Passion

Whoops. Okay.

Friday's things:

1. Chocolate. In massive quantities.
2. Coffee.
3. Headphones.

Today's things:

1. A local dance studio! We can fall out of bed and be in dance class in under 15 minutes.
2. Smartphones with entertaining games like Words with Friends.
3. Jim's family. They're good people, and spending the evening with them has only become more and more enjoyable as I've gotten to know them better. Now that both his siblings have significant others, we are a nice round, symmetrical number of people (Jim's parents, us, and his two siblings and their significant others - a round 8), and gatherings feel... good. Like family.  It's nice.

 Good things are coming up! I'm starting to get excited.

I finally booked plane tickets to go see my mom in May. My original plan was to call her, like, Thursday while she was at work (the Thursday before Mother's Day - and my birthday) and ask her what her Mother's Day plans were. When she said "nothing" or "just hanging out" I was gonna reply, "Aw, that's too bad. I wish we could go out to dinner or something." And then she'd come home and I'd be IN THE KITCHEN and we'd go out to dinner and it would be totally awesome.

You know, planning surprises is REALLY HARD. So she knows about the visit now, but I'm going for a nice long five-day visit, and we both have the opportunity to make sure we get all those days off work, so we'll have plenty of time to spend hanging out together. I haven't seen her in a year and half, which is absurd and totally unacceptable, so I'm really really looking forward to this visit.

There's a bunch of other stuff on the horizon for this summer. First off is a casual get-together with House Cup friends in June - people from around Michigan and some of the connecting states are going to meet up for an afternoon potluck type thing. I've met most of the people who are coming, so it will be a nice chance to chat with some friends I don't see often.

July gets really crazy. Or, the third weekend in July is crazy. The Michigan Brewer's Guild Beer Festival is on the 22nd and 23rd, and I've been looking forward to it since LAST July. I've been to the festival the last two years, and it's just awesome. It's such a fun gathering, and there are hundreds of different beers to taste. The atmosphere is fabulous, and the company is even better.  This year, sadly, Jim's sister is getting married that Saturday, so we won't be able to spend the whole day there, but I do plan on taking most of that Friday off work so we can spend all of Friday at the festival.

August looks clear at the moment, except for maybe a fiber festival on the other side of the state...

The first weekend of September is going to be the highlight of the summer this year. I've been talked into attending DragonCon in Atlanta. There are several House Cuppers (Slytherins, actually) who live there, and my House Cup friend from San Francisco is going to be meeting up with them down there too, so it was really inevitable that they'd talk me into going. Plus, James Marsters, Felicia Day, and Anne McCaffrey will be there. It's a huge convention for nerds. It's going to be four days of epic drunken House Cup nerdery.

In the meantime, the sun is slowly returning to these parts. It's making me cheerier and giving me more and more energy. I feel less like sitting in the dark in my apartment and hiding from the world, and more like MAKING things and DOING things and SEEING people and GOING places. I need to start channeling all that energy somewhere (and I miss living in California, where I remember this energy being so much more powerful...).

This evening I started working on a costume for our Friday night gaming group. One of our members just had a baby (and was our DM, and is not going to be attending for the forseeable future), so we've switched to a new campaign for the next several weeks. I'm playing a witch, the kind who lives in a secluded hut and has branches in her hair and is a little crazy but makes the most effective potions you've ever tasted.  So I scored some free glass test tubes from work and spent this evening brewing up the perfect potion. I settled on water, butter, xanthan gum, and food coloring.  Then I had to figure out how to cap the tubes, which was a bit more of a challenge, but wax-soaked cut-up-sweater-squares glued and then tied on seem to have done the trick. None of them are leaking yet!

Now I just need a stuffed weasel (on its way overnight from amazon.com!) and a black skirt I can shred and tie branches into...

 I need to get Claire to Detroit from Reno.

