april in america

Mid-life crisis resolutions

2012-01-31T22:08:00.000-08:00

I've made a few resolutions: things that i want to accomplish, barring Force Majeure and stuff like that, before i turn 35. In no particular order, including things that were on the list but have since been removed:

1. Run a half marathon.
I ran a 1/4 mile the other day while walking with my parents (5 miles covered total). I ran 6/10 of a mile yesterday. Got a ways to go, but the goal is 5k by April, 10k by October, and 13.1 miles by next March.

I used to hate running. I ran cross country two years in high school: i was the slowest member of the team, and i had horrid, horrid shinsplints both seasons. However, a team needed 5 people to not forfeit a match. I was the fifth girl. I finished every race i was in, even if it did take me (what is quite possibly a record) 41 minutes to go 3 miles. ;-) But now, my body kinda does what i want it to and i kinda like running. Here's hoping.

2. Learn how to fly the trapeze.
For no other reason than because i am afraid of heights, and because it has been the metaphor for my life lately.

3. Learn Spanish.
I don't expect to be fluent in 13 months, but to be making progress, which means to be able to do more than order one item off a menu and to not stare blankly in panic when they respond by asking me, in Spanish, if i want chicken or beef. :)

4. I was going to grow dreadlocks...
...because my hair had been unmanageable lately, and nothing makes me feel as physically unlovely as unmanageable hair. I was going to grow narrow, uniformly shaped ones, clean and tidy like Anne Lamott's. The most conservative of my church-lady friends thought it was a cool idea. The rest of my friends, church and forest and design, talked me out of it. The result is that it is going to stay its wild self. I'm not going to dye it. I'm probably not going to plait it either. I'm just going to watch it go silver and smile.

5. And i also thought of getting a tatoo...
...one that wouldn't be visible ever, except at the beach. One that wouldn't be in danger of pregancy or any other stretch marks. One that wouldn't be much exposed to sun or fading. But i hate needles (more than i fear heights), and they are awfully permanent...and expensive. So, this one is also scratched. For now.

I'll start writing more legibly, i promise.

2011-12-21T22:40:00.000-08:00

I’m working on illustrative maps for a historic housing development near Los Angeles. It’s not artistically challenging: pretty much involves digitally tracing scans of the original as-built blueprints, and color coding plant material as specified by little numbers on the as-builts. I’ve learned a lot by tracing the work of a practically forgotten master landscape architect.
The last set of drawings has changes scribbled all over, trees scratched out, new numbers hastily written without proper erasure, and it’s driving me crazy. Is that a 4 marked over a 9? Or a 9 marked over a 4? Or a 6 scribbled over a 5? I bet Fred Barlow Jr. never expected his work to be on the National Register. I bet he never thought someone would be studying it in preparation for a restoration plan. I’ve nigh lost my vision and pulled out my hair trying to decipher some of the lines and material notations.

I don’t expect to design permanent, lasting gardens at this phase of my career. I hope to be a master designer someday, and to be an expert plantswoman. Some of Barlow’s favorite plants are invasive here in Southern California, so even he didn’t necessary make perfect plant material choices in this landmark design. But by golly, I’ve learned a lesson here: write legibly in the final drawing. Erase things completely. Correct the key. And for that measure, place the key on the plan, because this one has been lost.

Sometimes good things

2011-10-10T13:59:00.000-07:00

Sometimes life is like removing Spanish Broom,.

Spanish Broom (Sparteum junceum) is an invasive plant that poses serious threat to ecosystem health--it's toxic (nothing eats it and it crowds out good forage for birds and animals), it's flammable (old growth is dry and thatchy, and it grows like crazy), and although it has pretty flowers for a month or so, it makes 10,000 seeds that are almost all viable for 80 years. It also has deep, woody roots that are a pain to dig out, but have to be dug up--otherwise it resprouts. To the un-knowing, they may look pretty and like a good thing, but to the trained eye they spell disaster.

So, we dig them up, wreaking no small havoc to do so. Sometimes the landscape looks worse the day after we dig up the broom plants: small craters, dislodged boulders, and we're pretty filthy too. A short time later though, the damage is erased.: the plants that belong there have begun to re-establish a healthy community, covering the areas left bare by broom removal. The colors, textures, and variety that belongs there is back. The landscape is the way it should have been.

Choices, choices

2011-01-27T20:10:00.001-08:00

Be as wise as a serpent, and as innocent as a dove.
Do not trade what you really want for what you merely want at the moment.
Lean not on your own understanding...

I hate making decisions. I also hate it when people make them for me. ;-) When they seem to just be serendipitous, then i'm okay. Tomorrow i'll either have to make a decision: to accept or not to accept a job; or i'll find out that the decision doesn't exist because they don't like my salary request.

I hate making decisions.

This isn't a direct career choice. It fell in my lap, because a colleague told them i could do what they need done. I can--i'm qualified by experience, by training, by my knowledge of the terrain, working relationships with key players, and because i know how to learn whatever else i need to know. It's in the environmental field, but it isn't very creative. It would last about four years, and give me a foot into a good company or a good stepping-stone back into government work: that's a lot more than the temporary student positions i've been finding in my direct field. It's here in SoCal, so i don't have to leave my community (where i love walking to the coffee shop and bookstore) or my friends the way the government student jobs require. It would be more money than i have ever earned before--and benefits!!! (about time!!!). But will i be happy?

I think so: i think, even if the work is a little tedious, i'll enjoy plotting invasive plant removal tactics. I'll enjoy being outside in my beautiful San Gabriels. I'll enjoy leading a crew of workers, and i even kinda get a sick pleasure out of organizing files, photos, and reports. I think i'll have enough energy left to complete landscape architecture projects on the side. The other concern is working enough LA hours to be able to take the licensing exam...but...

well, i'll find out tomorrow if these concerns are moot!

Nature

2011-01-17T16:54:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about nature and survival of the fittest...thinking about it a lot from summer work, during summer work. (Hiking every day gives you lots of time to think). I work for people who believe in evolution, believe species arrive through evolution, not just micro change over time which everyone agrees occurs. And i've been thinking, if things evolve, if it's survival of the fittest, then why do we care if the weeds take over? Obviously they are more fit.

I think people would say: well, the weeds are there because humans brought them. They were mixed in seeds brought by settlers or in grain shipments, or planted because someone missed them from home or thought they were pretty and imported them from some exotic place. And we should reverse the damage we've done. Nonetheless they are apparently the most fit, and if the native plants just can't make it in the competition, well, then, let the native plants go. The other things do better there.

Really, it's not any different from social darwinism, and saying that people who are infirm or week or mentally incapacitated shouldn't be propped up by society or individual kindnesses. Hitler and other eugenicists simply took that idea a little further and deliberately weeded them out. In both case, if they--plants or people--can't survive without assistance from the rest of us, why prop them up?

Thing is, i don't believe that. I don't believe that theory; i think there is evidence of a plan, and a planner. As Mr. Roger's sang, "Everything grows together because we're all one piece," but instead of it being my hands and eyes and legs, it's the water i drink, the air i breathe, the soil in which my food grows, and the habitat for animals and insects around that eat decayed things and pollinate plants. The planner just so happened to think of everything, every detail, every nuance. Everything works together. If we damage one piece, we damage everything else.

That's why i am a naturalist. Not because i think nature is more important than people, not because i think the planet is going to last forever, but out of respect for the planner.

Manna

2010-12-20T14:36:00.000-08:00

Several somethings happened last week that made me despair for a tiny moment. And then i thought: well, whatever the circumstances, God cares about my character and spiritual formation more than merely circumstance-based happiness, so i should find the balance between disappointment and despair, and between being sad and being dismal to those around me.

That seemed to go okay.

And then i thought: y'know, this kinda marvelous thing that didn't work out, i'd seen it as a last-chance effort. When it didn't work, i thought, well, there's no way it could happen again. This morning though, i remembered manna. God made manna *every day* for almost 40 years for the wandering Israelites. He makes sunsets and sunrises day after day, and holds the universe together year after year, second after second. If he wants something to happen again, he can do it.

And if he doesn't--career, car, life-long love--well, then the poem excerpt below is where i want to make my soul-battle stand:

"Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights."
Habakkuk 3:17-19.

I've written my own little paraphrase of that, but i won't post it here lest it come across as pitiful. ;-)

Fake

2010-12-17T22:16:00.000-08:00

I finally hit a red light at a particular intersection with a bus-stop today. An interesting poster is posted there and i'd wanted to read the grey-scale fine print for a while.

It said:

FAKE
Use steroids. Get caught. Become one.

I think the message misses the point. If you use steroids you are a fake whether you get caught or not. The difference being caught makes is that every one else now knows that you are a fake. Maybe this means we've fully made the transition from a guilt culture (not psychological burden guilt, but broke the law guilt) to a shame culture (it only counts if i get caught).

That's a sad place to be. For one thing, we don't have enough police to track down everything, and for another, i don't think any of us would want to live in such a police state. Who would catch the police, to keep them from being evil? The media? Right. That works so well now, doesn't it.

Yup. Much better to do what is right, even when no one is looking, and pay it forward.

Grrr to mere cosmetic changes

2010-12-13T16:38:00.000-08:00

I'll be the first to admit that change is not my favorite thing to experience. I'll go new places and try new things, listen to new music, eat new foods, learn new languages, but when i'm in the mood to do it. Other days (at least half) i want what i know i like, in familiar places, where i know how long things will take.

Facebook is not one of my favorite things, although i do waste an inordinate amount of time there. This latest cosmetic change to rearrange the profile is annoying, the missing status bar is confusing (especially when the program itself used to figure out if you were posting a link or a status) and i can't see the point, other than to mix things up for change's sake. Well, what a about making a significant change to content, such as not rearranging our privacy settings every once in a while?

(Which reminds me, since they've changed the profiles, i'd better go check on my privacy settings again. I really am close to quitting.)

My anti-virus software also was updated recently to a new version. I can see a difference, but only visually. It works less efficiently. It wants to reboot every time it gets a definitions update. As far as i can tell, this is a cosmetic change and not a beneficial one.

And last but not least, the impetus to this rant, my word processing software program. When my old laptop died, i got Windows 7 on the new one. The new word was a little tricky to navigate, but fortunately, we'd had it at work for a while so my time learning how to use it was spent there and not while trying to finish my thesis. However, now my toolbars disappear. That means i have to click on them to get them to come back, which is an extra mouse move and click EVERY SINGLE TIME. That's a lot for a designer, or a thesis writer, who has to make a lot of tweaks to font sizes, font colors, line widths, and image placement. When i went to the help (also hard to find: who looks for a tiny blue question mark instead of "HELP"!?) to find out how to lock my toolbars down, this is what i found:

"Learning new things can be stressful, but if you follow the demos, training courses, and of course, some of the advice I dole out, you'll probably begin to see why we made such a radical change in the UI (and you'll be happy we did).....After spending some time using the "interactive command reference guides" (a fancy term for ROAD MAPS), I began to see the beauty of this new UI. See, the commands and features we think you use most are grouped together under tabs so that you don't have to go hunting through the old-style menus to find what you need." -The Crabby Office Lady Column

See, I don't want to spend time watching demos or taking (and paying for!) training courses to use something as simple as a word processor. 'You' apparently did not know which tools i used most. And lastly, this didn't solve any problems for experienced users: I knew where the toolbars were, i knew how to customize my toolbars too, and it didn't take me any time to find the tools...unlike now, thanks to the ever so helpful cosmetic changes.

GRRRRR.

I think i shall go make a squash for dinner.

...if it's not okay, it's not the end.

2010-11-23T10:18:00.000-08:00

There's a saying--a warning, really--about MKs and how we take greetings such as "How are you?" literally and tell you how we're doing well, or not doing well, when all you wanted to hear was the standard "Fine." I usually try to remember that. I've been around someone who for two years also usually took that greeting literally; I don't think i ever heard that person say "Fine" or "Okay" in response, and i watched how people responded awkwardly to stories they didn't intend to hear.

In person, i can usually tell if they mean it. In person, i can answer in a way that lets them off the hook if it was just the standard greeting, or that lets them know i'd be happy to cry on someone's shoulder if their shoulder so happens to be available. It's harder to tell that in email.

And, being a forthright here's-how-i-am sort of person, i've never been a big fan of dissembling anyway. Not all news is for everyone, not everyone is privy to all depth, but sometimes i wonder why the mask? Then again, i kinda hate melancholy, impolite behavior excused with the label "authenticity"--i believe in manners and discretion--but if someone asks?

Anyway, i told someone this week in an email that i'm learning to live by the quote: "Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end." (They took it to mean things were really not okay right now, which prompted this blog post.) I saw it on a magnet with a bunch of other inspirational sayings; really, it was the only one i believed out of all the fluff. Someday everything really will be okay, more than okay; it will be Good. In the meantime, i'm trying to learn the balance between being crushed by circumstances (not good) and ignoring how things feel (also not good). Seeing good come out of things helps. For instance:

1. While i'm not technically laid off, i'm laid off for the winter season until March, or maybe April. This is scary: i have rent to pay, a cat to feed, and student loans coming due in a month, and not a lot of prospects.
--But, being laid off means i have a LOT of time to finish my thesis, which i couldn't accomplish when i came home bone weary, covered in dirt and ashes. And my body is tired; it's been nice to sleep past 5 a.m.

2. More than income, i realized how much my identity is wrapped up in my work. Theoretically, i think this is okay: people need something to do. Even in Eden, God gave us chores--make the rest of the earth a garden. Name the animals. But leaving a place i'd worked for over two years, work that i loved, and the people i've worked with, is hard.
--Then again, that has its good side too. I met a woman at a conference who was applying for one of the same jobs for which i was applying, and she said she celebrates each rejection letter with a margarita "because it means something better is out there". Martinis are more my thing, but i like the sentiment and the reminder. Something better is out there.

(I just want to know what it is right away!)

3. My maternal grandparents were moved into assisted living this past weekend. That's the end of an era. And it's been a little hard on my mom,
--although i think not too bad because it's a preemptive move rather than in response to a serious fall or something. And they have the money to afford a nice, friendly place, which is great.

4. My paternal grandmother had a stroke this past weekend. She's a strong-willed, fiesty, independent woman, and it's hard to face this reality. We're all hoping she doesn't do something reckless.

----

And with all that, Philippians has been the sermon topic for several weeks in church, and it's been perfect timing. And so is the truth of that quote: things will be okay in The End.

Thinking and hiking

2010-11-15T20:31:00.000-08:00

I have all these thoughts while i'm hiking every day, and i think to myself: i should journal this, or blog this, or both (with edited versions online, of course!). And then i get home and i can't remember a thing.

Therapy is like Halloween

2010-10-22T19:11:00.000-07:00

And i want all those gruesome lawn decoration skeletons back underground where they belong.

Washington, DC

2010-09-10T19:48:00.000-07:00

It's my first time in Washington, D.C. First impressions:

I'm pleased to experience a transit system that is as easy to use as the ones in other capitals i've visited. :)

Things are a little shabbier than i expected. Somehow i had this expectation (from photographs and postcards, i guess) that the place looked immaculately maintained, like Disneyland. Instead, it's a normal city, just like London or Paris: people live here, sometimes the grass is worn, sometimes shrubbery dies. I guess, while initially disappointed, i'm glad it is Real and not extravagantly maintained. Grass should die in the summer during drought.

The White House is smaller than i thought.

The Washington Monument is crick-in-your-neck tall!

I enjoyed watching people of all sorts ride bicycles for pleasure and for commuting, and people playing frisbee and soccer in the parks along Constitution Avenue.

And i forgot my camera! My mega-pixel SLR camera! Arg!

I'll just have to come back. ;-)

Wyoming or Palm Springs? And do i even really have a choice?

