Weddings and reunions

I still wish it didn't take a wedding to have all those people in one place. Maybe I wound up with a small-town mentality somehow on that score, in wanting all those I know and care about in one place. It sure was nice though, even just for a few hours, to be among so many friends at once. Some I had hoped to see didn't make it, which is as much their loss as mine or Forrest's, since Forrest will be leaving the country on Thursday. The ones who were there were a nice mix,
with plenty of camp and college friends. I only met three people I had not known previously- Ben, a friend of Forrest's from his childhood; and Christine Brinker's brother and his partner. I also saw Megan, Tom and Mike, if only for a little while. I am definitely over Mike, but he is still easy on the eyes, especially walking around sans shirt as he was when Megan and I found him. I think N would top Mike easily in that respect, but I won't speculate too long on that now. It has been a long day, and I am quite tired. I won't have another actual day free until maybe next Sunday, since I will be working for Nicole tomorrow and Friday. I think I am at least closing on Thursday again, though if I am at all worried about getting him fired, the last thing I ought to be doing is waiting for him after work, when he leaves right alongside the managers. It would not take many evenings for that to look bad, and he needn't even have any intentions of dating me to get in trouble because it would look obvious. But a closing shift means I see the security guard on duty without so many customers around to be distracted by, and maybe it is still possible to talk with him after work too.

Have checked off bears, now what?

Ok, so one of my biggest excuses for not making it out to the trails this year has been bears and mountain lions. Realistically, I really ought to be hiking with someone, too, but lots of folks go hiking alone without being eaten. But nonetheless, I was not out hiking before this cause I was afraid of the bears. Now that I have survived seeing a huge bear while hiking alone, I can check that adventure off my list and go on to a new one. The list so far:

Bears
Mountain Lions
Hiking 14ers
Horseback riding
Climbing
Skiing
Biking
Driving
Swimming


Yes, swimming is last. I may never bother with that one, really, cause I hate panic attacks, and don't really need to swim in Colorado. Mountain lions are dangerous enough for someone my size to be dealing with alone that I consider that one optional, and up to the Universe to make happen. The rest require that I improve my fitness, and have the right time and situations, and for many of them enough money. Skiing will have to wait till there is enough snow, and climbing till I have someone who can teach me, and till I have the money for gear, for both really. Riding is not completely checked off yet, cause I still am lousy at trotting, and can't saddle my own horse yet, but I don't have a horse around that I could practice with. Driving takes a lot of money up front, so that will have to wait. I plan to get a bike in a month or less, but not till I start getting regular paychecks again from my new job. So hiking it is. Short hikes, leading up to longer hikes, and hopefully coinciding with availability of companions to hike with. I dread doing another 14er if I am as badly out of shape as I was for Pike's Peak, cause that was embarrassing. I hope if I am in better shape my high-altitude 'asthma' will go away, so I can not feel like such a wimp at the top of the next one. And really I need to do Pike's again before I would really check that one off. Yes, I know that mountain fairly well now, but I still have a few hundred feet left to go at the top. I suppose I should leave off the Mesa Trail and start doing the ones that go up instead, since I know I can walk 20 miles comfortably without much of an incline at 5000-7000.' Hmmm.

Musings on a Minor Theme

A theme that crept into the foreground a bit just at the end of a conversation this week- what really is useful? Is developing chemistry that furthers the development of H-fuel cells more useful than figuring out how ecosystems can recover from gross traumas like strip mining? Are both these goals more useful than figuring out what happens when electrons collide, or how to more adequately describe the fabric of our universe? Ayn Rand at least provides a basis for discussion in her requiring that we clarify, "useful to whom, and for what?" If the point of my life is 'my life,' and I find life more fulfilling if I feel I understand the Universe more fully, all three of these pursuits are almost equally useful. The chemistry might eventually enhance my ability to have affordable transportation, but it also helps with developing a more complete understanding of the workings of our universe. The ecology is personally fulfilling, and while having the knowledge in my head as to how ecosystem recovery works will be pleasant, seeing a former wasteland returned to a healthy state would be even more satisfying as a visible proof that my knowledge is accurate. Knowing how the universe works at a fundamental level provides the basis for those fundamental stories we tell ourselves, that allow us to feel we understand better how we fit in to everything around us. For me, knowing that there was some singularity in space-time, the Big Bang, and that one way or another the known universe has been expanding outwards, or maybe matter has been collapsing in on itself so that it looks like expansion, or whatever... This story lays the foundation for my everyday life, allowing me to have some perspective as to where I am in space and time in the universe. Obviously I might be happier if I stopped paying attention to physics at some point, since if I was happy with the 'classic' Big Bang theory, I might not want to drill holes in my story with any new ideas, but that would be akin to refusing to hear or see any evidence that the Earth is round, or that stars are huge objects outside our solar system that have no direct ties to Earth. Blinders create a very false sort of happiness.

