hurry up and wait

I was hoping to be posting today from my new place in Belgium, telling all about the new job, the people, and my lame attempts at becoming fluent in French.

Instead I am in the living room of my friend's house in the U.S. chewing gum loudly and watching BBC America.

The employment contract is taking its sweet time moving through the proper channels in Europe, so I was unable to get my visa to go and work in Belgium. So we are waiting for the paperwork to go through and instead of starting on Nov.1 I will be starting Dec. 1. I thought about just going and trying to do the paperwork over there, but when I talked to people at the embassy about that option, they were quite adamant about that not being entirely legal. So, I called the airline and have the ticket held until everything gets sorted out.

It's disappointing because I am ready to go, I have everything packed, I have all the papers I am supposed to have from my medical certificate to my FBI background check. And, while I love staying with my friend, I am ready to get back into the swing of things with working and living independently.

So I am trying to look on the bright side, and think of the positive things that will develop during this extra time at home.

A couple of weeks ago, when I thought I was leaving last week, I sold my car. I didn't get as much as I wanted for it, and it was so pretty after I got it all detailed.

But, the rental car I am currently using to get around from day to day has satellite radio, so I have made my car a French zone, and only listen to the French-speaking radio stations in order to get accustomed to the language. Every day I understand more and more of what they are talking about, which eases my stress about adjusting to the language change.

I will get to spend more quality time with dad gathering bread and other food for charity in the mornings. It has been nice to spend time with him doing good things, especially after the drama of having to move out of his house. Every day on the bakery run is interesting, we never know what we are going to get. Apparently life in the bakeries is tough, because one day I found these 2 notes in the carts with our loaves:



I have been able to spend time with childhood friends that I probably would not have been able to do had I left on schedule.

I will get to finish the scarf I have started to work on from my super bright! yarn


I can go through my luggage again to see what I absolutely positively must take with me, because those bags are way to heavy for me to drag around airports and train stations.

quality time with my dad

I've been helping my dad out a bit while I am in Vegas. It has been good times, but occasionally I am dumbstruck by his politics.

Today he told me that public schools teach communist and socialist propoganda.

I had to laugh because he told me this while were were collecting bread to donate to local charities.

I told him that I hope he appreciates the irony of that statement, since donating food to the needy is about as socialist as you can get. If he really wanted to be anti-socialist we should take this bread to the needy and then burn it in front of them while taunting them for not working hard enough to put food on the table. Don't talk the talk unless you're prepared to walk the walk.

We still brought the food to the needy, so I think he saw my point.

civic duties and lapsed memories

I got my ballot! Yay! I'm sending it in before the end of the week.



Today I finished going through 2 and a half giant boxes of high school and college memorabilia and condensed it down to 1 box. I packed those boxes a good 10-12 years ago, and have just moved them from my dad's storage unit to my own storage unit. So I decided to go through them.

It is so interesting what we decide to keep forever when we are 20 because it is so important, and 10 years later I have no idea where it came from. I was surprised at the number of birthday and holiday cards from people I have no recollection of were in those boxes.

I saved the obviously important things, like my yearbooks. The 8th grade book from 1991 was a spectacular example of teenage insanity and angst. Apparently I was filled with some serious hate for some of my classmates, since I WHITED OUT both their names AND their pictures. Wow. I am so glad I grew up.

Luckily the other years' books were not as horrible.

Of course I found my mortar, and guess what? It still fits! woot!



I decided that since I have gotten 2 more degrees since then, I could part with the mortar.

There were tons of notebooks and planners filled with my daily activities and gossip with friends. I was a pretty active traveller in high school, going on as many school trips as my parents could afford, and kept every single little bag and brochure I found. Because at 16 riding on the Washington DC subway is new and interesting so I had to keep my metro ticket. At 31, on the other hand, I've been on many metros, and DC's metro several times. I can throw away the ticket.

Some of the doodles in my notebooks gave me a chuckle before tossing them in the bin.



My naive younger self also felt it was crucial to keep citizenship award from 1991, my driver's manual, a tiny plastic ballerina, a high school memory book, a champions for Jesus sticker, and a wooden dowel.

Because, you never know when you could use a dowel.

Woo hoo!

This came in the mail while I was out of town last weekend:



Yay!