United doesn't fly out of Reno.  Continental doesn't fly out of Reno.  American has a summer embargo on pets as cargo.  Southwest doesn't allow pets at all yet.  Delta has a summer embargo.  US Airways doesn't have cargo out of Reno.  Northwest doesn't have cargo out of Reno.

It looks like I have to GO to Reno to get Claire, and bring her back as carry-on.

Sigh.

Anyone want to lend me a weekend and several hundred bucks?

Christmas this year turned out to be sort of surprising.

For various reasons (I just tried-and failed-to write a post about them-I am slightly sick today and I think my writing skills are suffering for it), I don't like Christmas. That hasn't changed, but I definitely feel like... I dunno.

I didn't ask for anything this year, knowing I couldn't get gifts for anyone in exchange, and the whole obligatory gift exchange thing has always kind of irked me (shouldn't we buy things for each other because we like each other and because we find things that remind us of each other, and not just because it's December? doesn't December mean we celebrate the return of the sun? what does that have to do with gifts? even if Christmas is about the birth of some people's savior, what does THAT have to do with gifts? isn't that about giving thanks or something?).

Somehow, though, I ended up with a small mountain of gifts on Christmas morning. Friends from all over the country sent care packages. I got presents from New York, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, California.... And my family here also completely ignored my protests that I didn't need gifts, and added to the pile.

I think by far the best thing I got this year was the reminder that people care about me. To have friends remember me and send me things while I am hiding and trying to pretend Christmas doesn't exist... well, in the last couple months I have been becoming more and more of a sensitive sap (one of the notes that came with the gifts actually made me cry). So. I am touched, and humbled, by the outpouring of gifts I received this year. I don't think, looking back over the last 12 months, that I deserved anything at all.
So maybe gift-giving does convey what "Christmas" should be about. Love.
Thank you for your friendship. I hope to be worthy of it in the coming year.

I made it to Utah on Thursday. Claire and I are each in one piece, which is nice. The car also seems to be functioning well, for which I am deeply and eternally grateful to the powers that be.

I know I've mentioned this on here before, but in case you don't know, I have about a zillion cousins. My mom's side of the family is Mormon, so visiting Utah is basically like dropping myself into the center of a continuously ongoing family reunion. I am one of those extremely lucky people that actually LIKES her extended family (since they're all basically just totally awesome), so the fact that I am staying with my aunt and uncle for a couple of days is one of great happiness. Claire and I have a room to ourselves, and there has been much visiting of cousins and cousins' babies and whatnot. I always forget just how amazing it is to see family again. They're so bright and funny and loving and supportive... you can't help but come away feeling better about yourself. Even if your cousin's husband does beat you soundly at Settlers of Catan.

They're also trying to convince me to stay here, and I have to say, it's pretty tempting. There's a whole floor upstairs that's a mini-apartment that Claire and I could live in while I look for a job, and then I could find my own place. There's a built-in support network here, it's only a day's drive from Reno, there are several universities in the area creating lots of jobs and I'd have a ton of help getting back on my feet... I know, I know, I KNOW, it's not California. It is, in fact, a step backwards from Nevada. But there isn't really room for me at my parents' house in Reno (I believe I will be sleeping either on a pullout couch in the library or on a rollaway bed in the office... plus there is a dog-door that I'm terrified Claire will escape out of and be eaten by coyotes), and Reno's a smaller area, so getting a job feels less likely.... And going straight to California right now is just out of the question. It's the state hit hardest by the economic slump, and I simply can't afford to live there while I'm trying to find a job. I KNOW, I should have thought about all this before I left Connecticut. But I was terrified that if I stayed too long I'd never escape--and it was hard enough as it was. My friends did not make it easy on me. I seem to be plagued by an overabundance of people who want me around! What a terrible blessing!
On a side note, I've started having nightmares (mostly just sad, not scary) about the people I left behind in CT. Aaaauuugggghhhhh. The problem with choosing something is that you always have a thing you didn't choose!

Anyway. What was I talking about? I got distracted.