2010-08-07T00:50:00.001-07:00

This week i found out that my application made it through cyberspace to the deciding official regarding a job in Cody, Wyoming. I've googled Cody, WY, and it's an interesting place: near Yellowstone National Park. Population of about 10,000. A museum. A river. An airport. And winter. It's awfully far away from my friends, family, and community here. But I can make new friends, and keep in touch, and come back to visit...it's not as far away as Cameroon. I've looked up the office too, and it sounds like a neat place. I think i'd like the work and the environment.

Then i saw a job posting for Palm Springs. Much closer to home that is, with lovely architecture. I love the desert too. But it's blazing hot!

Either way, i don't have to choose yet: haven't been offered the Cody job, and haven't finished applying for the Palm Springs one. And both are moot unless i hurry up and finish this thesis. :)

Day 12: My hands hurt...

2010-07-11T17:11:00.001-07:00

...and i need to buy more thick wool socks. Two pairs is not enough when they're soggy and full of grit at the end of each day. I need to update my eyeglass prescription, because i can't ID plants more than 30 or so feet away, even squinting. And buy more sunscreen.

This week of work was harder and less fun, work-wise. The novelty of hiking up relatively unexplored drainages has worn off. Maybe that's because this one is not unexplored: it's right along a highway, and there's all sorts of debris, like coffee cup lids, beer cans of various vintages, potato chip bags, and car parts, strewn along the width of the wash. The water is filled with green and red algae because of the lack of shade, and biting flies are everywhere. Although the sycamores are crown-sprouting nicely, it will be a good growing season or two before they shade the creek, reducing the algae and flies. And i didn't see any frogs this week. Seeing little Pacific tree frogs hopping into my vision is a refreshing mental break of undirected attention in the midst of peering for 100 species of weeds in various stages of growth amidst a zillion native chaparral species in their stages of growth.

Side note: how can people who enjoy being outdoors treat the outdoors so badly? Why do we find so much garbage outside when we're doing these surveys? Do you like picnicking amidst garbage? Put it in the Dumpster or pack a trash bag with you and take it home.

Thursday, i found myself in a patch (an infestation, really) of weeds near a creek confluence. My skin ached from too much sun (not enough sunscreen on Tuesday), my fingers had blisters that using gloves neither soothed nor prevented, my wrists and arms and legs and back ached, i realized i'd left a major part of my lunch in the fridge back home, i'd walked into one too many baby yuccas while looking at something else, my arm had an allergic rash developing (either to black sage or poodledog bush), a sharp rock had ripped another hole in the knees of my grubby jeans, and i was tired. Four hours of work and i'd pulled a lot of weeds but made hardly any mileage, and that wasn't even tackling the type-converters (invasive grasses and mustards that burn too frequently for chaparral to recover). I sat down and had a brief moment of self-pity, just wanting to call it a day and go home.

Then i thought: my friend Katie the botanist wouldn't quit. And i can make it through the afternoon, go home and wash my face, put lotion on my hands, and recover over the weekend. I need the money. The stream needs help. I want to do a good job. And i hate quitting.

So, yes, i am still enjoying it. The first week of work, i told my supervisor that maybe i'm certifiably nuts, but i love this job. (I was on an endorphin high from all the hiking the day before.) She asked how it was this week, and i told her i was tired, my body hurt, i was looking forward to sleeping this weekend, but yes, i am still happy. I know we're accomplishing something useful. I know that this work is essential for letting the native plants recover, even though this isn't weed eradication. We're reducing the weed seed bank. We're giving the native plants a chance to compete against invasive species that sprout earlier than they do. And come Monday, i'll be ready to get back out there, slather on the sunscreen five times a day, drink 4 litres of water and rehydration tea, get my hiking shoes muddy, and pull out more weeds.

New job: mapping (and sometimes removing) weeds

2010-06-23T22:57:00.000-07:00

I have a new job for this summer: assisting the forest botanists with mapping and removing invasive plants in the Station Fire burn area. It isn't glamorous (and neither am i at the end of the work day!) but it's got to be done. And, while it isn't a permanent job, i'm very happy to be employed doing something useful, and being in the same place as my former job.

Monday was my first official day of not being a landscape architect and being a bio tech instead. Katie and i hiked for almost 12 hours down one drainage and up another looking for weeds near Mt. Gleason and the Pacific Crest Trail. We saw the usual suspects of bromes and cheat grass, various mustards, tree tobacco, dandelions...we also saw a garter snake, a rattle snake (we heard it before we saw it, oops), bear tracks, bear scat (thrice), a swarm of bees moving overhead, and a ringtail cat. It was a crazy long day but kinda fun after the fact, and definitely an adventure. The hiking was steep and crumbly, we crawled down more granite waterfalls than i care to count, we didn't get back to our truck until 10:30 p.m. and i've never been so happy to see an overside drain as i was as we hiked up a drainage to the road! I'm glad i've been bouldering, though, because it's helped my confidence, grip, and sense of balance as we clamber down and over the waterfalls. I can scout ahead sometimes to see if Katie can do it (she's tough, but she had knee surgery recently and needs to be more cautious than normal). Without being able to do that, we'd have to quit and retrace our steps each day.

Today wasn't such a good day. We found some terrible weeds in a stream: salt cedar, bull thistle, and arundo. And ivy, and vinca, and the invasive grasses, and tree tobacco, spanish broom, virginia creeper, eupatorium, and two kinds of mustard. Because we kept finding seedlings of the terrible three we had to look at the ground very closely, and that meant progress was slow. Oh well. We pulled up and took GPS points of what we found, and we have the rest of the summer to keep going. Thankfully there was no perennial pepperweed: i think we would have cried.

A lot of the weeds we're looking for are annual plants that sprout in spring, bloom in the summer, and that's when you find them. That's why we're looking during the summer (that, and the funding ends September 30). If there's a small group of them, sometimes we pull them out if they haven't set seeds yet (or if they've set seeds but they won't be scattered far-and-wide by pulling 'em up). Then we put then in heavy black plastic trash bags and haul them with us as we hike along the rest of the day. I find myself hoping things haven't set seed, because then we can just uproot them and leave them to decompose right there, returning the nutrients they stole from the sparse soil.

Why do this? Well, for a few reasons. Weeds aren't just a tree-hugger issue: in range and farm land they affect the value of a hay or food crop, and some can actually kill animals that eat them. Others suck a ton of water out of our streams (and my socks can testify to the fact that there is water in the San Gabriels). Less water is no good: some of your drinking water may come from these mountains. Weeds also burn more frequently than native vegetation, which is hardly a situation we need down here. More fires mean our air and water is more polluted. Plus, these invasive plants don't support wildlife. Foodwebs are important! My arms are covered with mosquito bites that attest to the fact that tadpoles and birds are useful creatures.

I'm one thirsty, hungry, grubby girl at the end of each day. :) I still have ashes under my fingernails from Monday, despite three showers and several passes with a fingernail brush. My shins are bruised from running into fallen trees while looking at the ground and from all the rock climbing. My hiking shoes are filthy. But boy, do i have an endorphin high from all that exercise! :) And did i say i'm super happy to have a job?

Almost the end of the chapter

2010-06-13T15:34:00.001-07:00

Tonight is commencement for the College of Environmental Design at Cal Poly Pomona.

I'll be walking.

I can't believe this day is here!

Twenty books

2010-05-30T23:58:00.000-07:00

Also from my facebook notes:

Twenty books you've read that will always stick with you. First twenty you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. (I cheated a little: I didn't think Harold and the Purple Crayon, or How High Is Up?, belonged here?)

1. everything Middleearth (Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, Silmarillion), Tolkien
2. Pied Piper, Nevil Shute
3. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
4. The Hero and The Crown, Robin McKinley
5. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
6. The Bible
7. The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard
8. Letters and Papers from Prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
9. Who is Man?, Abraham Heschel
10. Till We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis
11. Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
12. Lilith, George MacDonald
13. Unpopular Opinions, Dorothy Sayers
14. The Man Born to be King, Dorothy Sayers
15. Renovation of the Heart, Dallas Willard
16. An Inspector Calls, J.B. Priestley
17. Life of the Beloved, Henri Nouwen
18. The Sabbath, Abraham Heschel
19. Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv
20. Silent Spring, Rachel Carson

Random answers

2010-05-30T23:41:00.000-07:00

From my facebook notes, as i toy with the idea of deleting my profile: originally written July 23, 2009, with #1, 6, 44, & 45 updated for today. The rest haven't changed much.

I deleted the boring questions (Who won’t tag you back?) blah blah blah.

1. What time did you get up this morning? About 6:30 i woke up. Loud neighbors. :( I went back to sleep until 10:23.

2. How do you like your steak? Medium rare

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? WALL-E

4. What is your favorite TV show? none

5. If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be? Mmmm, wherever I can be near a museum, a symphony, a big body of water, desert, and mountains all at once. Hey! I'm here!

6. What did you have for breakfast? Trader Joe's O's and a glass of apple juice.

7. What is your favorite cuisine? Fusion

8. What foods do you dislike? Lima beans, cilantro, and most tomatoes

9. Favorite Place to Eat? Zelo’s Pizza in Monrovia, and Alicia’s in Brea. Rutabagorz in Fullerton is pretty good too. Um, and Claro's Italian Deli in La Habra & Arcadia.

10. Favorite dressing? Homemade vinaigrette

11.What kind of vehicle do you drive? ’97 VW Jetta

12. What are your favorite clothes? Jeans and a fitted T, or a skirt and a fitted T. And flip flops, if I can get away with them.

13. Where would you visit if you had the chance? Thailand, Australia, Iceland, Sweden, Spain, and Patagonia...don't get me started!

14. Cup 1/2 empty or 1/2 full? That depends on the day…maybe on the hour?

15. Where would you want to retire? Somewhere where I can have a big yard and garden.

16. Favorite time of day? Early morning, on the rare occasions I get up then; around dusk other times. High noon if i can take a nap.

17. Where were you born? Pennsylvania

18. What is your favorite sport to watch? Um, soccer? But it’s hardly a favorite.

22. Bird watcher? YUP!

23. Are you a morning person or a night person? Night. Well, mostly a night person. Give me 30 minutes and food, and you won’t know that I’m not a morning person.

24. Do you have any pets? Kind of—a parrot. He lives with my parents though.

25. Any new and exciting news you'd like to share? Nope.

26. What did you want to be when you were little? I don’t remember.

27. What is your best childhood memory? This may sound silly, but dyeing Queen Anne's lace was pretty fun, as was learning to make a quilt with my mom, and rescuing earth worms from drowning when it rained in Cameroon. We took them out of the road/gullies and put them in the garden.

28. Are you a cat or dog person? Neither. Both.

29. Are you married? Nope.

30. Always wear your seat belt? Yes.

31. Been in a car accident? Little ones. My favorite was a rock flying through the van windshield in Cameroon.

32. Any pet peeves? Yup. Chewing with mouth open, noisy neighbors at dark hours of the day, and people who knock incessantly. If they heard you, they’re coming; and if they aren’t home, no amount of knocking at 6 a.m. is going to open that door.

33. Favorite Pizza Toppings? Mushrooms and black olives.

34. Favorite Flower? Lisianthus, epiphyllums, mallows, and a certain pink rose. I like blue-eyed grass and forsythia a lot too.

35. Favorite ice cream? Ben & Jerry’s Strawberry Cheesecake, although Chocolate Sorbet (via Trader Joe’s) is pretty yummy too.

36. Favorite fast food restaurant? In n Out? And Subway.

37. How many times did you fail your driver's test? I didn’t. But I practiced for two years.

39. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? Um, I wouldn’t?

40. Do anything spontaneous lately? Spent the night on a friend’s couch after working late. It was so nice to be asleep by the time I’d have gotten to my apartment, and to be closer to work the next morning! That isn't terribly adventurous, I know...I *am* fighting the urge to cross an ocean, though.

41. Like your job? Most definitely, even though sometimes it makes me cry with frustration.

42. Broccoli? Yes, I even crave it sometimes.

43. What was your favorite vacation? A week in England, wandering around half by myself and half meeting up with friends.

44. Last person you went out to dinner with? My friend Cara, after a nap, after we were in another friend's wedding. I didn't have the energy to do anything except sit and have a server bring food to the table.

45. What are you listening to right now? The dryer at my parent’s house, my parrot clicking at me, and my hard-drive as the daily virus-scan turns on.

46. What is your favorite color? Blue, green, and yellow.

47. How many tattoos do you have? None, and never will. For one thing, I don’t like needles AT ALL.

50. Coffee Drinker? Sometimes, as with cheesecake, but always decaf. My heart doesn’t like the leaded stuff.

Silver linings

2010-05-18T21:17:00.000-07:00

My pilot brother has a quote on one of his pilot t-shirts that the silver lining in the could may be another plane coming toward you. ;-)

That said, things are better. I don't have a job offer, but i feel more at peace.

Dirt

2010-05-12T21:13:00.000-07:00

I am processing shock; and while hoping for vindication, also praying that i live a life that doesn't cause someone to cry out for vindication against me.

Last night, i thought that i see a point to feeling better after sitting on the ground and pouring ashes or dust on my head. I really do. And keening.

But after that's all done, the fact remains that the situation is unchanged. Or rather, the situation is unchanged but i'm now covered in dust and ashes, with nothing but dirt in my hands.

Maybe dirt can become soil. Maybe something good (better even) will come out of this--of course that could be. And really, I'm really not that bad off. I'm not sitting in dirt and ashes. It's an answer to a question i've been asking for months and months, although not the delivery i hoped for. And it's that--it's the sense of being wronged that stings vehemently, and that whispers lies about value and worth that i'm fighting to ignore.

And so: may i live a life that doesn't cause someone to cry out for vindication against me. May i welcome the crisis, because "there is no crisis that comes to us without a gift in its hands".

Riding my bicycle

2010-03-23T20:06:00.000-07:00

Do one thing every day that scares you.
- Eleanor Roosevelt -

I have a bicycle. I live in Uptown Whittier, which, being an older city, should be livable sans automobile. And it is, mostly: There are nice sidewalks and most of them have large lovely shade trees; the shops have interesting window displays and face the street; i feel safe, even after dark. So, i walk to Starbucks or the Post Office at least once a week. I walk to my hair stylist. I've walked to get ice cream with my brother.

But i want to do more. Cars put out more pollutants in the first few miles than they do once their engines and exhaust mechanisms warm up, and most people have many trips within just a few miles. For instance, there are two grocery stores within 2 miles of my apartment.

Usually, that doesn't matter, because i stop at Trader Joe's on my way home from work. It's en route, you see, and i have an insulated grocery bag for anything that may need to stay cold. Or, i stop at Trader Joe's on the way home from my parents' or from church. (Mmm, Trader Joe's. Yes, you see a theme here.) But my local Trader Joe's is more than walking distance--about four miles! I don't have time for that, even if it isn't physically a problem. I've been looking for a more economical and environmental way to get grocery things when i need one or two things asap.

So, today, i put on my sneakers, took down one of my cloth grocery bags off its peg, and took my wallet out of my purse. I put all that stuff in the basket on my bicycle, and wheeled it out of the carriage shed. I held the handle bars and gave it a good look. It's white, lavender, and purple--NOT a color scheme i would choose, but the shop gave me a good deal on it because it was last year's model. (I swallowed my pride and got purple instead of blue or green, which were my first choices.) :) Then i sighed.

See, i hate riding bicycles. I don't know why: did i have some traumatic experience with them that i've buried in my subconscious, like skinning my knees one too many times or something? Oh wait, that's not in my subconscious: i DID skin my knees riding bikes. Went through several pairs of jeans, as i recall, in 6th grade and 10th grade. I loved riding around the parking lot in Anaheim where we lived for 2 1/2 years, but i hated falling off all the time, and the idea of riding in public, on sidewalks with driveways and bumps and changes in slope, scares me to death. And trying to avoid moving cars, or people stepping out in front of me, or trees...

Ever read Calvin and Hobbes? I feel the same way Calvin does about bicycles.