Also, time is running out to register to vote! Seriously dudes, it's important. I'm voting early (absentee) since I'll be in Belgium election day.


Don't Vote! from URBNMKT on Vimeo.

Tales From Burning Man pt. 2: The Neighborhood

So, where did I camp at Burning Man?

I was part of a camp called Nosefish, and we were in the 3 o'clock plaza.



For a complete map of Black Rock City, click here.

It was nice because the plaza is a big landmark, so it is relatively easy to find from wherever in the city. Also, we were very near ice and port-a-potties, so that was pretty convenient.

But, by far the best part was having some awesome neighbors around the plaza!

We were just a hop, skip and jump from the ice tent, so we could see when there was no line and pick up ice rather conveniently.

This was not a good time to get ice.

Right across the street was Camp Hokey Pokey, which, every day at noon did the Hokey Pokey. That was awesome because, well, that's what it's all about. Plus, I didn't have a watch so it was nice to know when it was noon.


Across the way was the Red Eye Diner, which had a full menu of delicious, delicious grilled cheese sandwiches. I had the Pennsylvanian, it was tasty! But you can't go wrong with anything on the menu, or the daily specials.

It was always hopping when the kitchen was open.
And, there was a S'mores camp just down the street from us off the plaza which served s'mores every night. We were fed well.

There was spectacular entertainment. On the corner across from the ice was camp Truthiness, which played the Colbert Report each night.

As the week went on, the Word, Notice, and Tip of the Hat lists grew

And then there was the Bad Idea Theater, which was my favorite neighbor! Each night they played horrible, horrible movies, and they were hilarious. The people were awesome and the bar always had great punch and even snacks available. We sought shelter in their bar during the duststorm all day burn day.


Then there was camp Manha Manha, which was my 2nd favorite neighbor because they played the Muppet Show every night! So after explorig the city for a while, I would usually sit and watch an episode or 2 of the Muppet show until I started falling asleep and then would stumble to my tent.



Do doo do-do-do

There were many other great camps in the plaza as well, there are pictures of all of them in my flickr burning man set.

The art peice that was meant to adorn the center of the plaza didn't show up for some reason, so the Cave of the Echo people, another neighbor, moved their art peice to the center of the plaza:



Our camp had 2 main activities during the week. By day we handed out otter pops during the hottest part of the day. It was so much fun reaching out to people and sharing our frozen sugary goodness with them. We saved alot of lives out there, and it was especially fun getting hugs from super hot guys who appreciated me giving them an otter pop. And by night we had the mez screen, which displayed an image of the people that were dancing or sitting or whatever in front of the screen. The image was digitized and altered (blurred or pixelated or turned into swirls or popsicles,etc.) and people would spend hours mesmerized by it.



It was a great place to be, I am so glad I was able to camp there. Hopefully next year we will be placed just as well.

The straw that broke the camel's back

I am livid.

After spending a long weekend at BFF's house, I returned to chez hamsterdad for the week. I took a deep breath and headed back to this horrible place, hoping all would be well.

I drove home, and then parked the car on the street near the driveway. I had barely gotten out of my car when stepmonster asked me to move my car further away so halfsister could park there.

While my first instinct was to refuse and say that maybe walking the extra 15 feet to the door would loosen the stick up halfsister's ass, but then I decided that I did not want to fight within 30 seconds of my arrival home.

I went inside and there was a guy on the main computer (stepmonster's computer). I thought maybe he was here to fix the wireless internet connection, since none of the passwords that I was given ever let me get on the house's internet connection. Sadly, that was not true. Apparently stepmonster's computer got a virus, freaking everything out on her computer and somehow erasing the past few days of stuff she had done. So he was reinstalling the OS and retrieving everything. I asked him about the wireless connection, if when he was done, he could make sure that I could get on the internet.

To me, this did not seem like an unreasonable request, but stepmonster was highly agitated.

"No one is going to have wireless access except me" she said.
"You mean, I can't get on the internet to do my work?" I said.
"No, I don't want this [the virus thing] to happen again, I don't want anyone to have access to my computer using the wireless" she said.
"I don't think that's the way it works. I can't get to your computer from my computer on the wireless, I can only get to the internet from my computer and whatever I do on the internet would only go to my computer, right?" and I looked to computerguy for confirmation of what I already knew was true.
"She's right, her computer wouldn't communicate with your computer, it just communicates with the router here" he said as he pointed to the router.

