(lakes district, UK) out of contact

i'm on a 9K bluetooth cellphone dialup from a youth hostel in ambelside, UK. there has been no internet for days. happy new year. will catch up soon.

(san jose -> houston -> london) yamahohoho

carl gave me his yamaha dx7! we boxed it all up along with the modules and notes and pedals and lugged it to the airport. this created a bit of a logistical mess, since we were pretty much going straight to london, but of course clair and john paul came to the rescue. they picked up the goods at iah and joined us for lunch at taco bell. note to self: no more taco bell before long transatlantic flights.

(santa cruz) boxing day

happy boxing day. we decided to steal away from becca's house and get thai food for dinner. my sisters were making meatloaf.

(santa cruz) baby steps

outside the theater after seeing the life aquatic (highly recommended)



this is a guy. he was walking down the street taking tiny little steps and smiling at passersby. justin may have more on this.

(santa cruz) vanderslice

my current favorite record (favorite musician, favorite production) is john vanderslice's cellar door on barsuk records, recorded at tiny telephone in san fransisco. swoon. it's such a good record.

my second favorite might be jon brion, whom we saw play in LA.

(mountain view) tiny little snowflakes

justin reported on his drive to the airport today snow flurries in houston. wow. he even sent some photos wherein he attempted to capture these alleged tiny little snowflakes. can anyone else corroborate justin's story? or is he just telling tall tales?

(sf ba) alma mater

al·ma ma·ter or Al·ma Ma·ter -- Pronunciation Key (lm mätr, älm) n.

1. The school, college, or university that one has attended.
2. The anthem of an institution of higher learning.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
[From Latin Alma Mter, nourishing mother (epithet of certain goddesses)  : alma, feminine of almus, nourishing; see al-2 in Indo-European Roots + mter, mother; see maternal.]

i have many alma maters (almas mater?), but there's something special about stanford. when people ask me where i'm from, i usually have to pause to think about the question. you'd think that being born and raised for 16 long years in delta, colorado would make that the answer. no, i identify more with boulder, where i spent my senior hs year and freshman year of college than i do with delta or los angeles, where i finished college as a (very young) married woman. but when i visit these places i feel foreign and only vaguely familiar with residual bits from my past. in contrast, every time i visit the bay area, i feel a warm fuzzy comfort. i'm reminded that this, more than any other place, is where i truly grew up. when i'm here, it's like i never left. you can check out any time you like...

i mentioned this to chris and he drew my attention to the latin roots of the word alma mater. the dictionary says "kind mother", but he translated it as "soul mother." i like this idea. the bay area, with its amazing baha'i communities and its various formal and informal instutions like stanford and nasa ames and my favorite taco bell, is my soul mother.

this is where i'm from and i imagine it will always feel like home.

(mountain view) work free drug place

ok.

here i was, just sitting at my laptop, working away in someone's empty office here at nasa ames. chris came in to check up on me. i looked up and saw this:



so i says to chris i says
what on earth are those?

and he says to me he says
i believe those are dried bats.

then there was a bit of silence

and he says
not that i can explain why anyone would hang dried bats on their office wall.

now i'm a big fan of bats. bats are one of the coolest inventions ever. but....these look like they were first dried and then dipped in epoxy. where does one go for bat taxidermy?





elsewhere on this colleague's wall could be found other choking hazards:

(Hou -> SF -> Santa Cruz) no rest for the wigged

i'm on a dialup again/still (sigh) through my bluetooth phone. it's terribly, terribly slow, and i'm terribly, terribly weary. no deep thoughts today. i shall just sum up the day.

ten things i did today:
1) got up at 4:30 central time to pack for CA and England
2) took the long taxi from friendswood to IAH (justin, i think the beltway is the way to go)
3) met chelsea at SFO(she was on her way out of town to Houston, and I on my way in)
4) tried to retrieve my bags, which appeared to have been lost
5) filed a lost bag claim
6) talked to jon who was scouting the possible new home of it'snotrocketsciencestudios in DC while eating lunch with chelsea
7) found my bags on a random carousel on my way out of the airport
8) met with chris, jen, and darlene at ames to talk about analogs and sending life to mars
9) drove with chris to my parents' house and saw my sisters and their kids and gave my telescope to my dad for xmas
10) came here to the cabin in the woods where i'm catsitting. 10.a) fed cat. 10.b) typed this. 10.c) going to sleep now.

