morbidity and where it went from there. I was actually a good writer, but I never felt I had anything of substance to write about.

I'm not convinced that I do now, for that matter, but I don't let that stop me from planting emotional vomit onto the virtual page.

I'm finding that photography is taking over more and more of my thoughts on a daily basis. There's nothing particularly wrong with that -- hobbies are like that when you're passionate about them. More and more, I feel as though I've hit a plateau in that area of my self-development.

Photography never seems quite as simple as just pointing and shooting for me. I divide it mentally into genres, each one with its own set of possibilities and limitations.

Film Photography
I have a Nikon SLR camera that I bought a few years ago, prior to my trip to Ireland. I have the standard zoom lens, as well as a 50mm lens that I bought during a photography class I was taking this summer.

I've done some work with slide film, as well as regular print film, and I took a black and white darkroom class over the summer. Having someone else develop my film bores me, and I'm horrid about taking my film in. The process of taking the picture is far more interesting than actually seeing the pictures I took. The delay of gratification ruins the excitement for me.

What I want desperately to work on is more darkroom development. I really enjoyed developing my pictures over the summer, but it's hard to find darkroom space in Austin. The class I signed up for in October was cancelled for low attendance. I was very disappointed. ACC is offering a darkroom continuing education class in the spring, but it begins at 8:00am every Saturday morning, and it's on the other side of town. I'm dedicated to learning more about darkroom, but I don't think I'm that dedicated. The Austin Museum of Art offers darkroom classes sometimes, but they're really expensive. I'm having problems finding other programs geared toward darkroom semi-beginners.

I'd also like to experiment with other film genres. I'd love to get a lomo camera to play with.

Digital Photography

Obviously, I do most of my photography in the digital genre. I bought a Nikon CoolPix 5700 in June, and I've been using it exclusively since September. It was hard to give up my Olympus 700 UZ. By and large, I'm fairly happy with my Nikon, and it's far more versatile than the digital camera I had before, but I've been struck with a rather stubborn case of camera envy in the past month or so.

It's just that... I miss the feel of a lens in my hands. It's not nearly the same to zoom in and out with a little button, and I'm dying for an intuitive manual focus. I want to be able to switch lenses on my camera and add filters like a normal photographer, without having to buy adaptors or jerryrig something together. I really really want a digital SLR camera. Canon released its Digital Rebel a couple of months after I bought my Nikon, for about the same price as my camera cost. If I'd've known, I would have waited. And even though my camera is nearly brand new (but well-used for the time frame) and I can't really justify the expense, I'm half-hoping I'll drop it, so that I'll have the need to replace it.

A girl can dream, can't she?

One of the things I hated about my old car was that there was no music to be had. The cassette player and radio haven't worked in several years. On the day that C and I returned from Ireland in March of 2001, we had to drive back to Austin from DFW the same night, not arriving until around midnight. In retrospect, it was a pretty foolish plan, making that four-hour journey after having travelled all day from Ireland, but we had to be back the following day; there were no other options. So we sang in the car, in the dark of the night in rural Texas, to keep ourselves awake.

One of the great features of my new car is its outstanding audio system. It's got a radio (that works), a cassette player, and a CD player all built in. It has given me the impetus to start burning mix CDs to listen to in my car.

I'm sure all y'all mix tape aficionados have known this for a long time, but there's a science to creating a mix of music intended for other people's ears. In my case, my primary audience is C, who is far too picky for her own good. Here are the criteria to which I must adhere, if I hope for her to get any enjoyment from a mix CD:

• There must be no men singing on the CD.


• There must be no sad songs (or at the very least, sad songs must be kept to a minimum.


• There should be no orchestral introduction to any song on the CD.


• There must be one catch-song. (We'll cover this later.)


• The general tempo of the mix CD should not be too slow.


• The songs on the CD should not be too folky.

Some of these requirements, I've learned by trial and error. Others, I've been aware of for a long time. And the truth is? I kind of like sad songs. They're pretty, if melancholy. And I really like folky music. The majority of my music collection is made up of cool folky singers you've never heard of, and I like it that way.

So every once in a while, I'll go about putting together a new mix CD. The first mix CD I put together was wildly successful (though somewhat by accident) with the exception of the last two tracks (see the rule about orchestral arrangements above). Any new CD has to have the potential to be more popular than the original, or we'll just go back to listening to the original.

It was an inspired move on my part to include the Dixie Chicks' cover of "Landslide" on that first CD. It became the catch-song, hidden among Dar Williams, Ani Difranco, Erin McKeown, and Lucy Kaplansky, and we sometimes hit the rewind button to listen to it over and over and over.

I made a couple of well-intentioned mix CDs after that one. One introduced an instrumental piece by the Reivers (which was made up of both men and women, but you'd never know that from the song), as well as one of my favorite Nanci Griffith songs. That one was a no-go. Nanci was too folky, and C made fun of her twangy pronunciations. C has clearly never heard Nanci's weird pronunciations, because what she thought sounded twangy was pretty damned normal.