Hopeful coherency in the face of whiskey and tears

well, not so many tears. Remarkably, when drunk, I may be slightly more depressed, but I don't cry. And Tonight I think I am actually far less unhappy drunk than sober. And, no, my tolerance has not improved any. 1.25 shots of honey whiskey and I am almost too drunk to walk. But tonight it at least tasted good. I could appreciate the sweetness of the honey on my lips after the liquid had burned its way down my throat, and didn't need to drink it fast to finish it. Tonight is one of the best illustrations for me as to why, even if I was tempted, I would prefer to remain an atheist. No God I could respect would make one person's happiness the cause of another's misery. I never really chose to be in love, and it is not like he was looking to fall for someone else rather than try dating me. He is in love and wants to marry someone, and is very happy. I am in love with him still, and while I am glad for him, it hurt too much to stay sober tonight, and I suspect the whiskey tasted good only in comparison to the pain I was in before it hit. I don't want to sour his happiness, so while he is one of my best friends, and if I was in love with anyone else I would be talking to him before anyone else, I cannot talk to him, however much I feel as if I need to. I have not really talked to anyone else about him, because of the mess of circumstances involved, and because I felt it was something between us, that had no reason to crop up elsewhere. He knows how I feel about him, and unless he had wanted to try dating me, no one else needed to really know. So soon after Andrew, too, I felt silly if I was to talk to my friends about him, cause I am not some silly girl to be chasing every cute boy I meet. So I will get over him, but it will take time. He used to be someone I would talk with for hours, and had that continued, maybe this would be less painful, but circumstances have kept us from talking for too long. I needed to talk to him for most of this past week, and kept putting off calling, for fear that I would be getting in the way of something, and now. . . I still feel like I need to talk to him, like I could talk to him for hours and days and weeks and not run out of things to say to him, yet I doubt I could talk to him for more than ten minutes without crying. He is the last person who has seen me cry and the only person right now I would not be uneasy about crying around, but I don't want to cry with him there. I see him so rarely, that if I ever get to talk to him or see him I want to enjoy it. I love him for his ability to remind me of why it is good to be alive, in spite of all the crap we have been through. I am glad still that the universe created a person like him; it would seem rather empty now if he was no longer in it. But I miss having him as an active part of my universe. Life with him around was so much better than before that it seems empty and shallow without him now. He has only a few weeks till he leaves for summer camp, and if I have missed him these two months past, I am almost certain not to hear from him for the rest of the summer unless I somehow get to camp myself, which is looking quite unlikely. I guess I should be glad I never was dating him, cause if it hurts this bad now, it would have been unbearable if we had been any closer.

