in my solitude

For some reason on Friday night I felt moved to scan pictures from the old family albums that I hijacked from my dad's house last time I visited. This one caught my attention, because it pretty much represents my childhood. As an only child, I was my own playmate. At the beach, I invented a game called “big-a-bye” which involved moving sand from one location to another and saying “big-a-bye”. I could play it all by myself. (Although, sometimes Dad would join in.)

In a way, it looks kind of sad, to see this little girl sitting alone in the sand. And that's probably the reason why I feel so grateful for the wonderful friendships I have now.

But I don't view the loneliness of my childhood as a bad thing. I got to know myself so well, I did so much searching of my own mind and soul, so much contemplation, even as young as in this photo. I would lie awake at night for hours, envisioning my future, figuring out what I wanted out of life. Solitude came to be something that I was never afraid of; rather in solitude, I found solace.

I don't often seek to spend time alone anymore. I have gotten into the habit of wanting to be around people more often than being by myself. But I suspect this is largely because my alone time has become less contemplative, more practical, more of a time to “get things done.” This picture reminds me how enjoyable it can be to just ponder in private the silent wonder of the world.

goals for 2006

Having been off school for the last couple weeks, I've had lots of time on my hands. For the most part, I've been very unproductive, treating the vacation time as a vacation. I've felt guilty for that a lot of the time, but when I look back on how much I've accomplished in this past year, how much has changed and how hard I've worked, it's put me a little more at peace with taking some time off.

I've also spent some time looking at what I want to accomplish over the next year. From most years in the past, I'm used to having a great deal of personal overhaul kinds of goals, big financial hurdles to jump, and finding major direction in life.

But I've learned in this life of transitions I'm living that, as a student, it doesn't make sense to expect to have a lot of time and energy on your hands other than for classes, because frankly, school itself meets a lot of those big directional goals. Just being in school is in itself one of my biggest long term goals, and is a step in accomplishing many of the others. And I can't really move on to more, especially financially or career-wise, until school is over.

Do you realize how freeing that is? That basically leaves all my non-school related efforts to taking care of myself physically and emotionally, since my intellectual needs are being met, and college life also keeps me socially active. Everything else just needs to be maintained.

So, most of my goals this year have ended up being creative ones. Listed here are not all the specifics, but some general outline for what things I hope to improve this year. For the ones that are not entirely self-explanatory, I will elaborate on them in coming entries.

Creative:

• i will write three poems per week

• i will draw/paint/create three things per week

• i will begin playing out regularly again... return to the singer/songwriter life and become part of Columbus' music scene

• i will continue piano lessons and begin guitar lessons, practicing daily

• i will create themed topics of thought and exploration for myself on a regular basis, as writing prompts and artistic themes, keeping track of these in my small moleskine

• i will participate in the bi-weekly photography challenge with Adam

• i will update my blog at least twice a week

• i will create at least four audio docs, one of at least 40 minutes

• i will contribute more to my themed photo collections

Personal/Home/Financial:

• i will get an apartment i like/permanent housing (in time for summer vacation)
  

• i will manage my study time/recreation time better and plan out school days

• i will figure out a way to earn a stable living until graduation

• i will figure out a way to earn a stable living (and pay off student loans quickly) after graduation

• i will establish a ritual to help me wake up better/easier in the mornings

• i will begin regularly putting money in my savings account

• i will get my computer fixed

• i will get some old but sturdy suitcases for storage

• i will not buy anything i don't absolutely need or absolutely love
  

• i will travel to someplace I've never been before, out of state

Physical:

• i will take a daily multivitamin

• i will start running again

ripple effect

Before coming to school, I had held numerous jobs over the years. My favorite, and the one I held seasonally for about five years, was as office assistant for a self-employed mime and juggler turned motivational lecturer.

(I will pause here for a moment here so everyone can get all the mime jokes out of their system. “Did he talk when he was in the office?” “Did you have to let him out of the glass box?” “Were his lectures pantomimed?” etc. etc. Ready to move on now?)