Stepmonster looked at us, and then got up and walked out of the room.
Computerguy looked at me like 'that was weird' and I looked back at him like 'tell me about it'.

Then when I left the room dad came down the hall telling me not to mess with the computer stuff.

I told him I wasn't messing with any stuff, I just wanted to get on the wireless internet, so I could have a decent signal and actually get stuff done that I needed to get done.

"Why do you even have wireless? Stepmonster's computer is linked to the router directly, she doesn't even need to use the wireless." I asked
"So halfsister and I can use it" he said.
"So halfsister and you can use the internet and I can't?" I asked.
"No, no one can anymore" He said.
"Are you kidding me? Whatever happened to stepmonster's computer is not related to the wireless connection, and I need to be able to get online for my work." I said
"I thought you said you can get on the internet" he replied
"yes, I can but there's 2 things 1) I'm stealing it from your neighbors so it's ILLEGAL, and 2) the signal is very low so I can't upload or download large files. Like when I uploaded my flickr pictures, it took 3 days to do it on the low connection, but on a good connection it takes like 20 minutes."
"Why are you uploading such big files?" he asks (because it's so unreasonable that I would like to use the internet in ostensibly my own home)

And so on and so on.

It was just so frustrating because spotty wireless internet connection is one of my biggest pet peeves. Plus, I do need the internet to get my work done, I have to upload and download articles from the internet as well as submit papers for publication online, so I need a dependable high speed connection for that.
And, above all, letting me on the internet is NOT A BIG DEAL AT ALL. So WTF?

It's ridiculous! Now he expects me to go to his office to get on the internet, so I would have to set up my own wireless network there since all he has is an office network of desktops there.

I told him that I would help him with his home organization stuff by selling his extra stuff on ebay or craigslist. But, guess what? That needs an internet connection, so I guess he's out of luck because I'll be damned if I have to go out of my way more than I already am to please his wife.

So I think it's really time to pack it in and move over to BFF's house. I know that she totally doesn't mind if I stay there, but it makes me sad and angry that I have to do it.

Angry because if I leave, aren't I just letting stepmonster and halfsister have their way?
Sad because hamsterdad is completely incapable of seeing my point of view on this at all. The attitude I get from him is that I just need to do what they want.

So tomorrow I will call BFF and talk to her about the situation and spend the rest of this week getting everything completely out of this godforsaken place and into my storage unit.

Because, you know, when I am at BFF's I can do all of these things without causing anyone to go off in a huff and slam doors:
1) shower
2) laundry
3) watch TV
4) get on the internet
5) talk on the phone
6) walk into or out of a room
7) breathe

On my photo time capsule today

I can't believe it has been a year since I took this picture! I hope this fortune isn't true today!

Weekend with Natedog

I spent the weekend at BFF's house, helping watch BFF's son, Natedog, while they were away. We've played lots of video games, done some coloring (he said one of mine was really good, and then tore it out of the book and put it on the refrigerator, it was cute), watched cartoons, and went swimming.

The spare room where I am staying has the video game we played most in it, so when he wanted to play one morning I told him he first had to help me make the bed. I had put the comforter on the floor the night before, so just the sheet was on the bed. Natedog came in and saw the blanket on the floor and said, "Whoa, you must have done some hard core sleeping in here"

Tales From Burning Man pt. 1: Dust

One of the most exciting times I had after graduation was going to Burning Man with Sparkle.

Back in January, when I had just returned from Australia and I was just about to hit rock bottom with my depression, I was visiting Sparkle on the day Burning Man tickets went on sale. She came home from work that day and told me that she had bought 2 tickets to burning man, and one of them was for me, if I wanted to go. I had been wanting to go to the Burn for years, but have always found some excuse (usually school work or lack of money or both) to not be able to get a ticket and such. Having that ticket there for me made me get my priorities in order about going to the burn that year, no more excuses.

And, it was by far the best thing to do after finishing my Ph.D. I highly recommend it.

