December 2005 Archives

It's eleven minutes until midnight here in south Texas. Merry Christmas Eve.

I got my grade back for my Japanese class yesterday -- I got an A. If I had skipped the final altogether, I would've gotten a B in the class, so the A wasn't a huge surprise, but I'm proud of my progress. Japanese is an extremely fun language -- crazily challenging, and incredibly confusing and inconsistent, but very fun.

I've got a lot of plans, which include things that are more and less probable, like a professional certificate in photography, for instance, but somewhere near the top of my list is spending a year in Japan with my love. It's a remarkably practical way of spending a year in a part of the world entirely different from the one I've lived all my life. It's a way for me to work out my traveling itch before I settle down. It'll be crazy-hard, but hopefully, it'll be an experience that serves me well. So I'm learning Japanese, slowly.

And tomorrow night, my love arrives in Texas once more. I'm beside myself.

In my house, there's a package that I'm not allowed to open. It arrived by FedEx yesterday. I've shaken it a bit and felt the balance of the box, but the fac tthat I'm not supposed to open it makes me very impatient. It's a trait of mine that I've become very aware of lately.

I can be very patient about some things. I can do meticulous little projects if they interest me, and I tend to be very even-tempered with people, but when there's something I'm waiting for or looking forward to, I've got no patience at all. I want no delay of my gratification.

Sometimes, I think people use their knowledge of this to torment me a bit.

The waiting drives me a little crazy, though. I have this sense right now that I'm just biding my time and waiting for my life to start, and really, there's nothing worse than that at all. The things I'm waiting on are all out of my control, both in the short term and the long term, and there's nothing I can do about that. It would be helpful to have the wisdom to accept that and move on, but it's really easier for me to preoccupy myself with it.

I can't wait to see what's in my package.

I'm trying pretty hard, but I'm having trouble seeing the problem with a more inclusive holiday greeting.

It's not that I mind people wishing me a merry Christmas. I appreciate the sentiment; I might even wish it to someone else unprompted. I just don't understand why people get so het up about wishing someone happy holidays instead. It's as though we don't have more important things to be worried about.

First of all, it seems reasonable, if you know what holidays a person celebrates, to greet the person accordingly. I'm not going to greet my Jewish friends with a Merry Christmas, unless I just forget. (Then again, part of me thinks that they're so used to being outnumbered during the holiday season that they probably don't bat an eye anymore.) But if you don't know, you have a few options:

• you can make a guess, I suppose, but how does that work? "You look like the Kwanzaa sort to me..."


• You can use an inclusive greeting like "Season's Greetings" or "Happy Holidays"


• or you can just use your own holiday of choice to greet the person.

In my mind, though, a "Happy Holidays" greeting has nothing to do with the so-called War on Christmas. For me, the holiday season begins at Thanksgiving (that's American Thanksgiving, at the end of November, which very conveniently coincides with my birthday) and lasts until New Years Day. That's two holidays right there, even if you don't celebrate any of the December ones. So to me, "Happy Holidays" is less a watered down politically correct greeting and more a wish for a happy holiday season -- the whole season, not just one day of it.

And I'll continue to greet people as the whim strikes me.

Scott is off watching The Return of the King at a friend's house. I told him that I imagined I'd be going to bed early without him around to distract me (virtually, in any case), and he bet me that I couldn't go to bed by 11:00. That's the kind of bet I should have no problem winning, and tonight, I think I'll enjoy trying.

We couldn't think of anything to bet, so we're betting for a gimme. I'm still not entirely sure what a gimme is in this context, but I'm pretty certain that I'd rather win one than lose one. (G is also for gimme, I suppose.)

G is also for gross food, which Lloyd experienced today at an elementary school in Hawaii. In answer to his (perhaps rhetorical) questions, I'd say that my own elementary school cafeteria often experienced similar vast quantities of waste every day at lunchtime. The amount fluctuated, I'm sure -- in elementary school culture, there's definitely a sense of what constitutes a good cafeteria lunch, versus a bad cafeteria lunch. Pizza days, for instance, were always good days. Salisbury steak days, on the other hand... not so much.

In middle and high school, we had more choices to pick from. Granted, many days, none of the choices were particularly promising, but being able to make that choice encourages less waste. Nonetheless, I was always jealous of the kids who brought their own lunches. There's only so much deliciousness that can be packed into a 65-cent hot lunch.

...And on that note, I'm off to bed for the evening. It's 10:22 pm. The gimme will be mine!

I'm a lot like my dad.

When I was a little kid, anytime my mom would take me to the office and we'd run into someone who hadn't seen me in a long time, the first thing they'd say was always, "Wow, you're getting so big! I haven't seen you since you were this small." And the second thing they'd always say was, "You look just like your dad!"