Curtis was a mime and juggler for 25 years before making the transition to lecturing, but is was a natural transition considering how goal-oriented he was, and how motivating he was to be around.

When I was growing up, every year my dad always would make a list of “new years resolutions” on new years day. He'd write his list of resolutions on the back side of a used envelope. They were things like “read more” or “exercise regularly” and other such typical types of goals. He knew as well as I did that this ritual was to make himself feel better for the day, but was pretty much forgotten by the next week if not sooner.

That was what the idea of “setting goals” represented to me. A nice ritual to fool yourself in to believing you'll accomplish more than you actually will.

Until working for Curtis.

When he and his wife Michelle would sit down and set goals, it wasn't just on new years day. They would do this monthly, regularly. This entrepreneurial couple didn't just set goals like “read more” but they would establish what it would take to achieve that goal, such as “read at least one book per month”. They would measure their progress on each goal throughout the year. They would plan each week, even each day, keeping in mind what their long term goals were.

I had never seen anything like this. Self-discipline, planning, follow-through. These were principles that I had been told were important my whole life, they sounded so cliché to me, but never had I seen them in action. Never had I had an example of this behavior, carried out so effectively.

Without Curtis and Michelle's influence, I don't think I'd be in school right now. I don't think I'd have had the follow-through or the courage to apply for college, I don't think I'd have gotten out of debt after getting divorced (of course, I'm back in debt now, thanks to student loans, but that's all part of the plan...), I don't think I'd have had the strength to get through a divorce and face all my fears about what people would think of me and how to accept a new idea of the future. I don't think I would have found this new life that I find so very fulfilling and exciting and satisfying. I wouldn't have the wonderful friendships I've found, or all the amazing experiences and adventures I've had in the past three years.

8 days of birthday bliss

To understand the full value of this, let me explain what normally happens when you have a birthday on new years eve.

New years is that holiday that always gets forgotten until after christmas is over. Having a birthday on an often overlooked holiday makes the birthday doubly easy to overlook, because you've only barely thought of the holiday and aren't about to go remembering that someone's birthday is that same day. The last time I can remember a friend calling me on my birthday was in high school... from a friend who had the same birthday. (Remember, high school for me was over in 1998.) I say this not to throw myself a pity party, but to demonstrate just how fantastic this birthday was.

To start with, Adam started giving me birthday gifts even before christmas. The man spoiled me with 8 days of birthday gifts. 8 days, folks. Then on thursday, two days before my birthday, the two of us were in the basement watching his new dvd's of “The West Wing” and Summer, Adam's housemate (and mine too, when I live with them during school vacations) and an amazing dessert chef whose birthday is also on new years eve, came down to interrupt... with an enormous and delicious chocolate chip birthday cookie. (I've never much liked birthday cake; understand that this cookie was the perfect dessert for me.) It was bigger than a pizza, and fresh out of the oven.

Then, when the birthday actually arrived, we went out for breakfast to a favorite french cafe with my dad, his girlfriend, and my sister (the latter two, for future reference, will be referred to as "the Audreys" as they are both named Audrey). After they left, I ripped into the grand finale of gifts from Adam, and we got dressed up to go downtown for drinks and appetizers at Martini's, a fantastic restaurant in the short north.

We rang in the new year at home with James and Summer, playing catch-phrase. Perhaps the best part of the whole day, though, was the number of calls and messages I got that evening from friends wishing me a happy birthday and new year. I have a tendency to get rather depressed around midnight, realizing another birthday has passed, another year gone by. Feelings of nostalgia and loneliness sneak up on me. But this year, I didn't have so much as a twinge of depression. I did come close to getting choked up hearing Dick Clark's impeded speech from his apparently having suffered a stroke, but that was mostly because it was inspiring.

Complete birthday bliss was what the whole thing was.

So far, I like being 26.

all is calm, all is bright

Well, I made it. Christmas has officially been survived by me. Adam and I shared one of the most special christmas eves ever. I had been all back-and-forth on what I wanted to do for the holiday, because holidays have been difficult for me over the past couple years. We finally decided to spend christmas eve and christmas morning together and then head to our respective families on christmas afternoon.