(new orleans -> houston) ace

i passed my pro tools test, so now i am pro tools 6.4 certified. this doesn't mean i'm guaranteed to make big bucks suddenly with my studio, but it's a nice feeling finally to have completed the certification. thanks, shawn, for all your help.

and thanks to claire and john paul for car-sitting while i was away.

lots to do.

(new orleans) hospitality

i just want to say in all seriousness that i'm grateful for the hospitality of the nuns who allowed me to stay with them at their great convention center. they were all very generous and exceedingly kind. thanks so much. thanks to justin and arturo and cindy for finding the place...it was great.

also, thanks to jj and marisol for their hospitality in los angeles last weekend. you guys are awesome. it's a fine couch, indeed.

(new orleans) nun more black

i met my neighbor across the hall last night, so now i know i'm not the only person staying there. her name is sister...um...carmelita?

i'm thinking of sending out xmas/new years ecards this year. justin has inspired me with his handmade cards, but for me it's going to have to be electronic. i'm not good or systematic about keeping in touch with people - but all that is going to change in 2005. most of my own friends still don't know i have a blog (because i haven't gotten around to telling anyone), but they tend not to be so blog savvy as justin's friends, many of whom have their own blogs, and who make up the majority of visitors here. hi, justin's friends!

and then there are some mystery readers who check in regularly whose identities neither justin nor i can figure out. hello, bobst in nyc and comcast in woodbridge, va. nice to see you. welcome back. see you tomorrow?

(new orleans) my life at the nunnery

i don't have a good way of uploading photos from here because of the firewall at loyola. and my room at the nunnery doesn't have a phone or a tv or internet access, although all those things are available in the lobby. so there i'm resorting to dialup on my cellphone via bluetooth, which takes up to minutes to load a single page. rest assured i'm taking lots of photos for you.

i guess since today is aviation day, there was a reduced menu at the cafeteria, so no vegan option. denied! instead i had a piece of cheese pizza, some mac and cheese, and a grilled cheese sandwich. mmmmmmmm cheesey bready goodness. if i had to, i could survive on variations of bread and cheese. and seaweed. and that's all i need. just this lamp, this ashtray, and this cheese and seaweed.

(new orleans) swedish ice hotel dreams

i want to go here.

but here in new orleans,
i get me to a nunnery.
i had a lovely conversation
with sister joelle
when i checked into my room today (thanks cindy!):
.
.
.
[pleasantries exchanged]
.
.
[me]: so are there any rules to know about? curfews or guests?
[sister joelle]: nono, you know the door code...come and go as you please.
[me]: and there's no key to my room or anything?
[sister joelle]: nono. well, there is one if you want it, but...
[me]: nah, that's ok, i don't need one...
[sister joelle]: only good people stay here.

wow. how does she know that?
more specifically, how does she know i'm good?
that's some powerful sister good-dar.

(new orleans) yum

i'm at loyola university for a week of protools training and certification. the cafeteria here is stellar. they have a different vegan option each day that the nice lady cooks for you right there while you watch and wait. why can't every cafeteria be like this?

(houston) no zorb

i proposed to the NASA JSC center director's discretionary funds to get $100K to work with stanford to build a robotic habitat that could roll intelligently and position itself near other surface assets on mars before humans get there. justin and i affectionately called the design "the zorb." we were not selected for funding. that was ok, since i'm not going to be around to do the work, anyway.

(friendswood) voila!

the frog lives!

the fleas die!

(malibu) failure and self-loathing in los angeles

failure requires much more energy than success.

(malibu) i hate la

did i say i love la? by "love" i really meant "hate." what's the difference, anyway, between love and hate? my new working hypothesis is that they're the same emotion.