I do look a lot like my dad. I've got his eyes, his hair, and his smile. (Thankfully, I inherited my mom's nose.) But beyond that, I'm very much like my father, as my mom used to remind me with a weary sort of despair every time I'd procrastinate on homework or a class project.

I grew up with my mom, mind you, and I spent most of my time with her, since my dad and my other family lived on the other side of this very large state. And yet, somehow, I picked up a lot of my dad's behavioral tendencies. My dad attributes this phenomenon to DNAAAAAaaaa... always spoken in a low, spooky voice.

One of my earliest memories (at least, I think it's a real memory -- it's hard to know for sure without some independent corroboration) is of lying in our back yard in Ingleside, when I was about three years old, chewing on grass and watching clouds float through the sky. Did that ever really actually happen? It's hard sometimes to believe I was ever three years old.

Late one week in January, almost a year ago, I had this sudden urge to go to Corpus Christi for the weekend, to take some pictures. I set out early and headed to the bayfront. I had this idea in my mind that I wanted to take some photos of shrimping boats, perhaps something in the style of my grandfather's paintings. I didn't find much downtown, so I headed across the Harbor Bridge toward Portland. I took some pictures there, then headed on to Rockport. It was a meandering sort of journey, and I was a little disappointed that I hadn't found much so far on that cold, gray January morning.

Rockport was pretty quiet when I got there, but as I was driving past the docks, I noticed one shrimping boat coming in, swarmed by gulls and herons and egrets and pelicans. I found a place to park, then found a place to sit on the sea wall, from which I could photograph all the birds from very close-up with my long lens. One of the shrimpers was going through the catch for the day and tossing out junk fish to the birds, so they were very cooperative as I snapped their pictures. I took hundreds of shots out there.

There were two shrimpers on the boat, and when the younger had left, there was only the old man still there. I eventually worked up the courage to ask him whether I could walk out on the dock to take closer pictures of the birds, and he was happy to let me. He even brought me a chair to sit in as I shot.

He was a nice old man, but lonely. He told me all about his wife of 50 years, who had died several months before, and of his daughter, and of other photographers and biologists that he'd met. I think he enjoyed the company.

We made an odd pair, this wizened old shrimper and me. I brought my portfolio book from my trunk and showed him some of what I had shot. He thought my photos were great. To hear him talk about it -- to hear him talk about me -- you'd think I'd hung the stars.

I took some of the best pictures I've ever taken on that dock, and I'd like to go back someday to see if I can find that old shrimper again. I think he'd be pleased to see his boat immortalized so, to see birds in print. I think I'd like to show him.

...I don't know yet, actually. My mom wrote me yesterday morning to ask what E is for, now that the whole family has read D. It's a little hard to write when you know your family (hi, family!) is probably hanging on every word. E is for... egret? Engagement ring? Elopement? Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective? I don't know. I'll decide tomorrow.

I called my mom on Wednesday, before I posted my D entry, to give her the heads-up on my plans before she read them on my weblog. She seemed rather, well, surprised, to say the least. I had two main points that I was trying to convey in the conversation: 1) that she's the mom, and I get why she would be concerned about me (but it's okay!), and 2) that this isn't some whim that I came up with last week. I've put a lot of thought and research into my plans.

So then yesterday (Friday, that is), she wrote me to let me know that she'd told my grandmother and my aunts, and that they had questions which it was incumbent upon me to clarify. Questions clarified, but it makes me all paranoid and insecure to know that people are talking about me and around me but not to me. It all feels very seventh grade somehow.

My Japanese final yesterday (that is, Friday) afternoon was a little harder than I was expecting. It probably could have used more studying than I gave it, but I'm fairly certain I got a high enough grade on it to get me an 'A' in the class. I forgot to write my entry yesterday as the evening wore on.

I was going to write two today, but I spent the morning procrastinating cleaning my room, then spent the afternoon (off and on) actually doing it. It's significantly cleaner now... I've got some clothes to put away and some boxes to stack strategically, and then I should be about done. I really need a night stand with drawers to stash stuff in, though. I keep finding things that would fit there.

This evening, Claudia and I took a bunch of stuff to Goodwill and cleaned the living room, so progress is being made, never you fear. But between the cleaning and the vegetarian chili and the 48 Hours mystery, I'm a little late with the entry. Ah well.

Four days into my alphabet, and I'm taking a little break already.

I've got a Japanese final tomorrow afternoon, and I'm very busy with procrastinating studying, so I haven't a ton of time to write tonight. I've had the distinct advantage of taking only one class, which has given me (generally) plenty of study time. I've got a 97 average in the class at the moment, and if I don't even take the final, I should have a B in the course.