I was wanting to make things feel a little more traditional, so we searched online and found a nice, traditional-seeming church to attend a candlelight christmas eve service. We drove out into the country to find the church, parked, walked in the door and were welcomed and handed candles. But as we entered the sanctuary, the large overhead screen displaying an animated “welcome” message and the loud, upbeat piano/brass ensemble were the complete opposite of what I had been hoping for. This did not feel peaceful or moving or traditional. I sat there for about ten minutes, trying to decide if this could fulfill my need for a quiet, simple christmas activity. I decided it could not, and Adam, who was being nothing but supportive, got up with me and we left, taking with us the candles they'd handed us at the door. That's right. We stole candles from a church on christmas eve, and skipped the church service.

Once we were in the car, we lit the candles and laughed about the whole scenario. Another car even honked at us as we waved the candles while driving down the road. Before going home, we stopped at a gas station convenience store and bought ice cream to enjoy with the bottle of champagne that was waiting for us.

The night did, in the end, turn out to be wonderfully simple, not to mention spontaneous and fun.

I made it through the next day's family festivities largely unscathed. And then Adam and I got to go skiing with my sister and my dad and his girlfriend. It was only the second time I'd gone skiing, and it was a blast.

Now, I sit here, winding down after all the gatherings and all the visiting. I can't say we formed any lasting or meaningful christmas traditions (at least I hope not to make a tradition out of stealing from churches), but I made it through with plenty of good memories. That's good enough for me. Hope your holidays gave you good memories too, and maybe even some cheer.

simplify

I need to simplify my thoughts about the holidays. When I was a kid, I remember almost driving my parents crazy in December, as I tried to instigate various traditions to create some feeling of stability and consistency. My parents were always anything but stable, my life anything but routine. This volatility was something I adapted to rather readily, such that I grew to practically abhor routine.

However, there was something about the christmas season that always felt different. Like an annual anchor. Something about this time of year prompted me to insist that things be somewhat predictable. If one year the star was the last thing we put on the tree, the next year it became very important to not only put the star on very last, but to make a big ceremony of it. If one year we made christmas cookies, I would insist the next year that we not forget to have our “christmas cookie day” as if it had been a long standing tradition. If one year in the car I saw lots of christmas lights at night, I would remind my parents the next year that we need to go on our yearly christmas light drive. Since I didn't have siblings as a kid (my sister wasn't born until I was 12), it was mostly up to me to get excited about and carry on these traditions, although my dad helped.

Life is completely different now than it was then. My parents are divorced, I live in a different city, I have a sister who never shared in most of those traditions (she's practically a different generation), I don't have a particular house or living room in which I want to spend christmas morning watching people open their gifts that I couldn't buy them because I'm a college student with zero income. I've let go of all these attachments to all these traditions, yet I still keep hoping for the familiarity of them to magically creep up. I keep wanting that feeling of stability and consistency, and as a result, I'm putting a great deal of unwarranted expectations on the holiday season.

Maybe there's a way for me to just slow down and enjoy the little nuances that make this year unique and special. Maybe somehow I can look forward to a christmas and a new year that will be different from any other. Maybe I can just take it one day at a time, without big holiday expectations, without need for attachment to the past or assurance of stability of the future, but just enjoy the moment. Maybe I can take pleasure in simple, passing beauties, rather than needing to latch on to them the way I used to.

Ironically, this post about simplifying is one of my longest posts ever.

things that are making me happy these days

my leather journal

long conversations about religion, philosophy, relationships, etc...

super cool roommate

choir concert this past weekend (Go Team Alto!)

going out for mexican food after said choir concert with fun people

super cool boyfriend who brought me a beautiful flower at said choir concert

hot showers on cold nights

scarves (the only thing I look forward to about winter besides the first week of snow)

ray lamontagne

queen sized bed!!!!!!!!!!!!!

piano lessons

crying in the arms of somebody who understands

personal freedom

making a christmas list

seeing little kids in heavy coats that make their arms stick straight out at their sides

spanakopita

having my morning coffee and croissant in the atrium every morning

finally getting my lowest grade on a music theory test: B-

feeling absolutely surrounded by awesome people, every day.

the dog's fish

This is the fish. It has no name. It isn't that we don't love the fish, we don't name it for its own good. We've found, through trial and error, that when you name a fish, it quickly dies.

