Look at this

because it is amazing.

credit goes to Kevin for this one.

Owowow.

This is what happens when you don't wear sunscreen, kids. (Can you tell where my reach stops? And that my right arm is more flexible than my left? Should have gotten help with that...)

Skin cancer, here I come...




The one on the bottom literally fluoresces like one of those day-glo orange jackets crosswalk attendants wear. I couldn't even sleep on my back last night. Ow. And to think, I never used to be able to burn...Hanover really does suck the melanin out of you.

Or maybe

(Disclaimer: the following entry is an angst-filled, depressed mess, so if you don't want to hear another girl complain about her weight then please stop reading, because I know how ridiculous this may sound and the last thing I really want right now is a bunch of people commenting or emailing trying to tell me it's not true, because you know I won't believe a single word of it. Honestly, this isn't a cry for compliments or consolation, it's just me venting a little bit of frustration at the current circumstances, and I'd rather not deal with people trying to talk me down or anything. Don't even bother commenting on this, actually, because it can only lead to awkwardness. Thanks.)

it's not that the real me is overly sentimental, it's just that I'm much more prone to depression when I'm home. Only two days back and already all the emotions associated with home that I'd forgotten have caught up with me. The frustration at the fact that nothing ever gets done (so many things to do and so much time wasted), the drama with my sisters, the presence of my sisters that drives me into an emotional hole...let me explain:

I have always been amazed at the fact that within minutes of stepping off of a plane in California I could feel twenty pounds heavier and ten times homelier than I did when I got on in New Hampshire. I don't know if it's just a matter of their respective populations (and I have a feeling it is), but it's happened every time, and it kicked in today. Why is it that I can look at myself alone in the mirror and see a me who is just slightly heavier than she'd like to be, and be okay with that, but then I see myself beside my sisters and suddenly transform into some massive bespectacled white whale with a double chin and a dumpy wardrobe? Milky white skin can in fact be attractive on a girl, and it is a lot softer than tan (=damaged) skin, but unless you're willowy you don't look Snow White beautiful, you just look like a big marshmallow. In Japan it was the same thing as it was at the map painting today--I left the house feeling fine about myself, but then I saw the pictures and almost cried. It just feels so unfair, that no matter what I do I'm just fighting a losing battle that started in high school. If you were to draw a graph of my weight over the past four years you'd see a sort of sine curve where the entire graph is gradually shifting upwards. Even when I was exercising every single day at the beginning of sophomore year my weight only evened out at about ten pounds heavier than my lowest weight a year and a half prior (when I was pure muscle) and I even started to gain it back (and it wasn't muscle) living on the healthiest diet I could imagine. It feels like no matter what I do it only gets worse, and I don't even have the advantage of losing my appetite when it gets hot out or forgetting to eat when I'm stressed or busy. Unfortunately, I tend to eat constantly, and when things get rough I just eat more to take my mind off of less happy things. Then there are the people who think they're doing me a favor to lift my spirits by feeding me things I like, which I appreciate (even though sometimes, like in Japan, it felt more like they were saying, "Oh, look, she looks so cute and happy when she eats, let's feed her more since obviously by the looks of her it's what she likes to do" as if I were some sort of sideshow attraction), and for a moment I feel good because I'm not letting myself be governed by diets or calories or any of those superficial monsters that have possessed so many of America's females, and I feel like I'm accepted the way I am. But then I see another picture of myself and watch another TV show where there will never ever be a protagonist who is not supposed to be goofy who isn't either waifish or ripped or another magazine cover stained by the drool of dozens of men featuring another of America's Favorite Skinny Minis (and it's so depressing when people who actually looked average, like Kelly Clarkson, go all anorexic on you because their publicist said it would be better for their image--or let's just hope it was their publicist and not them deciding they needed to look like a stick figure, because that would be sad, even though that's sort of what I'm sort of saying), and feel like people here must look at me next to people like my sisters (lean, tan, white teeth, sun-bleached hair, glasses-free, comfortable wearing a tank top and shorts or even a bikini top in public) and laugh. Really, no matter how "okay" people may think I am, here there's simply no comparison. Maybe if every person I met on the street had a chance to have a conversation with me, they'd be able to look past the exterior and decide I was a worthy human being, but in the land of sun-kissed beach babes, I'm just some pale chubby goofball who doesn't stand a chance. I'm not talking about matters of the opposite sex, either. Just first impressions in general. I can see it in their eyes when they look at me. It's half unfortunate circumstance and half sort of motivation, too. When the average middle school girl is anorexic, you're just bound to get a lot of really skinny people around. Yeah, yeah, you may say that's not what matters, but here when you're scanning a crowd it really does. It should technically be motivating me to work out and eat better, but when I see pictures like this I feel like I can do nothing but sit down and cry. (Note: This image is only going to be up for probably 12 hours, a day, max, so if you missed it I'm sorry. I really don't want it being publicized for any longer than is absolutely necessary. It's incredibly embarrassing and depressing, really. It may not look that bad, but if you could see it bigger and see the rest of the pictures on that roll, you'd see it. Plus, being me looking at myself, of course I can pick out every single flaw in less than two seconds.)



When I get in moods like this, all I want to hear is "yes, here is the magic solution to your problems," so when my parents say, "well, if you want to lose weight you should start keeping a food journal, and if you go on a run every day and go to the gym four or five times a week and keep your calorie intake below 1800 or so and then you should be able to lose a pound or two a week" it just make s me want to (don't be scared I'm not going to hurt myself) cut little holes in my abdomen and thighs and squeeze out the excess fat--it seems like it would be so easy if I could just get past the pain and stop the bleeding, right? Sorry, that was a little gross, but that's seriously the thought that always crosses my mind. I know that the only way there is the hard way, but the thing is I've gone down that road so many times and it's never worked like it was supposed to. The only time it's ever worked was when I was spending six days a week, five hours a day doing some of the hardest physical activity I've ever done, and only after three and a half years of practicing like that did I finally get a metabolism boost and fall into good physical shape. Looking at that, I don't think I'll ever have the time, self-discipline, or energy to devote to that kind of exercise regimen, so I'm stuck thinking I'm going to be like this forever with nothing to do about it. The best I can hope for is to cut out most of the things I like and be at the high end of an acceptable weight (according to the health experts of america). I could "accept my body the way it naturally is" except I know I can never be happy like this, even with all the positive reinforcement in the world, if I'm going to have to constantly compare myself to people like my sisters. And that thought just makes me want to eat more.

