To Save 15 Bones

Through a series of mistakes and miscalculations, I ended up missing my bus and had to drive my car in to school this morning and park it on one of the university parking ramps.   Thursdays are my crap days anyway -- I usually arrive on campus around 8am and have back-to-back-to-back obligations until after 6pm.  And just so you know, it is nearly impossible to plan, pack, and lug around the amount of food a day of this length requires, since I don't stay in one place all day.

Today, however, would be even longer -- I caught a poetry slam that lasted until after 7. (It was AWESOME, by the way.  I'm attending a free writing workshop they're putting on tomorrow at the library.) I actually had a short break just before their performance, and I wanted to go home and get some dinner...except that it would cost me $15 duckets to get my car out of the ramp!  Screw that!   They stop monitoring the ramp at midnight -- then I can get the damn car out for free.

But to stay until midnight, I'd still need to go home to get the power pack for my laptop and workout clothes.  So I took the bus home anyway, gathered up all my stuff, and then caught the next bus back to campus.  Despite my ambitions to be productive, I am dead on my feet nonetheless.  I have no desire to exercise, so I'm counting the 30-minute walk to and from the bus stop as my workout.   Actually, being on foot in the cold night air was peacefully invigorating, if that's possible. Though it had "cold and lonely" written all over it, I really enjoyed waiting for the bus alone in the dark. 

The walk across campus to the student union was also pretty fantastic -- though I nearly froze my fingers off to get a photo of the capitol building that even approached being in focus.  Worth it, anyway.

But now, despite drinking down a large coffee, I can barely keep my eyes open except to look longingly at my car, trapped on the third level of the parking ramp for another hour and a half.


I wanna go home and go to bed!

Riot Proof (Or, Scrappy Is As Scrappy Doo)

This is a view from the steps of the Old Capitol building.  Just beyond the trees, you can see two brick buildings.  Actually, you can see the one brick building with all the windows, but the other -- the massive brick blob -- somehow manages to disappear behind the one tree in the foreground that doesn't have any leaves.  This is the building that houses my department and my office.  And it was designed to be riot proof.

That's right.

It was apparently built at the tail-end or right after that period in history when college students paid attention to the world around them, got pissed, and took potentially destructive action. With the exception of faculty offices, you can only see out if you stay near the doors.  Every door in the building is a fire door, so leaving my office to go to the restroom is a workout.  Similarly, the first floor is laid out in a such a pattern with oddly-angled turns such that one becomes disoriented in the building very easily.  Students can almost never find their instructors' offices -- or even the department office at times!  It took me the better part of a semester to match the specific portions of the inside to their outside-world counterparts, and correctly identify which of four unevenly placed exit doors connected them.

During my first year, I don't know how many times I ended up walking 3/4 of the way around the building because I could never be sure which was the shortest path between the part of the building where I was standing and where I wanted to end up.

A perfect physical representation of the problem I have with academia in general.

I took this picture the same day that two emails went out over the grad student listserv "encouraging" more attendance at department seminar.


More concerned about being considered a "great thinker" than they are with doing the kind of thinking (or ACTING, for that matter) that might actually do someone any good.

When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer

                                                          by Walt Whitman

When I heard the learn’d astronomer;

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;

When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;

When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;

Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

"I love you, Walt freakin' Whitman!"

"How Romantic!"

...said my office mate when I told her I took my time walking back to our office after lecture so I could take some pictures down by the river.

Bridge over the Iowa River

Danforth Chapel

Old State Capitol

Iowa Winter

I think the best evidence that I can be happy anywhere is the fact that I love Iowa in the winter.  So much, in fact, that I started wishing for snow at the end of September this season.  The first winter I was here was apparently the worst in about a decade -- bitterly cold, lots of ice.  I was fine.  My definition of "cold" certainly got revised, but I adapted well.  I learned how to strategize my snow removal -- mostly to suck it up and clear some away mid-storm so it would be a little easier the next time I'd have leave the house on a schedule.  I also discovered the peculiar comfort that the sound of snow plows in the wee hours of night/morning brings.

Right now a snow storm is dumping 5-9 inches of snow on us.  I was leaving downtown this afternoon when it started coming down in big, fluffy flakes -- my favorite!  The next thing I knew, I found myself down by the train station, so I fired off a few pictures.

I thought the brick apartment building across the street from the station was especially pretty in the snow.  I can only imagine those are also some fantastic sittin' porches in the summer, too.  I'll miss those evenings sipping on tall, sweaty glasses of iced tea and air thick with humidity and fireflies.  *sigh*

I love Iowa.