It's the dog's fish. We felt that Lucy needed some company during the day, so we got her a fish. Granted, she can't see into the fish bowl unless she's up on the bed, which she isn't allowed to be on at all really. In fact, Adam just got a new queen sized mattress which is considerably taller than the bed he had before, and Summer was downstairs earlier this week after the mattress had arrived, and said she heard a loud thud on the floor, which she believed to be Lucy trying to jump up on the bed but finding the bed higher than it used to be, so she didn't make it. I suspect she was trying to get up there to have a nice chat with her fish, you know, face to face. But even just the presence of another living thing in the room has got to do something for her.

The fish likes jazz. And fish food. And faces. When I look at the fish, it swims right up to the side of the bowl I'm looking in on, and swims past my eyes very slowly, looking right at me. It's a very intense fish.

thanksgiving break

On Monday, I drove up to Cleveland to hang out with my friend Bobby. It had been a long time since I'd taken a car trip of that length alone (three hours) and I savored it thoroughly. I listened to music and just stepped aside as my thoughts ran every which way, had some conversations with myself in the car, reflected on life, and drove up the interstate to Lake Erie.

Of course, I wasn't actually supposed to go all the way to Lake Erie, but some slightly mixed up directions allowed me a nice view of the lake, and a quick phone call allowed me to re-direct my course such that I made pretty good time. Bobby and I went out to lunch, and then went back to his house and just hung out, talked with his mom, watched dvd's, and I had a very relaxing time for the rest of my visit.

The drive home the next day was not as quiet (I was on the phone for most of the trip), but still very enjoyable. It had started snowing quite a bit, and the trees around the 271 beltway south-east of Cleveland were quite scenic.

Today, I'm back in my home away from school, back down in Columbus, tucked warmly in the upstairs bedroom with a dog and a goldfish, watching the snow fall.

My to do list today consists of the following:

• practice piano

• call Grandma

• go grocery shopping

• turn off coffee maker

• eat cookie (see cookie-monster)

That last item was added by James, Adam's roommate, a product designer for a design firm here in Columbus. He added a fantastic little cartoon of Cookie Monster eating cookies.

I had left the list, a pen, and the digital camera on the dining room table, along with a chocolate chip cookie in a bag, while I was practicing piano in the living room. James called to me from the dining room “hey, Robyn, this cookie on the table-- do you know whose it is?”

“yeah, it's mine.” I replied.

“aww, I was hoping it was Adam's. I was going to take pictures of myself eating it.”

He compromised by drawing the Cookie Monster illustration, which I would post if my scanner wasn't back at school. He also took some pictures of himself, not eating the cookie, which I will post, because that's what you get when you take pictures of yourself on someone else's camera.

just not down with the juvenile slang

Ahh, the facebook. That added social facet of college life that no one really can explain. It just exists, connecting us all to each other, often without our knowledge, telling other people things about us of which we may or may not be aware.

Apparently, as I learned last night, the choice of “random play” under what you are “looking for” in your profile does not imply to people that you are interested in spontaneous water balloon fights or late night trips to waffle house or barefoot puddle jumping. Instead, my friend Mike politely informed me that it carries the connotation of casual hooking-up “of the sexual variety.” Personally, the idea of jumping barefoot in puddles sounds a lot more random and playful to me than getting naked with someone you barely know, which to me sounds fairly awkward. My poor, naïve mind. Mike suggested that I must just not be down with the juvenile slang. Sadly, this appears to be the case.

I have removed “random play” reluctantly from my profile. But I still like water balloon fights.