(Hollywood) dear claire

dearest claire,

that is the sweetest and most genuinely touching thing anyone has said to me in a long, long time. i was going to respond in the comments, but it has been on my mind so much, it represents a lot of what was on my mind today. i will feel the same way about you. i'm sorry we haven't had more chances to hang out - we should work on that before i go. for a long time i felt like there was nothing keeping me in houston, but suddenly that's not true and it will be harder to leave than i expected. traveling around so much, though, continually reminds me that it's also a blessing to have friends in different places, and i'm surprised at how often i see them. i'm sure i will be back to houston often. perhaps we'll see each other more often after i go than we have so far! thank-you again for your kind words. they mean more to me than you know. *hug*

(LA) i love LA

the first thing i usually do when i get to CA is go to taco bell and order one or more cheese quesadillas with green sauce. you see, they don't seem to have green sauce at taco bells anywhere else in the country outside this state. mmmmmm LA cuisine.

second thing i do is fluff up my hairdo and put on some fresh make-up. cuz...well...everyone knows that looking good is priority one in LA. even more so in Malibu.

we may, perchance, get to see jon brion tonight at Largo, where he plays every Friday night.

today was a day of exceptional beauty and splendor in Los Angeles. i'm told they haven't had a nice day in weeks. lucky me. i celebrated this by sitting inside all day logging HD footage at earthship productions.

(DC -> Houston) the off position

ok...there are two things that are starting to really bother me, as i hear them over and over:


1) ...place your electronic devices in the off position...
where to start with this?
a) there is nothing to "place" to turn off a cellphone - only buttons to press.
b) off is a condition, not a position. tray tables and seats have positions. a cellphone doesn't, unless you're talking about its location.
c) grr.

2) i can't remember the second. but the first one is bad enough to warrant its own blog entry.

3) oh yeah. the second is "use of cellphones are now permitted." c'mon, delta...isn't subject-verb agreement part of your flight attendant training?

and i'm only 5 planerides into my month of N planerides... sigh.

(DC) cheating again

(dc) l'enfant advice

actual conversation at the entrance to the l'enfant metro station last night:

[random guy]: how ya doin'? (this seems to be the greeting of choice in the district)
[me]: fine, thanks
[random guy]: do you have a boyfriend?
[me] (without looking back - this guy was a bit sketchy): yes, i do.
[random guy]: you oughtta have him come pick you up. it's dangerous out here.

so...justin...come pick me up?

(DC) hi bye boston

some careful overbooking on the part of delta airlines today meant that when i arrived in atlanta, i got rerouted through boston to DC.



a little over 12 hours of traveling later i arrived just in time for the work day at HQ to be over. still, i managed to meet with my potential future boss and my potential future real estate agent. the job looks great. the real estate doesn't. tomorrow the serious hunt begins.

i'm going to have to practice walking faster if i move to DC. do they have special walking school for people who live here?

(friendswood) deep breath

starting tomorrow 5am: dc -> houston -> LA -> houston -> new orleans -> houston -> bay area -> houston -> london -> manchester -> houston.
back jan 5.
then move to dc jan 17 (?) (pending decision to take job) (??)

whimper.

but good things to look forward in each place:
dc: job "interview"
LA: "aliens of the deep" screening and wrap party
new orleans: pro tools training course and certification
bay area: meetings at nasa ames and family for christmas
london: spacegen w/justin and friends for new years in england
houston: home (for a few more days)

it will all be worth it.

(friendswood) fine, be that way

if none of you wants to know about the frog, i won't tell you of the frog.

(friendswood) he disappeared

have i told you of the frog?

(friendswood) is that you, universe?

should i accept a job offer at NASA HQ and move to DC?

that is the question.

how do you distinguish genuine Truth from idle fancy?

is that the universe, or is that my head?

(nasa) no branden

all that cramming, and branden didn't show up for our gym session today. grrrr.

this weekend i will be launching an extreme ebay sale. i have been gathering up things to sell for months. this is my way of making sure i have enough money to pay my happy friendswood property taxes come january. you will be able to bid on my items and pay large sums of money for old crap. but it will be for a good cause. stay tuned for the links.