But i rode mine today, 1 1/2 miles each way, to the grocery store That Is Not Trader Joe's. (There are no bike racks at this grocery store! What's up with that?) It's downhill all the way there, which means....Anyway, it was blissfully uneventful. I managed to stop at all the red lights and stop signs and not fall over when i rested one foot on the curb. I didn't hit any parked cars, nor did any reversing cars hit me. Trees stayed put. No one swooped madly into the bike lane, and one car who did want to make a right turn nicely signaled and moved over ahead of me.

All in all, a good trip. The wind in my hair felt good, as did the spring sunshine. It was good exercise to ride uphill home. The tires made a pleasant whir-whir-whir sound against the asphalt.

I don't know how soon i'll do it again though!

Can't stand still, but going forward through the fire...? Not so fun.

2010-02-16T22:47:00.001-08:00

Butterflies need the pressure and stress of breaking out of their chrysalides to make their wings fill out and dry.

Gold, silver, and other precious metals need high temperatures to burn out the dross and make them pure enough to use (and be pretty).

Stones and gems require polishing--with tiny bits of grit!--and cutting--with sharp implements!--to show off their brilliance and beauty and make them sparkle.

Trees need to move and sway in the wind to build up root strength. A tree guyed-and-staked too long will fall over much too easily once released.

Muscles grow from work and strain.

But, i am not a butterfly, a stone, gold, or a tree, although i do have muscles; those, however, get quite enough work typing papers and reports for work and moving a mouse around. (And doing dishes.) I am not spreading new wings; i'm not going to be used to conduct electricity or represent true love; i am not brilliant; i am not going to fall over in a storm (almost did twice, but i do think my feet are finally firmly planted again); and i'm pretty happy with my muscle tone, thank-you-very-much.

(Okay, okay, so i guess in some ways i could stretch spiritual analogy counter-arguments to all of those.)

I hate job applications. Filling out applications is the last thing my fingers need for exercise. And they sure do get my spirits down: what is my knowledge, skill, and ability? I mean, really? I dunno.

This is not a plea for help or fishing for compliments. I do know what i'm good at, mostly, and where i could use improvement (or should count myself out). But as a new professional, i really have no idea how i compare to the state of the field, and i have pitiful little job experience, and hate fishing for the magic words that some search engine is going to use to weed me out, and overall, feel quite grumpy after filling out screen after screen of information.

If only i could stand still and stay here. I just might be able to, and i just might, for once. But would that be taking the easy road? And shouldn't i go on being refined?

What will be left?

And am i exaggerating how hard this is? Yup. I'm having a little fit, and then i'll buckle down and finish them. Although, as Gary Paulsen says in Hatchet, self-pity isn't just wrong: it's pretty useless, too. After my little fit, i may feel a little better, but the applications still will be sitting there, staring at me, daring me to fill them out.

Ah, a dare works. I'll finish them, the little goads! Take that!

Workshops

2010-01-19T23:11:00.000-08:00

I never really saw myself as a person who would go to conferences. It seems so grown up, somehow, yet here i am, at a hotel by myself in La Jolla, my clothes and ready to go at the crack of dawn. Then again, i'm not presenting at a conference or workshop. Maybe i'm not really all that grown up yet. :)

Although my room is facing away from the sea, i can hear the surf roaring. The faint salty-kelpy smell of the ocean is like a light perfume here too, not too strong, just enough for memories. I remember walking along the beach with my grandmother, finding shells and kelp, and remembering that distinct smell. It all feels so mysterious and lovely: wonder what this place will look like in the morning?

I should be writing a paper....

2009-12-06T20:03:00.000-08:00

Or doing dishes, cleaning the bathroom, feeding Silly, emptying her litterbox, putting away clean clothes, tidying up my desk, updating my portfolio, dusting, mopping, washing walls, painting....

...or writing another paper. But instead (or maybe because i should be doing all those things) i'm thinking about the future instead.

One friend wants me to try thinking about a particular someone in that future, which makes me think, because i really don't know what i think of that idea. He's nice, but i fear i would drive him crazy. (As he's quite a mellow person, that's saying a lot.)

People ask me when i'll be done with this MLA program, and now that i've found out that my dream job actually exists, i of course want it, which may postpone graduating by half a year. (Alas, dream-fulfillment is temporary, of course.)

Other people ask me if i'm going back to Africa when i'm graduated, and i also don't know what i think of that. I'm not against it. I just don't know what i'd do--i mean, i can think of lots of things to do, but none of them really provide income, and getting there takes a nice chunk of change in itself.

So, i'm thinking. I know what i want to do in big-picture, life-motto terms. Finding someone to pay me to do it? That's another story!

Neighborliness

2009-09-13T20:26:00.000-07:00

Because i've recently moved into an apartment more than twice the size of my former apartment, i *needed* new furniture. Bookshelves, to be exact. So i traipsed off to a good place to get cheap bookshelves, and found the one i wanted.

At this good place, the furniture comes in boxes, and the new owner has to assemble it themselves. My sturdy little car (well, it's not so sturdy, considering how often it's been to Crazy Joe's lately!) can hold quite a bit of stuff. I've fit four other college students and all our sleeping bags, pillows, and suitcases into it and it's hauled itself quite nicely up into the San Bernardino Mountains, as well as quite a bit of stuff from this good place from my prior move and need for bookshelves. Anyway, I digress. My little car can hold quite a bit of stuff. The back seat slides down nearly flat, so i've shoved long boxes of bookcases through the trunk and over the back seat. That was my plan on this occasion.

But i've had $5 worth of recycling to drop off for weeks in the trunk, and long lines of people with $20 worth of recycling at the centers each time i try. And a bike rack. And some camping gear (pots and a burner). And emergency stuff, like oil for the car and water for me or the car and a blanket. And whatdayaknow, a big bookshelf, no matter how compactly packaged, won't fit with all that in the trunk. Silly me.

So, i tried putting the bookshelf in sideways, like a large passenger taking up all three spaces in the back seat. It was 1" too long. I tried having it on a slight diagonal from the ground to the ceiling, or across the seat, and no luck. I couldn't get the door shut.

Two women came out to their car, parked next to mine, as i was attempting maneuver #3. I opened my trunk, figuring i could move the bicycle rack and some stuff onto the front seat, and then put the back seat down, and like a puzzle, get that bookshelf in. Only, i was pretty sure i wasn't going to be able to lift it out of the side of the car and around to the back...and stood there, staring at the awkward shapes in my trunk, trying to figure out where to start.

One of the women said: Are you doing this by yourself? I said yes. She said--with a strong European accent--you can't, you are too small. And i laughed, because it was true, and because i didn't know what to do about it. She announced, "We will help you" and called her friend over. She was a cabinet maker, she knew these things, and she said it would fit if i rolled the front seat down flat against the backseat. All three of us then hefted and heaved the bookcase across, and although i felt like i was driving a strange bookshelf hearse, it did fit. I thanked them profusely, and one of them said: "No problem. You would have done it for me."

They were strangers. They didn't have to help me. And seeming like practical, sturdy women, they could have thought: sheesh, what's this dingie girl trying to do? Instead, that five minutes of kindness helped me feel very much less alone in the world.

And I hope she is right.

Summer goes by way too swiftly

2009-08-05T15:58:00.000-07:00

It's August. Where did July go? I was going to have stacks and stacks of notecards with pithy, relevant quotes and facts for my thesis; notecards with summaries of "The Literature" for my lit review; books read, violin music learned, apartment shelves put up.

But things happen. People die, emergency surgeries are undergone, weddings fill weekends with celebration. And then the summer is gone with nary a beach day or a page written. Oh, and then there's the occasional 12 hour day on a weekend at work.

I'm ever so glad that classes do not begin until the end of September, but i do still wish there were three months of rest and un-scheduled work ahead instead of only 6 weeks!

crowded ≠ community

2009-06-09T17:43:00.000-07:00

I don't know if it's the weather, the end-of-quarter stress, or if things have really changed, but i'm tired of living in an apartment. I like my space--it's almost all i need--and i like the location, but i'm tired of:

Hearing my neighbor who sings in the shower at two a.m. and hearing each time he opens the mirror/medicine cupboard and mutters to himself. Our medicine cupboards are back to back--i can even see light around it--and sound travels quite well through that. He also, being hard of hearing, isn't very quiet when he leaves between 3:30 and 4 in the morning. And i can hear his television well enough to know what number to call for products in infomercials. Should i complain? Or let him know? I dunno, but he's a little intimidating to me...

Then there's another neighbor. They left, fortunately, because i would hear their garbage disposal at odd hours of the night, right by my bed. I hope the new neighbors aren't as likely to tidy up the kitchen when most people are asleep.

And another neighbor. I can hear everything upstairs. Everything, and i can tell you what his favorite radio station is, including what the DJ said at 5 this morning.

And what makes people think that their phone conversation will be more private when they move from inside their apartment to the courtyard? Now all 40 units can hear the conversation, at 7:30 on a weekend morning.

Yup, i'm tired of apartment living. Maybe i'm just tired of apartment living without adequate insulation and without well-sealed windows and doors. I want to live in a small house in the country, far from every one else...

...and hence the suburbs were born.

God's green earth

2009-06-07T16:45:00.000-07:00

The other day it rained. It didn't rain much, and it didn't rain hard, but it was enough to clear some of the smog and dust and haze out of the air. Dark, moody clouds ambled their way along the mountains and the hills, with "God light" gleaming through in patches. It was so beautiful--the urban forest, the shape of hills not obscured through grading and terraces and rows of houses, the sky blue between the clouds.

That was driving to school along Colima between Hacienda and Azusa. Driving home on Fullerton Road, cresting the hill into La Habra, i could see the Coyote Hills, Catalina, the ships in port, Signal Hill, and the valleys--from the Cleveland National Forest to the ocean--again pastoral and lovely.

And it made me sad, because it so often doesn't look this way, but it was a reminder of how lovely God's creation was, how beautiful it can be, and the paradise that drew people to southern California. But then, discontented with what was here, somehow it was decided--whether a deliberate design decision or simply the cultural vernacular--that this semi-arid place should be something else. And i wish that i didn't have to drive everywhere, which contributes to the problem, and could instead use a reasonably efficient public transit system.

Dreams

2009-04-08T10:08:00.000-07:00

I've been having vivid dreams lately. I can't remember what having vivid dreams means, especially when one doesn't normally, but i think it's related to stress. Ha.

I can usually guess what my dream is about. Dreams where i'm falling off cliffs, in a canoe headed for a waterfall, or "herding cats" usually means i'm stressed out. Others are harder to decipher, and i'm leary of the funky dream interpretations: a suitcase means you're thinking of travel! Sure it does.

Speaking of which, i did have a dream about a suitcase. I was with a good friend and her baby. Their house was an old farmhouse, oddly sitting in a dry wash on a flat plain. I kept thinking the house wasn't on a solid foundation--it was as if it had floated down a debris flow and settled where it was in the wash. Other than feeling slightly unsettled by that, and how the house oddly resembled the first house i lived in as a child, the house didn't play an important role. There were interesting objects in the debris flow/wash, though, one being a suitcase. It was buried up to the handle, but i wanted to see if anything was in it, and loving old suitcases in general, i wanted to get it out. I thought it would be tricky, being so buried, and i guessed that the suitcase would be damaged, but when i tugged on the handle, it came out easily. When opened, it was clean and empty inside.

Very interesting. Wonder what my brain was processing.

In the grand scheme of things

2009-03-22T16:47:00.001-07:00

In the grand scheme of things, school may not matter. I doubt that on my deathbed i'll bewail the fact that i never had a 4.0 after high school.

On the other hand, who knows? That slip in gpa my senior year of college was one reason i didn't get into a PhD program in international diplomatic history. I'm glad, in hindsight, that i didn't get into that program, but the gpa did play a role. What if it plays a role later in something else more important?

And what about presentations? Earlier this week i was stressing out over two upcoming presentations. One was individual, and one was a team. Team work stresses me out more because my performance affects others directly, and i don't want to affect their gpas negatively. The individual presentation might have been observed by prominent academicians. I'm not sure why that was stressing me out, except that i wanted to do well, and wanted to impress in a good way--in a way that meant someone would be happy to write a reference letter, say. And all that stress led to a whopping migraine, which didn't help any of the work get done, which didn't help alleviate any stress!

A few helpful people started saying that, y'know, relax, these aren't that important, they aren't a matter of life and death. Trick is, i knew that. I know that. I also know that i am capable of presenting well, but i had a lot of work to do to prepare and trying to plan that preparation time in, knowing how horrible my concentration can be, is what stressed me out. The thought of being unprepared, not stage-fright. Furthermore, i agree: as a matter of life and death, these do not matter.

But i may have many years before i die, and i have a feeling they play a significant role for the interim.

Writing papers

2009-03-22T16:17:00.000-07:00

I should be writing two papers. I should have started writing the papers nigh eons ago. I'm grateful for grace--from God, and from fellow humans--because i could have failed this class, and still might, if these are not fantastic papers. I aced the presentations, but these may very well kill me.

I write at my kitchen table. It's hardly ever used as a kitchen table, because i have a little wooden cart thing on which meal prep occurs, and if i eat at the table, it's usually while reading if i'm not in the sitting room or out with others. It's a nice, large-ish maple table that used to be in my parents' home, each one of them except where we lived in Cameroon. I remember learning why we don't tip in our chairs at that table in Northhampton. I remember doing spelling words on that table in Bethlehem, and eating chloriquin-laced apple sauce at it. It seemed much larger than it does now. I remember cutting pieces for many quilt tops at their current home. The chairs are also maple; small, spindly things with curved backs. After sitting in one for nearly 12 hours now, they're hardly as comfortable as i thought they were as a child, and for my next study break, i'm walking to Cost-Plus to get a cushion!

Having to write these papers reminds me how much i hate academic writing. I've hated it since 10th or 11th grade English. Hated analyzing poems. Hated analyzing short stories. Hated writing anything more than a one page off-the-cuff response paper in college. I could verbally explain them to my classmates, but when it came to writing what i'd said, i'd stare at the blank page of notebook paper and hesitate to make my mark, as if the medium was precious, like medieval vellum. Now i stare at the blank white page on a computer screen. I make the title page. I format the references page. I plop my charts, graphs, and tables onto blank pages and insert the appendixes. And then i stare. I never know where to start or how to get my mind organized into an outline for the significant content.

I like writing some things--hey, i have a blog! I write letters to friends, both electronically and on paper. Sometimes i journal (on recycled paper). I used to write poems. But i buy cards that are not precious, because otherwise, that vast expanse stops me short again; and my poetry always began on scraps of paper: clean napkins, receipts, the back of an envelope.

So here i sit. I have 15 pages written, but half the information required isn't in yet, and the whole thing needs severe organizational editing. I edit others' work much easier (and better) than my own. And waiting for the inexorable stress to push me into action out of this writer's block will not lead to the fantastic writing that these must be for me to pass this class. So.

Small sweetnesses

2009-02-21T20:28:00.000-08:00

Driving home from work on Friday, traffic was horrid. It seems to be particularly horrid on days that i need to be home by a certain time--say, something slow-cooking without a timer (my crockpot doesn't have a time-bake feature) and company due to arrive. The classical music station DJ for the late afternoon commute usually makes me smile with his Classical Anti-Road Rage Melody, or CARRTune. However, when he said that the 605 was backed up from the 10 to the 210 in both directions for no apparent reason, he was only half-right; and even his jovial voice couldn't make me un-irritated. There was a Caltrans maintenance vehicle making some repairs on the side of the road, and everyone and their brother has to, of course, put on their brakes, fully swivel their necks, stare for a second, and then slowly accelerate onward. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE!? Not even a CARRtune could make me not mutter and question people's rights to having a driver's license.

The 605 usually--usually--isn't too bad. I'm going against the main course of traffic to get to work or go home. Once i hit an east-west street, though, it's a different story. Whittier Boulevard can be quite nasty before 7 p.m. and it's even worse when there are two accidents. Two accidents, not on the bouleveard itself (a mercy) but when two or three lanes of traffic merge themselves over into one messy line along the curb, thrice, it does slow things down. On top of that, someone was doing construction! During rush hour! In the middle of the road! And taking away two of three lanes! GRRR. My sanctification was being sorely tested.