Robyn needs some love

I've been in something of a strange mood lately. I've been feeling rather restless and incoherent.

So, rather than risk disturbing you with what nonsensical thoughts I might be having right about now, here's one of those “google search for your name + 'needs' and post the results” things. Some are very true. Some less true. Some, I hope are not true. Can you guess which ones are which?

Robyn Needs Your Support!

Robyn needs advice

Robyn needs to be taught a lesson - luckily for her it's the kind of dirty tutorial she enjoys [???]

Robyn needs to be sure

Robyn needs a name

Robyn needs to feel What is Above and not be afraid that It is an enemy

Robyn needs to work on tolerance and understanding

Robyn needs help!

Robyn needs more by way of a biography than those brief words

Robyn needs to stay here

Robyn needs to raise £500,000

Robyn needs input

Robyn needs an apology

Robyn needs to coordinate

Robyn needs to get started on the sequel

Robyn needs wisdom

Robyn needs scribes to help at refugee interviews

Robyn needs a band

Robyn needs it spelled out that she's dumped

Robyn needs to make an album

Robyn needs to contend with male teasing

Robyn needs some love

Robyn needs to tear all these words to shreds.

puppy love

One day, I went to work, and there was Lucy. I think it was a Monday. She was in a cage, in my office. I said hello, and talked to her for a while, because no one else was there. I didn't know her name, but I spoke to her about who she was and why she was there. I told her she looked like a "Lucy".

I worked for a couple who had a business based out of their home, and when they arrived home, they informed me that they had gotten a new puppy over the weekend. They said they were thinking of naming her either Zoe or Lucy. And Lucy she became.

Bailey, their previous dog, was somewhat traumatized by Lucy's presence, and after the couple had their first child a couple years later, having two dogs became less feasible for them. I jokingly offered to take Lucy off their hands, but it turned out not to be a joke, and she came to live with me.

I didn't know what it meant, before, to be best friends with a dog. It probably sounded silly to me. But she's been too much of an important presence in my life to think her friendship is silly, now. She's comforted me in times of unbearable pain and solitude, she's forced me to think of someone other than myself in times of intense self-absorption, she's shared with me some of the most joyful moments of simplicity my life has known. She's my cohort. She's my nap buddy. She's begging me to pay attention to her rather than type.

where am i?

It's an undeniably strange thing to be in the life I'm in. Let's review:

• I'm 25.

• I'm a college sophomore at a small, friendly, residential school, thus I live on campus, in a dorm, completely submersed in college life.

• I used to be married, but now I'm divorced.

• I have a good amount of work experience and used to be pretty good with my finances back when I had an income and rent to pay. Now I have essentially no income and feel irresponsible with money. Most of my friends have only had part-time summer jobs and are still financially dependent on their parents.
  

• I'm in a relationship with a wonderful boyfriend (Adam) who I was close friends with in high school, so he's my age, but now out of college and working full time, like most people my age.

Lots of people go back to college in their mid 20's. That's no shocker. But most of them do it either by taking evening classes or commuting, not typically upturning their adult life and regressing back to being a full-time, dorm-dwelling, activity-involved, party-going college student.

On a daily basis, when I am going about my life, this doesn't get to me. I have many wonderful, accepting friends, so it doesn't stand out to me that I'm in a different place in life from them. But when things are quiet, when I'm alone, when my emotions feel screwed with, then I feel the conflict within my identity. I feel the dissonance between what I used to be and what I currently exist as.

Generally, Adam bridges this gap, helping me feel authentic, like I'm not faking being someone I'm not. With him in my life, I know I'm not just pretending the parts of my life between 1998-2004 never happened. He's the only person in my day-to-day life who knows me from my married days, who knew me before I came here, thus, I know I have some link to who I was/am. He's my reality check. My life feels balanced with him in it.

But somehow, when he comes into my college life, everything gets shaken up. It's like I can live in both worlds, but not at the same time. I can switch back and forth from college kid to mature adult in long-term relationship, but I can't be both at the same time.