My boyfriend calls me a keener. That's Canadian for "studies even when she doesn't have to."

Tonight and tomorrow during lunch, I'm going to brush up on my kanji -- the older ones I haven't used in a while and the newer ones that I'm not entirely familiar with. The rest of the stuff, I think I'm okay with. Adjectives make me a little twitchy, but I only need a 55 or 60 on the final to get an A in the class. It's a cumulative test, so I'm not terribly worried, to be frank.

(We'll see how I feel about it tomorrow, no?)

Somehow, I'd made it the first 29 years of my life without ever informing the federal government of my detailed life plans. Clearly, I was overdue.

The Department of Homeland Security and I have become somewhat intimately acquainted over the last few months. I've spent hours and hours poring over documentation and rules and regulations, and I've filled out forms in triplicate. I've read other people's stories, I've gathered documentation, provided evidence of a continuing relationship and statements of intent to marry, and goodness knows, I've thought long and hard about all this.

So now I'm tangled up in a bureaucratic process that stresses me out, primarily because it's out of my control. From those who have gone before me, I'm picking up a wealth of acronyms and knowledge of the process. I'm biding my time and waiting to see what happens.

If you had told me a year ago that this is how I would spend 2005, I would've laughed at you. I can't wait to see what 2006 has to offer.

I feel as though I blinked and the holiday season fell on top of me. It's a little bit like that every year, really. I wait and wait and wait for my birthday at the end of November, and then before I know it, it's Christmas again. This was ideal when I was a little kid and always on the receiving end of the gift-giving, but as an adult, the process of finding and procuring presents is more than a little bit stressful.

In general, though, I love the trappings of the holiday season, Christmas carols (C is for Christmas carols), great food, tree-trimming... My mom has the best tree, always strung with red and white lights and decorated with sand dollars and red plastic apples. The red and white stand out against the green tree and look lovely and elegant. My grandmother's tree has multi-colored lights on it, but it's decorated with an angel for every member of the family. Every year, I look through all the angels and remind myself which is which. I think it's an awesome tradition.

I think that I fall victim to that common holiday failing, expecting Christmas to be perfect. I'm very set in my routine, in that regard: Christmas trees should be natural; they should be decorated the way we always decorate them; the angel ornaments should be lined up just so. Christmas dinner should involve Turkey and brocolli-cheese casserole. It just should. Why? Because it always has. The loss of my great-grandmother -- it's been almost nine years ago, now, which is hard enough in itself for me to believe -- was the biggest blow to our holiday traditions, and for the first few Christmases after she died, I had a really hard time reconciling the Christmas we had with "our" Christmas. Eventually, I imagine I'll be starting my own Christmas traditions, which should ameliorate my dislike of changing traditions, and then all should be fine.

C is also for Claudia, who is my best friend and roommate. She's finishing up her PhD in anthropology this year (we hope). She's a little nutty and kind of eccentric at times, but we generally get along pretty well. We met my second year of grad school, and the first year of her PhD program. I took her home for Thanksgiving that first year, and she quickly became assimilated into my big crazy family. A couple of years ago, she even got her very own angel on my grandmother's tree.

Claudia was away for over a year, doing field research for her dissertation in Romania. It's been a bit of a challenge to get used to having a roommate again, but I think that overall, it's better for my mental health. When she came back to the U.S., one of the first things we did was travel down to Corpus Christi to see my family.

C is also for Corpus Christi, the place I grew up. When my mom was a kid, her dad was in the Navy and they moved around quite a lot. She wanted more stability for me, and sure enough, I went to school with a lot of the same kids from first grade all the way through high school. I love Corpus Christi a lot, in the way that one loves a hometown. When I'm home for the weekend, there's never enough time for me to see all the things I want to see, or to eat the foods I want to eat, but occassionally, it occurs to me how very boring it seemed to me growing up. It's a lovely city to visit, and I'm especially looking forward to taking Scott there and showing him everything I love about it.

Last year, while Claudia was away, it snowed in Corpus Christi on Christmas Eve. A white Christmas in Corpus Christi -- we didn't know what to do with ourselves! Such a thing hadn't happened before in anyone's memory. It was crazy and magical, but I'm hoping it doesn't happen again this year, because I need to drive back to Austin that day. Maybe Corpus Christi could settle for a white New Years Eve instead.

bunnyhug n. Cdn (Sask.) a hooded sweatshirt.