But then, as i waited, far backed up from the light in a single-file line past the construction, i noticed a woman standing on the sidewalk. It was at a corner mini-strip mall sort of place, and she was with two children. One was a girl, about nine, standing a little further back from the street. A small boy stood in front of the woman, who had one arm around him, and he watched the Caterpillar and backhoe with the sweetest little-boy face: a look of awe, curiosity, and a wee bit of hesitation as he held his hands together and watched.

It made me smile like no CARRTune could.

Scholarly frustration

2009-02-16T18:12:00.001-08:00

When i write my thesis--if i write a thesis instead of working on a project--i will give it a title that informs and enlightens readers and ProQuest searchers. It will have the methodology as search terms and key words. And it will not be poetic froo froo nonsense! Grr!

I'm all for writing well and beautifully, but we aren't poetry majors!

AHHHH!

2009-01-27T12:27:00.000-08:00

Picture this: I'm wearing my comfy clodhopper hiking boots, grubby jeans clearly at least one size too large, an old turquoise t-shirt that i scored from Freecycle, and my hair is barely tamed under a faded red bandana. No makeup. And i'm not wearing my ubiquitous rings and earrings because i'm en route to a creek-surveying field trip. Have that picture in your mind? Grubby, because my jeans and boots still have mud on them from the last field trip. Happy, but grubby.

So, i'm running errands on the way to the field trip, and one of them includes dropping off my recycling. It isn't much--just two paper shopping bags of assorted glass, plastic, and cans saved up over the past few months. I'm running errands and not paying much attention to my appearance. The recycling guy, however, apparently thinks i'm hot stuff, because he says hi and asks me how i am in two languages and then asks why i don't speak his language and i explain that i'm learning, but i speak French instead and he says he thinks French women are pretty--i catch on at this point but don't want to take more time to explain that i'm not French--and then he asks if i'm married, because he's not.

WHAT!?

And why doesn't this happen when i WANT it to? :D

Christmas, shopping, and Christmas shopping

2008-12-14T22:16:00.000-08:00

Today i tackled a major part of this year's Christmas shopping. I had a good idea for my bro and sil, and after running the options past my mom, have theirs done. Nice, useful, and relatively eco-friendly. (Relatively.) I had a great idea for my mom, and my dad, and got most of it done today too--knew what i wanted, walked in the shop, walked out, and assembled them tonight. Fun, useful, and nothing that will clutter their house.

I like shopping like this, like my dad, who goes to grocery stores armed with a list compiled from their adverts and comes home proud, hunter-gatherer style. Seeing the opposite:--folks wandering around dazed, picking up doodads, trifles and powerfully-scented bath soap ensembles, asking their partners three aisles down: "What about this for Murgatroid?"--makes me sad. Giving gifts is supposed to be fun. Gifts are supposed to be meaningful, not an obligation to give, nor a dollar amount to match, nor getting Murgratroid everything s/he wants.

And, while i think the Advent Conspiracy is a good thing, and that less is more, and love that my bro and sil share the philosophy/theology that used books are just fine, i also agree with Oscar Wilde:

"Where there is no extravagance, there is no love, and where there is no love, there is no understanding."

So, while my gifts will never match the extravagance of his, i think there's little harm in celebrating God's extravagant gift with a little splurge of my own for those i love, if the gift i give honors God and respects what he has made.

Quote of the day

2008-12-13T18:14:00.000-08:00

Reading Phantastes at lunch on Friday (my lunch buddy was gone and well, anyway, it was about three when i finally went to lunch), i stumbled upon this jewel from George MacDonald:

"Past tears are present strength."

Thank goodness. Thank God.

And now, on to good reading that's been piling up for the past quarter, with much more pithy wisdom to learn.

I needed this:

2008-11-28T23:24:00.000-08:00

"Our season of life—whatever it is—is no barrier to having Christ formed in us. Not in the least."

John Ortberg, The Life You've Always Wanted

I needed that reminder in the face of what has felt like much misunderstanding and obliviousness. Well-intentioned misunderstanding, but none the less painful...and this quote, along with a good cry and hug from my mentor and a hug and hot cocoa from my mom, has been balm.

Thank you, God.

When someone listens

2008-11-22T14:40:00.001-08:00

Sometimes i don't write anything here because what i want to say belongs in my journal, away from sentient eyes. For example, i've been feeling rather snarky and ungracious lately. There's enough of that out in the world; it can be relegated to paper with less harm. Kie, i wish i could take back some of the things i said this week and even more of what i thought.

Sometimes i don't write anything because i've been too preoccupied, too rushed, and too busy to notice the little graces that God has hidden around me. This week, though, i saw golden big-leaf maple leaves glowing against a dying ash tree, fresh bobcat tracks and scat, an ancient oak tree born within two hundred years of Jesus, two hawks wheeling over a hill in Pomona, and red, festive toyon berries wherever i look: the world is beautiful.

And sometimes i don't write anything because someone has been my journal and listened to everything i had to say. Now i don't need to say it anymore.

I am...

2008-10-13T16:28:00.000-07:00

...relearning how to Formally Write after years of one-page response papers whipped out in an hour.

...spending time with friends when i should be reading or doing research.

...slowly learning how to be more organized and efficient.

...hunting down references for things i learned long ago but can't remember from where or whom.

...wishing i was an aunt, instead of borrowing other people's nieces.

Rain

2008-09-30T14:10:00.000-07:00

It's not supposed to rain in September, but as i drove north on the 605 yesterday clouds hid the summit of the San Gabriels and i could see rain falling in the canyons. The weather became terribly muggy and then boom! Thunder--barely distinguishable from the semi-trucks that growl past the office on the 210--and rain at the office. I didn't get to play in it, didn't get to drive in it, but i did love the smell as we left the office for a site visit.

:)

And that will be it for a while--school has hit hard and i'm going to use more productive ways to unwind this year, like practicing my violin or quilting or going for a walk, instead of reading blogs and the news for hours. Toodles!

Moral dilemnas

2008-09-12T07:51:00.000-07:00

Granted that the best thing is to say yes when one should say yes and say no when one should say no, what is the lesser of the two evils below?

1. Say yes, and then go back on one's word once realizing the thing should not be done?

2. Say yes, and follow through even though one shouldn't have said yes?

April was in England

2008-09-12T07:48:00.000-07:00

and had a jolly good time.

Pathways

2008-09-06T15:17:00.000-07:00

This is part of Cuthbert's Way, a old path to a cave in which monks hid when they were fleeing Lindesfarne. They wanted to take Cuthbert's bones to Durham, where they wouldn't be desecrated by invading Vikings. The purple-colored stuff is heather, and sheep were munching up there among the heather and huge bracken ferns. Brown cows (and some black cows) were in the fields on either side of the public footpath. And, to give you an idea of the scale, the reddish-brown plants on either side of the foot path were about four feet tall.

This is another part of Cuthbert's Way--very straight, and possibly part of an old Roman road, i was told. Conifer forest and a steep hill to the right, old dry stone wall and cows to the left. This path was about five feet wide.

And another road. It isn't paved--those are rock bits pounded into the dirt.

Aidan

2008-09-01T05:40:00.000-07:00

If i ever have children, and if one of them is a son, and if my husband (if i ever marry) thinks it's a good name too, (and there are probably other caveats) i'd like to name a son Aidan.

Yesterday was the first day of my holiday in England. While validating my rail pass at Kings' Cross station today, the ticket agent asked if i was here on holiday. Yes. Traveling alone? Yes--the best kind, i said. Which isn't entirely true--i can think of a few people that i'd like to have here with me. A few. But it is green and soothing and there was a thunderstorm last night that i got to walk in and two people--one a older woman that i helped at the Dublin airport--have already called me "Love". I love it!

A friend teased me about coming to England, "where the paled-skinned people live", he said. I laughed and retorted that he travels to places where he blends in, too. I blend in here, at least until i open my mouth, but i also like the cosmopolitan feel to London. At the same time, the neighborhood in which the hostel sits is a real original multi-use neighborhood. There are people there from all over the world--mostly speaking English in British accents, too--there are shops along the main street but private parks at the back, and people walking to and fro on their ways to work or the tube station.

After checking in and dropping off my bag at the hostel, i headed off to Westminster. That part of London is lovely: the golden stone of Parliament, the gilded gonging of Big Ben, the gorgeous glass and iron Westminster tube station, the cobblestone crosswalks. And the bridges crossing the Thames--it's no Seine, but it's still a nice river, with enormous ancient London Planetrees lining the walls. All it needs is places to sit along the bridges, but perhaps that would be considered a hazard, while Paris is hardly ever bombed.

Westminster Abbey is closed to tourism on Sundays because it is an active place of worship. However, a free organ recital is offered at 1745 each Sunday and the public is welcome to any of the services. I knew there was a service at 1830 and found out about the recital when i got there--it was amazing! The organists are world-class, the organs are massive, and the sound resonates through the sanctuary. I slouched down in my seat, rested my head against the back of the chair, and studied the ornate stone ceiling as music flooded the place.

The evening service followed immediately. Most people left--some even left in between movements of the recital--but even local parishioners go to the service so it wasn't touristy. The Sunday evening services are like devotionals, sort of. There are hymns--we sang Be Thou My Vision and several other recognizable melodies--and then lessons from a saint's life. Aidan, the Scottish monk who brought Christianity to northern England, died on 8/31 in 635 and so he was the saint for today. It was interesting--some people knew church things, like how to do congregational readings and the Lord's Prayer. Others didn't but participated and figured it out (they give you a program with good notes). Then there were those who were obviously tourists who said "yes" they were going to the service when really they wanted to sneak in on Sundays. Those were the people who left in between movements of the recital or half-way through the 30 minute service. :( On the other hand, if you're going to have minimal exposure to Christian theology and hear a smidgen of a story about a saint, Aidan isn't a bad choice. He didn't do any crazy questionable miracles--he's recognized as a saint because of his humility and because by all accounts, even his enemies', he lived what he preached. :)

Interesting random things on the road, not roadkill

2008-08-20T23:31:00.000-07:00

Today on the way to work, a white sedan sported a bumper sticker that read "Fragile: Don't hit me!" Said sedan proceeded to tailgate each car ahead of it, zip between lanes without using a signal, and slam on its brakes when the tailgated car had to slow--this was on the fringes of rush hour, mind you. I half laughed and half hoped someone hits the Fragile person and that the Fragile person is shown to be entirely at fault. Crazy!

There was a pick-up truck on 210 West. At first i thought it looked odd simply because we were going around a wide curve in the road. Then, as the road straightened out, the pick-up did not. It jogged down the road like a loping dog, the rear axle a good 8" to the left of the front axle. I got out from behind it as soon as i could!

Thievery

2008-08-07T20:17:00.000-07:00

Have you noticed errant shopping carts lately? They seem to have gone amok, breeding like rabbits. There were five carts between Whittier Blvd and La Forge (the light that's an entrance to the shopping center) a few weeks ago. I bet it's one of the side-effects of the gas prices going up--instead of driving a block to the grocery store, why not make off with a cart? It can be conveniently dumped in an alley or on the lawn in front of an apartment building, and ta da! I just committed a minor crime for the price of 1/4 gallon of gas!

What's up with this? Stealing shopping carts has got to be among the tackiest crimes a person can commit, and i've seen all walks of life making away with them. Will people desist now that gas prices are slowly descending? It's not like it costs us nothing--the cost is indirect, like the store paying insurance on damage to vehicles from shopping carts and paying to collect its carts, a cost which they pass along to us. Then there's the social capital costs from tackiness and an appearance that no one cares, which isn't good for neighborhoods.

Some of my favorite crimes:

A family walking away from a store: woman, man, three kids around age 9-14. Kids carrying nothing, man carrying one bag, woman pushing cart with about 5 bags. They could've distributed that and carried it easily.

Members of the Greatest Generation: This one really bothers me. I mean, i can understand my reckless, whatever fellow Gen-Xers or Gen-Yers making off with a cart (okay, i can't. The shame!) But i can't understand how people who saved the world in the second war to end all wars with moral high tones (even if it wasn't completely that) can stoop to STEAL a shopping cart. I understand that rising gas prices are tough on a fixed income and that a frailer sort of person might not be able to carry a lot. But, there are these inexpensive little wire frame wheeled carts that carry groceries--why not get one of those? I've seen other older adults with them.

Then again, maybe it is simply showing the insides of us for what they really are. The Greatest Generation, after all, raised the people who raised hell during the 70's. Maybe we only follow the law when shame keeps us in check. I enjoyed the information in Tom Brokaw's book, The Greatest Generation, but i don't think any one--or any generation--has perfect morals & motivations.

Overall, i think the shopping cart thing is a sad commentary on us and i'd much rather be in a guilt culture (i'm guilty whether caught or not) than a shame culture (hey, as long as you can get away with it, it's not wrong). Heaven help us.

I will not elope

2008-08-02T20:02:00.001-07:00

I used to say i wanted to elope. Quite recently, in fact, i made that comment. I don't mean it, though, at least not in the sense i guess most people take it to mean: dissing the families and thumbing noses at convention while giddily absorbed in the temporary insanity that passes for love. To paraphrase Benedict in Much Ado About Nothing, when i said i wanted to elope, i didn't really think i will ever get married. And if i do marry, i mean i don't want hoopla. My brother tried to have a simple wedding and it was NOT. It was lovely. It was not simple. My grandparents eloped: my grandfather was just out of the army, they didn't have the money for a ceremony and pre-marital counseling wasn't the thing, so off they went to Nevada. (Note: not Vegas). Funnily enough, my step-grandmother and her first husband also eloped and for similar reasons. All was well when they returned. No hard feelings. Happily ever after until death did them part.

Today's wedding was nice and sweet. The bride and groom are a lovely couple and relatively low-key: no bridezilla here. (Nor bridesmaidzilla, which i have also seen!) The photographer even remarked that in 25 years of shooting weddings, he's never had such a cooperative bridal party. It was still more work than i'd like, if i ever have a wedding. Coordinating music, being on stage as me and not as an actress, getting the flowers there, explaining directions to an...interesting...limo driver, coaxing a small boy in a tux to walk down the aisle with his sister and to not swing the pillow, finding out that the brother had accidentally taken the best man's boutonnière--things like that are not my cup of tea. I don't want a wedding.

But, i don't really want to elope either.

Fortunately, there is no need as of yet to solve this dilemma.

Transitioning work

2008-07-31T22:42:00.001-07:00

I've been very blessed to have mostly enjoyed most of my jobs. Sure, there were days at Disneyland that i never wanted to see cotton candy again, and days where guests drove me nuts (like the lady who pitied us working on Christmas day as she bought something from me. Sure. Real sympathy that was.) I learned good service skills there and at Nordstrom; learned how to type rapidly, fix copy machines, and manage small accounts as an admin assistant for a print shop; learned a lot about everything from life to graphic layout from working at a church.

Teaching--high school or older adults--is exhausting but rewarding, and i thought i loved my current job (teaching older adults) until i began the Forest Service job. Then i learned what loving a job really is. Usually these two-hour classes leave me drained, my voice has been hurting a lot the past few weeks, and the constant demand to prepare for the upcoming lesson is a like a small stone in a shoe during a long hike. Landscape architecture for the Forest Service, in contrast, leaves me energized and ready to work way past the time to go home! I have the day off tomorrow and i wish i didn't; i've gone in on a few weekends; it's all i can do (illegality is the main barrier) to not bring work home.

It is not without anxiety, however, that i realized next week is my last full week with the older adults. I don't want to tell them: i want to just disappear. I know that's not healthy, not for them or for me, but i hate goodbyes, i hate disappointing people, i hate making people sad. I've known them for two years and some of them feel like quasi-grandparents. I've seen their ups and downs and many of them have few visitors. They'll have a new teacher, but i will miss seeing them and they say they like my class most. The cynic in me doubts that; the soft-heart in me, somewhere in there, mourns. If only i'd have time to visit once in a while--but i know i won't, not really, not realistically.