Thoughts on Reading Dostoyevsky's The Devils

It took me a surprisingly long time to get into this book, though not for the reasons my sister Tammy seems to have settled on. Seven hundred pages may have been a few too many for this novel, though, unlike Les Miserables, this book had no truly extraneous chapters. I most identified with Nicolas Stavrogin as his character reached the crises that really brought out Peter's true nature and peculiar madness. I am hardly as admirable and accomplished as this character, nor am I subject to hallucinations, so this is not one of those novels in which I see myself reflected particularly well in one person. I could understand Shatov's reasons for loving Mary so much, because that resonates with my own life and feelings, but I hope I am not so desperate for someone to love me as all that, to marry someone because they once said "I love you." Nicolas Stavrogin talks in his confession about feeling things at the wrong times or feeling the right things but so that he could turn off those feelings at will, as if they were only fake, and he tells Dasha and Lisa that he could not really love them, and that any feelings he might have for them could only be superficial. This might have been enough for Mary, just for him to treat her with kindness, but she saw through his actions and recognized his lack of true feeling for her. I think, though, that most people act on that more superficial level. Just as the bishop explained that other men committed similar crimes and are not tormented by them, most people never examine their feelings thoroughly enough to see how deeply they run, nor do they necessarily need to. I doubt if I was content to live on that level that I would still be living alone in a basement apartment by now. I have met men in my 12 years since I left home, and some still in high school, who would have been happy to settle into marriage with me after a suitable courtship, and have a nice normal life. As an Adventist I might not have had to worry about a career either, since I could be active in the church instead.
Certainly I could avoid all the compromising and sometimes humiliating episodes in my life where I have 'wasted' time and energy loving men who could never love me. If it did not matter how deeply my feelings ran I would not have any reason to single out those people for whom I care most deeply, nor would I need to bother acknowledging the nature of those feelings. Life could be so much simpler without all that, and a great deal less lonely. This last one is a great microcosm of the whole idea. I had two men, of similar age, and both very attractive, re-enter my life. One was more likely to be interested in dating me than the other, but the one I was in love with, unfortunately, was also the one less likely to return that interest, at least right away. I suspect that the one I love, if he did return my feelings, would do so much more permanently and significantly than the other could. If I had said nothing I could have had myself an attractive boyfriend right now, but instead I took the necessary steps to ensure that I could not be tempted to do anything inappropriate with the other man. I made a fool of myself as well, by my admitting to being in love with the other one. At least I am starting to get used to feeling like a fool.
The biggest problem I could see with identifying too strongly with characters out of a Dostoyevsky novel is they so often end in tragedy. Shatov is murdered, and Stavrogin hangs himself. Stavrogin's death was a natural conclusion from his confession. So long as he cared at all about Dasha, or about anyone else in his life he had to die. He was one of those pigs, sort of anyway, from the Bible story, in whom the devils met their end, and he could not live without infecting others with those devils and their mischief. I am hardly a devil-possessed entity, at least, and have no active tragedies to propel me to end my life immediately, at least so long as those I love are well. I could easily work myself into a Dostoyevsky character, but I think I could do better as a Steinbeck character. I seem to always do the right things at the wrong times, or when I get the timing right, fate steps in to nullify my efforts, keeping me always in limbo, never truly suffering, but never really succeeding either. I have never been homeless, because there is always somewhere I can go, and I am never really penniless, because either a job turns up at the last minute, or a friend turns up with a loan to last till the job turns up. The job is never great, either paying very little, or lasting only a month or two, and while I get great references from them all, they never lead to anything better in the same field or anywhere else. So, at 29, I am still not any better off than at 23, except that I have more experiences in my head. It of course came to my mind to question, though obviously with no expectation that it would be an issue in reality, whether I could really marry a man 9 years my junior. If I had a great career, or had a solid idea as to where I am headed with my life, a 20-year old man would be a ridiculous match not for the age difference so much as for his sheer age. At 18 I had a better idea of my future plans than most 20-year olds, so by that measure, by now I ought to be dating men in their 40's, yet the way my life has gone, I am still mired in the same life-issues as he is , and with just about the same amount of success. At this rate we both will figure out our careers at about the same time, only his won't have met with quite so many dead-ends. It is a good thing he most likely wants to have children, because otherwise I might be more tempted to hold out real hope for 'us.' I am not exactly past child-bearing age, nor am I am dead-set against having them, but he is much more likely to choose a younger woman who actually wants to become pregnant, if he wants his own children. So I remain more in keeping with David Copperfield's aunt, a much less tragic figure, overall, I hope.

Dextromethorphan: my new word for the day

I finally looked up cough suppressants online, after days of little or no sleep with an annoying dry hacking cough, and have now gained by my illness. I now know that it is the dextromethorphan HBr in my pills that is supposed to take care of cough suppression. I had been wondering all week what purpose there was in ingesting bromide in any formula, for any illness, but now I know it is not the bromide, but the other part of the chemical name that is important. Maybe the bromine stays stuck to the molecule and just the H goes off on its own, and leaves dextromethorphan-Br to hang out in solution and bind to stuff with other loose H's. obviously I did not get very far in organic chemistry, cause this is probably all semi-educated rubbish, but it makes me feel better about my pills, now that I know what I am looking for in them. Now so long as they work, maybe I can sleep tonight and wake up cured in the morning in time to go back into Boulder for work.

The Speckled Jelly Egg Diet

Did you know speckled jelly eggs have no fat? It's true, according to the packaging anyway, and considering that they are basically gummy dense marshmallows with a hardened sugar shell they'd better not have any fat. They also have 150 Calories per 13 eggs, so if you eat all 8 servings that come in one bag, you'd still get 1200 Calories from your snack, but no fat. You'd also probably get a few cavities in your premolars, since they stick a lot worse than marshmallows. Considering that over the past few days I have mostly just eaten speckled jelly eggs, bacon, and a few turkey sandwiches, it looks like I might be well on my way to being a new spokesperson for this new lowfat diet. Vitamin B-complex from the turkey sandwiches, plus a little vitamin E. ( I still am eating the Good Bread with all the nuts and extra grains in it, and turkey has some vitamin E.) Vitamin A from the turkey and bacon, and the bread. Not much vitamin C, but a supplement should work for that. Vitamin D comes from the sun, and the reaction that its light initiates in my skin, assuming I get any sun, of course, but I have been outside easily enough over the past few days to gather enough vitamin D for the week. There's at least some iron in the bread, and maybe a trace of iron, plus anti-oxidants in my dark coffee.
At this rate the government may have a point about that any reasonably caloric diet is bound to be a sufficient source of nutrients by their standards.

