20 years ago today

These images became part of history, now they're fridge magnets & postcards, not a feature of the landscape.


photo.jpg, originally uploaded by Rosemary Grace.

I was 9 years old, my family was in Melbourne, Australia for a 3 month sabbatical, I remember my parents and 18 y.o. sister being glued to the TV, and my Dad said “Remember this, remember where you are, this is important”. Because we’d been on the other side of the world since September that year, we hadn’t heard of any of the build up, so it was a surprise. I was young, but I knew it was a really big deal that people were free to travel from the East.

Now my sister lives in Berlin Mitte, in the old East, she moved there in 1993, even then there were a lot of changes ongoing, filling in the spaces left by the demolition of the wall.

Mmm beep-beep, beep-beep YEAH!

On our way back from Los Angeles two weeks ago, Matt and I stopped by a Mini dealership to test drive their slightly larger Clubman style. We've been arguing/debating/obsessing about a choice for a new car for me, my economy sedan being over 100,000 miles and approaching the point of requiring a sizable investment to keep it going for the next 100k. Matt has the SUV he chose when leaving the Navy, and last year we upgraded his motorbike to a snazzy, powerful model. Matt loves 2-door sporty cars, I like to look at them, but prefer the usefulness of boxy hatchbacks with an actual door to the back seat. Then I found out the Clubman has an extra rear-hinged door to facilitate access to the back seat... and good fuel efficiency... high safety ratings... maintenance included with the warranty... and it's sporty... and boxy... and...

Meet Bertram.





"Bertie" for short. As in Wooster. The black & white interior made me think of spats, or Jeeves' black suit, but it's more of a Bertie.

Before the test drive I hadn't set foot in the driver's seat of a manual transmission since my last driving lesson in Edinburgh in August of 2001: chugging around the block in 1st or 2nd gear in a little diesel learner it was almost impossible to stall. I think I got to go up to third gear once. I got to drive Bertie home. 35 miles. At night. Through a construction zone. The freeways were fine, once in 5th or 6th gear it was just a question of avoiding the massive work trucks that kept trying to merge into me from alternating sides; getting to the freeway involved stalling at each traffic light and taking a few tries to get going again. I made sure I knew where the flashing emergency lights were before I trundled off the dealership lot, I even considered picking up "L" plates to warn those behind me, but I'm picking it up fast enough.

It's an adventure, we've got a radio ban until December, and I'm not commuting in it until I'm a little more practiced, I can't get the stickers to park at work until the official registration comes in the mail anyway. I haven't told my Mum, she's arriving in L.A. in a couple of weeks, so I'm just going to pick her up at the airport and watch her reaction when I put her bag in the snazzy new car.

I just wrote a blog post about my car. Yep, definitely an assimilated Californian.

Ex-Pat

I have allowed myself to be convinced that mathematical calculations exist in the singular form: "Math"

I get graded on the quality of my papers, not marked on my essay-writing.

I mail letters marked with a zipcode.

However, I still live in a flat and close my coat with a zip, not a zipper; I'd rather eat courgette than zucchini (I'd rather spell courgette too).

Brain Dump

I have been busy, and doing considerably better with depression symptoms than I was by the end of August (I got burned out & overwhelmed, went to doc, decided to go back up from half to full dose of antidepressant, found a cognitive behavioural therapist near home, started getting better).

New job - not so new any more - I am settling into a routine, and working on two projects. I am trying to establish myself as generally useful, and specifically the resident neuroscience person, since everyone there is more experienced in epidemiology than I, my angle is being "Brain Girl". I have (mostly) been having fun branching out into a more professional work wardrobe, the discovery of getting dress trousers a size big, then getting the waist taken in has provided me with a few pairs of pinstripe wide legged pants that make me feel like Katharine Hepburn when I wear them. Or her more buxom cousin at any rate. I'm still working on wearing "grownup" shoes. I'd rather wear smarter clothes and stick with clunkier comfortable shoes than go the route favoured by my female coworkers of more casual dags dressed up with heels. Can't run from zombies in heels.

University is chugging along, I am having a hard time finding the time/brain space to put significant hours in on my thesis. I don't know how I did 9+ units and full time work when I started this program, but that head of steam has decidedly run out! My main focus in counseling (besides taking adequate care of myself) is time management, since most of my stress comes from the balancing act.

Time to go, dinner is served!

Thus Spoke Marble

Marble has been very talkative lately, rushing about meowping in her squeaky little voice, she never manages a full "meow" so it pretty much sounds like she's running up and down saying "eek! eek! EEEEK!". Perhaps she's channeling Lewis Carroll's White Rabbit.

Marble smudge face

Marble smudge face, originally uploaded by Rosemary Grace.

As an indoor cat, Marble does not get many opportunities to get her snow-white self all mucky. However, she is a hard working, innovative kitty, and often manages to smudge her nose by pressing it against the dusty window screens while bird watching. This morning she has impressive amounts of grime on her nose, which made me wonder if she'd been trying to head-butt her way out through the screens.