I don't understand why this is. It's hard to be comfortable in a place of such dissonance.

Flat tires suck. New tires, however, kick ass.

For about three months my car has been vibrating when I drive, such that this morning I noticed that my thumb resting on the steering wheel would continuously shake back and forth about 3/4 of an inch. That's a really weird feeling. Last week, when Bobby was in the car with me, he said his favorite part about riding in my car was watching my arm jiggle as I held the steering wheel. I knew it had to do with the wheels, but I hadn't realized how worn my front passenger-side tire was (the wear was all on the inside of the tire, so it couldn't really be seen without removing the tire) until today, when it finally wore itself out completely. The tire even rolled off the rim, it was completely blown.

In the 9 years I've been a driver, I've been a passenger in cars that got flat tires, 7 times. This was the first time I had gotten a flat while driving.

Adam was close by, so he came and changed the flat and we went to get a new one, but all the tires were pretty worn so I got a whole new set of tires.

The amazing part is, though, that now, my car drives like new. It handles completely differently. I had such a nice drive home, I treated myself to a yummy dinner at Avesta's using off-campus food points when I got back to campus.


As a side note: I feel like I'm terrible at this whole blog thing. I have so much trouble keeping posts at a short, quickly-readable length. If you're reading this, kudos to you and your attention span. I thank you. Let me know if you have any advice for how to keep postings to a comfortable length.

fire tree

A couple days ago, I met with my academic adviser, who is also my choir director, Mr. Hiester. He has an office that is in the music building which overlooks a very nice courtyard-ish type area with several gorgeous trees. One of the trees in particular had exploded into a fantastic fiery orange. “I'll be honest,” he said to me. “Some mornings I come in to work, and I just stop at the window in the hallway there and stare at that tree with awe.”

It sounded like a scene from a film. I love hearing that other people get the wind knocked out of them from the shock of such beauty. I love learning of other people having quiet moments of deep appreciation for things around us that could so easily be overlooked and taken for granted.

Above is a picture of the same tree, only I took this photo about a week before it turned orange.

once upon a beach

This is what I'm really missing now.

Just before I started school in 2004, Adam and I got to take a vacation to explore the east coast. It was possibly the most carefree, stress-free, trouble-free week of my life. It was just freeing, in general. First, we stayed at his uncle's high-rise penthouse in downtown Boston with a rooftop view of the city skyline, taking the trolley tour of all the sights Boston has to see. Then we drove down the east coast, took the Cape May Ferry out of New Jersey, and headed to my grandma's and her sister's beach cottage in Bethany Beach, Delaware. A free, private cabin one block from the Atlantic Ocean. Enough said.

Life feels unbearable at the moment. Isn't that strange? I mean, despite all my longings to travel, I am so unbelievably content and happy with where I am in life. I had a fantastically beautiful weekend. Life, both from day to day and on the whole, is ideal. Other than the ageless problem of wanting more money, I can't think of anything I would change. Yet, I can't stand it.

I feel like fussing about all the things that other people could be doing to help me out. Yet, I'm doing nothing to help anyone else, other than trying to make them feel loved and cared for. And I guess that's it. I guess that's what I want. I want to feel valued; I want to not have to ask people to hang out with me or go somewhere with me, but rather have them invite me, have them come to me and say “hey, I want to spend time with you. I haven't been meeting my Robyn quota lately.” I feel like human relationships are so much work, and because it's mostly work that I greatly enjoy, sometimes I get to feeling like I'm the only one putting forth any effort in working at them.

What's worst of all about this problem is that I feel like I just have to keep quiet about it. Because as soon as you start complaining about being lonely, people turn off to you because you sound pitiful, and who wants a pitiful friend/lover/whatever. I am an optimist, and the curse that comes with being an optimist is that people come to expect that from you. You even expect it from yourself. As a result, if you're feeling down, you can get reallllllllly stuck, because you feel like people won't like you if you gripe and vent to them. I feel like I have a face to keep up and people to please, which is miserable, because authenticity is even more important to me. Most of the time my optimism is authentic, but right now I feel like I should just smile and be sweet and friendly and understanding of everybody despite the fact that I feel screwed and ignored and desperately sad, for absolutely no good reason whatsoever.