Well, my dad's making me go into the office with him early to do some stuff, so I have to go to bed early and once again forgo writing the end of my road trip story. I should be in a better mood to do it, anyway, so perhaps it's for the best. I can't have my story tainted by tonight's cynicism.

Geography Lessons

The last map painting ever is done, and I have a little bit of a sunburn. (Check the tan line.) For those of you who don't know: In high school I started a community service project so I could get into NHS [and I joined NHS so I could get into college. Yes, I know, I abused the system, but so did everybody else.] wherein a group of my friends and I got together, bought a giant stencil of the US, and painted or repainted giant US maps on elementary school blacktops.

They started out taking us 8 hours apiece, but as we got the hang of it/improved our technique/materials and got more efficient we got it down to 4 hours per map.
We've done I think 30 or so maps since the summer after my junior year of HS, and this was my last one.

It also happened to be at my elementary school, which was fun, since I hadn't been back in a long time. It went without incident, and I emerged unscathed save a small blister on my right hand. I also regained the true mark of a southern californian, the beloved sandal tan. Also, when dealing extensively in acrylics and spraypaint, one gets quite messy, hence the rather sorry state of my hands at the moment. It's alright, though, I don't mind it much. The only thing that bothers me is having paint under my fingernails.

It's pretty and multicolored and...this is quickly turning into the most boring, pointless entry ever. I think I just wanted to try putting pictures in. Sorry about all this. I did, however, put a sunflower seed where Dartmouth is. You can't see it in this picture, but I circled the spot. Hopefully it sticks in the paint, and generations of small children will forever know there's something significant about the near-geographical center of the Vermont-New Hampshire block, even if they don't know what that something is. It's like subliminally brainwashing little kiddies! Maybe they'll all start yearning for the granite state and they won't know why, and eight or nine years from now Dartmouth will get a flood of applications from Mission Viejo. That would be cool. Or I could just be insane. :)

Finally.

I was right--I think Crash did help me break through the scabs of last term and get closer to my old self. This morning I was sitting at my computer, reading email/blogs and listening to Hide and Seek again, and decided that depending on my mood the world either seems infinitely sad or infinitely happy. This morning it seemed infinitely sad. I went downstairs to distract myself with breakfast, turned on the tv, and bam!--two music videos and a commercial brought tears to my eyes. Just like old times. Even though it may be weak, I think I prefer that version of me to the one I've come to know recently. It felt good to be uncontrollably emotional. I feel more in touch with things, even if it's not in the most ideal fashion.

Nurgh.

At around 9:30 I got hit by the most brutal case of dry-eyed fatigue ever. Now, almost 2 hours later, I'm finally ready for sleep but haven't done the one thing I was supposed to do that was keeping me from actually going to sleep all this time--write thank you notes. I also haven't updated about the end of the trip, which I said I'd do, but that's going to have to wait, too. Tomorrow is a famous Grannis map painting, and since it's a fresh map and there are only 4 of us it'll likely take 5 or 6 hours. At least I'll get a good tan out of it. But for now, sleep is in order.
I wish it were possible to meet up with friends in dreams...it'd be a great way to see people without traveling, better than email and videoconferencing since you could actually do stuff, and almost better than reality because you could do things one can't actually do in real life. Just a daydream.

Crash

I still don't have the energy or the proper state of mind to write with appropriate passion about the extremely eventful last two days of the trip. I'll do that tomorrow. I just got back from seeing Crash, which was recommended by my sister and the most powerful movie I've seen in a long, long time. It was really really difficult to watch a lot of the time, but it was also very well done and extremely powerful. Film buffs may disagree, but I'm not too picky as long as it moves me. This was the first movie to make me start bawling in my chair in a long, long time and it felt good. I haven't been able to cry when I've wanted to for too long, and breaking down in pseudo-public (technically surrounded by my parents and strangers but isolated by the curtain of darkness) was almost cathartic. I usually break into tears watching touching commercials, but lately I've been in a dry spell--a sort of emotional drought, perhaps--and tonight felt like I chipped away at a little corner of that wall keeping me from my old self.

So anyway, the movie goes highly recommended (and has an impressive cast of B-listers [and a couple As] to boot). Until tomorrow, I wish you only the best.

---------

And please tell the whole world I am here
Here to be their hero

home

I'm home and alive. I also have less hair. More later. I'll leave you with this: a fittingly insane ending to a trip that was supposed to transition me between two massive stages of my insane life.

Mmm...Hate subsiding

So, since posting my last jittery and angry entry, I returned to the Econo Lodge to find that, unlike the fully-rigged Holiday Inn Express, this joint had been thrifty and relegated their one wireless hub to the motel lobby (makes sense, doesn't it?), so now I'm sitting next to the future Continental Breakfast and feeling a lot less hostile towards this place. That plus I ate a Pink Lady apple to get the taste of the tuna wrap out of my mouth (who'da thunk I'd find those apples in New Mexico? I found them for the first time in Hanover, and that's the only place I've seen them before now). What would have been the cherry on top of the cake is if the Jacuzzi had been warm--see, when we got back from next door, the lights in the pool room were still on, and the 'cuz was still bubbling away, so we thought we might be able to sneak in without the front desk guy getting mad at us. We covertly put sweats over our bathing suits and hid our towels in our backpacks with our computers, got all the way down to the pool, placed our things gingerly on the plastic chairs, and found out that the heater had been shut off. :( Oh well. I might take a hot bath instead. Or a warm one. Or just a shower and say I took a bath. We'll see.