:(

I'm alive

2008-07-28T21:29:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the undue alarum. I'm alive. :)

Amazing

2008-07-25T23:54:00.000-07:00

Today my car died in traffic and cost me nearly a paycheck to get repaired, and i was told by my mother and by a registered nurse that i should get myself to a doctor within 24 hours. I was late to work and had to work late to make up for it. A friend had to pick me up, take me to my car, meet me at my apartment, and then meet me at my parents' house so i could drop off my mom's car.

It was a long day.

In some books, it might have qualified for the moniker, "bad day". On the other hand, though, i woke up refreshed and made it to the first job on time. When my car died--in traffic--it began acting strange just before the freeway onramp and so, THANK GOD, i was not in the second lane at 65+ mph when it kerplunked. I'd have been toast. And, after waiting and trying to get it to start through three green lights, a jogger stopped and wonderfully offered to push me out of traffic. He was so nice; i need to pay it forward. I was beginning to panic. I called Triple A and everytime it connected me to a person, it hung up on me. But, they called back and got a tow truck guy there. A policeman stopped to make sure everything was okay. My mom was able to pick me up--i broke down near her work and her work was back on my way to my second job--so i was able to get to my second job, even if i was half an hour late. And it was only half an hour late. The free towing covered all but a mile to my mechanic, who was able to squeeze my car in and get it fixed. I have it back. And fine, i'll go to urgent care tomorrow as soon as i wake up, i promise.

So, it wasn't such a bad day after all. I'm alive. I could ask: hey, if God could provide a person to push me out of traffic and let my car die before i got on the freeway, why couldn't He keep it from dying altogether? But, see, i don't think God often intervenes to change the laws of physics. If He did, they wouldn't be laws and we wouldn't be able to see the marvelously complex and simple beauty of His creation and the consistency and justice of Him. I don't treat my fuel pump as well as i should. The car breaking down was due to come. I'm just grateful He doesn't make me learn my lessons any harder than they need to be.

Hmm

2008-07-22T18:20:00.000-07:00

I have a pen pal.

It's kind of weird to have a pen pal at this age. When you're a little kid, it doesn't seem to matter much who the person is. You just write them about your day, your pets, and your siblings and they write back in a similar vein. Then it ends.

This is a little different, and one can easily be deceived into thinking one knows this correspondent. I'm easily reminded that the written word was invented to convey the spoken--and i have no idea how my pen pal would speak. I've met pen pals before and been sorely disappointed--the voice i imagined reading the letters was not at all the voice that truly existed and spoke. I didn't like the real voice. Maybe that was because of the fantasy set up by mere written correspondence, but i think a true part of it was that we weren't really friends. We didn't really know each other. We knew what we thought was the other, but it wasn't us.

Anyway, now i accidentally have a pen pal. I wonder how long it will last, and if we will be friends in person ever. How strange.

On panicking

2008-07-13T19:24:00.000-07:00

My bank was closed this weekend.

This past week, my boss and i drove many miles to the picnic area from the office and back. I drove once, because he needed to eat breakfast. Then he drove back, and he's driven ever since. I think it alarmed him that i swerved for animals, dead or alive.

Nah, i know it alarmed him, because he mentioned it Friday. "Y'know how you swerve for animals in the road?" he said. "And panic? What if there was oncoming traffic?"

There wasn't, i replied. In split seconds i notice there's no oncoming traffic and there's a dead squished thing that i don't want splattered on the car or thunking under me, and i swerve. I've never hit anyone in street traffic and i avoid running over things then too.

He thinks--and rightly--that i should train myself to swerve to the shoulder or at least get the creature under the undercarriage of the vehicle, not avoid it altogether. I need to work on my panic reflexes.

AND SO DOES THE REST OF THE COUNTRY. Yeesh, people, have you never read the fine print of the FDIC? Have you not studied the Great Depression and learned about the safety nets installed so that people losing their life savings in banks doesn't happen again? Do you know that banks closing and stock prices crashing are self-fulfilling prophecies and YOUR panic is part of what sets them off and makes them come true? I understand there were some less than wise decisions made by the bank, and that its share prices fell. They had a plan to maintain liquidity, though, and that was ruined by people panicking and withdrawing funds: funds that were insured. They couldn't have been lost. And now the entire thing is dead.

Arg.

EDIT: Today, the idiocy continues. I agree there was probably greed involved in the bank's collapse, but that is no excuse for idiocy (or for signing something to get a house. What about personal integrity?) Where are the brains of people who waited in line today, saying "I'm going to take my money out, if it's still there." OF COURSE it's still there! That's what the FDIC has been saying in print, on the phone, and online all weekend! Arg.

So clueless

2008-07-05T22:59:00.000-07:00

So, someone thinks i'm naive. I know i'm naive. Then again, i think i reached the peak of cluelessness this past week when i unthinkingly gave someone my phone number. Why did i do that? Because he asked. Not being practiced in turning down requests for my phone number, and because he seemed like a normal person with perhaps business/networking reasons to telephone, i gave it to him. I didn't think it was a date or anything like that.

I D 10 T ERROR.

Because he called at least three times between when i gave it to him and the evening of that same day even though he knew i was working and proceeded to call a total of 12 times, plus a text message, plus even calling my BOSS and asking them to get a hold of me, in the next three.

Y'know, if he'd left one message that afternoon, i might have actually returned the call. Checking my messages after work and discovering three in five hours freaked me out just a teensy bit.

The next man who asks for my phone number will have to have references and go through psychological testing before i give it to him!

Not by works

2008-07-01T20:35:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to do too much and not doing most of it well.

For example, i forgot to make a phone call today. Not only forgot to make it, but forgot i was supposed to make it. Make that two important phone calls.

I need to learn to start saying no and not picking up things simply because they are enjoyable. When doing too much, nothing is enjoyable anymore and i become undependable. I don't want to be that person.

Here's to change. In August.

Frustrations of misperception

2008-06-30T22:57:00.000-07:00

Last week my new boss was explaining how office relationships operate--"We have to like each other in order to work together, but we can't be friends at work"--confusing things like that. Negotiating what that means with the help of an engineer, somewhere later in the conversation he said, "Don't worry. I've got you pegged."

As laughingly i related this to a friend, she said, "Oh no, you're hard to pin down. He's in for some surprises." She's an insightful friend, and while she's probably aghast at me sometimes, she has known me several years in various shades so what she says is probably true.

That said, it drives me bonkers that in some ways i feel like my new boss--of a week and a half--knows parts of me better than some do who should know me better.

It's bad enough that i usually feel like a gangling fourteen year old without someone thinking i still am that person. And yes, i do act goofy, i don't act my age--but heck, i pay my rent, hold down two jobs, earned two degrees with a third in process, and i'm paying--or promissory noting--my own way through. I've lived in Africa on my own and traveled around the world alone, attended a variety of social situations and handled myself quite okay, and while i second guess everything, i can make good decisions. Sure, i have fears: I hate making telephone calls; i get a little stage fright. They hardly cramp my style.

I hate those pointless arguments-in-germ of "You are this way". If i say that isn't accurate, and they repeat it, "Yes you are", it's crazy to mention it again. If i live down to their expectations that's stupid, but it's equally twisted and unhealthy to drive myself to prove them wrong.

Grrr, grrrr, GRRRRR. What is the God-honoring response here and how will i ever find the grace to do it!?

Ambition...

2008-06-26T23:23:00.000-07:00

...I don't have much. Grabbing a bite to eat this week, one of my new colleague-supervisors asked why i wanted that job, and i didn't have a good answer: because it sounded fun?

I REALLY need to take that First Peter admonishment to heart about having a good reason for my hope, and everything else, and think more and be caught off guard less!

Because it is a good deed sort of job, one that can do some public good. Because i want to help be a good steward of the few open spaces left around Los Angeles, and help keep the natural resources (that includes views) open for people to enjoy and have a place to let off steam from the city. Because i need experience and i can't see myself surviving as an intern in an Irvine-corporate kind of firm. Because i don't want to design housing tracts. Because i needed a second job for the summer. Because my immediate supervisor is a great person, whom i already respect, and i could tell i'd thrive working for him. Because i want to be involved in habitat restoration. Because i want to be able to work outside sometimes. Because i hope it could maybe turn into a permanent job in the future and i wanted to be a ranger when i was a little girl--not to steal my supervisor's job, but to work alongside.

Because this is my Father's world. Because Christians should have remained on the forefront of the environmental movement as a God-honoring means of obeying His mandate to tend the earth and rule over it as His regents, and a means of loving their neighbors, instead of abdicating their responsibility and cowering in enclaves of anti-nature or acting like King John à la Robin Hood.

That's all. To be promoted is to be stuck managing people or dealing with even more politics in Washington. I'd rather be outside in the dust and the mountains, sniffing pine trees to see what species they are, cataloging old fire pits, figuring out how to preserve a view when re-opening a picnic area, researching light fixtures, tagging along as the geeky side-kick, and learning a ton.

Lunch break

2008-06-24T16:12:00.001-07:00

As i sat in my car, under the trees, eating my lunch and listening to the radio, yellow flowers drifted down in the light breeze. They landed all over my car outside and in: some fell through the sunroof or the window and landed in my hair and the seats. Then i noticed a flower that wasn't falling down--it was moving horizontally and up, and ta da! It was a butterfly! :) I don't know what kind it was, but it looked a bit like a swallow-tail, as bright yellow as the flowers of the Tipuana tipu tree.

Flight

2008-06-16T22:28:00.000-07:00

My not-so-little brother is in town for the week and it's nice to have him around. He makes great dinners on the grill, buys decent beer, treated me to coffee, and convinced me to try smoking a cigar.

He did not make a convert.

He's a pilot. The life of a pilot is not all glam--he's had to move several times in the past three years, shared houses with several people and welcomed others who use his place as an occasional crash pad, and now he's on reserve for many years to come (that's if his airline stays in business during this economic whatever-it-is). Being on reserve means a completely unpredictable schedule. Believe me, having been a substitute teacher, an unpredictable schedule makes having any sort of life nigh impossible. He had a nice little life before upgrading to captain, plus people with whom he enjoys having a life.

We were talking the other day as he drove me home from our parents' house about how we're both feeling an urge to bolt. One point in his favor about a pilot's life vs. a grad student's life: he can request a base change and move while keeping his job. He probably won't, but if the draining situation in which he finds himself becomes more than he wants to handle, he does have an escape route and, he says, little to bind him to the place. I, on the other hand, know i am supposed to be here for now, but i sure am fighting a desire to bolt. I'm not sure Italy can come soon enough!

Someone asked me the other day if i was planning to go back to Africa as a landscape architect. When i got home, i realized my reply was sorely lacking something along the lines of the Book of Esther: God was implied (from my side) but i didn't overtly mention Him. I should have. My reply was: i'm not planning anything. I'm open to it, but i'm not planning. I thought i knew what i wanted my life to look like, and while it was right for a time, i was wrong about having that be the rest of my life. Did i misread what God wanted me to do? Maybe. Maybe not.

So, i am not planning my future, but i am listening and watching my feet. I don't really want to see more than a few footsteps ahead right now; i don't really want to know what is coming and i doubt i'd get the picture anyway. A responsible life--do justly. love mercy. walk humbly with my God.--that should be enough preparation for whatever is to come, i think. Here is where i am, and where i belong, for now. I am a graduate student. I have two years left.

So why do i want to run away so much?

Enduring repercussions

2008-06-05T12:00:00.000-07:00

In class we've learned about these nifty things called bioswales/bio medians/vegetated swales. Instead of a boring asphalt median painted green, a median is slightly concave and lined with cobble on the outer edges, then planted with appropriate species. (Imperial Highway between Santa Gertrudes and La Mirada Blvd is a great example, as is Temple Ave between the 57 exit and Valley.) A swale is a similar thing--any depression intended to channel water. Instead of a concrete-lined ditch, it could be planted with reeds or grasses or other plants that can handle occasional inundation.

These designs serve several purposes: they're much more attractive and that is good for people. They slow down, clean up, and absorb water before it hits the storm drains ("No dumping, drains to ocean"). That's important because most of the storm drain water around here goes straight to the sea, which is why i get so ticked when i see people toss fast food trash out their window. It's incredibly unpleasant to step on a crumpled plastic straw at the beach. Our storm drain system also is old: it wasn't designed to handle run-off from the plethora of housing developments that have sprung up like mushrooms in an over-watered lawn, so a bioswale slowing down the water (and absorbing some) allows a more appropriate flow rate into the system.

Another important function of these design features is phytoremediation, or plants cleaning up pollutants. Tire bits worn off by friction, brake linings, fluid drips, and other gunk is washed off parking lots and streets by rain and by any other water that runs down the street (like the people who water the sidewalk and the street when watering their grass. That would be your neighbors, of course, not you.). All that gunk also ends up in the ocean, just like your (sorry: their) straws. Not good. Not good for the ocean, not good for all the little fishies that swim in the sea, not good for me who eats fishies, not good for anyone who likes going to the beach. So, a bioswale's plants absorb a lot of those pollutants. Huzzah! Everyone thinks we've found a solution to pollution! Have the plants take care of it!

Wrong.

For one thing, while there are species that can handle this sort of environment, they are often not the prettiest plants to start with. Think crows and starlings and pigeons: sure, they can handle cities. I'd rather see a cardinal, an oriole, or a phoebe, personally. On top of that, if they are seriously polluted, these plants end up with growths and infections: a kind of plant version of cancer. They also die faster. Big deal, you say. So a plant dies. Trick is, these plants that have been absorbing all those pollutants don't deactivate those pollutants: they just contain them and keep them out of our water supply. That's great, but it doesn't solve the entire pollution problem. When bioswale plants die (or have to be pulled out and replaced) that plant has to be treated as toxic waste. Because it is. Plants, like us, are what they eat.

So, it's a good idea to have bio medians, but they are far from a magic bullet. If we pollute, and we do, there are things we can do to mitigate the effects of pollution: there are better and worse ways to pollute. We cannot undo the damaging effects completely though.

Like other aspects of life.

Listening

2008-05-27T16:30:00.000-07:00

Lately i've realized i am not a good listener, unless i consciously enter a situation in listening mode, which is not often enough. Often a question will come to mind when the conversation is long gone, but second-chances don't always come along. I also no longer ask many good questions of profs or situations--i've become a rather passive learner. The two are not unrelated, i think. Passive learning isn't terribly effective compared to active learning, and it's lazy. Not listening is self-centered and rather lazy too.

Walking home from the library today, a strange bird cry echoed across the street. Santa Gertrudes is a bit like a canyon at that spot--tall, sound-reducing ficus trees (honest they are--i know vegetation supposedly doesn't really reduce decibels but these suckers do) on one side of the street, screening a tall department building, and rows of apartment complexes on the other. I looked up and saw a crow. It was not the sound of a crow. Then i saw a pigeon-colored bird with a striped tail and intelligent head--some sort of hawk! On my street! In the middle of city-like suburbia! It landed on a light pole and began plucking its prey. I hope it was pigeon. Where did that hawk come from? What species is it? Where is its nest? How will it survive the annual tree lopping around here? Does anyone else cheer for the hawks instead of the pigeons?

....

One of my students told me last week that he was moving to Colorado. Thinking he was probably going to stay with a different grown child, i asked, When? His reply: Not sure; we'll go when the company tells us it's all set up.

Oh. That was my first clue that Jack* is slipping. He has Alzheimer's, but other than forgetting random vocabulary his case has always seemed mild. Today he told me he was moving to Oregon: his mind is slipping from the present into the past, when he was an engineer for a mining company and traveled frequently. I've heard that crossing these stages goes quickly, that the decline worsens exponentially. I've seen that happen with T and J. Oh, God. Please not Jack.