I'm heading to Reno tomorrow. Nine more hours in the car with Sad Cat (turns out Claire isn't Angry Cat in the car... she just walks around and cries. It's more depressing than anything else. after about half an hour she'll sit down on her pillow and sleep, but that first half hour or so is hard on the Cat Owner emotions).... Oh well. Wednesday night she actually used the litterbox while we were driving down the freeway, so I think she's finally gotten the hang of being a car cat. Poor thing.

Okay. I'm out of rambling for now. I'm sleepy and confused and all that good stuff. I miss Connecticut (by which I mean I miss the people I left behind, because I certainly don't miss the state), but I really think this was the right decision, and I feel like I have more options open to me now. I guess we'll find out.

So, I spent the weekend in Reno. And before that I spent Christmas and New Year's here in New Haven, largely by myself, and had a fabulous vacation during which I said I would go to work but really just sat around the house playing Warcraft and watching a TON of West Wing. And I got a kitten. She's a very tiny 11-month-old orange tabby whom I have finally decided to name Claire, although she was very nearly a Thomasina and a Guinevere. If I am not completely exhausted by the end of this post, I'll upload some pictures.

Christmas was great. I'm really glad I decided to stay here instead of spending it with my parents. I had a very low-key day. I cooked a turkey and had three of my labmates over, and we ate a ton of food and drank homemade eggnog and two bottles of wine and then watched the Emperor's New Groove. We also played cards and sat around talking for a while. I've got amazing labmates, and this is by far the best Christmas on memory. No stress, no pressure, no worrying about spending money on gifts people may or may not like. The week after was pretty similar. I didn't go into lab, even though I really should have. I think I really needed the time off (I think I could really use a decade off, after quals), and I didn't even have the energy to feel guilty about slacking (which is really saying something!!). I went cat-hunting for three days after Christmas and finally brought Claire home on December 30th.

For New Year's, Aaron had a couple people over, and we ate pizza and drank really terrible vodka and I learned how to play Guitar Hero. I'm fantastically bad at Guitar Hero. It was a great New Year's, and for the first year EVER I did not cry AND for the first year ever I had someone to kiss at midnight. It was great. Again, it was low-key and very relaxing and I just don't know why more people don't avoid going home for the holidays.

I went home on Thursday, just to spend this weekend with my parents and Elena, and we had a pretty good time. There was a huge blizzard on Friday and into Saturday, so Saturday morning we took Elena sledding, which really meant Phil pulled her up and down a small hill in a sled, while she yelled in her tiny two-year-old voice, "More? More?" Then she spent the rest of the weekend yelling, "No!! No!!!!" which we finally realized meant, "Snow," or, more accurately, "Please bring me a bowl of snow so I can eat it."
All in all, it was a pretty decent weekend. I had a couple of really good conversations with my mom, and I think I have largely decided that I'm sticking it out until the end of the semester and then I'm saying Screw You to graduate school and am finding something better to do with my life. I have no idea what that Something Better will be, or if I'll end up just taking a one-year leave of absence or a permanent opt-out, but at any rate it was neat to talk about leaving school with my mom and not have her tell me flat-out that it's a terrible idea and I'm wasting my life. We watched the series finale of Gilmore Girls Sunday night before I left and we both cried. It was a good bonding thing. I think we're doing better now.

Anyway, I feel a lot better now. Stuff with my mom is on the mend, my little sister is exponentially more fun than the last time I saw her and is clearly a brilliant little kid, I've decided I'm getting out of this miserable miserable grad school experience, I bought a cat, and I currently have a very good relationship with Aaron. I think my life is still in SERIOUS need of some shaping up and taping back together, but for this moment right now, I'm okay. I am not a trainwreck. At how many points in my life have I really been able to say that I'm not a trainwreck? It's kinda nice.

( Unexpected babbling (and a strange dearth of commas) about the above decision that should maybe be in a friends-locked post but isn't going to be, so deal with it. )

I'm gonna go make some more tea now.