One Flu Over the Cuckoo's Nest

I've been out with the flu for the last week. Still not 100%, but at least my body temp has returned to normal (I hovered around 96 the last couple days) as have my appetite and sense of smell.

I've heard about certain smells evoking memories, and last night as my own sense of smell returned, a cup of tea propelled me back to my college days. For me, "sleepy time" tea (and its equivalents) equals December 1994; orange spice, December 1996. I guess one of the cool things about having moved around a lot is that when a smell (or a song) transports me to another time, I also get to go on a little daytrip to a specific and special place.

"Sleepy Time" Tea: Dec 1994 -- Sonoma State University, CA
I lived in a quiet part of California's wine country and was completing my last semester at SSU (I was about to transfer to the 2nd of four schools I attended for undergrad). Sleepy tea reminds me of walking to my 7:45am English class as well as falling asleep in my Monday night Theater class. Seriously, who takes sleepy tea with them to class?!

Orange Spice Tea: Dec 1996 -- Seattle, WA
Orange Spice tea reminds me of my second visit to Seattle (I had gone earlier that summer), a couple years before I moved there. I was spending the holidays with the Love of My Life. I managed to come down with the flu on the plane -- and ruptured my eardrum on the landing.

Within the first couple days, we met up with his folks in downtown Seattle to see Singin' in the Rain. I just remember being very cold and miserable because I was sick, but somehow ending up after a long walk at Westlake Center (which is why I chose a pic of the Clock Walk over one of the Space Needle) and feeling really really bad for the horses that were being made to drag carriages behind them.

I also remember there was an engagement party for one of his college friends (that marriage was doomed from the start). I went to bed early because I was sick, but I do remember hearing something about one of the boys (Mossy?) making out (or trying to) with the bride-to-be's mother while the others (The Cray, Wewer, and maybe Garske) were hiding in the bushes/behind a car... can you believe these guys are 7-10 years older than me?!

I think that New Year's someone else in the group threw a disco party. I managed to find an AWESOME Phyllis/Rhoda dress at Goodwill. (Oh how I wish I still had that thing!) I've got it on good authority that there is a picture of me in it still floating around...

There was also a wicked snowstorm that year that derailed Joe's Miata, I went toe-to-toe with Moosie at World Wraps, spent a quiet evening in for my 21st birthday with a very tasty coconut cake but celebrated later at Moon China (oh that almond chicken!), didn't get carded when I eventually ordered my first legal drink at an Irish pub (rats!), collapsed in a heap from the flu at Christmas, and eventually went home early because my dad was lonely for my mom who was in the Philippines.

Yeah. ALL of that popped in my head when I got the first whiff of my orange spice tea.

First Post-26.2 Run Attempt

(not counting a failed attempt to catch my bus on Wednesday)

I lasted a whopping four non-consecutive minutes. Walked the rest of the half-hour.

I. HATE. THE. TREADMILL.

Body felt fine...soul couldn't take it.

Seriously...

Will someone please turn off winter?

In Iowa the Sun Means Nothing

WHY is it 3 below right now?!!

When I said winter broke me, what I meant was it froze my pipes. That's right. I showered at the rec center on Monday and Tuesday and made a couple late night trips to the 24-hour grocery to go pee in the middle of the night.

Un-friggin'-believable.

$260 bones and an hour of pipe heating later, I am not as in love with Iowa as I once was. And who's to say they're not going to just freeze right back up? IT'S -3!!!

Until we get back to reasonable temperatures (which is the high 20s/low 30s to me these days--egads, what's become of me?!), I will be nervous that my next trip to the loo will be disastrous.

Music Monday 2.11.08

I'm wondering how many points I get for lasting until February before actually complaining about winter. Zero? Well, that's more than the high yesterday, so I guess I'll take it.

In the meantime, here's a smattering of tunes that remind me of running in the desert. They're my own personal faves, but not all are necessarily about being outside. That's a picture of my front yard in Cruces. I'll try not to get too weepy thinking about it...

Wide Open Spaces
Dixie Chicks

Running on Empty
Jackson Browne

Against the Wind
Bob Seger

Running Down a Dream
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Life on the Road
The Kinks

Better Things
The Kinks

She's Got Everything
Dave Davies

I'm Not Like Everybody Else
Dave Davies

The Climb
No Doubt

Sunday Morning
No Doubt

End it on This
No Doubt

Not California Dreamin' but...

I miss the desert.

Are you happy midwestern winter?! You finally broke me. I want to run outside!