After Sparkle arrived in Vegas and we picked up our rental car (a Vibe, which made the rental car guy giggle and was also appropriate for burning man), and we started packing up our stuff to leave the next day. Before the night was over, though, we had to cut up some re-bar for our tent stakes. Hamsterdad had re-bar we could use, we just needed to cut it, and he seemed fairly confident that it was a relatively easy task. But, in fact, it was the opposite of an easy task. It all eventually got cut, but it was not fun.



We made the journey in about 11 and a half hours. When we reached the gates for Black Rock City, the greeters welcomed me at the gate with big hugs and then made me roll around in the playa dust since it would get all over by the end of the week (I had no idea how bad it would get). Then I rang the newcomer bell, it was such fun!

Everyone was saying "Welcome Home!" Since I was (and still am) essentially between homes at the moment, it was good to hear.

We arrived early to Burning Man, and got to see the city and all of the art rise up around us. It was quite a sight. Of course, the man was already up when we arrived.



We spent our first day on the playa setting up our tents and exploring the city. Then, on day 2, the wind arrived, and with it the dust. The morning was relatively calm, and we rode around the city on our bikes, taking a break at center camp. Here is center camp before the storm arrived:



And here it is during the first round of the storm, about 15 minutes later:



It settled slightly, and we were able to trek back to our camp from Center Camp, and spent the rest of the day waiting out the storm in style:



Eventually the sun went down and the wind calmed down, and when I went to my tent to get prepared for a night on the town, I discovered that I had accidentally left my tent door open slightly under the rainfly. So, everything was covered in dust:



We explored the city at night, seeing some awesome art cars, but did not get too adventuresome. Spending the day laying under shade structures in a dust storm is surprisingly exhausting.

Friday night fun

This week has flown by.

It's weird because right now I don't have a job or any real daily responsibilities, and yet I feel like I have been just as busy this week as I have been for the last several months.

I am sure it is because I am working on the long, long list of things that I've had to put off during my dissertation writing and move, and also because now I am preparing to move across the sea.

I've managed to go through a good amount of my belongings, and now only have a few more boxes to go through. I also plan to get my computer cleaned up enough so I have enough memory free to defragment the hard drive. I seriously was down to 16MB of free memory on my 80GB hard drive. I gotta get that under control!

Despite the dodgy internet connection at chez hamsterdad (for some reason, none of the WPA keys I have for the wireless work, and it randomly becomes an unlocked network and then a locked network again when someone gets on the main computer...yet no one has any clue about it...odd) I have managed to finish uploading my pictures from my drive from PA to NV.

Here is my favorite pic from the trip:



As I crested a hill driving West on I-40 in New Mexico, the sun just reached under the clouds making this faboulous sunset shot. I knew I was on my way back to the desert where I was born. It was amazing.

The next day the zombies and I decided to go to the Painted Desert/Petrified Forest National Park:



I forgot about the intensity of the desert sun as I drove around the park with my windows open. But I soon was reminded of my own lack of planning to wear sunscreen:



Oddly, that arm didn't actually start peeling until after I got back from Burning Man, over a week later. Apparently a coat of playa dust and a week of not having real running water showers will delay sunburn peeling. I know, that's hot.

I made it home and within 24 hours got all of this crap out of my car:


not only was the car full, but the trunk was also chock full of stuff. This plus the 15 boxes I mailed myself, there was tons to go through this week.

After getting home and unpacking the car, sparkle arrived the next day and we prepared for our trip to burning man!

You can see all of the cross-country adventure pictures here.
You can see the burning man pics and videos here, and the stories will come soon!

Also, I got some videos from way back up, you can see them here.

Now I have to get back to watching the crazy-ass weather reporters in Texas commenting on Ike. Why are they there? My heart is in my throat waiting for debris to hit some poor meteorologist upside the head.

too much baggage

I was talking to my mom the other day, and she reminded me that in the last month, I have really done alot. I have managed to:

• Successfully defend my Ph.D. dissertation, make all the necessary corrections and graduate
• Get rid of the bulk of my possessions, pack most of them in my car and drive across the country.
• Unpack the car, then repack stuff to go to Burning Man
• Spend a little over a week at Burning Man, along with great people and lots of wind and dust
• Unpack from Burning Man
• Get a post-doc job in Belgium
• Get a storage unit for the stuff I won't take with me overseas
• Dealt with the chilly reception at chez hamsterdad

And I can say that the most overwhelming feeling I have after all of this is that I am damn tired of packing and unpacking my stuff from cars.