I'm finally home!
And I'm sick. I guess as soon as the wedding ended and I began to relax, the cortisol left my bloodstream, stopped suppressing my immune system, and let my body actually start fighting all the fun bugs I've been carrying around since the last time I was sick (um... six months ago?). So I've had a cold for the last few days, but hopefully it won't hang around too much longer.

Also, it is ridiculously hot here. No hotter than it was in Reno or Salt Lake, but the humidity here makes me think I might melt every time I go outside, and living without air conditioning is becoming unbearable. I actually sat in my car for ten minutes today just to cool down.

Anyway... I have a ton of stuff to write about. I wrote quite a bit in my paper journal, both while driving across the country and while at Kayla's wedding in Utah, so I'll probably post snippets from there here. In short, vacation was wonderful. The wedding was amazing. It was soooooo good to see family. And I'm ridiculously grateful that vacation is over and I'm home now--I'm absolutely exhausted. Having fun is hard work!

I'm moving this week, so I guess being "home" is sort of a relative term. Alas.

Also, here at last is a picture of my final package from my secret pal, Emily.


Large post with excerpts from paper journal to follow.

In the meantime, look at pictures of my summer.
www.flickr.com/photos/dnatheory/

Oh yeah! And I'm going to see the new Harry Potter movie tomorrow!!!!!

Hurrah!

Okay, so I'm leaving early tomorrow morning. I fly from Hartford to Oakland, where my good friend Neal will pick me up (I hope). Then we'll spend two or three days hanging out (and climbing) in SF, one of which I will probably ditch him for and spend hanging out with bananasofdeath and owlishness, who are both in the area... Then it's down to Sunnyvale to see fieryminge (YAY!!) for a couple days right before her birthday. She'll give me a ride down to Santa Cruz, where I will pick up Ann's car and go pick up her at the SF airport. Then the real fun begins. The 14th to the 18th we'll be hanging out in Santa Cruz doing all the normal Santa Cruz-y things (and I might even have lunch or something with Jamie!). On the 17th we're going skydiving (I need to call and make the reservation...) in Hollister, and on the 18th we start our cross-country drive from Santa Cruz to Boston. And we can stop through Reno on the way and pick up my new laptop, which is already expensively awaiting me safely in my parents' garage.

After two weeks of cavorting across the country, we should arrive in New Haven and/or Boston. I'll help Ann move in a little, then come back to New Haven for a day or two, and then I fly from Hartford to Reno on July 4th. Then my parents and I will drive across the evil desert to Salt Lake City for my cousin's wedding (YAYAYAYA!!! And I found out yesterday that a couple of my far-away cousins will be there, so I get to see a few people I haven't seen since before THEY got married). Then I fly directly home from Salt Lake City to Hartford on the 9th, and collapse into a little ball and sleep for a good five or so hours before going back to lab.

It's gonna be an awesome summer.

Also, I will probably not update lj. At least, not regularly. But I will make a full and detailed report upon my return.
Have fun!

Aaaauggghhh! Somewhere--SOMEWHERE--in this apartment--in THIS apartment--there is a size G crochet hook. And I have NO idea where "somewhere" is.

The good news is that I learned how to crochet, so I can now make neat little borders along the edges of the bazillion squares I'm knitting. I think I'm in love with the single crochet border. It just looks so nice! The bad news is that I have size I and can't find the size G, and the size G is the one I need for my cousin's wedding gift. *bangs head on wall* This thing is SOOOO not getting done by July 6th. I think my wrists will explode before July 6th. Even if I didn't have to crochet around all the edges. Or even if I knew where the hook was. Explodey wrists.

I'll post some pictures of my progress later. For now, I'm giving up the hook search and am going to bed.

My hand is still killing me. I think I'm going to try to avoid my computer ALL DAY tomorrow to give it a chance to heal, but for now I think I really need to write. This week has just been crazy.