Sometimes i hate my job.

*Not his real name, of course.
....

One of the warm-up activities i do for work involves trivia about historical events: This Week in History. I like it--i love history--and my students like it since their memories function rather well about the past. Last week we learned that Ingrid Bergman was rare in that she refused to glamorize her name when she came to work in Hollywood. All these movie folks with normal, tidy, every-day sounding names--so many of them had other names, the truly every day names. How much of my perception of reality is accurate, and how much of it is a constructed image? I don't watch tv, i rarely watch movies, but i do read and listen to the news, and there are billboards, novels, stories, fairy tales....John Wayne's real name was Marion Michael Morrison. Bob Hope was Leslie Townes Hope. Why couldn't they keep their real names? Was it because those names were froo froo? But what if those manly men had performed with froo froo names--perhaps it would have changed that perception of those names? Doris Day was Doris Kappelhoff. Why change that?

Technology-dependent woes

2008-05-25T21:04:00.000-07:00

My laptop is dead. Or dying. How blog i thus, you ask? House-sitting for my parents, on their desktop computer, taking a mini break from reading articles in preparation for a highly intimidating telephone interview with a renowned landscape architect for a research paper. Why did i request an interview with said person!? He is a principal at a huge firm. Designer of award-winning gardens. Busy important man. Very gracious to agree to an interview. I will learn a lot reading published material and in the interview, but I AM A GOOF (e.g. i have to put on my grown-up hat for this interview and that takes much effort), i hate telephones, and i'm second and third guessing pursuing this avenue. Panic! I don't want to shame my school. Or me.

And now my laptop won't start. Thankfully, i backed up everything 10 days ago. Miserably, that doesn't include last week's work or photos. And my parent's old desktop is fine for word processing and web browsing, but it doesn't have the Adobe Creative Suite that i need to finish presentation boards, nor Sketch-up to make models (because i can't adequately draw them yet), nor Autocad to load base plans for a final project due in two weeks...their computer can't handle all that software, not to mention their lives involve going to bed at nine in the evening and mine involves studying/working/(goofing off) until midnight, and in a different town. Mooching off their computer won't work. People did this work before computers, but now, well, i need mine.

Panic panic...ha. That reminds me of the cover to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

And now, to avoid panic, i am going to return to reading articles and hope my brothers have an idea of what to do. I've replaced the motherboard on a desk top before, walked through it on the phone by my techie brother, but i think a laptop is over my head. I can read. Reading i do well. Back to reading...

EDIT: Thanks to some techies from church, it is working again. Believe me, i am backing up much more often.

Tempers and temperatures

2008-05-22T17:15:00.000-07:00

When it's hot, very hot, people seem to be more irritable. (I particularly notice this as i drive along Colima and the 60 freeway.) Earlier this week, discussing the weather, someone told me that one theory about this behavior is that people become at least mildly dehydrated and heat sick. Some side effects or symptoms of dehydration are irritability, irrational behavior, delusions, all that jazz.

How strange, because those are also the symptoms of hypothermia. Isn't it slightly paradoxical that opposite temperature extremes have similar symptoms? On the other hand, maybe it isn't so strange--it is still about body temperature.

At any rate, all you drivers out there, DRINK MORE WATER!!!

Strange nostalgia

2008-05-20T11:29:00.000-07:00

When i was a little kid, sometimes after music lessons my mom would take us to get a cheese danish (and a cup of good coffee for her) at an infamous fast-food joint. I vaguely remember these events. I remember putting my stockinged feet on the traced feet of a music folder to have proper violin posture; i remember the wood and glass doors of the old building; i remember my lesson partner, Leslie; i remember that my teacher had incredibly long brown hair. I vaguely remember tree-lined streets, with metal grates around the roots of the trees, and brick (or are they stone?) townhouses with steps up to the front door. I remember yummy cheese danishes, or at least yummy in the sense of high sugar and fat content.

Today i had a feeling of nostalgia for a cheese danish, but alas, said infamous fast-food joint no longer sells cheese danishes. When did that happen?

You can eat this

2008-05-15T22:50:00.000-07:00

To clarify: You can eat whatever you like...and you may well suffer for it. These, however, you can eat and they won't kill you or make you sick (unless, of course, you're allergic or someone used foliar pesticides or systemic fertilizer, in which case, ja, they just might make you pretty ill. Then again, so might cookies containing enough preservatives to make a mummy. If it's going to be death by food, i choose death by educated experimental browsing).

Day Lily, Hemerocallis sp. One of my classmates thought it was gross. I liked it. I find it tastes like pale celery lightly sautéed in butter, with a slight wasabi or peppery aftertaste. Try the buds just as they begin to show color. You can eat them raw (rinse them off first) or lightly sautéed with garlic, and added to a green salad. They're planted all over Southern California: usually yellow but sometimes the rose or orange varieties, although i'm not sure it's legal to harvest from the median strips. It would be the epitome of pitiful to be smashed by a car while living off the landscape; and have you seen what they spray along the sides of roads!? Ick. Eat them from your neighbors' yard and leave the medians alone.

Detail of Feijoa sellowiana. Photo courtesy of my classmate, I.F.

Pineapple Guava, Feijoa sellowiana. Deliciousness! I haven't tasted the guava fruits yet because they haven't ripened, but i love guavas and expect to enjoy these. (Probably a result of growing up in the tropics, that one is; guava trees also make good climbing). Not only is this a gorgeous tree, but the flowers on this plant are edible and they taste yummy, like a light fruit sorbet. I think they'd be good on high quality vanilla ice cream, one that was smooth and creamy, with chocolate sauce optional--it had better be good, not wimpy Hershey's. I bet the flowers would also be good in a fruit or garden salad. Mmmm.

Quote of the day

2008-05-08T12:19:00.000-07:00

"The cure for too-much-to-do is solitude and silence, for there you find you are safely more than what you do. And the cure of loneliness is solitude and silence, for there you discover in how many ways you are never alone." — Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy

Mt. Calvary Monastery, here i come. Once i'm done in June with the too-much-to-do that is school, that is. ;-)

How does my garden grow?

2008-05-06T23:36:00.000-07:00

For starters, i don't have a garden. I live in 320 square feet and no patio. But if i had a garden, or a yard, i would use some of this wunder stuff:

Carex pansa, aka carex perdentata, passes the barefoot test. It only needs to be watered once a month, and only needs to be mowed 3-4 times a year, or maybe the other way around: either way, a great plant for the upcoming water rationing if you like having a green lawn. It's available at John Greenlee's Nursery in Chino in plugs. It will be spendy to install, especially to kill your marathon lawn, but it will be worth it!

I think this is Sweet Vernal Grass, Anthoxanthum odoratum. It's edible, tastes sweet, and it smells nice.

This also smells nice, like vanilla. It's called Vanilla Grass (ta da!), Heirochloe odorata. Here it has been whacked for transplanting, but it grows taller than this.

Homesick sounds

2008-05-06T19:08:00.000-07:00

This isn't New Land Road.
It's better, actually; it's the road from Batouri to Yaounde.

The ubiquitous "they" say that the sense of smell is one of the strongest connected to memories. When designing therapeutic gardens for Alzheimer patients, for example, landscape designers use plants that will be familiar to older adults--roses, rosemary, lavender, sweet peas--in an effort to trigger memory recall and renewal from events or knowledge somehow tied to those smells in our criss-crossed brains.

Looking up case studies and having actual, solid references would be a good thing for a graduate student to do, but at the moment i'm studying children and play: aromatic therapy gardens will have to wait. I believe "them", however; the scent of freshly cut grass reminds me of my dad mowing the lawn on Saturdays in Pennsylvania and getting all scratchy as i played in piles of freshly mowed grass, cardamom reminds me of Christmas (and now it reminds me of baking Christmas bread with contents of two Republic of Tea Cardamom Cinnamon sachets since i couldn't find cardamom anywhere in the market in Cameroon), violets remind me of my mother and of the funky plywood bathroom shelves in Cameroon where she kept a tiny vial of Yardley's Violet Perfume. I can see that when i smell violets and almost reach out to touch the maroon painted wood and the contact paper lining.

Personally, though, sounds trigger memories as much as scents. I hear a sound, and it takes me somewhere like a summons i cannot disobey. I never know what they are until i hear them--it's not like i can think up a sound memory or many others. For example, last week i ran into a former student--someone i did not remember until i saw her face, and then all these memories about student teaching flooded back. A bit disconcerting it was, and i don't want to know what else is in there.

Anyway, back to sounds. Lumpy railroad tracks intersected my route to work this afternoon, a different way due to an errand. Keys rattled against the steering column as my car wobbled slowly across (slowly because all the raised pick-ups ahead of me had slowed down). My keys rattled, clack cling clack, then silent again.

Cameroon: I heard that sound every time i got a ride to school or market or home. The road was full of deep ruts and cars wobbled slowly as they drove lest an axle be wrenched or a rock scrape the underbelly of the car. Last time i heard that sound was as a passenger, driving out on New Land Road toward the airport, to leave.

Oh, to be this brilliant

2008-05-04T21:25:00.000-07:00

This evening some of the second and third year grads and one of the department's former profs met in Pomona to see James Turrell's Skyspace. I didn't go to the gallery with them earlier in the afternoon because i needed more alone time than the weekend afforded, but (after getting lost) i did arrive in time for the evening display.

I didn't take my camera.

I'm going back.

Learning to draw

2008-05-02T14:51:00.000-07:00

This week was Modules Week at school. It's a bit like a working spring break. The department brings in emeritus profs and professionals from the community to share their expertise in one-week intense classes. I took drawing--drawing as a means of seeing landscape.

Once i upgrade the memory on my laptop, i'll upload a sketch to show what i learned this week. A long way to go until i'd want to display drawings to anyone, but my prof taught us (me) enough to recognize shadows and light, the shape of things, to remember perspective. I'm proud of my blind contour California poppies, and the gesture sketches of guest speakers. I think i'm still better at diagrams than at anything close to realistic, but Italy should cure that. ;-)

EDIT: Here is a page of the gesture sketches.
They're rough, but hopefully the action or stance of the person is readable. Few eyes because they always look angry when i draw eyes!

It feels like learning to drive: all those things to think of: rear view mirror, side mirror, space cushion ahead, scanning, shifting gears, watching for stale greens & pedestrians; and now driving is like breathing. Maybe, if i practice enough, drawing well will become like that and perspective, diminishing scale, detail, light, shadow, and contours will be more automatic.

On the other hand, i drive 300 sorry miles a week, and i don't think drawing time is going to come close!

I also learned: Collages are an effective way to create perspectives. Legs are really hard to draw. And do not inhale cobalt blue!

Good Lord, deliver me

2008-04-27T22:41:00.000-07:00

From the cowardice that dare not face new truths,
From the laziness that is contented with half-truth,
From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,
Good Lord, deliver me.
- Kenyan prayer

It's been an interesting few months. At the moment, i'm feeling a bit like Judas. We tend to vilify him, but i bet Judas thought he was doing the right thing. (Not that his motivation absolves him.) Maybe he feared Jesus was really going to accept the acclaim of the people and be a puppet king to the Sanhedrin, and if Judas was a Zealot, well, he'd have thought it was better Jesus be dead. Or maybe he hoped to force Jesus' hand into striking down the Roman dogs with the power of the Almighty when they came to arrest him. Who knows? But i feel a bit like a traitor. Although i did what seemed wisest and best, and it still does seem wise and best, nonetheless it is unpleasant. I was in over my head. I still am.

I'm by no means going to go hang myself and spill my guts in a field.

On a related topic, honest it is: Last week i faced a weakness i didn't know i had. It was a good reminder to be humble: i'm susceptible. It was also a great reminder of God's graciousness in that He provides a way out of every temptation, a way that doesn't involve succumbing to it. The way out in this case meant not getting as close to the temptation as is technically allowed. Heck, allowed by almost any measure! But i can resist from here (and it's not running away). Get any closer though and i may not. I don't care to see how close i can get: the risk/reward is not worth it. [EDIT: I know, i know, "resist the devil" and "flee temptation". I backed up enough that it counts as fleeing; no temptation from this distance. ;-) ]

Is it legalism to say i'm going to stand back here, or is it self-preservation? Is it folly to think that i can resist something, or is it wisdom to recognize a weakness? And lastly, with permissible things, what about the laws of Nature? If i step into a busy street, i'll probably be hit. If i step off a building gravity still applies (with messy consequences!) and even Jesus didn't throw himself off the temple. Who am i to think those laws will not apply to me, even if breaking them isn't wrong in itself? I choose the sidewalk. I may still be hit by a car but that will not be my fall. I can handle that. Escaping the messiness and pain of life is not what i expect: causing a little less of it is.

The kingdom of heaven is not come, even when God's will is our law: it is come when God's will is our will. While God's will is our law, we are but a kind of noble slaves;
when his will is our will, we are free children.
- George MacDonald

I want to be like Jesus. I want to be like him because he called me to be, because he is worth it, and because if i really believe he was a good man and a good teacher (let alone God himself) it makes absolutely no sense to not do what he said. I want to be the kind of person who is transformed from the inside by his Spirit so that i can obey. I mess up, i fall, i am not perfect, i have no expectations of being so this side of heaven but i DO believe that Jesus is not a cruel task master who gave us harder rules than Moses did without any help to meet them! I think he means for us to be transformed so that we can be more like what he said. We're to be learning citizenship just like we would in a cross-cultural setting.

"Sin is the best news there is, the best news there could be in our predicament. Because with sin, there's a way out. There's the possibility of repentance. You can't repent of confusion or psychological flaws inflicted by your parents--you're stuck with them. But you can repent of sin. Sin and repentance are the only grounds for hope and joy....You can be born again."
- John Alexander

Amen.

Botanical garden field trip

2008-04-12T22:21:00.000-07:00

This past Friday, we went on a field trip to a huge botanical garden that specializes in California Natives. I had a heydey with photos. Unfortunately, having to learn the names of everything takes half the fun out of it--i'll remember the water needs, colors, and growth habit, and maybe one name, but it's taking the pudding out of me to remember both common name and latin name of all these suckers! Quiz on Monday!

This is a variety of Native Iris, Iris douglasiana. It's also sometimes called Douglas Iris, and comes in colors from white with yellow lines to deep indigo blue and purple. There are some cultivars that are golden and frilly: cultivars, however, tend to not be as hardy and vigourous.

Here is a golden one.

This is blue-eyed grass Sisyrinchium bellum and wild monkey flower, Mimulus sp. There are Mimulus cultivars that come in all sorts of colors with all sizes of flowers. I think this is also one:

This is Louisia. It's an alpine plant from around the timberline in the California Sierras. I have to look up the rest of the name because i misspelled it in my sketchbook. :( Edit: This is Lewisia cotyledon.

This beauty is Baccharis pilialaris 'chablis', also known as Dwarf Variegated Coyote Brush. It's a nice-sized shrub with interesting foliage, and it smells good when the leaves are crushed or if something brushes up against them.

Want to plant California natives in your garden? The Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Garden specializes in them and has plant sales a few times a year. Tree of Life Nursery is also a good source. I'm learning about other nurseries on a few upcoming field trips. Ask your local nursery about native plants--they attract birds and butterflies too.

I love the desert

2008-04-12T22:15:00.000-07:00

I have to learn the names of most of these anyway, so once i have, i'll come back and label them. For now, they're here for you to enjoy, whoever you are.

I love how the new leaves are wrapped so tightly that even after they unfurl, the imprint indicating their close proximity to the other leaves remains.

It rained a while ago, so all the cacti were in bloom.

This isn't a cactus but it was blooming too.

Another blooming cactus.

Small world

2008-04-10T00:19:00.000-07:00

One of my classmates is kind of from a country i lived in for a year for boarding school. His mother is from a town that my family went to every year up in the highlands. He recognized the name of the school in Nigeria and i recognized the name of the town in Cameroon. Weird. Kind of neat.