Oh yeah, this gives me a chance to say something I meant to say earlier but forgot on account of my guilty conscience. I've come to find that you can learn a lot about someone by the way they drive. It's not a personality-defining action, but it definitely sheds light on some aspects of one's person that wouldn't otherwise come to the forefront. Even if it's meaningless in the end, I find it fascinating nonetheless. I find that if I've known someone for a long time I start wanting to go driving with them if only to see how they do it. Do they sit close, far, have one or both hands on the wheel, do they hold it on top or at the bottom, is their seat slightly reclined or upright, what do they do with their left foot (you standard users excluded), how smooth are their turns, how smooth is their acceleration, if they do drive standard how smooth is their shifting, do they lean foward in their seat or let the seat cradle them, do they use their turn signal, do they drive recklessly, can they stay in their own lane, do they keep their eyes on the road, do they make you feel safe? You know, stuff like that. It's like watching someone play Nintendo. You could always tell the really skilled players from the ones who knew where to go and what to do but lacked finesse. When it comes to driving, by observing someone's style you don't necessarily alter your already existing opinion of them, but you end up tacking on an extra bit of info, as if sticking a post-it note in their file. It may also just be me, but personally, I like to see how my friends drive. I mean, aren't you curious?

I hate Econolodge

Don't have a *ton* of time to talk at the moment, but here's a quick update:

Econolodge lies and rips me off. wah wah wah. So now I've been reduced to stealing wireless from the Holiday Inn Express next door, and I'm getting really nervous about having to lie if someone comes up to ask what we're doing sitting on the curb outside the back door (why aren't we doing this in our room?). I suggested "enjoying the warm night air," and Kina came up with "waiting for our parents to arrive," and I think hers is better, but I'm still a little bit nervous about it. :
So anyway, here's this to whet your appetite:

Road Trippin': Day 7

This morning we left Colorado Springs and went to see Garden of the Gods, which is basically a huge assembly of massive blades of red stone jutting out of the earth. Very pretty. Took a bunch of pictures. Then we drove down south out of Colorado into New Mexico, where we hit up our grandmother's cousin's ranch in Cimarron even though she wasn't going to be there. We crept around for a bit and eventually walked in to what we thought was her house until we found out it was some random business office, freaked out and ran away. Going further down the unpaved road we found another house, this time full of big scary dogs, and that turned out to be the wrong house, too. The real house was apparently even further down the road and is 100+ years old (=impressive for the west, so shut up you Easterners). Oh well. Next stop was Taos, a little pueblo totally cute and all adobe-esque. Saw some cows heading single file toward a parking lot on the way there, so we figured we had stumbled across the underground railroad of the bovine world and thus when we saw "Taos cow" ice cream in town we had to partake. For the cows' sake, of course. Obviously they were running to escape suffering and persecution, so we couldn't let their suffering have been in vain. We had lavender, and it was quite tasty. Thank you, Taos cows, and god be with you on your journey to salvation. One bad point about Taos was that they promised us free wireless in the town square but the signal was nowhere to be found. Being robbed of the wireless that was promised to us seems to be a theme for the day.

Now we're in Santa Fe, and all was going well until we got here. Got a little lost finding downtown, and when we finally found the Econolodge we had looked up online (which promised the lowest rate AND free wireless) they charged us more, didn't listen to us ask for a single bed, and didn't have wireless. So now we're stealing. :( On top of that, the jacuzzi which was to be their/our saving grace turned out to close fifteen minutes prior to our arrival. And, when we went to get a sandwich for dinner, it ended up being overly tangy and wholly unsatisfying. :( So sad. Oh well. Tomorrow we'll wander about town (provided we can find it) and then head down to see Jared in San Felipe Pueblo. I'd really like to go out to see the cliff dwellings but we'll see how the timing goes.

Three days left, and a lot left ahead of us (and sadly not very much moolah). Oh well, such is life. And when I get back I'll have to work my butt off to get that website done. Sigh. At least I'm getting paid for it, so it's technically a job, so I won't be wasting time before I head out to Morocco, at least.

We also saw the world's biggest dandelions. About 4 inches in diameter. Wish I could bring some back with me intact.

Colorado is pretty

And Nebraska smells like cow, if you know what I mean. Those are the lessons I learned today.

Really, though, before I begin, I've had a couple things on my mind that I'd like to clarify:

1) I think the reason why I was most scared that night was this: yes, being in unfamiliar territory at midnight with strange people in beat up cars leering at you can be very nerve-wracking, but take that mild discomfort plus my tendency towards paranoia plus finding out we had the potential to not be able to get into the apartment, and now multiply that anxiety by twelve billion (because I really, really had to go to the bathroom like nobody's business, I'm telling you...it was bad). Everybody knows that a full bladder can add stress and moodiness to any situation, and when you're already a little bit on edge (and you're stuck in a car when everything is closed) you're bound to get a little crazy.

2) In the car after the firefly incident (and the bug-coated windshield) I was thinking about what would happen if we decided to start utilizing the ocean for travel, and developed a commuter vehicle for extremely fast underwater travel (even speedboat-fast would do, probably). Now, why we'd decide to move underwater instead of stick with the floating methods we've got now (more room? the water has a much higher resistance, but with the proper streamlining, and if we were really desperate...) I'm not sure, but bear with me. We've already got fast airborne travel, and we've heard the stories about unfortunate avians (apologies for a potentially incorrect pluralization) getting sucked into jet engines. When you hit bugs on the road, some stick in your radiator, and others smack into the windshield, their guts stick to the glass, and the exoskeleton flies up and over the roof of the car. Planes probably don't get much in the way of duck guts on their windshields, but then again I've never seen the front of a plane after landing (and I'm sure hitting birds in the air is a much more rare occurance than hitting bugs on the highway). Plus with animals with internal skeletal systems I'd assume it would be different anyway, since it's not outer shell + squishy innards, it's squishy outer + bones so instead of a juicy explosion it might be more of a weird smear. Then again, when people get hit by trains they pretty much disintegrate (or at least explode), so I guess it just takes a high enough speed for the mass of the object.