Today I got the last (my god I hope it really is the last one) box of crap that I sent myself from PA, and I am trying to sort through stuff to see what stays and what goes into deep storage.

One may think that it would be relatively simple, just take the boxes of stuff and put them back in my car and put them in the storage unit. But one would not be considering that I was finishing my dissertation at the same time that I needed to be packing. Also, one would not be considering that I have more than one friend that wanted to spend time with me before I left. In the end, my packing time was squeezed into a crazy 36 hour period between turning in the final draft of my dissertation and turning in my keys to my landlord.

So, instead of lots of nicely labeled, organized boxes of stuff from each room of the apartment, I have many unlabled boxes and bins of stuff that may or may not need to come with me to Belgium.

And several of the boxes in which my books were mailed lost all of their structural integrity during their cross-continental journey. The books are all fine, but now they need to be put into new boxes for storage.

So the best piece of advice I can give to anyone planning to move right after they defend their dissertation is DON'T. If you have to, hire someone to do it all for you. Or, plan way ahead, like spend a half an hour every day packing starting about 4 months before the projected move date. Or, just burn the place down and collect the insurance to buy all new stuff wherever you go.

getting on top of things

It has certainly been a trying time getting all of my stuff packed up in PA and then moving across the country to hamsterdad's house.

I haven't lived with hamsterdad for about 20 or so years. My parents got divorced when I was about 9 or 10. There was the usual divorce drama (dad was sleeping with my friend's mom, and knocked her up, it was quite a soap opera). In the end, hamsterdad wanted joint custody, he wanted to be a part of my life, which is a great thing, considering other people are not so lucky.

So, the plan was that I would spend night's with hamsterdad (my mom worked the graveyard shift), and then days at Mom's and weekends were split or something, I don't remember it much since it did not last terribly long. Turns out stepmom was not happy at all with the arrangement, she was mean to me and constantly yelling at my dad about the living arrangement. After one particularly traumatic morning where stepmom yelled "you are not her babysitter!!!" to my dad, I had enough. On the way to school, I told my dad never to bring me back to that house again. He asked why, and I told him "Because she treats me like shit and you don't do anything about it".

It was the first time I had ever sworn in front of my dad. I was 10 years old.

And I never set foot in the house again until a couple of years ago when I came to visit Vegas on vacation and I couldn't stay at my friend's house that week.

Now that I am an adult, I can look at the situation from a different perspective. I now understand how difficult it is when relationships end and how hard it is to build new ones. I can see that stepmom had her own issues with her divorce and the fact that her ex basically disappeared from his daughter's (my stepsister's) life was not fair to anyone. I have alot of sympathy for her at that time, and I can understand that she was in alot of pain.

But that doesn't make her behavior acceptable. I did not cause any of the drama in her life, and it was not appropriate for her to take out her frustrations on me. Nor was it appropriate for my dad to sit idly by and let the emotional abuse occur.

20 years is a long time, and in that time I worked through the issues that were born from that time in my life, and I feel that I have forgiven both my stepmother and my father, and also have forgiven myself. Nobody is perfect, and I have grown and changed and learned, and so I felt that I could move into my dad's house temporarily no problem.

Unfortunately, stepmom and halfsister appear to see it differently. I have repeatedly tried to put a forward a friendly face and lend a hand, etc, but have received essentially nothing in return. Things are not quite hostile, but they are no where near civil. Today, I said good morning to stepmom, and she started talking to her dog, not even an acknowledgement. I just don't understand it.

All I can do is keep on truckin' and being friendly, and perhaps eventually they will loosen up. If not, at least I know I only have to put up with it for several more weeks, and I can escape to friends' places.

There is a bright side: Larry the Cat is quite affectionate and appears to love having me here. He especially seems to love me most when I start trying to work on my computer on the couch. And he leaves tons of cat hair on me to make sure I know how much he cares all day long.

Today I am getting a storage unit, since there is not enough room in my tiny room and the cluttered garage for all of my stuff, and I won't be taking all the stuff I brought here with me to Belgium. Not having to step over boxes to get around my room will make me feel much more comfortable.

