Proof that there really is nothing better to do in Ohio...

Statue of the largest bust of Jesus in the world

The megachurch that erected it

I don't know about you, but i'm a little freaked out. This is a bit over the edge.

Traveling and Transience

From New Hampshire to North Carolina, up to Richmond, Virginia, and back to Boston, i've been all over recently. Last weekend, daN and i went up to surprise Stef (per Mark's plans) for her birthday. We had a real blast, played minigolf, laughed and talked, and went dancing. It wet my pallet for nightlife, which was terribly convenient, because i got some more doses of that in the South this weekend when i visited Patty in NC.

Friday morning i had my own hijinx related to thinking my plane left at 8:30 a.m. when it really left at 8... and i figured that out around 7:13... thank god for cabs. The cabbie was listening to the French International Radio! I just made it. Then, the flight was delayed for take-off. So i was lucky to make my connecting flight in Atlanta, where i had 20 minutes to deboard the plane, make it to another concourse, and catch my flight. I made it! And then, it was delayed ever so slightly. Yeah. Noticing a pattern? Don't ever fly AirTran. I mean it. Find something else. Pay the extra 20 bucks to have a better shot on being on a plane that leaves on time.

I made it to North Carolina! Seeing Patty is always fabulous. What can i say? We used to live together, so visiting is harmonious. We can tell when the other needs time to herself. It wasn't a big deal for me to do yoga for half an hour while she checked her email. She's good stuff. Friday afternoon, we attended a lecture/viewing of Tom Waugh, who has the world's largest collection of early twentieth century stag films, and his lecture was on "toilet sex" in Canada from the 1950's on. It was really interesting, made especially interesting by the subject matter and video. It was a good way to spend a couple hours. We were going to go to a Pride event that night, but it looked REALLY lame. And for 15 bucks? No thanks. We sat and got a drink, and eventually went home and talked in bed until 2 or 3. Saturday, we got gourmet popsicles! It was so amazing! I got a mango chilli pop, and it was so tasty! The aftertaste was where the spice really came out, but the mango was stong and smooth from the get-go.

Saturday afternoon, we hopped in the car with my wheat-free stuff, our pears (that i kept calling peaches for some reason) and grapes, and music, and Mitch Hedberg (hillarious dead comedian), and headed north to Richmond, VA where we visited Kat for the night! It was too short, and the visit was marred only by having to deal with one of Kat's mean "friends." But we got drunk and were able to avoid the issue, and we all went to a gay bar in downtown and danced and drank the night away. And you can get Long Island Iced Teas in bars there! I love those things! We made it home alright, slept, and left in the morning. Sunday was a day of rest. We chilled, went out for dinner, and eventually watched the season premiere of "Desperate Housewives" (I LOVE THAT SHOW!) and the first episode of "Sex in the City" which she was going to be teaching on in the morning. Bedtime happened eventually too, but only after me having laughed hysterically at his book called "Bad Cats." Getting to sleep was a challenge, because i was so energized. I am a night person as it is, so it was REALLY easy to stay up late and sleep late. Let me tell you -- waking up this morning was a hideous experience. Especially after having arrived an hour and a half late on the damned flight. Like i said. Don't fly AirTran.

I might not be able to blame it all on AirTran though -- lots of weird things have been happening around me lately regarding the sturdiness of things... or something. Patty and i missed the exit off the highway to see Kat on Saturday. Going back to Durham, we missed the exit off the highway that she takes ALL the time. Every one of my flights this weekend was delayed. Then today, i found out that one of my friends ex-girlfriends (a fellow Hampshire peep. I liked her a lot, too, we just never really hung out apart from the context of her being a friend's girlfriend) died in a car accident last night in Oregon. :( Ten minutes after finding that out, i got the news that the CEO of the company i work for resigned this afternoon. So i left work eventually, and went to Barnes and Noble to get the latest Weezer album. While i was there, i saw someone i used to work at the Hampshire College Bookstore with! What the hell! THEN, tonight while daN and i were at Anna's Taqueria eating our burritos, i looked out the window and saw a guy i hooked up with at a house party at Syracuse University almost seven years ago! WHAT THE HELL?