What thirst is it that feels unquenched? What more can I seek that I haven't already sought? What is it that I'm wanting that I don't have?

Oftentimes, I wonder if I take on stresses from other people. If I'm around people who are troubled, I become troubled for them because I so very much want to help them get through their troubles. What I really need is to figure out how to get through my own, how to get back that free feeling from that most memorable of vacations, without letting other people's troubles and stresses effect me so badly.

travel reminiscence- part III

In May of 2004, the company I was working for sent me to Boulder, CO for a very boring meeting. I didn't care about the boring meeting though, because in two months later I was quitting the job to go back to school. (They knew this, but they sent me on the trip anyway, which was very cool of them.) I was just excited about the prospect of seeing the rocky mountains.

Sadly, during my three day stay, the weather was of unprecedented cloudiness and fogginess, such that it looked more like Toledo than Boulder. The guy at the desk in the hotel said he'd lived in Boulder all his life and had never seen such a bad streak of weather. But I got a great free dinner at a fancy restaurant in the mountains, and we at least got to drive through the Rockies, even though the mountain peaks were hidden by all the low clouds.

travel reminiscence- part II

In Fall of 2003, my dad and I took a trip to to the southwestern US. My cousin was getting married in El Paso, so just for fun we flew to Phoenix, rented a car, and drove across Arizona, New Mexico, and into Texas, seeing the sights and taking lots of pictures. On the way back to Phoenix after the wedding, we stopped at White Sands National Monument at sunset, and drove through Saguaro National “Forest” (I'm sorry, but I just can't think of a field of cacti as a forest) searching for the funkiest cactus in Arizona.

The winner:

gotta travel on

I'm in the midst of a really overwhelming urge to travel. Winter is on it's way, which will no doubt only intensify this craving. Plans are in the works for a couple possible trip in 2006, but finances are a big obstacle such that the future of my participation in these voyages looks sadly fuzzy.

The biggest, most exciting of these possibilities, is Alaska. For the entire summer.

*dramatic pause*

Yeah, that's how I feel about it. I've almost given up already, just because it seems too cool to be real. Or at least too expensive. But I haven't given up hope. The itch to explore the world is a strong one, and such drives can motivate people like me to find a way where it seems there is none.

I've actually done a good bit of traveling in the past couple years, moreso than ever before in my life. But more recently, as a poor college student, I haven't been able to get around as much. So, I feel the urge to reminisce of these travels. I think what I might do, rather than making one huge long post about each of these trips, I'll post a bit about each trip each day this week.

The grand list of travels started in February 2003, with a somewhat random decision to spend a week in Florida visiting my grandparents, who were renting a place for the winter. The trip took place about a month before my ex and I separated, things had been rough at home for a couple months, and it was fantastic to get away and reclaim my freedom a bit. This was the first time I had spent the night in a bed by myself since getting married in July of 1998, the first time I'd been in an airplane since I was 14, the first time I'd been south of Kentucky since I was 10. That trip was what really got me into photography. My grandparents were wonderful tour guides, and were very supportive of (and patient with) my efforts to take pictures of all sorts of random things. It was amazing to escape from the mid-western winter weather, and I actually cried when the first leg of my return flight arrived in Chicago and the pilot announced the temperature outside.

Ohio is the stupidest state in America

Ohio may have voted to keep gay couples from getting married, but at least hamsters and guinea pigs have finally gained the freedom to live together in matrimonial bliss, according to this article:

[Note: I had a link here to a story in a local paper about a family who had a full out wedding, complete with invitations, a minister, guests, and cake.... for their hamster and guinea pig. They must have taken the story down, however, because the link is no longer functional. Sorry! Wish I'd copied the story. It was ridiculous. They took it so seriously.]

Maybe this is a sign of progress.

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