Thursday, December 31, 2009

13 hours before 2010

Ah, the holidays are almost over. I have to say I'm rather excited about that, because although I love seeing family (both the week in LA and the week in GA was great, we basically saw everyone and luckily it didn't involve a lot of travel condensed into a single trip), it is always nice to get things back to "normal."

The sad thing is that we have a temporary building that we are now occupying on campus, and so I get to share an office with my fellow post-doc. The sharing part I don't mind (although I did get quite used to having my own office), but the office itself is pretty dismal. Of course, I wasn't residing in the most spectacular digs before, because it is, after all, a physics department, but there was a coziness that existed in the old place.

The most disconcerting part really is that after I get back from a vacation, I return to a different workplace, had to unpack everything there, it's as if everything is different. Plus, of course, due to the holidays and severe lack of planning on the administration, we don't have working phones, I don't yet have a key, and we also don't have access to the building with keys (and the swipe cards don't really work either). Plus, parking is going to be a bitch.

On a lighter side, I finished my new hat, which I'll have to show a picture of soon. I started this while still in Georgia (my sister was very much creeped out by me, my mom, and C all knitting on the couch together), and finished it last night while watching a bad 1930's movie. Good times.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Epileptic dog

You know, I have never said that Dante was the most well-trained dog. He is very smart (usually), and often well behaved. Sure he used to go after food like he was a starving child, dig through garbage at my folks' house (my trash has always been under the sink, so he's never dug through our garbage), and when I first got him, would tear up any book, shoe, or CD case he could. But most of that was puppy stuff. When it came to begging, I would have none of it, and he is generally on good behavior when I eat.

Just about two years after he entered my life, I met Corbett. Corbett has been a bit less of a disciplinarian than I have, and for the most part that is fine. You can see it in the way Dante treats him, going up to Corbett and looking adorable, knowing full well that he just needs patience and quite likely Corbett will give in. At dinnertime, Dante stares at Corbett, again with that same patience.

But we hit a new low last night. I do believe in the last five years, Corbett has succeeded in untraining this dog. Dante was to get a treat, so Corbett broke up Pupperoni into several pieces (as giving multiple treats is more fun than giving one), and Dante went completely apeshit. Corbett sat on a chair and Dante began flailing his front paws around (the excitement making him not realize if he should "give five" or "give a high five," and as no command was given, he just did both, over and over, simultaneously. What resulted was what appeared to be either a dog having multiple seizures, or a completely untrained psychotic canine that was so excited he might pee himself.

He's over seven-years-old, and it's like Benjamin Button, he's moving backwards while we all are going forward. In a few years perhaps he'll start teething.

Monday, December 14, 2009

A lot to think about

I've been sort of in a daze for the last few weeks. A lot of it has to do with the standard stuff. Winter is here, meaning holidays and a lot of travel, and having a lot of work travel right before holiday travel is always mind numbing. But this year there is more in the air.

For one, we are moving out of the physics building into a temporary building, so packing up my office by next week is needed. (They are moving us between Christmas and New Year's, but I will be out of town by Tuesday of next week.) There are a lot of details to manage, and my office is a mess. (My preferred organizational style, much to Corbett's chagrin, is to just pile things on my desk as I use them, so packing means a lot of digging.)

What adds to that, and really is the bulk of it, is the realization that I am leaving this town. In a year from today I will be somewhere else. I don't know where that somewhere else is, but I know it's not here. It's funny because things have popped up in conversations with friends (such as Sonya saying, "Well, next year we can...oh, wait, you won't be here."), and every day passes with another thought crossing my mind about this.

What is most dizzying about this though is that I don't know where I'll be. Applications have been sent out, and nothing is known yet. In January if I am lucky I will get a couple of requests for interviews, and then I'll be able to play the "oh, maybe it'll be there" game. (I don't even want to get into the issues of the two-body problem, that just makes it all worse.)

Ultimately it is again making me numb to everything around, and well, distant. Hopefully the feeling will go away, and definitely a ten-hour drive to Georgia will help with that. I'll at least have something else to think about. I'm sure it will only get worse after the new year.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Disturbing dream

Last night I had a very odd dream. Actually, I believe it occurred during my "I should be getting up but instead of hitting 'snooze' I turned off the alarm phase," when my strangest (or rather, most memorable) dreams occur.