But I digress. My point was that if we developed very high speed underwater travel, might we start getting sea life stuck in propellers? Probably not stuck on windshields, since the water rushing past the glass would probably be enough to keep it fairly clean (at least while in motion), but stuck in things? Maybe. Would you stop for fuel and find little fishies and bits of dolphin on your craft? Who knows. But this is a terribly morbid subject, and not one I should continue to discuss.

3) Last night there was a huge hailstorm in Colorado Springs, which is where we are now, but I'll get to that later. Huge enough that cars were disabled and minor havoc ensued. Last week when we were stuck at Phi Tau trying to figure out when to get the car, we were thinking about trying to go up Thursday morning before Eric's trip to Boston. Had we left that day earlier, we would have been here last night during the storm and may have gotten stuck or something worse. (Hail in Colorado Springs has been known to get massive and has even killed people in the past.) So this goes back to what I said earlier about feeling a bit like a tempered Candide in that this may not be the best of all possible worlds but at least things tend to work out for the better, even when they seem to be going poorly at the time. [Let me destroy my previous assertion, now, by telling you that the reason we left a day later is that we wanted to see Eisley in concert on sunday in Cleveland. So no matter which day we left, we would have ended up in Colorado Springs tonight, and would not have hit the storm. So there goes that theory. But had we gotten the car on time and left on Monday, we may very well have ended up there yesterday and gotten stuck, so maybe *that's* my proof.]

So now that that's over with, here's a quick update on the situation:

Road Trippin: Day 6 (the abridged version...I don't feel like typing much anymore)

We began in Nebraska, hoping that after Kearney things would get more interesting...there were some postcards that promised pretty things in the west of the state, but sadly we sort of bypassed that to get to Colorado. We took a parallel highway for a bit and found that it looked much the same as the interstate, so we went back. Pretty much the entire middle of the state smells like cow, too, which is kind of gross.

Colorado started out looking a lot less green than the previous states. However, once we got closer to the Rockies it turned green and full of lakes and even had snow in the mountains, and Oh the Mountains! It's been so long since I've seen real mountains. The east coast only has hills (and Mount Washington, which will kill you), but the west...now those are mountains. The Rockies are just huge raw slabs of pure, strong, and unadulterated Nature. They're beautiful and intimidating. (The Sierras in California, on the other hand, are sort of a compromise between the sanded-down bumps in the east and the Rockies: they're huge and majestic but not as raw as their younger cousins...quite breathtaking if I do say so myself.) It's an amazing feeling to look up into the clouds and notice that what you see beneath them is not sky but mountains disappearing into the mist. Coming from the east coast, they seemed almost comically gargantuan, and I couldn't really convince myself they actually extended that high into the atmosphere until we got closer to the base.

We drove through the mountains and bypassed Denver (no big loss). We saw Boulder (adorable adorable college town) and Golden (tiny cowboy town where Buffalo Bill Cody is buried--also home of Coors) and a bunch of cute towns up in the mountains that lay in between. In Boulder we walked around the pedestrian mall downtown and saw the tiniest kitten ever, the cutest puppy ever, a man playing the harp gorgeously, hand-made soap, ten stores selling import goods from India or Tibet, lots of ice cream (to complement the perfect life in a perfect town, I suppose) and a game store that sold every bit of electricity-free entertainment you could think of EXCEPT for a certain item I've been searching desperately for. Boulder is also very very crunchy. So many Tevas! Ah, they're so huggable. :) (The people, not the shoes.)

In Golden we actually saw some live deer for a change. They *were* standing awfully close to the highway, though, which made me worry that we might have to see some of that roadkill in the making. Thankfully, we didn't.

We then drove into a bit of a rainstorm that was hitting Denver (we caught the edge of it). I love watching storms in the distance...the clouds look like you've raked them down with your fingers and you would never in a million years guess that the fuzzy gray wisps hanging from the sky can actually be torrential downpours if you didn't already know. Some lightning, too, but very infrequent. Nothing like the good storms we had in Hanover.

In Colorado Springs we saw (for a split second) a harvest moon. It was probably a couple of inches in diameter and only an inch or so above the horizon, so that we lost sight of it when we came off the hill. It was also the most amazing shade of burnt orange I've ever seen. It's a shame I couldn't pull out my camera fast enough. Not quite sure why we were treated to that sight in the middle of Colorado, but it was nice nonetheless.

Now we're in a Howard Johnson with free wireless (but we certainly paid for it :\) and a fan that doesn't really work. Oh, and "hot" breakfast meant "microwaveable sausage patties," which weren't all that bad. For microwaveable sausage patties, that is.

Tomorrow morning we're off to Garden of the Gods and then down to explore Northern New Mexico. The ranch plans fell through so we'll be motelling it again, but it's not so bad...just means we can make it farther south tomorrow and have less driving to do on our very scenic day (friday's filled with a visit to Jared in San Felipe Pueblo and seeing the Petrified Forest and Meteor Crater, and then an early bedtime before going to see the sun rise over the Grand Canyon). So for now, goodnight.

ps--We saw gas today for $1.93. (But we bought some at $1.99...:( ) Just thought people in more unfortunate bits of the country might like to hear that. :P

pps-We gained another hour today in western Nebraska. It's quite convenient, so I'm glad I'm not driving in the opposite direction. I also realized that I proved my ignorance *again* in print when I expressed confusion regarding time zones. Now, being in the mountains, I realize that Mountain time would have no business representing the Midwestern states, which are hilly at best. Bah. So I'm a bit slow. I try to make up for it in other ways.

Oh, Kearney.

Road Trippin': Day 5?

So I think it's been six days since we started, and we're now in our dear Davey Archwamety's hometown of Kearney, Nebraska, at a Day's Inn (which has so kindly furnished us with free wireless). It's no free apartment in Iowa, but the bed is huge, so I think I'll live. Kind of irritating that any city with a population of over 5,000 people won't charge less than 50 for a motel, though. :\ I wouldn't mind so much if we weren't trying to stay under the budget our parents set for us. That's why we're going to subsist on generic brand special K with strawberries and raisins for as much of the rest of our trip as possible...all these motels are really taking a bite out of our collective wallet, and with all the travel I've still got planned for the near future I can't afford to be shelling out much of my own cash once the generous donation runs out.