So says my bunnyhug, which comes from Saskatchewan. It's a lovely, self-referential bunnyhug. Regional colloquialisms are sort of cool. My bunnyhug is very warm and fuzzy on the inside -- Canadians do know how to choose a good bunnyhug. It was given to me by my boyfriend.

B is also for boyfriend, a topic I generally avoid. My boyfriend also comes from Saskatchewan, and he is an expert on bunnyhugs, snow, and curling. He'll arrive in Austin on Christmas night, and he'll spend the next ten days traveling around Texas with me. I'm hoping for sunny, warm weather, especially in the week following Christmas, which we'll spend mostly in Corpus Christi. I imagine we'll go to the beach no matter the weather, but sun would be better, as far as I'm concerned.

B is also for beach, that smelly, gritty, sandy expanse of land that lines the Gulf of Mexico, of which I am particularly enamored. There are many things I'm looking forward to showing Scott on this, his third trip to Texas, but I'm especially looking forward to showing him the gulf coast, the landscape of my childhood, in such contrast to the landscape of his.

My girl Megan read a book called Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, and it gave her the brilliant idea to journal her life from A-Z. She's assured me that copying her will make me no lamer than I already am, so I'll give this idea a go.

I've lived in Austin for ten years now. In my mind, that makes me a native, by sheer force of will if not by birth. I moved to this city for college in the late summer of 1995 and spent six years in school. School wasn't all I was doing, of course. I spent four and a half of those years in one relationship, then another few years "finding myself." I've had five different roommates in that time and have lived at seven different addresses.

I may have been raised in a different city, but Austin is the city in which I grew up -- truly grew up -- and with every year that passes, it becomes more like home to me than just the place where I live.

This is significant to me these days, as I ponder my long-term plans. I love this city, but my long-term plans don't see me staying here forever. I've got much to do and much to see, and I can already feel myself falling under the city's spell, the one that I'll wake up from in ten more years and wonder where the time has gone.

I don't know for sure whether I'll leave Austin permanently. Maybe the lure of (generally) temperate winters and quirky culture and the siren's call of this city I love so much will draw me back into its clutches, or maybe I'll find some new place far from here to call home, but I'm certain I'll carry a bit of Austin with me wherever I find myself.

I spent part of today hanging out with the person who has known me longest of anyone except my family. It was nice to catch up. We went out for lunch, then to the farmers market and Armadillo Christmas Bazaar, then to Taniguchi Gardens until they closed early.

Old friends are very powerful things. In knowing you for so long, they know many of your quirks. They know your family and your old friends. They know all the stupid things you once did, but hopefully, they also know the kindnesses you once paid and your saving graces. It's a fearful and dangerous thing to have old friends, in some ways.

The flip-side, I suppose, is that if you have a friend so old as to know all those things, you have the same knowledge in return.

I had much to tell my friend, of plans and hopes and dreams. There was much catching up to be done.

Waking up this morning with my bed moved perpendicular to its previous direction was a bit strange. I looked above me for the window, to see whether it was light yet, and saw only wall. It'll take a bit of getting used to. It's cozier in its present configuration, though, like a little nest of a bed, though I can only enter and exit on one side. It's nice not having to worry about tripping on anything or falling against the boxes that used to block my exit, though.

I'm thinking it would be nice to have one of those mosquito net canopies above it, to make it even nestier. I think with my room configured as it is, I could avoid the ceiling fan, which is always an important configuration, with regard to canopies. I also think I need more blankets in my life.

My room still needs some fairly serious cleaning, but the job looks much more tackleable than it did before. That makes me happy. Cleaning my room stresses me out.

It took a night's sleep to do it, but my body is definitely feeling the effects of yesterday's stair-falling. My left shoulder in particular is very sore -- I guess I tried to catch myself as I fell. I should know better, but it's hard to stop that sort of thing on impulse.

Despite my sore muscles, I put some effort into rearranging my bedroom today. My room is packed full of stuff, and it's hard to keep it all manageable, but I did a good job of moving some stuff out of the way and turning my bed to go against the wall, in order to free up some floorspace. I'll be able to get out of bed all bleary-eyed without killing myself now, which is a definite improvement. It's amazing what rearranging things and shifting my perspective can do.

I have this persona that I craft for myself, a sort of flighty, carefree persona that doesn't bother making a lot of plans. I'm not sure whether I really used to be that way and have grown out of it in recent years, or whether I used it as an excuse, so that I wouldn't be held accountable for my supposed lack of planning. You might need to ask my shrink, actually; I'm a little tired of my own self-analysis lately. In any case, when I cultivate that persona, I really shouldn't be surprised when people buy into it, right?