I was at the grocery store on Thanksgiving here, waiting for a cake that I had ordered. I waited for two hours and after yelling at the woman who was spending more time talking to her friends than on the cakes, I left to come back for it later.* As I was coming into the apartment (no longer on the top floor), the drunk fireman who lives in my building started spitting, and hit me in the head. Now, in real life he does live here and is constantly drinking (luckily, he's a York county fireman, so he wouldn't be coming to our place were there a fire), but he lives one floor below us, not above, as he did here. As he laughed I got extremely angry, and C and I were just getting all riled up.

So we called the police, who happened to be the same two officers we ran into at Blockbuster** and they decided to hang out with us for the holiday, since they had nowhere to go.

The rest is sort of a blur, but I do remember whatever happened, they spent the night (in a separate room you gutter-minded folks, and anyway one of the cops was female, so, ew***). My next memory was of looking at the clock thinking, "Oh crap!"

---
* Apparently, I'm a grouch even in my dreams.

** This only occurred in the dream, we've only run into Andre and Erin at Blockbuster in real life.

*** I mean this in no offense to my female friends.

Friday, December 4, 2009

Positivity

So yesterday we finished decorating for Christmas. Of course, we will be in Georgia for the actual holiday, but this is the first Christmas we've actually lived together (I know, ridiculous, but it's hard to cohabitate when you live in different states), so we have a tree (fake, courtesy of a former WM prof), ornaments (many from my family from the last dozen or so Christmases, and glass balls from the same aforementioned prof), stockings for the three of us, and lights for the apartment. We still have to put tinsel on the tree (yes, I still like tinsel, even though it's old fashioned and kind of tacky, it's pretty), and wrap lights around the balcony to show our neighbors how festive we really are.

The best part, I will say, about the shopping we did for this was watching C play with the little toy Jack-in-the-boxes. If you ever get a chance to see this...

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Marriage rant

If you haven't already heard, the state senate of New York voted against gay marriage today. I didn't write about this sort of thing much after the Maine debacle, but given the extra joyous hypocrisy of New York (by which I mean they will recognize a gay marriage if it's been performed in another state, just won't allow it there), I feel like I have to just vent some.

I don't have much to say, really. I do, however, have an ever-growing hatred of the people who run this country, as well as many of the inhabitants. I shouldn't hate, I know, however it is more and more difficult to live day by day without these feelings growing. When I hear people say that they "love gay people, but just don't think they should get married," I feel the hatred in their voice (and don't try to tell me it isn't hatred; it is hatred pure and simple).

I think it is sickening that people are easily allowed to oppress others in the name of "God." I think it is disheartening that I am not fully considered a part of C's family (nor he a part of mine) because we are not legally married. It doesn't matter what people say, it matters to everyone in this country whether or not someone is your husband or your boyfriend. It is absurd that I could go marry some random woman that I just met, legally and with all of God's blessing, and the entire world would look at us and say, look at that happy couple. Oh sure, our families would take issue with it at first, but the very notion of being married would force them to overlook it and get used to it, and eventually (given that she wasn't a total psycho), they would grow to love the union.

The only thing that is making me not move out of this country right now is my spite. My spite is keeping me here, so that when gay marriage is fully legalized and all of you fuckers have to accept it, I can sit here and laugh myself to sleep thinking about how you are praying for our souls.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

A tribute

I should work right now, but I feel like writing a tribute. A tribute to something that has been in my life for so long, it deserves nothing less than this. And that is my gray hoodie.

I have had this hoodie since high school, and it's been so long that I can't even recall when I first obtained it. However, it has been with me, through high school, through college (especially during the semester in Rome, where I wore it far more often than I ever washed it and it never let me down), through graduate school, and beyond.

It has been with me in Maine, Texas, Rome, St. Louis, New York, and now the 'burg. I am almost 33 years old and yet I still wear it to work (that's right, I wear hoodies to work--Thank you, Academia). It is absolutely the most comfortable thing I own, and during the summer I yearn for the days where the temperature will drop and I can again put it on. There is a small bleach stain on the front pocket, but do I care? Hell no. It's my hoodie.

Here's to you, the one thing throughout the last two decades of my life that has really been there for me, and here's to at least another two decades together.