Turns out the culprit is Matt's dusty sandals from a walk we took yesterday. She's been running over to them and snuzzling the mucky things frantically all morning.

It was a great long weekend, culminating in getting our feet good and dusty. Saturday morning I briefly Skyped with my sister in Berlin, & the APs in Edinburgh. On-screen time being used to play show-and-tell with everyone's new eyeglasses, Eve held her laptop out the window so Matt could see the Berlin TV Tower live, and three cats in three countries got waved at their respective owner's webcams. Then Matt and I retreated to a friends house on the hill overlooking our neighborhood, where we lounged by the pool and watched people make beer while catching up with my friends from the lab. I took my swift and wound a couple of balls of yarn while chatting, then bravely bared my bathing suit and spent some time in the pool.

On Sunday we ran errands, did laundry, watched movies and hung out on the patio once the sun dipped behind the hills.

Monday, Labor Day, I woke up with a hangover (did I mention we had gin on the patio?), so I retreated to bed for a bit. Around noon we headed up to the mountains for a picnic lunch and to lounge under pine trees listening to the breeze. We took a walk to a spot claiming to be a small lake, it was really a damp patch of ground, but there were five cows munching away on the water plants, and we sat watching the pastoral scene for a while before continuing around the loop back to the car. We also saw a gorgeous blue jay, and heard a few woodpeckers thunk-thunk-thunking. Both of us had beige feet by the end, the classic "dust tan" effect of walking in the fine dry dust of Southern California. We had planned a pasta dinner when we got home, but discovered we were missing the necessary fixings, so we ended up at BJ's for dinner (fish and chips!), and then back home for pineapple upside down cake for dessert.

Marble evidently appreciates the dusty shoes resulting from this adventure, but I think I'll take them outside for a good shake so I can have my clean white kitty back.

To the Mountains!

Predicted to go over 100F in El Cajon this weekend, so we are high tailing it to a campsite near Julian, where hopefully it will stay under the three digit temps. Either way it'll be pretty forest camping, a much needed recharge before the semester starts on Wednesday. That two week break went fast.

Can't talk, deadline will eat me.

Last session of class is tomorrow, revised drafts of Intro, Literature Review, and Methods chapters are due, along with a brief presentation on my project. Then I will be done. For two weeks. Then Fall semester begins.

I'm definitely having trouble concentrating, I'm feeling somewhat burned out, and seriously considering dropping my "extra" class next term. I've gone through the whole program planning my schedule on " I can take it!" principles, and I think it is time to give myself some slack. If taking a challenging work-heavy statistics class, working 20 hours in a my new field, and FINISHING MY THESIS can be considered slack that is. Now that I put it that way it definitely makes sense to skip the additional statistics class. Both the classes I'm signed up for have a reputation for being coursework intensive, and I have learned that can mean "twice as much homework as you'd expect from a three unit class".

Enough procrastination. Back to my second draft.

Sunset July 25th

Sunset July 25th, originally uploaded by Rosemary Grace.

Snapped on the way home from a lovely day in Julian. We met up with friends from the lab at Orfila Winery, where S & J have a membership. Before they rolled up I discovered a bead shop where the owner hand selects every single piece (and she has great taste) and I picked out some copper pieces to turn into earrings while a brother-sister pair of golden retrievers flaked out on the floor to escape the heat. They were so relaxed that when their human papa came in all that moved was their tails, wagging in unison.

What do you mean I can't eat this? It SMELLS like food!

photo 4.jpg, originally uploaded by Rosemary Grace.

I had a bit of fun with the camera on my iPhone yesterday, being able to snap a photo and email it right to Flickr is such a handy feature. The camera is surprisingly good, especially in low light. Now I'll probably keep my Ravelry projects more regularly photographed, since it's so much less of a fag to *snap, send* than *snap, find cable, connect to server, save photo, upload*.

Of course, after a couple of shots of lonely skeins on the block by the window, I recruited Tali to make the photos more interesting. He was surprisingly well behaved, no chewing on the sheepy goodness or trying to run off with a ball of mohair. In this photo he had just nuzzled the lampshade at me. Sometimes the cats must find us as quirky as we find them. What's more odd, me photographing coloured string, or Tali carrying around the occasional dirty sock?

The summer is zooming along. I've registered for my lone remaining class, the rest will be research and field work credits. I've produced a (very) rough draft of the lit review, and am currently avoiding work on a draft of the introduction, due tomorrow evening. I've been going to belly dance at least once a week since I got back from Scotland, and I'm really enjoying it, I can feel how much work for my legs and core it is, and it's liberating to be learning a dance form designed for my body shape. Though the best thing with belly dance is EVERY shape looks good doing it, but having extra jiggle makes it much easier to get a good Turkish Shimmy going. I had planned to just take it over the summer, but I want to carry on once term starts again, and add a weekend yoga class at the gym. We've already paid for the membership, and the dancing makes my hamstrings and lower back veryveryvery tight.