Small Worlds and Piriformis muscles

I always love days when something interesting happens, especially lately. I actually made it all the way down to Boulder to see a possible new apartment in Southeast Boulder. I used to think commuting between Longmont and Boulder was intolerably slow and inconvenient, before Washington, but I got used to their ideas of commuting, I guess. There commutes of 15 miles are always long, with all the hills, weird curvy streets and lakes that slow down traffic and lengthen actual trip distances. I was commuting a distance that ought to have been just 12 miles for a while, and yet with a ridge in the way the buses took a 21 mile route instead, and took almost 2 hours to do so. But I walk at about 4 miles per hour, so it would still have taken longer just to walk, unfortunately. After all that, taking the Bolt into Boulder is so easy and fast! However, it took just $1.25 to get me to work transferring through two counties in Washington, and $2.25 to take a much longer trip to the other side of the lower end of Lake Washington. Here it takes $3 just to get to Boulder. Very annoying.

Anyway, I liked the place I went to see, and instead of meeting complete strangers, I met up with two ladies I already knew from some of my classes at CU. The only one I didn't already know is the one who is looking for a subtenant for her room. I'm hoping that works out.

Unfortunately between my very lumpy mattress and all the walking I have done all of a sudden this week I seem to have given myself a case of pipiformis syndrome, which feels a whole lot like I tore a small muscle in my butt. I only really notice it if I lean forward while my legs are more or less straight, so the act of sitting hurts, but once I am seated I feel fine. If I am putting weight on that side while moving through that conformation I lose feeling and motor control in the back of that leg, so it is definitely a pinched nerve. So I am rebuilding my mattress yet again, and stretching, and maybe I have learned my lesson about not getting so sedentary again in the future. Maybe. After all, if you have similar aches and pains in a leg or your back, there are ways to treat it with wrappings and massage, but asking someone to massage your butt is just ... Ok, I can see how that might be a great excuse to get a cute guy to become a much more intimate acquaintance, but if you have to have an injury in your butt before a guy is willing to touch your butt, either he's gay, or he's really not interested.

Connectivity

It is funny how easily people let themselves be isolated from even those they care about, let alone the rest of the world. Every day or so we are bombarded with messages about making the most of life, and concentrating on the people that matter to you before worrying about material things or status, yet we rarely as a society think anything of the idea that one could be busy and thus not talk to best friends, children and spouses for weeks, or longer. What do we do instead of keeping in touch with the people in our lives?

Many people keep hobbies that are fairly isolating, by habit if not by necessity. Reading, watching TV, scrapbooking, painting, and just about every other hobby people do alone can also become a shared activity with at least one person without losing anything of the pleasures of that hobby. Even the most introverted quiet person can share something of their life with friends, if only by sharing great books, since the books a friend recommends to you are always a reflection of that friend. Email makes it even easier to keep connected, since an email can be written in minutes or less and sent off as soon as it is written, and costs virtually nothing, yet few people really make an effort to write to friends they haven't heard from in a while, let alone keep regular correspondences.

Alvin Toffler, in his book FutureShock, makes an argument for friends and acquaintances being more temporary in the modern era, and does little towards discussing the necessity of this. At the time, of course, when he was writing, email didn't exist yet, but literature is full of letters from people who kept regular correspondence across oceans well before motorized travel was possible. expectation is as much a part of the dynamics of friendship as technology and circumstances, and intention trumps all three. If someone really intends to keep a friendship going, there is a much greater chance it will last, and if both parties have this intention, they are sure to remain friends for life, no matter what distances separate them. Perhaps our society is not dominated so much by technology and innovation as by laziness. The same lazy habits that lend themselves towards buying automated appliances for everything so we can sit around watching TV and getting fatter may easily be behind our ready acceptance of lost connections and bad relationships.

Note for anyone who has not yet upgraded their Firefox

Just a FYI, the new Firefox sucks. It may be a new and improved system overall, but if all you want to do is use the web as you wanted to before you upgraded, accessing the same webpages, and using your same blogging tools and chat utilities, you may prefer to not upgrade just yet. Or at least make sure you set up your computer so you can backtrack to your old set-up if Firefox is as bad for you as it has been so far for me. I wouldn't advocate Internet Explorer either, actually. My attempt at installing IE 7 stalled out and left me with just the software removal and download blocker from that package, and sure enough, it won't let me install anything I download since then. Old Firefox was great, and the new one will be ok eventually, but so long as it has major issues with opening Gmail, Blogger sites, and practically everything else more complicated than pure html, don't bother with it just yet.