The day began with a hop over to Iowa City where we met some of my aunt's costumer friends from her University of Iowa days. Nine falafel, a five dollar expired meter ticket and some successful gift purchases later, we headed out towards where we are now (with the eventual destination, to be reached tomorrow, of somewhere in Colorado, either Colorado Springs or Denver if we're feeling metropolitan).

Iowa is a suprisingly beautiful state. I had expected something much more boring. However, beautiful does not always imply interesting, so I can understand how people can complain so much about it. It had lots of corn...lots and LOTS of corn. And farms. And tiny little towns in the middle of nowhere...sounds like New England with corn, really. I don't know how all you rural folks do it. We took a state-demarcated "Scenic Bypass" that ran parallel to I-80 for a while so we could catch a glimpse of what (more) "real" Iowa looked like, as opposed to just whatever businesses and people had the guts to move close to the interstate. (answer: strange rest stations, and nothing else. Maybe some dead bambis.) It turned out to be really nice. What's that word? Refers to the countryside...not agrarian...pastoral, that's it. Took lots of pictures. At some point we came across a field of...geese. There were probably fifty or sixty good sized-ones, all waddling together through a corn field towards a nearby pond. No clue why they weren't flying...my guess was that it was a funeral procession and they were on their way to float the body out on the water. (Maybe it could be on fire at the same time...isn't that a ritual somewhere?)

Nebraska hasn't been too interesting so far, but then again we've barely spent any time in it. Lincoln proved to have too many suburbs to sift through before we could get to the downtown so we turned back to the interstate. Somewhere along the road I noticed white clumps floating around and I thought it might be cotton coming out of the big truck coming up on my right, but as we got closer we realized that the cotton was moving, and then we realized that the entire truck was a giant chickenwire cage full of LIVE CHICKENS. I'm talking an entire semi full of seven layers of chickens. Some had whole wings stuck outside of the cage so it was getting torn at by the wind, most of the rest were just climbing over each other and being battered by the highway speeds and each other. It was totally something you'd see in a PETA video or something. Heh.

One really nice thing, though was the drive at the end of the evening. After a beautiful sunset, we noticed flickering lights over the fields beside the road. (We also noticed a disproportionately large number of bugs embedding themselves in our windshield--foreshadowing! Ooh!) I couldn't crane my head long enough to not get us killed (most of Nebraska's stretch of the interstate has a speed limit of 75, so I was going almost 90 at that point and concentrating rather hard on not driving off the road), so Kina took a good look and realized that they were fireflies! At the same time a perfectly mellow, slightly bittersweet melody came on the air (from a demo CD we received for free at the Eisley concert) came on, and the combination of the purple dusk, the mood music, and the dancing fireflies created one of those moments you only find in movies.

The very end of the night was slightly less fun, as it consisted of us driving later than we had hoped to and having trouble finding a motel that wouldn't rip us off, but here we are, safe and sound and ready for Colorado. I only got 4.5 hours of sleep last night because of my cough, so hopefully I'll beat that record tonight, but at least we gain an hour tomorrow in western Nebraska.

Tomorrow is Boulder, Golden, maybe swimming in a river, Denver, Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs. Supposedly.

All I can say is that the Day's Inn's "Hot" Breakfast (actual quote) had better be good.

ohmygodohmygodohmygod

I don't much care for continuity at this point, so forgive the lack of the usual header.

(Sorry for not updating last night...we went straight from Grog Shop to a Days Inn and I couldn't get to a proper connection.)

We're in Davenport, Iowa, it's 1 in the morning on tuesday (Central time? Mountain? Whichever is one time zone west of EST), and I have never felt so relieved in my life.

The concert went great last night, Eisley rocked as usual and their opening bands were quite nice as well. (Lovedrug and ...somebody else.) We found a motel for fifty buckaroos and slept well on a giant giant bed (seriously we were both curled up with legs protruding and never touched each other). HOWEVER, scary thing #1 happened last night: I woke up 'round 4 in the morning with one of my usual coughing fits, dealt unhappily with the gunk in my eyelashes that used to be the mucus my eyes produced to protect themselves from the ten tons of cigarette smoke blowing into my face at the show (I miss California and their no smoking anywhere laws), and HEARD VOICES OUTSIDE. Yes, it's was a strip-style motel, so people go by all the time moving in and out, but I get paranoid easily, so I peeked through the...peekhole and saw some guy on a cell walking VERY SLOWLY past my car and looking at it closely. I got totally scared that he was going to break into it, because I get scared about stuff like that, and then I got even more scared that he was going to turn around and look at ME and come kill me. So I got back into bed quietly and hoped I didn't see a face through the curtains (I would have had a heart attack, no doubt). Then I heard a car engine start and a car drive off and I was afraid it was our car, but I was too scared to get up again and check. In the morning thank god once I chipped more gunk off of my eyelashes (and lost some in the process...*wah*) I saw that our car was in fact still there and all in one piece.

Today driving went well except for having woken up late on a 9.5 hour driving day (with city visits planned). We took a quick driving tour of Cleveland and then hit the road towards Iowa. I then realized that Indiana is actually located between Ohio and Illinois so we had a bit more ground to cover than I had previously thought, but hey, I already knew I was terrible at geography. :) Heck, I found out two days ago that Idaho is on my side of the country. (no joke.) I also used to think that Utah was over by the great lakes. I think my brain just automatically shoves all the states I don't really care a lot about over into that "middle" area so it doesn't have to deal with them. Aheh. I'm a terrible person. (Apologies to people from the midwest and Mormons.) In Indiana we stopped in Gary because I knew there was a song about it (I'd quote the lyrics but they're terribly redundant). At first I mistakenly thought it was where The Music Man was staged, but since the last time I saw that was during my family's Rodgers and Hammerstein binge back in middle school or something I didn't remember until we were already in front of City Hall that they were in River City [Trouble, oh we got trouble, right here in River City! With a capital "T" that rhymes with "P"and that stands for Pool!!] but we enjoyed finding out the city is sort of a heap, anyway. (***UPDATE!!! The Gary, Indiana song IS IN FACT from The Music Man, even though they're not from there, so I'm not so dumb after all! BUT, it ISN'T a Rodgers and Hammerstein, so for that I'm extra dumb. AND, River City isn't even real, so I couldn't have gone anyway, so...I don't know what that makes me.***) Next on the list was Chicago, which turned out to be totally sweet even though we spent most of the little time we had on the nice side of the river (which has all the famous buildings but happens to close down at 7pm). Sears Tower, the Monadnock Building, early steel-framed apartment buildings with ceramic decor beneath the windows...we missed a bunch of the ones that weren't within walking distance (including the abode of Mr. Wright himself) but it was still awesome to the nth degree. That's what I get for taking HIST 52 (was that the number? I forget now)...an appreciation for American architecture. :) (Even if I did totally resent having to memorize stuff about pediments and cupolas and the layout of early American abodes.)