The thing is, I do plan. I make really elaborate (and sometimes outlandish) plans for the future. I set goals and timelines, and then I start working toward them. I just don't tend to talk about them much. I've noticed lately that when I do start talking about my plans, people tend to be extremely surprised and sort of concerned. They don't think I've planned things through, because they don't know about them until they're almost complete. I don't talk or write about them very often because... well, that's probably another topic for my shrink. The short version is that I worry too much about what other people think. Maybe that should be my resolution for 2006: turn 30 and quit worrying about what other people think. 'Cause I've got plans, and people are about to start finding out about them.

As of first thing this morning, all indications were that my reprieve from class and work would last until 10 AM. I managed to sleep until nearly 8. In the last several months, I've lost my ability to sleep indefinitely late, so I was proud of my quasi-insomniacal brain for making it that far. I saw no ice or precipitation outside at all, save for the frost on the rooftops.

Claudia and I hurried and got ready for class and work, then stopped at Kerbey Lane for a pancake breakfast on the way. We drove (very carefully) over one icy bridge and then to campus. We were almost there when we heard word on the radio that everything was shut down all day.

Instead of work, I decided to go down to Town Lake to take pictures instead. Last weekend, driving over that bridge, I saw a glimpse of something resembling fall color (in December, mind you), so I thought I'd go try to capture it.

What I wound up seeing were three white swans, on the other side of Town Lake and the other side of Lamar, so I hiked over there, over the pedestrian bridge. At the top of the bridge, the wind was blowing. It might've been 29 or 30F out, but it felt much colder. Even with my scarf and toque and gloves, I was very very cold walking across that bridge.

There was a bit of ice still at the top and coating the steps down on the other side, so I was doing a good job of watching my step, or so I thought. I'd hardly descended the steps when my feet slid out from under me and I bounced down a few steps before landing hard on my butt. I did a quick self-assessment ("Camera? fine. Bones? ...I don't think anything is broken. Alright, let's go!") and then pulled myself up and continued, very very carefully. We Texans, we don't handle the ice well, it'd seem.

I tracked down the swans on the other side of that old building -- what is that building, anyway? I've always thought it was related to the power plant somehow, but I have no idea -- on the concrete slab where people often fish. There in the sun, taking photos of preening swans, I finally thawed out a bit.

Tonight, the temperature may dip into the teens, but there's no more precipitation expected, so I imagine it'll be business as usual tomorrow morning. I've got a quiz to study for and homework to do -- more tomorrow.

It's time again for Holidailies!

The problem with Holidailies is that I don't post regularly (or, well, at all, really) during the rest of the year, so when I start Holidailies with all good intentions, I find myself entirely out of practice and run out of things to say in a few days.

The good news is, I've got a lot to talk about this year. The bad news is, I'm so incredibly not used to talking about it. More on all that later, I suppose. My goal for this year is to find things to talk about every day, to find time to write about them, and to post pictures every day, if possible. They won't all be new photos, but they'll be new to you, at least.

Just in time for the Christmas season to start, Austin is receiving its first (and likely only) batch of winter weather for the year. Which is to say it's freezing out, and we're expecting some precipitation. The University closed at 2pm today (Yes, I know! Don't laugh!) and will stay closed until 10am tomorrow morning. It's supposed to get into the low 20s tonight and stay there into tomorrow morning, but we'll see how that goes.

Rather than staying home in my safe house during these treacherous, life-threatening conditions, I headed back to campus an hour later to pick up Claudia. I'd lent her my gloves, but she was without gloves and a hat, so we spent a couple of hours looking for some for her. I've got my cool pink toque, but I did admire some of the pretty, colorful hats at Old Navy. Naturally, Claudia didn't like those, so we went and looked at Sears and the Gap and finally found one she could (maybe) live with. I did pick up a nice, warm scarf, though. I might need it in February. By the time we got home at 4:45 or so, the temperature had dropped below freezing and it was sprinkling. The roads were still fine, though.

Claudia and I made gulyas last night, by which I mean that Claudia made the gulyas, but I peeled the potatoes. It was excellent, and the leftovers made a good, hearty meal for this chilly evening.

The university closing means that I have no class in the morning and don't have to be to work until 10AM. This would be the perfect night to bury myself in covers and read until the wee early-morning hours. Very appealing, that idea.

I did say I wouldn't be updating here anymore, didn't I?

And then I made the questionable choice to sign up for this year's incarnation of Holidailies. I do love Holidailies.

I'll need to get back into the habit of posting before I find myself obligated to. The problem is, I also not need to use up my scant amount of material before that date. Er, yeah.

It's December 1st, the beginning of a shiny new month, and I'm in a great mood. December is going to rock, y'all. I have utmost confidence in that, retrograde Mercury be damned.