I guess it's not really a small world, though, because we don't know anyone in common.

Once again...

2008-04-07T21:26:00.000-07:00

...i need more sleep.

I'm not sure what it is, this aversion to sleep, but i am convinced it will soon wreak havoc on my graduate career unless i get it under control. It makes me forgetful. It makes it nigh impossible to wake up on time to get to school with breakfast in my tummy. Make that: get to school on time with breakfast in my tummy. Or get to school on time at all. And it makes me forgetful.

We had a field trip today to the Huntington Library and Gardens and I FORGOT MY CAMERA! My precious, which i hardly know how to use because it can do everything except make dinner. It would have been helpful to have today because the gardens were in glorious spring bloom.

The (third ever in 100 years!) director gave us a death-march paced tour of the Desert Garden, Japanese Garden, and Chinese Garden because our design studio project this quarter is to brainstorm ideas for one of those. He told us some of his ideas and visions, gave us history of the estate and the individual gardens, and was a delightfully informative host. I look forward to many more (free! yay! whew!) visits to research use, topography, and come up with ideas. (And to take photos.)

The estate is intended to still feel as though it was someone's private estate. When Huntington bought it, the land was a working ranch with oranges and peaches, and the site of one of the first commercial avocado groves in California. Little of that remains, but the gardens are at a personal scale in many ways (personal if you were a multi-millionaire), and have the funky charms and idiosyncrasies of a 100-year-old private garden. Many of the cacti and succulents in the Desert Garden were collected by the Huntingtons and the first garden superintendent; the Japanese garden has elements requested by Mrs. Huntington, and the Chinese Garden is brand spanking new but only the first phase is complete--there are about 10 more acres to develop. The Japanese Garden needs renovation, not in least because a lovely old tree died this past year and everything under it needs shade which it won't have for many years, and a new bonsai court is in progress for sun-loving bonsai, and a tea garden is planned. And for the desert, which i love, most of the paths are closed to the public because of steep terrain, unstable footing, and very prickly plants with little regard for path delineation.

I haven't decided which of the three to focus on this quarter, but at the moment i'm leaning toward the desert. It isn't truly a desert garden the way the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix is, but it's a world-class collection of plants begun in the early 1900's. And, learning a lot about solitude this past year, i've become more attracted to the desert as a place of weakness as well as a place of strength. There should be places of drama where plants explode in color and texture, as well as places of subtle discovery to reward those who sit and study. The desert kills or it woos--it depends on if one insists on rushing through headlong or realizes the wisdom of yielding to forces much greater than oneself.

Seeing my fears come true...to someone else

2008-03-30T23:41:00.000-07:00

Several former students and colleagues live and study in Southern California, and even though we only live an hour from each other, i'm not too good about keeping in touch or reconnecting. Actually, i'm horrible at that, but that's a story for another day. Today we met up in Point Loma and Mission Beach to hang out and share a meal.

We were going to swap out to take group photos, but a passing motorist offered to take our pictures for us. How nice! :) Here we are--i, of course, am the one with wild hair.

Because carpooling was not an option, i took the train down and back. I've taken the train late at night several times, and even though it probably isn't the wisest thing, it's never alarmed me to be waiting alone at the station in the dark. What i DO fear is sleeping through my stop. It's not like an airplane where everyone has to get off at the destination, nor do conductors wake up passengers. One late night--the train was to arrive after midnight--the lulling clack clack and gentle sway sent me deeply asleep in between stops, even though they were only about 12 minutes apart. I kept starting awake, fearing i'd slept through Fullerton, especially since the train only stopped for a moment or two. If i missed Fullerton, there were no other south-bound trains to catch from further up. It would be Union Station for me, or calling someone at one in the morning, oh boy.

Well, tonight those fears were realized. The guy seated diagonally from me slept soundly through Santa Ana. I felt sorry for him. That stop was announced loudly, several times! If i'd known he was getting off at Santa Ana i'd have tried to wake up, but two stops later, even the conductor had to shake him. I think he was going to have to go all the way to Union Station and catch a train backward. :(

Whaddayaknow...

2008-03-27T17:16:00.000-07:00

30 is the new 50. I received an invitation to join AARP today!

When i called to be taken off the mailing list, i asked about this mix-up. The operator said you can be as young as 18 to join AARP. How strange.

Good thing i've come to terms with 30; this would have put me over the edge a few weeks ago!

soul searching

2008-03-25T16:32:00.000-07:00

Having hidden from
myself for so long, i do
not know where i am.

Spring is sprung

2008-03-24T23:06:00.000-07:00

I enjoy Spring. I enjoy all the seasons, but i love spring flowers greatly. My mom planted sections of the backyard by color (some annuals, some perennials, some things in pots).

We vigourously trimmed the wisteria and it finally bloomed! My mom thinks threatening to dig them out makes plants cooperate. :)

One of my favorite flowers: gerbera daisies. I love them in all colors but especially yellow. This guy grows in a pot with a native daisy thing.

An old-fashioned miniature rose also in a pot on the patio. A blooming Rosa Banks is there too--blooming, according to my mother's theory, because she announced it had one last chance.

The orange section: there's an heirloom tomato, red salvia, and golden lilies planted nearby.

Willy-nilly lack of reason

2008-03-15T15:48:00.000-07:00

Between taking classes and teaching classes, i drive nearly 300 miles a week. I hate that about my lifestyle, especially at $3.53/gallon, but it can't be helped for the moment and i make recompense by walking to church, the library, the grocery store, and the post office.

Driving that many miles and hours without a cd player or functioning tape deck in my car, the radio is on a lot. Usually it's tuned to stations with few commercials: public radio, e.g. but even that has blurbs and sponsors and senseless adverts.

If i hear one more blurb from Flex Your Power (and i'm so miffed, i won't deign to hyperlink) about how much energy we'd save if Californians replaced all their inefficient washing machines, dish washers, dryers, and water heaters, i'll scream. Better yet, i'll write my favorite radio stations and Flex Your Power, although i doubt it will accomplish much. IT WILL NOT SAVE THE WORLD to chance your water heater. Sure, it'll save some energy. It will not, however, address the energy used to make the new whatever, the energy to ship the new whatever to the store and then transport it to your house, or the energy to haul away your old whatever. Worst of all, where on earth do they propose to put 16 million old water heaters, dryers, washing machines, and dish washers? Throw the thing out when its useful life is completed, wrap insulation around it, only run full loads--there are better ways to save water and energy. We don't have enough planet to dump old things just because there's a new and improved thing. Prime agricultural land in California has already been paved over. We shouldn't waste any more.

This lack of logic also goes into the marketing of hybrid cars. They do, in certain driving conditions, use less gas. That's no excuse to ship older models overseas or to Mexico, or to dumps or scrap lots. Then there's the whole issue of their toxic batteries.

We could have a grand standard of living--people did in the 1920's and 1950s and thought they were at the height of consumerism--while consuming much less, and that includes so-called eco-friendly stuff too. Just because it's called "green" by the manufacturer does not make it green, and using more than one needs is far from green.

Rant over.

Except, oh, did i mention hearing news about a California legislator's brilliant idea to raise oil taxes by 8%? As if gas, and everything transported by gas (= almost everything), hasn't increased in price enough? Close the loopholes about yachts already, and give us better public transit, and then i might re-elect someone who proposes an increased oil tax. Over my dead body if i'd vote for him before that.

Fullerton

2008-03-12T19:37:00.000-07:00

These are from my self-directed field trip yesterday afternoon. As i walked around taking photos i was sure someone was going to ask me what i was doing: one of my classmates nearly got arrested while measuring Pershing Square. Alas, i must look harmless. No one asked me anything.

This is the North-bound side of the Santa Fe Depot. Many a time i've scampered here to take the metro or train into Los Angeles! The depot was built c. 1930 to replace the Victorian Depot, which was built in 1888. That one was wooden and looked a lot like the station where Anne of Green Gables waits for the Cuthberts. This one is Spanish Revival. I like it. The benches, ceiling, and lighting fixtures inside are grand, even if it's just a small station.

This is the Chapman building, one of the tallest in downtown Fullerton. I've read that it's supposed to echo the style of Chicago's sky scrapers, since Chapman hailed from that city. Note how the building is only 5-storeys--apparently, that's a Fullerton historic area ordinance currently being challenged. This and the Landmark Plaza building are two of my favorites on Harbor Boulevard. I also really like the Villa del Sol building, which used to be the California Hotel.

This was the Union Pacific Railroad Depot. It used to be at a different site but was moved here around 1980 and became the Old Spaghetti Factory. The structure is largely intact, although many of the furnishings are different. An evening manager nicely showed me around a few weeks ago and he knew a lot about the building.

Fullerton has spiffy modern architecture too, like a Streamline Moderne home and a futuristic car wash. I like well-done buildings from that era, like Neutra, but i must admit a weakness for Spanish Revival.

It is Lent...

2008-02-09T19:43:00.000-08:00

and i haven't yet put away my Christmas decorations. Fortunately, being lambs, lions, and three angels, they will work for Lent & Easter too.

But i really should put the reindeer away.

At a loss for words (sort of)

2008-02-02T19:30:00.000-08:00

To write or not to write...to write of the banal seems, well, banal; yet to write of the deep is too much self-disclosure. Nonetheless, here we go:

I am not often enough at a loss for words, but it has been a rough week. There's much more than circumstances inducing my misanthropy, but by the grace of God that was actually going better the past two days until today. Perhaps misanthropy isn't the right description: it's been more dismay and despair, with an unhealthy dose of disgust thrown in. At any rate, after a good conversation and prayer with my mom, it had toned down to mere dismay.

Driving home from work, a boy on the service street next to me rode his bicycle around a cul-de-sac. He wasn't straddling the bike--he had his hands on the handlebars and one foot on the seat. Where was the other foot? Up in the air behind him! :) It made me smile and laugh, and fortunately, since it was a red light, i made eye contact with him and gave him a thumbs up. His face glowed into a grin. It was a fun moment, and it again made me thankful for God's grace and His enabling me to think graciously of my fellow humans.

But in general, it's been a rough week in that category, and there have been a couple whammies this weekend. (I went over to my parents to borrow a shovel today, but when my dad opened the door, i said what i really needed was a hug and started crying.) People are fallen. We are silly, selfish, stupid, shameful, and well, sinful. Including me. I don't like that i can't change me, and i don't like that i can't really make a difference in small or large things around me. Only God can do that, and He, for reasons best known to Himself, lets us do silly and/or sinful things. We do not love Him with our whole hearts, and we certainly do not love our neighbors as ourselves.

"If you fall, fall forward", an old boss often said. (A friend said, "That's tripping." I think she's right. I trip a lot!) So, feeling dismayed because i'd been disgusted again (which is a symptom of being non-gracious, i think), i went looking for words to talk to God and found this prayer. It addresses to God's good and capable hands all the things that have flustered or dismayed me this week.

O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son:
Look with compassion on the whole human family;
take away the arrogance and hatred which infects our hearts;
break down the walls that separate us;
unite us in bonds of love;
and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth;
that, in your good time,
all nations may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
May it be so. May it be so in me.

"Prayers and Thanksgivings: Prayer #3". From The Book of Common Prayer. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

On the road

2008-01-23T18:46:00.000-08:00

It seems i've been on the road a lot lately: field trips, commuting to school, commuting to work. I think it brings out the worst in me, highlighting how far there is to go to be like Jesus (or how little i walk with him). Sure, people drive like maniacs, selfishly endangering others on the road; people are gratuitously attracted to other people's trouble (aka rubbernecking); but even though these conditions are true, i don't think Jesus would condone the dark thoughts i have toward my fellow commuters! :( Today's rainy conditions on the 60 were a good test of my attitude, and it mostly failed. This is how i felt:

And these are some of the places i've been on the road: the 60 is much less attractive so it isn't here:

Highway 133, from Laguna Beach field trip. The dark smudge is a ding in my windshield, a result of not-so-courteous sharing of the road with gravel trucks.

A foggy day at the Philip Raines Rest Stop field trip on Route 99.

Over the Grapevine

2008-01-20T20:14:00.000-08:00

Two field trips in one week! Friday's field trip was much longer than Monday's--we went to the Philip Raines Memorial Rest Stop on Highway 99 in the Central Valley. It's near Tulare in the middle of the bread basket of California, which is quite possibly the bread basket of the world. (Except, of course, they don't really grow much grain. It's more a cows, fruits and veggies kind of place.)

This is from just north of the Grapevine in the minuscule hamlet of Grapevine. We tried to get to Grapevine but we got stuck in the on-off ramp vortex, so the parking lot of the Don Perico restaurant it was. Isn't it lovely how the hills frame the amber waves of grain? (By the way, that is tule fog, not haze or smog.)

Most of the birds at rest-stops were crows and starlings although i did hear one phoebe and one hummingbird. These guys looked like they were waiting for something tasty from the vending machines, but i think they were going to be a long time waiting. People didn't get much out of the vending machines--i don't think ice cream or even potato chips sell well when it's 40 something degrees out (F), and definitely no picnics going on either.

This is from Southern California Edison's AgTAC center, free demonstrations of energy efficient and cost-saving ideas. They have this cool sample wall, roofs and windows, so you can feel the difference from insulated houses, roofs, and windows, and they also have demonstration crops because 20-30% of the energy used in CA is used to move water: irrigation, drinking water, sewage. If you can grow crops with more efficient and effective irrigation, you save money, water, and energy. This is a corn field. Did you know they are graded by laser!? Tractors with lasers!

One way they've found to increase the yield from stone fruit trees is to prune them to grow like this. That's because you can plant them closer together--12 feet apart by 6 feet apart, instead of 12 x 12. Each arm of the V gets sunlight too, instead of having the center of the tree produce wood and twigs but no blossoms.

There were many trucks, oleanders, and tumbleweeds along the way, as well as fields and fields of grapevines. Flat land, and mirky with winter fog, it was a long drive but nice to see a different side of California. It's quite a different place up there.

And on that note, i am SO glad i don't have to go to Las Vegas next Friday. The undergrads are going to the Springs Preserve, which i would like to see, but it would be another crazy long day, not so fun. Instead, i'll go standby (Yay brother who will make captain in a month!) over spring break.

No Dumping: Drains to Ocean

2008-01-15T20:29:00.000-08:00

Our most recent project is to redesign a beach access in Laguna Beach, a real project being worked on by a real firm, not us, but we get to pretend and use some of their graciously-lended data. To scout it out, i made two trips there, one at night and one during the day. It isn't ugly, but it could use some love:

There isn't very much parking (surprise, surprise) and the parking that does exist in Laguna Beach is mostly parallel and metered. There are many of these signs--but most of them are more visible, of course!

One of the problems faced by beach structures, whether stairs, streets, buildings, or the beaches themselves, is erosion. It's a fact of life and the result of pounding waves and tides, but here it is accelerated by run-off from the hills, as well as the fact that beaches are partly grown by sedimentation from proper amounts of run-off. That doesn't happen when you have a hill-side community of paved roads that chute rain water and irrigation water down to the ocean. They've apparently had to redo the stairs at least once:

The view is worth the work cut out for us, isn't it? Even Clemente Island was visible. Too bad we had rush back for a lecture on campus--i'd have happily spent the whole day as a field-research field trip. :)

Calm before the storm: a place to retreat

2008-01-03T22:32:00.000-08:00

I know that some people think the word "retreat" is not fitting for retreats. I've heard them called "advances" or "work" or other things. I'm not a particularly martial person, but i do know that a retreat is not a bad thing. Routs are bad things. Retreats are strategically important in order to regroup and re-attack. So.

Semantics aside, a friend and i went on a solitude retreat together (ha, we carpooled and shared a room) to a monastery and retreat house in Santa Barbara called Mount Calvary. I went with a stack of four books, seven letters to write, my journal in which i hadn't written since September, and knitting. I accomplished: one letter, one journal entry, and a completely different book that i hadn't intended to read but found in the library there.