SO, left Chicago after dark (but got back to our car before then because we're good little girls) and began the drive across Illinois to Davenport, Iowa, which ended up taking around 3 hours. We got low on gas right before we reached our destination so we had to stop and fill up at a sketchy deserted gas station (which TERRIFIES me), which brings me to the MOST SCARY PART OF ALL (the part that inspired the title of this post, though I think typing out all of the day's previous events has kind of brought me down, thank god).

Kina and I both had to go to the bathroom (because like good little girls we're also drinking a lot of water to stay hydrated), but we were going to wait until we got low enough on gas that we could fill up and make our rest stop at the same time, thus minimizing time spent in sketchy gas stations. However, we had more gas than we thought we did, so by the time we had to fill up (which was actually in Iowa) we really really had to go. While I stayed by the car and filled up the tank, Kina went into the little convenience store (and I'd go in once she came out, or we'd park the car and go in together, or what have you), and the whole time I was waiting there was a guy standing outside the store rattling change in his pockets and staring at me. Looked late forties, maybe, tall, thin, kind of scruffy. Just kind of paced around staring at me. I felt safe until the relatively normal looking guy filling up next to me pulled out of the station. If it hadn't been around midnight I might not have been so scared, but as it was I was beginning to worry (and the really having to go to the bathroom wasn't helping). When Kina got back we considered parking the car and going in together but the guy was still pacing and staring and by that point another, younger guy had pulled up in his car, looked at us for a bit, and gone inside (and there was no one else around), so we decided to look elsewhere. My urgency had subsided a bit, so we had a few minutes to spare, so we drove across the street to the motel there, only to find that there wasn't a public restroom available. We drove back across the street (this time with more urgency) in hope that the suspicious characters would be gone, and in fact they were, but as we crossed the street again and turned into the station we noticed a man on a bicycle who had been riding away, but who STOPPED his bike and TURNED AROUND when he heard our car. We went straight out the driveway again as he rode back into the station (that was our change-rattler, alright) really creeped out and (at least in my case) really stressed out (thanks to my potty emergency, to quote the Animaniacs). We decided to continue towards our destination, which supposedly wasn't very far away, and even though we passed a few gas stations along the way I was too scared to try that again. We made it to the apartments where my aunt's friend is so kindly letting us crash (and she's not even there...she left us the code and the door unlocked--and this free internet! :) ) and typed in the code she gave us (avoiding the cockroaches along the way and fingering the pepper spray in our bags as cars slowed as they drove past us) and it DIDN'T WORK!!! Ten, twenty times we punched it in and we couldn't open the door. It was past midnight, so we couldn't call the girl, so Kina called home as I entered panic mode. It seriously couldn't wait much longer. We decided to hop back in the car and find a gas station while we waited for a response. However, one way streets and the lack of open stores at 12:30 in the morning (and the lack of gas stations in a "downtown"-type area) meant we drove and drove and I got more and more desperate (to the point of almost pulling over once or twice and saying to heck with my dignity--oh to be male), even driving into the parking lot of a casino in the area (unfortunately it was the valet pull-up so I had to drive out the other side), and eventually we found a kwik-e-mart type thing (that was fortunately quite clean and non-sketchy) and the weight of the world was lifted from my shoulders.

After that we drove back to the apartments and tried the door one more time but this time with a suggestion from our aunt, and lo and behold--it opened!!! Then we checked the stairwell door, and--it opened, too!!! Then the apartment door, and--ta da!!! It was as if we had been put through tests of will and courage, and upon passing said tests we were allowed through the gates of heaven. A fully furnished, quite nice apartment awaited us, with free fast internet, a fluffy bed with fluffy pillows, a nice TV and a nice DVD collection, two showers...mmmmmm. I have never felt more relieved in my life. (No jokes...the double entendre was not my intention here.)

When I began this entry it was an hour ago and I was nearly shaking from the adrenaline. Now, thanks to the catharsis of typing much too much, I'm merely pleasantly tired. I think I'll go change into my bedclothes, brush my teeth, wash my face, and dream of interesting things. Then I'll inevitably wake up to cough violently for a bit, but I'll eventually get back to sleep and in the morning I'm sure I'll wake to find a beautiful little town. Sunlight really does a number for the character of unfamiliar cities, I'll tell you that.

So for now, goodnight, and I hope your evening was less harrowing than mine. Until next time.

Heh.

I think I've developed an irrational fear of loud and aggressive door knocks. :\ (My mind seems to equate them with impending death these days...my heart completely stops.)

Shower, then off to Iowa City before we go to either the middle or far western edge of Nebraska, depending on if we want to get to Cimarron in two or three days. If we choose the former, we will die of driving, but we'll see.

Grannises are wusses

Road Trippin': Day 3 (note)

So, here I sit in Caribou Café in Cleveland, Ohio, just feet away from half of the band Eisley, whom we are here tonight to see. Kina spent half an hour getting up the courage to drop a note on one of their tables while they talked on the phone. I managed to snag a blurry photo with her cell phone. What we really wanted were pictures of them holding the piñatas, but neither of us have any guts.