And then, while C was home in Romania over the summer, I began working on a compilation of new songs. I left it running as a playlist on iTunes at work so that I could adjust it as needed, and eventually, I came up with what I thought was the world's most perfect mix CD. It was liberally sprinkled with all the usual suspects: Ani, Dar, Erin; no Lucy this time, because C got tired of listening to Lucy when the cats were kittens and would cry all day unless Lucy was playing. (See? This is complicated.) And then I added "London Rain" by Heather Nova. That last choice is a bit out of place on this CD, being the only single of the compilation ever played on mainstream radio, but I put it near the end and hoped for the best. Turns out, "London Rain" may be the catch-song for this compilation! C hit rewind twice yesterday to hear it again.

The next challenge? Coming up with a mix CD to use for our upcoming road trip.

I started off trying to write a critique of a lecture I saw yesterday on modernist photography, but it occurred to me that nobody but I would give a shit about it, so I threw it away for the time-being and started over. I'll try to work out a less-dry rendition of the lecture and how it pertained to me tomorrow.

It's cold and bone-dry in Austin lately, and I've been feeling a bit miserable. My lips are starting to chap, I've been battling static electricity constantly, and my hair stands on end as often as not. My skin is so dry that the lotion I just applied to my legs is stinging and causing a bit of a rash. Next time, I'll try unscented lotion. And maybe a humidifier.

The weather is supposed to be extra-chilly this evening, with temperatures in the 20s and wind chills in the teens. I anticipate weeks of dry, chapped skin, and that's not a prospect I look forward to. In general, I think I prefer the warm, sunny Decembers often endemic to Texas. Being able to wear sweaters at Christmas seems a paltry reward at this point.

In other news, I've been updating the photolog regularly lately; go check it out if you'd like to see what I've been working on recently.

I'll have more to write tomorrow -- honest!

My cousin was in Corpus Christi for part of the weekend along with his girlfriend and their two yippy little rat dogs. He and I are almost exactly the same age (he's just a couple of months older than I am), and so I think it's natural that we gauge our progress through life against one another. (To be truthful, I don't know that he does that, but I certainly do.)

And the main thing that I noticed, of which I'm becoming more and more aware, is the conspicuous consumption that he seems to have enveloped himself within. Don't get the wrong idea here -- I'm no posterchild for asceticism -- but my fantasies skew toward simplicity lately, and his most definitely skew toward purchasing things. Most recently, he's been talking about buying not only a huge house out in Hutto (currently being built), but also about trading in his Mustang for a new pickup truck. ("I can deal with wussy dogs," he explained, "but I can't drive a wussy truck.")

To be fair, I, the current recipient of an exorbitant car payment, can hardly complain about somebody buying a new car, but I don't think he had the Mustang for more than a year or two.

I'm not sure why I care about this, really. Maybe it's that he was bashing my new car, which I'm rather proud of. He pooh-poohed my hybrid's quiet motor, saying, "I added a muffler to make my Mustang louder," and bragged about the "American power" behind his car, and the 190 horses powering his desired truck. My response was, "Wow, that's a lot of hay."

Maybe it has nothing to do with the car at all, and more to do with the four- or five-bedroom house he and his girlfriend are buying, and the fact that I'm not in a financial position to buy a house now or in the forseeable future, and that I don't have a significant other to split the cost with. Or maybe it's that outside of my extensive collection of gadgets, I don't have a lot of nice stuff -- like furniture, for instance. And, I mean, sure, I could buy some nice furniture, but it isn't really a priority for me. As much as I'd like not to live like a college student, it just seems like buying more stuff means I'll have to sell more stuff in a few years when I sell everything I own and set out to see the world.

When I started off, this entry was going to be about camera envy, but it seems that I've gone off on a tangent. I think I'll save the camera envy for tomorrow.

I remarked to someone at work today that I've never in my whole life had an adult-style birthday party. This is due in large part to the fact that I spend almost every birthday in Corpus Christi, surrounded by turkey-drunk relatives.

In keeping with this tradition (or lack of tradition), I spent a very low-key birthday with my family on Saturday, visiting with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. I spent a lot of the day looking through one grandmother's old jewelry and mementos, and most of the evening reminiscing with my little cousins. There's really nothing like spending my 27th birthday surrounded by my beautiful teenaged cousins to make me feel my age.

I'm reminded, though, that I've celebrated every single one of my twenty-seven birthdays with my family, either on the day of my birthday when it falls during the Thanksgiving weekend, or on the week prior. And while I'm sometimes pretty quiet about my upcoming birthday, I've never had it go unnoticed. As sheltered as it makes me feel, in this season of thanksgiving, that's something I'm thankful for.

In other news, I signed up for Jette's Holidailies project again this year. Unlike NaNoWriMo, I've actually started, rather than dropping out before I wrote my first word. I'm hoping to be more successful with the project than I was last year; it's good practice to make myself write more than a sentence or two daily. We'll see how it goes.