It's getting better all the time

I have escaped to my best friend's house for the weekend, and it has been glorious to be in a place where people talk courteously to one another and don't go around slamming doors all the time (well, sometimes Nate-dog does, but he's 6, so I don't think it's on purpose).

We've been spending the weekend hanging out in the pool and drinking cocktails to celebrate....drum roll....me getting the kick-ass post-doc job in Belgium!! Yay! Yay! Yay!!!

After the phone interview I was telling my dad how it all worked out, in a very subdued yet excited voice (as it was about 8:30am). Stepmom walks out into the kitchen where my dad is and whispers something to him about 'yelling', and my dad says, 'she's not yelling, she's excited, she just got a job'. There was some other whispers that tempted me to go into the kitchen and say in a full voice, 'do you have something to say to me? to my face?' but the glee of getting a job made me decide that it wasn't worth the effort.

Later she was all smiles and congratulatory, I think because now she knows I won't be there much longer. She was back to her standard door-slamming, ignoring self as the afternoon wore on, though.

Whatever, dude.

The Belgium job should be starting on or around Nov. 1st. Originally Oct. 1 was a potential start date, but I really appreciate having a couple more weeks to get organized for an overseas move. Luckily I just streamlined all of my possessions for the move from PA to Vegas, so I don't have too much stuff to sort through to move, but there is still plenty to do. Anyone out there have any tips for becoming an expat for a year or two?

At the moment I am sorting through the hundreds of photos I have taken over the last few months and uploading them to flickr, including pics from my favorite band's last show ever, the drive from PA to NV, and Burning Man! The road trip and Burn picture sets are still growing, so more will appear there over the coming days.

Sparkle has done a much better job of updating her Burning Man pics in a timely fashion, so if you want to catch a glimpse of some of our adventures, check out her flickr page.

back from the burn

I am back from an amazing week and Burning Man. Pictures will be forthcoming once I find my camera cords.

I loved loved loved my time on the playa, everyone there was so friendly and so giving. I will have many tales to tell in the coming days.

At the moment however, I am trying to make the best of a horrible situation. Life at hamsterdad's house is not cool. Like, my stepmom and halfsister barely speak to me or make eye contact.

Today was crappy for me for the following reasons:

Halfsister has taken to removing my shower supplies from the shower and putting them either in my room or in a box by the door of my room. When I politely asked if I could just leave the stuff in the shower because I was planning on showering fairly regularly while I lived here, I was told quite tersely to just be sure to keep everything on the one side of the shower. And, when I mentioned that when she moved my slightly expensive jar of sugar and oil body scrub, much of the oil leaked all over everything and made the soothing sugar scrub significantly less soothing, her response was a glare and a shrug.

Then, later, I added a couple of sheets and towels to a load of sheets and towels that had been in the washer for a day and ran the load, trying to be helpful, and stepmother gruffly told me not to mix my stuff with their stuff (even though the sheets and towel were from the house's hall closet, and so were actually not my stuff). Apparently there was a dark towel in with the light stuff and even though I washed it in cold water, the fact that I dared to try and help out a little was highly offensive.

Halfsister could have simply said, "hey hamster_grrl, there is not much space in the shower, could you please try to keep your stuff on the one side?" and I would have happily complied.

Stepmom could have simply said, "hamster_grrl, I appreciate that you were trying to help with the laundry, but I have a specific method of sorting, so could you please check with me before you want to add anything to a load of clothes?" And I would also have happily complied.

Instead they are just being plain rude and I am feeling quite awkward.

Thank goodness Sparkle was here visiting so I had a witness to much of the rudeness as well as moral support! I'm also happy that my best friend still lives in town and told me that I am welcome to stay there if things get too crazy (I already plan to spend all my weekends there).

Tomorrow I have a phone interview with a potential post-doc position in Belgium. Fingers crossed I get it so I can get far far away from this place as soon as possible!

Almost there

After about 14 hours of driving (weather and construction made this leg longer than I thought), I am finally relaxing in Gallup NM. There was some awesome lightning today, and I even managed to catch some of it on video.

I like this one best, because the lightningbolt is all loopy, I couldn't help saying out loud how I hoped that it was caught on camera.

You have to wait about 20 seconds, but it is worth it.



Tomorrow is the last day of the cross-country trek! Las Vegas is only about 6 hours away, I am excited to get back to my hometown.