I must be back to the concert now, but I'll update when I can. The drive, by the way, wasn't bad, but we did have to stop a bunch of times to make bathroom stops because I guess walnut-sized bladders run in the family, too.

Manhattan: Redux

Road Trippin': Day 2

First of all, I still have a cough that sounds like I'm dying of Tuberculosis, or so I've been told.

Today we went into the city around lunchtime after a leisurely ten hour sleep (much needed after our 2 or 3 from the night before). Kina says I made funny noises but she was afraid to wake me because when I'm awake I start coughing again. I didn't have a chance to catch her snoring, though, because I apparently fell asleep rather quickly despite my hacking up of lung bits. (Mmm.)

We met up with Justin again, this time up at Columbia, and saw the campus a bit. 1) Wow. Like Central Park, I'd never guess that stuff existed in the midst of all of Manhattan's chaos. 2) Jealous. Why do they get tons of cute little sushi joints when Hanover's stuck with the soon-to-be-departed-and-hardly-worth-it-anyway-since-it's-not-even-its-own-restauraunt "Bamboo Garden"? I don't know, but it's not fair. I suppose they are NYC, though. So yeah, the campus is very nice, but there was a major lack of public computing (no campus-wide wireless? You've got to be kidding me) and all the girls' bathrooms were in hard-to-reach places since they went co-ed later than we did (in 1980) and didn't bother to convert any of the conveniently placed men's bathrooms. Still, very cool.

While checking out their little park I saw a pigeon get hit by a car. That was disturbing/amusing. Would have been more disturbing and less amusing had I not seen it fly away afterward (or maybe it just disintegrated). The only true bits of evidence were the feathers floating gracefully down into the intersection afterwards (and the thump I heard when it hit). Ah well. You can kick those things if you run at them, so I suppose they deserve it to a point for being so complacent.

We also hit up a corner of Soho ("it's HOW-stun, not HYOO-stun!") and walked through the sad and shrinking three blocks of what's left of Little Italy. Then we reached my favorite NYC destination--Chinatown! MmmmMMmMmM!!!11one! (forgive me.) It's all about the char siu bau/custard bun/boba combination. A Manhattan ritual for me, I tell you.

After that we forewent the Brooklyn Bridge and walked down to ground zero through TriBeCa. Interesting site, I just which I could have seen them when they were standing so I could know what I was looking at. Then we walked down to Battery Park to peek at the Statue of Liberty (or the Eiffel Tower, as Justin calls it) and saw some Michael Jackson-wannabees along the way (very cool). What the heck is up with Clinton Castle? Weird...

Finally, we walked over to Wall Street and witnessed the violation of the bull...since the head was occupied by a zillion small children cleverly posing for their mothers as cowboys, a group of small asian women decided to take their souvenir photographs of the other end of the bull: my companions and I watched in horror as one by one they squatted between its legs and cradled its...err...huevos with their little asian arm and stared back at the camera with glee. *shudder* Ah well, at least they knew how to have fun.

Despite my cough and the tendency for my baby toes (thanks to my narrow walking shoes) to try to assimilate themselves into the rest of my foot, it was an overall satisfying day. The lessons I can take from it are: 1) My cell phone is totally lame. Who cares about tri-band and GPS when it can't transmit my voice from a train or last more than an hour without dying or be compatible with any car chargers since apparently they don't make my version any more? Argh. Anyway, moving on to 2) I already knew this but sightseeing with a local is a bad idea because locals don't know how, nor do they necessarily have the desire to see any sights. When you live there, nothing seems exciting anymore, so most things seem missable and you can never come up with good ideas for places to go. Best leave it to the tourists who've already planned out their desired itinerary. Plus, when you've got a local with you, there's a tendency to feel guilty for boring them with things they've already seen (or things you think they won't enjoy, like wandering through Chinatown looking for bubble tea and steamed pork buns).

Also, good news: we bought a tape adapter for the iPod, so tomorrow on the long long drive to Cleveland I get to play DJ! Huzzah! We were dying with just the lame and frequently fuzzy radio stations we were forced to entertain ourselves with. It was torture--Hollaback Girl came on and there was no other good station to fall back on! Aieee!

So yeah, tomorrow is the long drive to Cleveland. 7.5 hours, giving ourselves 10, and we can't figure out if the time difference (there's an hour...right?) gives us an extra hour before the concert or takes it away. I think we gain one, but neither of us really cares enough to triple check, so rather than sleep an extra hour we'll just give ourselves more time with which to (potentially) futz around on side roads/rest/do jumping jacks/take pictures.

Oh, one last thing. We've been given a copy of On The Road by Kerouac since it seemed appropriate. I should read it while Kina drives, but really I should be working on the website, since I'm getting paid for it and it's barely started (as in it hasn't made it out of my head yet). Mm. I also have book 1 of Harry Potter and a certain Dan Brown book called Digital Fortress to read, so perhaps I'm getting a little too ambitious.

ONE MORE thing...I promise this will be the last...turns out our host is hilarious (and I thought I didn't like British humour...), our hostess used to race her Honda CRX/play Final Fantasy/Morrowind/Nintendo, and Kina is still crazy and does situps and pushups at night and watches what she eats and generally makes me feel like a lout. But we knew that one already. :)

Goodnight, and I'll be in touch next time I see a computer.

A long, long day

Road Trippin': Day 1

Wow. Let me tell you why I'm tired.

I woke up at 2:30 in the morning after a few hours of sleep (which happened to be full of ponytails and disappointment, strangely enough) to catch a bus at 3:30. Tilmann, our savior, drove us to the stop to avoid the ominously sprinkling proto-raindrops. After an Amelie-soundtrack themed drive in the front seat of the bus, we waited in the Manchester airport for an hour for Eric (savior #2) to arrive, who then drove us in the direction of our lonely vehicle. After much confused navigation through Fits--Fitch--that place where Justin used to go to school, we made it to a Bickford's somewhere and I enjoyed some rather nutty pancakes (while Kina ate only two eggs and made me feel piggy yet again). Eventually (by 9:30ish) we made it to the car (whose rear end is coated in squished bugs--we know which direction it was facing on the truck) and got on our way. We drove through beautiful stretches of Mass and Connecticut, only to remember that it's only this pretty for small portions of the year. Oh well. At least here you get three different kinds of pretty (but one of those comes along with inconvenience and another with yucky humidity) instead of the one year-round kind you get back at home. :) We made it to Nyack (most.adorable.town.evAr) by 2 or so and were on a train into the city by 2:45. There we met up with Justin (Kina's HS friend) and set off on our journey.