Everything just feels so transient right now. It put me in a strange mood where i looked around the room in case there was someone ELSE i knew at one point. Odd night. It's good to be home, but somehow, i feel like everything is telling me that it's a good time to move onto a next step right now.

A Good Start

This morning i had an interview at Elderhostel for a copyeditor/archivist position. It looks really cool. It's a wonderful non-profit that organizes educational travel across the world for people aged 55 and older. It's got a sister organization, Road Scholar, whose target audience is mid-thirties. The thing i liked best about it was the look of the people, the place, and the things there. Its location is fantastic -- it's at that neat nexus of Downtown Crossing, Chinatown, and the cheaper business district by South Station where a lot of non-profits are located. The people i interviewed with i like a LOT. They're very down to earth, they believe in what they're doing. How refreshing! I was assured that there is a flexible schedule so i can still pursue yoga. I was also told that the job was between myself and four other people out of an applicant pool of over 100 people. That made me feel great! I also felt great that the two or three other people they've already interviewed didn't do so well on the copyediting test we are all getting. I hope i did well... it's in the Associated Press style, and having studied English/Lit, i'm much more familiar with the Chicago and MLA styles. However, i studied up on AP style over the weekend, and am confident that i did at least SOME things right on the test this morning. Hopefully, the other two people they interview after me do terribly. I want them to be poorly-socialized dumb nerds. Although, if that were the case, i'm not sure they would have qualified for an interview there.

Erm, wish me luck. This looks like a healthy balance of sincerely making the world a better place without killing myself.

Otherwise, life is wonderful. Like i said, work is boring, but not particularly bad. The people there are really nice, but it's not the place for me to be.

Yoga, on the other hand, is coming along wonderfully. Last night i got yet another comment from my yoga instructor that floored me -- she said that i'm only the second student she's ever told should become a yoga instructor. She sent me all sorts of good links to www.Kripalu.org and www.massyoga.org for ideas on where to get training. I don't think i'll be ready for formal training for at least another few months, so i'm going to check out some classes at the Back Bay Yoga Studio since it seems to have a good spread of types of yoga. Yay!

Right now, i'm trying to find the right balance of right for now and right for always. I have realized that the equation that most people use, 'office job + a master's degree = hopefully something i might enjoy doing' was not going to work for me right now, and that i can DO something that i love DOING. What an amazing thought! I'm elated.

SINCERELY GOOD NEWS!

in news in my life, i don't think i'll be taking the classes at tufts this fall after all -- the only one that matched my schedule was way too legal... and it turns out i'm not into learning about it. however.... i have seriously been considering going through the formal training to become a yoga instuctor,, but have been too sheepish to really tell anyone that it's been a serious consideration of mine, because it's the kind of thing where you're really not sure what kind of a reaction you're going to get. especially from your teacher, whose class you missed all summer long. but really, i just want to drop everything and do yoga all the time. (a feeling i haven't had since being a barrista and wanting to drop everything and do coffee all the time. i still could, but it's nice to have ANOTHER thing i like to do that much.)

well, yesterday i FINALLY made it to my class after having missed it for several weeks. on my way there, i bumped into my instructor, and we walked together. she asked me how my summer has been, and i let her know that it's been ok, but that the job i don't really like has been making my outside life harder because of being hard to get away from. she looked at me and said out of the blue, "you should become a yoga instructor. i'm serious. you'd be good at it, and i think you're really cut out for it." Whoa! it made my day. heck, it made my week. i have been glowing ever since. it's nice to be sincerely excited about something. furthermore, it's really one of the highest forms of a compliment one can get -- hearing from your mentor of a sort that you should consider taking the mentor path yourself because s/he thinks you'd be really cut out for it. and having it come unsolicited! for something i REALLY enjoy, something that REALLY makes me happy, centered, balanced, and something i can do for hours without noticing the time going by. that sounds like happiness to me. i can't tell you how thrilled i was when she told me that out of the blue.

i have been feeling more in touch with myself in general. though i haven't made it to many classes, i've been doing a lot of yoga at home, and everywhere i can. i've been eating better and doing hippie things like giving myself honey facials. i honestly notice the difference in how my body feels when i eat wheat or sugar versus when i stick to my no wheat-no sugar regiment. i feel more present. it's a nice feeling. so, i think i might pursue this one. and this time, i don't think it's just a twenty-something fluke.