This is the main entrance to the monastery and retreat house. We rang the doorbell and entered (as a small hand-calligraphed sign directs) and Will, a spry 82-year-old monk, greeted us and showed us our room. It felt very peaceful from the first step in.

The grounds are scattered with benches all over the place, some in secluded nooks, some with sweeping vistas of the Channel Islands. In the early morning and evening, bunnies hop around. The monks compost and garden and use little pesticides, so there are songbirds flitting about too. I saw two great horned owls one night; they were hooting right outside the reading room very loudly.

This is part of the lower garden. It's left kind of wild and Italianate, a cheerful mix of herbs, fruit, and flowers, and it smells good. Lots of hummingbirds and other birds around.

The labyrinth/prayer walk.

A detail of the labyrinth.
A labyrinth is meant as a place where you can walk as you pray and think without having to pay too much attention to where your feet are taking you. For a kinesthetic learner or a person like me who has a hard time concentrating when sitting still, they are great for focused prayer. (They may not be so for everyone, that's okay.) It looks small, but because the path is narrow it actually creates quite a long walk. Nonetheless, if you are concentrating on the conversation with God and not on where you are--the point--then before one realizes it, one is at the center. I liked it. Wish i could make one in my yard, but i don't have a yard.

One of the many trails led to a few benches near this carved wooden cross.

I went with an idea of how to spend my time: full, busy, cramming in knowledge. Instead, i spent several hours the first evening just being quiet, reading a few Psalms, and being still. I craved that during the past quarter, and i will probably crave it during the next quarter no matter how disciplined i try to be with time management, so i think it was good that i didn't meet my idea of a successful retreat. I'll be back. I'll probably take a stack of books again too, but i'll be happy again if i am quiet with God and am reminded that above all, i am His, His workmanship created for His work, and not my own.

Ten years from now

2007-12-28T23:35:00.001-08:00

Being my father's daughter, i'm not much for celebrating an "arbitrary calendar event", but i do like reflecting and looking ahead on New Year's Eve. Last New Year's was different from any other. It was fun but not terribly reflective. I can't remember the one before that (except that there was no alcohol involved, so i'm not sure why i can't remember anything!). The one before that was spent singing, catching up, and doing dishes with long-ago friends and per former-life tradition, having pancakes, strong coffee, and fresh juice for breakfast. This New Year's Eve i'll stay up reflecting and playing games with friends, and then i'm heading to a soulcare/solitude retreat (paradoxically, with a friend! Ha ha. We're carpooling.) I'm looking forward to beginning the new calendar year this way.

Someone asked me today what i dreamed: where would they find me in ten years. I didn't know i knew until i answered. This dream is one i'm writing down, and i may even put it somewhere to remind me on distracting days. It will be interesting to see if it changes or if it sticks around for ten years.

Favorite places

2007-12-27T00:06:00.000-08:00

I went to the Wild Animal Park with two of my former students this week. One of the baby elephants is only a month old! I think we watched it and the other baby elephants for almost half an hour.

Isn't it adorable? She can completely walk under the adult elephants in the enclosure without even grazing their tummies.

Tradition

2007-12-26T23:58:00.001-08:00

Since moving to California, my family's Christmas day traditions include going to the beach Christmas afternoon. After stockings, breakfast, story, and presents, we pack up cold cut sandwiches, marinated artichoke hearts, Christmas cookies, a flask of coffee, and picnic plates, and off we go. The first years we went to Huntington Beach just north of the pier, where there is lots of secondary seating (landscape-speak for things you can sit on that aren't specifically chairs). The past several years we've gone to Corona del Mar. The weather is lovely (i even wore shorts one year) and the sunset is always beautiful. Many other people have the same idea and stroll around enjoying the weather and the view. Over half of the people there have dogs with them, and i usually end up half-wishing i'd received a puppy for Christmas. (Half wishing. Someday, but not yet!)

We stayed, as always, until the sun slipped behind Santa Catalina island.

here is where i am for now

2007-12-23T22:54:00.000-08:00

Who says we have no fall color in southern California?

This is the white-blossom crape myrtle in my parents' backyard.

And a close-up of the same tree, with a vine weaving itself in.

Merry Christmas

2007-12-23T17:11:00.000-08:00

This entry is a excerpt which i love, because it restores my hope on bad days and reminds me of the source of my hope on good days.

"Jesus bar-Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth, was in fact and in truth, and in the most exact and literal sense of the words, the God 'by whom all things were made.' His body and brain were those of a common man; His personality was the personality of God, so far as that personality could be expressed in human terms. He was not a kind of demon or fairy pretending to be human; He was in every respect a genuine living man. He was not merely a man so good as to be 'like God'--He was God.

Now, this is not just a pious commonplace; it is not commonplace at all. For what this means is this, among other things: that for whatever reason God chose to make man as he is--limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death--He had the honesty and the courage to take His own medicine. Whatever game He is playing with His creation, He has kept His own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He has not exacted from Himself. He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it worthwhile....

....So that is the outline of the official story--the tale of the time when God was the underdog and got beaten, when He submitted to the conditions He had laid down and became a man like the men He had made, and the men He had made broke Him and killed Him. This is the dogma we find so dull--this terrifying drama of which God is the victim and the hero.

If this is dull, then what, in Heaven's name, is worthy to be called exciting?"

Sayers, Dorothy L. "The Greatest Drama Ever Staged is the official Creed of Christendom". In Creed or Chaos?, 6-9. Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 1999.

Califonia Scenario

2007-12-01T20:11:00.000-08:00

Our last field trip for the quarter blitzed all over south Orange County. We started at Roger's Gardens, a lovely nursery in Corona Del Mar. It's one of my mom's favorites: a bit spendy, but everything is beautiful there. They have interesting specimen trees (i want a Harry Lauder Walking Stick) and the plants aren't laid out in boring flats; they are arranged tastefully. Being near Christmas, all the colors were silver-sage, pink, red, white and green, not my favorites, but our prof took us there to see micro-design and planting arrangements--a very nice idea.

The next stop was the Irvine Water Management District and the Sea & Sage Audubon duck area. That was a quick stop and parking was amusing. We followed the visitor signs, honest, but somehow all eight cars were parked somewhere we should not have been, and we got locked in, and probably heads rolled. (Not ours--security's). (The construction guys didn't do a good job directing us past rumbling lorries, either. Yikes!) I want to go back with my bird book over Christmas break, although it seemed to be mostly coots.

The final stop was in Santa Ana near South Coast Plaza. This is a square in-between several large office buildings, and the designer is Isamu Noguchi. It was a cold day, and dreary. One of my classmates said that in summer, it's quite hot--the walls are white, the ground is stone, there is little shade, and the albedo of the surrounding buildings is high. There are concerts there during lunch time sometimes too...a mini Pershing Square, albeit more successful? I want to return and observe more here too. I got lost looking for this California Scenario: there are no signs, and parking is limited and expensive. No one knows it as "California Scenario" either--but a man from whom i asked directions did know of it as "the Noguchi place".

I thought this tree looked like a dear, but what's with the picket fence? That made it a bit kitschy.

This is the mountains, whence our water comes. It trickles down the groove in this sculpture and meanders through the plaza. There are foot bridges but, if you aren't wearing heels and are feeling bold, you can leap over the stream in most places.

This is Los Angeles, which sucks up all the water. The stream disappears under Los Angeles to the right. Notice the grid line? That's supposedly a reference to city streets. Bad Los Angeles (whatever). The scale is hard to detect: the sculpture is about ten feet high at the peak.

Running a race

2007-11-28T23:53:00.000-08:00

In high school, they said they needed a fifth runner. All i needed to do was to keep going-- run, walk, limp--just cross that line. Not every runner who began a race crossed the finish, but i want to be one who placed instead of the last to cross, the one who set a real record instead of shaving scant seconds off my time.

Fifteen years later, i still want to be the one who crosses victorious with arms raised high instead of who i am: shin-splinted, barely into the first mile and already lagging far behind bronze.

The pack and the stands say: keep moving ahead. You can do it! Keep going! Run! Drop everything that hinders! If you can't run, walk. Or crawl. Or at the least fall forward.

I know i can cross the finish, but i don't want to run merely to limp across the line.
Instead of the one kindly cheered for, i want to be the one to cheer the others in.

Christmas list

2007-11-17T12:56:00.000-08:00

All i want for Christmas is to

sleep 40 extra hours and eight hours every night
read or finish books (Founding Brothers, Love & Respect, Transforming Discipleship, The Divine Conspiracy, Making Room, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed)
move my furniture into my apartment from my parents' house (done over Thanksgiving--thanks Mike & Tim!)
play the violin
hang out with my brothers & sister-in-law
make my friend in Malawi a tea cozy
make another friend a baby quilt
hike at least twice (once at San Diego Creek of the IRWD) and bird while out there
stargaze
really learn how to use my spiffy new camera

To see peace on earth through God fully reigning would be nice, too.

To sleep...to dream

2007-11-17T00:06:00.000-08:00

I came home from work yesterday and, having had a headache all day that got progressively worse (Santa Ana's? Allergies? Stress? Something?) i decided to take a nap before tackling a response paper and a stack of readings. That was 4:30.

"Nap, then dinner", i thought, "then study".

Next thing i knew, it was 1:30 in the morning. I almost got up to study. Then i thought twice about that, decided that getting up to study at 1:30 in the morning was more than a little ridiculous, and went back to bed until 5:30...

...which means i had 13 hours of glorious sleep.

I can hardly wait until Christmas break!

ZZZZzzzzzzzz.

Contour project

2007-11-14T20:31:00.000-08:00

Today two projects and a paper were due and homework (but the homework has been adjourned until Monday). The projects are turned in. The paper is being reviewed by my project partner. It's at least four hours before when i have been going to bed, no projects or homework due until Monday, and i feel like celebrating!

Wait a minute. There's a pile of readings due at midnight tomorrow, and another pile with a response paper due Friday morning. The celebration will be limited to air-popped popcorn and hot cocoa. No sprinkles.

This lovely thing is one project that was due today. I think i was supposed to sand off the burn marks from the angle grinder, but i liked the dark lines and didn't sand to the point where they were removed. I learned a lot:

Plywood is harder to seriously damage than you might think.
Sanding off wood glue drips takes effort and layers. The stuff soaks in!
Routers and angle grinders are difficult to control. I have a lot of respect for intricate woodwork (unless it's done with a laser cutter, which our shop has but i haven't used).
Sanding for five hours can almost take the fingerprints off your thumbs!
Even after sanding with 600 grit, a water-based coat will make the plywood buckle a bit. Sand and reapply.
Expressing a concept in wood is tricky. Does this say "swirl" and "wave" to you?

And now, back to polishing touches on that paper, and to reading, and then to bed...before tomorrow. Yay!

Salk Institute

2007-11-10T14:52:00.000-08:00

Our most recent field trip was to three points south, and while the other two were interesting i have no photos of them. This is an ocean-facing view of the main courtyard at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, designed by Louis Kahn. Quite an amazing place architecturally, several visual tools are used here. For one thing, notice the lines toward the horizon? They aren't equal in width to length, making the courtyard look much larger than it is. (I have a photo with a classmate to the side that neatly puts it to scale, but he's identifiable and i don't want to post a photo without permission!) The ocean isn't visible from this point, but if you step forward a little all of a sudden it's there, and when people walk across the far end, their heads line up with the horizon. Architecturally, that is a position of power and dominance for this courtyard. You have to watch where you step because little drainage ditches are carved into the stone, as well as a runnel. Our tour guide said they cover up the ditches and stop the runnel for the annual gala so that people don't break the heels off their shoes. And it's very windy!

The architect chose materials that blend together: the color of the water echoes the eucalyptus and lime trees at the other end of the courtyard, and the concrete walls were finished so that as they age, they will more and more closely resemble the travertine used on the ground plane. The ocean is just barely distinguishable in this photo--it was a hazy, overcast, cold day, and a lot of the time the sea blended into the sky.

Last but not least, i walked over this several times before i noticed it glint in the faint sunlight. I didn't merely take a photo because i like the subtle inlay (the color blends in and you walk on it, versus some bold and brassy confrontational entrance plaque).

A normal life, or, I have slept too much this week

2007-11-08T21:29:00.000-08:00

Doing some research today, i came across this quote by Albert Camus:

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."

Ah. Maybe that's why i am tired? ;-)

Nah. If only it was that easy. I am tired because i am silly and trying to work while going to school in a program for which i was forewarned that people who try to work usually don't make it through the three years, that there have been divorces, that sometimes you just need to cry to your classmates who will understand. Work and have a life. What was i thinking? I'm slowly cutting out the life, but i am very reluctant to cut out work. One of my profs just paid off his credit card debt from grad school--i don't want that! Besides the (very nice) money, i love my job and i enjoy my older adult students very much. But i don't want to be a busy person, nor a workaholic, nor live like i believe in salvation through works instead of grace...

I'm not as tired as i should be. One project was due yesterday but our prof postponed it until next week, very clearly saying "it's not because I feel sorry for you!". (Sure it isn't--we were falling asleep or looking at him glassy-eyed from the project we'd turned in at 8:30 that morning and i have only teaching IGCSE Geography getting me through contour grading). Anyway, that reprieve somehow messed up my stress-level-motivation index, and i'm now feeling quite lahteedah about the whole thing. Focus, focus, stay up, read! Draw those sketches! Three weeks to go!

Long Beach: downtown

2007-10-27T17:42:00.000-07:00

These photos are from downtown Long Beach during our weekly field trip. We were waiting to cross the street. I don't know what the building is, but there were several others from a similar era and style in the vicinity. I like seeing a city that has preserved its old buildings, even if the interiors were gutted to bring them up to code and it's just the outside that looks neat. By the way, you can kind of tell what part of Long Beach you are in by the streetlights. Just a few blocks away, the lampposts are old-fashioned and painted bright blue and yellow, like a circus.

This photo below is of the Pike area. I thought the contrast from the park in San Pedro was worth highlighting--palms, broad streets, little shade. We were there in the late afternoon and it was quite cool; i'm not sure i'd enjoy the area during a hot summer day. On the other hand, to the right are restaurants mostly patronized for dinner, and on the left, a multi-use shopping area mostly used at night, so maybe shade isn't such a concern as a feeling of visibility and openness that large old trees would obscure. There are interesting issues involved in re-development...some people miss the rough character of old Long Beach. Other people love the liveliness (and the moolah doesn't hurt). The condos are affordable...for a certain income bracket. Hmmm. Tricky questions without easy answers. At least parking was (relatively) cheap for a downtown area.

My apologies to my classmates: I used to avoid having people in my photos but now i am always snapping them in for scale. This sidewalk was huge! because it doubles as a bike path.

A park in San Pedro

2007-10-27T17:38:00.000-07:00

Our weekly field trip was supposed to be to San Diego, but due to the fires, that was postponed until November. Instead, we went to the Los Angeles Harbor area (and could have spent several more hours there--we didn't get to the berths or docks.)

These photos are from a park at the very end of Gaffey Street in San Pedro. It's a relatively old park, designed on the passive recreation model (strolling, picnicking, concerts). The more recent park model is active: soccer & baseball fields, basketball courts, things like that. I kind of liked this old park--it's around an old lighthouse and perched on cliffs. The ocean didn't smell so good as it is one of the most polluted bits of ocean in the US. Sad. The view was decent considering the air was filled with smoke from the recent fires--i bet it's breathtaking in scope on a clear day. The photo below is of the restrooms: very discreetly hidden, no?

This huge old tree is representative of many others planted around the edges of the park. It's a kind of magnolia--grandiflora? Not sure. The man with the hat is 6 feet tall, to give you an idea of the scale.

Up the hill from here is an old gun turret base left-over from WWII. Up the hill from that is an enormous bell: the Korean Friendship Bell. I didn't take any photos of it because i was in the wrong place (my class was meeting at the lighthouse) but i'm going to go back sometime to hear it rung!