We saw Rockefeller Center, Times Square, Central Park, the UN building, Grand Central Station, and Columbus Circle today. It wasn't much, but after the day we had (I did all the driving) my feet are about to boycott my body and take a vacation to Florida, and I myself am ready to collapse. Tomorrow we'll visit the Columbia campus, go down to Greenwich Village/SoHo/TriBeCa, Chinatown, maybe walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, maybe take the Staten Island ferry to see the statue of liberty (without paying to go to Ellis Island :P), We'll see.

This evening we met up with Kenny and Julia and I got to hear the story of his proposal. I must say, I was impressed. I wasn't aware he had that much capacity for romantic creativity in him, but I suppose true love will bring out the best in people, right? :) I was jealous for a moment that I'd never get such an amazing and thoughtful proposal, but Julia made a good point--everyone thinks theirs was the most special in the world, since everyone's is such a personal experience. And that's what's important. That it's someone who knows you better than anyone else in the world and that the moment is your own personal memory--both yours and his--and the fact that it belongs only to you and to nobody else is what makes it absolutely priceless.

Ah, time for sleep before I don't make it to the "Submit" button. Goodnight, all, and take care. Dream beautifully.

Still at the big green...

First off, now I'm simultaneously updating both this blog and a new Livejournal account, trying to figure out which I like better. I'm fond of the color customizability and moods/music features of the LJ, but I really like this template. We'll see who comes out on top in the end...

Kina and I were supposed to leave here on Monday afternoon, but the car shipped much slower than it was supposed to, and in fact is at this moment sitting in a parking lot in Worcester, Mass, where it's been since monday. They don't intend to deliver it here until Saturday. So, instead, we'll be heading down friday morning to pick it up, and from there we'll be on our way. First stop is a family friend's place in Nyack, which we'll use as a point of departure to head into the city. We'll have all of Saturday to explore as well. Sunday morning we'll head to Cleveland where we'll catch one of our favorite musical groups in concert, and on Monday we'll be making our way to Iowa via Chicago. Long drives but we'll be able to stop as we see fit. :) Tuesday on to Nebraska (to wherever we find a suitable stopping point), Wednesday on to Denver, Thursday down to my grandmother's cousin's ranch in Cimarron, New Mexico (near the northern and eastern edge), Friday down to see a friend in San Felipe (near Santa Fe) NM and on to Arizona where we'll see the meteor crater and the painted desert/petrified forest, and Saturday early morning we'll be watching the sun rise over the grand canyon. For the rest of the day we'll see Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks, and if we feel up to it trying to get to Las Vegas by nightfall. Sunday will be our four and a half hour drive home, after which point I'm sure we'll be collapsing for a few days. :) Kina, unfortunately, has to return to temping (which I should strongly consider doing in the month and a half I'll have at home), but I think I'll be needing some napping. :)

I knew it!

Fate works in strange ways. Lately I've been getting more and more into the mindset that things tend to work out eventually, and there are few decisions you can make (save the drastically terrible ones) that can significantly alter the course of the life you're trying to lead. I don't necessarily believe in "fate" in the religious sense...I don't think there's a set plan for me that I'm only here to fulfill, I just think that a lot of the little things aren't really worth crying over because in the end it always works out. And in some cases, like yesterday, they work out for the better, and then you tip your hat at the universe, smile, and take another step forward.

Since the car's still not here, we decided to visit India Queen for dinner (I had me a craving for some nan). When I walked through the door, who should be there but a whole slew of old school Taus whom I'd completely forgotten about but would have been crushed to have missed seeing before I left. Blair, Sarah/Sashka and 8 month old Devon were there, Zeb, Mark Barolak, Svava (apparently engaged?), Naomi, Galen and 'Stine, Tilmann, and eventually Eric Kidd, his little french other half, and Brian Campbell showed up. Nice surprise, and I'm now kind of glad the car was late. So thanks, universe. *tip*

But ask me again in a week--if the car's not here by then, I may have some choice words to exchange with our friend the universe.

-ps: I watched Rushmore for the second time and liked it a lot more. I really, really like Wes Anderson.

Aheh.

I'm laughing right now, for several reasons.

One, I knew I'd never update this. I had even completely forgotten about that last (first) post. However, since I was looking for a host for my post-grad blog, and happened to have this sitting around, I do believe I'll evolve it to suit my purposes. I'll have to change the description, but those who have seen it before will remember what it said, and those who haven't, well, it's probably better that way.

Two, and I don't know why I expected anything different from such an abnormal term, but the car that was supposed to be carrying Kina and I to New York right now is supposedly still somewhere in Massachusetts, and won't be here for another three or four days. That means cutting out a few stops and driving a little faster, but at least I can look at all this and say that it's only more of a reason to make this trip again in the future. It's not my mom's fault--she doesn't understand the intricacies of online comparison smart-shopping--although with a few google searches she could have learned that the company she chose to ship the car was one on a black list of scam moving companies. At this point I'm still crossing my fingers and hoping it shows up at all.

At any rate, at least I now have a bit of a transitional period during which I can come to terms with the thought of leaving this campus. Lonely as it may be, it's almost better that no one else will still be here, because it'll cut out the painful and teary (maybe? knowing me lately that's not really a given) goodbyes and leave only me silently adjusting to my post-Dartmouth status.

Hopefully I will actually be updating this semi-regularly, although during the trip I may not have much of a way to get online. I'd like this to serve as a way for people to stay connected to me despite my knack for getting distracted and not emailing. Let's just hope it works.

Let's also hope that car shows up.