Thursday morning I went to talk to our admissions coordinator, who is really awesome and has helped me out with a few other freakouts. I told her I was thinking about transferring and what did she think, and she said she thought I'd already made up my mind, and that if I was miserable, then I should go. So I started crying. We talked for about twenty more minutes, and she gave me some suggestions for which steps to take next and who to speak to, and how taking a year off works, and what to tell Yale if I did that and used my time off to reapply to UCSF. It was a crazy conversation. I felt like a giant weight had been lifted off my shoulders--they're gonna let me go home!--and at the same time I felt a deep sense of panic--there are things here I've come to love, and there's no guarantee I'd get those things back. I've got great friends here, and I really do like Yale.

In fact, I spent the rest of Thursday thinking, "This is crazy. I've been wanting to transfer since I got here, and finally a professor suggests it and an administrator supports it, and I don't want to go anymore?"
Friday morning I met with the campus counselor. She was largely useless. I spent the full 45 minutes giving her the backstory and explaining stuff and never really got to discussing the future. The only thing I decided was that I should make a giant pro/con list.
Then I went to talk to Susan again, and she informed me that she might not have enough funding to take any grad students this year. I ignored this, because she's crazy, and there will be funding, or, or... or... um... I'll just show up and start working and she'll deal with it. We also talked again about transferring, and she was supportive. Now I'm starting to wonder--do they not want me here?

Thing is, I really have been thinking about transferring since... since before I left Santa Cruz. I promised myself, back in April 2006, that I would give it one good year at Yale. That I would try my hardest, and do my best to fit in, and that at the end of that year I'd reevaluate, and if I was miserable I'd come home. I made this pact before I ever even left California, and I've held onto it like a security blanket. That faint hope got me through the long dark winter. But at some point I stopped hanging on to it as a real hope; maybe once I realized I'd missed the application deadline for the 07-08 school year, I stopped thinking that it was a reasonable hope. Thinking about it this week as something I could ACTUALLY do was both exciting and terrifying. The parts of me (the very few, small parts of me) that have actually managed to settle in New Haven and bond with Yale are reluctant to let go and take the risk of starting over. I really would have to start over; this year would be a complete academic loss. I might get some classes waived, but I'd have to do rotations and be a first year student all over again. On the other hand... California.

California.

It's almost, almost enough to think that I'll go back after I graduate. To think that there are only four or five more years to give to New Haven, and then I never have to leave California again. But the miserable part of me screams and writhes to contemplate four or five more years away from the sunshine, the fog, the climbing walls, the weed (and still, I don't even smoke). I guess I just have to sit down and figure out how much of me still really wants to leave, and how much of me is just afraid to let go of the idea that I can leave. In some ways, realizing that I CAN transfer has made me feel a lot better about staying; I originally felt that I came to Yale for some specific reason, that I'm SUPPOSED to be here, and I'm staying here because I'm SUPPOSED to. But since Thursday I've felt like maybe I'm here because I choose to be here. And does that make all the difference? I'm not sure yet.

I had a really good conversation with my mom (actually, two of them) this week. I finally decided to take a chance and tell her what I was actually going through, so I opened up (and expected to be ignored or brushed off), and amazingly she was really supportive and helpful and honest. We talked about living alone, and being 21, and sleep paralysis and how it's linked to feeling insecure. We talked about transferring, and mood drugs, and expensive counselors. And holistic healing and how her insurance will cover it, so I can go have some weird voodoo performed on my midsection and maybe it will stop destroying my life. Anyway, it was awesome to talk to my mom so directly again, to be Rory and Lorelai and actually connect. I missed that. I'm glad it's still there.

And it's been a good weekend. I've hung out with friends, gotten drunk and gossipped (and on a side note, I had the desire to drunk dial people last night, and went through a list of possibilities, and only realized this morning that Graham was on the list and Jamie wasn't--which reinforces that I'm correct in saying I'm over him), slept, and had a lovely two hours alone in lab (I love empty labs) doing minipreps and cell culture, followed by hanging out sober at a bar with two of my favorite people in the world. How could I leave these things? Even for California?