Squinting, drooling. Me around 11:20 this morning. I woke up at 10:50, so I wasn't ready to make coffee until around 11:20

A Most Talented Sleeper

daN has always marvelled at my "incredible sleeping instincts." Two mornings ago, as i was having a particularly hard time rousing from sleep-delightful-sleep, daN sat on the bed, tried to wake me up again and again, and informed me that he wouldn't be able to get up off the bed until i got up.

My response: "I can't get up. I'm doing a crossword puzzle."

daN replies surprised and supercilious, "a crossword puzzle?"

"AND a jumble." I remember informing him about the crossword puzzle. I do not recall saying the part about the jumble. The fact is that in my highly developed sleeping instincts, i wake up just enough and just long enough to secure some more sleep for myself. Like turning off an alarm clock. I can do that and simply not remember later on in the day having done it. I can hit the snooze button six or seven times and not remember doing it. When i was in college, i actually had to get out of bed to accomplish said turning off/hitting snooze button. I still didn't wake up, even though i had to walk across a room to do it. Six or seven times.

To further illustrate this point, i would like to elaborate on a story from late childhood/early puberty. I was at summer camp with my friend Lee. Naturally, we had to get up early. It didn't seem like many other people in the cabins had much of a problem with that. I, on the other hand, was always one of the late risers.

I was having the most elaborate dream this one morning! I was at my aunt's house, and the TV wasn't on, but these little aliens in the shape of 1" planet Saturns were flying out of the television screen in droves! The only way to slow them down from filling up the house was to hit a particular sequence of numbers on the remote control. Every time you hit the numbers, you heard this beeping sound (remarkably similar to the sound of an alarm clock, i might add.) Just when i was making some MAJOR headway, i felt something heavy thump on the back of my head! BATS were flying down from the ceiling and repeatedly smacking me in the back of the head! How dare they?! Well, what was i going to do about THIS?! Then in the distance, i heard Lee's voice yelling, "Lindz! Lindz!" She was hitting me with a pillow in efforts to TRY wake me up. I managed to incorporate getting hit over the back of the head into my dream. Now THAT's a good sleep instinct.

The compelling part about this story is not only the incredible talent with which i was able to instantaneously incorporate outside forces (literally, FORCES) into a dream in order to maintain REM, but also that this particular talent was developed in me early on, in pre-teenage years. Most people were able to get up early without a problem until sometime in high school or college. Nope, not me. I've NEVER been able to wake up easily. At least, not for most of my life. There's no reason i should expect it to change now. I simply have to embrace what i have as a rare talent, unappreciated and unwanted in today's fast-paced society.

"Pooping is like having a baby. Short of a medical procedure, it's not going to come out until it's ready." -- myself, this morning on the crapper

"But not for me"

Well, i'll make a long sob-story short. Today was the first day of the class i was hoping to take at Tufts University called Environmental Law. Remember how i was all about finding out if this was going to be for me? How i was going to start it and see if it worked out? It's not going to. The first part of the class where we were mostly talking about stuff that was theoretical, i was happy as a pig in shit. When we started looking at legal case hypothetical situations, i got bored instantaneously. It was SHOCKING how uninterested i was in it. I was daydreaming about how i'd get out. Yeah. So, i decided that since i'm not actually enrolled, i'm not obligated to take this class that is going to bore me to tears. I went to Hampshire, so i'm really trained in class-shopping and using the appropriate signs from which to judge whether a class is going to work out for me.

A minor freak out about my life is currently ensuing. It's the syndicated twenty-something one where i wonder what i'm going to do with my life. For now, i'm going to stick to the plan of taking the french course that starts up at L'alliance francaise on September 19. That's doable, and that way i feel like i have some direction, and that way i'll be in a CLASS again! The saddest experience about tonight was realizing i might not end up taking an academic class this fall. :( But french will be challenging and fun. That is, if i don't flake out on THAT as well.